An Inheritance of Ephemera

SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

William Kent Krueger: "It seems to me that when you look back at a life, yours or another's, what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow. So much is lost. What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses. Our histories . . . are structures built of toothpicks. So what I recall of that last summer . . . is a construct both of what stands in the light and what I imagine in the dark where I cannot see" (from the novel Ordinary Grace, 302)

Over the summer, I have been sorting through half a dozen dusty old boxes of memorabilia saved by my mother and her mother: some clothes and dishes, notebooks and papers from my mom's childhood and college days, plus hundreds of family photos, some from over a hundred years ago. Against the guffawing of the naysayers, I dragged this stuff out of storage after my mother died and hauled it straight up here from Kansas into my dining room. It is a heartwarming but also heartbreaking task, so much sadness. It’s like my dining table has become a sea of ancient grief and worry and conflict; world wars, sickness, accidents, disappointments -- with some greeting cards on the side, an inheritance of ephemera.

While I sift through the "hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses" -- obituaries, letters from elderly cousins, long-lost railway tickets, Gerry sits in front of his screen, traveling the "path that weaves into and out of deep shadow" -- census reports, military records, forgotten addresses suddenly recalled to life. Surprising new names and old faces continue to appear at every level and branch of the family tree, as we follow the treasure hunt / obstacle course of genealogy.
[See also Wait But Why.]

I was intrigued to come across the following handwritten "note to self" in a stack of my mother's papers:

"A number of times I've thought my life has been an interesting, sometime almost unbelievable one, but then I suppose everyone thinks that at one time or another. At the times I've had those thoughts, I've wondered if I could get the myriad vignettes organized in a written form that would be of interest for my children and grandchildren. Yes, I would like for them to know more about the 'real' me than only being in their lives has been.

"Where do I start? To write a chronological account doesn't appeal to me -- I've catalogued my memories in so many ways -- chronologically, yes; by songs and music; by trips; by people in my life; and by my pets -- to name a few."

Sadly, I have discovered no memoir beyond this introductory sketch. If she carried her ideas any further, I have not come across them anywhere -- in a notebook, on a computer disc, gone forever?

What I have instead is the timely suggestion from my friend Jonnie to read A Fraction of Darkness, a book in which poet Linda Pastan (1932) deals with the loss of her parents. For the time being, I will have to stretch these poems out wide enough to cover whatever else it was that my mother intended to say but left unsaid:

Last Will
Children,
when I am ash
read by the light of the fire
that consumes me
this document
whose subject is love.

I want to leave you everything: my life
divided into so many parts
there are enough to go around; the world
from this window: weather and a tree
which bequeaths
all of its leaves each year.

Today the lawyer plans
for your descendants,
telling a story
of generations
that seems to come true
even as he speaks.

My books will fill
your children’s shelves,
my small enameled spoons
invade their drawers. It is
the only way I know, so far,
to haunt.

Let me be a guest
at my own funeral
and at the reading of my will.
You I’ll reward first
for the moments of your births,
those three brief instants
when I understood my life.

But wisdom bends as light does
around the objects it touches.
The only legacy you need was left
by accident long ago:
a secret in the genes.
The rest is small change. ~ Linda Pastan

Shadows
Each night this house sinks into the shadows
under its weight of love and fear and pity.
Each morning it floats up again so lightly
it seems attached to sky instead of earth,
a place where we will always go on living
and there will be no dead to leave behind.

But when we think of whom we've left behind
already in the ever-hungry shadows,
even in the morning hum of living
we pause a minute and are filled with pity
for the lovely children of earth
who run up and down the stairs so lightly

and who weave their careless songs so lightly
through the hedges which they play behind
that the fruits and flowers of the earth
rise up on their stems above the shadows.
Perhaps even an apple can feel pity;
perhaps the lilac wants to go on living.

In this house where we have all been living
we bind the family together lightly
with knots made equally of love and pity
and the knowledge that we'll leave behind
only partial memories, scraps of shadows,
trinkets of our years upon the earth. . . .

Always save your pity for the living
who walk the eggshell crust of earth so lightly,
in front of them, behind them, only shadows. ~ Linda Pastan

******************

" . . . the fruits and flowers of the earth
rise up on their stems above the shadows. . . ."

"All August is condensed in this one day!"
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, August 28th

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