Vitrine

What does it mean? I reach for my cell phone to search an online dictionary but an impulse stops me mid-reach. My hand recoils in antipathy.

It yearns for something else—something tucked away in its muscle memory. Surfacing like an air bubble, the memory bursts and takes form.  I want a dictionary, blockish and tactile; next to me on the bed or side table, shoring me up. I want to climb out of my ignorance by reaching for a solid hold. How long has it been since I could count among my belongings a big red book that held the entirety of the English language?

I have marveled for years over the instantaneous access to meaning via the internet. Input, click, output. Almost no waiting at all.  No heft either, or paper edges brushing my fingertips; left thumb strumming the folios as they fan out in response to my plucking. Pffft. Whoosh. 

“Dad, what does iconoclast mean?”

I know his answer before I ask the question.

“Look it up.”

Thus I was trained early on to do my own research. As a young adult in Europe, my backpack was always equipped with a bilingual dictionary. At the end of the day in my closet of a rented room in Cuatro Caminos I lay in bed, pocket dictionary in hand, looking up the words that seasoned my ears by Madrileños at the mercado when negotiating a purchase of chorizo; dos cientos gramos por favor.

On the terraced slopes of Martigny I communicated in French with my travel companion Hubert, as we picked Pinot Blanc grapes for a family owned vineyard. We lied and said we were married so they would let us share the only room they had left. Before we crossed into this Swiss village from Chamonix, I worked as an au pair to an adorable three year old named Elsa, and my French/English dictionary, a miniature bound in blue plastic, accompanied me through the daily and necessary interactions of survival in a foreign land.

“Hunnnnnny…do we have an old fashioned dictionary anywhere in this house?”

Mi amor, a lover of paper and pencils, brings me the familiar Webster’s II, New Riverside University Dictionary, a replica of my own from the college years. 

I have just read the epigraph of Edmund de Waal’s family memoir the Hare with Amber Eyes. It is a quote from Cities of the Plain, the fourth volume of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

“I open my heart to myself like a sort of vitrine, and examine one by one all those love affairs…”

In lazier moments my wont is to skip over an unknown word, assign it an imaginary meaning and convince myself I am getting the gist of the intention. But caffeine was surging through my veins and my best guess at a definition was a glass decorative urn…it wasn’t cutting it. 

I embraced the three dimensionality of my old pal Webster, slipping the tip of my thumb into the quarter-sphere index notch marked U-Z. I’m rewarded with a diminutive image, a pleasing line drawing of a tree next to a botanic detail of its be-leafed twig.

upas  1. A tropical Asian tree, Antiaris toxicaria, yielding a milky juice used as an arrow poison.

That’s what I’m talking about! How would I ever have learned that from an online dictionary? Is it crucial knowledge? Maybe not. Will I ever use it? Unlikely, as I don’t live in Malaysia nor do I hail from the Orang Asal peoples. But that’s not the point! Going down the rabbit hole of a reference book used to be an almost spiritual experience for me. 

I proceed: my gaze ping-pongs from vascular to voracious, Venn diagram to vituperous until I home in on vitreous. And that is where my search ends. No vitrine anywhere in sight. 

It must be a French word. 

Feeling dejected I once again reach for my phone/calculator/camera/dictionary.

vitrine(n.)

"glass show-case for display of delicate objects," 1880, from French vitrine, from vitre"glass, window-glass," from Latin vitrum "glass" 

Well that makes sense. Good to know. I check the publication date of the Webster’s: 1984. 

Time to buy a new dictionary. I’m thinking of springing for an OED.

Proof of Life

.

original art by Melissa Jordan Willis

The lemon yellow birds are back

I don’t know where they’ve been

They flit and swoop

While branches crack

In gusty breaths of wind

Their shadows paint themselves on cinder block-

A blur of wings

Askew 

Distorted 

I am rushed and still 

In the earthly garden

Bees and crows are blown about

The clouds are silk and satin

The golden pollen fills cracks in the concrete-

In the unreachable valleys of the barrel cactus spines

It’s April

It’s desert 

It’s a mesquite roof of emerald

and winecups on lanky stems

In the jaws of fire ants 

Foraged morsels move like legless beings

Into the hole

The hills in the sand 

That grow overnight

Decay is always at hand

In fallen seed pods

In sun bleached logs 

That recline as magnificent torsos

On the burial grounds of beloved pets

I threw the seed guts of a spaghetti squash

Into the dirt a week ago

Just because

New velvet leaves push up now and claim their turf

Where the scorpionweed unfurled its lacy fronds

in February.

Where her lilac heads curled and withered-

Where spaghetti squash will flower and fruit

So much to say

About the world today

A whirlwind of change on the stage of our commonwealth

There are no guarantees 

As my Grandma used to say

I channel her guts

Her resolve to persist

I do it in my own way

To be true to myself

To know all is passing

And soon I’ll be gone

Too

To where the lemon yellow birds go

Original Art by Melissa Jordan Willis

Tilted

The spray from the hose boomerangs into my face. The westerlies are blowing again and I’m watering the wind-dried annuals under the mystery tree. I call it that because unlike most of the yard’s plants that have nursery tags, the mystery tree erupted from the soil of its own volition, perplexing me from the first. A few seasons back, at the base of a sun-bleached ironbark stump, it emerged in the form of a willowy sapling.

I’m not what you’d call an expert on the binomial nomenclature system, but I do get a little linguistic rush when reading the botanical names and common monikers on labels and seed packets. I find power in a name, in identity. Knowledge. Aesthetics. History. Proper care and feeding. What to expect in the future. I want to know who this stranger is on my land and how big is it going to get?

Labels, diagnoses, etymologies; I’m always searching for a cause, an origin or classification. Like when Coop, my second born failed to develop on schedule—Autism, okay—now I know what to do. Speech therapy, special schools, a psychiatrist for me. Or when I get a follow on Instagram, but their account is private. Who are you?! Show yourself! Am I being hacked? But the mystery tree is still a mystery, and I drive around town looking for some of its cousins, hoping for some enlightenment. The plant identification app everyone suggests is wrong, that much I know. I am learning to live in the “unknowing”.

I admire its slender, blue-green leaves, alternately placed, not opposite. A clue. 

I think of beauty, of nature’s genius, of symmetry. In my life things are crooked. My body is misshapen; my breasts hang too low, my eyes too close together. My Mom is bent over, her spine bowed like a tree limb carrying overripe fruit. My cat’s tail is kinked at the end like the letter zee. 

Symmetrical facial features are associated with beauty and health, and evolutionary psychologists suggest these traits trigger mating signals that cause arousal, our desire then influencing our selections. But the classical definition of beauty is thankfully being challenged now, and people are learning to question their primal programming. Skin care companies have heeded the clarion call for the inclusion of diverse forms of loveliness. Laugh lines are the remnants of a joyful life. Stretch marks are the beautiful etchings of bearing a child. A tilted tree is the proclamation of the will to live.

The mystery tree is fifteen feet tall now, tilted to the east and lopsided, like most trees in our desert corridor. The wind gusts are funneled through the San Gorgonio Pass and cause cenizo shrubs to bend in supplication, honey mesquites to grow hunchbacked. My efforts at pruning and shaping were in vain. It resents the wind and knows better than to battle it. Its branches sprout to the east, like arms reaching for a lover.

I still don’t know what species the mystery tree is, but I’m moved by the way it sways in the breeze. And my mother Betty is achingly beautiful as she looks to me from her ninety-one year old cocoa-brown eyes.  I love my bent-tailed rescue cat Ziggy, and—on a good day—my imperfect self.

Oh the Places You Will Go: A CNF post from the Motherland

Original art by Melissa Jordan Willis

Oh the Places You Will Go

“Mom, thanks for picking up the video call.”

“No problem.”

Seth has a close cropped haircut that reveals our family hairline; his brother has the same. The last time I saw him he bore a frightening resemblance to Charles Manson. He gets nice haircuts in jail.

I know I only have a few seconds to relish the deep wave of love that comes over me when I see his face. It will soon be replaced by the need to fortify myself. 

His anger will surface soon and I will be blamed in some way for his suffering.

I’ve had to crawl my way out of the pit that was my obsession with his well-being. It took fifteen years. It felt like a betrayal to him, but it had to happen. 

“I have to say goodbye now Seth. Tom (my new husband) is getting a haircut.”

“What about putting ten bucks on my books Mom?”

“No.”

“Okay, when can I call again?”

“Anytime you want to.”

Tom smiles while Julia cuts his hair. The tourists are dragging their luggage down Tahquitz Canyon Way in the June heat. I think about the ways we try to escape our lives, our failures, or the memory of our failures. Trips that put us on streets we have no association with. 

When we get home we have chicken salad sandwiches for dinner. I sponge the plates off with warm soapy water. I am aware that Seth is incarcerated. I know his future is uncertain; it is no longer within my power to change that fact. It never was. I notice I am okay. 

Tomorrow I may take Seth’s call and regret it. It may fuck up my weekend. But tonight I am okay. The bread from dinner tasted so good, I opened the bag and took out half a piece more; dessert. 

I put more butter on it than necessary. Thick slabs. A balm that will coat my thoughts so I don’t fall back into the dark place. 

*****

My bones will rest on a grass-covered hill. It is both natural and synthetic. The fruitless olive trees thrive happily in the California soil, but they didn’t germinate of their own volition; the cemetery is a loose interpretation of the Mount of Olives. The trees have been planted strategically to allow room for the groundskeepers’ utility trucks to comfortably navigate the slopes. High grasses turned saffron sway in the breeze and hawks fly overhead. It’ll do.

I won’t be alone. I got a twofer when the mortuary was promoting their new Simi Hills location. I went for the double-decker internment  and saved a bundle. The plan is that I will go first, before my second son Cooper, and his bones will accompany me for eternity. This brings me true peace. Just as he was once enveloped in my womb, we will rest together in the dusty cradle of a California foothill.

The end-of-life planning for Cooper fell to me. He was only 25 when I purchased the plot, but I could see how the future would unfold. He lives in a group home for adults with intellectual disabilities, and although his earthly needs are met in life, the government doesn’t begin to cover burial costs. The thought of his precious body being incinerated or put in a pauper’s grave was more than I could bear. 

Tom quipped that if I didn’t make burial plans for myself he would have me cremated; a rascally but effective motivator. He has his affairs in order. Early in our marriage he slipped me the little blue card and told me to keep it in my wallet.   

I have Pre-Arranged my cremation with The Trident Society and have provided them with all my personal information and requests for my time of need. In the event of my death please contact…

He is fine with cremation. It was good enough for his parents, so in a way he is following tradition. My family are all buried alongside the 134 Freeway in Burbank.

I know traditional burial practices are antiquated, impractical, exorbitantly priced and politically incorrect. I know there are more ecological methods to dispose of a body. But I don’t want my body, and the bodies of my children, my two sons, to be disposed of. I want them cleaned and cloaked and nestled…in the earth, like Sarah, Rebekah and Leah in the Cave of Machpelah.

*****

Seth is in the hospital again, this time they admitted him. After jail I lost contact with him. He no longer carries a phone, wallet or I.D.

He is becoming someone else now. His former identity is fading. Infections are eating away at his body. He refers to himself as Saul.

I speak with his probation officer to see if they can’t admit him to a psychiatric hospital. I still want to save his life. 

Officer Tanner explained, “We cannot commit him. He would have to admit himself voluntarily. We paid for a sober house for him but he left. It is not a crime to be homeless.”

I thank her for the information that I already know, that I have known for years. He turned thirty-one yesterday. I called the hospital to wish him a Happy Birthday, even though there is nothing happy about it. He was polite but in pain and said he had to go. There is nothing to talk about that hasn’t already been said a hundred times. 

No words. No sound. No image. I caught him in my net like a fish, a long time ago, and now I release him back into the stream. The shape of his hands remain in my memory. The hands that pulled himself upright, that wrote poetry, that stole cigarettes. The hands that pull a blanket over himself while sleeping under a bridge. I hold those hands forever across time and space, because although we may not speak, we hear each other just fine.

Note—This piece will be live online January 25th at the literary site You Might Need To Hear This, https://www.youmightneedtohearthis.com/