Been cleaning and purging and sorting through pictures and scrapbooks and albums and such. Found something that I wrote for the City Theater newsletter back in 95 or 96 or something. We were doing a play called If We Are Women, which takes its title from a Virginia Woolf quote: "we think back through our mothers, if we are women." My ex-friend, ex-roommate Sara edited the newsletter, and, having lost her mother to cancer in her late 20's, really connected with the subject matter of the play. She enlisted me and some other staff members and actresses to write something about mothers and loss and history. I wrote something based on stories that Sara had told me about her mother and family, growing up on a farm in Houston, PA with a twin and ten other siblings. Sara was WACK and we parted ways a while back. I had no idea at the time how powerfully my own words would affect me today when I found them. Here's what we both wrote for the newsletter.
Ella
by Sara D
The earliest memory that I can recall is of her hands. And the sunlight. How bright and warm the sun feels to me as I lay there -- aware of nothing but my connection with her.
I remember looking up at her and seeing her smile; I smiled too. And the sunlight-- so brilliant! Her hands were so delicate and lovely ...even now, I can see the traces of her blue veins.
We were all alone in her bedroom. Alone! No brothers, no sisters -- just her hads, the sun, her smile, and me.
Ella-- that's what her father called her -- short for her given name, Alice. I've held on to this memory of my mother with both of my hands and all of my heart and I wonder if the sun will ever be that bright again.
Piece
for Sara
by Erin Fleming
sitting on my mother's bed
she held my hand so small so small
scrape-kneed siblings and tractors
cut into the air outside the door
but there was only us and the smell of quilt
and sun
when she lived
I broke my mother down in pieces
and small change that jingled in my pocket as I cut across yards and fields
photographs like this one stored in lockets 'round my neck
and this is how I thought I would remember her
sitting on my mother's bed so small so small
I held her hands
nurses and flourescent lights hummed about outside the door
but there was only us and the smell of sterile sheets
when she died
I laid my mother down in rivers and small streams
that flowed in like too much wine and out like so much sorrow
still lifes like this one
kept in boxes in my attic
and this is not how I remember her
sitting on my sister's bed I held his hands
so small so small
another piece of our mother come back to us burping and gurgling and staining the blanket
she is everywhere around me now
my nephew's eyes
my niece's laugh
the way my sisters answer the phone
the way my brothers cut their food
the way my father wants his laundry folded
and I am an aunt again
I will hold on to this piece of my mother
so small
so small
So, we rented a big dumpster to facilitate the cleaning out of my parents' home. Both of my parents were clutter-holics. And packrats. Those terms sound so crass and negative. Let's call them instead sentimental archivists. Over the years, it has been a game of sorts, not really a fun one, or one with a winner, but still a kind of game for my brother and I to determine which of our parents' idiosyncracies was most responsible for the physical disaray of their home. Was it my father's all-consuming videotaping disorder hobby? Was it my mother's refusal to throw anything out? Was it her tendency to get stopped on a project before she started? Was it his laziness and procrastination? Was it their collective denial about the size of their house? Neither of them seemed to be talented at the kind of clutter triage skills that we in the information age have had to adopt. This should be saved. This should be tossed. This should be saved temporarily. This I'm not sure about. This can be given away. I think the only question my parents ever asked themselves about a piece of paper is "where can I put this that won't necessarily start a fire."
There are some upsides to it. We've found a lot of really interesting, funny, poignant and meaningful artifacts. Tons of photos. Cards that my brother and I made for Mother's Day and St. Valentine's Day when we were little. Military trinkets and other tailsmen of history that reveal something of the time in which they lived. It's a cathartic process.
Monday & Tuesday
Monday I babysat Alexander at my house while Scot and Kathy worked, so I was really surprised on Tuesday morning to see how much they had been able to clear out. I'm sure our friends and family who came over to help wouldn't have believed that there was five times as much stuff there in January, because it now looked like a normal amount of clutter for being lived in for 25 years. Cheered and inspired by the fact that I could now see into the dining room from the living room, I began the video project.
My father liked to record and archive television shows, live music, special events and movies - anything broadcast on TV. He worked off of a kind of bay or station he created with 4 VHS VCRs and, at least for awhile, one BETAMAX machine. He spent most of his time recording shows onto a master tape, which he then copied onto an archive tape, with the commercials edited out, and the theme music recorded over the end credits. At any given time he was probably archiving ten shows. He also had a collection of First Shows - the pilot episodes of every show that debuted since 1990, and some pilots of classics show that he would catch a re-broadcast of occasionally.
Instead of labeling the tapes on the side, as human beings do, he wrote all the information (including the name of which VCR he used and any flaws in the recording) on a POST IT NOTE which he slapped onto the front of the tapecover. Did they sometimes fall off? Did that make it a pain to see what was on a tape? Did that mean that if a tape was separated from its cover that you'd have to watch it to see what was on it? Yes, yes and yes.
My father's collection took up a lot of space and time and was a huge headache for my mom and all of us, so you might think that all I wanted to do was to go over there and destroy each and every one of those tapes gleefully. And part of me does, fo shizzle.
But it is precisely because of all that time, energy, space, and money that my father spent on it (as opposed to on his family) that I decided that I would my hand on each of those tapes at least once. I would look at it, acknowledge it, and sort it into either the trash pile or the might-be-of-some-use-to-someone pile.
And I know that you can get most of this stuff on DVDs if you want it now, but I figure there are schools and libraries and families who let their kids use the old VCR in the family room who would appreciate these tapes.
And it was harder to just toss them after I did the math. Here's the math.
Let’s say you average 8hrs of sleep a night, leaving you 16 hours a day of wake time. Of that time awake, let’s say 5 hrs/day are spent preparing and eating meals, getting showered and dressed, going to the bathroom, answering the phone, traveling to and from places, chores, errands, shopping. This is all averages and estimates, but let's say that leaves us with 11 hours a day to spend as we see fit; working, playing, building model airplanes, etc. That's about 4000 hours a year.
So how do you just dump all those years, all those hours, away. I can't. Not without at least trying to make something good come out of all of it. He considered this project his legacy to us and it pisses us off because who the hell wants a legacy that includes 13 episodes of Andromeda and every failed Loni Anderson vehicle that has come out in the past decade. Not to mention the fact that videotapes do not have a long shelf-life and most people do not want to populate their homes with them, strangely enough.
I remember a Mother's Day, it must have been 1995 or 96, because it wasn't long after I had come back to Pittsburgh. Scot and Kathy and I took mom out to the Mexican Restaurant that used to be in Station Square. Dad didn't come along because he had to stay home and tape something. Mom didn't push the issue, and neither did any of us because at that point, you don't want the son of the bitch with you. Can't come to dinner for Mother's Day? Screw you. It was sort of a melancholy evening and Mom was talking about not being really happy at work. I was asking her all kinds of "what color is your parachute" questions and Scot was mocking me, and I guess we were just trying to distract her and ourselves from the fact that Dad was really a self-involved jerk. And it's not like his presence would have made it more fun for us -- lord knows Mom would never have talked so candidly about things at work with him there - but it was clear that she wanted him there.
That's just one in a bag full of memories of Dad opting to tape something rather than be there, and I guess that's why I really want to make someone happy with those 13 episodes of Andromeda.
It really seems like one should buy one's plot at the beginning of one's story, rather than at the end. I would like a plot filled with mystery and intrigue and one of those montages where I try on a bunch of expensive outfits.
I don't like the people at Mt. Lebanon Cemetery. I mean the live people. They are snooty and callous and our Funeral Director gave us the inside track that the "hill" on which my parents' plot is is actually a man-made hill, or really just a pile of dirt, which they created and which explains (1) why iit s was cheap enough to appeal to my thrifty parents and (2) why there is some nonsense about what kind of markers we can and cannot put on the ground. I understand that everyone needs to make a living and it's all just real estate but there is something so very Poltergeist about the whole thing. So Scot and I are looking around for another place for my parents, and decided to try and find this cemetery that Aunt JoAnn mentioned.
We didn't have directions or a brochure or a guide with us, but we did have two small pieces of paper with possible names of the place and my uncanny sense of direction. Scot had distinctly remembered Aunt JoAnn saying that the place was off of Arla Drive. Arla Drive is a long winding residential road in Green Tree that could conceivably butt up against Carnegie, which is where we thought the place was. We both went to school with folks who grew up on Arla, and never heard them ever talk about hanging out at the cemetary, but that really didn't thwart us because, well, people from Green Tree have historically been odd in the sense that that is just the kind of thing they would never mention about themselves and also, Green Tree itself is so anomalous. First of all, there is Green Tree and then Green Tree City, which seems to be a subset of the former, but which is only really discussed in secret Green Tree Proper meetings. Also, Green Tree has a Bermuda Triangle type quality regarding its borders which seem to be fluid. If you're on the highway LOOKING for Green Tree, you can easily miss it by going by it in a second, but when you are actually inside Green Tree, you can drive around for forty minutes in all directions and never seem to get anywhere. It has abandoned railroad yards, and cows, and a lake which only appears to certain people on certain days like Narnia or Brigadoon, and lots of legends around its "whiskey hollow" area. It's an odd place, and the little towns surrounding it like Carnegie, Crafton and Scott Township get a little bit of the oddness rubbed off on them too.
All of this being offered in explanation of why I wasn't really nonplussed when we had driven all around Arla Drive and still not found the cemetery. Scot was employing some kind of Douglas Adams theory about finding the place, which involved instinct and intuition and the Holy Spirit and following some other car. That is a fine way to navigate a place like Green Tree if you ask me. But with each disappointing turn of the road, he was remembering his conversation with Aunt JoAnn differently. It wasn't Arla. It was Swallow Hill. Or Forsythe. I'm telling you, it's like ALIENS founded Green Tree and embued it with a disorientation spell as some kind of protective force field. Even our little pieces of paper were affected. According to them we were looking for Mount Olivet Cemetery, part of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish, formerly St. Luke's. Now, we all know that everything in Pittsburgh is formerly some other thing. Especially in the South Hills, and especially if it is Catholic. So, really, while other people from cities with more logical urban planning would have insisted on better information even before beginning (In Chicago for example, the entire city is set out like a GRID and every location can be narrowed down to its x and y coordinates...wusses) we felt as well armed as most Pittsburghers feel when they're heading out for a picnic at a coworker's house on a Sunday. And in this sense, in Pittsburgh, everyday is like Sunday.
We have a number for the cemetery. We call it. No answer. No help. We call Aunt JoAnn. No answer. No help. We think we figured out what Aunt JoAnn actually said. We go up and down the roads. No help. We're in Carnegie and I suggest stopping at the nearby Funeral Home. They should know where it is. They are closed. Did no one die this weekend? We stop at the florist. I ask the nice ladies where the cemetery is. Six of them turn around and start answering my question. The lady nearest me grabs the little piece of paper and says "oh, she means St. Luke's. " They say different things but they all point the same way. One of them says something about seeing trees and a bridge and train tracks Really? We'll see trees and bridges and train tracks? In Western Pa? Really? Well now we're set. We go up the hill. We try to follow the directions. We decide whether the right turn or the left turn is supposed to be really going straight. We come around a curve and see, um, trees and a bridge and train tracks, and then we think we're on the right road. There's a cemetery! Hurrah! Dead people!
It doesn't say Mount Olivet but it does say Elizabeth Ann Seton. Formerly St. Lukes. No one is there. It is small. The driveway runs along the crest of a hill, with the tombstones spilling out down the hill on each side. We each get out and take a side, looking for our family's graves. Scot was looking for new graves, since our aunt just died, but I wasn't that clever; I was actually looking for older graves, since I thought our grandparents were buried there. After ten minutes of trudging around the grass in the hot sun, the graveyard didn't seem so tiny anymore. I was trying to keep my search systematic, but I was on a slant the whole time, and I would get distracted by a really old looking stone and to over to it. Finally my cell phone rang. Scot ran into someone who told him that we were probably in the wrong place. I trudge back up the hillside to the car. I don't see anyone, so I don't know where this information comes from. Maybe it was a ghost. I hope it was a ghost who grew up in the South Hills.
We take off again with our third set of ambigous directions. Now we're looking for a sign for a school district that is no longer there. Pittsburgher's really love to tell you to look for stuff that used to be or isn't there anymore. Navigation by nostalgia. I don't know if it's charming or annoying. We're speeding up a road that we've already been on three times today, and Scot is getting increasingly fed up with Aunt JoAnn, because if we are actually anywhere near where we are supposed to be, then none of the roads Scot remembers her mentioning were really good clues. I have to remind him that Aunt JoAnn stopped driving at night a few years ago, and by night I mean after 4pm, and that she does not make left hand turns. Just doesn't do them. And once, when she gave directions to our cousin Michele about how to get from her house to Scot's house, which should take about 20-25 minutes, she gave her the RIGHT TURN ONLY directions which takes about an hour ten. This was a blessing though really because it meant less time with our cousin Michele. Believe me.
So really, we had to reason to suspect that this morning would have gone any differently. Scot is just about to turn the car around and I'm shouting at him to stay the course when we see the big ass sign for MOUNT OLIVET CEMETERY. Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parrish. Formerly Saint Luke's. You are well out of it, St. Luke.
It's a lovely little place on top of a mountain with flowers and trees and an incredible view and a nice breeze and it takes us ten seconds to find a mess of Manions. We will probably move my parents there. You would think that with so much of our family buried there, that Scot or I would have many memories of visiting this place, rather than just a vague kind of "oh yeah, this place" recollection that I'm not even sure is authentic. But it's right in keeping with our family to have something which should be common knowledge or a family tradition just turn into an hour of trying to figure out something from clues on a little slip of paper. And that's the kind of plot that would make my mom laugh.
1. Zjanarah
2. Levitra
3. Montajia
4. Propecia
5. Jah'shondra
6. Cialis
7. LaSintray
8. Vydale
9. Viagra
10. Ajhuana
Across the street from where I live now is Dormont Methodist Church, a modest white-bricked, red-doored building which played a recurring featured role in my childhood. My brother and I went to Scout meetings there. Somewhere, in its recesses of carpeted meeting rooms and linoleum hallways, I told my Brownie troop leaders that I could play the guitar (It was a plastic mickey mouse guitar with three strings) and that my parents spoke fluent spanish (well, they had lived in Panama for two years - I thought they could.) I used to hit tennis balls against the back wall for hours and hours. I watched the sunset from the church steps. People would park there during the High School football games, and once a big black man in a trench coat and a cowboy hat got out of his cadillac and handed me and my friend Tony a dollar to "keep an eye on his car." The neighborhood kids used to play in the parking lot and one day, when my mom was trying to teach me how to ride a bicycle, she was distracted and I lost control of the bike and rolled over the four foot wall, landing on the sidewalk with a bloody lip. My mom had turned around to see me heading over the wall and ran after me, leaping into the air, and landing 20 feet away in the middle of street, with a crushed knee that put her in the hospital for months. My brother and I spent that summer with various relatives in a series of blurry arrangements that ranged from mildly embarrassing to outright abusive. I can't think about that time without the phrase "we're on our own...cousin" from Tommy playing in my head.
Good times.
The church used to have a massive bronze and copper marquee on its front lawn, which informed the neighborhood of the service times and things like that. It was stolen a few years ago. I was happy that it was stolen, or rather, I was happy that the church had been vandalized, because I harbored a vague sense of resentment toward the building and its elusive inhabitants. I say elusive because for all the meetings I attended there and the hours I spent on its grounds, I can't recall a single time that I met with, talked with, or was introduced to the minister or the secretary or anyone officially connected to the church. That's the problem with protestants - no uniforms. They look like everyone else. A few times some nondescript adult would come out the back door and yell at me for hitting the tennis ball too hard against the wall. It irked me that they knew my first name. But I can barely remember their gender, let alone be able to pick them out of a line-up. You know if it had been a nun, I would have remembered. And I would have known her name. Yes Sister Agatha. Sorry Sister Agatha. I won't lie about knowing how to play the guitar, Sister Agatha.
My resentment came out of a fuzzy understanding of the events following my accident in the parking lot. I was seven, so a lot of what happened was unclear, but I know that the church acted in a way that disappointed my parents, so much so that there was a trial in a courtroom and I was put on the stand. It was all very exciting and confusing, and I know it was during those months that my blatant mistrust of authority was born. Churchpeople: no good. Judges, lawyers & "the system": no good. Relatives: no good.
But there was another incident that had informed my resentment of Dormont Methodist Church. Years later from all that, on a summer afternoon when I was ten or eleven, I was walking our dog Rags in the alley near the parking lot when a brown truck turned down the street going the wrong way and parked right outside the church. There is something fundamentally unsettling about an official looking truck going the wrong way down a one way street. It smacks of rules being broken by men with "clearances" or espionage or some kind of covert operation. It was instantly disturbing to me as I stood there with my dog, looking to see if any of the adults who were out on the street were watching this. Then it got worse.
A man came out of the truck with a big ass rifle. Maybe it was a pellet gun. I don't know. But I saw a big ass rifle. No one came out from the church to meet him, he didn't acknowledge anyone else on the street - I was only a few yards away -- or make any announcement. He just lifted his rifle, took aim, and started picking off pigeons from the roof of the church.
Oh my fucking god - dead birds started falling everywhere. And the SOUND of that GUN. I was frozen with fear. Rags was upset by the noise. I saw Mothers running out of the other apartments down the street and gathering up toddlers. People started coming out to look. Finally I picked up Rags and ran inside to tell Mom.
It's one of those bizarre events that happens in slow motion when I recall it. The man was from Animal Control, and the Church had called him to attend to their "pigeon problem."
I'm not a big fan of pigeons. They carry disease and all that, but OH MY GOD. Where does one start with what was wrong with that picture? I know I would not have articulated it exactly this way at the time, but right then and there I became aware of religious hypocrisy. I was no expert on Jesus, but I knew that he wouldn't have no part of some rogue Animal Control asshole whipping out a rifle in the middle of the day and shooting God's creatures off the roof. It just didn't jive. And to this day, people who call themselves Christians but who participate in the meat industry or who are disrespectful or cruel to animals in anyway really IRK me. What Would Jesus Eat? Not veal.
But honestly, I'm irked by so much of the behavior of folks who call themselves Christians these days that I really can't even begin to go into it.
Obviously I was reminded of this whole episode by the "sniper" who managed to shut down part of downtown yesterday, but who turned out to be some custodian picking pigeons off the roof of some building. And what is really disturbing is how everyone was sighing with relief that it was just some asswipe with a pellet gun shooting pigeons instead of oh, some terrorist.
And I'm like, you know what, people....potato - poTAHto.
But back to the stolen marquee. So the marquee was replaced by an incredibly ugly changeable sign, which now spouts cutesy messages like " When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right." and "God answers knee-mail," and last week's "exposure to the SON is good for you."
Get it? It's a pun on sun. Jesus is the son. Get it? Gosh that's clever. That just makes me wanna go inside and pray. That makes me wanna sing a bunch of hymns and then go out and shoot me some dinner.
What WOULDN'T Jesus Do
a list
1. Shoot pigeons
2. Be mean to a woman with a smashed knee
3. Participate in today's flesh/petroleum trades resulting in destruction of the rainforests and exploitation of the third world
4. Believe a seven year old who claims to know how to play the guitar
5. Terrorize his cousin
6. Put up signs with bad puns
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fine_mingler- Erin Fleming
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