Many mornings, in the flicker between sleep and waking, I’m back in my childhood house on Ash Street in McPherson. In that blue bedroom with the white dressing table and bureau, my bulletin board, the fragile old-fashioned china figurine Daddy brought back from Florida, the box of inspirational pictures Mother used in teaching her art classes. I’m just on the sweet edge of consciousness. Almost ready to get up—to see if Mother’s across the hall in their bedroom. Or, do I hear her in the kitchen?
And then, not exactly an “oh shit” moment, but something close. A jolt. No, I’m in Montana. And Mother’s been gone thirty years.
It doesn’t last long – that distress, that wistfulness. I get up here in Helena and say hello to the cats and turn on the coffee. I savor that honeyed moment three slurps in when my body settles into the day.
And mostly in my waking hours, I don’t return to that odd out-of-time yearning.
I don’t want to replay my life. Or revisit childhood. Or live the years in-between. In fact, these days, I don’t wish for much. My 22-year-old car hangs in there. I love the condo with its light and long views to the mountains. Tuxedo and Tiger Tiger are fine companions—cuddly, entertaining, relatively work and worry free. I’m surrounded by belongings that remind me of fascinating work, glorious travels, of friends and family, of what I know to be a rich and lucky life. I anticipate meals out, cocktail hours, and tea and crumpets with friends. Including brand-new friends! I have the great privilege of knowing daughters and their families. For all that my eyes and ears and toes and gullet and bust are compromised, I’m remarkably healthy. It will soon be time to plant geraniums and tomatoes on the porch and sit outside. And then prepare for a return to India!
Yes, I do have a short list of wishes, but nothing on which my current happiness turns. Maybe maybe, just another trip to the Grand Canyon– once more—of course as pristine as it was in 1974; or a bit less craving for cookies and donuts; or finally figuring out how to dress—especially for my age. And then, if a genie really appeared, a time-machine to return me to a few magic moments: meeting Bob at Dulles; walking into the Tumacacori Visitor Center for the first time; standing under the Pension Building’s soaring atrium; picking Dave up for our Dauphin Rapids meeting.
And once in awhile, I enjoy silly, fleeting possibilities. Today I saw the Helena Airport’s advertisement for air traffic controllers. And swear to god, part of me jumped up and said, why not! The view from the tower would be exquisite and air traffic here is pretty limited. And wouldn’t it be fun to tackle a new job. And then, sitting in the ophthalmologist’s waiting room, I daydream up an hour’s course for the staff on how to tend to their aging demographic. It begins with an exercise in enunciation!
I’m almost 80. And death has taken or is hovering over too many people absolutely central to my days, to my soul. I miss them–profoundly. And the laughter and love and promise and inspiration that they gave me. So truth be told, I am glad for dreams—and for these edge-of-real, gentle holograms. These moments of knowing when memory and longing return me to Mike and Betty and Dr. Pfanz and Dr. Govan and Ivan and Mother and Bob and Dave. A now enormous chorus of shadows.
Indeed, as I wake up, I will always listen for the scritch of the Chambers Range oven door in our kitchen; the cadence of a baseball announcer’s patter; and the rhythm of DeVoto’s words read aloud as I learned to know the West before I ever moved here. ©
