10:32 a.m. - 2010-10-29
Suddenly an Orphan
I remember my mother crying when she washed the bunny with which my father, fresh from the war, had greeted her. The kapok had shifted in the washing, leaving Penny with damp, distoring protrusions. Clumps of stuffing matted just below the surface. No longer beautiful. She cried inconsolably, pinning Penny's limp ears with wooden clothespins onto the backyard line, where she refused to dry. I remember a photograph of my father suddenly falling, glass smashing to pieces, as my mother sobbed and picked up shards. I remember playing in the moist dirt, making tract home castles in neat rows with frozen orange juice cans. As long as I could see her silhouette in the window, I dug with abandon. Only once I glanced up to find her gone. Shrieking, I left my earthworms and the delicious smell of wet grass to find her. They call this "rapproachment". An old French word used in psychology to describe the developmental stage in which a child can move forward to explore her world only to the extent that she is able to look back and see her vigilant mother. I think it is normal for an eighteeen month old. Perhaps I should have outgrown it by now. I am officially an orphan, as of August 6th, 2010. Both parents gone. Sometimes I feel the bravery of discovery, as I feel my way into the future. Mostly, I look back in an attempt to locate their nervous smiles. Like when I had to get a polio shot. I am still terrified of needles, but, as a child, it was a dealbreaker. Still, I found myself in line, shivering with fear as other children laughed and teased one another. At the end of the torturous line, just beyond the terrible needle, my anxious parents stood holding the coveted Webster Webfoot doll (my hero from local tv), coaxing me on. They were creative like that. When I almost died at three from virus pneumonia, I was in the hospital for three weeks. I actually remember them standing on the other side of my crib bars, offering a rubber knife so that I could cut the bars and come home. I would think that too obvious a metaphor if it were not so painfully true. And, most of my life, I have equipped myself with that same rubber knife, bravely confronting whatever arose, as long as I could look back to find those familiar worried, critical, sad and loving eyes. I am bereft and exhilerated all at once. Tether unloosed.
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