Stories from mine:
When I feel raw and tired, I call my Aunt BahBah – the peace wrangler of the family. Her last name is Lamb, and sheep, lambs and all connected terms are a part of her identity. At least to all of us. She’s also a kind of a shepherd.
I said to her, “I think you know what I’m going through, and I need some advice.” BahBah took a directive tone on the phone, “yes, we’ve all been though it, the women of the family, that is.” She went on to say, “except maybe your mom, she never forgave grandma, so she probably doesn’t have the same experience.”
I paused because I knew she understood my teetering state of mind, maybe she’d have a solution to bring me back to center from a very confused, hyper aware, overtired place?
“When this happens, An and Ka just come here and stay in the spare apartment to rest. De works through the pressure, because she’s a perfectionist and never stops.” I knew this was true, De is a nurse, a wildly capable woman who holds up a research department and several aging relatives across both sides of her family. Her name is an inadvertent call back to my mom’s, and they shared the same profession: nursing. This profession has gone along with depression, accomplishment, silence, compassion and caring through multiple generations of our family’s women. Starting with my grandmother, Marion.
My mom, a certifiable wild child, still held a grudge against Marion for not liking her and not knowing how to control her either. I am the natural born daughter of that daughter. Still, I found a great love of my grandmother, and my way into her heart as her favorite grandchild. (Really, we just liked smoking cigarettes together on the front porch when I was a teen. That’s why we understood each other.)
Growing up, my mother taught me to be wild by walking in nature with packs of stray dogs, flipping quirky, laughing birds at angry drivers, and breaking the rules often and with great delight. She believed in the power of nature, and asked us to tie her body to a tree when she dies, to let the crows and coyotes pick her bones clean.
My mom loved my wild streak too, and nurtured it while I ran about town getting into trouble. But only “good trouble” was allowed. Trouble to make people wake up, Trouble to help them feel loved, Trouble to help them know they were really free beings, who didn’t have to conform.
I must have kept many adults awake at night, and occasionally a policeman would come to my single mom’s door to tell her how to extricate me from bad consequences about to come down on my head: a grand jury testimony against the molester in town. Time to leave town, they’d say. And off I’d go to my dad’s, oblivious. My friend behind, left to put Johnny N behind bars all on her own. What a burden.
BahBah took a much different path from her sister. She was good and much easier to raise. She then went on to raise 5 kids of her own in her small town where she was also a deacon in the church and her husband taught junior high. BahBah raised her kids with nicely braided hair, decorations for every season, a beautiful garden, and with one ear to the police scanner during their teenage years.
Aunt BahBah often told stories about “being mortified” as one child played the Motherf$cker Song full blast in the driveway when company arrived, or the self-professed black sheep played an illegal prank, or their finished basement lit up with teenage gatherings with lots more than spinning bottles. Still, every Sunday, everyone got to church and Aunt BahBah always had a great story about the absurdity of the prior week’s events. She did this all with a whooping laugh and grace. A true Jesus lady who never judged. God bless her.
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Aunt BahBah told me some dates I could come and stay in the apartment – the one the grown daughters used to metamorphose to regain coherency and peace. I was both eager and scared. I was invited to bake myself in their oven, the good woman’s oven. But, the last time I saw the apartment, it reminded me of a Godfather movie: a cavernous, dark, tchotchke and candle-laden space with no front door or entry. The living room was enormous with patterned couches, dark wood, and more space than the apartment could possibly have housed based on the outside view. I had once been inside the place by going through a side door, and the place felt like it was out of time, suitable for a mafia princesses’ homecoming, or ring-kissing ceremony. I had occasionally fancied myself one of these types of girls because of my heritage, but was not ready to live it for real.
I packed a Marshalls 99 cent bag with toiletries, scarves, a coloring book, and clothes. I moved the bag downstairs, then upstairs again. I walked in circles around it – where was the front door to the apartment, anyway?? I delayed departure. I got confused. My husband said, “go for it” when I mentioned a few days of rest away. But, I couldn’t figure out how to get there. So, maybe just packing with intention would be the same as going away? It wasn’t. Real Fakery.
And then I landed in a different restful space via 5 days in ER. One brightly lit with regular meals and roommates who sleep all day or overshare in groups. I realize while I’m here that I’m connecting the dots of my unique story, my family’s story, and my inner cracks of pain and brilliance, with the souls who roam around this place.
The paths of the others are literally the same as my own: one man grew up in my home town and we remembered business after business, person after person who’d come through our mutual lives in the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond. Another worked too diligently on their spiritual practice and fried their circuits, a creative man had great wit and outrageous anxiety, a young queen who just sleeps.
But where is ‘here’? The place I arrived instead of the mafia apartment? It’s the 8th floor of the hospital where I birthed my children on purpose. It’s where my doula met us, after driving across two bridges and our shared home island in the bay. Sara was her own kind of nurse, off-the-books style, and she knew my mother’s wild healing streak and respected it immensely. I think they used to talk to each other after I moved out.
Sara sings on stage, wears long hair and also tells the story of the mother who wore clogs for labor and delivery because it was the footwear she used to wait tables and “get stuff done.” I didn’t know she shared that story until I met her daughter and grand-daughter at a music festival. When the younger woman asked, “Is this the woman? With the clogs?” There were nods and surprise and pride.
Yes, I am that woman.
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So, last night, despite my respite, I found myself up most of the night replaying verses of Bob Dylan’s “Idiot Wind” in my head, feeling too light to be held in my bed by the white cotton blankets and too heavy a burden for a normal American family.
I didn’t dare tell the nurses I needed Calcium supplements and Vitamin D for my aging bones, lest they think I’m crazy. I also didn’t do yoga for the same reason. I also watched lots of TV for the same reason: to appear normal. It’s a wonder that I still know how to breathe.
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Back to BahBah’s wing of the family and why I tell these stories with glee. I want for them to know, we are of good ironic stock.
I was the one who taught my eldest cousin bad words. He was one year younger than me, and as toddlers, we sat in the rhubarb patch out back on Noise Avenue practicing our best bathroom words, laughing until we peed ourselves. BahBah always made us play outside, so she and her friend could spell out gossip stories away from children’s ears. B. A. B. Y. I’d go home and ask my mom what the letters spelled. She’d looked amused and tell me. This was just one more way the women in our family ALWAYS knew about the other women’s reproductive status. We learned to spell out the important stuff that way too.
Timmy and I didn’t care about the mommy-gossip, and promptly adhered to BahBah’s firm edict “go outside, its a nice day.” In the corner of the yard, near the chain-link fence, we said “BM” and other words the nurses said with a steely-face, practical tone, but we weren’t allowed to say for no good reason.
When we went back inside the house for bologna sandwiches, something made Aunt BahBah wash my mouth out with soap and water. Perhaps this same thing also helped make Tim the forever loud and beloved black sheep of the Lamb clan. I thought he was just great. Still do.
Another story that cemented my respect for Tim happened a decade later. Aunt BahBah, with 5 older kids, had spread her wings into the larger community. She was a volunteering mom and star organizer, recruiting local families to host dozens of inner-city kids in their nice town to enjoy a summer of beach fun, carousel rides, and hand-scooped ice cream.
One day, the train with city kids was set to arrive from New York City, and the whole family had to go to welcome them. My older brother, me, and Timmy roamed around the cement floored, old school train depot. Timmy pulled us aside, and revealed something special he’d brought for the occasion: glass ampules from the magic shop. Stink bombs.
My brother and I didn’t even get a chance to egg him on, because before we knew it, the rotten sulfur smell began wafting through the train station space. Bench by bench, wooden pew by pew, people began turning toward the person next to them, noses curled up, with attempted polite smiles of puzzling inquisition. Could that have been you?!
Aunt BahBah must have smelled it too — everyone did– but she carried on her mission of smiling and thanking the nice young families and telling them what to expect for their generous do-gooding summers. My brother and I were bending over, hiding our faces and nearly peeing our pants in suppressed laughter and awe-struck disbelief. Tim stood stone faced and silent. Cool beyond words, stoic and calm, he’d executed a plan that was beyond ironic: Welcome Fresh Air Kids!
We knew then, our younger cousin was king.
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So, there’s no clear way to wrap this story, but to say, irony and history make for the best kind of transformations. If you can see who you are, remember your roots, and somehow not be anything but open to everything that erupts in your current place, you will make it through okay.
