Canary Yellow

I heard a bit of murmuring in Grandma Marty’s room early this morning, and I was surprised to hear that it was him—that soft, scratchy, mouth-full voice.  What are you doing here? I thought, blurrily. 

“I didn’t sleep too well last night,” he said to her from behind the closed door, and I propped myself up on my elbow on the couch.  Clear as a bell, I heard him, and then he shuffled out of the bedroom, wrapped in that canary yellow bathrobe.  “Good morning, sweetheart,” he smiled, and I immediately kissed him.

“I love you.”  I hugged him.  “I miss you.”

 

I haven’t dreamed about my Grandpa Marty since before he died, I think.  For weeks after, when I’d close my eyes and just drift, I would see his face, stretched tight and waxy, dry and rough like sandpaper, mouth gaping, breath rattling.  His dying-face, but not his face.  Slowly, I’ve come back to his face in my mind, and now, when I think about him, I see him smiling, filled out, healthy, crinkly eyes and mischievous smile—long before I see him in the hospital.

But I haven’t dreamed him, haven’t spoken to him or touched him, let alone had the opportunity to tell him the very simplest version of anything I’ve wanted to say to him in the year or so since he left: “I love you.  I miss you.”

It was so good to see him canary-yellow and silver and smiling.

BMV, June Fifth

Today, she wrote June five 2 zero zero nine.

She didn’t know her address when the nice redhead at the BMV asked her, and to the question, “What was your mother’s maiden name?” she responded, “Audrey.”

No birthdate came to her mind, and hell, I wanted to giggle, forget about asking for the social security number, sweetheart, because I’m standing here with one of the sweetest women you’ll ever meet, but please don’t ask her the details of who she is, the official stuff.  Just love that she can even sign her name, and that, in this crinkling, crumpling memory of hers, it’s still her name.  Be glad.

I navigated, clumsily, the terrain of what-can-she-do-for-herself and what-should-I-do-for-her?  In my head, I could hear Ingrid Michaelson protesting, I’m a big girl now, see my big girl shoes…  Still, I gently took her pen while the nice redhead at the BMV asked her questions—“courtesy questions”—that mostly, she couldn’t answer. 

“Are you a citizen of the United States?”

“Yeah,” Leona Mae Searls chuckled.

Name, and I penned in Leona Mae Searls.

“Have you lived in Ohio your whole life?”

“Yep,” she said, sober-like, and I wrote 5280 Foxfire Dr, Zanesville, what’s the zip, shit, oh, 43701.

“Have you ever had a driver’s license or an i.d. issued here before?”

Silence.

I left Driver’s License # blank and nudged her.  “Yes,” I whispered. 

“Ye…Yes,” she said.  “I drove for quite awile, there, but not for awhile these days.”  I’m glad, again, that those fights are over.

“Sign here, Grandma,” I smile, and she haltingly pens, Leona Mae Searls.  Then, she hesitates at the date.

“June fifth,” I coax.

June…fifty…

“Two,” I stammer, “2009.”

Two…thou…

I gently take the pen, and she’s flustered.

June fifty, two thou 2009.

She signs maybe three or four more times, with varying degrees of success, Leona Mae Searls.  She smiles blurrily for the crappy camera, and for the tenth, the fiftieth, the millionth time, maybe, I miss my Grandma.

Four Fingers

From here, drowsy and warm, I can see the rough edge of your left cheek.  Your right cheek is pressed into my right shoulder.  Your beard is scratchy-soft on my skin.  Your curls are lit dimly from behind.  The shades are down, but light filters in like dust, falling down. 

I put four fingers down on the slop of your left shoulder.  I press gently, and the skin and muscles give slightly.  You’re breathing deeply, and my fingers rise and fall, keeping time with your breathing.

I can’t sleep.  I’ll lie here, supporting you, softening your sleep.  I’m glad to see the morning sunlight on your back, my fingers, glinting off your curls, softening the waking.

Morning Breaking

 

My alarm clock, the blue plastic one that Donna gave me for my birthday, woke me up most mornings at 5.  I would lay for a minute or two in the dark, listening in a fog of sleepiness to the birds who woke, most mornings, at about 4:45, and they started singing—cleared their throats a bit, and by 5:15, they were showing off.  I would sit up, throw my sheets off, and raise my mosquito net, and I would pad across the tile to my short, steep staircase, climb down, and boot up the computer.  While it hummed to life, I padded to the kitchen.  I learned how to step lightly, avoiding the squeaky boards in the hallway so Deb and Ken wouldn’t wake up. 

I pulled down a mug and a coffee filter or a bag of tea and flipped the switch on the speed kettle.  If it was already hot, and there was a wet, full coffee filter in the single-serve, I knew Ken was awake and tapping away at his computer.

Tea, milk, and sugar.  A book.  My journal.  Emails.  Rain pouring, shattering against the windows, pooling in the driveway, washing away the ants, the dust, and the roads.  My mornings.

Photograph # ?, or Traipsing to Fisenge in the Rain

 

Each time the clouds have gathered, scowling in the sky, since I came back to the States a little over a month ago, I’ve thought of Theresa and Patricia, umbrellas in hand, pushing through the weeds and maize, and of the question, “Will it rain?”

“It won’t rain!” I crowed.

“It will rain…somewhere.” Typical Dru.

“It will rain this afternoon!” Theresa predicted.

“It will rain,” said Patricia, and we giggled, and on cue, we were swallowed up in sheets of rain. 

We slogged through the grass until we reached the first clearing, a cluster of flats, a couple of trees, a porch, shelter, and we huddled there.  We pulled up chairs next to a handful of children—sisters, each knotting and combing the others’ hair, and a baby boy, looking concerned—and an old man on our left.  Patricia and Theresa greeted him in Bemba.  He had obviously welcomed us onto his porch, and he had asked about the two muzungu women, the old one and the young, traipsing through the rain with the two respected black women. 

I shook out my umbrella as Patricia and Theresa chatted with the man, and I set it on the porch in front of me, useless and limp, as the rain dripped through the ceiling onto my shoes.  I turned to smile at the children crouched in the corner, wishing I could offer one or two my chair without being rude to my hose.  Uncertainly, the oldest girl smiled back at me, and the little boy grimaced.

“That one,” Dru pointed at the boy, “needs to be checked for worms.”  His round belly poked out from under his t-shirt, and Auntie Dru noticed, of course, and assessed the situation.  He was shivering, and Dru waved him to her and cuddled him close to warm him, and the rain fell, and we waited, patient.  We waited, unconcerned, waited, because that is so much of what we did in that place—waited and hoped.

Dear Erin,

 

            I was so glad to read your newsy email, gladder still to hear mostly good news.  I’m trying to picture your sister as a pregnant lady, and I can’t, and I’m trying to picture you rocking your own adopted baby, and I can’t–no matter how much those images suit both of you, I can’t quite make those pictures in my head.  It’s a chronic condition I seem to have, this shock and awe that we are, in fact, grownups, constructing our own lives and capable of creating new ones, and responsible for seeing both of those through.  Do I need to remind you that you were five, like, yesterday, and I was recently in diapers?

            Seriously, though.

My world at twenty-three-nearly-four is now full of newly married folks and new mothers.  To me—single, transient, jobless, homeless, free as a bird and floating—this is both hilarious and creepy.  In a weird way, it’s like I’m kneeling here in the center of my life, awkwardly untangling my arms from my legs from my pigtails from my big girl britches, struggling to stand and become an adult, and off to the side, there, all my friends are happily playing house. 

All things considered, though, I’m learning a great deal about growing up, and I’m experiencing vicariously some of what the people I love are experiencing. 

There’s that bit about motherhood, right?  I spent four months living with, Donna and Stu, the parents of a college buddy, learning bit by bit the particular pain of a homemaker, wife, and mother who is dealing with a newly and profoundly empty nest.  Her daughter Diane graduated from Ball State last summer and married right after.  They moved to Indy, where they are much too busy to visit often.  The son, Kyle, just graduated from BSU this spring.  He told me he wants to spend the summer rolling around the country with his guitar and car, playing music on the street, playing for change—playing for a change, really.  We’ll see what comes after, but the chances are good that he won’t go home. 

Suffice it to say, their mother, my friend, is lonely in a big way.  On the one hand, it was a pleasure to know how much she enjoyed having me around, having someone to look after.  On the other hand, it took us awhile to come to the delicate balance where I could allow myself to be a cherished, looked-after adopted kid and also assert myself as an extremely independent, capable adult who was just grateful for a room to stay in.  Likewise, she learned to offer to take care of me without treating me like her child, realizing that was not a relationship I’d signed up for or one that she had earned.  At the end of four months with her, I feel like I understand a woman’s heart a little better, particularly a mother’s heart.  And she’s a good woman, a good mother with a very, very good heart.

Soon after I moved out of her home, just before I left for Zambia, I met the first baby born to any of my high school buddies: Ella Grace Stewart, born to my lifelong friend Liz.  Born perfect, Erin–completely flawless, as babies can be but usually aren’t.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Liz, cross-legged on the bed in front of me, beaming, a woman and a mother.  She was cuddling a little girl not so very much younger than Liz and I were when we met on a pool deck.  I wasn’t around for any of those transitions.  She had happened while my back was turned.

I realize that these are universal moments, the sugary, flowery ones in Hallmark movies and Christian romances, but seriously?  There’s a lot of truth to the sweetness and strangeness of them, and I felt privileged to be present.

I also wondered if maybe I’ve been skipping out, somehow, on some of life’s most ordinary and heroic moments.  I suddenly felt penniless, like I’d turned the pockets of my own existence inside out to reveal nothing but clean white cloth.

Then, very quickly, I came to my senses.  I could love Ella for what she was: a miracle.  Someone else’s miracle.  That warmth, like a balloon rising in my chest, was a response to what she was, not to motherhood itself.  Thank God.  It was a close call.

I can marvel at mothers.  I can appreciate them.  But because I’m not yet ready to be someone’s mother, because I’m still struggling with the concept of being someone’s life partner, there are deep places—terrifying places, magic places—mothers can go where I can’t follow.  I can’t begin to understand. 

 There’s a woman here, Sharon, who works for Kafakumba teaching the God’s Kids classes with Vivan each week.  Sharon has had several miscarriages and stillbirths in her young motherhood.  Not one live child yet, until this last baby, a girl.  The child had been sick since she was born, but she’d lived eight long months.  I arrived here a few days ago, though, to whispers about Sharon, the mmm-hmm kind, the poor-baby kind, the well-meaning kind: Sharon lost the baby, did you hear?  Made it to eight months, then died mysteriously.  Mmm hmmm, poor woman, poor baby, mmm hmmm…  Debbie’s face was dark when Caroline told her, and I couldn’t read it, but I felt such a strangely familiar sense of grief for a woman I’d never met. 

  I met Sharon the other day as Patricia and I were walking through Beluba village.  She’s a tall woman, very thin, with a face scrubbed flat by sadness—that kind of sadness, like yours, Erin, that I can’t sing, the kind that I pay so much attention to and hate.

Liz, Ella’s mama, is a nurse.  She’s worked in OB and loves it, but when I visited Ella, Liz told me that eventually, she wants to work in oncology, with terminal cancer patients.  Over the body of her sleeping baby girl, I blinked at her.  “You’re in for some really painful, sleepless nights, love,” I said.  “That is a very difficult job,” though I know she knows that.  Liz is a nurse, though, and in a cancer ward, unlike any other ward, a nurse can really come to know and develop relationships with her patients because they’re in there all the time.  Pain is simply part of the gig, and to Liz, the caretaker, the nurse, the keeper of this brand new life, it’s worth it.

Then I thought of you when I heard about Sharon’s baby–you, wanting to be a dula and a midwife, your intense passion for women’s lives and stories, your need to involve your love of women in your spirituality and in the work you love.  You, like Liz, are in for some really painful, sleepless nights, my dear.  Of course there’s a particular pain that comes to anyone who works exclusively with men and men’s lives, but to want to tangle yourself up in the world of women—this is an act of bravery.  If you’re willing to endure the often-sadness, you are going to be so privileged.  You’ll be present for the very holy, most intimate moments in life.  I mean, there are less than a handful of people who are witnesses to a baby’s first breath and a first-time mother’s first tears.

In all of this, I miss you, Erin.  I wish for you tonight, a cup of tea, and your perspective.  You always seem to see things that I don’t see in a situation. 

At least, if I have any kind of clear understanding on my own here, I always have the perspective that relativity offers.  Perspective isn’t comfort, of course, but then comfort isn’t the point.  Relativity isn’t vision, but I welcome the perspective. 

See, I’ve cried many times over seven days for ordinary love:

I’ve wanted to hold my niece so much my arms have throbbed; I want to hear “Aunt Daisy.” I want my sister’s cooking and her bossiness, I’ve wanted Ben’s scruff on my face and his hands in my hair.  I’ve wanted my father’s hugs and my mother’s worry. 

All those are exactly what they seem, though: they’re the elements of a healthy dose of homesickness, a clear and classic case of wanting exactly what I can’t have and wanting it now.  I would settle for their voices on the phone, but even tonight, I can’t have that because I made a particular choice, and that is always when we want something most. 

Perspective, at the end of the day, says this more of an old, old ache–the dissatisfaction of loneliness–and less of a pain.

I made a choice that requires barefootedness, a willingness to walk on broken glass, if that’s what’s ahead, and this is the first choice I’ve made in quite some time that requires me to grow up and commit to and learn to live with its consequences.  To do otherwise would be shameful.  I could say that I’m proud of myself for making the choice, and to an extent, I am.  But then perspective, at the end of the day, says I don’t really have to live with anything.  Remember that—barring any unforeseen craziness, barring the possibility that immigration will love me so much that they decide to make me stay rather than kicking me out when my visa expires—I’ll get exactly what I want most in just under three months.

 

All of this is because, very simply, I wonder:  what kind of love and horror does the woman feel who’s lost every child she’s ever conceived? 

 

I know that folks ought not to go around comparing their lives to the most awful situations simply to feel better about their own or to avoid facing their problems altogether.  That’s not healthy or realistic, and that’s not the point.

 

But.

 

There’s something to recognizing the spectrum of what is possible and endurable.

 

Also, there’s something to the fact that for every year this old rock has been turning and sustaining human life, women–rich women and poor women, women of every color and class and country–have borne babies and have lost babies. 

It’s really nothing new, and there’s nothing selective about it.  There have been women of every color and class and country there to witness those moments.

 

I’m not trying to oversimplify anything.

 

I am, however, making the argument that whatever we do or don’t agree on in this world, women can, on some level, understand each other, feel each other.

 

If we could bottle that power up and anoint the world, it seems to me that the kingdom of God would have come, and we would have done God’s will...

 

 

            Just a thought, and at the end of it, I do love you dearly,

 

            Sarah

To understand anything I do as an artist, and to get any idea of what I experience here, you have to know that I approach the world in a very sensual way: I lean heavily on and very much enjoy sight, taste, sound, touch...
That said, I love that my life here is saturated with color. 
That's what I've been thinking this week, and I've been thinking and writing IN color this week: yellow soccer ball, blue sky, orange flowers, green chitenge, red dirt, purple paint spot.

Since so many of you have enjoyed my "word-pictures," as you've called them, this email is the first installment of a series of color-thoughts (this is a concept I'm basically borrowing from my friend Kelly Heneveld's senior paper at Anderson University, which was sort of a memoir broken down by color).
Plus, this particular strange color gives me an excuse to tell this story tonight, rather than wait until later this week.

There's no real nutshell version of this email, as that would ruin the story, which true to my nature, I've drawn way out mostly for no good reason.  Well, for dramatic effect.  And for fun.
(As "Dad" says in Grumpier Old Men, "What the...what you talkin' about, a moral?  Hell, no, there ain't no moral!  I just... like that story.  Like that story...")


With my love, I'm sending warmth to you all, and better dreams than I'm bound to have tonight.


BLACK...ISH--BROWNISH--ORANGISH

Well, then.

A bit of history, shall we? 

When I was a senior in high school, I took psychology with Mr. Iden.  He probably doesn't remember, but he had each of us fill out this long, long survey of...well, ourselves, answering question after question about what was in our heads.  If I'm remembering correctly, one of those dealt with what, in psych terms, are called "irrational fears":  fear of heights, say, or fear of small spaces. 
We were supposed to list what we thought were our irrational fears.
(Now, I tend to contest the term "irrational."  For example, when a person is up high, he or she risks toppling, right?  To me, this is a very logical fear.  Yes, it's not so much the being-up-high that one should be afraid of; it's the falling and the impact.  So being afraid of high places themselves IS irrational, I suppose.  It's being afraid of the impact in the low places that's not...blah, blah.)
Still and all, I thought hard.
Heights?  Nah.  The last time I was in Zambia, I threw myself off a cliff backwards at Victoria Falls---a bungee-jump-and-zipline combination called "The Gorge Swing."  This time, I've spent most days for the last month on tiptoe at the top of a rickety ladder.  Tight spaces?  Darkness?  Deep water?  Strange foods?  Needles? Not a real problem--I've shimmied through pitch-black caves in Thailand, swum in the ocean, have tattoos and piercings...in short, I'll try just about anything once.
The point here is not to sound ridiculous and arrogant, as I realize I do, it's to illustrate: then and now, I consider myself a relatively gutsy individual with few irrational fears.

...I said FEW.  And I did not have to think hard then--nor do I now--about what was at the top of that list.
Spiders. 
Folks, to me, this is not an irrational fear, it is a logical fear, and a healthy respect: spiders have fangs, their fangs deliver poison, and poison delivers pain and, occasionally, death.
I fear them, and I fear their fangs, and I fear the poison in their fangs because I have quite a bit of living left to do, I hope.

Let's put me on the couch, here, where we'll flash back to when I was about seven (maybe eight or nine).  If my big sister were in the therapist's office with me, here, she might hotly contest my memory.  But for my purposes, I'll claim the integrity of this story and move on.  The two of us were waiting at Ivy Tech for my mother to finish work.  To pass the time, Jenny decided to rent a movie for us from the Warsaw Library.  She popped it in, and within short order, I had turned my chair around to face the wall, refusing to look at the screen, where man was pitted against nature--specifically giant spiders--in the movie Arachnaphobia.
I swear to you that for weeks afterward, I could see long, hairy spider legs creeping out from every nook and cranny I laid my eyes on.  They were like little fingers pointed directly at me.  I want to eat YOU, they said. 
I had a great imagination. 
It was awful.
For years afterward, I could hardly stand to look at, let alone touch, pictures of giant spiders (like the ones on the covers of the kids' reference books I would shelve when I worked in the children's department of the library.  I would hold them gingerly between two fingers and shove them in the stacks as quickly as possible.  If I was feeling very brave, I'd take a peek at the pages.  That wasn't a regular thing...) without shivering violently.  Encounters with spiders produced violent reactions, too.  I once caught sight of a large black house spider in my Syracuse bedroom.  I'm not a squealer, but I distinctly remember squealing, shooing it into the corner where my door hinged with the wall, slamming the door on it, leaping onto my bed on the other side of the room, and waiting there nervously, reading a book for a couple of hours, until I was sure that poor, crushed creature would have to be dead.
Although I love and respect my sister deeply, to this day, I'll lay the responsibility for all of that on her. 
But don't worry, Jen.  Over the years, I've healed quite a bit  I can even look at Ryan Schlipf's dictionary of creepy-crawlies, the Big Book of Little Monsters, or whatever it is--and be genuinely fascinated by what he's showing me.  I can touch the pages, now.


Apart from self-deprecating humor, there's a point to all of this backstory, very relevant to my present life in Zambia, I promise.

It's just to explain why I yelped when I picked up my paint smock off the floor of the children's centre this morning and went to put it on, and a very large, very leggy, very furry black thing fell out of it and scuttled across the floor to the corner where I store my paints.  I squinted hard at corner, where in the dimness, I could vaguely see legs poking out from behind a ball of my yarn.  I stomped my foot.  No movement.  I opened a small bottle of water and splashed the corner.  No movement.  I backed away slowly and marched purposefully out of the room and across the way to the women's centre, where I approached the four guys working there.  I like to think my face was pale, but brave.  Still, I didn't even attempt Bemba.  I gushed English.
"Benjamin...or...somebody," I grinned sheepishly, "there's a, a, a huge spider in the children's room...I know you're working, but would someone be willing to come tell me if it's a tarantula so that I at least know whether to be afraid or not?"  They all looked at each other, it clicked, and Benjamin followed me.  I pointed, and he crouched.  He picked up the ball of yarn from the corner with his thumb and forefinger and tossed it aside, then I heard a low "ooh ho hooo" from him and murmuring from the other three behind me, whose curiosity had gotten the better of them, I guess.
In a flurry of activity, Benjamin grabbed one of my brushes and stabbed at the spider, pinning it, and kind of chop-sticked it together with another paintbrush, holding it up as its legs flailed.  The guys were all grinning.

(Backstory, now, backstory...my heart, as you can assume, was racing, and I truly understood what authors mean when they write about knees that "turned to jelly."  I've never passed out before, but I honestly thought I was going to today.)

"Tarantula?" I asked weakly, and one of the guys, in broken English, turned to me and explained that it was very good I'd had them come because this spider would "sting bad" and was very dangerous, especially for children.  "Kills them?" I stammered, and he nodded. Benjamin dropped the spider, obviously wounded, on the floor, and it REARED UP on its back legs.  There was excited discussion as he picked it up on the paintbrush again, and it reared again.  I asked them not to kill it, so someone, I'm not sure who, took it away.  The man who'd told me about the spider picked up my two paintbrushes and explained that we needed to wash them well to get rid of the poison (biologists reading this: does that even work?), so we took my soapy water and rinsed them thoroughly.

Not that I was going to use those paintbrushes.  Again.  Ever.
Not that I really wanted to paint at all, after that, particularly with my head back up in the rafters of the room.
I thanked the guys again and again, feeling both foolish and lightheaded, grabbed my keys, and took my wobbly knees out for a long walk to stave off an adrenaline rush that was going to have me puking if I didn't move my body.  I looped around the grounds of Kafakumba twice before I went back to the room and painted, sans the offending smock, until this afternoon.

I found two of the spider's fuzzy legs on the floor by my paints before I left today.  With a paintbrush, I nudged them into a baggie and took them home with me to ask almighty Google what the heck had just happened and to compare the legs to any pictures I might rustle up.

Baboon spiders, according to the results of my Google search tonight, are a kind of tarantula.  They have an orange sheen to their hairy bodies, and they're incredibly defensive and aggressive.  When threatened, they rear up on their back legs and can apparently leap three feet in the air to use their fangs on whatever party they feel has pissed them off. 
My four buddies and I were that party, and I am so, so not sorry that Benjamin broke the bully's legs.

If general, practical wisdom is correct, the best way for a person to conquer deep fears is to face them.
Probably, that takes more than one instance of "facing," and frankly, I don't want another.  Heck, I didn't choose that unhappy meeting today!  Plus, I let a guy fight the actual battle for me, which is just shy of shameful.  But hey--
I totally survived way more than touching the pages of Ripley's Big Book of Spiders.
That's definite progress, my friends, and it's only taken me a decade or so.
Slow and steady wins the race...