I asked him how he was doing, and he said he was fine.
Probably the hardest thing for Mark is that his mom wanted everyone at the memorial to sing old songs from the 1960’s. I have offered to sing “Puff the Magic Dragon,” in his stead; this is mostly for him, but partially to spare other memorial participants from Mark’s terrible, sarcastic, and raunchy parodies of Puff.
*
This year, Mark prepared a Mother’s Day lunch of moussaka and a salad to take to my folks’ house. He helped me make the strawberry pie my mother requested.
The Child drove us up the Interstate. We survived.
*
Typically on Mother’s Day, Mom recites the following stories of how the process of birthing children went.
Right after I was born, my mother was very hungry. The hospital staff brought her a chicken dinner (in some versions of this story, it’s a steak), but no tableware. So she picked up the carcass with her bare hands and tore the meat off of the bones with her teeth (and probably no napkin).
When my sister was born, my mother wanted to watch the process (I believe there was a mirror involved somehow). She was expecting a long labor, but my sister was the second-born, and arrived much more quickly than I did.
“Wow, that was fast,” my mother said. “I guess I can take out my (thick, 1960’s style) contact lenses.”
“Uhh,” said the obstetrician in shock.
This year Mom said she didn’t remember those stories. We had to tell them to her.
*
Way back in 1975, I had a theatre kid friend (whom my parents had a high opinion of) who taught me a parody of a famous Shirley Temple song. As a sixth grader, I thought it was particularly funny and belted out the opening verse at home:
“On the good ship Geritol / It’s a fun trip to the hospital /
where old folks play / games like trying to remember their names.”
“Oh John!” my dad said, “That’s terrible.”
This was from the man who introduced me to Monty Python, so I don’t know for sure what admixture of being horrified, or amused, or being horrified that he was amused my dad was. But I never sang the song again where he could hear it.
Sometimes, in the early morning, when I catch a particularly weathered version of myself in the bathroom mirror, I will sing the end verse: “happy landings on a laxative bar.”
*
Meanwhile, back in the present, The Child was having a conversation with my dad and led in with a question about Dad’s Air Force days. I think he was hoping to hear the story of the drill sergeant who once bellowed at Dad, “Bryurredge; if you can’t march, then DON’T SING!”
The Child asked Dad if he served in Viet Nam.
“No,” Dad said. “But your dad served in Korea.”
Dad thought he was speaking, not to The Child, who is an undergraduate, but to my elder cousin, who is currently in his seventies. According to Mark, the conversation recalled a few more Korea details before skipping back into the present.
During all of this I was speaking with Mom, so I only caught a bit of their conversation. I couldn’t figure out why they were talking about M*A*S*H reruns.
*
After lunch, my sister and I had done some quick house up-keep tasks and were in a downstairs room looking at some framed pictures. As usual, the discussion turned to what to do with some of the family mathoms when my folks move out or are gone.
“Do you want that picture?” she asked, pointing to a water color of the wreck of the Peter Iredale.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m not quite sure where we’ll hang it, but I like the composition of the ship and the color’s good. And it’s something Grandma Agnes made.”
“I’d like that one,” she said, pointing to a painting of my mother’s mother’s parents homestead—a red barn and a yellow house set against fields and a pine forest done by a great-aunt or -uncle. The house in the painting had no electricity nor indoor plumbing. “You don’t want it, do you?”
“No,” I said. “It’s a place we can’t go back to, and I really didn’t know who painted this picture.“
The last time we visited that piece of 1890—with its five mile gravel drive and rain and oil lamps and wind and wood stove and foot pump reed organ and more rain and old Norwegian bibles and hymnals and musty patchwork quilts and a dark, leaky tool shed with a treadle grindstone and rusty tools and bats living in the unsound second floor of the barn and nobody but two elderly Norwegian bachelor great-uncles for miles and miles (except for that one year with the cows) and really no place to play—was 1978.
There used to be some spectacular giant bearded irises growing there. The violet, yellow, and periwinkle blooms had furry insides and a dusky scent. In the 1980’s some were transplanted and grew on the hillside below my folks’ house and blossomed annually before deer, moles, and icy winters thinned them to nothing.
Somewhere in the pine forest behind where the barn used to stand there’s a pioneer cemetery plot. I think my mother’s grandparents are buried there. You need a GPS to find it.
*
The Child drove us along the back-road highway home. We survived—although at one point in town some horrific driver swerved right out of an intersection and I was convinced I was going to have a broken sideview mirror in my lap.
*
Mother’s Day drew to an end, and I was reminded of a fantasy story where the characters visit caves: In one cave are statues of Zeus, Athena, Thor, Isis and other deities; in the cave after that are statues of gods with no names; in the cave beyond are the broken and worn remnants of statues of forgotten gods; the final cave is dark.
I was reminded of a science fiction story where the characters listen to a record of the Beatles song, “With a Little Help from My Friends,” and find each other in the heartbeat thud of the record player’s needle circling in the record’s final groove.
I was reminded of the Labyrinth Stone sitting in the Station of the North of our backyard’s circle of pavers: there’s a finger labyrinth replica of the Cretan Labyrinth on it.
When I run my index finger along the curving stone course, spiraling to the pattern’s center, it brings me to here and now.
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