Family Legends

Her name was Stella, and her portrait, with those dreamy eyes and one curved lock of black hair falling softly over her cheek, captured her at sixteen, and she remained sixteen, then, for all time, because shortly afterward, she died.  They called it sleeping sickness, but it must have been encephalitis, for family legend was that she would fall into a sleep so profound my grandmother could not waken her.  Family legend also had it that she was sweet and good and truly loved all her nine siblings, and they her.  She was the family favorite, which is often the case with one who dies young.   

My mother had originally promised to name her first girl child Mary for the Blessed Virgin, but I was born very shortly after Stella’s death, so mother chose instead the name Mary Stella for me.  Double names were common in those days.  I knew many Mary Anns, a few Mary Janes, even a Mary Rose or two, but Mary Stella was, well…unique.  I didn’t like it, but didn’t dare say so, because it would have been blasphemy.  There was an Italian poem, or maybe it was a prayer (I don’t remember which,) that began, “Maria, Stella del Mare” (which means Mary, Star of the Sea,) and about the only nice thing about my name was that my father would affectionately call me his little stella del mare. 

It was hard growing up in the shadow of Stella’s goodness.  I used to look up at that portrait, in its magnificently large and silver frame, on a wall of my grandparents’ home, and feel I somehow was letting my mother down.  She never gave me any indication that she thought so, but maybe it was Stella’s dreamy eyes looking down at me, or maybe it was just me, I don’t know.  What I do know, though, is that saints are a hard act to follow.  That’s why, after I went off to college and had an opportunity to invent myself anew, I decided to drop the frills and became just plain Mary.

After I was grown and married and had raised a family of my own, had lost my grandparents and buried my own dear parents, little by little events began to conspire to

make me see the Stella legend differently.  I didn’t recognize them as conspiring events at the time, but they kept building and I kept mellowing.  The first event of consequence was that my bachelor uncle Lou, who lived in the house that used to be my grandparents’, one fine day, out of the blue, offered me Stella’s portrait.

“After all,” he said, “you’re her namesake.  You even look like her.” 

 My mother’s family had often told me so, and I remember I used to stare at her picture and try to find something in that angelic face that I even remotely shared, but I never could.  Finally I concluded that my resemblance to Stella was just one more family legend, and one not to be taken lightly, so I accepted the portrait.  No way, though, could

I hang that large frame, in all its silver magnificence, on my modest walls, so (and thank goodness Lou never knew) I exiled it instead to the dark confines of my storage room.

The next little incident was that a dear friend of mine came to help me rearrange some of the accessories around my house and put others away in the storage room.  She came upon Stella’s picture and asked who she was, and upon learning, said, “Oh, Mary, how can you banish such beauty to such a lowly place!”  I felt immediate guilt, but managed to squelch it, turn out the light in the storage room, and shut the door.  “Too big,” was the only explanation I gave my friend, but later during that day, and even a time or two the next day, I thought of Stella in storage, her silver frame propped against an old trunk

Shortly thereafter, I visited my oldest uncle, Alex, and it was then that my heart did a complete turn around with regard to Stella.  I happened to mention to him, “Guess what, Alex -- remember that wonderful portrait of Stella?  Well, a couple years ago, Lou gave it to me.” 

“Yeah?” he asked.  “I always wondered what had happened to it.”  He paused a moment, looking off into the distance, then said, “I’ll never forget when Stella died.  I loved her so much.  I was only about eight, but I loved her so much.  We all did.  She was so good.”

I began to get the idea that family legends are often pure truth…or at least this family legend was.

“I remember that day clear as anything,” he went on.  “I was happy, walking home from school with some friends.  A neighbor woman called out to me from her window (people used to do that a lot) and asked me how my sister was doing.  I told her I had heard my mother tell my father just that morning that Stella seemed a little better today, and the woman said, yes, sick people often get better right before they die.”

“What an awful thing to say to the little brother!” I said.

Alex agreed.  “ I nearly died myself when I heard that,” he said.  “I knew Stella was sick, but I never thought she wouldn’t get well.  Kids didn’t die – at least none that I knew.  Was she really going to die? I wondered.  I ran all the way home, my heart beating like crazy.” 

He stopped a minute to get control.  I saw tears in his eyes, and couldn’t help thinking of him – that little boy – running home in anguish.

“As soon as I was inside the front door,” he continued, “I yelled, ‘Mamma, is Stella going to die?’  She told me it was true – that Stella was very sick and that the doctor said she was already dying.”

I know it sounds corny, but I said a prayer to Stella at this point.  Well, I guess it wasn’t really a prayer, because that’s not my style, but what I said inside my head was, “I’m sorry I was so flip about being your namesake, Stella, and I’m really sorry you died so young.”

 “You know,” my uncle was saying, “It took me a long time to forgive my mother.”

“For what?” I asked.

“For not telling me sooner that Stella was going to die.”

“Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.  

There was silence. Then I heard him give out a great sigh. Then silence again.  Finally I said,  “You know what, Alex?  I think Stella’s picture really belongs with

 you, and I’m bringing it over tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” he asked.  “Gee, that’s really nice.”

And another really nice thing was how great Stella’s portrait, in its magnificent silver frame, looked on Alex’s dining room wall where we hung it the next day.

First Communion Sunday

          "There's Mrs. Digby,"  Carolyn Watts said to her husband.  

          He looked up and saw the Widow Digby climbing  the church steps ahead of them.

          "I swear," Carolyn whispered, "she's a saint, if anyone ever was one!"

          The Widow Digby smiled to herself and entered the church.  She pretended not to have heard, but exalted (although humbly--ever humbly!) in the sainted image she must have projected.  

          It was good that she heard only Carolyn's remark, and not Dean Watts' response.  "Saint?" he said.  "Funny, I would have said more 'religious fruitcake'!"

          "Shh!" Carolyn said.  "How can you say that?  She virtually raised those five kids 

herself.  Jake Digby was drunk more times than he was sober!"

          "Maybe she drove him to the bottle," Dean said.  "She spent half their married life on  her knees!  Well," he said upon reflection, "I guess she spent a few times in bed, but anyway, maybe it's tough living with a saint.  Maybe that's why he drank.  Who knows?"

       "Dean!"  Carolyn said, slapping him lightly on the arm.  "Stop it!  The poor woman!  You have no cause to say that.  Today her last child, Malachy, makes his First Communion.  She has done a wonderful job with those children."

 

          Mrs. Digby genuflected beside the front pew, then knelt, knees flat down  on the tiles of the aisle floor, and with exaggerated movement of her right arm, crossed herself, head bowed low.  She arose and sat in the pew, at the very end, closest to the center aisle.

          Sunlight through the stained-glass windows made wavy red and blue patterns on the pews.  Somewhere outdoors, a bird twittered.  One of God's own creatures, thought this pious woman.  Contentedly, she looked up at the altar.  

          "O Lord," she said to herself, "How I love this house wherein Thou dwellest!  The tenting-place of Thy glory!"  Surely He was smiling down upon her today.

          A sudden jab at her elbow broke into her reverie.  Looking up, she saw Mrs. Harrington .  "Late again!"  Mrs. Digby muttered.

          "Please move in," Mrs. Harrington said.  "I believe there's room in this pew for one more."

          Mrs. Digby set her lips.  She has no one in the First Communion Class, she thought.  What right does she have to take up space belonging to us proud parents?  Just because she lives in that big house on the hill!  Lords it over us!  Who does she think she is, anyway?

          Mrs. Harrington pressed against Mrs. Digby's kneeling form.  "Please move in," she said again.

          Mrs. Digby shook her head.  "I want the aisle seat," she said.  "I came on time so that I would get it.  You're welcome to climb over me and sit on the other side of me."

          "Surely you don't expect me, elderly as I am, to have to lift my poor legs to climb past you," Mrs. Harrington said.  "Move over, for the love of heaven, and let me sit at the end of the pew!"

          "No!"

          Mrs. Harrington, her great chest heaving, tried to nudge Mrs. Digby to make room for her, but Mrs. Digby grasped the side of the pew and held fast.  "Climb over!"  she said.

          "Move!"  said Mrs. Harrington.

          "Lord have mercy," sang Father Brady from the altar.

          "Climb over!" said the Widow Digby.

     

          "Christ have mercy," responded the choir.

          Sister Mary Aloysius, with clicker in hand, signaled two times.  The double-click was the cue for the Communion Class to rise and proceed in procession to the altar rail.  Their big moment was approaching.  The Mass was nearing the Consecration, and the First Communicants were to receive the Host before the rest of the congregation.

          "I tell you, I want a good view of my Malachy!" said the widow, holding her ground.

          "And I tell you, I want to kneel down and properly attend Mass!" said Mrs. Harrington, trying to wedge in anew.

          One of the ushers came over to them then.  "Ladies, ladies," he whispered.  "Please, Mrs. Digby, let Mrs. Harrington be seated."

          "No!  Unlike someone whose name I won't mention, I was on time for Mass!  I have a right to the aisle seat to see my Malachy receive his First Communion!"

          With a sigh, the usher led Mrs. Harrington to another pew, where room was made for her.

          "Glory to God in the highest," sang the priest from the altar, raising his arms to heaven.

          "And on earth, peace to men of good will," sang the choir.

The Widow Digby bowed her head and closed her eyes in fervent devotion, and stifled a triumphant smile.

Dawn

Trees, dark silhouettes

Outlined in day’s first light.

Sun’s ball inches over the horizon,

Glows red.  Paints the eastern sky.

Between Rest Stops

Assignment:  Sleep as Writing Inspiration 

She slipped off her shoes and stretched her legs as far in front of her as space on the passenger side permitted, then settled more comfortably against the seat back.  They had been on the road better than two hours and were approaching the Pennsylvania Turnpike on-ramp at Breezewood. 

“Want me to take over once we get to the next available rest stop?” she asked, knowing he would say no.  He always preferred to drive more than half the journey home from Washington before letting her take over while he in turn slept, usually snoring enough to wake, (or at least to shake)  the dead.  Certainly, she often imagined the car itself shook, but his snoring was a comforting sound – not at three o’clock in the morning in bed beside her perhaps, but she didn’t mind it in the car.  

He was fully awake now, though.  “No, thanks,” he said.  “Just relax and enjoy the scenery.”

Some scenery!  The day was winter-like and gray, although the outside temperature displayed just above the rear-view mirror registered forty-two degrees.  About normal for the end of November, she thought.

They didn’t talk much on their way home, and she appreciated this.  She allowed her mind to linger over one happy memory after another of the past weekend with their daughter.  She knew a smile played on her face, and glancing over to him, was pleased to see that he, too, was smiling to himself.  The tollbooths loomed, and he maneuvered the car toward the booth on the far left, anticipating the westerly direction they would take.  She heard a faint whir as the automatic window on his side slid down to open position, and out of the corner of her vision, saw him reach for the card the machine spit out at him, and remembered what their son Steve used to say when they were a young family traveling together.  

“Mum, that machine stuck its tongue out at me!”

The first few times Steve had pulled that joke, all six of them had laughed, and indeed she had continued to laugh politely for many more times, not wanting to hurt his feelings, but finally even she gave up and agreed with them when one or the other of his siblings would groan at him: 

“Shut up, Steve!”  

“Not funny anymore!”   

“Get a new line, that one’s old!”  

Now she and her husband were the ones who were old, and the family had scant  occasion to travel all together anymore.  The kids had their own families to travel with, and she was content to bask in memories of other times, which, from the distance of years, seemed to have been nothing other than fun times.

In the sparse woods that bordered the highway on either side, trees, bare of leaves, whizzed by her window, one after another at sixty-five miles per hour.  She yawned. Even in the gloom of dark November days, the Pennsylvania countryside was not unpleasant.  She loved it, and would never even consider retiring to warmer climes.  Neither would he.  After forty-seven years, they meshed very well together.  He was far-sighted, she, near-sighted.  Together, there was little need for glasses.  He could figure great sums in his head for her when, shopping in a foreign land, she would ask him, “How much is that in dollars?”  On her part, she could identify for him any number of songs when, hearing them over radio or television, he would ask her,  “What the hell is the name of that tune?  I know I know it, but I can’t remember.”   These golden years of theirs were, if not fourteen-carat, at least golden enough, and she wished that by some miracle, time for them could freeze here for about thirty years or so – here in this pleasant present, when all the worries and cares of their younger lives had narrowed down to just worrying and caring for each other.   But she knew, of course, their days were growing short.  She saw her face reflected in the car window and sighed and murmured half aloud, “the autumn of our lives.”   That was another area of balance between them -- he was right down the line, matter-of-fact, no bullshit; she tended toward the maudlin.

Something or someone moved between the trees far ahead to her right, but when she sat straighter and looked again, there was nothing.  Then again, a dark figure moved, 

wove in an out between tree trunks, seeming to float.  Then another, then another, and until soon there was a host of specters.  She discerned them more clearly now.  They were men – thin, almost shapeless men, wrapped in black capes that undulated around them as they skimmed the ground and kept pace with the car’s speed.  They turned their faces toward her and beckoned.  Their eyes were nothing but round black holes.  Unable to force a cry from her throat, she glanced quickly at her husband.  He turned toward her, and his eyes, too, were nothing but two black holes in his face.  Suddenly she was lifted from her seat and floated through the closed door.  The figures sailed to meet her, and in one brief moment before they gathered her in a huddle among them and enveloped her in their capes, she was able to look back and in horror see their car careen across the road, strike an on-coming bus, and pummel pell-mell down the opposite bank.

“The sign says the next rest-stop after the one coming up is twenty-six miles farther on.  Do you want to take over at this one or wait for the next?” she heard him ask. She rubbed her eyes, relieved that she and he were both still among the living. 

“This one coming up will be fine, dear,” she said.  “I’m well rested now.  I’ll take over.  God!  It’s great to be alive, isn’t it?”

He looked at her.  “You sure you’re awake enough?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” she said.  

She drove all the remainder of the way home, happy to let him sleep, slumped with his head at an awkward angle, snoring like a honking goose.  His neck’s going to be awful sore when he wakes up, she thought.

November 22, 1963

Assignment:  Write a poem about President Kennedy’s Assassination

Generations yet unborn that day
When death in Dallas struck,
No doubt will consider history in the same vein
As when Lincoln or McKinley were similarly slain,
But we knew it was a shinning knight they slew.

Gone in an instant’s explosion
Was his brain, spattered in Jackie’s lap.
Gone was his sparkle and wit.
Gone, too, were our dreams of hope.
To our dying days, we are destined to remember
That sad November, and the farewell to Camelot.

Like sacred ritual, we asked one another,

“Where were you when you heard?
Each of us had a story to tell,
And did we cry? Oh yes, we cried.
For most of the three following days
We sat numb before our TV screens,
And watched grim pageantry unfold,
Finally we folded our dreams and put them away.

Pilgrimage to Arlington

In the land of the Potomac,

In the white heat of August,

She stands before the bank of vaults

Stroking to and fro, in tender ritual,

The face of the drawer where his ashes lie.

The metal, cold and cruel,          

Numbs her fingers.

                              

He had been her kin, but more

Her husband's in friendship than hers.

Yet they had had fun, the three of them.

Smart as he himself was, he thought her smart,

Which no others on his side of the family did.

He used to ask her advise on which books to read.

She liked him for that.

Some of his siblings, in religious abhorrence,

Called it a coward's act.  But he was no coward.

He had proven that in the North African Campaign.

Had he chosen pills, it would have been easier. 

    Instead, he shot a gun inside his mouth and

Left a note with one request:  a soldier's interment.

His country owed him that right.

Silent now, with memories of him,

She neither weeps nor utter prayers,

Nor does she rebuke him for his deed.

She had come for closure, but finds instead

That she will grieve forever that he died all alone,

Consumed with an anguish he never revealed.

And she forgives him for it at last.

I'll Sleep Tomorrow

"Lazybones, sleepin' in the sun

  How you gonna get your day's work done

  Sleepin' in the noonday sun?"

When I was young, there were lots of tomorrows.   Now the yesterdays outnumber the tomorrows, and each today must be lived for all it's worth.  My father tried to tell me that long ago, but I was young, and youth hears but doesn't always listen.

One late spring morning, in my third high school year, I lay abed in that state between almost awake and still snoozing.  Eyes closed, dimly aware of the sound of birds chirping outside my open window, I gave myself a brief moment to orient time and place.  Yes, I decided, it was Saturday.  Good!  No school!  I snuggled deep under the white sheet that covered me and surrendered to the deliciousness of sinking back into sleep, wave after wave, farther and farther back in my brain, falling, falling.

Suddenly my bedroom door flew open.  "Time to get up!"  It was my dad.  "No sleeping to noon today, lazy-bones!"

"Aw, Daddy..."  How could he be so cheerful so early in the day? 

"No 'aw daddy' about it!  Up!  Up!  You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead and in your grave."

I thought that was a dumb sentiment, but of course I didn't say so.  If he wanted me up before the noonday sun on a precious Saturday, I guess I was doomed to obey, but I didn't have to be happy about it and I wasn't.

Now, when at five a.m., temptation urges me to linger just another ten minutes or so under the soft comforter, I remember and wish he were here to fling wide my bedroom door, to tell me to get up and live the day before it's gone with the wind.  Scarlet O'Hara said she would leave her worrying to tomorrow.  If that's good enough for Scarlet, then leaving my sleeping to when I'm six feet under is good enough for me.  Right now there's too much other stuff to do.