Daddy gives my sisters and me nicknames when we’re little girls.

Donna, Happy-Go-Lucky.

Jeanne, Smartie.

Barbara, Hot Shot.

Maria, Mona Lisa.

Whether or not we believe it, the elephant in the room, impossible to overlook, is that Daddy truly loved us.  The elephant that I can’t talk about is Daddy.

“He was a drunk,” said Mom.  She slams the pink elephant book on him.

“Jeanne, you’re the only one that has unconditional love for him,” said Barbara.

Stick up for Mom.  Always.  Don’t talk about Daddy.  Never.

“I saved you girls from Jefferson Street,” said Mom.  This is an obvious truth.  The elephant is banished.

Yet, the only one who truly saves me is Mother Mary.

The nicknames follow us in life, even when I see the Mom that I miss when she peeps out, now and then, in a dementia unit of a nursing home.  Mom tells Maria that she’ll always hold a special place for her in her heart.  I’m over the top about this because my Mona Lisa princess sister needs to hear it.  Barbara struts her stuff, holds Mom’s hand, tells her that she loves her, in her Hot Shot way.  Donna gives out a Happy-Go-Lucky vibe as she teases her son into kissing Mom.  Mom smiles.  Mom tells me that she missed me years ago, when I was away at Smartie college.  How I wish she had told me then, at the time I needed it most.

When I was a teen, Mom said that I should be more like Donna, Happy-Go-Lucky, put a smile on my face, instead of a frown, let things roll off my shoulder.

Through my thin skin, a weight sits in my cord-knotted stomach when Mom talks like that.  The elephant is in my throat.  I can’t speak, or defend myself, wonder why Mom wants me to be more like my sister and what was wrong with me, the way that I am.

The way that I am.  Smartie.

The nickname takes me back.  Daddy plays games with my sisters and me.  We’re in the kitchen, where aproned Mom cooks yummy gravy, spaghetti, and meatballs, for Sunday dinner.  The kitchen smells good, like an Italian restaurant.

“Your mother’s the best cook,” said Daddy.

He keeps us out of Mom’s hair, sits on a chair, Barbara, Maria, and I henpeck around him as we lead him in a beauty parlor game.  He lets us brush his hair with Mom’s pink hairbrush.  We use her black bobby pins to curl Daddy’s hair, in the way that Mom does her hair, but the pins slip-slide to the floor, which crack us up.  In another game, with a quarter hidden in his fist, he gives us turns at guessing which hand the coin is in.  I get it right every time.

“Smartie,” he says, unconditionally.

“Look ahead, don’t look back, hold onto your dreams,” said Mom.

The torpedoed teenager mess in my head spins in divorce trauma, welfare, mom-beats-me-because-she-does-not-like-the-way-I-look-at-her, subsidized housing, mom-rips-my-clothes-out-of-the-closet-because-she-does-not-like-the-way-I-hang-them, rich Darien, no money, embarrassment, no memories, ugly words, why-don’t-you-just-marry-your-boyfriend-and-get-the-hell-out, housework sweat, no help, can’t-use-the-dryer-so-towels-freeze-on-the-clothesline, crippling shyness, yells, don’t-bother-Uncle-Pippi, wild wooden spoon smacks, school stress, shame, endless fear, have-another-of-Aunt-LaLa’s-Italian-cookies, squashed feelings, say-your-prayers-at-bedtime, mow-the-lawn-and-car-drivers-pass-by-and-stare-at-my-tshirted-chest, screams, mom-beats-me-because-I-crack-up-her-car, slaps, pinches, bruises, always-be-friends-with-your-sisters, swear words, mom’s-pink-hard-hairbrush-hits-my-shoulder, violent fights, you-can’t-do-anything-right, fuck, fuck, fuck, mom-says-she-has-no-one-to-help-her-but-me-burdens.

Smartie doesn’t work so well in those days.

Once in awhile, I sneak into Mom’s bedroom and search in a dresser to be reminded of my nickname and what it was like to have a Daddy.  It’s a good thing that Daddy recorded the nicknames on paper, in a drawing for Mom.  With colorful pencils, he drew his daughters and taped a black and white photo of each of us, taken in Woolworth’s photo booth, above our portraits.  We have beautiful smiles and the most hopeful eyes.  A headline, in his technical block hand-lettering, above each girl, lists an item number.  I am Number 2, as I’m the second-oldest.  We are all required in his recipe as he wrote, “Mix four items together and bake well:  WOW!  Happy Anniversary.  Love, Joe.”    Below each girl’s image are our nicknames.  In a corner, compass arrows with a question mark symbolize what item number might be next in their family dreams.

Over the years, I ask Mom if I can have the drawing, a marriage memento, but she says no.  She keeps it in a drawer of what used to be Daddy’s dresser.  When I’m in my thirties, Mom finally gives me the drawing.  It is in fragile condition.

“I know you appreciate old things, Jeanne, and that you’ll take care of it,” said Mom.

It is the sweetest wedding anniversary present that I have ever seen.

In the nursing home, I show Mom my wedding album, family photos, a Noroton Heights history book, and photos of her grandfather and brother, Pippi, as a Darien high school football star.  The weight in my stomach is here as I search for clues, reasons, answers, on how to live up to my know-it-all nickname and for God’s directions to my happiness.

Smartie investigations give the answer key to many questions.

Now I know that Mom tried, at times, in kindness, to lighten the elephant with her roundabout nature.  She didn’t get that I have to look back to look ahead.  I hold onto dreams.  Not her way.  My way.  In a reoccurring dream, I am dutifully connected to Daddy and Mom with a strong, white cord.  I have to go where they go.  The cord is fragmented and weakened with Mom’s death.

Dreams, dreams, dreams.  With a call to joy, my mother-in-law spelled me with dream interpretations to find answers.  Years spirit by.  I investigate a dream where the elephant in the room comes to me.  An elephant is in my yard, to clear away debris, from the sidewalk installation that occurs in true life.  He clears away leaves and twigs near a dogwood tree.  He helps me clear away the mess.  He is friendly and I don’t fear him at all.  He is thick-skinned and lets things roll off his shoulder.  The elephant speaks for God’s power to remove obstacles.  I offer the elephant an apple, as though it’s a present for a teacher.

Through investigation, I gather that the defensive nature of an elephant may represent an introverted nature.  Elephants symbolize inner strength, wisdom, memory.  The power of persistence.  It depicts the power of the unconscious with a conscious direction to achieve wonderful things.  So, it is the totality of self rather than awareness of only the conscious ego.  In Christianity, this is the Holy Spirit, the influence that heals, instructs, guides us to truth.  If you feed an elephant in your dream, you are elevated through kindness.  If the elephant is friendly, you will have good luck in what you are undertaking to do.  If the elephant is doing a job, you will have success above your wildest dreams.  I don’t believe in dreams, still, I learn that if you are seeking answers, the elephant symbolizes the key to knowledge and truth.  You will be told the answer.