On the Road Again

Earlier in the week Sonny dropped in with a newspaper article from Sunday's Des Moines Register reporting on an excellent leaf ride through northeastern Iowa and ending in the Norwegian town of Decorah. He has another newspaper dated two years ago interviewing a married couple who had opened a pizza joint in said Norwegian town and it had experienced instant success. You know

how your mother loved pizza, and we kept this article thinking we would check it out. Did my parents have a file cabinet somewhere that held info on intended places to visit? Sonny says it will take the better part of the day and I don't think I want to spend all those hours in the car after so recently returning from Colorado and Minneapolis road trips. Like so many overworked women, weekends are catch-up time to right all the household wrongs in preparation for the next hectic week. Your mother always packed a picnic lunch. Argh, mother, why did you need to be Mrs. Perfect 50's/60's Housewife? All that was missing were the high heels and pearls. But Sonny tells me we could stop at a Subway and we could bring fruit and other supplements for the meal. When we return, he tells me, we could do an early dinner. As usual, my father has all meals and snacks planned for the next 48 hours and there will be no diversion from his schedule. That's negotiable, I tell him, and he looks confused. We'll just wait and see how things go, I add. He leaves the articles with me but reminds me he does want them back. Later that evening I make several attempts to screen them but they do not hold my interest.

I am growly these days and I find it difficult spending time in the kitchen. I cook two meals weekly for my father and I have lost my rhythm in the culinary department. I can't get all the dishes ready at the same time. When the meal is over I am exhausted and almost every dish and pan is lying greasy and crusted on the counters.

Cowboy Dave says perhaps he will not need to go along on this trip and maybe I would rather just have Dad and the day to myself. I study him and realize that I am glaring in a menacing sort of way. You can go, I tell him, I can't keep up a conversation that long. And I realize I need him tomorrow. His conversation peppered with sports statistics and John Deere stories will be the diversion we need. My dad and I will no doubt flounder too often into reminisces of my mother. A few will be all right, but not too many. I am glad that he is brave enough to make this trip even though it is without my mother, his constant companion on these kind of road adventures. They loved to traverse the back roads of Wisconsin and the rich farmlands of the Mississippi valley.

With a sigh I visit the corner mart and pick up some deviled eggs that get tossed into a bag and resemble a box of yellow glop with white chunks thrown in. Chips and dip, deli-baked cookies - I honestly do not have the energy to do the bake thing right now and watermelon and grapes. I discovered a cantaloupe on my kitchen counter that had been there for awhile - kind of forgot about it. Has a few soft spots, but it goes in the fridge and it could be all right. We'll know more tomorrow.

I pack a bag with the good paper plates and Vanity Fair napkins, only the best. And with a sigh I tuck in my mother's red-checked gingham table cloth. I had taken this from her linen closet after her death - it reminded me of countless picnics from my youth. She has ironed it with even creases and I know that when Dave washes it upon our return I will need to iron it again.

Some Days there is a Darkness

Cameron and I visit Sonny. We decide to go out on the patio and Cameron escorts me to the swing. She would like to push me and you do not argue with a 20-month-old child, well, at least not this one. I close my eyes and lay back, lulled into a dreamy state by Cameron's song , her baby song. I hear the wind rustling the leaves of the lilac grove and hear the tinny tinkle of the little wind chime above the picnic table. The late afternoon light is dappled and uneven on the dry leaves. I think I can feel my mother close by. Cameron keeps singing and the wind is now shrill and I'm hoping for a sign and I don't know what that would be. I'm listening for my mother but I can't hear her. She can't get through. Or she's just not there and my brain is tired, overworked, and fragile.

She and I loved the lilacs.
I first became acquainted with that fragrant flower at my grandmother's house. Nana had lilacs on the eastern and southern borders of her home. When I was eight years old my family moved into that great white house. Ivory and purple flowers, the ancient vines of twisted branches brought spring into my life every year. The huge cottonwood above our house with its plastic shiny leaves blowing flap-a-flap-a-flap, twisting in an Iowa wind storm. Wind was my comfort while growing up and when I was younger I thought it might contain the voice of God.
But now it sounds empty and hollow and I am at a loss. I had felt safety with the wind blowing against my window and me inside tucked into a warm bed. I thought the wind was my friend and it would comfort me on nights I could not sleep. Now it confuses me and I feel it taunting me as I toss on the mattress. I wish I could leap ahead and not feel this great barren desert I am in, but that is not to happen. Today, I lose Cameron's glasses and I eat fried food and I argue with David over stupid things and I am too tired to apologize. I just want to lay down somewhere and I don't want anyone to find me or interrupt me or ask where I want to go for dinner or when is my next dentist appointment. I don't want to live a normal life right now.
I transplanted lilac bushes to my parents' yard from the last house I lived in. Lilacs are important to the Giegerich women. Every spring my mother and I would discuss the status of the lilac nation. Were they plentiful this year, abundant, long-lasting, the best blossoms ever? I would stand on the hood of my car clipping the rich blossoms from my brother's lilac bushes listening to his pit bull hissing at me. What I would attempt to keep that little parent happy. And today I have trouble breathing while shopping for orange juice and other things. My chest is tight and consticted and I feel I must will the air to move into my lungs and back out again. My reflexes have stopped working. This is crazy. I need to find something fun to do.

Sassy Susan

Oh happy day, Susan called me much too early this morning, but for some people, we make allowances. Like Jane, she does not read my blogs and she checks her Facebook communiques only once a week. I know, fellow FB addicts, what's the point . . . She is alarmed and firing questions at me re: the dog incident. I'm getting weary of repeating the story but I dutifully do and it is like I am reading from a script. We get past that and onto other things most importantly that she is moving back to San Diego this month. Susan is a midwesterner in love with the ocean and although she does enjoy a snowy Christmas eve by the fireplace that's about all of old man winter she can handle. She is now living in Alexandria, Virginia and the summers resemble sitting in front of an operating oven with the door open. When the spring winds of cherry blossom season howl up and down her elevator shaft she growls, "I hate this place. Can't wait to get out of here."
I first met Susan in 1985 at my Human Services job. Jane had left for the big city and I was experimenting with different social groups around the office looking for a new comrade. A supervisor had passed my cubicle during the noon break and once again saw me eating my lunch alone. "Dawn," she said. "You need to make new friends." It was dreary work and not easy for someone who did not make friends easily and was essentially shy. "Most people have an egg shell around them," Jane had said, "you have a walnut shell."
At last I came into the company of Mary Osbourne, a droll, academic woman whose sense of humor was desert dry. Occasionally, Mary would invite another friend of hers, Susan, to join us.
I did not like Susan. A few years older than me she wore tight black leather skirts and a stylish, slightly stiletto pump. She laughed too loud and too often and she would flirt outrageously with the young men in the office. A few years went by and I was in the process of buying a new home. I was divorced several years at this point and I found a little bungalow with real woodwork and a yard with lilacs. I made an appointment to meet with the realtor after work. "Is your husband coming?" he asked. I replied that I did not have one and he audibly sighed, the rude chauvinist that he was.

I was leaving the office to meet with my bank person and I ran into Susan returning from her errand. She asked where I was going and I told her. She looked at me for awhile and then said, "you're buying a house? Wow, that 's scary. Almost as scary as getting married." And it was one of those moments. A woman of like mind, Jane would have said.

Usually I was surrounded with well meaning women who wanted me hitched and excitedly would tell my about a friend of theirs who they thought I should meet. It seems they had spent considerable time studying this man sometimes employing other persons in this project, sort of a Team Dawn approach. And sometimes I would give in if nothing else so we could change the subject. But I put my foot down with the guy in the beige snakeskin boots who even with two inch heels was still shorter than my own five foot height. I opened the door and a cloud of Jack Daniels hit me and he continued to imbibe at the bar. He stumbled and slurred out his words and told me how much he wanted to meet my children. I excused myself for the ladies' room, called a friend - not the blind date friend, and escaped to her car out the back door. Rude? Yes. Necessary? Totally.

But the conversation with Susan clinched it for me. We were comrades of spirit, not ready to take the marital plunge, ready for discussions late into the night about how lucky we were to be the women we were - manless, but lucky.

Five Things I Like about Minneapolis, um, actually, St.Paul

Gay humor and philosophy
I know I need to be very careful here. I have only a few gay friends. I live in a redneck, racist, sexist Midwestern town of old boys and their tractors. There is no way any of us escaped unscathed and unbiased. Me, prejudiced? I think not. Think again. My gay friends are tired, trying to stay afloat on an island surrounded by hostile judgmental waters. They are all old souls that have dodged the small town bullets. The first person that I knew was gay was Lance, brother to a friend of mine back in the 80's. I might have known other gay persons, but as Jane said, they are well hidden. Lance lived in Minneapolis and I always hustled to sit next to him whenever he visited. Once I was lamenting the loss of my ear lobe. A heavy 80's earring had quietly and bloodlessly tore through the skin and now I could only wear clip-ons like all the old ladies. Nonsense, he said, I love it when you take off your earring and massage the lobe, just like the film stars of the 40's. It's so-o-o sexy. He was a hairdresser and stylish and classy. How should I cut my hair, I asked him. We need to see more of your face, he said. Not understanding, I realized later it was a compliment. He was one of the early victims of AIDS, tearing out his IVs at the end.


Byerly's
Especially the cherry chicken pasta salad and cranberry walnut oatmeal cookies. Jane, Jill and I sat around the kitchen table sampling the cookie trying to figure out the recipe. It is sweet like a chocolate chip cookie recipe and possibly has more brown sugar to give it a darker color and a molasses taste. Look at these peppers, a work of art. "Designed by a starving artist," quipped the produce clerk.




Jane's veterinarian who sees only cats
Cats everywhere and even a wide screen TV showing film only a cat would appreciate: wild turkey chicks fluttering about a field. The receptionist Monica and I have a discussion about rabies shots and the fact that her sister had a bat in her attic and announced to the family, "send Monica to get it. She works for a vet and she has had her rabies shots."




The chicken and wild rice soup at Fabulous Fern's
Full of crunchy almonds and carrots. Jane has the beer brat and offers me a taste saying it is delicious. Note to self: next time Jane visits prepare her a Kremer's brat, spicy and sassy and much better than that slushy, tasteless thing some Norwegian came up with. Bruno, our waiter, laments that yes, it truly is his name bestowed on him by Brazilian parents.






Garrison Keillor's book store, Common Goods
"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven." Usually, I find Mark Twain to be filled with laughs and dry sensibility but I am at a loss here. I have read articles by comedians that say they, too, draw their material from tragedy, comedy from tragedy. I do not understand this concept. Feel free to comment.

Of Like Mind

Jane, myself and Fabulous Fern

I met Jane in 1984 when the recession was in full swing and the State of Iowa decided they needed more eligibility workers to determine welfare benefits for the growing number of recipients. We both took jobs with the huge Human Services department and our lives changed forever. We were lugging our huge manuals around trying to find the next meeting and Jane introduced herself and she said I said, "I feel like an embryo being shaped and formed by forces beyond my control." Jane said she went away from that meeting thinking, I need to get to know that woman, such a compliment for me. As the months passed our friendship became safe and secure and we realized that we were women of like mind. A year later she was moving to a larger city and her reasons were two: Dubuque has too many hills (she had a near-accident one wintry morning) and the gays are too hidden. Who will be my friend, I asked her. Jane was the center of my social universe and I really had not cultivated any other relationships at work. She was enough. You will be all right, she said, and I was, but not for awhile.

We have maintained this friendship over twenty-six years, over several moves for Jane, relationship mishaps for the both of us, and job changes. It is a treasured, timeless letter-writing relationship and she is the oldest friend I have.

With my mother's death I hesitated about visiting. Jane's own mother had been a monster and Jane's background is a horror story of every kind of domestic abuse a social work text book could describe. I knew I could not help talking about my mother when I visited Jane and I didn't know if upon hearing those stories it would bring back painful remembrances of her own youth. I always talked sparingly about my parents because her own had been desperate, miserable souls and the contrast was of huge proportion. Jane has given me permission to tell some of her story and in fact, she says I may create things to make her appear more interesting, but that would be impossible to do. These things need to be said and then you can understand what an incredible woman she is.

Jane was abandoned by her mother as a newborn and sent to live with an older, alcoholic aunt and uncle in Lamont, Iowa. Her father had told her mother before Jane's birth that if she delivered another girl instead of a son that baby could not stay in the household. When Jane was 11 her mother and father decided to reunite and Jane was taken from her only recognizable home against her will. Two years later her mother left Jane's father for another man and they moved to California and later married. Jane was left with the father and an older abusive brother who attempted to make sexual advances towards her. She made it clear that should he prevail she would kill him. The father was a trucker gone during the week, mercifully, and Jane was alone as the brother had gone off on his own and she did not communicate this to her teachers or other adults. The father was a sadistic, mean loner who took out his anguish over his absent wife on Jane. He is still alive, 97 years old and living in a nursing home and the staff is terrified of him. Jane's mother died in California ten years ago of a lingering cancer and Jane had traveled there at the time to try and reconnect with her mother. She wanted to see if they could finally reestablish a mother-daughter relationship and the mother could answer all Jane's questions about why, why, why . . . I could not help but express anger when Jane told me of her planned trip. "Just because she is your mother, you do not have to love her," I told her. But Jane went and she stayed two weeks and then she had to return to work, and the old hag died the next day. Jane's stepfather is currently imprisoned for sexual abuse of Jane's younger sisters. When the stepfather left for work Jane's mother beat the girls if they had not resisted him and also if they had. Jane had rejoined her mother briefly and when she graduated from high school in her seventeenth year she came home to find that her mother had packed all of her belongings in garbage bags and left them sitting in the snow on the front porch.

Being in social services all these years I have seen the havoc abusive parenting has on the little innocents. Many are destined to be abusers themselves, never learning how to parent with patience and intelligence and love. They are convicted criminals, welfare manipulators, chronically unhappy and scared people. So I am always blown away when one of the innocents survives and on her own arrives at adulthood an incredible person.

And this would be Jane. She is a quiet, inward soul who is constantly striving to bring the shreds of her family back together. She is educated, well read, and loves her cats, her gardens, theatre and opera. She is a member of an adult choir of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender individuals who perform regularly around the state, including children's groups, in hopes of communicating to closeted young people that it's all right, it's all right to be homosexual. She is an advocate for the liberal left, animals' rights, women's rights, well, any body's rights. She talks to my grandchildren in an interested, uncondescending manner and together they share a love of Junnie B. books. I have never heard her utter an unkind word. In her year at Human Services she would freqently go outside her job description to help a welfare recepient, for example, plan a budget. Her younger sister, another victim, was recently released from prison for check forgery and choosing the wrong man. Jane invited her into her home and with Jane's encouragement Jill is completing a degree in social work next year and has been accepted for graduate study. The cruelty of Jane's heritage escaped her and she retains no trace of those hellish traits. She is in therapy and probably always will be looking for that lost little girl who never felt safe.

I salute you, Jane, for a life well lived. Continue to shine your light.
(Jane doesn't read my blogs, another commendable trait.)

Up North With the Loons and the Geese

Up in Minnie-soda Jane and I check out Prairie Home Companion with bigger than life Garrison Keillor and yes, we were able to buy tickets in line just as we had the year before. We have unbelievably good luck and the ticket sellers seem drawn to us. They want to make us happy and we are. This is actually the annual fall festival outside the theatre after the show and Garrison is directing the loon-calling contest. Later there will be a Charleston contest. The big guy hosts this event every year and the meatloaf dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy and a

delightful milk powder biscuit woos me back every year. A truly fine meatloaf is a work of art.

Jane has an ongoing love affair with the SuperAmerica chains and their discount super soda deals. I ask her how many of the plastic glasses she owns, and she says, oh about 20. I know this to be incorrect as I count 28 on the counter including the two being used to dry the rubber gloves. Like all my friends, Jane is very creative about household tricks and fix-it ideas. I highly admire this trait in any human being. And after I count the glasses in the bag in the car it is over 40. But in her favor, she reuses the glasses and has not had to bring a new one into her home for quite some time. She does occasionally steal extra straws from McDonald's as they are much larger than the average bear, uh, straw. And that is the only character defect that the dear one has.

Escape

I open the cupboard last night and the little plastic do hickey holding up the shelf collapses and a barrage of hard, ceramic bowls come crashing on my head. Oh, hurt, hurt, hurt. I now have a giant goose egg on my forehead to match the ones on all four limbs from my shots. And tomorrow I get another one. I look like someone threw me down a stairwell. Dave worries people may think he beats me. I cry and whoop like - well, a motherless child and I realize this cry has been a long time coming. The next morning I accidentally flush a dish towel down the toilet. Don't ask. I forget that I did that and I use the commode again only to cause a flash flood coursing through my house. I do the only thing a person can do at this point. I jump in the car and head for East Dubuque and check into Mulgrew's for a foot long chili dog, no onions, please. I realize that I am emotionally and physically spent, a train wreck in human's clothing. I miss my mother so much I can't stand it. I am leaving for Minneapolis tomorrow to visit my good friend Jane and I am glad. She is a soft place to land and a source of maternal comfort for this poor old soul. We will see a Garrison Keillor show in St. Paul and taste the marvelous meat loaf and listen to the loon-calling contest during the street dance afterwards. It has become a custom for us. In Garrison's honor, I buy red tennis shoes. What do they say? Only prostitutes and children should wear red shoes. Well, there you go . . .