jeannebirdblog

Dear Friends,

This will be my last post for awhile, as my compass is pointing me in another writing direction. Thank you for reading along these past seven months. I’ve learned a lot about myself and writing in the creation of jeannebirdblog.com. At the least, I hope that you have wondered about life with me.

CONNECTION

I head to the garage that runs under the house. It is cut into the hilly landscape, below the house that Grandpa and Uncle Pippi built at the top of the hill. Since the garage was cut into the earth, the garage smells like dirt. It is dark, dank, delightful. It is neat as a pin. No clutter, no junk. The cement floor is swept clean. The garden tools hang on pegs on the left wall. A washer and dryer keep to their designated spot near the basement steps that head to Nanny’s kitchen upstairs.

One might think it is a dreary spot, however, I welcome it. I can sigh deep, dirt sighs here and be by myself. I study the garden tools and know them well. The hoe, the shovel, the rake, all know their jobs.

Jewels welcome me at the threshold of the garage. The door is fully open when I arrive, welcoming me. At the beginning edge of the cement floor, where the driveway’s black asphalt crumbles into the cement, the garden jewels sit. Uncle Pippi leaves his garden bounty there for the taking by the lucky ones at the receiving end of Aunt LaLa’s phone calls. The lucky ones are her sisters, cousins, nieces, and Great-Aunt Lizzie from across the street. Mom tells me to go and fill a bag.

Brown paper grocery bags, neatly folded, sit in a stack next to bags filled with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers. Ears of corn are piled high in Uncle Pippi’s wheelbarrow. Pale yellow kernels peek out among green fronds and slippery silk slipped from the ears lie under my Ked’s covered feet. Early in the day, Uncle Pippi wheeled the garden jewels from the garden across the street, the smooth, wooden handles of a wheelbarrow lying easily in his workhorse hands. Metal rings attach the wooden handles to the metal vessel, a bowl welcoming the vegetables mounted high is its’ load.

Cucumbers, their dark green, shiny, waxy skin, feel bumpy as a toad’s back under my running fingers. The prickly, tiny thorns tumble off as my thumb pushes them away. I bite into crunchy skin, cucumber juice runs down my chin, wipes away with the back of my hand onto my cut-off, blue jeans shorts. Green bites of hard skin crunch between hard flesh and the pulpy, soft, seedy innards of the cuke.

I hold a plump, deep red tomato in the palm of my hand. Bringing it up to my cheek, I stroke the tomato along my face, the soft, silky, dirt dusts my skin. A soft, soft, soft touch of red garden love. I wonder at the tomato. Is it not part of Uncle Pippi? And, as he’s connected to Mom through Grandpa and Nanny, doesn’t that make me part of the tomato?

This morning, I searched for Uncle Pippi’s date-of-death online. I want to give it to the priest that is presiding over Mom’s funeral, as I want him to try to personalize her tribute with family history. I didn’t feel like searching through my documents-upon-documents of my own research. Blaming laziness, I did an online search which immediately brought me to a version of the Darien High School newspaper. Shows you how useless searches can be at times, since this has nothing to do with his death. Needless to say, I thanked Pippi for helping me today, as he helps Mom with her coffin, leaping to the end zone, and victory.

HISTORY OF RIVALRY REVEALED
An excerpt from the NEIRAD, Darien High School newspaper, November 1984.
NCHS COFFIN

An angry Darien team traveled to New Canaan in 1936, hoping to stop their mentors. Darien students came to the game with a coffin marked N.C.H.S. and Darien even managed to score, but it looked like all they would manage was a 6-6 tie. Then late in the game, the Wave’s Jackie Craighead intercepted and returned it 50 yards to the New Canaan 5. With Darien’s fans up and screaming, three line plunges would not crack the end zone. On fourth down, with the game, the season and revenge riding on one play, Pippy D’Arrigo leaped into the end zone, and Darien had the victory.

There are times when Mom buys clothes for me when I’m a teen, and I’m overjoyed. It doesn’t happen often because hand-me-downs and my raggy, measly paycheck as a cashier at Grade A Market cover my wardrobe. I write in my journal, “Mom spent $40 on me at Bradlees today! I can’t believe it!” What a wonder Mom is at times like this.

When I was in the ninth grade, Mom bought me a red, hoodie jacket at Gimbel’s Department Store in Stamford. It was lush, lush, lush, soft, soft, soft, red, red, red, and hip, hip, hip. I loved it.

The first day that I wore it to school, a hip, pretty girl came up to me at my locker after homeroom period. I never talked to her before, or to any of her friends, the other cool, snobby, rich girls of Darien. She asked me where I got my hoodie, and lovingly touched my arms that were lovingly smothered with the red jacket. She didn’t look at my face. She looked at my jacket.

I took her action as a sign of friendship, and with my biggest smile, told her, Gimbel’s. She looked up at me. As my smile threw her off, she hurriedly turned away in the noisy hallway of junior high students. My red hoodie was crushed, crushed, crushed.

How I comforted myself when I was a little girl…

At the end of a crying spiel, I wipe my eyes with the back of a hand, hug my dog, Happy, really tight, and think about rolling down the hill at Nanny’s house, spying on wild rabbits in Grandpa’s garden as they munched leaves while keeping a look-out for trouble about, picking dandelions to make into necklaces and crowns for my little sisters, and watching Uncle Pippi push the seeder along the dirt, dropping the seeds in The Garden.

In the year 2000, I learn that Uncle Pippi is going to be recognized by President Clinton at the 50th Anniversary of the Korean War.

“Jeanne, guess what? You’ll never guess what LaLa told me today! The government is picking Pippi up by helicopter, and flying him to Washington, D.C.! Can you imagine? My own brother! You know, he was a hero in the Korean War,” said Mom.

We’re in my kitchen. The room is decorated in baby highchair décor, accented with an over-flowing laundry basket, a wire basket stiffly holding overdue bills, dishes precariously stacked in a mountain-shape in the dish drainer, remnants of a fried egg glued to a breakfast frying pan, dog toys and little girl toys underfoot.

Mom is here to help, as she has been, consistently, for the past eight years, helping me love my children.

“What? What are you talking about?” I think that she doesn’t have the story straight, because, in the forty-one years of my life, I’ve never heard an inkling that Uncle Pippi is a war hero. It’s a fine line with Mom, and always has been. She’s either giving it to me straight, or exaggerating her way, manipulating my thoughts to get me to do something for her. I am glad that I recognize this at this point in my life. In this way, I can love her.

“True-blue,” said Mom.

On a lucky, summer day, Aunt LaLa hands me the big, black, metal scissors that rest in a kitchen drawer.

“Go outside and cut some zinnias, Jeanne,” she says, and hands me a shallow, wide-handled, ash basket to hold the flowers that I will make into loose bouquets to bring home. She’s great at keeping me and my three sisters busy with little chores around Nanny’s house.

“No, Ida, no, she can’t use those! Are you nuts? She’ll get cut. Give me strength!” screeches Mom, frowning darkly at us as I take the scissors. Mom refers to Aunt LaLa’s Christian name, Ida, when she gets mad at her. A divorced woman raising four daughters on her own, Mom is highly overprotective, usually in unimportant instances, such as when it came to me, at twelve-years-old, using scissors.

My shoulders hunch down as I draw my arms tight, cross them against my chest, the scissors tensely held in my hand. Mom’s harsh, cold words ring out and ricochet from wall-to-wall in the warm, turquoise-colored kitchen, then ricochet right through my head, down to my feet. Her voice is unbendable, hard, and reproachful. I feel as though I’ve done something wrong and take the blame, hard on myself for getting Mom worked up.

“Dummy! I should’ve known she’d get mad! How I wanta cut the zinnias!” I push my elbows into my sides to stop the shaking in my stomach, the tremors of fear in my head. Even my below-the-shoulder, brown hair is quivering in its brown, plastic barrettes clipped at each side of my head, and tears are starting to sprout at my long-eyelashed, brown eyes.

I don’t know what it is, but one thing like hell I do know is that I don’t want to get Mom angrier. She thought I could hurt myself and didn’t want me to end up an unfortunate victim by way of the scissors. She didn’t know how to say this in a kind way, just her way.

“Oh, Marie, you’re so fussy! She’ll be fine. I’ve shown her how to use them before, and besides that, she’s watched me use them plenty of times. She’s not a baby,” says Aunt LaLa. Mom’s mouth shuts as she falls silent. Aunt LaLa will not take Mom’s shit, and Mom will not argue further with her.

“Go on, Jeanne. Don’t worry about it. I know you’ll be fine,” says Aunt LaLa, then shoos me out the door with a big smile. She knows that the more you cut, the more the zinnias bloom.

“Marie, you’re so stubborn! You’d better watch it. Jeanne is fearful of her own shadow. It’s tough to get two words out of her. She can’t go through life afraid of everything, including a pair of scissors.” Aunt LaLa’s words push at my back as I escape before any more of Mom’s words stop me.

“They don’t like each other when they get like that. Sisters!” I think, happy that Aunt LaLa controlled Mom just then, but miserable that I had to feel their coldness. I didn’t have to make a self-sacrificing move, give up the scissors, or anything else, in order to please Mom. I didn’t have to try to keep things flowing in a happy direction for her, but continued in the happiest direction, away from Mom, to the zinnia bed.

“Be careful with those big scissors, Jeanne! Watch the bumblebees! You don’t want to get stung! Make sure Barbara doesn’t get stung.” Mom calls out, having to get the last word of control. It’s a warning, with conditions, limiting my actions. My younger sister, Barb, jumps off the slate steps of the back porch and follows me to Grandpa’s zinnia bed, just a few feet away from the backdoor.

“Oh, Marie! Come and have a cup of coffee,” tsks, tsks Aunt LaLa, as she closes the screen door.

During the summer when I’m ten-years-old, Mom takes us for a walk while we’re visiting at Nanny’s house. This is kind of unusual, as Mom didn’t take many walks with her four girls. At Nanny’s house, Mom spends her time indoors, chats it up with Aunt LaLa, Nanny, and, more often than not, Cousin Lucia, and Great-Aunt Lizzie, who trails whispery smoke from a cigarette as she walks across the street, up the path alongside Grandpa’s zinnia bed, her flowered housecoat hanging loosely on her soft, round form.

Mom was good at nagging about walks. She rarely gave us rides, sometimes due to the break-down of the car, sometimes not. We walked to school, from school, to and from church, the park, the beach, the grocery store.

“When I was a kid, I walked everywhere,” she said.

Never mind if you just didn’t feel like walking sometimes.

Her tone suggests that because she suffers, we must suffer. So, since she walked, we walked.

This particular summer, Mom led the way, Indian single-file style, on the grassy area that surrounds Uncle Pippi’s garden, along the gray-weathered split rail log fence and the paved roads. The garden was on a plot of land shaped like an island, surrounded on all sides by three roads. The neighborhood had been chopped up by the addition of the I-95 Turnpike in the 1950s, cutting off Linden Avenue along one side of the island.

“Girls, your Daddy and I are getting divorced. We won’t be living with him anymore.” said Mom.

I pull a long piece of grass out by its roots and stick it in between my teeth. It twitches nervously, shivers in my mouth. I wonder if Nanny is watching us from her house across the street. I don’t want her looking at us. At me. I don’t like to be looked at, to have any attention turned on me. I don’t want to look at my own feelings.

“Are we going to live at Nanny’s?” Donna asks, relief in her face, round eyes wondering. She is relieved that we are finally leaving Daddy.

“No, Donna, we’re moving to our own apartment,” said Mom.

It was as simple as that. On the outside of the garden, looking in, the end-of-summer decay of garden plants, as they wither and dry, turning in for the winter, the last of their old life dusting down to the dirt of Dear, Sweet, Jesus’ earth.

College days; I am twenty-years-old, in 1979. I consider my Journal a friend, therefore, I write as though to a friend.

Journal,

There is just no time to be alone, there is no place to go. And, if there is a moment, it is only there to clear my head, to think, to sleep. I was having problems with school, and I was frustrated. I couldn’t write. It just got in the way of my school life.

My family and friends think I am artistic. I know I’m not. I wish I could make a fortune in ceramics, and writing, and embroidery. Those are the three things that I do that make me feel like me. They make me feel wonderful.

And, those are the three things that I hardly ever do. Why? Because school vacation is here, and I have to live at home, where there is no room for my art supplies, where there is no clay, where there is just work to see when I wake up in the mornings.

Home is where there is yelling, where there isn’t a quiet corner. After I work, I go out with my boyfriend. I am always helping others. I supply the needs for my manager, I supply the needs for customers, I supply the needs for my mother. When I do housework for my mother, I don’t have to hear her yell at me. There is hardly any love here.

I supply the needs for my boyfriend on weekends and weekday evenings. I never supply the needs for myself. I am going crazy. Can you feel it? Can you feel how hard I am writing with my Wearever medium pen? The intensity of the ink flowing across the paper is tremendous.

I let out a long sigh. It is all coming out. My anger is draining out. There’s so much more inside.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for burdening you with my anger. I’m not going to stop writing until it is all drained out. Even if it takes years.

I have to find Jean. She is there, somewhere. She is a happy person, she is funny, and pretty, and she loves painting, and going to school. She loves it, even if it is hard, so hard, to live through life. Her life is hidden by anger now, but someday, someday, I’ll find her.

I am eighteen-years-old, in my first semester at college. I consider my Journal a friend, therefore, I write as though to a friend. Two of my classes are Drawing and Social Problems.

Monday, November 28, 1977

Journal,
I am thoroughly confused. Emotions in my mind. Daddy called LaLa’s or Linda’s – I don’t know which one, on Sunday, and left a number for me to call him. I talked to Patty, Jackie, and Mark about it. They all told me to call him. I called him this morning, after my Drawing class. Sarah came home after I talked to him, so I was alone when I called him. I gave him my address and telephone number. I am kind of mad at myself and scared at the same time. What’s going to happen?

I feel so sorry for him. For myself. My family. What is wrong with having contact with him? What is so wrong? After I talked to him, I hung up the phone, went into my room, and started crying. I got so mad at my parents for making me feel so torn, so mixed up. Confused, I hated them for a moment. I should have written my feelings down then.

I love Mother so much. I wish she could understand. I just have a deep urge inside to find out about my father. I wonder what life is like with a father. I want to see what I am missing. I need their love. Mother and Daddy. Damn. How I wish life was different. Write later. Have Social Problems to read. So ironic. We are just starting a chapter on Alcoholism. Shit.

MAY, 1979, JOURNAL ENTRY (I am Twenty-Years-Old)

My mother is another problem, but she will always be a problem.

I came home with Mark and Mike last evening, to get Barb, and to change before we went to NYC. As soon as I came in, she started bitching about me going out every night. She doesn’t like that. She thinks it’s wrong. She doesn’t like my style of living, and if I don’t do what she wants, I’d better get out.

I have been kicked out of my house millions of times, verbally. I have been called a whore, a bitch, and any other filthy word you can think of.

I know my mother hates me. We get no pleasure out of each other. I am a burden to her, and she probably prays for the day to come for me to move out.

Once, when Mark called twice in one day, she yelled at me, “Why don’t you just marry him and get out!”

She says this crudely and harshly, and I try not to cry. Her words hurt. She doesn’t know how to talk rationally, like a human being. I think she is insane at times.

Of course, it is not all her fault. I must have done something wrong. I can’t figure it out, though. I clean my room, and I do the dishes in the morning, since I’m the last to leave. And, I do the dishes at night. I try to make life as easy as possible at home. I never talk to my mother. I have given up trying because all she ever does is argue with me.

She yells at me in front of my friends. She yells at them. I hate that. She doesn’t have any right to do that. They are human beings. They are people with feelings. They care. They love.

I guess that’s why they are my friends. I need people like them. That’s why I go out every night. Because they have feelings, and so do I.