Salt Water in My Soul

Two little sailors ready to take on the world

I turned 50 on Long Beach Island. Although I don’t live here anymore, it seems a fitting place to celebrate … in this place where my roots have been laid so deep. I am 50. Why not come “home” and rest awhile?

I’m not supposed to know this, but my family is arranging a party while I sit on this bench by the bay with my journal in hand writing my thoughts and feelings as I’ve been instructed to do. My family has sent me on an Island journey (I’m sure to keep me busy for the day).

I have traveled from merchant to merchant. When I arrive I tell them, “I’m the birthday girl,” and in every shop I receive a little gift along with instructions for my next stop. That’s how I got my journal. It’s been a whirlwind day and now I’m at the bay. Writing.

I love the bay. I prefer its gentle lapping upon the shore to the rough and tumble of the ocean. Most of all I love the smell and sounds of the bay. The smell of the gas and oil mixture boats use for fuel transports me to that time when I was learning to water ski. I remember the fierce tug of the water trying to force me back into the drink, and it succeeded more times than not. But then there was that jubilant day when I held on just long enough to pop out of the water and soar on the skis. At that moment I was queen of the world and I knew I could do anything.

As I sit here watching, listening, and reflecting, I remember learning to swim in the bay. We just walked down the end of Fourth Street in Surf City, waded into the water, and were taught to dunk our heads, hold our breaths under water, float face down, but most glorious of all ... float on our backs with the cool salty water hugging our bodies and the sun kissing our faces. In that moment of reflection I was sure I could feel my mother’s hand holding my head and gently releasing me to float upon the calm water all by myself.

As I sit here watching, listening, and reflecting, I remember walking out on the salt marshes at the end of Fourth Street in Surf City (when my Island roots were being cemented, there were no houses on the make believe peninsula at the end of Fourth Street in Surf City), tying bunker to my string, lowering it in the water, and standing at the ready ... net in hand ... just waiting for a big blue claw to take the bait. When I got bored I ran around exploring the marsh holes and collecting hermit crabs. My mother said I was always coming home with critters and dinner!

As I sit here watching, listening, and reflecting, I remember learning how to row a boat. Off we would go, we sailors, carrying our tiny craft, launching it at the end of Fourth Street in Surf City, heading out for great adventures that were only found on the bay. In reality we weren’t allowed to go far, “just to the Surf City Yacht Club and back,” but that was just far enough for young girls to imagine narrowly escaping pirates, pretend to be almost tossed in a storm, or envision ourselves as worldy sea travelers.

As I sit her watching, listening, and reflecting, the wind is blowing gently through my hair and through my body taking with it all stress, worry, and negativity. In return I receive joy, laughter, calm, comfort, and well-being. Sailboat tethers are slapping against their masts like wind chimes upon my soul. The Gulls are singing happy birthday just for me. I know I’m 50, but just for this moment I’m seven. And just for this moment as I sit watching, listening, and reflecting my soul is restored. And I am home.


     
  

Some Have March Madness - I Have March Memories

In like a lion and out like a lamb. Isn't that what they say about March? I've always had "issues" with March for exactly that reason. One never knows from one day to the next what the weather will bring. Or perhaps I have issues with March because I still remember, as though it was yesterday, a terrible coastal storm that overtook the island we lived on. It was in March of 1962 and I was eight years old.

My father was a volunteer fireman with the local fire company when the storm hit. For reasons beyond my understanding, he felt it was best for all of us to stay on the Island. At the time there were four of us children: my older sister, who was ten, me, and two younger sisters who were one-and-a-half and four months old.

The first day of the storm was a blustry, sunny day, but oddly, the water kept rising higher and higher. My sister and I sat at our picture window and watched things float past our house: picnic tables, boats, garbage cans. We listened to the wind howl and watched as tree branches flew by. That night we lost electricity and heat. The next morning water was coming into the house.

My father and grandfather came to rescue us during low tide, but because the tide never really went down they couldn't get to us. So they waited up the street in a parking lot, in a fire truck. We had to walk up that long block in knee-deep water for my mother, waist-deep for us girls. I was sure we were going to die, and how we made it I don’t know. My mother carried the baby, who was wrapped in blankets. My older sister and I took turns carrying the other baby. I remember carrying my sister on my shoulders and trying to keep her out of the water while at the same time trying not to drown myself. She felt so heavy. I remember how terrifying it was, transferring her back and forth between my older sister and me – terrifying because we were afraid we would drop her and lose her in the water.

My mother’s greatest concern was to get her tiny baby into the fire truck safe and sound. She handed her up to my father, who dropped her. All of a sudden the baby disappeared. We were all in a panic. My grandfather quickly grabbed my sister off my shoulders and put her in the fire truck. My mother was absolutely hysterical as she screamed and sifted through the water. We were all crying and screaming and my father and grandfather were yelling.

And then something hit my leg. I reached down and it was my tiny baby sister. I pulled her up by her ankle and she was sputtering, coughing, and screaming. My father grabbed her, put her in the fire truck, undressed her, and checked her over. Aside from being startled and scared, she was fine. There was an old rag of a towel in the truck and my parents wrapped her up in. I remember being terrified, and I’m sure now that I was in shock. I remember crying. A lot.

I know now that all of this took place in a matter of seconds. But back then, to me, it seemed like hours. When it comes into my mind today, it’s in slow motion, and I don’t remember anything else from the rest of that day except hugging my tiny baby sister ... a lot!

On the third day of the storm we had to stay on the second floor of my grandparents’ house because the water was beginning to seep into their downstairs parlor. Luckily we had plenty of food because my grandparents owned the Island Supermarket, but we had no power and no water. I remember the adults talking about how it was too late even if we wanted to leave because many parts of the Causeway were washed away.

My mother came and went because she was helping my father and the fire company, who were trying to rescue as many people as possible. They didn't succeed in saving everyone and some people died, overcome by a large wave that washed them all out to sea. But at the time, more important to my young mind, my mother came home with a big gash on her leg. She had fallen and had almost been swept away too, but my father managed to grab her and pull her to safety.

I remember the nightmares I had that night (and for many months after) about my mother being swept away by the sea. I remember talk about the possibility of a bad infection setting in to her leg because the water was so dirty and there was no doctor who could come to look at it. I was afraid someone was going to come and “chop her leg off.” I remember her not being able to get warm. She was shivering and shivering. All she kept saying was “The water was so cold. The water was so cold.” And I remember her being very, very angry with my father. I heard them arguing and she told him that he had put his family in danger and she didn’t think she could ever forgive him. (She ever did. They divorced a year later.)

On the fourth day the wind stopped howling and the water receded. The sun came out and it was a spectacular new day. I remember Army helicopters landing in the grade school playground. I can still hear the woosh, woosh, woosh of the blades. We had a bird’s-eye view of all the action since there were no houses between my grandparents’ house and the school at the time.

I remember watching as supplies and Army jeeps were unloaded from helicopters. I remember watching medical personnel get off the helicopters and being told that we would have to get shots. I was terrified of shots! We were the first to get them. All of us girls cried! Maybe the shots were for hepatitis. I’m not really sure. I just remember that it had something to do with the dirty water.

I remember going for a ride with my parents after it was safe for us to go out. So many parts of the Causeway were gone. Sand was everywhere, making some roads impassable. Houses were in pieces on the beaches at the northern end of the Island. Our house was full of sand and jellyfish. We “lost” the heater in the back part of the house (it never did work again).

I don’t remember cleanup efforts and I don’t remember how we all got back to normal. I do remember playing in a big field where a pile of storm rubble was being burned. I saw something sticking out of this smoldering pile of rubble. I reached in and grabbed it. It was a hand-carved statue of St. Francis that stood about four inches high.

The statue belonged to the nuns from a convent on the northern part of the Island. A few nuns came to our house to look at it. They let me keep it because they believed it was “divine intervention” that had caused me to “save” it. I still have it after all these years. To me, it still smells of smoke and salt water. To others I’m sure it does not.

I don’t live on the Island anymore. I don’t even live in New Jersey. But every March, as the weather changes from day to day - sunny one day, torrential rains the next, cold and hot - it’s as though I’m back home again and eight years old. And the memories of the ’62 storm are still alive in me, working their way to the surface. I haven’t really dwelt on them. I haven’t tried to figure them out. I haven’t tried to get anything more from them than what they are ... my memories. Rather, I let them wash over me like gentle waves upon the shore.

Sometimes, though, I find myself asking, “Are my memories true?” Maybe, maybe not. But it’s what I remember. Was I really the one who found my tiny baby sister in the water? Probably not. I was, after all, only a young child. Perhaps it was my mother, or father, my older sister, or even my grandfather who grabbed her. I don’t know. I never will. In all the years past I never asked anyone. All of the adults who were there are now gone. I’ve counted on my own memory and the stories I still hear in my head. Anyway, who is to say that anyone else’s memories are more accurate than mine?

In those three days, at the tender age of eight, I learned about the awesome power of the sea. I never again “hunkered down” for a hurricane. When one was forecast I was the first to hop in the car and get to higher ground because I was one of the lucky ones to survive the March Storm of 1962.

As I think back on those days I realize how strong one can become – how strong I’ve become – because of an experience with a life and death situation. In the years since, I've learned a lot about resiliency. So maybe it's time to let my "issues" with March go. In March of 1962  I learned the March does, indeed, come in like a lion and out like a lamb. It has ever since.

Savannah's Blanket

When my older sister and I were little Mother made most of our clothes. As our family grew and her interests expanded, she didn’t do that anymore. But one thing she always continued was crocheting. Mother had a real love for the craft. All “her girls” learned to make granny squares almost as soon as we could hold a pencil. Mother would sit behind us and help work our hands. I have a left-handed sister and Mother diligently taught her too, sitting across from her, hour after hour, until she could crochet.

Over the years my life took different twists and turns and crocheting certainly wasn’t one of my activities. And I didn’t have any girls. Nevertheless, Mother would always chide me, “It’s important to keep your hands busy.” My reply, “Oh please Mother, I have more important things to do.”

But then Mother got sick and crocheting became the focus of her life, and of everyone who came to visit her. Beside her “comfortable chair” sat a huge basket of wool and more crochet hooks than we could count. She had “masculine” colors and “feminine” colors to cover all her bases. “Sit down,” she would say, “let me teach you how to crochet.” This wasn’t really a request and virtually everyone who walked through her door had a crochet project going.

Of course if you really knew Mother, you would know that this was her way of not having people sitting there feeling sorry for her. It was also her way of not talking about being sick. “How are you feeling?” someone would ask, and she’d reply, “Oh I really have nothing to complain about. Now how is that crochet project coming along? Let me see it,” and she’d offer her expertise on the project. Aside from myriad granny squares I made while caring for her, I actually made a pair of baby booties, a monumental accomplishment for me.

Unbelievably, the day came when Mother couldn’t crochet anymore. She wanted to make an afghan for her great granddaughter Savannah, but she just couldn’t do it. First she read and then re-read the pattern, complaining that she just couldn’t get it in her head. Day after day, she’d sit there with that darn pattern trying to understand it. Not being experienced at this craft, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of the pattern either.

Mother’s frustration was heartbreaking so I mentioned it to our hospice social worker. She told me about the many people who volunteer to come and sit with hospice patients. She asked Mother if she would like someone to help her with the afghan. Mother said that it would be nice to just have someone help her get started. Our social worker, then set out find someone who knew how to crochet.

Soon after, Joanne came into our lives. She quickly saw that not only was Mother unable to understand the pattern, her fingers were not nimble enough to crochet anymore. But Joanne was determined to help Mother, so of her own volition she purchased a baby quilt that just needed some easy stitches here and there to complete.

Joanne was only supposed to spend one hour per week with Mother, but that hour turned into a few hours more than once a week. Although Joanne took an intense liking to Mother (everyone did) it was also clear that Mother was failing. It became Joanne’s goal to finish the quilt together. Sadly, Mother never did finish. She passed away well before the quilt was complete. But we had an angel among us. Without telling us, Joanne took the quilt home and finished it.

Savannah’s first birthday was just a few short months after Mother’s passing and we were all with her happy to celebrate a joyous occasion! What most of us didn't know was that one beautifully wrapped box held the quilt that Mother and Joanne had so lovingly made.

It was in that moment, when the box was opened, that I knew Mother’s legacy would live on. Hopefully Savanna will share the story of how her great grandmother made that quilt especially for her. Hopefully she will pass it down to one of her children who will share the story too. I have written this to help Savannah remember and to give her a first-hand account of how much her great grandmother loved her.

As I think about it, I wonder what Mother and Joanne talked about when working on the quilt. What had Mother shared with this woman she hardly knew about her children, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren? What did she say that would spur Joanne to finish the quilt? I’ll never know.

I’ve since lost touch with Joanne. But my heart is at peace knowing that somewhere in the world there is a woman who works miracles one person at a time. And I am grateful to her. Because of her, Mother’s legacy lives on in one simple quilt hanging on Savannah’s wall.

My Mother The Hurricane

My Beautiful Mother

My mother wasn’t the best housekeeper. Actually it was a talent she never acquired. If you visited our house, you had to clear a space to sit down. This didn’t faze Mother though. In her mind you were coming to see her, not her house.

Mother could turn the whole house upside down with a task as simple as watering her plants. She couldn’t just water the plants with a simple watering can. No. Each plant had to be brought to the kitchen sink, the soil checked, the plant doused, fed, and left to rest. While it was extremely important to Mother to water her plants, it wasn’t so extremely important to put them back.

When my sisters and I came home from school we'd find wet African Violets, and potting soil, and feeding spikes everywhere. Stray leaves would be living in every drinking glass we owned. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t one single drinking glass left in the whole house. Nope. Much more important to Mother was that every leaf be saved. So, there they were, all the glasses lined up on the shelf, over the sink, full of leaves just waiting to take root.

Dumbfounded, my sisters and I would just stare at each other. Inevitably one of us would blurt out, “Oh God … Mom’s been watering the plants again!” Then we would set about cleaning the kitchen because let there be no doubt, Mother would have made us dinner amidst the mess and we would have eaten hash with a little potting soil mixed in.

Every now and then Mother actually did clean, which meant pulling every thing off every shelf, out of every drawer, and every cabinet. Each treasure would be inspected and dusted. And then left right where she put it down. Again we’d come home from school, walk through the front door, look at each other, and say, “Oh God, Mom’s cleaning again!!” It got to be that we didn't want to leave her alone for a day.

Mother’s curiosity once led to a blob that lived in a jar on top of our kitchen cabinets for what seemed like years. Everyone who ever visited us over the years still remembers it—and it’s still highly talked about. Mother was so proud of it and pointed it out to every single person who entered our home. There it sat, year after year amid the grease and grime, bubbling and fermenting. She actually thought we would eat it some day.

While I don’t recall exactly what happened to it, I seem to have a faint memory of all of us gathering to see if it was ripe yet, opening the jar, and running from the house screaming.

At the time I was sure our mother deliberately made messes for us to clean up. That's not how I see it today. I realize she just didn’t see messes. To her, the outcome wasn't nearly as important as the adventure. Chaos could be swarming around her and she never noticed. Rather she was intent on living in the moment, on the thing she was doing, or on the person she was talking to.

And that’s what this tale is about really. It may have appeared that Mother walked through life with blinders on. But don’t be fooled, she did not.

“I know I have cancer and you know I have cancer,” she whispered to me one day. “But humor me and let’s not talk about it.” So we didn’t. Mother braved her illness as she did so many others, by taking each day as it came, by laughing, and never taking anything too seriously. She was extraordinary to witness and—personally—powerful to behold. Even then, though, it was still exhausting cleaning up after her. She would leave balls of wool, patterns, scissors, or crochet hooks all over the place. But that's another story for another time.

Someone once told me, “There can be a room full of people and total chaos about, but when I’m with your mother, she makes me feel like I’m the only one in the room.”

So you see, Mother was right. Nobody did see the African Violet leaves, or potting soil, or plant food. No one ever gave a thought to the trinkets she left all over the place. They just delighted in her company.
God help them though had they been with us when we opened the blob jar, for they too would have run from the house screaming.

In The End, What Really Matters?

How do you care for a terminally ill parent that you hardly know?
Of all my sisters, and there are five of us, I am perhaps the one who knew our mother the least. Or so my sisters often reminded me.

“If you could just get to know Mom the way I do,” one would say.

“I wish Mom knew you like I do. You’re so funny and she doesn’t even know it,” said another.

“If you could just try to lighten up and laugh more when you’re around her” said yet one more.

Then there is my absolute favorite, “You scare Mom,” which I think is most accurate. Actually, I think we scared each other. How, then, did I wind up caring for her during her terminal illness? I don’t have the answer to that question, but I believe it was no accident.

At first I felt anger at being the one to take care of her. I was happy to sit back while my sisters took control of her care. After all, they knew her so much better than I did. But I was the only one who had a job that would allow me to telecommute, so I was the only one who could be with her round the clock since my mother chose hospice care at home.

During my first few days of caretaking I knew I didn’t measure up to my sisters. From time to time Mother let me know it too by telling me how much better one sister was at this or another sister at that.

“What am I doing here,” I kept asking myself, “and how am I ever going to get her to trust me if I don’t trust me?”

My first day alone with my mother, I had to get her car from the dealership where it had been left by one of my sisters for repair. When I went to claim her car, it couldn’t be found.

“What kind of car does your mother drive?” they asked. I had no idea.

“Well what color is the car?” they asked. I didn’t know that either.

Then I panicked. “Oh my God,” I thought, “I don’t even know my mother enough to know what kind of car she drives, how the hell am I supposed to take care of her?” And I melted in a puddle of tears.

My second task didn’t go much better. I had to take Mother to get stitches removed from the port that had been inserted under her skin a few days earlier. She couldn’t remember where in the hospital this was done nor could my sister who took her. “Just go to Emergency,” one sister said, “and they’ll tell you where to go.” They didn’t know either.

A trip back home to try and find paperwork and a trip back to the hospital when I thought I knew where to go produced nothing. A call from another sister reminded me that the stitches must come that day. “How,” she asked, “can you make such a big production out of getting them out?” First the car and now this, failure number two!

To pepper my wound even further, home again for the third time Mother said, “Oh honey, let’s just forget it for today. It’s just way too much for you.” But my stubborn streak kicked in and a call to the hospital oncology department gave me the exact information I needed.

“OK Mom,” I said, “we’re going back and we’re getting these darn stitches out!”

“Honey,” Mother cried, “you are so smart. I never could have persisted the way you have today. You amaze me. I had no idea you were such a fighter.”

It was then I realized that this was an opportunity for both Mother and me. We would be spending a lot of time together, just us. I didn’t have to try to be like my sisters. I didn't have to try to be a hero. All I had to do was listen to learn about this woman who was my mother. I also had to put my ego aside. Everything she felt, everything she said wasn’t always about me. This was a woman who had her own thoughts and feelings, her own hopes, fears, and dreams. I just had to listen to understand her.

What I learned was this: Caring for my mother during her last months was the greatest gift I could have been given. It gave us both the chance to really get to know each other. In those short months our relationship grew and blossomed. I learned that my mother was funny, smart, sometimes conniving but always loving, and loved.

During the entirety of her illness my mother's house was never empty. One friend or another was always there by her side. They loved her, unconditionally! And I was blessed to witness that. I was blessed to see her as others saw her, as a person and not just my mother.

In the end, my four sisters and I were by her side. In the end, although she was their mother too, and knew each one of them intimately, she and I developed a special friendship that was uniquely our own. In the end, I know that I was the best daughter I know how to be. And in the end, isn't that all that mattered?