the phone call

I ask for your endulgence as I go in a very personal direction today. After my father died a couple of years ago a friend of mine--who had lost her mother the month before--told me that as I grieved I would go for weeks feeling fine, then I would get "zinged" out of nowhere and find myself crying about my parents. Now that both my parents are gone I do find that often I will have a Mom or Dad "zing" out of nowhere and it cuts to my core.

Last weekend I was visiting family in Missouri and had the opportunity to go to a party where there were many people from my hometown. Most of these people were several years older than me, but I remember them from church and school activities of my youth, and it was great fun to talk to them. At one point a woman I don't know or remember, when finding out my maiden name, said, "oh I had your Mother as my teacher in fourth grade." I immediately got "zinged" when she said that. My mother taught school in a one-room schoolhouse in a rural part of our county before I was born. It is very unusual for me to meet one of her former students. The woman continued, and told me that my mother was an "awesome" teacher. A while later I met a man I personally didn't know, but recognized his name. When he asked who I was and I told him who my parents were (in trying to figure out the hometown family tree) he said that my dad had been a regular customer at his tractor parts store for years. He said that my dad was one of the finest men he ever met, and that he (my dad) always treated him with nothing but courtesy and respect.

What those two people didn't know is that they gave me the best Christmas gift I got this year...a new memory of my parents.

Later, at my brother's cool new/old house, I got another "zing" just standing next to a piece of furniture that belonged to my parents, and now has pride-of-place in the dining room at The Edward's home. As long as I can remember this desk/hutch served sentry over family meals and gatherings in our childhood home. It held my mother's collection of cookbooks, and the cubbyholes in the desk were full of her notes to herself, and an odd assortment of snapshots. The drawers had a peculiar wood/musty/barn smell to them when pulled out that is seared in my memory. The first time I visited The Edward's house at Thanksgiving I pulled out one of those drawers just to smell it. Still smells that way.

That piece of furniture is once again standing over our family meals, and I find great comfort in that.

On the last night we were in MO I had this moment where I was thinking of what would happen if I dialed my parents' old phone number. It hasn't been in service for three and a half years. Would someone answer? What if someone answered and sounded like Mom? I thought about what it would be like to dial that number and hear my mother answer. For the record, I didn't dial the number...I'm not that far gone...but it was something I mulled over for a long time.

Then the day after Christmas I was listening to NPR, and Writer's Almanac was on. I haven't heard W.A. in a long time, mostly because it is on exactly when I'm taking the kids to school, and I'm ususally listening to XMKids on that drive. On Wednesday Garrison read a poem by Grace Paley called "I needed to talk to my sister..."

Here's the poem:




I needed to talk to my sister
talk to her on the telephone I mean
just as I used to every morning
in the evening too whenever the
grandchildren said a sentence that
clasped both our hearts

I called her phone rang four times
you can imagine my breath stopped then
there was a terrible telephonic noise
a voice said this number is no
longer in use how wonderful I
thought I can
call again they have not yet assigned
her number to another person despite
two years of absence due to death


(I copied this from the W.A. website...here is the copyright info:)
from Fidelity. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Reprinted with permission.