I am making a road trip home. I flew into Denver yesterday, rented a car and headed out for "our little town," as my father always called it, across the mountains. It is difficult to take in the full majesty of the Rocky Mountains when you are driving, so I stopped in a small town, a hamlet really, and rented a room in a hotel for the night.
My husband was not overjoyed about my making this drive alone. He and the rest of my family will be arriving home tomorrow for a family reunion of sorts. However, my husband saw me clutching my manuscript as I told him my plan to take to the road alone and he understood. He kissed me at the airport and squeezed my hand, the one that was not holding the dog-eared pages to my heart, and said simply, "Drive carefully, Deb. See you soon."
Now, as I stand on the tiny balcony of the little hotel, I look out over the magnificent view and feel tears stinging my eyelids and a lump growing in my throat. I have seen these same mountains dozens of time on family trips back and forth between "our little town," a small city now, and Denver, but I have never seen them through the eyes of maturity. Of course, children spend so much time and energy on simply growing up, they seldom notice natural beauty around them.
It is sunset now and the mountains are that deep purple we sing of, the sky above them a glorious mix of pinks and oranges and colors only the hand of God can create in a western sky. I stand for a moment to watch, transfixed by the beauty, and wait as the sun bids goodnight and slips behind the mountain, bathing me in the pastel peace of a mountain evening.
I go into my room and close the blinds. On the little table by the window sits the book, my memories—the gift I want to give to my mother and to Gigi. My manuscript is as much for them as for the enjoyment I took in writing it myself. I wanted them to know I remembered so much of those growing up years. I wanted Gigi to know that the philosophy she pronounced so many times— "Life isn't all peaches and cream, you know. Sometimes it's just the pits!" —still stays in my mind along with the picture of her mischievous face as she said the words. It is true. Our life held some pits. However, the sweet juicy joy of peaches and the richness of the cream was the part I most remember and the part that helped us all get past the pits.
I've read the words a hundred times while in the process of recording my memories, but I want to read them again tonight, at least until I fall asleep. I open the book to the first page and smile even before I begin to read.
The bungalow sat on a street of very similar houses. It was small, white framed, and had a tiny front porch which was really only good for setting out one summer plant, a yellow mum in fall or the Rudolph figure my father had purchased, in honor of Gene Autry's new song, during the holidays. The house sat on a small square of grass and was truly not a beautiful house. But it was home to me and it was into this home I rushed that warm spring day to shout out my news.
"Oh, no, someone must have gotten into some glue," my mother moaned, when I informed her that two neighborhood dogs were stuck together. That would most likely seem an odd response unless one knew that two weeks previously, my sister, Janine, and a friend found some bright blue paint left beside trashcans in the alley. Delighted, the two three-year-olds managed to paint a fairly large portion of one side of our house, three slats in our childless, extremely tidy neighbor's white picket fence, and the backside of a friend's cocker spaniel before my mother discovered the mischief.
"What in the world made you do that?" she asked Janine, in a voice that, for my mother, was a shriek.
Janine held the paintbrush up and faced her interrogator alone. Stevie, her companion in the escapade, had run home, the only evidence of his participation in this mishap a small smudge of blue paint on his nose. "It was sitting right in the alley," Janine said calmly. "If they don't want nobody to use it, why did they put it there?"
As with most of Janine's justification for her misdemeanors, there was some thread of sense in her response, so my mother simply told her to put the brush down, scrub her hands and go to her room. Amazingly, the only evidence on Janine herself was blue fingers.
My mother spent several hours trying to undo the damage with turpentine and a rag, beginning with the neighbors' fence. Those stuffy neighbors never did understand how my mother could have allowed such a thing to happen. The next weekend these neighbors were out repainting the entire picket fence a new, shiny white. My father, who easily became upset beyond belief over some things, took this incident in his stride and nonchalantly painted over the awful blue on the side of our house. The dog, poor thing, was blue for quite some time, until the affected areas could be cut away or had worn off.
So, there was definitely sense behind my mother's assumption that "stuck dogs," "glue" and "Janine" somehow would go together. She was quite relieved to find that glue in general, and Janine in particular, was not involved in this latest incident. That was not the end of, or the important part of, the incident for me, however. I watched as my mother did the clean up and listened as she lectured Janine on never taking, using, touching or smelling anything left in the alley by anyone, no matter how interesting it appeared to be. But I was waiting to get to the true core of the situation, from my perspective.
"Well, how did those dogs get stuck together?" I asked my mother, as she scrubbed the turpentine from her hands.
Perhaps my mother was thinking, Those darn dogs! Why do they have to do their thing in front of my little girl? However, true to her character, she wiped her hands and sat down to tell me as much of the facts of life as she felt were necessary for a six-year-old child. Considering the fact that "stuck" dogs were involved, she had to be a little more graphic than she might have been had I simply asked, "Where do babies come from?"
I still remember thinking the whole thing quite unimaginable, but nodding appreciatively as she gave me the information. She did her best to bring in the loving, caring aspect and to emphasize that it was all a part of God's plan. Still, I recall being very happy that my mother only had to endure this strange procedure the two times that were necessary to bring my sister and me into existence.
Until that time, my knowledge of human sexuality was limited to "God places a seed in the mommy and a baby grows inside her tummy and when it's time, a doctor at the hospital takes the baby out," which was the explanation I received when I was told that my mother was going to have a baby. I was just three at the time and am sure I was much less concerned with how the seed that was to be my sibling got there than with the fact that my mother would be away at the hospital for several days and I would be abandoned to the care of my well-meaning, but totally un-motherly father.
I have no real recollection of that seven-day period my mother was gone except that I was miserable and fearful that she would never return. My father constantly reassured me that my mother was fine and that my new baby sister was fine and that, in fact, the whole world would be fine if he just didn't have to worry about brushing out my long dark hair every day. I actually believe I have some recollection of that terrible ordeal. My father did not have the fine touch nor the patience of my mother and accordingly his technique was either to pull right through the snarls, leaving me howling in semi-pain and anger, or to pass lightly over the tangles, hoping my mother would straighten everything out when she got home. In fact, my father spent quite a bit of his life hoping my mother would straighten things out when she finally got home.
When my mother did return from the hospital, I greeted her adoringly, not holding against her one bit the long time she was gone or the fact that my hair was a knotted mess awaiting her careful attention. I was just happy to have her back and to find that I had not been abandoned due to this new baby that I heard about for what must have seemed like most of my lifetime.
I recall, or perhaps I just think I do because the story has been relayed so many times, my first glimpse of this new little one and the strange three-year-old feelings I experienced at the sight. My mother always referred to her as "your little sister," rather than "our new baby," and that gave me a sense of responsibility right away. I do know that I loved Janine from the first moment I saw her and, probably because I hovered over her with such care as she was growing up, she returned that love.
Not that we didn't have our moments. Like all sisters, we argued and picked at one another from time to time, but no hostile behavior or hurtful words were tolerated in our home by either parent so most of our battles were reasonably mild.
No two children could have been more opposite. I was a very precise, introspective child who spent much of my time thinking about things. Even as a baby, my mother reports, I sat for long periods of a time gazing at something or someone, thinking, I suppose in the way babies think, very carefully. Janine, on the other hand, was an extrovert who ran on feelings much more than thoughts and tended to get right to the point in direct contrast to my consistent over-analysis of almost everything.
I was tall and slim with shiny dark hair and green eyes, while Janine was petite with reddish-gold hair, blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across her upturned nose. Janine was haphazard in her approach to almost everything, but somehow managed to have things turn out in her favor the majority of the time. She showed her anger as vehemently as she demonstrated her love and was most often, and to her great delight, the center of attention. She was, and is, my best friend. We learned from each other as we grew and played together and formed a bond that seems far too rare between sisters.
In our early years, as she moved out of babyhood and became a playmate and companion, Janine showed a great desire to be a boy. She dressed in pants or shorts and often, which was quite acceptable until the age of four or five, went bare-chested.
She played Tarzan to my Jane, Robin Hood to my Maid Marion, and cowboy to my pioneer wife. We loved the movies, especially the Saturday matinees, and came home anxious to reenact the events of the silver screen. Wonderful imaginations blessed both of us and the three-year age difference was negligible. I matured slowly and she was quite precocious.
During our play, she took her parts seriously and often could repeat verbatim entire scenes from movies. She swung from imaginary vine to imaginary vine, giving the Tarzan yell and my mother frequently heard dialogue such as "Me Tarzan, You Jane," pass from my sister to me during our times together. If mother worried about her unusual younger child, it was never apparent.
Janine had her feminine side, too. We played dolls together, and even though she sometimes wanted to be the father, she could just as easily be the mother, sitting in her little rocking chair and cooing as her baby drank from its tiny plastic bottle. We also had a wonderful collection of paper dolls, which were very popular at that time. My mother ingeniously designed a clever system for organizing our many sets between the pages of old magazines.
I kept mine scrupulously tidy, knowing where to find the teenage cutouts with their boyfriends and up-to-date outfits and which page Raggedy Ann and her brother were located. Janine, on the other hand, did not have time for such precision and often shoved all of them in one heap and then pushed them into the pages of the magazine. When it was time for play, she ended up in tears because she couldn't find anything that matched and paper legs were often bent or torn.
Whether her torment was real or just another of her wonderful roles, she looked at me with a pleading, tear-streaked face and said, "Debra, can't you help? I don't know how this got all messed up."
Knowing perfectly well how everything got all messed up, I patiently sorted out her mess and my mother would arrive with tape to repair wounded dolls. This never seemed to bother Janine at all, nor did she learn from it. She would sit cross-legged beside us, occasionally straightening a crumpled dress or making comments like, "Look, Debra, I forgot all about this doll!" She took no credit for the disorganization and didn't seem to be bothered one iota by the fact that my mother and I were the ones straightening it out. She was not phased either when, several weeks later, her magazines were in the same condition and my mother and I once again would be called upon to help her straighten them out. Certainly, it seems like the sensible thing to do would be to insist Janine take care of the job herself and learn a lesson from the experience. But Janine had a way of making the sensible seem unimportant and my mother and I took on this responsibility as naturally as if this is just the way things were meant to be, which, in a way, I suppose they were.
"Catalog's here," was a shout that was joyous for all the females in our household. Catalog families were even better than commercially produced paper dolls as far as my sister and I were concerned. My mother's joy came from knowing that she held in her hands a simple object that would keep her daughters busy for days at a time. Catalogs were not necessarily used for purchasing as much as for entertainment
Sears, J. C. Penney and Montgomery Wards provided us with hours of pleasure. Even better than playing with our paper families was selecting them. This often took days. We poured through pages trying to find the mother and father, teen sons and daughters, charming little girls, mischievous little brothers and adorable babies that suited us.
"Look at this precious little girl," I said, holding up a picture of a curly-headed toddler in a fluffy pink dress.
Janine wrinkled her nose. "I like boys," she said emphatically. And true to her word, the only female in any of her catalog paper doll families was the mother.
I was precise while choosing my paper family. The father had to be taller than the mother, and properly proportioned families were a must. It took a lot of time to create this perfectly matched family. I measured and cut and estimated, agonizing over each choice. Sometimes I painstakingly cut and taped several body parts together to get an accurate match.
Janine was much less fussy. The father could be a head shorter than the mother and missing a foot. Once in awhile she would follow my plan and ask to have an arm taped to a doll whose own arm did not appear on the page. She was seldom careful of the size or position of the arm and the doll ended up looking freakish, to say the least. Often the baby of her family was bigger than his teenaged brother. It drove me crazy.
"You can't pick him," I said indignantly, as she announced she had found her perfect father. "He's too short. He doesn't look right with the mother."
"But he's cute," she said. "It doesn't matter—or we can pretend that he's taller."
"Here, look at this guy," I suggested hopefully. "He's just as cute and he's the right size."
"I like this one," was her stubborn reply, and I had to spend the next several months, until new catalogs came out, having my perfect family be best friends with a family whose father was short, had a taped-on, crooked leg, and had somehow produced a gigantic infant.
We played paper dolls—secretly—until I was well into my teens.
"I'll play," I told her. "But you can't ever tell any of my friends. They'd make fun of me."
"I promise I won't tell," she said. And she never did.
Because we were close in age, we often received identical toys. I particularly remember dollhouses we had that we would set side by side on our dining room table. The houses were metal, the furniture plastic and the dolls molded into sections so that they could sit, stand and raise stiff arms and legs. Everything was exactly alike, right down to the pink dress and white apron of the mother doll. We would sit for hours maneuvering our twin people around their
twin houses. The families were best friends, of course, and they had wonderful times together. I guess it never occurred to them to wonder why they all looked alike and lived in identical houses.
In spite of the fact that two sets of many items sat in closets and on shelves in our room, each was carefully labeled with our names. It was a matter of integrity that we each be able to identify our own things. Sometimes dolls would have different colored hair or would arrive dressed in different colored outfits. However, we knew which belonged to whom.
Apparently, though, there was something special about my things. The greatest treat and the most successful bribe my mother could arrange was to offer Janine the opportunity to play with my doll or game or doll house. If my mother, father and I wanted to spend a long evening with board games, something the super-active Janine could not endure, my mother knew the way to keep her happy the entire time.
"Janine," she said with a slight hint of a conspiracy in her voice, "Debra, your father and I want to play Monopoly tonight. You know how long that takes sometimes. But if you're nice and let us play without whining and nagging, you can play all evening with Debra's doll house."
Janine looked ecstatic and jumped up and down with joy. "Really," she cried. "I can have Debra's doll house for the whole night?"
"That's right," my mother answered.
"And I can stay up as late as Debra?" Janine added. She always liked to put the last demand on the table before the deal was closed.
At the risk of sounding stodgy, those were good times. They were the late forties and early fifties when mothers were home all day chatting over fences and across yards while they hung out the laundry. They saw their older children off to school and then cleaned the house and made the beds or did the laundry while their younger ones played around the house or in the back yard. Their husbands rode the bus to work or accepted a ride with someone who was fortunate enough to have a car. Many women still ironed sheets and pillowcases and darned their husbands' socks. They took hot dishes to school potlucks and organized church socials. Evenings were spent talking and playing games. I can remember lying in bed at the end of the day, listening to the contented chatter as my parents talked about "grown up things" before I went to sleep. My mother, a lovely fair-skinned woman with thick dark hair, smiled and laughed a lot. There were many women during that time who felt downtrodden, under appreciated and underpaid, in many cases with good reason. I do not believe my mother ever felt that way. Or if she did, her happiness far outweighed her discontent because there was never an indication that she felt like anything except a completely joyful woman.
In those childhood years—and certainly well beyond—I adored my mother. I saw her in simplistic terms, however. She solved daily problems, cooked wonderful meals, dried tears, gave hugs, and welcomed my father home each night with such a big smile and warm hug, it was as if he had been gone for days.
It was not until much later that I realized the complexity of this woman.