grandpa

I was just in washington for my bio grandma’s funeral. I barely knew her. It was more of a loss of what could’ve been than what was. 

But this week my grandpa died. Not unexpected, but still a shock. 

He was not perfect, but he was what was and I knew he loved me. 

Here’s some words about him:

82 years old this week. He made it to his 60th anniversary a few weeks ago as well. He attended his last reunion straight out of the hospital and it may have been his best one yet. He played cornhole, bullied my aunt into cooking his famous clam chowder, and rode his scooter around like he was 64 again and stole someone else’s. He started these weeklong family campouts something like a million years ago where we all get together somewhere in Oregon and play cards, cook amazing food, and just spend time with one another. I don’t know how many reunions he’s been to, but of course he was at every one that I was able to be at: organizing, barking at kids and cooking clam chowder his way: bacon grease and butter. He made the best salmon, too, glazed in brown sugar and baked to perfection. He loved to cook for people and he loved to eat good food. I’ll forever see him at my grandma’s dining room table: throwing down cards, his kids sitting around him. that loud lenardson laughter roaring so big that we all had to learn to yell to be heard. what an honor it was to finally sit at the adult table and play cards with them all of these past few years. for sure, he wasn’t perfect: this gruff old navy veteran who apparently used to love to dance. but i’m so thankful for the years I got to know him and for the family he’s left behind, for all of those who were able to sit around a table together with him and toss our quarters in one last time. he called me last week: “thank you, i’m glad you made it and i love you.” and I didn’t realize it then, but i’m really so thankful for that last goodbye.

I’ll be headed to his funeral tomorrow. 

Too much loss. I also sprained my ankle this week and had covid a couple weeks ago…. So, running has not been really an option to deal with it all. Thank goodness for my art…

bio dad

 “You feel victimized?”

He looks at me with pity. Patronizing. As though feeling victimized was just the saddest thing I could be, having been abandoned by my biological father at three. His empty face giving me judgement instead of remorse. Never mind the world I have created for myself. Never mind the beauty and love I put into this place. I have woven a network of friendship and connection, something this man will never have. I have built a palace of hope and possibility compared to the shanty of a life he lives in: sick and alone. He fuels himself with delusions; Reality twisted and fragmented into his mosaic of truth, caulked together by the lies his mind tells him. 

Somewhere out of the insanity, he does speak words of kindness: they are laced in pretention, as though he’s gifting me approval. The audacity he wears to even think I need that from him. This is the trouble with frank; his half truths, one image drawn over another so intricately that the two become one. In the same breath, he compliments me and on exhale says his very words have changed the world. He thinks he can walk around in other people’s rooms, see into their lives, and read their minds. I will myself not to ask what he sees in mine just as strongly as I close my lips and swallow words of accusation or argument. There’s no point. 

He is happy he says, alone with his books and god. He prefers it that way. People are too complicated. So I note to myself, I will not hold onto guilt if I don’t come again. 

1st visit in 14 years

 We create our own reality. We live in whatever space we build for ourselves. We are responsible for our future, perhaps not our past. We choose the avenues that we walk down and who we become. We spend our life building the house that we live in. 

I sit here staring at the man who is responsible for all of my empty places and most of my broken pieces, who has never showed up, and I realized he has been shattered into a million pieces by this life and his choices. He is ill and alone. He is empty. And yet: What power to walk away and leave such a large hole. And here I am, trying to mend what? Trying to find what? I want to take my money and light it on fire. Catch eyes with a stranger, wrap their arms around my body and pull them into me. Pour myself a drink, and then one more, and then one more. Shake myself free from anything good because I don’t deserve it. I want to gouge out whatever part of me carries part of him. He is a stranger to me, yet holds my soul under water. His grip squeezing out any peace.  This skeleton, this shell. A mere outline of a greater story of could-have-been. Perhaps it was out of kindness that he stayed away from us all, knowing his brokenness had sharp edges, knowing they would pierce the soft, smooth skin of his children. 

Flying Time

 I know it’s been so long. Reading through these stories is inspiring and yet cringeworthy in some cases. I am amazed by how much time has passed. How different I am. How much I am the same. Some posts make me want to write again. Some posts remind me of how many memories are just going to forever be missing because I stopped my writing. There are some little pockets of goodness sprinkled throughout. Could they be collected and turned into a mini memoir? Perhaps a book of poems? 

How to compile all the years into one post. Impossible. I read of the hunger for life and adventure and her heart is the same: always wanting for more, always dreaming. 

At this time, I am learning to be an artist. After 13 years of nursing, I have taken the last 9 months off (not exactly by choice, but more by circumstance) to pursue this original dream. Perhaps the fear of failure squashes my ambitions the most. That or my subconscious fear of fraudulence: Imposter Syndrome represented authentically. Was my dream of creating and being an artist just something bigger to hold onto? A shining light I pretended was there to make the shadows of life seem more tolerable? 

I read: The only thing separating an artist and everyone else is the desire to create. Talent, so they say, is something you practice, not that you Have. 

What a perspective, but one I’ve always told others. “You could do this too if you put in the time”. I could see on one hand how it seems to take away something from the artist by suggesting that “anyone can do it” so perhaps it’s less valuable? But on the other hand…who else will take the time to put their dreams out there for the world to love, criticize, take, admire, to have… Honestly, not to toot my own horn, but this path takes more bravery and strength than I realized. I have to believe in myself despite all other perspectives because even the words of my admirers don’t heal the cracks of insecurities. 

I do want this, despite what you may think, despite my faltering along, my hesitations, my insistent delay of growth….I want this.

To follow my art and creative adventures:

          @fiberandglaze on instagram

           www.fiberandglaze.com

the last time i saw her

 we decided to wait at the bar next door. the family chose to meet for dinner at a chinese restaurant in a strip mall and we were early. My brother, my husband and i settled into our stiff leather seats and ordered some beers. behind the counter were rows and rows of lottery tickets, so we challenged our luck and bought some to pass the time. 

i hadn’t been back since i was twenty three and now, 13 years later, we came to visit. i had no intention of ever returning, but after hearing that our grandmother had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer it felt like the right thing to do, so here we were. waiting. she, my aunt, my uncle, and likely at least one cousin would be heading our way shortly. 

in the beginning my aunt kept looking over her shoulder to the door as though she were waiting on someone: more hoping than expecting, her eyes returning back to the table, downcast for just a flutter. at some point in the meal, she resigned to their absence. we sat across from each other at a table full of tea pots and plates overflowing with chinese food: the peas an unnatural bright green, the sweet and sour a brilliant blaze of orange, the chicken more batter than meat, the fried rice shiny and crisp. the conversation was void of anything too exciting, mostly just pleasantries and polite exchanges. we laughed awkwardly, like it hadn’t been over a decade since i had last come. no one asks too many questions here in the land of family-who-are-strangers. in the end, the grandmother gets up to go outside and smoke a cigarette. she stood in the shadows of the stripmall lighting, staring out into the parking lot.

she invited us to her house the next day, so we walked there. we went to the grocery store near her house and bought her some chocolate ice cream bars. they were out of her favorite kind, so we splurged on the fancy ones, hoping she would still be pleased, hoping she would have an appetite for these. our grandmother lived in a small two bedroom apartment with my uncle who ended up on her couch years ago out of desperation and now had become her primary caretaker. the three of us squeezed onto their loveseat, the uncle sat in a desk chair behind us, and we faced the grandmother sitting in her own special chair, so small and underweight from the chemotherapy. in her sweet little mini mouse voice, she asked and then insisted on buying us pizza. while we waited, we talked. i asked for photos, but they had all been lost in a fire. she told us a story of when she ran away from the reservation at the age of seventeen and somehow ended up in california. she said she was wild and free and having fun, but i wonder what it was really like, why she left the reservation and all the stories she may have left there. i told her of my pottery, my art; how I had been exploring ojibwe styles, but wasn’t sure if I should, if I was stealing it from her ancestors. She said “You should make ojibwe art. You are Ojibwe.” the phone rang and she lifted the television remote to say hello and then she laughed, recognizing her error. the pizza came and my uncle put it in the kitchen on top of a stack of something. the counter, the cabinets, the makeshift shelves: all overflowing with cans and jars and cups and boxes of quick meals. things all piled up to the very edge of it all, precarious and daring. we each had a slice, trying to leave a little leftover for her. i suggested we get a photo together, so the little woman squeezed in between my brother and i and my husband took some shots. she had chemo again tomorrow so we left, not wanting to tire her. 

i had reached out in march, begging for stories. no one responded. i reached out again, asking someone else if they could relay my hopes. a thumbs up. and nothing. perhaps her mind was already gone, perhaps my requests were too painful, perhaps….i will never know. 

she passed away two weeks ago now. i’ll be headed to the funeral this thursday.

i still hear her voice: cartoonishly high and sing-song, soothing somehow despite the shrill.

i still see her: standing outside the chinese restaurant in the pacific northwest autumn air, a foggy cloud billowing around her. 

i wonder: does anyone know her stories? 

Fall 2021