Applesauce hands

I just canned 26 quarts of applesauce. I didn't have any kind of labor-saving device. I had the old fashioned cone shaped colander, wooden pestle, and the big dark blue enamel canning pots to cook my jars in. That is how my mother did it for as long as I can remember, and that is how I did it.
Although, with the stiff shoulders from working the pestle, blisters on my hands, and chipped fingernails, I have thought long and hard about getting a Squeezo. I made one unholy mess of my stovetop, the floor and counters. But my applesauce is thick, golden, sweet, and superb in every way. I am thrilled.
I have put my total of 56 glass quart jars away, stacked in the storage room where I can casually produce a quart for friends at will. What a luxury!

When I was small, I used to snuggle into my mother during church, loop my arm through hers and hold her hand. Sometimes, leaning against her and breathing in the fragrance of Ivory soap and detergent in her dress was enough to help me get through the long sermons. However, mother's hands most often held my attention. With one finger I used to trace the veins on her hand, trying to get them to roll from side to side. After awhile she would pull her hand away from me and give me a look that said, Cut it out and listen to the sermon. So I would stop rolling her veins and start looking at her fingernails instead.
My mother grew up in the immigrant ghettos of Manhattan, back in the 30s and 40s. She and two other siblings contracted tuberculosis and had to be sent upstate to a sanitarium. There had been daily X-rays and all sorts of medications. That was why, she told me, her fingernails were ridged. So sitting in church, I looked at those vertical ridges in mother's fingernails and got lost in stories of my own making about her adventures at the sanitarium in the mountains.
By looking at her fingernails I could usually tell what fruit or vegetable was in season: grapes, tomatoes, peaches. There always seemed to be stains on her nails of whatever she had canned or cooked last. When beets were in season she wore white gloves to church to hide her glistening red-stained hands.
I tried to tell mother on more than one occasion that she shouldn't be so worried about her hands because they were beautiful: the thinness of her skin, the veins standing out that I equated with being a mature woman (something I wanted far more than breasts or starting my periods!) Mother used to say, "You've got to be kidding! My hands are just terrible!" And she would look down and self-consciously rub one hand over the other, as if to smoothe away whatever imperfections were there.
My mother never had a manicure during her entire life. She had grown up poor and then became a hard working mother of four, living a life of sewing, cooking, cleaning, and gardening. Her hands have always told this story if one looked closely.

Tonight after I finished washing up the counters, stove, and floor, I glanced ruefully at my hands. I've earned a blister on the ring finger of my right hand. My right middle finger is sore and red from cutting apples and my index finger has dark stains in a hundred tiny creases of my skin. My nails are a mess and have dark apple stains under them, and my hands are red and a bit swollen. I'll have to explain to my students that I really do have good hygiene, it's just that I've been canning applesauce. Looking down, for a fleeting moment I thought I saw something familiar. Yes, I have my grampa's crooked fingers that roll in every direction; and short, stubby fingers like my father's hands. But tonight I earned something for which I have longed my whole life. I finally have my mother's hands.

Detours

I was 14 when I learned that I could not follow my heart. Getting ready for college, I had many conversations with my parents about what degree would best suit me. “I’d like to work with people who have emotional problems,” I’d begin. “People who are getting over the death of somebody, or who are sad and don’t know why.” My mother would throw her hands in the air and ask in exasperation, “Why spend your life being around kooks?” She’d regale me with the story of her inner city childhood, unprotected from what she considered the “kooks” of New York City. “Those Armenian girls next door—what they were put through by that weird man in the subway.”
My father took a more logical tact. “You know honey, there are always sick people. You will never be without a job if you become a nurse.” Then he’d begin his well rutted story about how he wished he’d become a nurse after he got out of the army 40 years earlier. “Think about all the people you can help that way.”
But I still thought often about people with emotional or mental problems. A number of families in our community provided board and care for elderly retarded people. Church was an interesting experience, as I watched retarded people salute the pastor from their pews, jump up from their seats in the middle of the sermon, or attempt to help the deacons collect the offering.
“Why don’t you just be a teacher for retarded people?” my father asked. “Teachers always will have jobs, and besides, it’s a natural job for women.” I didn’t want a natural job for a woman. I wanted to be a musician, writer, or a psychologist. “You can’t make a living at any of that” was the all too common refrain at our house.
So I became a nurse. I knew I’d hate it from the first day that I learned in skills lab how to make a mitered corner on a bed. For this I’ve come to college? As soon as I graduated I started back to school so I could work with people who have emotional difficulties.

Tonight my students were a bundle of nerves as they faced their final exam. Even so, there were tears and warm goodbyes as they left the classroom tonight. “Thank you for being the best teacher I’ve ever had.” “I learned so much from you.” “This was my favorite class in my whole graduate program.” I’m a therapist educator, teaching them how to work with people who have emotional problems. The 24 year detour is over and I’m following my heart.

Screeching teenagers

There was an unholy row outside the kitchen window yesterday afternoon. Bird screechings and scoldings. It sounded like something was being tortured or being told off--I couldn't tell which. But then I saw them and knew that I was seeing myself.

A mother grackle was at fever pitch, pulling worms and bugs out of the grass. All the while, four young croaky, newly feathered offspring poked and prodded her, hoping to be fed whatever bird delicacies she found. She could not move fast enough. She couldn't provide enough. Her babies were babies no longer. They could fly, but didn't know how to do much more than follow her around. Yet their screeching and poking seemed disdainful and betrayed their irritability. I marveled at the mother's efforts to meet the demands of that noisy brood.

It's what teenagers all the world over, do to their parents. They're old enough to talk and be reasoned with. They don't need supervision or direction about hygiene or caring for themselves. Yet the unspoken emotional and social uncertainties cause them at times to poke and prod their parents out of frustration. Parents can't do enough, fast enough, or right enough to satisfy their irritable demands that are unclear even to themselves at times.

So I watched the birds, listened to their racket, lost in thought. There was something about the busyness and good nature of the mother that reminded me of my own mother. She never gave up trying to provide for us, even though we were irritable, distant, and demanding. Just last week, I received one of her many packets in the mail, full of newspaper clippings, the church newsletter, and a bulletin from a concert that she and my father recently attended. She's still giving, God love her. I only pray that at 46 years of age, I am more gracious than the half-grown, immature birds outside the window.

Mother's Day

Today is Mother’s Day. The 18-week size fibroid that I birthed by C-section, is what we think about today in our house.

At least, I think about it. Last week my husband asked me rather innocently, “Honey, what day is Mother’s Day this year?” For whatever reason, the only response I could muster was a flood of tears. It is a special day for other women, not me.

The year before I met my husband I had begun to consider adopting a child from another country. Motherhood was not feasible for me any other way. But I never sent off my adoption applications because of a new job that absorbed every waking moment. Then I met Sam.

Two days later I found a huge, hard mass in my belly and knew that something was about to change. I had already begun to entertain the idea that I’d probably never have children of my own, but to be told that the only treatment was an everything-has-to-go type of surgery, left me strangely numb. I took in the news, relieved that I wouldn’t have the possibility of developing uterine or ovarian cancer. I was more concerned about having major surgery than any other consideration at that point.


Surgery was a breeze, fortunately. Sam was there with me in the hospital, helping me up to the bathroom and back to bed. He walked me around the nurse’s station, as I shuffled along, all hunched over, pushing my IV pole jaggedly down the hall. As we rounded a corner, Sam told me I was beautiful.
“Oh please!” I laughed, thinking of my pasty complexion, IV-bloated body, and wild hair. “I look so gross.” He stood still and looked at me for a long minute. “You would have been a beautiful mommy.” His eyes were moist and his voice wobbled.

I’m a stepmother now.  But events in my life are not yet recognized by these children. I have been thrust into their lives and they do not know how to make meaning of me. I have only to look at the Polaroid shot of the tumor that looks like the glistening, veiny bald head of an alien, to grasp the limitations of my mothering experience.  

Sam looks regretful and tenderly at me over breakfast, feeling helpless in the face of these inconvenient tears that spring to my eyes when I least expect them. “Honey, when we get to heaven, there will be babies there without parents. We can have those babies then.” I blow my nose loudly, and Sam rushes around the table to envelop me in his arms. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispers into my hair.

There is a vast gulf between what we have on this earth and the life we will have in heaven one day. I have not suffered in ways that so many people have in this life. My pains are small but deep ones. My sadness is mixed with gratefulness. So I think of what is to come warmly, tearfully, every time I feel the light heaviness of a crumpled, sleepy little body near my heart, and smell the fragrant sweetness of baby cheeks. Someday I will get to be a mother. Sam, whose mother has died, will have his mother again. My mother won’t be forgetful anymore. And I will be happy to say, “It’s Mother’s Day today.”

Into the Woods

The idea hit first when I was sitting next to Jimmie in fifth grade during story hour. Our teacher read us books about the West, life in the “olden days”, and survival stores set in the prairie and mountains. I could hardly get enough of it. We read My Antonia, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. But one story took on a life of its own. I don’t remember the title, but this book was about a boy who lived in a burned out Sequoia tree for an entire year, completely alone. The story chronicled his experience of gathering and storing food for winter, occupying his time during rainstorms, and befriending animals. My 11-year old imagination took over and soon I was seeking out solitary woods in which to live for a year.
My first choice was one of the many large stands of deciduous trees with dense underbrush situated between farmer’s fields in our county. Deer, coyote, fox, and smaller animals such as raccoon and possums lived there. Riding back and forth from school, I used to stare out the window of the bus and study the land so I could select just the right place in the woods to escape into. I wanted a place where I could slip into the woods without being seen, yet be far enough away from people that no one would accidentally come across me. I wanted to be invisible to the outside world and focus my attention on soaking up the quiet, calm of the moist community of the woods.

It was about this time that I took an interest in taxidermy, much to my parents’ horror. Mostly, I skinned intact road kill and tried to learn how to cure the hides of raccoon and deer by rubbing salt into the skin after soaking it for a long time in the creek. I still remember the fetid odor associated with that particular experiment. Once, a neighbor farmer called to let me come down and skin a calf that had died. I don’t remember what ever became of that, except that the calf was very bloated. Mother once caught me dissecting a dead squirrel on the kitchen table using her good paring knife. That was when she and my father decided to buy me a dissecting kit, in the hopes that these forays into science would lead me into a surgical career. I eventually grew out of this most uncomely pastime, but I never lost my desire to be alone in the vastness of the wilderness.

There were days I used to fantasize about hiking the Appalachian Trail for a summer. I would do it alone, mosquitoes and trail criminals be damned. Later, I discovered the Sierra Nevada mountains. After conquering numerous peaks, I thought I might be physically able to spend a summer up behind Mt. Whitney. But I fell in love, and that ended my plans.

Last month PBS aired a program about a 50-something man who went into Alaska’s outback and built his own cabin. He lived there alone for over 30 years. I watched the program twice, scrutinizing everything, mentally recording his every move. That aching desire that had flickered during years of getting a PhD, falling in love, becoming overwhelmed with life, was fanned back into a full blaze.

So it is not surprising that when I commute to my job through mountains every week, that I find myself scanning the hills and bends in the river—to find just the right place to hike up into the woods and build a small dwelling—close enough to the river to fish, yet situated in a place protected from the wind.

I am a professional woman in suit and heels, technical lexicon and impeccable classroom demeanor. Yet my longing is like unrequited love for a dream that almost became a reality. Maybe one day I will slip off into the north woods and find a hollowed out tree.