Strumming to himself

Several years ago, for his 75th and final birthday, John was given a tape made from some old wire recordings my Grandfather, Papa, used to send back and forth to my Mother and her sister in the late 40’s. Recorded “letters”, an innovation - and Papa loved whatever was the latest thing. George had sent me one earlier and it was so strange listening to my parents as young kids in their twenties, sounding so well, young. I was in my late forties then and felt like I was the parent, listening to those youthful voices from the past. So there on the couch sat Uncle John with the cassette player to his ear listening intently, tears streaming down his face, smiling and crying at the same time, a beautiful heartfelt moment and an awesome gift. Later in the afternoon, while the young people were setting up the BBQ and milling around outside, Uncle John was playing his guitar on the sofa alone. Playing quietly, so totally immersed in the music and oblivious to us all was a lesson in inner peace. When he was young, his musical ability gave his quiet personality a foothold in social gatherings. His talent came naturally, for he had an ear for music. During family get-togethers, he loved to take a seat at the piano or organ and play without “performing." Like delighting in a happy child at play, we all sang along and shared in his pleasure. He always seemed at ease, naturally funny and loveable. He’d be there at gatherings, his single glass of wine in hand, chortling after making his standard toast – “Here’s to our wives and lovers – may they never meet!”

Working Jigsaws

I have been thinking about my writing and why I am mulling over the past. I am trying to remember, trying to sort out the pieces, as if they were parts of a puzzle, trying to join them together with some coherence. Arranging and rearranging the pieces, assembling a slightly different picture every time. What image am I trying to create? I am not really sure. Mostly I am remembering, re-traveling long ago paths and hoping that by retracing my steps I will come across something I missed on the first trip, some sort of ah-HA! - so THAT'S WHY. I go over the scattered memories and conversations, sometimes like a detective building a case, sometimes like a collector bringing order to his pile of treasures by continual repositioning. My memories are different from the recollections of siblings and cousins. When their new odd pieces are thrown into the mix, I try to make them fit. I shave a little off of this one’s edge or press that one into a spot where it doesn’t quite fit. My grandmother, Nana, had an intense love for games and puzzles. She enticed us into her world, lavishing us with the attention a child craves when growing up in a large family with busy parents. We became addicts. Besides the intoxication of the inner world of mental games, there were all those wonderful physical objects to hold and move about; checkers, cards, dice, chips, and most of all those strangely shaped colored bits of cardboard that could join together to create a masterpiece. At our cabin there was always a giant jigsaw puzzle in progress on a rickety card table at the end of the living room. We worked on it in shifts, our backs stiff, our eyes bleary, hunger and thirst gnawing away at our guts. It was a grueling and dangerous activity. At any given moment the dog could pass underneath, wag his tail and knock the sky off the edge. A passing sister, (snidely insisting that puzzles were a waste of time), would find the piece with the little part of the red boat – annoying those of us who had been putting in endless hours searching for it. The little ones, drawn by the intensity of our adult concentration like flies to sugar wanted to “help”. We shooed them away with “don’t touch that! - here you can work this one”, appeasing them with a game box missing so many pieces that we knew better than to attempt it anyway. So here I am, putting in my time, finding parts that interlock, bringing together sections of a larger picture; clouds here, a boat there, the horse’s leg, working towards some sort of completion. I probably won’t end up with a masterpiece, but maybe I’ll get a picture of my past without too many holes in it.

Kitty Hawk

My dad dreamed as a child about flight and early on turned his inventive mind towards planes, and sticking fast, became an aeronautical engineer - getting to do what he loved for the rest of his life. He always claimed a connection to the Wright brothers. Apparently one of his Mother’s relations had been married to Orville or Wilbur or something, the thread was thin and tenuous, but we gripped it tightly. He grew up reading the classics, but was always thinking of the future, gravitating towards Buck Rogers and John Carter of Mars, and eventually shifting to Heinlein and Asimov. Our attic was filled with musty yellowed copies of Analog, Argosy and Amazing Stories and we would shuffle thru them, reading short stories about spaceships and robots when other families read Zane Grey and Mickey Spillane. Dreaming of the future, he helped to make it,designing planes his entire life, from the Flying Tiger to the Stealth Fighter. And yet, it wasn’t until the late 80’s that he finally visited Kitty Hawk - the Mecca of aerospace. To view the path and feel the breeze must have been a moment of triumph for him, coming full circle as he did. They stopped off in Iowa on their way home, in part to visit and also so that Dad could recuperate from a bug he may have caught on those historic winds. They had photos to share with us and developed them at our local one-hour shop. The manager was so taken with one of Dad's ocean photos that he asked if he could post it on the bulletin board. That honor probably gave my Dad more joy and pride than any award from art competitions ever gave me. It is for me, a treasured shot , although almost eclipsed by his photo of Mom with a camera sneaking up on a gull.

Holy Matrimony, Batman!

In answering an old friend's questions about the circumstances of my wedding, I pulled out the old photos and made a facebook album of some choice shots. Our wedding was decidedly no frills. I always was uncomfortable with dress ups and fancy ceremonies. How I ever got thru my sorority days was a miracle, and going to church was an ordeal of an hour of rolling up my hair during Gunsmoke, so it would bend a little on Sunday morning - a day I grew to dread more than Monday’s return of school. My younger sister had recently had a huge Church wedding with lots of bridesmaids and fancy dresses and a big reception at home - so I figured I was now off the hook. Mike and I knew we’d get married but wanted to wait until we were done with grad school before taking that step. We intended to stay on in Iowa City, having grown attached to the place, and with both of our families 2000 miles away, just figured we’d go and get hitched here. We planned no ceremony and didn’t expect anyone to come all the way out to the boonies even if we had. Getting married for us was just a legal matter. We planned to go to the Judge’s house after work on a Friday, sign the papers, and then go sign a lease on a little rental house we had been eyeballing for our new digs. After that business was done, we’d pick up Robert and John; Mike’s in town brothers, go to the local steakhouse and then play cards. A fun filled evening by our standards. But no, in-laws took us by surprise. Mike’s older brother Joe flew in from Colorado, insisting that Robert and John were too young to oversee an event of this magnitude, along with my parents – who refused to be left out of their eldest daughter’s “Big” day. Well, we worked through the “big” day as usual, me at Ho Jo’s, making up beds, and Mike at the Frame House, framing pictures. In the afternoon when I got off work, my folks came over to our apt to strategize. Dad asked if he had to rent a suit and when I said “nope!” promptly took a nap. Finding that we didn’t want to plan anything, Mom took matters into her own hands and busied herself making arrangements for a “proper” dinner at a posh restaurant and cake afterwards. The “ceremony” of paper signing at the judge’s home was almost drowned out with music blaring up from the basement, where her kids were watching the TV show, Batman. Who else can claim that infamous 60’s theme song as their “wedding song”? The day after our nuptials, my folks took us around with a realtor looking for a house they could buy and rent to us until we got sick of this Iowa business. Since we had passed on the fancy wedding, they sprang for a U-Haul truck to move our stuff from California back to Iowa. After 33 years we’re still living in that house and haven’t gotten sick of it yet.

Chafing at the Passage of Time

I pulled out an old sketchbook the other day. It was a “journal/sketchbook” I used in 1981 on a vacation at my parents beach house out in California and later on at home in Iowa. Reading those entries and looking at the old paintings after so many years have passed was another trip in itself. I was way too serious in my diaries and way too somber. It was as if I didn’t want to write about anything fun – preferring instead to pour out my angst onto the pages. Reading the passages stirs up some painful memories, but I wouldn’t let go of them for the world. The sketches belie a beauty and serenity that was indeed there, serving as a backdrop for the growing pains of revisiting a home and parents that through the passage of years, shifting relationships and physical distance, you have grown away from. Memory is selective. Whether we choose to keep the joy or the pain from the past depends so much on the fickleness of mood and personality. I think optimists underline all the pluses in their past, plucking them out like flowers, while the pessimists are always finding all those weeds.

From November 2, 1981 at home in Iowa - revised
“It’s like my handwriting - it’s terrible because I try to write as fast as the words come into my head. Sometimes I think I’m making the letters sloppy on purpose - to spite myself. I know I can write legibly and even use all the letters required by each word. So why not? What is this heated rush - this sense of urgency that my thoughts are so transient, so fleeting that I must grab them as they fly by. If I don’t tie them down they’ll be gone forever. Time is my enemy - my tormentor. It laughs and sneers, tongue wagging, eluding me, always two steps ahead of me. Always stingy with itself, time is not generous with me. When I knock at time’s door, looking for a donation, it always says it gave at the office.

Once on a visit, while filling the coffeepot, I asked my Mom if she too, got mad that the water didn’t come out of the tap fast enough, YES! , she laughed.

the Last Icecubes

My Mother and her sister were opposite in so many ways. Mom loved Coca Cola with loads of ice, and slurped down coffee that was burning hot. Her sister disdained all fizzy drinks and was happy to nurse a cup of coffee well beyond tepid. Mom was up and do-do-doing. My Aunt lounged and read and mused before budging an inch. For them, sisterhood was a push-pull relationship that teeter-tottered between extremes. Mom was always up and ready with a rapid fire response to every situation, Alice was relaxed, tut-tuting, descending into a philosophical dissection of its moot points. One warm evening at my Aunt’s home in the valley, Mom’s sisterly devotion was put to the test. Her laid back sister, unconcerned with temperature of drinks as she was, rarely had ice cube trays that actually had more than two or three cubes in them. We, a family where certain death was anticipated if the trays were not refilled on the spot and several batches of ice on stockpile at all times, always worried when an event was at my Aunt’s home in the valley in 100 degree temps with crowds of people there imbibing full steam. (This was in the days of no automatic ice cube makers). So we’d ask upon arrival if we should go get ice. “Oh no we have plenty” was always the reply. We usually snuck a quick peek in the freezer when alone in the kitchen – sticking a finger in the tray to test the firmness of the water, and making necessary adjustments to the trays. So there we all were, the evening getting into full swing and the drinks flowing. The ice is down to a few cubes and no reinforcements on the horizon. Mom is attempting her best behavior - not wanting to stir up trouble since her sister was recovering from an illness as it was and everyone wanted the night to be happy. Mom was stationed in the kitchen by the counter, where the drinks were mixed - next to the aquarium. She clinked the remaining ice cubes around in her glass, savoring the security of the sound. My Uncle, chatting happily with us and feeding his fish, walks over to the freezer and pulls out the tray, (“Hmmm making more ice?” Mom thinks to herself.) He lifts out the last two remaining cubes and goes over to the aquarium and drops them in the tank. Mom’s eyes bulge out of her face as her lips tighten into a thin line, holding back an outburst of panic and rage and disbelief at what she is seeing. She wants to say a thousand things, but for the sake of family harmony, must keep them all in. I watch her, admiring her strength of will and desperate attempt at keeping her composure from unraveling. I know she’s thinking “He’s gone nuts!! He’s throwing the last two ice cubes in this house into the fish tank and there’s twenty people waiting for refills!!!!!” Her round eyes meet mine aghast! I start to giggle and later she does too. My Uncle is as oblivious to the drama that has just gone on, as Mom was to his need to adjust the temperature in the overheated aquarium by cooling it down with a few ice cubes.

Shoe Talk

About ten years ago we took a vacation on the Oregon coast, a family reunion on my husband’s side. I walked the beach and thought about being away from my work and the usual hometown crowd, surrounded instead with busy in-laws and all the emotional stew of a large family gathering. Of course, when you walk the beach, whether clustered in a group or spaced apart, you turn inward, into your thoughts, into studying the bits of shell and stones, into the patterns in the sand. Your involvement in those washed up fragments drowns out the voices of others just as effectively as the steady roar of the waves. You are with others - and yet alone. It’s funny; my Mom would have been in her element at this reunion - with the beach as a backdrop and all of the family stuff going on. She would have attentively listened to everyone’s stories, plunging into the smorgasbord of family spats, shifting alliances, personal victories and crushing defeats, like she threw herself into the surf. When I found myself striking up a conversation with the Oregon resort owner, listening to his woes about his adult son’s return home, his renter’s hassles, his tamed seagull, I had to laugh at myself. This is exactly what Mom would have been doing - finding out everyone’s life stories. How they felt, what their troubles were, making humorous comments, commiserating and befriending, getting more out of a stranger than out of her own kid. Her father did it too. He had what she called the “GIFT OF GAB” or as she so graphically put it - “DIARRHEA OF THE MOUTH”. Anyway, I remember the last visit my family and I had with my parents. It was up at a lodge in Minnesota a few months before her unexpected death. I was irritated at her spending so much time getting to know a stranger’s story, when she should have been spending time having intense conversations with me. It was like she preferred new friends to old - and here I was doing the same thing. The Minnesota trip was such a frustrating “VACATION." She was thumbing through newspaper ads wanting me to talk about what shoes I liked (NONE) when I wanted something deeper. I had such few visits with her and for such short times, what with my kids being little and our living 2000 miles apart, that the last thing I wanted was to talk about was something as stupid as shoes. I should have talked shoes, they may have moved into deeper things (soles? souls?). I was mad and rash and frustrated by my parent’s age and deterioration and the shoes had just been the tipping point. Now I think that talk, any talk can become relevant and important and WORTHWHILE, given the chance. I remembered Steinbeck’s comment about creativity, that “art lies not so much in the OBJECT of scrutiny but in the DEGREE of OBSERVATION “. I missed a conversation that COULD have become important or, if trivial, at least one more memory. It is my loss and my mistake. So now, when one of my daughters wants to tell me about her new couch covers or even gasp! a recent shoe purchase, I’m all ears.

Cabin

Every year for Thanksgiving, we went to our Grandmother’s cabin near Lake Arrowhead. There was no phone, no TV, and not much heat other than what you got from the fireplace, the stove and the scary gas heaters in the bedrooms that were put in during the twenties when the cabin was enlarged. The heaters had ceramic grilles that were broken and hanging. The blue and yellow gas flames licked and blackened the white clay over the years making it look very alien to our Southern Californian eyes. You turned a little crank in the pipe that fed the gas to the heater and then stuck a lighted wooden match in a hole in the side to ignite the flames. Sometimes the gas hadn’t been on for a season so it came slowly thru the pipe. Sometimes it came with a burst of air and the match blew out and another had to be lit. We were always wary when we went to light it, arming ourselves with a fist full of matches (definitely a job for the older kids). Wooden kitchen matches were prized at the cabin; they were the source of fire and warmth and food preparation. We used them for counters when we played Tripoly - we never had real poker chips up there. We had many, many decks of cards - some with all 52 cards - those we kept together with rubber bands after carefully counting them two or three times. We stored them on the mantle “out of reach” - safe from sabotage by the “kids”. The rest went into the coffee table drawer for the little kids to “play” cards - they had vast quantities of them with all kinds of pictures on the backs from winter scenes to golden retrievers to my grandmother’s fancy matched roses that were once very expensive KEM plastic coated cards. My Grandmother Nana taught me how to play canasta with those rose cards on the floor of the bedroom we shared when I was little in Ohio. I remember laying out the rows of red sevens with the last one placed slanted across the bottom and the power of freezing the pile with a black three. I can no longer remember how to actually play the game, but I still look at red sevens and black threes as cards with special powers.
Matches lit the big stove in the kitchen and mom always did that first thing when arriving at the cabin. She’d leave the oven door open with the flame on and it would slowly heat up the kitchen. We’d all bring in our boxes and paper bags of clothes and the food stuff, in a hurry to inspect and stake claims on our beds in the back rooms, the same rooms our Mother had shared with her school friends when they came up for holidays. Then, if it was still daytime, we’d rush outside to collect pinecones, twigs and to greet our rocks. The rocks were huge boulders by the garage. Actually some were pretty small, but they were huge to us and one rite of passage was to be able to climb up the largest of them and sit on its top. We centered most of our play around them. The twins became wild animals and those rocks were their lair. One of the boulders had a crack where you could hide secret things or brace a branch to use as a support for the roof structure of a fort. We sat on them and listened for the squirrels and blue jays and the air moving through the pines. After we conquered our rocks, they shrank in size and we traveled on to find other, larger boulders to tame.
The rocks were next to the garage. It was old and leaning, probably built in the 20’s and filled with the remnants of Grandma’s past. The cabin itself was furnished with a hodgepodge of everyone’s leftovers which supplemented a core of items originally intended for a vacation spot in the twenties and thirties. Going through it piece by piece you could retrace the ever changing story of their lives and mark the turning points - Divorce, death of an aunt or uncle, downsizing to a smaller house. Things handed down that could not quite be discarded found a home there. They all retained some history some spiritual meaning, which made rummaging through the pile in the garage an almost holy experience for us as kids. They seemed like curious relics of a lost civilization,”Whose was this? What did this do? Who is this guy?
The kitchen was equipped with a complete set of fiesta ware which my grandparents bought down in Laguna Beach. We thought they were magical plates, in all different colors and we fought over who would use the deep magenta one and who got stuck with the yellow or pistachio green ones (this was back when they were just pretty old dishes and not valued antiques). The cups and bowls broke and disappeared and finally only the big serving plates were left for Thanksgiving dinners. Coffee and tea was served up in fat white diner mugs, probably PAPA got them at a discount in some sort of deal. They disappeared and were replaced with a set of thin “normal” cups which simply do not compare. There was nothing like having coffee or tea in one of those heavy mugs in the chill of morning while waiting for the fireplace to spread warmth. Another item unique to the cabin’s dining table was the spoon jug. Filled with more spoons than our young minds could count – and we each had a favorite that we relished for our personal use. The first person up made the fire and boiled water, then the next guy started breakfast, number three did the dishes...we played poker with matchsticks to determine the order. The last guy could sleep in of course.
Every year we went there for Thanksgiving. Four days away from TV and phones and rock ‘n roll records (though later on when I had my own portable stereo I would take it along) There was a HUGE old radio/record player (78 rpms of mostly Frank Sinatra) we would lay by it at night trying to tune in a rock in roll station from San Bernardino. The sound came in intermittently and crackled voices sang and told us what was going on in the “real” world down below. It was frustrating and tedious work occasionally rewarded by a snatch of a favorite top ten tune we basked on the rug drunk with success. Mom would spend the holiday weekend writing out her Christmas cards...she was the great communicator and she took it upon herself every year to write newsy personal letters to each recipient...and the time away at the Cabin was perfect for that. She did it every year over Thanksgiving sitting at the picnic table in the breakfast nook off of the kitchen. It was a little converted porch with windows on three sides and a back door, which we kept in constant operation running in & out with pinecones, injuries, damp & soiled clothing, tales of adventures and arguments to settle. She would be there writing at the table looking out at us or down the road to town, stopping to prepare food or go by the fire to read for awhile or come out to go on a hike with us. The cabin was the one source of continuity for her - things changed, parents left, but that place remained the unbroken thread that wove in and out of her life. We return to it singly or in groups over the years bringing new friends and spouses and our children.

Roger by Himself

Dad was an only child. We kids (a family of 6 children) had trouble imagining what that was like. He was eager to have several children after spending so many lonely hours in the back seat as his parents took him on road trips to various fishing spots. He spent a lot of time figuring out and making his own things - items his folks had no money to buy for him. In the spirit of depression era frugality, he would devise them out of the materials at hand. Here he is on his handmade skiis. It was the thirties and he was obsessed with photography and had no funds to purchase equipment, so he made an enlarger from a cocktail shaker. Imaginative use of an item he would come to enjoy tremendously in later life when he mixed his own martinis. I think his only-childness was an asset; fostering self sufficiency and allowing him time to read and ponder. He slept in a “room” which was more of an alcove converted from the front porch of the downstairs duplex in which his parents and he lived. It wasn’t until he had left home, that they bought a house with a spare bedroom. He was stung by that and I think, held it against them for rest of his days. He still mentioned it late in life in a voice tinged with irritation. I think an only child often becomes an appendix to an adult couple’s life. Sure many are spoiled and doted upon to excess, their parent’s attentiveness warping them into selfish and demanding creations. But just as often they are just wedged into their parents’ world like an inherited piece of heirloom furniture that cannot be discarded, but must occupy a prominent space in the living room among pieces that it doesn’t match. His parents didn’t build their life around him but at the same time were not really cruel and uncaring. They just sort of made do with him. I kind of think he was unplanned and they didn’t decide after his arrival “well guess we might as well have some more kids cuz here we are parents now and yadda yadda yadda”. Maybe they just waited until he would grow up and move away and they could get back to their life......whew.

For No Reason

MY COUSIN ANNIE HAS INHERITED THE SHOE GENE IN THE WORST WAY, SHE GOT IT FROM MY MOTHER (MY DAUGHTER, MARGARET INHERITED IT AS WELL.) OUR MOTHERS WERE SISTERS, AND WE WERE EACH NAMED FOR THE OTHER. THEY WERE DECLARED WITH PRIDE BY THEIR PAPA TO BE, THE "PRETTY" ONE, MY MOM - AND THE "SMART" ONE, MY AUNT ALYCE. MOM SAID THAT THAT MEANT SHE WAS STUPID AND ALYCE WAS UGLY, REVEALING HER SOMEWHAT JADED PERSPECTIVE ON THE DOWNSIDE OF COMPLIMENTS. PAPA DIDN’T REALIZE HIS MISTAKE, HE THOUGHT HE WAS TOUTING WHAT HE PRIZED AS THEIR BEST ASSETS.
BOTH MOTHERS LOVED FASHION AND WERE INSTRUCTED BY THEIR PARENTS ON THE BEST WAY TO DRESS AND ACT. I WAS SO TOTALLY UNINTERESTED IN SUCH THINGS, THAT MY BEING THE FIRSTBORN DAUGHTER WAS A CRUEL TRICK PLAYED ON MY MOM. I HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH A FIRSTBORN DAUGHTER WHO IS KIND & LOVING AND OBSESSED WITH ACCESSORIZING, LIFE GOES FULL CIRCLE.
COUSIN ANNIE DID HAVE THE SHOE GENE - AND HAD IT BAD. IT WAS AN ERA OF PUFFED SLEEVES AND FULL RUFFLED SKIRTS THAT POOFED OUT BELOW A TIGHT FITTING WAIST. FASHIONABLE DRESS NECESSITATED A PETTICOAT MADE OF LAYERS OF STIFF NETTING, LIKE BALLERINAS WEAR, WHICH “POOFED” YOUR SKIRT OUT AND ACCENTUATED YOUR WAIST. ANNIE HAD NO SUCH PETTICOAT. SHE PLEADED AND ARGUED THE NECESSITY OF THIS WARDROBE ESSENTIAL, BUT WAS REBUFFED WITH PARENTAL DECREES OF “ITS NOT A NECESSITY”, “THEY’RE TOO EXPENSIVE”, “PLENTY OF GIRLS GET ALONG JUST FINE WITHOUT ‘POOFY’ SKIRTS, THEY MAKE IT THROUGH THE WHOLE DAY AND EVEN SLEEP AT NIGHT". HER MOTHER WAS STUDYING PHILOSOPHY IN COLLEGE AND HER LOGIC CLASS PROVIDED THE TOOLS FOR ARGUMENTS THAT WERE IRREFUTABLE. PREOCCUPIED WITH READING AND STUDYING THE GREAT BOOKS, AUNT ALYCE HAD EVENING SOIREES TO DISCUSS PLATO AND SOPHOCLES WITH LIKE-MINDED SOULS. THEIR THOUGHTS WERE DIRECTED TO FAR LOFTIER HEIGHTS THAN THE DICTATES OF ELEMENTRY SCHOOL FASHION REGARDING LITTLE GIRL’S PETTICOATS. BUT, BEING THE RESOURCEFUL AND DETERMINED KID THAT SHE WAS, ANNIE WORKED WITH WHAT SHE HAD. BY LAYERING ALL THE SLIPS IN HER ARSENA- THE FULL-LENGTH, SOMEWHAT LIMP, NYLON ONES, THE SLINKY SATIN ONES, THE ELASTIC-WAISTED HALF SLIPS, SOME WITH ADDED RUFFLES ON THE BOTTOM, SHE MANAGED TO GET HER DRESS TO AT LEAST BULGE OUT A BIT. THE TOP PART OF HER DRESS, ALREADY TIGHT FITTING, WAS SO STUFFED WITH LAYERS THAT HER BREATHING BECAME LABORED AND THE ADDED WAISTBANDS MADE HER STOMACH GRUMBLE WITH RESENTMENT. STIFF UPPERLIP, SHE WENT OFF TO SCHOOL, BUOYANT WITH DETERMINATION TO MERGE WITH THE ELITE. SHE KNEW HER DRESS DIDN’T CRACKLE QUITE LOUDLY ENOUGH (DESPITE THE EXTRA STARCH IN EACH METICULOUSLY IRONED COTTON RUFFLE) AND BY THE END OF THE DAY, HER SKIRTS DROOPED, ALONG WITH HER SPIRITS. DAY AFTER DAY THIS WENT ON. THE MORNING LAYERING, THE AFTERNOON WILTING, BEGGING HER UNHEEDING MOTHER FOR A FULL AND FANCY PETTICOAT, IT WENT ON INCESSANTLY - A DRUMBEAT OF CRINOLINE CRAVINGS . HER MOTHER WAS UNYIELDING, HER PARENTAL RESOLVE REFUSING TO BEND TO THE WILL OF SILLY SCHOOL GIRL FASHION. THE SITUATION WAS HOPELESS, BUT ANNIE KEPT UP THE RITUAL OF LAYERING, MORNING AFTER MORNING, RETURNING FROM SCHOOL EACH DAY DRAGGED DOWN IN DEFEAT. IT WAS ANOTHER HOT AFTERNOON, SHE CAME HOME, WILTING AND SWEATY TO HER ROOM TO UN PEEL. THERE ON HER BED, LAID OUT IN THE FULLEST ARRAY OF PRISTINE POOFINESS WAS A NEW, THICK, FULL, CRACKLY PETTICOAT. IT WASN’T HER BIRTHDAY. IT WASN’T A SPECIAL OCCASION. THERE WERE NO WEDDINGS TO ATTEND - SHE HADN’T EVEN BEEN PARTICULARLY GOOD LATELY. IT WAS A MAGNIFICENT GIFT, FOR NO REASON.

Elizabeth in her tigersuit

A PRESCHOOLER AT THE TIME, ELIZABETH WORE A TIGERSUIT DAILY, TO THE GROCERY, ON WALKS, MUCH OF THE TIME ON ALL FOURS.
SHE DREAMT THAT SHE HAD FOUND A PANTHER, A CHEETAH, AND A LEOPARD IN EAGLES' PARKING LOT AND THEY WALKED HOME TOGETHER DOWN THE ALLEY. SHE KEPT THEM IN THE PLAYHOUSE. WHEN SHE WOKE UP SHE WAS CONVINCED THAT THEY WERE THERE AND SHE WAS DETERMINED TO GO OUT THERE AND SEE THEM. I COULD DO NOTHING TO DISSUADE HER, FINALLY LETTING HER GO OUT AND CHECK. THE DISAPPOINTMENT ON HER FACE ON HER RETURN WAS CRUSHING. SHE SAID NOTHING AND WANTED TO HIT US WHEN WE ASKED HER ABOUT THE LEOPARDS - PREFERRING TO RETIRE TO HER LAIR BEHIND THE COUCH. SHE CHOSE NOT TO PUT HER DEFEAT ON DISPLAY FOR THE REST OF US, BUT TO SUFFER IN SILENT SECLUSION. HER SILENCES WERE SO MUCH LOUDER THAN ANY OF HER SISTERS NOISY OUTBURSTS, I ALMOST WISHED THERE REALLY WERE TIGERS OUT THERE FOR HER SAKE.