Underneath that

For one and a half hours each week, I serve as a mentor in a writing group for young adults (ages 18-24) who are houseless and working to find housing. Three mentors generally attend each session (one of us takes each week off), and we may have from zero to twelve writers, depending on who shows up that day or who’s hanging out in the day center and wants to join the group.

When I arrive at the building a few blocks from my downtown bus stop, I punch in the code that unlocks the door (unless it has changed: then I push the intercom button and wait for someone to greet me.) I hold onto the handrail as I walk up twelve dark and dusty stars that open onto a large space of cubicles. There must be forty or fifty staff in cubicles upstairs. These staff help the young adults find housing resources, jobs, and so forth. A therapist has the office with a closed door three doors down on the left.

We gather in a conference room if the noise from outdoor construction isn’t too loud, and the leader reminds the group of the writing group’s purpose (to speak from the heart) and guidelines (to keep all members emotionally and physically safe).

Members of this group have always been smart and thoughtful. They live on the streets for some trauma they’ve experienced, not because they’re stupid. (They’re survivors.) At the point that they come to writers’ group, many of them live in the shelter at the back of this room, a place where they have a little privacy and can leave their things during the day. (They can’t be in the shelter during the day. For the rest of the day, many of them are starting jobs or spend time with the therapist, other programs, and resting, texting, or socializing in the day center.) They always have a free breakfast, usually cold cereal but last week scrambled eggs, strawberries, and pancakes.

To respect their privacy and the group’s confidentiality, I won’t say more about them, but I will share a little of my own story with them.

After my brain tumors and then graduating with a Masters from the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, I have been seeking ways to use my skills and experiences within the parameters of respecting my own disabilities to help others who struggle. Two years ago, I went to a Pongo http://www.pongoteenwriting.org workshop where leaders shared a method of writing poetry with teenagers in the juvenile detention center. I loved Pongo’s approach and wished I had known about it when I was teaching. This spring, through Pongo, I learned about the need for a mentor with this writing group for young homeless adults.

This volunteer job allows me to connect with young adults who write and with the mentors, and I feel like a group member who benefits as well as helps to lead. One thing I love about writing is that I am often surprised by what comes out of me, and so I learn about a self often so far below the surface that I don’t know them (not a grammatical error, but a semantic gender choice for this self.)

For the first six weeks, I said little and never led, but now I sometimes share my writing and lead once a month. I get my ideas from themes for leading from the writers, though the group’s membership may change from week to week, as writers find housing and jobs.

One week, I led with Sandra Cisneros’s “My Name” from The House on Mango Street. We discussed the passage briefly and then I offered several prompts, for a 10-15 minute write. Here’s a prompt:

Possibilities for writing

1.   Following Cisneros’s piece (here’s one possibility)

a.    My name means…

b.   It came from…

c.    A favorite story about my name is…

d.   People say my name…

e.    If I rename myself, I will call myself…

As a participant, I wrote, too. This is my writing from that day:

Grandmother Mary Edwards, spoiled baby of 13. Grandmother Mary Matthews, who mothered her father and her siblings before mothering her own five kids. Aunt Mary Ann, the family storyteller. Aunt Myra (which is just Mary scrambled up a bit.) Mary, Mother of Jesus, with all her worshippers, Mary Magdalene—the one who listened.  My name. Mary. Full of family history. Connected to my grandmothers and to God. Listener. Storyteller. Sometimes scrambled.

At church, there are so many Marys that we have numbered off. I am #3. Mary L is #11. Mary D won’t play. Mary F says she’s number one, but I say Mary the mother of Jesus is #1 and Mary F is # 7658. Mary Ellen has two names, making it easier, and her last name starts with an M, so she’s MEM and doesn’t need a number. She’s her own number.

Probably because I’m so focused on our puppy Dosey, the second reading that day was Mary Oliver’s poem “The Sweetness of Dogs.”

Prompts 1) If you were an animal, what animal would you be? (x3 if you want to) 2) Write about a specific animal that you love(d) or hate(d).

As usual, my writing about something else, in this case animals, says more about me than about the something else:

Abraham [not the real name of one of the group’s writers] used to hate bees. I still do. Intellectually, I know that they are good for the ecosystem, so intellectually I like them and want to protect them. When one flies around me, however, I cringe at its buzz and the unpredictableness of its flight. I know that there’s a difference between bees and wasps and yellow jackets, but they all get my hackles up.

I remember when, as I child, I covered my Coca-Cola bottle so that no yellow jackets flew in and then stung me as I swallowed them. I also remember when I was a kid visiting Spring Hope relatives, and the biting fly landed on my head in the swimming pool taking a bite out of my scalp: me screaming in a surprised pain as the fly continued chewing while my third cousins yelled, “Go under!” I also remember the fourth grade teacher I adored scolding me when I ran out of the room and screamed. She said I was overreacting.  I still believe I was responding appropriately.

Another day, we read “TheMoment” by Margaret Atwood. The poem aroused thoughts about my brain tumor, what I and my doctors thought and felt at first and what I think and feel now:

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and many paths,

some winding some straight and narrow,

my doctor called to say,

“It’s over now. Your life will be different and new,

but not shiny.”

I thought once that I directed my life,

That I only needed to find the right path,

And all would be well. I would be well and happy.

The right man would lead me to the right path,

a path with children and Southern Baptist sermons,

and Labrador retrievers in suburban back yards.

But as it turned out, I walked side by side

With a woman,

And my kids were teenagers in schools where I taught,

And no dogs were allowed.

And then there were the brain tumors

To detour me from my career path and

Lead me into the woods,

Lost.

So here I sit,

Not on a path,

Not in the sun,

But in a place of shadows and breezes

Noticing the textures and

Verdant colors of leaves and bark

And flowers sometimes,

And with the trees,

I breathe.

And on a recent day, another mentor invited us to write one long sentence. She said, “Write for five minutes. Start with I just want to tell you…or I just thought you should know….” The anger in what I wrote that day surprised me:

I just want you to know that I’m disabled, but I’m not stupid, so don’t treat me like I can’t figure things out, and I know that you think I’m overreacting but the truth is that I’m not just reacting to you but I’m reacting to everyone who treats me as a fool or a weakling, so you’re taking on the heat of all who have come before you, but you won’t be the last because this world doesn’t get me, doesn’t get that to be slow and unable to work is not the same as being a drag on society and tax dollars and you who are in such a hurry and as I write this I learn about anger that I didn’t even know was there, but the anger is not really about you it’s about the ways my life has changed without my permission.

And as last week’s leader I chose poems and prompts related to getting below the surface, something that a previous group of writers had talked about. We read Dee Daffodil (H.W.)’s poem “Beneath the Ocean” (Sorry, but you have to get past an ad to read it on the web.)

One option I provided was to experiment with a frame by Chris Zweigle and Hamda Yusuf, which I did. This is what I wrote:

underneath

my passion for writing

is the sound of waves touching the shore, an endless waving

under the sound is longing

under that is belonging

under that: wonder.

underneath my fear of loneliness.

is the smell of metal, cold and bitter.

under the smell is pain.

under that is trembling

under that: weightlessness.

underneath my intensity

about writing

is the taste of lemon drops, sweet on the tongue and sour at the core.

under the taste is satisfaction

under that is ease

under that: summer.

underneath my obsession with my puppy, Dosey,

is the touch of soft curly fur 

under the touch of that fur

is a small, fast heartbeat.

under that is joy

under that: a deep sleep.

Additionally, last week we read together Ross Gay’s poem, “A Small Needful Fact,”  a poem about Eric Garner, the teenager killed by a policeman’s choke hold, and the life that teenager might have been living. The poem pushes the reader to think about the life taken, about the ways he might have been giving to all of us, and the gift we all lost in his death. It’s a lovely poem, but the reminder of Garner’s terrible death (“I can’t breathe” x 7) may have been too much to bring into a room of people, mentors and young adults alike, who have experienced their own traumas.

I invited writers to share what people see of them and what they don’t see, what I intended to be an empowering prompt. Indeed, the writers who shared went deep, but not everyone wants to go deep. Maybe the invitation was helpful for some but re-traumatizing for others. I hope not. But so much of their and our emotions stay below the surface, so I don’t know.

In my writing, I thought of the man, perhaps homeless, who noticed me with my cane at a downtown intersection. “Hurt your leg?” he asked, looking at my foot.

“No, my head,” I responded.

“Oh,” he said, and his eyes traveled up my body to my crossed eyes. Wide-eyed, then, he said, “Ohhhhh…” and as the light changed he hurried across the intersection as if my disabilities were contagious. Here’s the poem that grew out of that memory:

When people see

Me walking with my cane,

Lumbering to get down the sidewalk,

they think they see some one like them,

someone who hurt their leg

falling from a rock

while hiking

or sliding into home base

for the winning run.

They think they see

Someone who will get better,

Like them.

…

But what they don’t see is

That I won’t get better,

That my leg’s not hurt,

but my brain’s been cut.

What they don’t see is that

I’m like them, but not like them,

And it’s all different than they think.

The tumors have weakened me,

(My strength, my balance, my vision),

And they have emboldened me

To see a new world,

And to tell a new story,

A story without a clear ending,

But for sure a bold protagonist,

A spunky storyteller.

And finally, this week one of the mentors introduced us to Amy Lowell’s poem“Leisure.”  (Sorry, you have to get past the ad again.) And here’s my writing, which ends in the most joyful moment I know:

When I have leisure time, I write about time, the crunch of it, the compression. Olivia just told me that dogs are good for people, that they reduce stress. I think leisure time is like that, and maybe dogs take us into that space of breath and joy. Of being 100% in the moment, not worried about duty or the next task, just like a puppy wiggling in this moment.

Joyful is the right way to end.

Ode to Joy

There’s a shoe-brown dog treat on my bureau in a milk bone shape. On the living room floor lies a menagerie of puppy toys: a grey bear that squeaks so it’s a little scary, a red mouse that’s bigger than the bear and squeaks but isn’t scary at all, and a shag bright green frog with a red tongue but no other facial feature. In the kitchen where the garbage can used to sit is a blue mat with pink and blue bowls for Dosey’s food. Salmon treats spill onto the chair-side table, and freeze-dried beef liver sits on our butcher-block table. The house smells like sweet cardboard (a description my friend Mary might use for her wine). Dosey has taken over our previously tidy house, and we love it.

Last week, my partner Ann, our dear friend Ellen, and I took the car to Spokane, a five-hour drive, to pick up a 4.6 pound puppy, Dosey. Ann and I had been on a waiting list for this cavapoo, a smart, affectionate, small, hypoallergenic child of a King Charles Cavalier and a miniature poodle, since last October: nine months. She was worth the wait, and we needed the time to get ready.

In that six months, we hired builders to put a fence around our backyard (though she’s digging under it already), read three books about raising a puppy, and watched several videos. The author of one book, the “The General” scared us about how easily in the first few weeks we could mess up this puppy for life. Were our puppy to pee or poop on the rugs inside (both of which she has done), we were instructed to roll up the newspaper and spank ourselves (which we have not done). Our badness in training her would have led to her badness; thus, we would need self-flagellation.

Sunday morning, we met her breeder, Jennifer, in a hotel parking lot and watched one of her brothers being taken away, tale wagging, by someone else who had a long drive ahead of him. When Jennifer handed little Dosey to me, she was willing to be held by me, a stranger, but she did not yet wag her tale. 

Dosey rode in her crate in the backseat beside one of the three of us all the drive home. She was remarkably mellow for the first four hours, but there was heavy traffic, and she was tired of the ride and her own patience for that last hour. She’s sweet, but she has her limits.

She has limits, and she can establish limits. We saw her ability to establish limits when we took her to a puppy play day nearby. Some of the puppies were more the size of ponies, so she and another small puppy played under the chairs, protected by the people sitting above them. Each time a rambunctious, pony-sized puppy approached and tried to smell her butt (a dog’s version of “How do you do?”), she barked once at them to back off, and they did. She approached a gentle giant of a puppy, one who dozed the whole time we were there, and said her own, “How do you do?” He just rolled over, but not on her, thankfully. She’s brave and not stupid.

We saw this combination of courage and caution when she met the vacuum cleaner. She didn’t squeal, but she also didn’t go up to smell its butt. (Where is its butt, anyway? How can you trust a noisy thing without a butt?)

Dosey’s tried to set limits with us as well, as we have with her. I’m not sure who’s winning to contest for alpha female. Sometimes, Ann says, “Dosey, you’re the best dog in the world.” Other times, Ann calls Dosey “Princess.” This is not a compliment.

Because Dosey is in the socialization period, we introduced her in her first week to as many dogs and people as possible. Last week was a busy week. Friday I counted 35 people that she had met at our home: over the weekend, she started visiting.

She went to church with us Sunday, and was a hit among the young and old alike.  After church, she made particular friends with Susan and her son’s Australian Shepherd, Rainie. Though Rainie’s much bigger and boisterous, the two dogs bonded. Susan took photos of them hanging out on the carpet, at one point nuzzling nose to nose.

We love this puppy already. At the beginning of the week, Ann (who is not given to hyperbole), kept saying, “We have the perfect dog. ” Since then, Dosey has peed and pooed  on the carpet a few times, chewed on Ann’s shoelaces and learned to voice her displeasure in a very high octave when we lock her in her play pen. So she’s not perfect (she fits in!), but she’s pretty darn fabulous.

I bastardized a song for her from my childhood camp, Seafarer. You can sing it to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands”:

Good morning, Dosewallips, how are you? (clap, clap)

Do you know that Ann and Mary love you, true? (clap, clap)

It’s time for work and play

In this urban scene today,

So let’s get started:

We’ve got lots to do! (clap, clap)

Music seems appropriate for the joy this puppy brings, but perhaps something less campy and more symphonic like Schiller’s "Ode to Joy" would be more dignified.

I sang the campier ode when I woke up around 10 am one morning (I even practiced), but Dosey and Ann had already been busy for hours. Ann took her outside for her morning constitutional and then for a walk down the block. Ann says Dosey stopped often along the way, sat down and looked up at her like, “What exactly is the point of this walking?” Dosey tried going up each set of stairs (she loves to visit people, and could understand a walk for this purpose.) When they reached the end of the block and Ann let Dosey turn around to head home, Dosey sprinted. I do that, too, in my run-like-a-drunk-person-who-uses-a cane kind of way.

True joy elicits music as well as poetry, but I haven’t had time to write any of my own yet, so here’s Mary Oliver’s  “The Sweetness of Dogs” with slight revisions:

What do you say, Dosey? I am thinking

of sitting out on the lawn to watch

the moon rise. It’s full tonight.

So we go

and the moon rises, so beautiful it

makes me shudder, makes me think about

time and space, makes me take

measure of myself: one iota

pondering heaven. Thus we sit, myself

thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s

perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich

it is to love the world. Dosey, meanwhile,

leans against me and gazes up

into my face. As though I were just as wonderful

as the perfect moon.

I would read this lovely poem to Dosey, but she is dozing at my feet. Which reminds me of Glenna Luschei’s modern haiku “Home”: 

Dog at my pillow. Dog at my feet. My own toothbrush.

I’m home. (There is actually no dog at my pillow. I love Dosey, but she has her own pillow.)

A Call to Not Look Away

Yesterday morning, my partner Ann and I were in Raleigh, NC, and visited Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, the church I grew up in. In some ways, the church is just like it was then: about 350 adults sit in the main part of the sanctuary, and teenagers dot the three balconies. (Maybe they slip out for the sermon like my friend Ande and I used to.) Royal blues and deep golds color the sanctuary: embroidered cloths, one of wheat and the other of flames hang from the two pulpits (I once heard the church split earlier in the 20^th century over the split pulpit, and the Baptist church that split off had only a single pulpit—I suspect and hope the issue splitting that church was more significant than the number of pulpits. There’s nothing about this split on the church’s history website, so maybe it didn’t happen, but I think it did, and am curious about why it's not in the church history); another blue and gold embroidered cloth hangs from the communion table displaying the Alpha and the Omega, Greek letters that stand for Christ. The embroidery somehow manages to be both noble and homey, like this church.

Behind the split pulpit and choir, images of Jesus and other important men shine in vivid colors in the stained glass windows. (Jesus is the one in the middle with the dove flying around his head.) Over the side balconies, rounder windows tell Bible stories in the same vivid colors. They were just like this when I went here. On today’s visit, Mom, Dad, Ann and I sat on a gold pew cushion. I remember when there was a lot of discussion about buying the gold cushions: “Couldn’t the money have been spent on some better cause than easing Southern Baptists’ behinds?” some folks in the church wanted to know. It was a fair question, I thought, the kind of question that has shaped who I am and what I believe is right.

The church has always seemed to me to be a place that strives to do right, to understand what’s right, and to ask a lot of questions. J.A. Ellis the church’s pastor beginning on August 6, 1919, was “the first of Pullen’s pastors to make frequent application of the gospel to controversial social issues.” 

In the 1958, before my parents had married and years before I was born, the church’s constitution welcomed Black people and folks from other denominations into membership, and in the 1960’s protested against the Vietnam War. As I understand it, the church was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention for these affronts. This banishment was a source of pride, an indicator of who we were: Christians more committed to Jesus than the Southern Baptist Convention.

In the seventies and early eighties, as I advanced through Sunday School, I didn’t learn the books or stories of the Bible, but I did learn songs like Pete Seegar’s "Garden Song" (“Inch by inch and row by row, I’m gonna watch this garden grow….”) and “OneTin Soldier”  (“Go ahead and hate your neighbor, / Go ahead and cheat a friend. / Do it the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end….”)

I was always encouraged to ask questions in this church. (I remember a service in Poteat Chapel when we were asked to share a doubt with the person next to us, so I turned to my mother and said, “I’m not sure Jesus is the son of God.” It seemed to me that all of us were God’s children, so the distinction didn’t make sense to me. This is not the only time I shocked my dear mother.)

Our minister in those years, Reverend W.W. Finlator, was often in the newspapers challenging the next-door university and the rest of us to recognize racist policies. (I loved the man and appreciated the time he said he’d pray for snow so that I wouldn’t have to take a test in school the next day and an unexpected blizzard indeed closed the schools, but his sermons seemed painfully long and dull to me.) The next minister, the good Mahan Siler, who came to the church after I had moved out of state, led the church through a “discernment process” in which the church decided to sponsor a gay commitment ceremony in 1992 (and this time was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention for good.) I wasn’t out to myself or anyone else at the time, but my parents and I feel so lucky that they had been through that process and stayed in the church while many long-time members left.

Along with all that’s the same are differences, but the similarities and differences both connect to the church’s core of “radical community.” For example, the church building and parking lot have changed significantly in the decades since I frequented the place. Poteat Chapel is now a meeting room. Finlator Hall, which used to be Fellowship Hall, has moved from under the sanctuary to the addition on the back of the church, near the Hope Center, which serves homeless youth. That’s new to me, too. When I was young, the church had a relationship with Coventry, England, and youth went regularly to see the church that was bombed during World War II. Thirty-five years later, as Ann and I headed to the sanctuary, we read about sister churches and communities in Nicaragua; Cuba; Coventry, England; Zimbabwe; and The Republic of Georgia. The current minister is a lesbian, a white woman who works for racial justice with the African American leader Rev. William Barber II. (If you haven’t read his book, The Third Reconstruction and want a cause for hope concerning racism in our country, don’t walk but run to your Kindle or your favorite local bookstore and start reading.)

There were other changes to indicate the decades that have passed since I attended the church regularly. In the service, I didn’t recognize others in the congregation, nor did I recognize the giant art hanging on the sanctuary walls, feminine representations of the divine to balance all the men in the windows.

I did recognize the accents. I loved it when I heard a woman behind me talking to the folks sitting there. As she left them, she said, “If y’all wont to, come own up this a way.” (No, I didn’t misspell anything.)

I also recognized the spirit of the place: people there seemed glad to be there and glad to see one another. During the service, one woman gave a talk encouraging others to come to a meeting about environmental justice.  Such a talk might have occurred at our littleMethodist church in Seattle, WA, differing in its size (only seventy people attending most Sundays) but similarly devoted to radical community. Oh, and we have a lesbian pastor, too.)

I hope that one day our churches will build a sister relationship, not across oceans but across this continent, where there’s such a regional divide. I think we could find solace in such a relationship and that our Pacific Northwesterners could learn about liberals in the South. I think our pastors would love and respect one another.  I’m working on that, but for now if you’re on the left coast and visit Raleigh, I’d recommend a visit to Baptist church, and if you're on at Pullen, (or anywhere else), I invite you to our little Methodist church with a big heart.

On our visit, the minister, Nancy Petty, preached an intelligent, heartfelt, and challenging sermon about one of the Bible’s most disturbing stories, Genesis 21:8-21. This is the story where aging Sarah directs her husband Abraham to have sex with their younger slave woman, Hagar, so that he’ll have descendants, and then when Sarah has a child of her own, she directs Abraham to send the slave and her child to the desert. (Nancy pointed out the problems of abusive power in this dynamic—thank heavens she didn’t ignore it—but saved that sermon for another day.)

Nancy focused on the scene where Hagar, in the desert and out of water, placed her baby under a bush, a make-shift grave, and wept for him. This scene reminded me of stories women in El Salvador told by peasant women forced to let their crying children die so that they and others with them would not be detected and might escape violence. Though Ishmael lives in the Biblical story, I know that many children in this situation did not, and I know the mothers will grieve for a lifetime. I cannot hear this as a happy story in which God provides for those who mourn and was glad that Nancy didn’t take the easy way out, didn’t suggest that if we just feel the pain deeply enough, God will make everything all right.

Nancy focused on this passage in the story:  “and as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy.” Nancy pointed out the oddness of these lines, that God heard Hagar weeping and heard the boy’s voice. This, she argued, teaches us to pay attention to another’s suffering, and she told stories of paying attention this week to homeless women she passes on her way into the church each morning. In this story, she said, she is called to notice others’ pain. She said, “I must always remain suspicious of my serenity in a world that’s suffering.”

Ann said she wished she’d heard this sermon before she tried to teach this story in Sunday school a couple of years ago. I remember how frustrated she was at the time: “How do you talk with kids about this story?” she’d ranted. “I just skipped some of the hardest parts and rushed through the rest until we got to a game that was in the curriculum.”

To be honest, I haven’t done Nancy’s sermon justice. When the sermon is posted on the church’s website, I recommend you read it yourself. I so appreciated not only her willingness to challenge traditional, pat interpretations of the scripture, but also her close attention to language. Just as she paid close attention to Biblical language, I paid close attention to her language. She made linguistic choices that interested me and that I feel sure weren’t accidental. For example, when she recounted Biblical dialogue and action, she used present tense, the tense commonly used when we talk about literature, rather than past tense, which we use in journalism and history. This choice revealed that she thinks of the Bible’s truth as literary rather than historically factual, as Biblical literalists do. (Don’t get me wrong: I know, love and respect some Biblical literalists. I just don’t think that way.)

Also, when Nancy talked of paying attention to pain in the world, she said, “I tried to not look away.” Now, split infinitives (placing an adverb between “to” and the verb in an infinitive), drives my English-grammarian self nuts, but I trust that Nancy knew what she was doing. The opposite of looking away in this case is an intentional not looking away. This, then, is what she says we are called to do, to not look away.

I’ll try, also, to not look away, and if y’all wont to, come on up this a way, too. And if you have prejudices about the South’s stupidity and bigotry, go to Raleigh, NC, and visit Pullen Memorial Baptist Church. They’ll give you a lot to think about. 

Grandma and Grandpa

Grandma and Grandpa are three-foot, apple-faced dolls who hold hands and look vacantly towards the middle of our living room. They came to live with us in 2004 after an auction at a high school where Ann was consulting. I had come to the auction late, working long hours at my own school, and went through the silent auction by myself. I was the only person who bid on them: $27. Heck, I thought, the bench they’re sitting on was worth that much.  What luck!

Grandma and Grandpa looked a lot like older people I’d met in the small town of Spring Hope where my dad grew up in Eastern North Carolina: Grandma’s white hair is pulled back in a bun. She’s not smiling. Her face is somewhat wrinkled, but not overwhelmingly so, and her blue eyes look intelligent (even if she is in this moment staring vacantly: I’m guessing Grandpa was telling a long story). Grandpa’s hair is white and thinning, and he is smiling (pleased with his story, I’m guessing). Both used to have glasses, but when my nieces Lucie and Gretchen were in town for our wedding eight years ago, they tried them on and broke them. Since then, G and G have been without glasses, but they’re still holding hands unless our friend Ellen has put them in compromising positions. (I never saw that in Spring Hope!)

Spring Hope was once voted most like Mayberry, Andy Griffith’s small town. It has a couple of stoplights and several churches. The cemetery is across the railroad tracks from where Von’s Beauty shop (also her house) was, where my Grandmother got her hair done. The town’s best restaurant is The Grill, where I would get a North Carolina barbecue sandwich (no coleslaw) and fries with a real chocolate milkshake instead of the sweet tea everyone else was having. The country folk lived on farms, mostly tobacco, like the ones where my grandparents grew up: a detached kitchen (in case of fire), a gazebo (for curing pig meat), and a giant bubble in the green linoleum floor (where Uncle Bill had installed an electric heater when they were invented.) Dad grew up in town.

My favorite Spring Hope story gives me a sense of the people who grew up with my dad: When his teenage friends wanted to look wealthy one hot August day in 1956, they drove a convertible to Chapel Hill, the nearby college town, with the top and windows up so that pretty college girls would think they had air-conditioning. (In my day in the state capitol, convertibles were cooler than air-conditioning, but this was their day, and this was Spring Hope.)

I never came out to any of my grandparents. My Granddaddy Edwards died when I was three and my Granddaddy Matthews died when I was 23, and I didn’t come out to myself until I was 30, so I never came out to them. Still, I didn’t come out to either of my grandmothers who were 88 and 78 when I came out. My parents’ greatest fear, I believed, was that my grandmothers would find out I was a lesbian, and only the good Lord knows what would have happened. Therefore, when I mailed coming out letters to my whole family, I did not send my grandmothers the letter that I wrote everyone else. Both grandmothers, however, let me know in Southern code that they knew my secret and that they loved me.

When Dad, Ann and I visited my Dad’s mother in Spring Hope, he and I left the room to dish up ice cream for everyone. Ann stayed in the spare living room with grandmother, who sat in her red faux-velvet chair near the window where she could see the pecan tree and yell at the squirrels in the bird feeder. (The squirrels were not faux.)

As soon as we left, Grandmother said to Ann, “Are you the one who lives with Mary?”

Ann said, “Yes.”

Grandmother said, “I thought so,” and that was that. Grandmother was a woman as frugal with words as with money.

(When Grandmother was in her early nineties, she told my father that her dryer was on the blink. He said, “You should get a new one. You have the money….What are you saving your money for?”

(Grandmother’s blue eyes twinkled and her dentures grinned when she replied, “My old age.” I imagine my silent Grandma doll would respond the same way if she came to life.)

I imagine my Grandpa doll might have been a Yankee visiting Grandmother Matthews and family in the state’s Queen City. Though I don’t know if the Matthews family ever hosted a Yankee, I feel sure that they would have been Southern-friendly, asking about his family and life up North. They would have wanted to know about his kinfolk. What did he think of Sherman’s march through Georgia? Was he Southern Baptist, they would have asked, and if not they would have wanted to know about his religion. If he’d shown up without being expected, Grandmother would have pulled a Thanksgiving spread from her two refrigerators. In the summer, Granddaddy would have brought in some fresh “maters” from the garden, and there would have been a chocolate cake to top it off. “No,” was not an option. Not even, “No, thank you, ma’am.”

I didn’t come out to this grandmother either.

My partner Ann met this grandmother when Ann and I visited my mother’s family in Charlotte. Aunt Mary Ann had everyone over for Sunday dinner, the main meal in the middle of the day, after church. (It's not a meal with this family unless there are at least 15 people at the table, so aunts and uncles, cousins and second cousins and Grandmom came to the table with Ann and me.)

Grandmom took a seat in the middle of the long table, seating Ann to her right and me to her left. Auntie Susan said, “Pass the potato salad,” and Cousin Lori said to her son, “Would you like some gravy with your fried chicken?” We focused on the food. Then everyone was talking at once.

Aunt Mary Ann told me about my Great Uncle Bubba. “He looked just like Clark Gable. I’ll tell you. We’d walk down the road together and cars would stop to look. Once someone got out to get his autograph. I’ll tell you. Did I tell you that the cat next door had kittens? They’re so cute. I’m keeping one that’s completely white. Her name is Snowball, and she’s so cute.”

Uncle Tommy heard her desultory story and said, “Dear, the train has left the track.” (I admired the sweetness of his observation: both have family histories of Alzheimer’s, and they’re helping one another notice when they lose track of a conversation.)

In the midst of this chaotic conversation, Grandmom turned to Ann and said, 

"Who does the laundry?"

Ann responded, "We both do."

My grandmom said, "Oh! That's good."

Then she turned to me: "Who does the cooking?"

I said, "We both do."

Grandmom again exclaimed, "Oh, that's good!" before going on to the next chore of her life. Grandmom, like God in Genesis, looked at my world and called it good.

These dolls remind me of my family and our stories. They have been a grounding tie to my past in these years when so much has changed after my brain tumors, and I have sometimes felt like I’m dangling in this world, not entirely tied down. Now, however, I’m ready to move on.

In July, Ann and I will welcome our puppy Dosey into our family, and I don’t see Grandma and Grandpa being a delight for Dosey like they are for me, so we have put them up for adoption, and before Dosey comes, Grandma and Grandpa will go to live with my friends Susan and Rod. (They weren’t home today, but Susan said we could leave on the front porch. By themselves?! With squirrels and bees and all manner folk around? No way!)

I’ll miss Grandma and Grandpa in our home.  I’ll miss the way that older women go directly up to Grandma and say, “Hey girl. How you?” (or in the case of Sister Josefina from rural El Salvador, “Hola Senora. Como esta?”)

This feels like a marker in my new life, a letting go of the old dolls and an embrace of  a new puppy.