One of A Kind

How many times in a lifetime does a person turn 30 on the 30th? Only once, of course. And not everybody can do that. We in the Schiess family, proud to say, have a person who can do it and is doing it this very day.

It's Ann, or--pardon me, Ann--our baby. On this rainy October 30, 2009, our baby is 30. That's my view of it. For her part, she leaves her twenties behind forever. But 30. That makes a person sound solid, serious, stable, more so than twenty-something. Right?

It was not raining the day Ann was born. We could look out the windows of that Caldwell hospital and see sunshine. At least that's how I remember it. I'm not much for omens, but if I were, that would be a good one. Either way, rain or shine, Ann has been sunshine in our lives ever since the moment of her birth.

She was, as my mother would say, a cute little rig. She is still cute but has grown out of being a rig and into being a statuesque and lovely woman. Lovely she just is, and I say 5'9" is statuesque. Certainly Ann is taller than her mother who always wished to be be tall because Wayne was tall. So, obviously, Ann gets her height from her dad.

She gets her wit and wisdom and cleverness from . . . well, I'd say it has two sources:

1. she brought a lot of it with her in her genes
2. life experience has provided her with the rest.
   

Today Ann is still our child, but she is no child. No. Today Ann is a grown-up, in spite of or because of being the baby in the family with six siblings. My recollection is that they all loved her a lot.

But besides that, she's a college graduate; a natural-born teacher; a smart person; really good writer; veteran of some interesting work places and survivor of that one place whose name escapes me with the weird, controlling dr who was her boss; wife and partner of Jeremy; mom of two great boys and of one coming that might be a girl (it could happen, you know); maker of bread and Halloween costumes and jam and many good foods; good friend; former property manager/psychological counselor (and survivor of that); reader and thinker; all-around dependable person.

I love her. I know her dad loves her just the same as he did that day he held her on his shoulder and they both fell asleep. Aren't we glad to have a picture of that?

We have always been proud of her. Always.

Happy Birthday, Ann.

It's Out There

Saw Ron and Mary Ames yesterday. Such a sighting is very rare. Rarer than that sounds.

She said to me, in kind of a whisper, "I heard that you had remarried."

Was I stunned by this report? Take a wild guess.

I said, out loud, "No. And I didn't die either."

She said, "I didn't hear that you had died, just that you had gotten married."

I was too stupid or stupefied to ask the questions I now need answered, and who knows when I'll see her again. By that time, she will have forgotten yesterday's conversation.

The questions:

1. Who told you this?
2. Whom did I marry? This one would be the important one.
   

Notes

This is what I wrote after one year:

Widowhood does not suit me. What am I supposed to do, to be like? I always knew that as I aged, people would lose sight of me. And I always knew that if I appeared ordinary—nothing remarkable—when people saw me with Wayne, I would be, somehow, more acceptable, better looking, legitimized. If I resented it, I banked on it too. Now, I am really aging, and he is gone. I cannot put my arm through his or walk along side of him or look across any room and see what he’s up to. He’s gone and I am the widow Schiess. I do not believe widows count for much in our society.

Beyond that, I miss him. No, it was not a perfect marriage, if such a thing exists. But that is not the point. What is the point? I’m not sure, but I say this: we were part of each other. Now he is not here, waking or sleeping, though something of him is in every room of the house. I don’t mean only the physical bits and pieces that indicate he lived here; I mean the sense of him, the feel of him. It’s in the air here. It moves through the walls and if I ever have the sense that it touches me I am one happy woman—for a few moments.

Lonely. No one here to grumble at or smile with. No one to rub my feet or ask me if that is something new I’m wearing and tell me how nice it looks, how nice I look. No one to prepare food for, do laundry for, consult with on this or that, look to for answers and safety and that kind of comfort I knew when he was here.

Now, six years and 10 months after Wayne's death, I suppose I am used to being alone. It is the prominent fact of my life, after all. But I still do not feel quite right as a widow. Not the part in life I would ever choose. How does one play it well?

I Think It's Finished

I have posted this poem on Carol's Corner also. Been working on it. Like it better now.

The River

Carol Schiess

A voice calls across the river,

but the water disconnects,

carries the words away.

The early morning sun spreads

light through shore trees but

cannot discover the ducks,

their passage swift on the water’s surface.

I mark the river’s speed, its darkness,

water lines from other years,

wonder what it has passed by,

what might lie at its bottom.

At the river’s edge, chicory grew

thick in August, waving its blue flowers

as I passed, but it’s late September now.

A few weeks more,

the blue will be gone from my walks,

like some people from my life,

like their faces, their stories of long love

or unexpected death.

I look at the water to find one staying spot,

but the river cannot hold;

its appointment is to move, to run,

tell a new story moment by moment.

I turn towards home, a familiar path,

but I may stop for rest at the log bench,

climb a neighbor’s worm fence,

or take another way.

Eating Out, Part 2

When our kids were young we often ate at the Midway Lunch. We liked to order a group meal, enough for all of us. It came with salad, pork and seeds, fried rice, sweet and sour pork, and chow mein. And, honestly, I don't remember ever having to send something back. I do remember that a couple of our children would order hamburgers and fries, not yet having developed a taste for Chinese food. As I recall, that was Richard and occasionally his brother Wayne. Am I right?

But that is the place where we learned at least two things. 1)"You likey fly lice?" and that was one of the very few things we did understand when the nice Chinese lady spoke to us. And 2) To love pork and seeds with hot mustard.

On that other part of eating out, I was not with Wayne when I found two small rocks in my refried beans about the size of half a bean each at Cancún, a Boise Mexican restaurant, not to be confused with the resort city in actual Mexico. I didn't see the rocks, but I found them. That's right. With my teeth. Kind of spoiled the meal for me because who knew what I might find in my enchilada? So I didn't eat, just sat politely and watched my friend finish her meal. No rocks in her beans. As I recall, she ate a lot.

I was with Wayne when he had bits of glass--you think I'm lying but I'm not--in his Mexican food at a restaurant that has since changed its name from Melissa's to La Tapatía, and I think I know why, but they're not fooling me. We wondered how much of the glass he had eaten before the nasty crunch made him stop eating. The nasty crunch also made him take a close and serious look at his plate of food, and, yes, he could see small pieces of glass. You know, that kind of thing makes a person a bit suspicious about what's really going on in Melissa's kitchen.

Melissa's was close to our home--how nice--and had been highly recommended by Joyce Doughty. That's Chef Joyce Doughty. Hmph! I told her about the glass. Okay, so it wasn't her fault, but I felt like it was.

We left Melissa's. Didn't go back. Even after the name change. We were smart about that one.

No Title

Okay, so maybe you don't know this, but I still sometimes say stuff like, "Oh Wayne." Or maybe even, "Oh Wayne. Where are you?"

Out loud.

This is one of those details people--people like me, that is, widows like me--usually don't share with others, believing that others don't really want to know it because they wouldn't know what to do with it if they knew it.

Sometimes it's hard for me to know it, hard for me to hear my own voice say such words at these times. Hard because I don't like the sound of my voice at such a moment, hard because I receive no reply. But they are not planned occasions. Neither are the places of their occurrence planned. It could be in my room or at church or in the car or wherever. It's all quite random, you know.

Somewhere, he is alive. That's what I think.