Reading: The Hundred Years War

Moving: short walk

Watching: rain and fireflies

Listening: rain, birds, peepers

17 June 2001: Sunday

Perhaps in early May I mentioned to our father that CLH and I were going to Connecticut. He had been thinking of going up sometime because one of his sisters, the one after whom I am named (the J, not Lisa), is ill, and so he chose that day. As my sister said, my opening my trap cost me one of my beach days.

I got drenched anyway.

I woke up to my mother taking a shower. I wondered at her using the upstairs bathroom, as usual leaping to a conclusion, in this case wrong, that she chose this closer one as the more likely to wake us up. Later, my sister still abed, I tried to use the downstairs one myself and observed that it had no showerhead. Ah. By the time I was properly awake, she had finished her shower and was making a bizarre noise in my sister's old bedroom (both our twin beds are in my room, which was afterward my grandfather's and is now the guest room). I got up to find her ironing. Ah. Because she was ironing her clothes, she was not in a huggable state and was offended that I declined to hug her before she was clothed. Whatever. If I'm the one with the problem, I'm proud to have it.

I sat with the Happy Couple over their breakfast, and as they set out for God, I set out on a walk, slapping mosquitoes as I went. I had wondered if the old trail to the Indian shelters was still accessible or whether it was entirely overgrown or privately owned. It's still there, as were mosquitoes and poison ivy and the potential to feel very buggy indeed, so I turned around. Just after I turned, rain began to fall, first sprinkling and then pouring.

I was only a quarter mile or so from the house and didn't hurry at all. In Colorado, the rain is so cold you don't want to walk in it. This rain, in contrast, was as warm as the air or warmer. In the backyard I removed my sopping sleeveless cotton shirt and long skirt, grateful that the Happy Couple were out and likely to stay out for hours, what with church and a Father's Day lunch afterward with the German Shepherds.

(Oh yeah. When I had greeted him that morning, I wished BDL a happy Father's Day. Was that wrong? I don't call or consider him a stepfather.)

On the back steps of the deck, gazing out at the woods, listening to some birds partying in their baths, I sat, savoring the warm rain on my skin, for more than a half an hour, until I was thoroughly thoroughly chilled. Maybe the rain wasn't as warm as I thought. It was lovely.

In the bathroom upstairs, whoever tiled the wall forgot one essential accessory in a bathroom. So there's this delicate little tagsale table set up. This amuses me, in a mostly non-derogatory way. What I really need to poke fingers and jeer at is--is--is the tinfoil on her upholstery.

Also visible in this photograph is the, as my sister calls it, toilet-seat cover carpet our mother installed over the beautiful, beautiful hardwood floors. That rose color is about her favorite decorating hue. The entire first floor is covered in this stuff, which is marbled in two tones per color and has strategic cuts in the shag. Our mother says this is so it doesn't need to be vacuumed as often, or doesn't show footy prints in the pile. Or something. In this she reminds me now of her deceased ex-mother-in-law, who vacuumed her rug every day and then wouldn't walk on it and got mad at any grandchild (me) who didn't sit still enough in one place to preserve the vacuum tracks.

The tinfoil is to stop the cat--BDL's cat, who at 17 must fill my mother with hope that she won't have to deal with it much longer--from sitting on the furniture. It's not plastic slipcovers, is my one consolation. When BDL wants to sit with his cat in his lap, he has to sit on the floor.

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As it turned out, opening my trap didn't cost me a beach day, because it rained all the day long. A lot. Strong and steady, the deathgasp of a tropical storm, I guess. As such, the prospect of spending the day at my uncle and aunt's house didn't piss me off. Just filled me with apprehension.

We stopped at the shopping center for CLH to get last minute stuff at the A&P and for me to nip into the drug store for rafts and a Father's Day card for CLH, who could not find the perfect one she bought ages ago. Naturally there were none left, so I bought a blank one with a photograph of Gillette's Castle. I also bought two bunches of daisies for our two aunts, and in the A&P I talked to a friend of my mother's before I escaped. CLH agreed we were very thoughtful to have bought our aunts flowers, and we were off. She asked me to get the directions out of the glovebox, and underneath that--written in our father's curious mixture of upper- and lowercase letters and with a map on which the house in question had no street number, no phone number, and no street name--was her Father's Day Card.

BJWL had offered to come and fetch me if my father's side of the family proved too much for me, which we found amusing on two counts: she never considers that she herself, or her side of the family, or her newly acquired family, might be too much for us; and she would do anything, still, to lay eyes on our father. I mean, I have that curiosity about exfriends, both boy- and otherwise, myself, but I hide it better. Or at least hide it in front of the unsympathetic. I hope.

The house struck me by how similar it looked to the trailer this uncle and aunt--my father's one brother and his wife--lived in until less than 10 years ago. I hadn't seen our uncle since our other grandmother's funeral in 1989, I think, or shortly thereafter when he came to the house to discuss the will, smoked a cigarette without asking whether any of the house's residents minded and without an ashtray, and told me, in some surprise, that I had turned out into a fine-looking woman. (In the summer of 1989, I was very thin and very tan, and on that day I wore a white sundress. So my uncle leered at me. Wheeee.)

My namesake and uncle arrived with two friends of that aunt. My eldest cousin from this aunt and uncle is now married to the son of one of these two women. I offered that I had been flowergirl at the cousin's first wedding. I thought this was kind of cute and humorous and also harmless, as the marriage was over 25 years ago, but I think I offended. Well, I would hardly be me if I didn't.

The other thing Aunt Namesake had brought was, by CLH's request, family photographs and letters. I only learned five years ago that my father is named for a maternal uncle who was killed in the First World War. He was ten years older than my grandmother, who was 11 at the time and adored him. I had always thought that my father's pronounced Youngest Child-itis was due to his being the youngest of five with seven years between him and the next oldest sibling, but as it turns out, his own namesake might be the larger reason.

The letters are heartbreaking. My eleven-year-old grandmother wrote a poem about her brother going off to war, to fight for what was right. My great-grandfather's letter was found on his son's body; it's written in a fabulous copperplate hand. My great-uncle's last letter, written to his father, is dated 24 October 1918; he writes that he hopes to be home by summer and all he wants to do is walk up and down Lyme Street and talk to everyone again.

24 October 1918. He was killed by shrapnel as he brought hot food up to the trenches on 7 November. Four days before Armistice, and a ceasefire was already in effect.

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In the evening, having mentioned I had a videotape of my house, I showed this to my mother and BDL. BDL made no effort to conceal his boredom--although of course nothing could be more fascinating than my abode to anyone of sense--but did not think to, say, pick up a book or maybe leave the room, or, in short, to do anything but fidget.

In December, when I went to Boston for work, for a meeting, and spent the next days with CLH, I showed her the tape (while I was giving her a backrub; she'll do anything, including listening to one of my stories, if I'm giving her a backrub). She said something that really made me happy after seeing it. My first years of marriage were not all roses--we had moved cross-country and were broke etc.--and my sister, ever my best defender, was a while getting over blaming RDC for everything. It didn't help that I vented when I was unhappy but seldom remembered to report the good news. Anyway, she said that, watching RDC and how he responded to me made her realize how much he loves me and let her see how happy we are (now).

My mother's reaction was rather the opposite. She asked if RDC had gained weight, which is only a semi-loaded comment but not exactly one calculated to please, either. I said no, his clothes had shrunk, which is in fact not his excuse but that of the husband of another escribitionist. I shouldn't've said it, because she will assume that he is making weak excuses instead of losing weight (which in fact he has) but never that I might have been making a joke. At exactly the same point in the tape that CLH saw him moue at me, saw his affection and pleasure in my company, BJWL saw something else: she ejaculated, "Well, smile, Rich!" This just bolsters my ongoing theory that people see what they want to see.

After this, I asked if I could drive her car to the beach. I could see her trying to overcome her reluctance. She succeeded, and said I could take it, but only to the beach and back. Then I thought of something new and revolutionary, and asked if she would like to come with me (the rain had stopped). She said she would if she didn't have to get out of the car. She came along in her slippers.

I love my beach. Damp and deserted in the sunset, it was as beautiful as ever. I went for a short wade, ever mindful of my waiting mother, and a quick scurry to the end of the jetty, and I dipped the end of my braid so I could taste the salty water after I left.

Home.