The Treasure Chest

My mother’s Lane cedar chest always stood at the foot of her bed. She got it when she lived in Lewiston, Idaho and her sister, Irene, had one identical to it. I like to imagine them walking arm in arm, smoking cigarettes and talking excitedly about their upcoming weddings. They never could have guessed where their lives would take them.

My mother’s cedar chest was a beautiful piece of furniture when I was young. It was oak veneer and Mom always kept it polished and oiled. I loved it in the winter when she would open the lid and pull out the calf length fur coat which she always wore to midnight mass. I would lie on the fur side of the coat and rub my nose in the soft hair, inhaling the tart aroma of the cedar. I imagined wearing the coat when I became an adult. It would be the height of sophistication.

Another old fur lived in the treasure chest. It is one of those long narrow stoles with the tails and heads of the poor animals it was made from dangling from the ends. I found it frightening but intriguing. I used to believe that it belonged to my grandmother, but I learned recently from my cousin Leslie, it was probably Aunt Irene’s. The stole was used as dress-up clothes and was part of many a Halloween costume.

As much as I loved the smell and the glamour of the chest, inside it lay many mysteries. On the rare occasion I was left alone in the house, I would sneak into my parent’s room and carefully open the treasure chest. Most of the contents was boring; old linens and my old baby clothes. However, tucked in a corner was my mother’s old diary, kept in the years before she met my father. I tried to read it to try to understand her better but she was too crafty for me. She wrote the entries in Gregg shorthand, so even her diary’s contents was another mystery I never was able to decipher.

In the top drawer of the chest lay an unburned baptismal candle and a death certificate. I knew my sister had died shortly after birth. We visited her grave every Memorial Day. Along with my sister’s papers was a mysterious envelope which contained a copy of my birth certificate. I couldn’t understand why an attorney would be mailing my birth certificate to my parents. When I asked about it, Mom said, “You stay out of that trunk. The lid could fall and you would get locked in there and suffocate.”

Some of the items in the chest were my father’s. There was a small silk pillow case which he had purchased for his mother while he was stationed in England during the war. Some old cards to his mother were tucked inside the case. He had kept it all these years for my grandmother who had no use for it where she lived at the state mental hospital.

Over time I removed some of the items and made them my own. There was a wonderful calf-length wool pea-coat with military insignias on the sleeves and pockets. I pulled it out when I was in high school and wore it thinking myself very smart and John Lennon-like for protesting the Vietnam War by wearing it. Along with the coat there was a battered, brown box containing various military patches and buttons. These were a sacred relic to my mother. I believed for a long time they belonged to my father, but my dad hated war. He never talked about his experiences flying in bombers over Germany. Perhaps the box, like the coat belonged to my mother’s first husband, lost in the war.

When my mother died, the chest of treasures came to live with me. Time had changed the outside of the chest. Someone had let the water flow over a potted plant leaving a large ring in the shellac. Pieces of the veneer had been pulled away and lost. As I sadly sorted through it, most of the items in the chest were meaningless. The old clothes and linens had no history attached to them so they were sold at my mother’s estate sale. But the fur coat, which I still love to lie on and rub my nose against still resides within it. I am too large to wear the coat and the wearing of furs is no longer sophisticated or politically correct, but I keep it none the less. The old fur stole keeps it company in the bottom of the trunk.

The old linens have been replaced by two quilts my mother made for my daughters. They are young and have no interest in them for now, but I hope someday they will. My baby clothes have been replaced by my daughters’ favorite blankies. The cedar aroma cannot hide the smell of their soft babyhoods. My sister’s papers and candle still lay in the drawer next to the silk pillow meant for my grandmother, and my parent’s birth, marriage and death certificates lay beside them. But that age yellowed envelope containing my birth certificate still remains. I have removed it to a safety deposit box. The attorney’s name is the only clue I have to the past I am continually seeking.

As I get older I think perhaps the cedar chest is all I really need. The sight of it brings up memories of my mother and father and life on our farm. I no longer seek to know my mother better. She hardly knew herself. My life has moved forward making memories of my own. My daughters are women now with their own lives. Perhaps my grandchildren, the future of my DNA, will be drawn by the mysteries of my treasure chest and I will share with them the stories of my life and the items within.

The Dance

I am the first one to admit I don’t know anything about dancing. I mean, after all, I was a tap dance drop out at age seven.


Of course, I watched dancers on the Ed Sullivan show. I loved the costumes and the grace of the dancers, but my knowledge of dance is still pretty basic. I can tell a ballet, from a waltz, and I enjoy watching a good rousing square dance, but the ballroom style of Dancing with the Stars I find fairly dull.

The thing is no one ever told me that relationships are like dances. In the beginning a boy picks a partner from the line of waiting girls. He chooses the dance and the girl follows his lead. He either likes her and wants to continue the dance; or he heads back to the stag line, leaving her to join the line of waiting wallflowers.

I was drinking beer and playing pool the night Tom decided to ask this perennial wallflower to dance. I was so flattered by the attention and the opportunity to get out on the floor that I never realized how truly out of step we were. His family was famous for their graceful waltz learned in the highest levels of society. My family did a rollicking tarantella with a smattering of country two step.

I wanted to learn to waltz but try as I might, I just couldn’t follow the steps. Tom wanted to lead and I couldn’t go backwards into life. I wanted to stand alone to do the twist or the frug. I loved the rhythms of disco and wanted to try the hustle. And around the house I did danced much as I pleased, but when Tom came home, he would take my waist and attempt to lead me more mannerly dances. I always ended up stepping on his toes.

We danced a furious merenge for many years, Tom dancing toward his career and me chasing after him. I found the paso doble of motherhood dull and monotonous. So one day, I started a new dance. I picked a lively two-step, balancing school and motherhood. Tom spent several years trying to continue in his lock step as I danced away in my own direction. Every now and then we would try to come together in the family waltz but the kids kept cutting in with dances of their own.

I thought someday when all the distractions were gone, Tom and I could dance together. I hoped he would loosen up and enjoy a lively jitterbug or jazzy freestyle. But when our daughters danced away into their own lives, my husband and I moved again into a halfhearted waltz, trying to keeping up the appearance of a happy marriage. We went round and round and back and forth in the same four step pattern his parents had danced all of their marriage. Tom didn’t realize I was bored with the music, and he seemed unwilling to change the record. Finally the stifling routine of our steps caused me to dance away again, and this time it was for good.

Two years ago I moved into my own studio. My first night there I put ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” on the CD player. I was sixteen again as I twirled and spun, unselfconscious. I am happy with my solo dance. I am my own choreographer. And if someday I choose another partner, he better be confident enough with his own dance to follow in my lead.

Misty

Around the holidays I always rediscover how ambivalent I am on the subject of gifts. I enjoy giving gifts, however, I feel embarrassed to receive them. When people ask me what I want for any occasion, I usually answer, “World peace.”

My trouble with gifts started the Christmas I turned eight. That year my teacher read Misty of Chincoteague aloud to my third grade class. I fell in love with the story of John, Maureen and the wild ponies from Assateague Island. That year, a copy of Misty was the only thing on the Christmas list I gave to my mother.

The gifts started to accumulate under the Christmas tree and as they did I scrutinized them carefully. Soon a rectangular package appeared with my name on it. It seemed the right weight and size for a copy of Misty. It was solid along one side and dipped in on the other three. It made no noise when it was shaken. I would sit there for hours petting the package, anxiously awaiting the magic hour when I could open it and begin to read.

On Christmas Eve, I bounced around too eager to eat dinner. When the dishes were cleared away, I sat down under the brightly lit tree and grabbed the rectangular package. I squirmed while the adults took their places. The rest of the gifts were distributed and everyone ripped in. The first tear in the red and green paper revealed the rear dust cover of a book. I turned the package over.

My heart sank. Instead of the picture of a grey pony on the beach, there was brown horse and a man in a funny hat. “Justin Morgan Had a Horse”, I read silently to myself. I lowered the book to my lap. The rest of my gifts lay ignored.

Later, I dawdled as Mom and I dressed for midnight mass. “Are you sick?” she asked.

“No,” I said as I pulled at the neck of the stiff new Christmas dress.

“Well, then what’s wrong? You have been pretty quiet.” She applied her bright red lipstick in the bathroom mirror.

“I asked you for Misty of Chincoteague.”

“Well, Sears didn’t have it, so I got the other one. It’s about a horse, isn’t it?”

The unshed tears where tight in my throat. “But I wanted Misty.”

She never turned around but saw her narrowed eyes reflected in the mirror. “Why do you have to be such a brat? It is Christmas for Christ’s sake.”

After New Years, the Justin Morgan book was put on the shelf unread and I stopped making Christmas lists.

A few years later, while home from college, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas.

“Nothing,” I replied in a surly tone.

She continued to badger me for several more days. Finally she demanded, “Just tell me what you want.” When I again replied, “Nothing,” she threw down her dust rag, “Why do you have to be such a brat?”

Something exploded in my brain. I was a brat if I asked for something and I was a brat if I didn’t. "World peace!” I screamed at her as I stomped out of the house.

Years have passed and I have spent a lot of time and money on therapy. One day, while looking through some old books with my grandson, I found that copy of Justin Morgan. I turned it over in my hand detesting it. That day, I took the book to donation bin and hurled it in. I relished the bang as it hit the metal wall of the bin.  It was the sound of chains falling away. I got back in my car and drove to a bookstore. I bought myself a copy of Misty of Chincoteague.

This Christmas, I decided to take a chance. I asked for presents instead of world peace. I was very specific when I told people what I wanted. I told them where they could purchase the item, and what size and color I wanted. This year there were no surprises under my Christmas tree, nor were there any disappointments.

Holidays and Gifting

As usual the busy-ness of the holidays have overcome my good intentions to write.  I think this year I attempted to buy a few gifts of meaning for all those I had on my list.  I think the days when the mountain of gifts under the tree are over.

Our women's writing group project is about gifts.  It gave me the opportunity to think back about gifts that I received as well as those I have given.  Of course the one's which I received I certainly remember more, but the stories I recall are all unhappy ones.  It made me begin to wonder if my mother wasn't correct when she told me I always see "the fly in the ointment".

I wonder if this tendency is nature or nurture.  I don't remember ever making the decision to see the glass as half empty, but at least in this reguard it is so.  I remember the negative over the positive.  I will have to stretch myself to try to understand this as it effects my world view. 

As far as this Christmas, I received the gift from my children which I had asked for.  My grandchildren got from me the things which they had asked for and they enjoyed them.  Their mother received the handmade gifts which I had kidnapped the grandkids to make for her.  It was pleasing to see her tears of joy over their artwork.  My girls recieved the yearly gifts of socks and their stocking stuffers.  It is fun to watch them open their stockings with mini bottles of liquor, scratch tickets, and chocolate. 

I didn't spend a lot on Christmas this year, but the pleasure they all seemed to get from simple well considered gifts was priceless.  Now if I could only remember those simple joys.  I wonder if they were ever present and if they were, where they have gone.

My Three Uncles

I grew a small white farm house. Every day, at lunch time, my parents and I were joined by my bachelor uncles who lived nearby in the same termite infested farm house where they had grown up.

My Uncle Harold was the oldest brother. He was a big man with a gap toothed smile. He always wore Oshkosh bib overalls and a bill cap to protect his bald head from the sun. Harold had quit school after my grandfather’s suicide. His whole life was spent on tractors, plowing, planting, harvesting and baling hay. When Harold came in from the fields for lunch, dirt and dust covered his face and clothes. He let me hold his callused hands and walk up his vast stomach, turning somersaults until my arms grew weary of the game.

Uncle Howard was the second oldest. He was a quiet, delicate man. He was the only blond. His front teeth bent backwards, the result of a run in with a milk can when he was a boy. Howard did the irrigating for the farm. At lunch time he kicked off his rubber boots by the front door and sat stocking footed on the high stool near the telephone. Howard’s shovel was never far from his side and he wore a pith helmet to protect his fair skin from the sun, a habit he took up during a brief tour of duty in North Africa. He spent most of the war eating cabbage soup and sawdust bread in a German POW camp. When he was released he returned home and took over the household duties for my mentally ill grandmother.

My dad’s younger brother, Uncle Dale, didn’t work the farm. He didn’t have to wear a hat so he lacked the pale bald head of his brothers. His dark fringe of hair was always neatly trimmed. Dale wore horn rimmed glasses and, except that he was taller and thinner, he and my father could have been twins. Dale was first person in the family to graduate college. He worked as an accountant at the local grain elevator and ate meals with us only on the weekends. Dale and I shared a love of books and education. He supported my desire to go to college.

When I was in high school, my family began to change. Uncle Harold suddenly married, produced two sons, and just as suddenly divorced. After that my childhood playmate experienced a long decline of mental and physical illness. Remembering their own parent’s battles with mental illness, the family turned away. I rarely saw him again.

I graduated college and got married. My father died eighteen months later. One night after the funeral, Uncle Dale called to say he had married his long time girlfriend and moved into her house. I would see him when I went home for visits. He seemed diminished by his wife’s hypochondria and the shadows of her former husband. Our visits were brief, punctuated by gaping silences. He now resides in a nursing home. I haven’t seen him in a decade.

Two years after my father’s death, my mother declared the farming over. My Uncle Howard was alone in the old farm house down the road. He had nowhere to go when the farm sale was over, so my mother moved him into the basement of her new home. Howard never abandoned his boots, shovel and pith helmet. He helped my mother with her garden and kept gas in her car. Howard took over the role of grandfather to my girls who called him “Unk”. He spent the remainder of his days silently perched on the high stool in the corner near the phone.

When I think of my uncles, I remember those happier times; turning somersaults on Harold’s stomach, driving tractor while Howard burned weeds, and playing pinochle with Dale and my parents. They provided love, companionship, and extended family to a lonely child. Somewhere within me Harold’s fun-loving spirit, Howard’s quiet perseverance, and Dale’s love of learning carry on, a living testament to my three bachelor uncles.

Relationships

I have a cold today. I don’t feel like writing. My nose is drippy and my head aches. My neck is hurting as well as my left hip. I feel feverish.

I have so much to do and no motivation to do anything. My cat is even worried. She is haunting me.

I had a party at my house last night. While it was nice I didn’t get to visit with everyone like I had planned. I made too much food and now it will sit in my refrigerator going to waste.

It makes me wonder why I have parties at all. Some people who said they would come didn’t. My older daughter called at the last minute to say she wasn’t coming. I don’t think she likes my company. All this party business brings up the worst of my feelings of rejection.

I realize that I bring a lot of my isolation on myself. I am afraid to invite people because they might not show. I am afraid that if they come they will be bored. So to avoid all the painful feelings, I just stay home alone.

I wonder if I can ever overcome this. I am quiet and reserved by nature. I work all day with the public and get easily burned out by too many people. Perhaps I should embrace my solitary nature and revel in it. Maybe smaller get-togethers are more my thing. My counselor would say I should keep trying.

I know I tend to keep people at arm’s length. It takes a lot for me to trust. Once that trust is broken, then I am done. I suppose it is better to know, but it is something I am not proud of.

This week I get my dining room table. I am having company for Thanksgiving and at least part of my family will gather then. My older daughter has promised to be here for Christmas Eve. My office staff wants to have a girl’s evening of movies and snacks. Maybe smaller get-togethers are more my thing.

Today I will care for my cold. I will read something that makes me laugh. I will not worry about my writing.

The Unusual House

The house on Fourteenth Southwest was curious. It was painted battle ship grey and there was a brass ship’s railing around the front deck. Inside the front door, where the carpet was worn, there was a sheet of brass nailed to the floor. An old ship’s lantern hung in the dining room.  The oddest thing was the two large grey pallets which hung down below the regular siding on the south side of the house. Neither our real estate agent nor my engineer husband could explain the house’s unusual traits, but we had imagination, so we purchased it without these mysteries being solved.


Several days after we moved in, I went down to the daylight basement to do a load of wash. When I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, it was pitch black. I peered through the gloom, wondering where the light had gone. When the solution revealed itself to me, I marched to the garage, grabbed a weapon and headed outside. With crowbar in hand, I began pulling those weird extra pieces of siding off. Tom heard the commotion and yelled out the back door, “What are you doing?”

“Letting in the light,” I yelled back, as a chunk of siding fell off at my feet, revealing the hidden window. The house was curious.

I never imagined when we bought the curious grey house that it would become a home. It was filled with powerful memories.

I opened the front door one day to find the red haired woman I had seen walking with her children. Mary Lou was a stay at home mom like me. Her twins were a year older than Sarah. She invited me over for coffee. We discovered a mutual love of books, nature and motherhood. Two doors down on the other side lived the Broomfield’s. They could be counted on for spontaneous trips for frozen yoghurt or Mrs. Fields’ Cookies, and many games of pinochle were played around our dining room table.

One summer day when I turned my back, two year old Sarah disappeared from the living room. I looked out the large picture window and there she was, walking the balance beam on the front deck railing. She was oblivious that the ground was twelve feet below. I signed her up for gymnastics.

Over the years, Tom and I did a number of projects to fix up the curious house. We painted the outside blue. We tore up the carpeting and the brass sheet from the living room floor. We swapped the ship’s lantern with a proper chandelier. The brass railing was replaced with the sturdy wood one which Sarah had walked that summer day. I day I went into labor with Robin, we replaced an outdated cast iron laundry sink.

Personal remodeling occurred there as well. Surrounded by love and friends, I battled the darkness of depression and, like removing the pallets from the boarded up windows, I became enlightened. I set my feet on the path to my career. I could never have imagined when we purchased the grey house it would become our home. A place of love and growth built with sweat and tears. It was indeed a curious house.