Let It Be

 

       My big mistake was in expecting a twenty-mile drive to erase the thirty years I had been away. I set myself up for the unwarranted sense of betrayal that came when I saw a flat lot with a beer garden standing where I remembered rows of curbside-service speakers, covered by orange awnings. Otherwise, the outside of the stone and glass building appeared untouched except for the new name. Hunts was now Rubbies.

     

      While I was growing up, my family ate out most Friday nights. We hit the church fish fries, Sizzler and Pizza Hut after they came around, and Frisch’s on occasion. Once in a great while, we donned good clothes and manners and visited an upscale restaurant. The one place we all enjoyed, and therefore frequented most often, was Hunts, a family-owned, neighborhood bar-restaurant combination with one small and one large dining room, a banquet room, and servers who delivered food outdoors, on trays that attached to the car windows. Hunts' original salad dressing made them famous. Individual jukebox connections on each table made the dining room our favorite spot to eat. For a quarter, each of us could choose a song. A dollar entertained us through the whole meal. 

       Last week, my daughters and I went back to Hunts, where an eerie combination of old and new greeted me. Everything and nothing had changed. Hunts had taken the salad dressing but left the bar, standing across from the same row of booths, seating what looked like some of the same people, in the same clothes and hairstyles. A stage replaced the jukeboxes, and open mic meant we could still eat to music and choose a few of our own songs. 

       Before I registered the significance of the glass-encased antique coke bottles I might have emptied in the past, or absorbed the nostalgia of the coconut face on the wall, I spotted my uncle standing at the bar. A few pounds heavier, much shinier on top, same brandy in hand, he looked past my pounds and gray and recognized my daughters. Hours and hugs later, I wondered if his mist over partying with great nieces came from the bottle, the years passed, or realizing how few we might have left. Maybe he thought, as I did, that I should be my daughter’s age and he should not be the only male left in the only generation ahead of me. 

       Harmonious discord wasn’t exclusive to our table, nor did familial concern end there. When the red head in the out-of-season, cardboard New Year’s Eve tiara draped her arms around my daughter’s shoulders and smiled at me, my heart sank. How could I have forgotten her name when she was so obviously overjoyed to see us? I mentally removed the tiara and a few lines from her face, and tried on the name of every second and third cousin I could remember. Nothing fit, except the warmth she radiated and the smile my daughter wore. 

       As the tiara bobbed and the stories poured, I narrowed the prospects. Laughter accompanied her complaints about the pawing she had received from the old fart by the pool table; she had to be from Mom’s side. I would either remember her name by the time she finished the rundown of safe, arms-length, and stay-the-hell-away men present, or I would ask my uncle when he found his way back from the bar. 

       Her name was Bonnie. I didn’t remember because I had never known. She was a regular, not related on either side, but already vested in my family by the time we found out. Bonnie stayed with us the first hour and then took off to pull a good-natured, stay-the-hell-away guy to a back corner for a dance. 

       Later, Bonnie hugged her way to a back table of arm’s-length listeners and my uncle grew roots beside a blonde barfly. One daughter went off to reserve her ten minutes on the sign-up sheet, while the other huddled close to hear a friend yell over the heavy metal group on stage. 

       A lone dancer hypnotized me with her routine – five steps to the right, raise the beer bottle overhead, bow, five steps to the left, flip the hair off the face, turn a complete circle, and repeat. Although disturbed by the obvious role of long-term chemical use in this dazed ritual, I respected the dancer’s disregard of public opinion. As if willing to enhance my appreciation, an ageless, gender-undisclosed clogger unfolded from a lotus position beside the stage and tapped passionately to the last thirty seconds of a poor rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”. 

       Possible explanations flooded my mind: flashbacks, nightmare, Twilight Zone, time warp. Flashbacks seemed unlikely since I had refused even the drugs prescribed to me, and I’d never heard of contact flashbacks. The Twilight Zone was fictional and I knew I was awake. A mullet head conversing with a tube top supported the time warp, until I looked past my daughter’s nose ring and focused on the table behind her. Three men stared back at me, one fiftyish with waist-length hair poking out from a bandana scarf, a thirty-something, clean-cut yuppie, and a sixty-something, toothless biker in a leather vest. I would surely have warped to one era and there was no way these people all belonged in the same one. 

       Sometime after the clogger sang “Let It Be”, and before seventies rock, they called my daughter to the stage to introduce ancient country. While she tested the mic and whispered to the bass player, a ghost from my past climbed on stage beside her. Not quite the guitar player her father had been, and not knowing he was standing next to an old friend’s daughter, a worn man plugged in and accompanied her on a song her father had sung twenty years before. 

       I watched his tired eyes travel with the music, maybe wishing he could recapture the same thirty years I had wanted the trip to erase for me. He stared into space, the middle-aged bass player watched the back of my daughter’s head, the young drummer kept his eyes closed, and my daughter’s eyes never left mine. My uncle and Bonnie left their fans and came to stand beside the mix-matched crew behind us. The lone dancer repeated her routine and the clogger remained in lotus position. 

       The magic of this unique little world hit me as I watched young-and-hopeful stand two feet and a world away from holding-on-to-what’s-left on the stage. Everyone had come to share common space and individual passions and paths. Some were young. Some were old. Some were sober and others hadn’t been in decades. No one laughed and pointed at the clogger or the lone dancer. No one booed when the band changed, or when the music was horrible. The stay-the-hell-away guys didn’t shun Bonnie when she pawed them and turned the story around. 

       I hadn’t been anywhere so accepting in years, and couldn’t remember when being unaccepting had come into vogue. 

       Twenty miles got closer. We’re anxious to go back, where people remember how to let it be. 

Originally posted to Author's Den and Gather on  Thursday, April 27, 2006

I Forgot To Be Betty

Everyone left the small table by the mirrored pole for Betty, no table tent announcing reserved for necessary. Employees and regulars honored the icon who remembered their names, birthdays, recent illnesses, habits, and accomplishments as though each of them were her personal charge by leaving this space for her, six nights a week, fifty-two weeks a year, open-to-close, no questions asked. Drop-ins must have sensed either the good-natured cussing the feisty redhead would deliver should she find anyone in her seat, or censure from others if they ventured near her table.

Her slender, athletic frame and high-fashion clothes masked the fact that Betty was usually the oldest person in the club. When caught in the bright lights near the stage or the DJ booth, the lines on her face broke through heavy layers of make-up, suggesting she might fit better at the bingo down the road, or maybe a nursing home across town. Otherwise, she appeared to have more energy and spirit than the rest of the crowd combined.

She danced every song, most of them alone. Her smile welcomed the first note of music and remained faithful through the last. The band dedicated her favorite songs without request and she waved her arms overhead until the song ended and it was time to blow each musician a kiss of gratitude. Waitresses delivered her drinks without orders. Betty characterized routine.

Years of speculation shrouded this woman's tenure. She knew the owners. The cook was her sister. She wanted to find a younger man. She was a retired dance instructor, insane, lonely, a rich old lady with nothing better to do, good for a blow job in the backroom or parking lot, an alcoholic, a lost soul. Projection circulated like folklore, without verification or malice. Betty became everyone's eccentric aunt. Annoying succumbed to permanent and accepted.

With the same permanence, "Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain" lingered on the song list years after falling off the hit charts. A Betty favorite, it never failed to pack the dance floor. Although the song was also high on my list, I dodged the dance floor when it started to take advantage of the vacant ladies room. Deviating from routine, Betty followed.

I took a stall; she stopped in front of the mirror. A honking blow, loud enough for me to hear over the flushing toilet and background music, convinced me illness must explain Betty's uncharacteristic silence.

I buttoned my jeans and stepped out into a changed world. Betty raised shaking hands in an attempt to hide the tear washed mascara streaming into the crevices on her face. "That song," she said, stepping away from the sink.

I switched my gaze to the water running over my hands. "It always gets to me, too. Such a sad song."

She opened a stall door, pulled off a new strip of toilet paper, blew her nose again, and let loose a new stream of tears. Relieved the song had ended, I dried my hands and turned, expecting Betty to return to normal. She snuffled behind her hands. Her head and shoulders shook. I locked the outside door as laughter, cheerful voices, and undue humiliation neared.

"That was his song," she explained as I wet a paper towel and wiped the streaks off her face. "Don't know why it got to me tonight."

"Maybe you needed a good cry," I said. "Funny how these things hit at the worst possible times."

"We danced every weekend for fifty-two years. He made me promise I wouldn't stop when he was gone."

"And you haven't." I spoke around my own mascara-threatening torrent.

"Hell no. Long as I'm dancing, I feel like he's with me." Her smile returned.

I unlocked the door, years of speculation lighter and hoping, with all my heart, I would be just like Betty one day.

Guitar Christmas

I had unusual children. They wanted to stay at home and hand out candy on Halloween, and provided lists of their favorite charities when asked what they wanted for their birthdays. They seldom asked for anything and never made Christmas lists. They made gift buying almost impossible.

So, when my youngest sat on Santa's lap long enough to repeat her life story and share her endless list of perceived injustices in the world, an internal alarm went off. When he removed his glasses to wipe his eyes, my heart sank.

I had dealt with her questions and wishes for two months and still had a hard time controlling my sorrow; she had blindsided this poor man and his emotions. Santa looked around his elves and caught my eye. I shrugged, shallow, but the best I had to offer at the time. He hugged her close, kissed the top of her head, and sent her back to me.

"Did you see him kiss me?" She sounded relieved, maybe excited. "I told him I want him to bring my dad back, and he kissed me."

"What else did you tell him?" I hoped for a list of toys and a new conversation. "You were up there a long time."

She turned her eyes away. "I just told him about my dad so he'll find the right one." Her light, confident tone assured me she still believed a man in red could deliver anything she wanted. This would surely be the last year. I wished she could have wanted something possible.

As we walked through the mall, I asked more specific questions. What had she told Santa about her dad? Did she ask for anything else?

"I told him my dad had a beard and played guitar, and he liked Chucky Cheese. And he's dead."

"Santa can't bring your dad back," I said. "Nobody can. But maybe he could bring you a guitar." I waited out her labored sigh and defiant repositioning. "Did you ask for a guitar?"

"No way. He'd bring a toy one, like he did with the piano."

"Maybe not. You're older now."

"Santa only brings toy stuff. I want a real guitar."

I suggested we shop awhile before leaving and switched directions when her eyes lit up. "Choose a store. Anything except pets."

"Toys," she said, but changed her mind as we neared the organ music. "Can we go in the music store and look at microphones?"

"Look," I said, grateful for the microphone clue. "No touching and don't ask for anything because I don't have money for a microphone tonight."

Three frazzled clerks juggled impatient customers in the crowded store. My instinct said escape as I squeezed between the pre-teen male torturing a display drum set and a couple, obviously his parents, arguing over the length of time the noisemakers would hold his interest. By the time I cleared myself from the area and my head of the banging, my daughter had made her way to the other side of the store.

When I caught up with her, she had bypassed microphones and found a three-quarter acoustic hanging on the wall above the electric guitars. She stared, eyes glazed and lip pulled between her teeth, ignoring my presence, if it even registered with her. I stepped back to allow a frazzled employee through.

He started past her, stopped, and caught her eye. "Want me to get that for you?"

She shot me a glare. "I can't touch anything."

Without waiting for my response, he climbed a stepladder and handed the guitar down to her. "Okay, Mom?" He asked.

Saying no would have been like letting the air out of her arm floaties or denying the child another breath. She held the instrument and stared as though it might disappear if she looked away.

"Try it out," the defrazzling clerk urged.

She sat cross-legged on the floor and strummed, gently at first. As she grew comfortable and retreated into her own world, she warmed up her voice and let go. "Daddy's Hands," she sang, and played louder, her voice on key even if her chords weren't. Her song lured a gathering of customers to our corner of the store.

Still oblivious to everything around her, she stopped playing, traced the row of butterflies circling the sound hole, and said the magic words. "It was meant to be. I love butterflies."

"She wants it, Mom," the unfrazzled clerk said.

She climbed to her feet and handed the guitar back to him. "My mom doesn't have enough money."

I believe I heard gasps from the crowd and for a minute thought some of them were reaching for their wallets. "You can go back and tell Santa," I said. The clerk supported that idea, but she sighed and explained the problem with Santa and toy instruments.

"Maybe you can hold it?" I asked. "And we can tell Santa to come here and see what she wants?"

The too-freaking-excited-to-contain-himself clerk led the crowd in a series of cheers. "I'll take it down there myself and show it to him, after the store closes," he said. "And make sure he sees this exact guitar."

I pulled out my checkbook. "If you're sure, I guess we need to buy a strap and some guitar picks, so she'll be prepared."

"Positive. Santa's my buddy," the clerk said, walking behind the counter. He processed the transaction--with a twinkle in his eye--and handed the receipt to me.

My daughter received the butterfly guitar on Christmas that year. I got the real Santa.

Resourceful Disassembly

We met at the house to disassemble their lives. In one evening, we took apart what they had created, collected, and been in their years together. We held the pieces of their lives - our history - in our hands and decided what we would keep, and what we would leave behind forever.


Some things we all remembered the same, waved off or declared a keeper without discussion, and moved away from without a second thought. Others held different meaning for each of us, depending on our ages, interests, and perceptions. We all wanted a few things, and there were some none of us wanted but begged the others to take so they wouldn't disappear.

The white step might represent every category. Built from wood scraps in Daddy's workshop, sanded to perfection, and finished with the white, high gloss paint he often used, it might have brought in a quarter at a yard sale. None of us needed or wanted it, nor could we let it go. My brother and I remembered it first as a nuisance we had tripped around in the bathroom for a few years. Our much younger and shorter sister defended her step to independence; with it, she was able to wash her hands and brush her teeth without assistance.

My daughter won possession of the step with her memories of dragging it around while she helped her grandfather build the house. Whatever the project, she appeared, white step and plastic tools in hand, to stand or sit beside him until they had completed their work. He coached, complimented, explained, and wasted hours of his time putting his tools down to lift her and the white step and move them to a new position, where he needed her expert workmanship more. It seldom took long for her to inch her way back under his feet, and for him to smile, put his tools down again, and move her to another new spot.

To anyone else, it might have appeared we were cleaning up after what must have been the two worst packrats ever born. After sorting through the coffee cans and wooden crates of doohickeys and thingamabobs in his workshop, the recycles and sale items in her sewing table and junk drawers, their libraries and boxes of documents and greeting cards, I saw the wonder of two resourceful, loving people. The coffee can and junk drawer enabled special moments, like when I came in to see the finished pantry in my remodeled kitchen and recognized the knobs from my old bedroom closet, and when I bought the coat with the ugly buttons, and Mom found perfect replacements in her sewing table.

Between them, they could repair or create, define or explain anything. They left instructions for life, photographs and movies, music, recipes, tangible evidence of their births, marriage, accomplishments, and their appreciation of our expressions of love over the years. For anything we had not absorbed enough of, there was something in that house we could take with us to continue the session.

I came home with the baskets Mom wove and a ceramic clock she painted, a pair of wooden birds Daddy made, a toothpick holder, a bobby pin dish, a planer and a rosary I made for my grandmother when I was in fourth grade. The clock, birds, and baskets are the only items I will ever use and I doubt a stranger would have chosen any of these items from the house full of selections. They mean the world to me because, collectively, they symbolize my parents.

Be Still My Hand

She caught the misguided traitor--once known as her left hand--in time to save face, but too late to protect her emotions. Two decades of near-perfect denial washed away, dropping her in a life-changing spiral of churning, rallied love.

An instant replay of the morning's interactions assured her that she bore total responsibility for the break from reality. He had not crossed one forbidden line, uttered a word of encouragement, donated an emotion, or contributed anything to the imaginary wall she had placed between their seats and those carrying the children behind them in the van. She had looked over during a lull between how's Linda and have you heard from Rob and imagined sadness or regret in his prolonged blink. She turned her world inside out; he blocked the sun from his eyes.

What if she hadn't found the willpower to paralyze the shameful extremity? Were the children old enough to understand the implications of a spontaneous touch? Would he have felt I adore you branded where she touched him? She sat on the hand until it tingled and went numb, wondering how it could have detached from the rest of her, forgotten the divorce, taken on a life of its own, and assumed liberties that belonged to someone else.

When they arrived at the park, she shook blood flow back into the wayward hand, helped release children from seat belts, and grabbed the hands of the two youngest, thinking she might persuade one of them to stay with her when the others took off for swings and slides. He selected a picnic table near the play area, told the children they would watch from there, and sent them to play. The tiny hands in hers broke away and left her, vulnerable to the liberated hand.

She reset her perfect ponytail and emptied sand from her shoe – anything to keep the hand busy while he chose his place, back against the table, facing the action. When he looked settled, she sat on the tabletop, her feet on the bench beside him. Resting her elbows on her legs, she leaned forward and clasped her hands in front of her, far from his legs, so she could keep an eye on them and the children at the same time.

In this safe position, she forgot his leg. Instead, she focused on his head. How could a man his age still have that much hair? If anything had changed, it looked like he had more hair than he had twenty years before. That wasn't possible. The hands (both of them this time) went back under her legs. Like a bruise that begs a validating poke, his hair beckoned her aching hands. One touch would satisfy, but how would she explain it? There was a fly on your head?

She walked away when her thoughts went from embarrassing— If I trip getting down from here, I'll have to grab him for support-- to insane--If I'm lucky he'll need CPR before we leave.

The kids enjoyed having her join them on the swings. She was pleased to have those chains keep her hands occupied.

Strawberry Lane

I spent one of my fifty-one years in a meager apartment on Strawberry Lane, in a rundown business district of a fading neighborhood. The bathtub didn’t hold water and my bedroom window was at ground level, separated from the parking lot by a narrow sidewalk.

Headlights, slamming door, screeching engines, and squealing tires guaranteed interrupted sleep, night or day. Metal closet doors popped off track daily and the olive, apartment-sized stove clashed with the copper refrigerator that required weekly defrosting. The single, unadvertised amenity was a slow draining kitchen sink that provided an excuse to dine out frequently.

I moved on to nicer apartments with matching appliances, walk-in closets, and adequate plumbing and eventually bought my own homes in residential neighborhoods. Still, at the lowest points in my life, I was homesick for Strawberry Lane. Decades later, I finally understand why.

Home is where the heart is. I had sown the seeds of my hybrid heart on Strawberry Lane, when I settled as comfortably into my role as wife and mother as I had been in my role as daughter, and realized I didn’t have to give one up to have the other. I reveled in the one opportunity I had in life to have my cake and eat it too - freedom and independence yet with the security of a husband and extended family to pick me up if I fell. My world was safe, my opportunities endless, and life couldn’t have been better.

It wasn’t the building or neighborhood I longed for when I was homesick for the apartment on Strawberry Lane. I missed the promise life offered while I lived there. Today, I feel the same homesickness for my country.

I long to return to an America that protects me and offers endless opportunity instead of glitzy amenities. I miss the Strawberry Lane America that feeds the hungry, houses the poor, medicates the sick, and hugs the lonely. I want an America where there’s a party in the courtyard at night to make up for the headlights in the bedroom window. I want to have my cake and eat it too, not sacrifice freedom for a façade of security. When I moved to Strawberry Lane, my father didn’t sell my security blanket to buy himself a new golf club. I wish America still loved me the same.

Daddy died of cancer in 1989. The apartment complex on Strawberry Lane burned down in 1992. A bush stole America in 2000. Maybe it isn’t too late to recover the last one.