Dad's Dad -- Mom's Mother

To My Mother
by George Barker

Most near, most dear, most loved and most far,
Under the window where I often found her
Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter,
Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand,
Irresistible as Rabelais, but most tender for
The lame dogs and hurt birds that surround her—
She is a procession no one can follow after
But be like a little dog following a brass band.

She will not glance up at the bomber, or condescend
To drop her gin and scuttle to a cellar,
But lean on the mahogany table like a mountain
Whom only faith can move, and so I send
O all my faith, and all my love to tell her
That she will move from mourning into morning.

Source: http://reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com/2007/05/on-george-barker.html

Getting older is something you hear about long before you really believe in it. It's something your elders talk about first when they are young, and it's in jest. "Oh my aching back…getting' old, I guess."

Old is something your grandparents are, sort of. They still are really the VIP's of the family and they do dynamic things that you admire and sort of envy, like retiring and moving to Florida. My Dad's parents moved to Florida when they retired "to thin their blood." They would come back to stay in my aunt's house in summers and we enjoyed them again, just as before.

Mom's mother never did get old. She died when Mom was just a pre-teen. We knew her as a story character, a tragic figure in suspended animation in my mother's life. She was a classically beautiful woman in the black and white photos, dressed in white cotton that set off her sun-kissed complexion, luxurious dark hair piled up over her serene face. My grandfather took a lot of photos with good reason. She was gorgeous.

Years last long when you are a child, and my grandparents stayed the same for such a long time.. Then one winter my folks told me the most difficult news I'd ever had to get my mind around-- my grandfather had died. My father would be going to Florida for the funeral.

It did not seem possible. Granddad was my friend and my mentor in so many ways. He had hard candies for me next to his card table. He taught me to play checkers! He listened to the baseball games in summer with the sound turned all the way up because he was deaf. He gave me the giggles with gentle tricks and riddles. He was so playful, and very alive-- but no, he was not alive any more. It was my first encounter with the death of someone who "belonged to me."

My parents stayed about 40 in my mind almost all their lives. They stopped being 40 when my dad retired and they came across the country to live near me. Dad had aged with disease and Mother had aged with the burden of it.

A year or two later my Dad died and I grew up.

Then my mother's contemporaries across the country began to die-- she really ran out of people from her life! Her two beloved sisters died. Although Mother embraced my children and "borrowed " my friends, she seemed alone in the world-- part of a dead generation. Then my mother became seriously ill and suddenly she was gone!

I have a black and white photo my son took of me right after my mother died. I call it "The New Matriarch" because that is what I found myself to be. In the photo I look about forty, but so tired. My eyes have dark circles underneath and my face is unanimated. I sit passively by the familiar houseplants that my mother had recently tended for me.

My son still takes pictures and they tell me more than I would otherwise know about myself. I am actually looking quite a bit like my own mother did about twenty years ago. There are the family forehead wrinkles, and the unbelievable creases under the cheekbones. I must remember not to purse my lips so much!

Some family person in my generation will die in the next decade or so and my grandchildren will bump into the surprise of death. I wonder how it will change or instruct them?

For me, I love the glorious sonnet by George Barker, quoted above, as he remembers his mother.

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Some Cats Swim and Other Tales of the Chesapeake Bay

This is a very early boat ride my father gave his mother on the Chesapeake

Listening to tales of my father's family camping trips on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake never got tiresome. The old tent-- sand colored canvas with a heavy metal skeleton, a proper ridge pole and the odors of many summers embedded into its huge expanses-- sometimes came out of the attic and we would spend a good two or more hours setting it up on the back yard. My brother and I would sleep for a week or so outside with the night air slightly scented with old mosquito netting and attic must, hearing peepers and imagining ourselves deep in the Maryland woods.

"NEVER, NEVER, NEVER touch the inside of the canvas when it's raining!" my father instructed my brother and me. This rule was crucial! If you disturbed the surface tension of the water outside the canvas, a leak would find its way through the fabric and you would have ruined the integrity of your shelter. The leak would grow and you would not be able to stop it. (My brother and I surreptitiously tested this one night, and it was true. Happily the rain stopped and the tent dried out and our experiment stayed a secret from our father.)

There were still a few of the wood and canvas cots that my grandparents and their children and grandchildren of their earlier years (we came later) slept on. They would take a month off in summer when my granddad got his vacation from his assistant postmaster's job in Easton MD, and haul tent, duffel, food, straw, sawdust, ice, tools, boat, and their cat down to the side of the bay. Sometimes my grandmother's sister and her family would come along, and often my father's sister and her family would come. All told there were anywhere from seven to twelve people who enjoyed these outings together. The tent was large.

Dad told about the big job of immediately digging two large deep pits at the site. One pit was lined with straw and sawdust and packed with ice. The food was then stored there, butter, dairy products and meat nearest the ice, and the pit sealed up with a snug-fitting door that could be removed as necessary by my grandmother, one of the celebrated cooks in our family history. The other pit was set well alee in the woods: the latrine.

The tent was pitched and staked very securely (the Chesapeake Bay can kick up terrible storms at times) and I am sure the set up of camp and kitchen was quite enough for the first day of camping. Food prepared with fresh supplies always tastes wonderful al fresco. The cots placed around the sides of the big tent with an aisle in the center for walking in and out must have felt very good on the first night of camping.

Dad's boy cousin and he would take the boat out on the water and hoist the sail. I have not seen any photos of this boat, but they said that there was some sort of outrigger assembly on it that allowed some very sporty sailing if you got a good breeze into the large sails. This link possibly shows the kind of boat they sailed.

The story was that the family cat would come with them on the boat, and then swim in when it got tired of being at sea. It would just jump overboard and paddle itself back to shore. I always suspected that the cat did not OFTEN come with them-- and that a certain amount of persuasion as necessary to "herd the cat" onto the vessel.

The boom was low to the deck on this boat and another story was that my father, at the helm, yelled to his cousin "Duck!" as they were coming about. The cousin looked all around, saying "where?" and got bopped off into the water. Big goose egg. Serious lesson. This story was corroborated later when the grown-ups would reminisce at family gatherings about the camping days-- storms, jelly fish infestations, fresh crabs, baby bluefish, all of it.

I always wondered what it was like at the end of that month of camping. Surely there were smells that were not all that inviting-- from the clothes washed in bay water and never quite dried out in summer humidity, from musty blankets on the cots, and bits of mold brought into the tent on rainy days. From odd bits in the fire pit and food locker-- now holding few rations not spoiled-- the butter rancid, meat gone, the fruit a bit soft and bruised, potatoes gamey. The pit in the woods not keeping its atmosphere to itself.

The parents must have looked forward to the springiness and the pressed linens of proper beds in the big house in Easton. My grandfather may have enjoyed the prospect of getting back to his routine at the post office. I think the boys may not have been so glad to pull the boat out of the water. They might have stayed neck deep in bay water until the last minute before the move back home began. The cat may have been hard to find. But I am certain it did not get left behind.

Then I visualize them piling out of the funny old car, rumpled and sticky and tan, glad to see the maid they loved waiting with something cool to drink on the table. My grandfather reminding the kids that they must unload and hang out the tent to air, to put the laundry by the cellar door, and hurry up and take a bath.

And I am sure the cat found a heavenly spot somewhere quiet and had a nap.

(I still have a small square of that tent canvas-- ragged and really soft and stained-- a piece my dad cut out when they moved from our house and had to get rid of stuff. He kept it with his emergency toolbox in case he had to lie down under the car. I keep it with my garden tools for much the same purpose. Or just for looking at.)

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