If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name

by Heather Lende

  A few months earlier I had decided to learn how to really pray, the old-fashioned way, the way Christians have for over six hundred years—with a rosary, the string of prayers you can hold in your hand. I know rosaries are usually for Catholics, and I’m Episcopal, but I figure prayer is prayer. And the rosary prayers are directed to the Virgin Mary. I liked that. It would be easier to talk to a woman, a mother like me, than to God himself.

  My rosary is made of blue glass, ivory, and light wooden beads with a silver crucifix hanging down the front. It looks like a necklace except I can’t fit it over my head. Each bead and some spaces in between have a prayer to match them. A pamphlet came with the rosary explaining which bead is for what. It has the prayers printed on another page, and on the back are the Bible readings that tell the story of Jesus. After four or five tries, I thought I had the sequence of rosary prayers—the Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and Glory Bes—more or less figured out. But when I got to the bead for each new Bible verse—or aptly named mystery—I was lost. I had to open my eyes, flip over the pamphlet, and find it. It broke the spell. Maybe that’s why the rosary didn’t work so well on the flight to Juneau; maybe I wasn’t doing it right. Sure, I felt better for saying my prayers, even if it was technically from shock, and yes, we didn’t crash. But it didn’t feel like God was holding me safely in the palm of his hand. Instead it felt as if I was hanging on to the hem of his robe while he flew through the air like Superman. I want to feel peaceful and secure during prayer. I want a reassuring answer. When I said the rosary on the plane, it was more like talking to myself than to Mary or God.

  I told this to Kathy, who is Catholic, and she invited me to say a rosary with her small prayer group, so I could see how it was done. I needed help, and I had a lot of questions.

  The church door was open and Kathy, Marie, and Dick, the banker, sat on two pews. Before I could ask them how to use the rosary properly, they started. The empty church was dim and plain and felt holy. I was nervous at first, but after the first few go-rounds, I fell into a rhythm of automatic responses with them. I did know how to pray. When Marie read the “mysteries,” I understood them. I quit worrying if I was doing it right. With each repetition of the Hail Mary prayer, my cares receded.

  When we were done, Dick read from a Thomas Merton essay about how God was in each one of us like a tiny, diamond-bright light. Prayer may not be a conversation with God at all. Maybe it is listening to that light inside you. Then Dick said we should close our eyes, breathe deeply, and say, “What is the question?” over and over again, blocking out all other thoughts. I had come looking for answers, and now he was telling me that prayer is a question? Still, when they invited me to join them the next week, I said I would.

  MARY PRICE COULD have used prayer to ask for real things over the years—with eleven children and Warren long-shoring and her working as a nurse at the clinic, I’m sure they would have appreciated the extra help. Maybe she did ask. But I have a feeling she got more answers from her daily rituals of Mass, lighting candles, and saying the rosary.

  Watching Mary now, running her bustling household while making funeral arrangements for her husband, serving plates of food, answering the phone, and laughing with one of her grandchildren, I am amazed at her strength. Warren is not the first loss for Mary. She has buried three sons. I’m not sure I could get up in the morning if that happened to me. Her boys were great kids. Steve died in a car wreck when he was still a teenager. Mary hoped Joe would be a priest, until he died diving for sea cucumbers a year out of high school. Warren’s oldest son, Cookie, who Mary had raised as her own, died just this winter of a heart attack in middle age. Mary has practiced her faith so regularly, for so long, through so much tragedy, that she really believes Father Jim when he says of her sons, “God called them home early.”

  After Father Jim helped himself to coffee, he told everyone in Mary’s kitchen how Warren had said he was looking forward to seeing “his boys again.” The little house in the mostly Native neighborhood was packed with Mary and Warren’s children and grandchildren, cousins, nieces, and nephews. I had brought a box of doughnuts from the bakery, and I realized with a quick head count that I should have gotten two. I found a chair and moved some paper plates and took my notebook out to get down the details of Warren’s life. He was a Tlingit, a Raven from the Frog House. He joined the navy before graduating high school and became a signalman in the South Pacific in World War II and later a Seabee in the Korean conflict. He was proud of his service, and his children’s. His daughter was in the army for seven years, and his son Russell is currently a captain.

  It wasn’t very hard to talk with the Price family about Warren, partly because of his age and illness and, I think, partly because they all believed Warren was in heaven now. Before I left, Mary invited me to a public rosary for Warren at the Catholic church that evening. I don’t think she knew I had been saying mine, and I know she knew I wasn’t Catholic. I wanted to go, I was curious what praying the rosary with so many people would feel like, but I just couldn’t. I told her I was supposed to be at a school board meeting.

  Then Warren’s cousin, an older Native woman with long gray hair and bifocals, who hadn’t said a word since I’d arrived, spoke in a light Tlingit accent. “Warren is only going to be dead once. There will be lots more meetings,” she said. “You be there.” She didn’t look at me, and she said it the way they call bingo numbers at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall, emphasizing each word. Mary caught my eyes and nodded her agreement. Father Jim said in his loud, South Boston way, “Well, Heather, looks like we’ll see you there. Seven o’clock.”

  This time the Sacred Heart Catholic Church was full and the lights were on. Dick was up front playing the guitar and singing with Sister Jill from Juneau. I saw Kathy and Marie in the crowd, as well as all the Price kids and family friends and relatives. Father Jim passed out brightly colored plastic rosaries and the pamphlets of prayers that come with them to the people who didn’t have their own. Sister Jill began by explaining what the rosary was.

  “It is more of a meditation,” she said. “The repeated Hail Mary prayers are like a mantra. The words are not as important as the thoughts attached to them. Tonight we will pray for Warren’s soul and for his family—we will think of them while we say the prayers to Mary. At each large bead I will share a mystery in the life of Christ; for this service we will use the joyous mysteries, the ones that focus on the Resurrection, to remind us that Christ died and rose again so that we—like him—and Warren will, too.” And then we began, a hundred and fifty voices praying out loud in almost unison. I closed my eyes and jumped in with the rest. The words became one kind of sound and one kind of thought. They were like the wind off the water. About a half hour later, we were done, and everyone sat quietly, not sure if it was okay to leave.

  Then Russell, the army captain in his uniform, stood up and thanked us for coming, on behalf of his mother and the rest of the family, and he echoed something he’d told me earlier at his mother’s kitchen table. “My father, like me, was in the service, and like me, he saw most of the world. He always told us that he came back here because Haines—all these mountains, rivers, and lakes—is the most beautiful place he’d ever seen. And he’d seen it all. I have, too, and I believe that.”

  The Catholic church has very high windows that let in light, and stained glass on either side of the altar. We couldn’t see out, but we knew what he was talking about. On the other side of the double doors, beyond the muddy parking lot, the boarded-up former grocery store, the Captain’s Choice Motel, and the faded, flat-roofed, two-story buildings on Main Street, beyond the dirty piles of rotting April snow, the barking dog, the teenager jumping the curb on his skateboard, and the mother with a baby in her backpack, beyond the American and Alaskan flags on the pole at the library and the wood smoke rising from the chimneys of the big old homes on Officer’s Row in Fort Seward, beyond the fishing boats in the harbor and the plane carrying the mail to Juneau, beyond all of it,
holding us up and catching us when we fall down were the eternal deep blue sea and the mountains as old as the earth.

  And then Russell said, “Seeing all your faces and hearing your voices together made me realize that the beauty in this community is not the scenery. It is right here, in the people. Thank you.”

  Maybe it was the rosary, or maybe it was magic, or maybe a little of both. All I know is that something big had happened. I left that church feeling light, brand-new, and filled with a whole lot of love.

  And that is a way better answer to prayer than a bathtub.

  DULY NOTED

  Rain at a wedding brings good luck, and judging by the downpour Saturday evening, Kenny Waldo and Linda Smith should have overflowing good fortune the rest of their lives. More than three hundred friends and relatives packed the Sacred Heart Catholic Church for the brief formal service written by Linda. Her words were practical, personal, and at times funny, with references to Chinese proverbs, angels, and all “the great and petty perils of marriage.”

  _____________

  About twenty well-wishers surprised honeymooning newlyweds Janet and Dan Harrington with a late-night serenade of chain saws, fireworks, and song Saturday at the couple’s Lutak home. The group, led by ringleader Bill Darling, “almost caused a heart attack” with the chain saw, Janet said, but she invited them inside to carry on the day’s celebration. The Harringtons were married earlier in the day at the Assembly of God Church.

  _____________

  Amy and Matt Goodman of Detroit, Michigan, spent ten days in Haines visiting their new niece, Madeline Jane Andriesen, and Amy’s sister and brother-in-law, Lisa and Thom Andriesen. Besides playing with the baby, Thom says they did all the “usual things,” including a Chilkat River raft trip and a day in Skagway. “The last night we had whales in front of our place,” Thom said. “That capped it off.”

  _____________

  Dave Long and Pam Hansen are engaged. The local guide proposed to the preschool administrator during a raft trip at the confluence of the Tatshenshini and Alsek Rivers. Nuptials are set for August 28 aboard the Haines-Skagway water taxi, on the water off Seduction Point. The boat’s skipper, Leslie Ross, will officiate.

  _____________

  Mating for Life

  STOLI AND I SKIED out on the river flats on a bright spring day—a day so warm that we didn’t need jackets, hats, or gloves. The ski trail weaves around the clear, fast river channels. At one bend we stopped, hearing the familiar call of the trumpeter swans. They sound like Christian practicing his trumpet. We stood still watching a pair of swans glide across the water like model sailboats in a park. “I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep,” I whispered to Stoli. It’s the first line of a poem by James Flecker. I told Stoli that swans mate for life, just like people. They form pairs—or, as I said to her, they “marry”—when they are young.

  Linnus didn’t marry Steve until after they had built a house together and raised two daughters from her first marriage. The wedding was in their living room, with our friend Joanne officiating. In Alaska, anyone can be made judge for a day just for this purpose. Linnus wore a purple jacket and a black miniskirt. Steve had on a sport coat and tie. Joanne wore a man-tailored beige suit—pants and jacket. A handful of friends each said something from the heart about Steve and Linnus and marriage and love and friendship. Then Joanne said, “So, I guess you’re married.” And they kissed. We toasted them with champagne, ate gourmet appetizers that Debra had made, and then went over to our house for a turkey dinner. Leigh made the cake, and Becky Nash made two snails in wedding clothes for the top.

  Leigh also baked the cake for another reception at our house, on a sadder occasion, following her father-in-law’s memorial service. Leigh called and asked if she could borrow our big Suburban to drive her relatives to Chilkat State Park and sprinkle her father-in-law’s ashes there. I said of course. Leigh’s father-in-law had been living in Sitka when he died, so they had a memorial service there. He’d lived in Haines before that, and Greg, Leigh’s husband, had grown up here. They wanted to scatter his father’s ashes near his favorite place to kayak in the park.

  I asked what they were doing afterward. When Leigh said they didn’t know, she sounded brittle. She was overextended, with her own small children, plus houseguests, on top of planning this second service and her husband’s grief. Greg’s father was a big, booming man, a Methodist minister and an outdoorsman who had strong opinions on everything. Greg is a slightly built, shy artist. He doesn’t go to church. His father’s sudden death may have been harder because of what they hadn’t been for each other. Greg and Leigh are my friends. So I volunteered our house for the reception afterward.

  After putting fresh flowers on the table and dusting off the china cups and saucers my mother gave me when she moved to the country and decided she preferred ceramic Italian dishes, I drove to town and borrowed a thermal coffee pot from Mary Jean at Mountain Market and the arts council’s cut-glass punch bowl from Mimi Gregg.

  “Punch?” said Eliza, who was helping me. She raised her teenage eyebrows.

  “Yes, punch,” I said, a little defensively.

  “Do you even know how to make punch?”

  “Sure, just put some ginger ale and cranberry juice and ice in the bowl. It’ll be fine.”

  It’s easy to miss our driveway, so I told Eliza to tie some balloons to the wild roses next to the road. “Do you really think balloons are appropriate at a time like this?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Eliza thought a minute and said, “Well, at least let’s use blue ones.”

  Everyone found the house, and Leigh liked the balloons. We stood around quietly at first, offering simple condolences—we’re so sorry and he was a good man and the heart attack was such a shock. Then Ted Gregg, in a madras sport coat, white bucks, and straw boater, shuffled in with his cane and announced loudly, “He was too young. I’m eighty-four and still have plenty left.” He said it again: “He was too young, I say, too young.” There was laughter and nods of approval. The widow smiled.

  In the kitchen, Leigh told me that Greg and his brother from South Dakota had had a little trouble getting the lid off their father’s ash canister. She said their aunt Eleanor, who had traveled all the way from Alabama for her younger brother’s funeral, couldn’t slide down the rocks to the cove they’d hoped to use for the ceremony. They hadn’t realized she’d aged. The last time she’d visited Alaska, Greg was still at Haines High. Now he’s a forty-something father of two. “But it was fine really,” Leigh said. “I mean, the ashes fell out okay, we read a poem, the baby cried, and that was pretty much it.”

  It was hardest on Greg’s mother. She and his father had been married fifty years. The preacher was not always easy to live with. But he was her mate for life, and now she was alone. I told Leigh what Budge McRae had said after his wife, Clara, a difficult woman if ever there was one, passed away: “Clara and I’ve been together sixty years,” he said. “It may get a little lonely without her.”

  The party grew louder and more animated. Everyone protested when Leigh started to cut the cake; it was too pretty to eat. I found a camera, and Leigh posed, surrounded by admiring relatives and friends. The flash didn’t go off, so we did it again. A baby crawled under the table. Someone let the dogs in, and Carl’s wagging tail spilled a drink. Leigh talked with Greg’s mother’s friends and passed plates of cake. She helped their little daughter reach a cream puff and steered a pack of boys, including both our sons, outside to play on the beach. I was on my way to the kitchen to make more coffee when I saw Greg leaning against the doorway looking at Leigh with wonder and gratitude.

  LINNUS SAYS NO one should get married until age thirty-five. She says if you marry any earlier than that, somebody has to give up too much. Linnus and I are sitting on my porch, our faces tilted toward the sun. Four trumpeter swans fly out over the river, on their way home to Chilkat Lake for the summer. I don’t agree with Linnus. I tell her tha
t sometimes young couples survive, and argue that Chip and I have been happily married for twenty years and that we were fresh out of college when we said our vows. She rolls her eyes and says, “You guys are like in the first percentile.”

  We both know the apparently happy couple who just split after twenty-eight years of marriage. They seemed a perfect pair. They matched. They looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife. They had a cool house, neat kids, and a good dog. They camped in exotic countries and hiked on local trails. I heard that the wife was the one who wanted a different life, in a warmer place. The children were grown, so she decided her job was done. Linnus heard that it was mutual, that they just decided not to be married anymore. We don’t say more about it. Neither of us really wants to know the details. We are both a little rattled by the bad news on the small-town rumor network.

  After my conversation with Linnus I can’t sleep. Sure I am happy, but perhaps Chip is the one who feels he’s had to sacrifice too much. That’s why, when Chip looks up from the taxes a few days later and grumbles that he doesn’t know where all the money goes, I burst into tears. Suddenly I see the pantry loaded with cans of corn, cereal, and dog food like a weight chained to his ankle. The next morning at breakfast we have an argument about nothing. I feel terrible. He looks confused. There is no time to talk; he’s late for work, and I have to fix school lunches.