The Inside Passage: A look back.

My youngest son, who is in law school, recently asked for some paperwork from his youth. I have a huge file on each kid, not too organized, which includes their artwork, academic achievements, their poetry, and for this kid . . . when he got in trouble. He didn't take the entire collection, but afraid that I'd never see the stuff again, I made copies. In the process I found some of my own anguished writing as the mother of a troubled teen, which started this long look back.

The blog that follows is from a trip to Alaska in 2007. What does that have to do with motherhood guilt? It's an example of the primary challenge of my life . . . living alone. Wait, I'm married and our college-age children were on this cruise with us. None of them joined me on my hike. Sad.

I had a great time anyway. Still makes me happy to think back on what I did. The lesson for me learned from my own unhappy childhood is that you can try to influence your family, but you can't control them.

Is it possible for a woman to  be independent and still be nurturing?

 Introspection continued below, but first the adventure:

July, 2007: That's the Mendenhall Glacier to my right (your left). I'm about to hike to the falls on my left. A friendly stranger is taking this picture. My family declined to join me on this adventure.

On the way to the falls, a wild bunch of senior citizens ran frantically toward me. "There's a baby bear back there," one gray-haired lady shouted breathlessly as she sped by.

Even before Animal Planet I watched Disney nature features, so I knew that where there's a baby bear, there's usually a mama bear nearby. I was already braving the biohazards of cruising mall-like with my fellow Homo sapiens, mostly Midwesterner's, so an Alaskan bear on maternal overload was not to be missed. Plus, I had been feeling sorry for myself, doing this hike alone, but if my husband had been with me, he would have refused to take another step forward. That thought made me unreasonably happy. I was unfettered by spousal fears and maternal responsibilities. I could take my foolhardy leap toward certain death with Ursus Americanus.

As it turned out, the bear went up a tree, and I lived to blog another day. In the picture I took, he's a frisky brown spot that only I can see toward the top of a very green tree in the middle of a forest.

The picture of the big pile of rocks on the right is what I had to cross to get to the bottom of the falls. It wasn't easy, and several people gave up, but when I saw two grannies in loafers and knee-hi's making it across (slowly), nothing could have stopped me.

This picture is whatever you want it to be:

This photo is an upside-down mirror image of the waterfall, the lake and the glacier.


I love the upside down clarity of this picture. A reflection on my inner reflection?

I'll post some of what I wrote about his teen experience, the support I received from an online writing community (Zoetrope), and speculation as to why my son would want those notes, letters, and confessions. A creative nonfiction piece came out of the project, too. Equations in Dogtime is scheduled to be published in the Huffington Post this spring.

All photos © Sandra Ramos O'Briant 

Then and Now

            Cleaning my office is like an archeological dig.  My attempts at organization are evident in research files for two novels, but they're not just in one place.  Then, there’s the financial stuff that I couldn’t make my mind up about, the old payroll receipts from my previous career, and certain emails which I print and treat as a diary, labeling them by year.  I have every intention of rereading them at some point in the future.  There are also letters and cards from friends with description worth keeping because I mentally and emotionally chart their lives alongside mine.  My sons made holiday cards for me when they were in grade school.  I especially love the Valentine’s Day ones, back when I was their only sweetheart. 

            Photographs are everywhere interlaced between folders like the special sediment created in a volcanic blast.  What seismic event rained down the array of photos that seem to crop up everywhere?  My children's pictures span their lifetime ­­­­– holding a soccer ball, a violin, sulking in front of the camera.  My plan has always been to organize everything into scrapbooks when I retire, in those hazy, long-into-the-future days when I have nothing new to do but consider the past.  But how can you look at a photograph, especially one with you in it, without a nostalgic backward glance?  

            Take the Christmas photo when our son was four.  He was the first grandson so my in-laws went nuts with the presents.  Eric is in a frenzy over his loot, and is stretched out full length on top of his hoard reaching into the recesses under the tree for more.  His brother, 4 months, is in the stroller looking like a chubby replica of his brother at the same age.  My husband is behind the $800 video camera we gave to each other.  His mouth is curved in speech because he’s narrating the present for the future.  What a clever man I married.

           There I am, holding court over the proceedings, a young self-conscious mother.  I look uncomfortable and avoid the camera while still holding my head erect, acting like I’m royally pissed about something.  My diffidence disguises shyness, my sharpness masquerading as matriarchy.  No smiles from me.  Not like now.  

            I look at myself, and think that I was beautiful, and that all my bravado hid a deep well of fear.  Did I find joy in myself?  I think not.  Those were days of stress, and overwork, and pervasive loneliness.  Now is better than then, but then is still in my now.

Dead, and Almost Buried

 The black cat dies is my refrain, and with her flies childhood.  Theirs ­­– my children’s ­­– not mine.

I dug two graves this morning.  The dry, funnel-shaped one left me unsettled.  It meant I’d have to arrange the body, curl her like an ouroboros, nose tucked into tail.  I struck the ground harder with my shovel trying to widen the hole, repeating the poem my son wrote when he was eight:

Akasha the cat is bad

She’s black and rad

And altogether glad

To be a cat

He sang it to her, and when he left for college, his brother took over the recitation.  He’s all grown up now, too, but Kasha still seemed to recognize the cadence of the words, even up to her end.  

For me, the poem was an incantation.  Like a witch reciting verbal charms over her cauldron, the black cat sat on my lap and those words invoked images of afternoons filled with outings with my boys, like the one to animal rescue where she spotted us.  My young sons answered her silent siren call when she extended a paw through the bars of her cage.  I was not impressed and pointed out sleek and shiny cats, ones requiring little grooming.  This fluffy-tailed feline no doubt would get knots in its fur, kitty litter stuck to its backside, and plum-sized hairballs.  She licked their fingers; cat and boys looked up at me. 

She was with us for over twenty years, and the first grave just wouldn’t do.  It was too narrow, and I never once saw Kasha go to that area of the yard.  The back of my tiny garden where the tomato trellis grows up the wall in summer seemed perfect.  It was easy to dig there, the soil black and loamy.  I lined her grave with clippings of lavender and perennial basil, and covered her with them, too.  I imagined looking out at the garden while I write.  The vine growing out of her would be heavy with deep red tomatoes, the fruit another invitation to reverie, to memories of youth.  Hers, theirs, mine.

My husband said it was unsanitary to bury an animal where food is grown.  He’s digging a third grave in an unvisited place. 

The black cat is dead, and childhood has flown.  I see now the fruitlessness of incantations to the past.  My sons are men, but motherhood persists.  It shifts form.  One only has to imagine a cat blossoming into an heirloom tomato to understand the possibilities.