She was quiet again before offering her insights. “You are like a trapeze artist. You have to let go of one swing in order to grab the next one. There is that moment of being airborne in between when you are holding on to nothing, and trusting that the other swing will come toward you. That ‘in between’ is where you are now, grasping for air.”
I listened intently, watching and wondering how she was able, session after session, to deliver her questions and advice with such kindness. Was she this caring with all of her clients? She had revealed that her own grief led her to this kind of work, but she would never cross the professional therapist’s line and discuss her experience.
I took her comment well, though it was not a stretch, because I knew she was right. Her assessment actually felt like a compliment, considering the day before someone told me I was like the Tasmanian Devil and that even when I stopped my tornado twirl the angry grimace on my face remained.
She continued, “You are very open and don’t hide things. You are impulsive but you have wisdom that overrides your impulsiveness. You make good decisions—when you listen to your own voice inside.”
I grabbed a fresh handful of tissues and, sitting there on her corduroy couch, wiped my eyes and blew my nose as she talked.
For the grand finale of her dissertation, she said, “You are still vulnerable, but also very brave. It was an honor having you as a client.”
I was really sobbing by that point.
I blew my nose once more and then thanked Susan for her brilliance, for the months of wise counsel and for keeping my life from derailing completely. We exchanged a long, tear-filled hug. Her body was soft, vanilla-scented and enveloped me with comfort. I was wrong when I said she was like a slice of warm apple pie. She was a whole apple pie made with extra apples, butter and sugar.
That was the end of grief counseling. I was on my own from here.
As part of my farewell tour, I drove up to Seattle to spend a weekend with my brother and his family. One last drive north on this part of I-5, I maneuvered my MINI through the dark alley of tall pines lining the heavily traveled north-south corridor—in the blinding rain. Trucks sprayed my windshield with sheets of water so heavy my wipers couldn’t clear my view fast enough. Equally frightening, I felt my tires lose contact with the pavement as they hydroplaned on the flooded highway surface. The over abundance of moisture was one thing I would not miss when I moved.
I arrived in time for my niece’s dance recital, held in the auditorium of the high school across from my brother’s house. I pulled up in front of Patrick’s house and got the usual greeting from Zach and Ben, who in spite of the rain were playing baseball outdoors without coats. I guess you had to grow up in this climate to be immune to its bone-chilling dampness. Seeing them with the ball and leather mitts reminded me of when Marcus played his first—and only—game of baseball in this yard, with these kids. Zach pitched the ball and on his very first swing of his life Marcus connected the bat with the ball. He hit it hard, but not quite straight, so it hit an upstairs window of the house. Nothing broke, but I couldn’t set foot in the yard without the scene replaying itself each time.
Inside, Patrick was in the kitchen, drinking a glass of wine. “Hey, Beth, glad you made it in time. We’re about to leave for the recital.”
I felt my body relax as I looked him up and down. I hadn’t realized how tense I was, how I had been bracing myself to see the face of death again. What I saw was the brother I used to know, the one with hair. His eyebrows had grown back, as well as the hair on his arms and some fuzz on the sides of his head. “Oh, you look great!” I couldn’t help but exclaim. “Any updates from your oncologist?”
“Thanks. Yeah, I got a clean bill of health, an ‘all clear.’”
“Too bad when your hair grew back it didn’t fill in the baldness.” I had to tease him. The men in our family all went bald in their twenties and they were always making jokes to each other about it. I was grateful he was better. And that I could still poke fun at him.
We piled into his SUV with my sister-in-law, Vickie, and the four kids for the one-block drive to the school.
The last time I had been to my niece’s dance recital was five years earlier, her very first performance when she was four, when she still had baby fat on her little body. At nine, she had become long, lanky and muscular, a graceful athlete with big brown eyes and excellent coordination. Moving in unison with her fellow dancers across the stage, leaping, twirling, bending, she was full of strength, beauty and confidence—and some fine dance moves. Given her position in the front of the ensemble, she was also a leader. And I was an aunt full of pride.
When the youngest dancers came on stage for their turn, I remembered watching Eleni in her first recital, a gasp-inducing pageant of cuteness. I could still hear the collective “Awww” from the audience when the baby ballerinas came on stage.
I remembered my own dance recitals from my own childhood. My sister and I spent our entire elementary school years in ballet, tap, jazz and gymnastics classes. Over time we collected trunks filled with tutus, leotards and sequin-and feather-covered costumes, which we used for subsequent backyard talent shows, well-organized events that included choreographed song and dance (thanks to my sister), and profit-earning ticket sales to the neighborhood kids. I marveled now at our pre-Nintendo-era creativity and industriousness, underscoring the advantage of growing up in a place (Iowa) and time (the Sixties) when TV didn’t air twenty-four hours a day.
But here, in this Seattle suburb, forty-four years after my own first dance recital, I studied this new crop of wide-eyed four-year-olds. I observed their innocent faces, watching them take in the enormity of their on-stage debuts. This experience was their first time in front of a big audience, first time wearing makeup and princesslike layers of satin and tulle, first time hearing the seductive sound of applause.
My sister remembers her first time on a stage like this. She told me that the feeling was so powerful, so addictive, it formed her entire future. She knew at that precise moment, hearing all that clapping—just for her—at the age of four, she was going to be an actress. And that’s what she did, she became an actress, and a successful one at that.
I sat there and wondered what all these little girls were thinking during their moment in the spotlight. Were they so smitten by this glorious attention that they were going to spend their lives seeking to recreate this stage-loving feeling? What would they grow up to be? Would some of them prove to be such talented dancers they end up in the New York City Ballet? Or would some go the other direction, maybe become strippers? Would they become doctors? CEOs? Pastry chefs? Pie bakers? Would they win scholarships to Harvard? Would they get into drugs and drop out of high school? Would they have children? Would they get cancer? Have their hearts broken? Would they become freelance writers who marry sexy, smart German men, work really hard at the marriage, threaten divorce only to lose their husbands to ruptured aortas and become emotionally debilitated grieving widows? Did they have any idea of what life held for them? To look at their beautiful cherubic faces, it was clear. No. They had no clue. Lucky them. Lucky, lucky them.
But it wasn’t my musing and memories that stood out. It was one specific moment, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of thing. My niece had spotted me sitting in the second row, next to her dad, and flashed me the biggest, most magnificent smile that said “Look at me, Aunt Beth. Isn’t this cool? I’m so glad you’re here.”
Glad I’m here? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. That moment, that smile, made me forget about everything else—even if just for a few blissful minutes.
As the moving boxes began to stack up in my tree house, so did my anxiety about leaving. The more anxious I became, the more I mulled over Susan’s parting comments.
She was wrong. I was not a trapeze artist in a midair leap. I was not in that free-floating, faith-challenging, empty air space. I wasn’t flying; I hadn’t let go of the first swing yet. My fingers were still clutc
hing the bar in a white-knuckle grip, afraid to release, afraid of falling into the abyss (the one I had spent the year living in and had barely begun to climb out of), afraid of the unknown. The longer I sat staring at the stacks of boxes—not to mention, the piles of clothes, dishes and other belongings that hadn’t found their way into boxes yet—the tighter I was clinging to the first swing.
I was clinging to the security of my nest. Moving was stressful enough under the best of circumstances, but to be running away from your self with no future in mind? I was clinging to the familiarity of the city (St. Honore Boulangerie where Marcus and I used to go, the ease of driving on Portland’s uncrowded freeways). I was clinging to my friends, like Alison, Joerg and Katrin, and many others. The list was long with amazing, kind, loving people who propped me up during my darkest months. They were people I had hiked with, baked pies with, walked the dogs with, gotten drunk with, gone to movies with, cried with, spent holidays with.
I was clinging to the trees—literally—in the forest behind my house, hugging them all, channeling energy from their roots to keep me from blowing off into the atmosphere with the next breeze. I did the hugging thing only when I was sure no one would see me, though the moss and bark that stuck to my hair and jacket afterward might have been telltale signs that I had been communing a little more closely with nature than the average Forest Park hiker.
I was clinging even harder now that I planted a tree in this forest for Marcus. On his birthday, July 2, I planted a baby redwood sapling at the edge of a meadow where Marcus had spent many hours throwing a stick for Jack to fetch. It was a memorial he would have appreciated more than a grave headstone or a park bench with a plaque.
And I was clinging to Marcus. What would happen when I left the place that reminded me most of him? Would my memory fade? Would I forget him? I didn’t want to forget him. I was terrified of forgetting him, worried that I was leaving him behind. What would happen to my connection to him when I severed the ties to the places that kept my feelings for him alive? For example, what would happen when I no longer drove past the hospital where he was taken in the ambulance and pronounced dead?
Exactly. I got it. It was time to leave. But for the first time in my free-spirited, nomadic, restless life, I was truly afraid of moving forward.
I needed to let go of the swing. Even skydiving had been easier than this. But then, the one time I went was a tandem jump and the instructor had pushed me out the door of the airplane. Pushed me. Once I was airborne, I had no choice. I couldn’t climb back into the plane. I was already in a ten-thousand-foot free fall and the launch pad had already flown away. Surrender was my only option—surrender and enjoy the ride. I did enjoy it, from the initial high-speed descent, so fast my cheeks flapped wildly from the force of air, to the screeching speed reduction when the chute opened—yes, it opened—and we drifted in slow motion like a feather until we touched the ground.
A good shove out the Portland door was what I needed.
I had already committed to letting go, to being open to the few seconds of free fall without another swing to grab, because I knew where I was headed for at least the next four weeks—Iowa.
And I was going to be busy. Since my initial contact with her, Food Superintendent, Arlette Hollister, had assigned me to every pie competition at the Iowa State Fair, all seventeen categories. And she had volunteered me to give a pie-baking demonstration on live TV, to promote the fair.
I packed up Marcus’s shrine, most of it for storage, except for a large envelope stuffed with photos to take with me. I only had the MINI, which had about 1/100th of the space of the RV. I sealed his red plaid robe in a plastic bag and laid it in one of the boxes. Same with his orange-and-yellow plaid duvet cover. Almost a year later, I was still trying to preserve his scent.
The last thing to pack was the contents of my refrigerator. I had a blueberry pie in the freezer. I knew just who would be the recipient: Susan, of course. What better way to tell her how deeply, eternally grateful I was than with a homemade, handmade pie? Gratitude in a crust.
Within the first six blocks of the two-thousand-mile trip, any trepidation I’d had was replaced with excitement, a sense of possibility, a sudden surge of freedom. Extracting myself from Portland really was like skydiving—first the anticipation, the terror, the leap of faith, the surrender, all followed by a peaceful calm—and then, once the adrenaline wore off, the exhaustion. I was heading toward Iowa and pie, a lot of pie, so I already had a guaranteed soft, safe landing.
The next four days and thirty hours of actual driving time were a blur. I didn’t have the RV, but I had my tent. After an overnight in L.A. to see Melissa and my parents, I spent my first night on the road camping on the Arizona/Nevada border, at a campsite just far enough off the freeway to be quiet, and just isolated enough to be a little scary. It didn’t help that Team Terrier acted as sentry, performing all-night guard duty. But the morning made up for the sleepless night when sunbeams crept inside the tent, nudging me to get up. I took the dogs on a hike among the red rocks and sagebrush, breathing in the delicious dryness, my eyes straining to take in the width of the desert canyons and the sweeping views. I was no longer trapped in the darkness of the rain forest, no longer confined to the Grieving Sanctuary—the cloud of grief was lifting just by making a geographical shift.
The second night I stayed in Boulder, Colorado, at the home of an old friend, Patti, an athletic-clothing designer. She was out of town, so I had her bungalow on the quaint, tree-lined street all to myself. Marcus had stayed here when he drove the RV from Portland to Mexico, but this was my first time in her house. I looked around her living room, taking it all in. Marcus had sat on her brown suede couch, he had walked on her orange-and-green geometric-patterned rug, he had used her shower, he had pulled this same white shower curtain shut to keep the water from splashing out. I had forgotten that he had been here, and now I couldn’t walk around her house without imagining him in it. I was obsessed.
Patti was another in the seemingly endless list of people who had experienced loss. She had given birth to triplets, who were all off to a good healthy start, and then, without warning, one of them went to sleep and never woke up. The grief cost her her marriage. But a peek inside the boys’ room, seeing their bunk beds piled high with stuffed animals, and toy soldiers and SpongeBob figures littering the floor proved her two five-year-olds were thriving. And from the assortment of photos covering the refrigerator, in which Patti’s beaming, bright white smile stood out, she was now thriving, too. Resilience was possible. She was living proof. I was sorry not to see her and her radiant smile in person.
Ancient glaciers had served as nature’s rolling pins and done an expert job, because from Boulder onward, the landscape flattened out like rolled pie dough. The expansiveness of the farmland—open, free, unobstructed—allowed the mind and the soul to open up along with it. The hues of corn-husk green, prairie-brown and periwinkle-blue were straight out of a Grant Wood painting. I felt my body relax.
The road signs indicated Iowa was getting closer. Council Bluffs: 80 miles, then 30 miles, then 4 miles, and the next thing I knew I was driving across the Missouri River. An overhead sign halfway across the bridge read “Iowa: A Place to Grow.” It did not say “A Place to Grieve.” A lump in my throat grew as I landed on the other side of the river. Not that the Nebraska side looked any different than the Iowa side one hundred yards behind me, but it was Iowa. It was home. I could almost feel little stubs protruding from the soles of my feet. Roots. I doubt my mom felt this way when she crossed the state line with me in her womb forty-eight years earlier. She had wanted to stay in California, in that ocean-front apartment. But this was not my mother’s life and I was not my mother.
There was nothing between Council Bluffs and Des Moines, except for farms—red barns, white wooden farmhouses and fields divided by gravel roads exactly one mile apart. There was so much space here, yet every inch of it was filled with life. Each acre of black topsoil hosted tilled
rows of plants, nourishment, crops of corn and soybeans, all growing, ripening, flourishing. Each barn was home to stalls of animals, sows and cows, all fattening up, preparing to feed a nation.
It was everything I had remembered, and then some. I had forgotten about the smell. Not just the earthy scent of fertility, but the strong stench of the pigs. You knew when you were passing a pig farm without seeing it; the odor was so intense you could almost taste the manure in your mouth. At the first whiff, I rolled down the windows to introduce Team Terrier to my home state. As they got hit with their first blast of farm air, their noses twitched, they both tilted their heads back, and seeing as they view manure of any kind as a delicacy, they made loud hungry, sniffing noises.
“Hey, guys,” I told them with a laugh. “Welcome to Iowa.” We were still a few hours from Des Moines but I was already feeling the Hawkeye state wrap its arms around me in a hug. And I hadn’t even had a piece of pie yet.
CHAPTER
19
Meg Courter and her husband and two teenage kids live in the manicured suburb of West Des Moines. Meg and I were friends and fellow cheerleaders in high school and, with the exception of our twenty-fifth class reunion five years earlier (which was the last time I had been in Iowa), I had barely seen her since we graduated. But Meg embodied Iowa hospitality and when she heard I was coming for the state fair, she insisted I stay with her.
Making Piece Page 20