Scrabble

The week of her exam, my mother and I play Scrabble nearly every night after dinner. Each game begins with the same routine, which she initiates with the same questions. 

    Now how many tiles do I take?

   

    Seven, Mom.

    Now how do we tell . . .?

    Who goes first? Let's each pick a tile and then we'll know.

    Okay. 

She picks one of the tiles from those I have amassed in the top of the old beat-up Scrabble box and stares at her letter. She looks up at me expectantly, but I don't speak. (Why do I make her ask? I know what she needs. Maybe I don't believe or understand yet. I am willing her to be my regular old mother, the one who knows and tells me what to do.)

    Is it closest to the beginning or the end?  

Her mouth is already getting set to say Oh to my answer. Almost like a pucker, a kiss, but if she was preparing for a kiss, there would be intention in her eyes. She is all reception, capitulation. And trust.

    Whichever tile is closest to A. So you go first.

I watch her fingers hesitate above the spread tiles turned face down. Her eyelids flicker. She looks at me and waits. She still has that expectant Oh ready for my next instruction. 

    We each pick seven tiles, I prompt, and her fingers begin to pluck and collect.

Once the game begins she is alright though. She comes up with as many high-scored words as I. Even when I decide I should try to win a game, she bests me half the time.

   Is zen a word? She asks me several times. (Funny that that word should occur to her repeatedly during the week. Is she channeling a reminder from my inner self? Does her receptivity go that deep?) 

   Sure, Mom. It's a form of Buddhism. I try to tell her what it is, even go so far as to read aloud a definition from the dictionary, but she is not interested. She has become absorbed in the game, where she can rely on her old skills. She only wants to use her z.

    

Splitting

 I was surprised when they allowed all three of us into the examination room, but by then I’d taken my chastening to heart and was holding my impulses at bay. I was behaving for the new authority in our lives. I had stopped trying to fill my mother’s silences. When she looked towards me beseechingly, I just looked back without a word. A pocket of space was growing around me or was it around her? I never could tell the difference. She was the isolated one, having been led by my father and me into the den of the enemy—that diagnoser, that final arbiter of her mental fitness.  Even though I kept still, I told myself I was sending her encouragement, but encouragement for what I wasn’t prepared to say. Even now, all I can come up with is courage and the strength to endure what would come next, last in her life.

My father had removed all but his physical presence from the room. I couldn’t detect even the slightest hovering nearby of his thoughts or emotions. Maybe he’d retreated all the way back to South Philly where he’d been the favored son in a prosperous family, strong, handsome, and in control. Or maybe he’d gone to wherever he went to bargain with his god—they’d always had a close relationship—what will you take to spare her?

I became the silent witness, taking in what I could, objecting only in my mind to the questions that my mother couldn’t answer. Even I don’t always remember the date, I thought when my mother couldn’t say what year it was. Don’t you see she’s wearing a digital watch?  I chided when she was unable to tell the time on the analogue clock with its moving hands. These are false measures! You didn't give her enough time! You’ve terrified her so that she can’t think! My objections tumbled over one another when she didn’t get a single question right. But I remained silent and submissive as others took over. 

That Moment

It's an easy line to cross without noticing, because it happens gradually and you don't want to notice. You and your mother used to finish one another's thoughts. Perhaps not out loud, but believing that you were hiding your deepest selves--your longings and secrets-- you always kept each other in your sights. You, because she was strict and fearful, and you needed to explore and experiment. She, because she was private and protective to the extreme.

You can't say when you began to fill in the holes of her thoughts. You can't remember when the holes appeared or when they expanded or when they began to alarm you. Different from the vagueness that used to crop up whenever you asked her a question she didn't want to answer. "You don't want to know," she'd say, brushing you away with the sweep of her hand, commanding you not to want what you clearly  wanted. Driving you back into yourself, both in your separate corners.

 You remember, though, when you realized that you were covering for her, speaking for her because she could no longer speak for herself. It was a lifetime later. You were in an elevator, you, your mother, your silent father, and the social worker. You remember going down, although you were probably going up to the examination room. A small cage. Your parents standing together, you behind them, the social worker facing your little family, her back to the closed door, trying to engage your mother in conversation. You spoke over your mother's head, filling in when she hesitated, helping her. You were just helping. The social worker shot you a stern look, shook her head. You stopped what you hadn't known you were doing or what your mother was no longer doing until that moment.

January 2002

Morris dropped me off at the Fort Lauderdale Airport after a short trip from the Century Village where my parents lived. He had established quite a business for himself, shopping, driving, and picking up take-out for his neighbors, who, over the years, had aged and weakened and lost the spouses they had come south with. Morris was a great resource for them my mother used to say. He had been lucky with his health, and this free-lance work was a cinch. He had been a seltzer delivery man in Brooklyn before he retired. Now that had been hard work, climbing countless flights of steps every day, carrying cases of glass bottles to walk-ups on high floors. His daily exercise for all those years had enhanced his excellent constitution.

My father had stopped driving to the airport the year before. At first, it was just pick-up. The cops who enforced the "no stopping" rules had always made him nervous, and he no longer could expect my mother to wait for me by baggage claim, collect me, and meet him a block away from "Arrivals" where the cops didn't bother shooing cars away from the curb.  But soon enough he found Morris' services to be such a convenience that he reserved him for both ways.

It was a relief for me to get out of the car and into the airport with little fanfare. I had said my goodbyes back home at the Century Village. Funny that I referred to it as home, since I had never lived there. But even though I had moved out of my parents' house many years before, and even though they had sold that house and lived in several apartments since my leaving, I habitually referred to any place where they lived as home.

The airport was its usual madhouse, even worse, since it was early January, winter break. The energy was bouncy and chaotic. College students were continuing their New Year's carousals. They shouted to one another, as if they still needed to make themselves heard above the boisterous bands. There was loud, raucous laughter. A few even tooted on noisemakers.

The din dissipated when I got to the end of the long, winding line for airport security. I was at the waiting portion of the hurry-up-and-wait that is airport embarkation. The people ahead of me were subdued and obedient. Even the college kids had quieted down, preparing to follow the new rules. At this point no one wanted any trouble.

Nearby, a girl was discussing with her friend whether or not she had to take off her oversized novelty sunglasses because they hid her face. No one was sure what was permitted or required. It was 2002. Increased airport security was new and in transition. It had not yet become a way of life.

The line barely moved while the guards seemed to be working out the details of security on the spot. After all of the activity of the past week, this sudden slow-down gave me too much time to think. I wasn't ready for that. Those silly sunglasses. They were on display at every kiosk and cheap souvenir store at the airport. Several people in front of me were wearing them. The center 00 made a perfect frame for the lenses, and 2002 was a numeric palindrome, which duplicated the symmetry of the double-0. A two on each end. Zeroes at the center.

Suddenly a ridiculous thought popped into my mind. What if I had brought a pair of those sunglasses to my mother's examination last week? I could have slipped them on when the nurse asked my mother what year it was.  I pictured myself pointing emphatically to my glasses so only Mom could see and not the nurse. Magic glasses. Invisible. Would Mom have been able to answer, "2002" instead of shrugging and murmuring that she didn't know? Would she have been able to make the connection between those glasses and the information they offered? Would she have gotten at least one answer right? No, of course not. She was that far gone.

Anniversary

Look up the word anniversary in the dictionary, and you'll find that it is the commemoration of an event, any event, that took place a year or years earlier. But that's not how we think of it in our culture. The word has come to mean a happy event, an event to be celebrated. Most often it means a wedding anniversary.

It is remembered by date, marked on our calendars and in our minds. If it is our anniversary, we remember it in its entirety--the year and the month and the day. There are some forgetful spouses who forget one or two or all three of those numbers, but that's another story. If it is the anniversary of a friend or relative, the month and day are all we need to note. The greeting card companies have made such commemorations simple to fulfill, so everyone is happy.

I wonder if we would feel a general sense of well-being during our wedding anniversary times if we didn't have specific dates so well documented. In earlier times, we didn't. Anniversaries (and birthdays) were associated with religious holidays or seasons. (Those were times less devoted to individual fulfillment and more towards community devotion.) But I wonder if happily-married people back then, without quite knowing why, just felt good and optimistic around that general time. If they had cellular memories of their transitions from daughter or son to wife or husband. Bypassing consciousness--a lightness of being, a spring in the step, an eagerness to please, and a willingness to be pleased.

I know that I feel the other kind of anniversary in my bones and spirit--the anniversaries of the passing of my loved ones. It isn't conscious. I don't always recognize just why it is that I'm feeling down, defensive, or particularly attentive to potential danger and loss. If I didn't get a card from my synagogue reminding me that the yahrtrzeit, or anniversary, of a loved one's death is coming on a specific date, I'd simply think I had fallen into a general depression.

But that's not it. I am reminded that this is different, my feelings arising from particular earlier events when I had no control over the well-being of the ones I dearly loved and still love. What I am feeling seeps up from tamped-down memories of those times--feelings of eternal helplessness, that no matter how smart I am, how resourceful, how hard I try I can't/couldn't make them well. They are memories of ultimate failure, the kick-at-the-knees reminder of  mortal limitations--mine and theirs.

February and March are cluster months for me. They are the months when my mother and father died. When my husband Al was first diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, which began his 18-month-long battle. A reminder of how I cared for them all, watched their suffering, witnessed their courage, and stood by helplessly when they left..

I'd like to say that I'm over it all, and mostly that would be true. I've made a good life for myself with abundant joys and challenges. I even find myself fretting over nonsense that I know is petty in the grand life- and-death scheme of things. I'd like to leave it all at that, but my memories haven't left me. Not entirely. I'm not stricken by grief anymore, but I'm changed by it. I guess I'm the keeper of a grief circle, as Sobonfu Some taught me nearly a decade ago. This blog is a grief circle into which people can visit and be supported in whatever ways work for them.

As for me, I acknowledge these times and my sadness, which begins to leave me even now. The rituals of grief are a receptacle for feelings. The dates put a frame around them. On the particular dates of my loved ones' deaths, I'll light a candle at sundown that will burn and flicker all night and into the next day. I'll recite a special prayer that praises life and acknowledges all I can't know or do by myself. It may not instantly lift my spirits, but it puts my mood in perspective and reminds me that I still have my life to live in gratitude.

In memory of Al Silverstein, Frances and Benjamin Letofsky, and my dear Star.


To learn about the way other cultures honor death anniversaries, go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_anniversary

Small Things

For now, I can only tell small things. The turn of seasons floods me with loss like new. Tears bring brief relief. Another long cold spell coming. Will I endure? Change for better or worse?

Yesterday I looked up from my desk and happened to glimpse the gold birch leaves catch the last light of the setting sun. They blazed against the dusky sky, miraculously unconsumed. I wanted to stare until that fire lit me too, but, distracted, I forgot and returned to my tasks. By the time I looked through the window again, all I saw was starless night.

Offer, Listen, Neutral, Feed Back: Writing Class, 9/11/14

A couple of weeks ago, I met with my poetry students equipped with some five-minute writing topics that I use at the beginning of class. Simple and general, these topics help clear the mind of surface thoughts. I began with "waking up" and unclasped my wrist watch to lay on the desk besides my unopened journal. Some students stared into space at first and some set to writing immediately. My own hands were idle.

I  was fretting about a failed lesson from the week before and forming a plan to try it again this session. The failed lesson had to do with the students giving one another neutral feedback following the reading aloud of their pieces. I'd learned it from Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind) at workshops I'd attended in the 90s. Neutral feedback requires focused listening so that we can repeat the words and images that we remember back to the reader, thus telling her or him where the language was most memorable for us.

"It's neutral, not positive or negative," I'd explained the week before. "Just say the phrase or word. Leave out opinions and interpretations." It was difficult for most of the students to follow my instructions, and they responded to each others' writing with "I like..." or "That made me think of...."  I didn't correct them, probably because it had been our first full writing session, and I wanted to establish an initial sense of comfort in the classroom. When a student did attempt to follow my instructions, I'd merely nodded my affirmation. That was hardly enough of a distinction for a teacher to make. Quite simply, I hadn't been clear enough in the follow-through.

So I was determined to reinforce the basics of neutral feedback in this session. As the students wrote about waking up that morning, I was gearing up to retry teaching the theory and application of neutral feedback. "It doesn't only help the writer; it helps us all to develop our listening skills," I practiced saying in my head. 'We think that we know how to listen, but we can do better. We need to listen as writers listen. To explore how words can only bridge our thoughts and experience. To begin to understand the gap between being and telling." Teacher talk, likely just what Natalie had told me when I was her student.

Their five minutes were up. I told them to finish their sentences. They looked up expectantly, their pens poised above their books. "When I leave here," I said. "When I leave here," I repeated. They began writing again. My notebook remained closed. I watched my students leaning over their desks, noticing how some held their pens between their pointer finger and thumb, how some used their middle and ring finger."When I leave here," I thought, "I'll have my last office hour of the week and hop into my car to head upstate." Several of my friends had decided to retire last semester, but I didn't want to think about that kind of leaving.

"Time's up," I announced. "Finish what you're doing." In a minute most of the students stopped. One young woman bent further over her notebook, deep into her writing. She needed to catch whatever she was chasing. I didn't wait for her. The rest looked at me. I had another general topic ready, but I hesitated. In the back of my mind was the date of that session. I decided to give it to them to prepare them in some way for the day to come. "Nine-Eleven," I announced. "Nine-Eleven." Some nodded. A few closed their eyes." They began to write. After a moment or two of watching, I decided to open my notebook. Before delving in, I jotted down the time I should tell them to finish up in case I lost my teacher self in my writing. Then I began.

These students were around five in 2001. I want to know what they think. Not too reverential, I hope. Distanced, maybe. Not sure what to do with it, maybe. I wonder if I touched a nerve. I wonder.

I remember Al running home from his jog on the East River path, calling "turn on the tv!" Just before the second plane hit. I remember us rushing later that afternoon from hospital ER to hospital ER being turned away each time. No blood was needed. Four years before his diagnosis. 

"Time is up," I called. We were sitting in a sort of oval to accommodate the narrow room. "Let's do some reading." I reminded them of the listening rules. "Who wants to start?" As I listened to the first student read his piece, I remembered how hard it is to listen deeply, to quiet one's own thoughts and connect with another's. How one gets caught on a phrase and sets off on a long self-inquiry before remembering to rein oneself in. Settle down, I told my restless mind more than once. Go back and listen.

When it came time to give feedback, I said, "Just the words, phrases, images." A student did just that. So did another. "Good," I said. Another student offered her opinion. I firmly held up my hand. She stopped, and another said a phrase.

We listened to the rest of the readings. Although it wasn't required, all the students wanted to read their Nine-Eleven pieces. As each one finished, all of the rest--including the one who had earlier tried to give her opinion--offered neutral feedback. Go home quickly... I feel the panic... Live in fear. ..Hardened faces... President reading... I'm not sure... Very bad people... We rush home and have lunch. ..Teachers aren't supposed to cry... A mom planning her weekend... Happy to be getting out of school... Shield of grief... Inside domestic terrors... Abandoned... Rules and regulations... Mrs. O'Connor... Campfires of revolutions. ..Your dark hair...

I was feeling satisfied with the results of the lesson on listening. They had all gotten it. Then a student raised her hand. I nodded. "Would you read?" she asked.

I looked down at my page, unsure as any of my students of what I'd just written...and read. I hesitated before reading the last sentence about his diagnosis. But I read that too.

I'd forgotten how it feels to read just-written, unedited writing to a group for the first time. Humbled, I felt layers peeling off, something like soul showing, tenderness not meant for everyone. I lingered on the page, suddenly too shy to look up and meet my students' eyes.

A brief silence...then they began to give feedback. Neutral. I wonder. ..I remember... Running home... Turn off the tv! ...No blood was needed... Finally, someone said,  four years before the diagnosis. Others nodded at that last sentence."Thank you," I said and ushered them on to our next project.

That day still has me thinking. We hide so much of ourselves, our best maybe, in the service of dignity or whatever it is we believe keeps us intact and safe. What would it be like if more of us were to offer, listen, and feed back? I wonder.