Hanoch McCarty
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The Only Memory That Lingers
You never know when you're making a memory.
Rickie Lee Jones
I have many memories about my father and about growing up with him in our apartment next to the elevated train tracks. For 20 years, we listened to the roar of the train as it passed by his bedroom window. Late at night, he waited alone on the tracks for the train that took him to his job at a factory, where he worked the midnight shift.
On this particular night, I waited with him in the dark to say good-bye. His face was grim. His youngest son had been drafted. I would be sworn in at six the next morning, while he stood at his paper-cutting machine in the factory.
My father had talked about his anger. He didn't want them to take his child, only 19 years old, who had never had a drink or smoked a cigarette, to fight a war in Europe. He placed his hands on my slim shoulders. "You be careful, Srulic, and if you ever need anything, write to me and I'll see that you get it."
Suddenly, he heard the roar of the approaching train. He held me tightly in his arms and gently kissed me on
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the cheek. With tear-filled eyes, he murmured, "I love you, my son." Then the train arrived, the doors closed him inside, and he disappeared into the night.
One month later, at age 46, my father died. I am 76 as I sit and write this. I once heard Pete Hamill, the New York reporter, say that memories are man's greatest inheritance, and I have to agree. I've lived through four invasions in World War II. I've had a life full of all kinds of experiences. But the only memory that lingers is of the night when my dad said, "I love you, my son."
Ted Kruger
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Urbana Farewell
Your children are always your babies, even if they have gray hair.
Janet Leigh
In 15 minutes, a bus is due to arrive at the station to take me back home to Bozeman, Montana. In 15 minutes, my life will turn a corner and my relationship with my youngest son, Keith, will alter.
We drove to Urbana together after Christmas to get him set up in an apartment and a new life. He will attend the University of Illinois on a scholarship to play wheelchair basketball. Keith is a paraplegic.
"Well, Mom, I guess this is it. No more 'stretchy sing pow.' "Keith speaks in a family code. That is his way of saying: "I won't have anyone to stretch my legs in the morning" implying he'll have to do other things for himself, too, like dishes and laundry. It's also his way of acknowledging all the little things we share, like the code itself.
"No more 'techy sing pow,'" I reply. That means, "You won't be able to razz me about the inept way I handle the physical world." (A "tech" is our family slang for someone,
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like me, who is allergic to the techno gadgetry of our times.) My "techniness" exasperates him. But it delights him, too, because he never tires of wise-cracking at my expense. To him, I am the "Dorisaurus," a creature bound for extinction. I must agree, I am an analog woman in a digital world. Our affectionate estrangement is a pattern that started early. Even as a child, when we went shopping together, he pretended he didn't know me, and walked 20 cool paces before or behind, always glancing out the corner of his eye to keep me in range. Our distance created an ample laughing space we could both enjoy as we bumbled along together.
We are both very aware that our mutually endearing relationship is changing. Fortunately, as a result of the forced intimacy between "caregiver and client," I learned to banter easily with my son. Many mothers would find the lightheartedness in our relationship remarkable. But for the accident, I would probably be lucky to have three of four stiff phone calls a year from Keiththat's the way things were going.
Neither of us looks at the other, in fact we both gladly stare anywhere else. We are aware of others in the bus station. I conclude that the traveler across from me only pretends to read his gold-embossed supermarket novel. That way, he can keep a polite distance from what is obviously a private and touching moment. On the other hand, I doubt that the other passengersa head between earphones and a mouth devouring a mound of deli ribsnotice anything whatsoever beyond a radius of six inches. Still they figure in as an obligatory audience.
I want to have the parting moment behind us, so I move to hasten it. "No use for you to wait here, Keith. It will be half an hour before we're ready to board. I'll be fine."
Keith receives my suggestion with relief. "Okay, then."
Frankly, I had hoped for a polite protest, one I could
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overcome with a slightly martyrish, "No, really. I'll be fine." But protestations and games of manners are not Keith's style. He prepares to leave.
Now comes the inevitable part. I bend down to hug my son for what could turn out to be the last time for a long while. Unfortunately, I don't remember that the only way to hug someone gracefully in a wheelchair is to kneel, and so our embrace feels awkward. We deliver the standard three pats which in our family signifies "It is finished," or "Go with God," or in this case, "Free to go."
For an instant our eyes meet. His eyes are red, but he is not crying. Instead, he laughs nervously. He is officially "on his own" for the first time in his life.
Undoubtedly, Keith would have been independent at 18 were it not for that last surfing safari with Richard, his best friend. They headed up Pacific Coast Highway early one morning in July 1989. Richard, who had only been driving for a few months, sat behind the wheel of my Nissan pickup. Out late the night before, Keith dozed in the passenger seat. Richard took a curve too fast and too wide. The truck spun out on the gravel shoulder and rolled several times. Neither of them lost consciousness, but Keith was pinned in the crushed cab. Realizing they were both alive, Richard joked, "Hey, man! Are you there?"
"Half of me is. I can't be sure about the rest," was Keith's fateful reply. Within the hour, the "jaws of life" arrived and pried Keith out. A helicopter lifted him to one of the best equipped trauma centers in the world. Richard escaped with minor injuries. Keith turned 17 the next day in Northridge Hospital.
The supermarket novel man glances up. Does he see a woman whose last child is leaving her care; a young man going forth in the time-honored way to seek his fortune? I wonder what he sees.
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Keith pivots on his racing wheels and heads out smartly, self-consciously, with determination in each stroke. I watch him out the window. When he gets to the car, he swings his body gracefully into the driver's seat and deftly disassembles the chair. Keith is not a ''tech," no wasted motion. Feeling my eyes on him, he looks up. I wave; he waves back.
That is the signal for the tears I have been holding back. I wonder if Keith is crying, too. "Not like him," I decide, "but still, not beyond him." I know it's a good thing that there are mysterious depths in my children that I need not fathom.
I am suddenly aware of curious eyes behind me. The novel, the earphones and the ribs have lost their appeal. Attention is focused on me. It registers as compassion.
Keith drives by the front door of the station and signals again. But this time it is not a wave, it is a salute.
Doris W. Davis
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My Own Experience
No external advantages can supply self-reliance. The force of one's being . . . must come from within.
R. W. Clark
My first awareness of her was her hands. I don't remember how old I was, but my whole being and existence were associated with those hands. Those hands belonged to my mom, and she is blind.
I can remember sitting at the kitchen table coloring a picture. "Look at my picture, Mom. It's all finished."
"Oh, that's pretty," she replied, and kept right on doing whatever she was doing.
"No, look at my picture with your fingers," I insisted. She then came to me, and I ran her hand all over the picture. I always enjoyed her excited response that the picture was lovely.
It never occurred to me that it was strange how she felt things with her hands, how she touched my face or things I showed her. I did realize that my dad looked at me and at the things I showed to him with his eyes, and
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so did Grandma or any other person who came into our house; but I never thought it unusual that Mom didn't use her eyes.
I can still remember how she combed my long hair. She put the thumb of her left hand between my eyebrows, just at the top of my nose, and her forefinger at the crown of my head. She was probably lining up those two points, and then she'd bring the comb from her forefinger down to meet the thumb. Thus, she hoped the part would be down the middle of my head. I never questioned her ability to do this task.
When I fell down many times at play, came in crying and told Mom that my knee was bleeding, her gentle hands washed my knee and skillfully applied a bandage.
One day I found out, unfortunately, that there were certain things my mother wouldn't touch. I found a tiny dead bird lying on the sidewalk in front of our house and brought it into the house to show Mom. "Look what I found," I said, as I took her hand to touch the bird. "What is it?" she asked. She lightly touched the dead creature in my outstretched palm, and I could hear the terror in her voice as she asked once more, "What is that?"
"A little dead bird," I answered. She screamed then and quickly drew back her hand and ordered me and the bird outside and admonished me never to let her touch such a thing again.
I could never quite reckon with her powers of smell, hearing and touch. One day, I saw a plate of cookies that Mom had just placed on the table. I slyly took one and looked at her to see what she would say. She didn't say a word and, of course, I thought as long as she didn't feel with those hands what I'd done, she didn't know. I didn't realize that she could hear me chew. Just as I passed by her munching my cookie, she caught my arm. "Next time,
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Karrey, please ask me for that cookie instead of taking it," she said. "You can have all you want, just ask next time."
I have an older brother and sister and a younger brother, and none of us could quite figure out how she knew which one of us did a certain thing. One day my older brother brought a stray dog into the house and sneaked him up the stairs into his bedroom. In a short while my mom marched up the stairs, opened his bedroom door, and ordered the dog to be put outside. We were amazed she figured out there was a dog in the house.
As I grew older, I realized that Mom reared us psychologically. And with those sharp ears and nose of hers, she put two and two together and usually came up with the right answer. She had heard the dog's toenails clicking on the bedroom floor.
And that nose of hers. How it knew so much! One day my friend and I were playing with dolls in my bedroom. I slipped into Mom's room and doused the dolls with some of her perfume. Then I made the mistake of running downstairs to ask Mom a question. She immediately told me that she knew I had been in her bedroom and used her perfume.
Those ears. How they knew the things we did. I was all alone in the living room one night doing my homework with the TV running softly. Mom walked into the room and asked, "Karrey, are you doing your homework or watching TV?" I was slightly surprised but answered her and went on with my homework. Later I thought about it and wondered how she knew that I was the one in the living room and not one of my brothers or sisters. I asked her. "Sorry, honey," she said patting my head. "Even though your adenoids are gone, you still breathe through your mouth. I heard you."
Mom had a good sense of direction, too. She had a tandem bicycle and we took turns riding with her. I sat on the front seat and steered and pedaled and she sat on the
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back seat. She always seemed to know where we were and called out directions loud and clear. She always knew when we were approaching an intersection or when a fast-moving car was coming up on the right side.
How did she know that while I was taking a bath one night, when I was about nine years old, that I hadn't washed any part of myself? I was busy playing with the toys in the water and having a great time. "Karrey, you haven't touched your face or ears or anything, have you ?" I hadn't, but how did she know? Of course she knew that a little girl playing with toys in a bathtub would not stop to wash. I realized that she also used her mind's eye in rearing us.
The one thing, however, that used to concern us was the fact that Mom never really knew what we looked like. One day when I was about 17 and standing in front of the bathroom mirror combing my hair, I asked, "You really don't know what any of us look like, do you, Mom?" She was feeling my hair to see how long it was.
"Of course I do," she answered.
"I know what you looked like the day they laid your tiny little body in my arms for the first time. I felt every inch of you and felt the soft fuzz on your head. I knew that you were blond because your daddy told me so. I knew that your eyes were blue because they told me so. I know that you are very pretty because people tell me you are. But I really know what you are likewhat you are like inside." My eyes grew misty.
"I know that you're lithe and strong because you love being on the tennis court. I know that you have a good nature because I hear you talk to the cat and to small children. I know you are tender-hearted. I know you are vulnerable because I've seen your hurt reactions to someone's remarks. I know that you have character because you have the courage to stand up and defend
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your convictions. I know that you have a respect for human beings because of the way you treat me. I know that you have wisdom because you conduct yourself wisely for a girl your age. I also know that you have a will of your own because I've seen a hint of temper, which tells me that no one can dissuade you from doing the right things. I know that you have family devotion because I've heard you defending your brothers and sister. I know that you possess a great capacity for love because you've shown it to me and to your father many times. You have never indicated in any way that you were short-changed because you have a blind mother. So, dear," and she drew me close to her, "I see you and I know exactly what you look like, and to me you are beautiful."
That was 10 years ago, and recently I became a mother. When they laid my precious little son in my arms, I, like my mother, was able to see my child and know how beautiful he was. The only difference was that I could see him with my eyes. But sometime I'd like to turn out the lights, hold and touch him, and see if I can feel all the things my mother felt.
Karrey Janvrin Lindenberg
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A Simple Act of Love
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
Henrik Ibsen
When I was growing up, my father always stopped what he was doing and listened while I'd breathlessly fill him in on my day. For him, no subject was off-limits. When I was a lanky and awkward 13, Dad coached me on how to stand and walk like a lady. At 17 and madly in love, I sought his advice on pursuing a new student at school. "Keep the conversation neutral," he counseled. "And ask him about his car."
I followed his suggestions and gave him daily progress reports: "Terry walked me to my locker!" "Guess what? Terry held my hand!" "Dad! He asked me out!" Terry and I went steady for over a year, and soon Dad was joking, "I can tell you how to get a man; the hard part is getting rid of him."
By the time I graduated from college, I was ready to spread my wings. I got a job teaching special education at a school in Coachella, California, a desert town about 170