A Face For Hats

Despite the fact I only read it last year, on Tuesday I couldn’t remember the name of one of my very favorite books.

But, on Saturday, burying a hand trowel into earth made forgiving by Spring rains, I remembered being eight and being dubbed “Messy Bessie” by my brownie leader.

I forgot to buy an onion at the supermarket.

But every time I see a hat, or a lady wearing a hat, or even a hat-rack, I remember being twelve and standing in the millinery department at Macy’s. My sister and I were accompanied by my grandmother in what was an annual After-Christmas walking tour of Perimeter Mall. I call it a walking tour because, while occasionally an item was returned, nothing was ever actually purchased.

My sister and I donned hats. Both of us posed in front of mirrors.

“Laura!”, my grandmother called. “Laura, you don’t have a face for hats. You need a plain face to wear a hat.”

There was a slight pause as we looked at one another for an answer to the question neither of us would ask before she provided it.

“Stacye…”, it was a statement. “Now, Stacye has a face for hats.”

At work on Monday, I panicked at the idea of creating a whole new set of contracts, only to discover I’d already done it, weeks before.

Wednesday night, as I reclined against the cold ceramic part of the bathtub not filled with warm water, I remembered John O’Conner turning in his desk to ask in his most sardonic voice “Was that really necessary?”, before I even had a chance to lower the hand I’d raised, in vain, to prevent the burp from escaping my fourteen-year-old lips.

I sometimes struggle to remember which son was born on what date. Although in two different months, their birthdates are just two weeks apart. Which one was born in April and which in May?

And, just the other day, as I pinched dead blooms from pansies’ heads, the image of long, yellow hair swirling around my sister’s snarl flashed across my brain. Anger reddened her cheeks.

“I wouldn’t trade places with you for anything in the world!”, she growled.

The toddler at my feet pressed her back against my legs as instinct tightened my hold on the baby in my lap. We all shrank.

They come in quiet moments, reflections of mis-steps, things I’d rather forget. They’re etched there, burned onto the surface, easy to retrieve. They come unbidden.

They are not who I am but they are, in part, what makes me, me.

>Writing Yoko

My mother insisted I write letters…mostly to my grandmothers…mostly to her mother.

Grandmother Eakes (We called her “Eakes” to distinguish her from Grandmother “Howell”, though the two were as different as night and day.) never answered. Never. I don’t mean to suggest she forgot. I don’t mean to infer she was busy. She just never answered. Period.

I mentioned it to my mother once…the lack of response. The meat of her answer escapes me now, some thirty-plus years later, but the flavor remains. I taste it often. It serves me well. After all, there are many occasions in which when we are called upon to “rise above”.

Eventually, my mother presented me with a pen-pal. The how’s and why’s faded over time, but I know her name. It was Yoko, as in Ono, but no…Ono was not her name. It is, however, the way I’ve thought of her since John Lennon died. One day she came to mind as she always had; she was Yoko Yakushima. And, the next, she was Ono. I don’t know…

I can’t stop thinking about her.

We exchanged letters for a couple of years. Hers were always enthusiastic, filled with life, and all the drama a thirteen year old girl could muster. I tried to keep up. I pretended. I crafted excited sentences and feigned filial frivolity I didn’t feel; until I didn’t.

I stopped writing Yoko. Her letter came, wrapped in onion skin that labeled it foreign even before seeing the postmark. I read it, but I didn’t answer. I felt guilty for as long as allowed between volleyball games, swim meets, and clandestine bumper pool lessons given by Bernard, a seventeen-year-old boy my parents hated that I would have followed to the ends of the earth.

Even without response, Yoko continued writing for weeks; until she didn’t.

And now, I wonder where she is.

I hope she’s okay. I wish I’d kept writing. Are her children safe? Did her house wash away? Was hers one of the faces standing in bread lines? I worry.

The tragedy in Japan compelled me to break my years-long boycott of television news. I watched as death flowed onto the beach and kept on going.

Over and over and over, again, I watched houses join other buildings, unidentified debris, and the occasional vehicle, in a watery swath that wrapped its arms around everything in its path, until I couldn’t breathe.

Yoko wasn’t the kind of girl that would have left home.

Days passed. I continued watching.

An elderly man excused himself as he passed between two people standing in a line that wrapped around the grocery store he exited. He walked down the line handing out loaves of bread from his ration.

Diane Sawyer, appropriately devoid of makeup, happened to be standing nearby. In a voice filled with just the right amount of disbelief, she asked the man why he was giving away the food he’d waited in line for hours to receive.

“I only need one.”, was his answer.

And I wonder, “Would that ever happen here…here in the land of “me”?”

No matter her actual proximity to the destruction, nothing I have survived can come close to what Yoko has endured. That knowledge serves me every day; that and the image of that man, the one who shared his bread.

Combined, they are grace. In deference to their sacrifice my spirit quiets. I am more giving. I strive to share what they have taught me.

Today the earth shook again.

And still I pray.

>Shoes, Shopping, and Shame

My grandson can’t tie his shoes.

You might imagine a boy of three or four, his brow knit in Pre-K concentration. The harder he tries, the more his chubby fingers become entangled in the laces.

No. Elijah is seven. He’s in the second grade. He’s among the brightest children in the second grade.

But he can’t tie his shoes.

He doesn’t like shoes. He sheds them at every opportunity, necessitating frantic hunting expeditions before he can play outside, or accompany me to the market, or help with walking the dogs. He finds them, though. The speed with which he finds them is usually dictated by his interest in the reason for wearing them, but he always finds them.

What he doesn’t find is socks. I don’t mean to suggest he searches for socks, because he doesn’t. It seems he holds socks in even lower esteem than he does shoes.

It would be his obvious disdain for socks, in fact, that led to the purchase of new shoes which he then had to tie and couldn’t, but I’m getting ahead of myself….

High school football is a big deal in Georgia. In fact, when compared to professional football, there’s very little difference in terms of fanfare, music, noise, face-paint, dancing mascots, and other related tomfoolery that a seven year old might find entertaining. Elijah had never been. That and the fact that, at thirteen, my son is sure that missing even one game would be instant social suicide made choosing Friday night’s entertainment a no-brainer.

I exchanged pleasantries with the parent manning the gate as he halved our tickets. My son’s hand barely grazed mine as he grabbed his share, darting off in the direction of a group of boys that appeared cloned, from their unruly mop-tops right down to their khaki cargos. Elijah and I picked our way through knees and feet to gain seats on the fifty yard line.

The game didn’t hold my interest; our team is two and five and they play like it. Instead, I watched the girls sitting next to me. I decided that the one with long blonde hair was much too young for the skin-tight hip huggers she wore under her cheerleader’s vest. Attempting to get an answer to the question, “What kind of mother lets her daughter walk around like that?”, I craned my neck in an effort to see further down the bleacher.

That’s when I smelled it.

I knew right away what it was. And there was no question as to the source.

“Elijah?”

“Yes?” Bent in half, he shooed his shoes under the seat.

“Did you take your shoes off?”

“Yes.” Sitting up now, he spoke quietly while instinctually covering his shoes with his bare feet.

“We don’t do that. We don’t take our shoes off at football games.”

I watched as he hurried to replace them. The laces had been cut and knotted, making them slip-ons. They looked like they’d been slipped on a lot.

The next day, at the department store, I grabbed a package of socks before heading for the shoes. I slid sneakers over his freshly socked feet, tied them, and pinched the toes the same way my mother always pinched mine. Hiding the others inside the box the new ones came in, we headed out to find more things to buy.

Minutes later, he whizzed by me. One shoe had come untied.

“Tie your shoe, Elijah.”

I walked a few paces before stopping to read the label on a jar of protein shake mix. The air around me moved as he whizzed by me again. At the meat counter, I waited my turn in front of the steaks. Seems lots of us were planning to cook out. Elijah squirmed around one corner of the refrigerated case, dragging one shoelace behind him.

“Tie your shoe, Elijah.”

“I did!”

“It’s untied. Tie it again.”

Pouting, he plopped to the floor. I watched him make shoelace bunny ears, then everything fell apart. He started again. One bunny ear, two bunny ears, and a mess. And, again. One bunny ear, two bunny ears, and something resembling an attempt at a bow that came unraveled as soon as he made a move to stand. I cursed silently at the memory of knotted laces and bent to help.

I’m not one of THOSE Moms. I don’t give my daughter parenting advice unless she asks for it. And I can count the times she’s asked for it on one hand.

This was different.

On Sunday, I passed Elijah off to his parents with a kiss to his begrudging cheek. My grandson did not inherit my penchant for “kissy face”.

Ten minutes into the drive home, I dialed my daughter’s cell phone.

“Did you know Elijah can’t tie his shoes?” Either the question or my complete lack of pleasantry surprised her. It took her some seconds to answer.

“I saw you bought new ones.”

“Well, I was going to buy laces. One of them was broken. But then he took them off. He doesn’t wear socks, you know…”

“I know…”

“It’s the knots. Someone is tying knots in his laces. He’s forgotten how to tie. This isn’t good.”

“I know. I’ve asked him to stop.” “Him” is always her husband, my son-in-law.

“Do I need to ask him? Because, I will. I’ll ask him to stop.”

I hadn’t used that tone with her since she was a teenager, a teenager who’d held so much promise, a teenager who’d seemingly lost her mind, the answer to my mother’s twisted mantra, “You’ll get yours! I hope you have a daughter just like you!”

She got there so quickly. In that moment of separation, that space of time during which I could speak and also watch in horror as the words left my lips, my mother was there. She lives in my snarl.

“No, Mama…” My daughter’s voice was tired, because she’s not like me. And most of the time, I remember, most of the time that’s okay.

It’s just sometimes….