Scarecrow

When I lived in Mexico, I envied the people their special relationship with Santa Muerte.  I could never warm up to a holiday where there was grave-dancing and celebration.  Death was fearsome for me;  Edgar Allen Poe and Edward Gorey gave me nightmares.  I had no living grandparents (well, none we were allowed to acknowledge) and little intimacy with the elderly.  There was a white bridal gown in a box in our old attic that my sister insisted was used by the spirit of our deceased Grandma on the occasions she visited.  I shivered.  

The first actual death in my young life was my best friend's mother.  She died during the summer-- of cancer.  I could not imagine losing my own Mom-- the thought absolutely terrified me, although I often wished my father would disappear and leave her eligible to couple with some random prince or even a kind carpenter or fisherman.  My friend's Mom had these downturned eyes and permanently worried brows.  I felt safe in her home-- sleeping over, on little trips; she was the leader of our Brownie troop and she was kind and soft-spoken.  I was devastated by the news of her death; her daughter had to leave the summer program where they'd put us to distract from the fallout of her advanced illness.  I had to stay behind where I wept and tried to process the concept of 'gone-ness' in my 8-year old world.  I offered to lend my own mother-- to trade places.

Not long afterward the widowed husband remarried a woman with three children.  The new mixed family was buoyant and festive.  He seemed to blossom with a new wife... and that was that.  But I carried my friend's mother's memory like a badge-- like a missing tooth when I smiled.  No one seems to notice, and it's inappropriate to be weeping daily like a drama princess when the immediate family has made great effort to recover.  It put a wedge between me and my best friend; I missed her Mom when I slept over-- the milk and cookies, the way she braided my hair so it wouldn't pull... her soft sing-y voice calling Good night, girls! when we were up past midnight whispering and giggling.

I'm not the poster child for Life Goes On.  The losses and griefs take their toll.  Besides Jesus, there is a litany of saints and angels in my nightly recitations-- all of whom are conspicuously missing from my life.  The past year or two has had its own version of pain; the fact that the world seems to be grieving does not comfort much.  I remember my aging Mom complaining there were so few left of her acquaintance-world-- crossing out in red the date-book names that no longer required birthday cards.  Her Christmas list was down to single digits.  

October has always been a sad month for many reasons... I also dread the ambivalent celebration of Halloween.  I've never been a costume-enthusiast... and while I appreciate the parade, the souls of the departed give me no incentive to party.  Thirty-two years ago I went into false labor on October 31st and prayed I would not be giving orange and black birthday parties for years to come.  As it happened, my son waited a full week, for which I am grateful.  Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater my mother used to recite as we carved teeth on our Jack-o-Lanterns; she was a late October baby.  

A week ago I walked back from Harlem along the East River... for a while I was shadowed by a man who pulled out a knife and asked me for money.  As it was, I had none-- food stamps, which I offered... he blinked his red-rimmed eyes and decided not to hurt me.  Was there a guardian angel behind us? It occurred to me that I was not even frightened. A few blocks later,  the sun set and produced a vivid double rainbow which truly merited the 'arc-en-ciel' nomenclature... I can't recall ever seeing anything that compared in New York City.  The Hunter's Moon this week-- has had an exceptional performance-- a soloist among choruses of clouds.  

Late last night-- almost dawn... I took out my guitar, as is my habit... and the lights in my living room began to blink.  That would be Alan, I said out loud.  Spirits.  Ghosts... I am approaching a point where absent friends will soon exceed the ones who are here.  The pandemic has whittled down my circle of intimates to a very few.  It is a kind of limbo... I feel more connected to those who have passed.  We speak, we exchange.  I sing to them.  My own daughter walks among them.  

I haven't visited my mother's grave for nearly three years; she'd have turned 97 this week... this seems uncanny.  I celebrate her pumpkin-carving hands when they were still manicured and elegant-- me, in my uncostumed non-finery, like an old scarecrow with arms extended,  ghosts and spirits perching.  

Blindsided

When I was in grade school, a blind boy moved into my neighborhood and we became friendly.  He was super intelligent and well read.  My Mom, who was a miraculously fast typist, was a volunteer transcriber of books into Braille.  In those days, the machine that punched the holes was incredibly interesting to me-- a child.  There were musical manuscripts, too; my Mom played piano and was useful for this work as well.     

I've written before about the special relationship I had with the blind boy-- how we had a kind of conversational intimacy I'd had yet to experience.  It was addicting; I loved our sacred after-school hours, exchanging ideas.  He could sense the hour of the day-- he could gauge the nearness of objects and I let him run his hands over my face and my hair.  My mother began to disapprove of our exclusive little twosome.  I moved and walked a certain way in his presence, as though it mattered more; this creeped her out.  I realized in retrospect, as an adult, that I'd never felt so 'seen'.  

So he went away and when he returned he had regained some of his sight.  He visited me and did not share this information; we were as we'd been.  Then I found out from some other kids that he could see me... and I was furious.  Why did he deceive me this way?  Because he was afraid I would no longer love him he said. Love-- a word we'd never exchanged; no one did, at that age.  It was something we casually put on valentines and repeated in songs.  

Anyway, things were never the same.  His family moved again and we didn't write-- braille or otherwise.  One day another boy walked into our classroom with a cane and dark glasses.  My heart opened... it turned out that he'd had some kind of surgery or episode and was light-sensitive.  He also was dull and silly and told bad jokes. After discovering Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, I realized I'd somehow mistakenly linked a grade school disability with some kind of brilliance.  He was anything but.  

There's a man (one of many) in my neighborhood who asks for money with a cup and a cane.  He's wheelchair-bound-- used to sing but no more... he's missing one leg and part of the other.  We talk occasionally when I see him 'on break' in the park, eating some of his 'take'.  A local Mt. Sinai doctor told him he could be fitted with an artificial limb-- a prosthesis-- he could become mobile.  He'd rather just have the $5 deposited in his cup, please.  It wasn't the pain, he told me-- yes, it's not easy to go through this process; I read "Slow Man' during the pandemic and it was pretty graphic.  But my panhandling friend looked me penetratingly in the eye and asked 'Woman, where would I be without my disability?' And lit a cigarette.  

It stayed with me all day, his rhetorical question... I mean, who are we all, each one of us-- without our flaws and handicaps and failures? They motivate us, make us create and empathize... sometimes they kill us, cripple us, destroy our families and loved ones.  I have so many friends whose lives are defined by their substance of choice. After the blind boy in grade school, I have fallen in love with not just the addict but their addiction, somehow.  Heroin, when I was 19, was like a test of courage-- a living dare-- an edge you crossed or didn't.  I lived briefly with an addict and was fascinated by the rituals and the daily fluctuations... the obstacle course of a two day cycle-- I was spectator and enabler-- lover and audience-- it was like an adventure, sleeping with danger-- penetrating a deep enigma I could not understand.  Like with the blind boy, I was deluded into believing this other-worldly companionship was mystical and deep  and superior.  

We are all psychological magicians; we turn bad habits into rabbits, we stuff things into hats... we hide behind curtains and mask our true feelings.  We transform... we use drugs, we drink.. we fall in love. All these things change us, or change our belief in what we are.  We have plastic surgery and put on wigs-- we lose weight and build muscles and sculpt our bodies and faces.  In the end, we are only as real as our disabilities-- the B-side of our talents and potential.  At the end of the day, I admit I envy my wheelchair friend his simple answer.  All in.  I am so often on an existential fence.  

So many of my friends and acquaintances wear the badge of Recovery.  It's something the uninitiated of us cannot really understand.  My disability, I suppose, is not having had a diagnosable addiction or issue from which I could emerge like a phoenix.  I don't have any landmarks or the daily reward of measuring my own transformation.  I have no badge or social media post for which others congratulate me.  I do have the daily struggle of human existence--   trying hard to overcome my personal roadblocks, to survive long enough to leave something possibly memorable when I die.  And to recognize sympathy when it is warranted-- to accept and not necessarily fall in love with a disability, no matter how seductive we find these people who may not necessarily deserve our devotion. Then again, who am I to judge anyone on a street corner with a cup or a cane or dark glasses--- or the man in his penthouse failing to see anything from his massive glass world? Not necessarily disabled but disqualified....