Hi Sweetie, I live as though I am partially blind. I see something, mask it with a justification and surge onward. I have spent 7 days in a dream of which I came out of only yesterday.
I was hit twice in the temple by a jealous drunk woman, offered a charge of crack and sex by a young beautiful black girl, got sick and broke out in crater sized pimples.
Since I faced myself in the late afternoon yesterday, the flu like symptoms have mysteriously disappeared. Could it be that my body is my best angel?
I am led to strange places by subconscious yet conscious Cubans who have a common river running in their desperate brains. “Can you help me”, they say again and again like a constant chant that fills my good senses with bad ideas.
I must have a need. I push all sorts of interesting but wasteful stuff at it and come away without having accomplished the very thing that I sought to accomplish and then I’m exposed to what I don’t want. Now buried, I can’t see it anymore. Write to me, I will explain what I mean or call.
For ever your friend, Karen
2
OK baby, Denial is holding on to what already has died but one won’t learn the lesson of it because feeling and thinking the same old shit is easier. Or, once again, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
Why are you hanging out in bars with shaky Latinos? You’re bobbin’ up-and-down with 3 fingers out of the water. The Cubans are only there to take the rings off your fingers before you go down for good.
You can’t possibly believe that you’re having fun. Where are your guts? Do something different. Don’t go dancing even if you really want to. Don’t rationalize your wants around your desperate needs. This time is not about you but about your family. There is enough there to fill your days and nights. Fuck the-guys-in-the-club thing for a big 8 weeks. I will meet the challenge with giving up or doing what you ask of me for 8 weeks.
I am worried about your recklessness. It is not 1970 when there were virtually no consequences to taking drugs or in a one night stand. I am worried you do not understand you can drop dead, you can get Aids, you can get herpes, you can nose dive and never get out of the spin. I don’t think you can see what your going out and coming back beat up must look like to your family.
Your recklessness in going out and looking for trouble is scaring the hell out of everyone who loves you. Don’t you care? Who is out there cheering you on? What are you thinking? You know what you are shootin’ for while you are in the clubs. Do you have the courage to say it? Is it worth it right now? What happens if your family says enough is enough?
I am ready to hear how mad you are that I would write this. I am ready to read where you see I am fuckin’ up. I am so ready.
I do love you. I check my email every day.
Love, MB
3
Sorry for jumping up-and-down on you in the last email I just don’t get the attraction to the same old scene that chews you up and spits you out again I don’t want to see you keep cripplin’ your relationship with your family because you want to be worshiped by anyone who is willing. You have so much wonderful experiences around you right now at this moment and the moment will not last long.
I check my email everyday. Feel free to write whatever, something like I have. I am not afraid to hear anything although, I might bark a little.
Still your friend? MB
4
Hi Sweetie, Will you please stop being afraid to speak your mind with me. Do you think that I don’t know what your reaction will be when I tell you the things that I do? I expect that someone who loves me as much as you do will tear me up when I fuck up. I give you, if I haven’t already, permission to nail me to the wall, beat me with a stick until I cry out for more love… but I know that I won’t quit going out dancing. I just want to get smarter, quicker. It only took me 7 days to open my eyes. Actually they were open all the time. I justify my blindness. I am gaining much needed experience and will hope to learn more each day. I will find out about myself. I will, I will, I will.
Mexico is the next stop, baby. I have to head home in order to arrive by the 28th. I will arrive late if I can come and see you again.
Gotta go. And by the way, nobody is influencing me. My friend is appalled at my attraction for the wild side. She prefers to die slowly, I, the quick and handy way.
“If I have any debt to pay, I will pay it to god.” That sentence and that image kept me out of jail… I think.
Just out of high school and barely 18, I got my first job. Well, my first job was as a theater usher at the age of 16 for $1.50 an hour but this was my first real grownup job.
No one had encouraged me to go to college. I guess making something of myself, in the traditional sense, was not an option. This was 1967 so smoking weed and taking LSD and going to live dance venues represented adulthood and freedom and a meaningful education in real time. My main occupation was expanding my mind. But in order to do this, I needed a job.
I’m out of the house, I have my own apartment and my frontal lobe obviously was not fully developed. Good sense hadn’t even occured to me yet. Making reasonably good decisions was not my strong suit, let alone a priority. But finding a job to support my new lifestyle was.
I could do retail, I told myself. The most interesting shop around was Import Plaza owned by Bill and Sam Naito. I applied and was immediately hired, on what merit, I hadn’t a clue. But this was my first step in becoming an independent woman. This is where fate took over.
This is where I met my new best friend, Laurel Lee. Yes, it was that Laurel Lee (may she rest in peace), author of Walking Through the Fire, and subsequently, many other books. She was working there before she became famous so that she and her husband, Richard, could travel to Alaska in a house he was building on the back of a truck.
This was a general retail position. I stocked shelves, put price stickers on new items, straightened the merchandise throughout the store, helped at the cash register bagging purchases and that kind of thing… in other words, anything I was asked to do.
I proved to be reliable and a good worker. I was promoted to cashier and merchandising. The Naito brothers liked me and soon, but not warranted, they put their trust in me. I was given the keys to the store to open and close. Before long, I was invited into the office where they discussed training as a buyer. I had met the current head buyer and I liked her. This would mean international travel as a trainee. But how did I fuck this up?
I was not new to fucking up. I had a couple of opportunities while in high school that I passed up that could have set me up for a successful future. The first was working as a designer for Star Sapphire. My art instructor saw potential that others did not see. She knew people and set me up with an interview. Without going in to painful detail, suffice it to say, I foolishly let that slip through my fingers.
My second opportunity was with the Portland Junior Symphony. Again, a teacher saw potential, this time in my musical abilities. I auditioned and interviewed and was accepted. But once again I let an incredible opportunity pass me by. I won’t go into great embarrassing detail but it’s another example of me fucking up.
So continuing on with the story of the perils of being young and an already established history of being really foolish, I made a bigger mess of things. I’ll make this short.
First, my criminal escapades started with taking smoked oysters and exotic crackers off the shelf to eat lunch with Laurel. She was already taking from the store. Richard would come to pick her up and I noticed that he was leaving with goods without paying. His strategy was to pick up several things, pay for one or two and stash the rest in a bag leaving with the stolen goods.
As time went on, I was taking small imported objects to decorate my apartment and imported cookies from Belgium, baskets from Thailand, fabrics from India, stained glass lamps from Morocco. Once I was closing the store, I took a rattan “King Chair” from Indonesia. I took, unabashedly, jewelry from around the world.
What was I doing? I had never even shoplifted the odd candy bar or lipstick or mascara as a kid. My parents taught me perfectly. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Don’t walk across the neighbor’s lawn. Don’t skip school. Don’t cheat. Be kind and conscientious. And they were good examples as far as I knew. I grew up happy for the most part. So what was I up to now?
I liked to justify my actions with excuses like, I was taking from the rich and giving to the poor… the poor which included myself. I was obviously deluded and a liar… and a thief. What I was actually doing was taking from people who were trying to give me a chance in life. I was stealing from people who wanted to help me.
My “career” as a thief did not end there. As a cashier and a manager, I was able to steal money, as well. I thought I was so clever. Even at this point, I allowed a friend to come after closing and he loaded up his car with stolen goods.
I was doing all of this while expanding my mind with psychedelics and entering the world of Eastern religion. My studies alone should have deterred me from the path I was on. I really don’t know what I was thinking. I suppose you could say I wasn’t thinking at all and you would be right.
They say that all criminals, that get caught, fuck up in some way. I had been fucking up for a long time and in many ways without even knowing. The end of it for me came quite suddenly and was over quickly. It happened one day as I was cashiering. Three men in suits came in and approached me at the cash register in front of a line of customers. They said to follow them to their car and I did, heart in my throat.
I was taken to another building down the street owned by the Naito brothers and was escorted into an austere office. Both Sam and Bill were there. These were kind and generous and important businessmen in the community. These were men who had trusted me. These were men who saw potential in me just as my two high school instructors had. Here I was again having failed and fucking things up.
I sat and looked into their eyes and saw that they were sad for me. This was really painful. They could have allowed the investigation to be done by the professionals but instead they sat in front of me and talked face-to-face. First of all they asked me what kind of grades I got in math in high school. I replied that I had very good grades in math in high school, that all of my grades were good in high school. And then they put a box of cash register receipts in front of me and asked me to explain why then do these not match the amount of merchandise going out the door.
If I remember correctly, I sat silently having no answer for them. Then they showed a video of what I had been doing at the cash register. Again, I had nothing to say. I had been caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
I was crying. Both brothers stood up and turned their backs to me and walked slowly out the door without turning around and without having anything more to say. The investigators once again asked me to follow them out to their car and we went to my apartment and they confiscated all the stolen goods. They said that the Naito brothers were contemplating whether they should press charges or not but in the meantime, I would be free on my own recognizance.
My theivery added up to grand larceny and could have ruined my life but for the kindness of the Naito brothers. They did not deserve my arrogant response. At the time I didn’t even realize my response was arrogant and was completely inappropriate and out of hand. Within a few days, I received a letter from the courts saying that I would be called and not to travel outside of the state. I wasn’t going anywhere anyhow.
While waiting for the court to call me, I tried to figure out what to do and worried about going to jail. I was suddenly dragged from a dream. I was fully aware that what I had done was wrong. How was I going to make up for it except by going to jail?
While all of this was happening to me, Laurel and Richard had left for Alaska just as they had planned. I received some letters from Laurel and I guess you could say the most significant was one in which she told a story of how they had met Jesus on a dirt road in Alaska. According to Laurel, which evidence proved out through the rest of her life, she had been transformed.
From this day forward, Laurel was a devout Christian. But what made this significant for me was that inside the envelope was a small card with a painting of Jesus ascending into the clouds. The card was about 2″ by 3″. I always kept Laurel’s letters because she was a wonderful storyteller and her letters were always full of great stories. Suddenly that card held more importance than I could have imagined.
I wanted to apologize to Sam and Bill but I didn’t know how. “I had a brilliant idea”, she says sarcastically. “I’ll write them a letter and include the card and ask them if it wouldn’t be all right for me to pay my debt to God.” This is entirely cringe worthy.
Apparently, my letter got to them because I received a letter asking me to meet with them. My biggest punishment was having to meet with them face-to-face again. They were not going to press charges, they said. The worst that they were going to do to me was to never recommend me for a job working with money. However, they would give me a good recommendation based on my skills and work ethics.
How could they have ever said anything about ethics concerning me. After that meeting, I slunk out of the office, my head hanging and my tail tucked under. Next was an official document from the court saying that all charges had been dropped.
I have no idea whether that little card had any influence on the Naito’s decision to forgive me or not. I’m sorry to have used Jesus, since I’m not a believer. Perhaps I could just as well have used a card with an image of the Buddha or any of the Hindu gods or any mythical images of gods and goddesses but perhaps it served its purpose.
As a girl who was under 20 years old, I sure was lucky. I had no criminal record and I would spend no time in jail. In fact, there was very little punishment other than humiliation in the face of love and generosity. I’ll never forget Bill and Sam Naito. These men are long gone, having passed away, but among many other things, their legacy lives on in me.
Bill and Sam NaitoLaurel and her the children. Years later.
I lay awake and my mind dwells on the unfathomable words you have spoken on my unfulfilled desire to give you my heart and my life. More than anything I want to give you my time. I am lonely. I hear words that I don’t understand and I spin them around in my mind. I try to hear your voice. I try to remember how you said them and what they might have meant.
I lay awake and suffer because of my own decision to stay. I could leave. I don’t have to be here but you are so beautiful to me. Your skin, the color of your hair, your lips and more than that your eyes. But I don’t understand you. The trouble is that I know the truth. I am alone. You’re not. You want me to make that easy for you.
I lay awake with unshed tears and trembling body. I haven’t seen you… it’s only been two days and I miss your touch. I want you to want to me like I want you but I can’t say for sure that you do… I can’t say that you don’t.
I am like so many women who want more than they can have. Am I unrealistic? Should I be satisfied? Don’t I remember the last time you were here and the words you spoke? But they don’t sustain me.
I lay awake because I cannot tell you what I am feeling. What does “I love you” mean? Don’t those words leave so much unspoken? I want to tell you that I want you in my world. I want to be with you every day. I am alone. I eat alone. I walk alone. I travel alone. I shop alone. I sleep alone. I look at the stars alone. I experience the moon and Mars alone. I only have the hour that you give me at random times on random days as I am getting less time with you. I do remember Friday and Saturday last week but what about this week?
I lay awake and breathe. I feel my body. My hand feels the soft skin of my belly, the muscles under the skin of my thighs, my bones that surround my heart and my lungs. It all feel so precious to me. It is the treasure that I give you every time we lie down together. I look at the dark ceiling and picture your face above me. There are things that I don’t understand. Your kisses are so real, at times they hurt. I am left with bruised lips. Your hands are so soft and sometimes so hard when they delve into my soft places. So quickly you roll off and push my arms and legs away from you as you lie spent next to me, too hot to breathe. I want you to hold me as you swiftly pull on your pants and pull your shirt over your head. My body pleads for you to hold me but you have to run. So few are the times that I have been able to curl up in the crook of your arm. I can count them on one hand.
“I want to go home”. I know what you mean. You have to go home. You have given me an hour by your watch, which you keep glancing at. No, I don’t forget last weekend when you crept away in the early morning hours just before she arrived home. It was sweet sleeping with you.
I lay awake. It’s 3:00 in the morning and I shed tears that you don’t want to see. “Look at your eyes”, you say. “Your face is different”. My tears are my blood that I cannot give you… they are the beat of my heart as I hold it in my hand and ask you to take all of it. My tears are my hopes and my dreams and thankfulness. They are my tide that has come to shore and overflowed my banks. You have rejected them and I cannot stop them. I cannot stem them anymore. I cry because I want to give myself to you… because I want you in my world… because I don’t want to wonder anymore… because I have only hurt once before and I am scared… because you are so different from me and I don’t understand you… because I don’t know the future.
I lay awake because you say that you love me and I am not sure what you mean. I asked you one time, “what about me?” You quickly said, looking into my eyes, “When she leaves, my children are coming and I will buy a house and then marriage”. But you leave and I don’t know what you have said. Have you said that you want to marry me? You wear a wedding ring. Some days you don’t… most days you don’t. What do the days mean when you do? Questions. I have questions and no answers. When will she go? Will she really go? When your children come will you still want me? Can I meet your children? Can I meet your family? Can I meet your friends? Could I be more lonely than I am without you?
I lay awake and wonder. I only have this. Am I being fair? Do you give me as much of you as you have left over? Left over. Am I the splinter that never ceases to molest you? Or am I only the sure thing, a diversion? That is why I lay awake. Why can’t you call? Too many questions.
My tears will come now though you reject them and tell me that you only want us to be happy. I will cry when we are together and it may be the reason that you do not come to see me. I want to release you. I need to release you and be with you either because I choose to or leave you because I need to release myself.
I have always said, “Leave when you have to. Stay as long as you can.”
My mom loved getting and giving cards for all occasions. At Christmas time, she had a list a mile long because she had a very large family and many friends. When a card would come in from someone not on the list, they would be added.
My cards this year.
Mom would set up an aluminum TV tray (remember those?) in front of her living room chair. Beside her was a tall stack of cards with envelopes and her list with names and addresses. From right after Thanksgiving until her list was complete, this is where we would find her, when she was not at work, or cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, shopping and wrapping presents.
For Christmas, as the mail came in, she’d cover the fireplace mantel with cards, then when there was no more room, she’d tape them on the door jams in the living room. Every year, when the holiday season was over, she would gather the cards and stash them away in a box along with her list.
Mom and me in 1966. See the Christmas cards?
When Mom passed away, it was hard to throw away her memories that were her only treasures. She didn’t leave us money or property but she left us something more precious, her unconditional love for everyone. Cards and photos and letters were overwhelming as evidence.
I’ve never sent cards at Christmas. Kristi (my sister) had taken over this tradition from Mom. But this very special year, my cousins (on mom’s side) and I decided to send cards to each other. We needed to say, “I love you” in a very tangible way. Some of us are very alone or suffering in other ways. There are well over 40 of us. In such a large family, one never knows what heartbreak might be.
I can’t tell you how much this has meant to me. I could feel Mom stirring in my heart and see her in my mind’s eye, sitting in her chair, head down, handwriting her cards as I wrote my cards, addressed the envelopes and stuffed them into the mailbox.
And now, I rush to get the mail everyday to see who has sent me a card. I think it’s my turn to keep the tradition, Mom.
This has been heartwarming in a cold and dark night. Our world has been turned upside down and this small gesture of sending and recieving cards has brought much needed joy and comfort. Thank you, cousins.
This letter was written to me in 1953 by Dad’s only sibling, Aunt Wilma, Wilma Jean to be exact. I was in the hospital suffering from infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis. I was only five years old and just starting kindergarten when I succumbed at the tail end of a serious epidemic and just a year before the Jonas Salk vaccine was distributed throughout the US public school system.
The letter is written on paper from a small tablet, maybe 3″x5″. This was the cheap kind of tablet that you might write a grocery list on. It was, at one time, a multi-colored paper that has faded to a dull orangish-yellowish brown. I rolled it at some point, tying it with what once was a pretty blue satin ribbon but over the years, it faded to a nearly colorless grey. For some reason, I have saved it for over 64 years. Mostly, it has been safely tucked away in my blue trunk. Now, I find it very curious and have a question about its intention… about her intention. About the seemingly mysterious guilt hidden there.
More about Aunt Wilma later.
Christmas 1951 – One year before I contracted polio. Mom, me, in the rocking chair, and Kristi and Steve
Mom woke us up each morning for school, singing:
“School days, school days,
Good old golden rule days.
Reading and writing and ‘rithmatic.
Played to the tune of a hickory stick…
She left every night at 10:00 for St. Vincent Hospital where she worked for over 40 years. We never thought of her as a working mom. She left the house after we were tucked soundly into bed and arrived back home mornings in time to get us ready for school. This day was no different, except for one big thing.
Kristi had already climbed out of our bed and left the bedroom, even though she wasn’t yet in school. I could hear the sounds of Mom cooking and everyone talking. Steve was already in 2nd grade and he always had lots of stories to tell. In spite of all of the morning’s activities, I could hear Mom calling me to get up and come to the table, or “you’ll be late”, she said.
I was just too tired and heavy feeling to move. I knew I needed to get out of my flannel nightie, put on my school clothes, wash up, brush my teeth and hair and get out to the kitchen nook where breakfast was already on the table. But, I didn’t think I could. Somehow, I don’t know how, I made it out to the kitchen, sat in my chair, but I couldn’t pick up my spoon. I sat there drooping, still in my nightie and I said, “Mama, I can’t pick up my spoon.” Mom turned to look at me and according to Mom, she knew at once that it was polio.
Polio was at epidemic proportions in the US by the 1950s. By 1952, thousands of children had died and tens of thousands were paralyzed. In the fall of 1953, polio season, as late summer and fall became known, I came down with the symptoms.
Mom immediately called Dr. Peasley, our family physician, who came over to confirm that I had contracted polio, one of the most feared childhood diseases. Since polio is a highly communicable disease and we did not yet have the vaccine, arrangements were made to take me to Isolation Hospital. This is where Mom took her tiny 5-year-old and dropped her off to be cared for by doctors and nurses. I don’t remember this, but Mom told the story so often, I feel that I can remember it: As I was being led away, I turned one last time and said, “Mommy, go home and put your uniform on.” Leaving me there was one of the hardest things she had ever done, she later told me.
I remember much of my experiences with polio. I can still see the young man, lying in a bed close to mine, who breathed, using a pneumothorax apparatus. I didn’t know what it was then, of course, but I remember that he blew bubbles. I don’t remember how long I was in Isolation Hospital, but I was next moved to Providence Hospital, where I spent 3 long months.
“The City of Portland opened a sixty-bed, municipal Isolation Hospital at Kelly Butte in September 1920 to house patients with contagious diseases. This hospital closed in 1960.” https://www.southeastexaminer.com/2013/05/kelly-butte/ Nick Blackbourn, 2013/
Mom as a nursing student -1942 University of Minnesota
Mom was a nurse, trained at the University of Minnesota and fortunately, she had the opportunity to train with Sister Elizabeth Kenny. Sister Kenny had developed a controversial but what proved to be an effective treatment for polio patients, utilizing exercise of affected muscles and not immobilization; in other words, physiotherapy and hot packs.
Sister Elizabeth Kenny 1880-1952
So, Mom knew what we were up against. It was possible that I might die or only fate knew how much paralysis I would suffer and how much might be permanent. Mom and Dad had two other children to be concerned with. They both were working and hospital care would not come cheap. What would they be facing financially and how could they manage a little girl of 3 years old, not yet in school, and a son who was just 7 years old and me, who needed full hospitalization?
Of course, at the time, I was not aware of any of this. I was too young to know and too sick to care. I only came to understand as an adult, just how much Kristi and Steve had to accommodate Mom and Dad’s schedules. Mom told me that Kristi and Steve couldn’t visit me so they sat countless hours in the waiting rooms while both Mom and Dad were sitting with me. Fortunately, there were Grandma and Grandpa living right around the block from us. How much did they have to sacrifice to care for Steve and Kristi and still find time to come to the hospital to visit me and keep on working. Then there was Aunt Wilma and Uncle Bob and any number of Mom’s brothers and sisters who came to see me.
My worst nightmare happened the night the iron lung was rolled into my room. If you don’t believe that a 5-year-old child can have vivid memories at that age, you are sorely mistaken. I don’t remember my symptoms other than complete fatigue. I must have had the accompanying chills, fever, vomiting, paralysis but finally, there was complete paralysis from the neck down. I remember being placed inside the machine with just my head sticking out onto a shelf with a mirror above my head. A rubber collar, attached to the machine, securely encircled my neck. My world was what I could see in the mirror. I was terrified.
As an adult, I was baffled how my parents could have made the decision to place their little child into one of these monstrosities. How could one decide that this would be better than death? To me, it is a kind of death. I would never choose to live inside of a metal apparatus with caregivers changing my diapers or having a complete colostomy and catheter. Opening the iron lung to physically care for the patient, meant that the moments when the machine was not working were moments of sheer terror. Dying of suffocation is desperately terrifying.
I don’t know how it happened but I suddenly started to recover some of the use of my body and my ability to breathe on my own and out I came. I was saved, by I don’t know what, from a life in the iron lung. Eventually, new ways were developed to help people with paralysis breathe. But, I may have, could have, spent many years in there. It is unthinkable to contemplate a life where I would be unable to play outside, feed myself, to play with toys, or read on my own or write… unable to run, climb, to make love, to have children, to drive or ride in a car, to travel or anything else you might think of.
Though I was released from a life of incarceration, I spent, from what I remember Mom telling me, three months getting well in Providence Hospital. I spent Thanksgiving in the hospital and Christmas too. I became a bit of a hellion from what I understand. I could hear and see some of the other children, who were not as sick as me, tearing down the hallways in their wheelchairs. I wanted to do that too and as soon as I wasn’t so tired, I was doing my share of racing. I remember Thanksgiving dinner. No one came to eat with me and the hospital food was not to my liking. I hated the peas and the gravy. I began to spin my tray on the table until my plate flew off sending my dinner flying. Though I was sick, the nurses were none too pleased with me.
At Christmas, Dr. Marxer, who I grew to love, let me go home for a few hours. I remember Mom and Dad coming to get me. They made a bed in the backseat of the car with blankets and pillows and all kinds of stuffed animals. When we got home, they carried me into the house and I laid on the couch with Gypsy our dog lying on my feet the whole time. I got to be a part of the celebrations with aunts and uncles, Grandma and Grandpa and Steve and Kristi doing all sorts of things to make me happy. It was terrible when Mom and Dad had to take me back. I couldn’t have been more distraught. All I wanted was to be with my family but I was tired… too tired to even eat.
The days went by slowly in the hospital but I had lots of visitors and regular time in the therapy pool. Eventually, all of my muscular strength returned and the only effect was that the right deltoid completely atrophied. When I was ready to leave the hospital, Mom kept up the physical therapy with me lying on the kitchen table and there were regular visits to the therapy pool and visits to the doctor. I do not remember how long I had to wear a brace that held my arm up and out in front of my chest, but it was too long, as far as I was concerned. I can still see it, abandoned in the basement hanging from a post. I hated it. It made me different from the other kids and I felt awkward. But I had to wear it until the surrounding muscles supported my arm and held it in place and kept it from popping out of the shoulder joint.
The only photograph that I have of me with my brace. I’m in the plaid dress and glasses; 1954
Mom and Dad refused to treat me special. I was expected to participate in family chores and there were no excuses that were accepted. Many nights I cried at the dinner table because they would force me to eat with my right hand. They also made me brush my hair and teeth with my right hand.
I had begun tap-dance lessons when I was 2 years old and soon after returning home, they commenced once again. Then, there were 12 years of ballet. I played soccer and softball. I rode bikes and scooters and I skated all around the neighborhood. I played the clarinet and bass clarinet in the school band and orchestra, playing at games and marching each year in the Rose Parade. I ran around just like any other child. I remember kindergarten, so I must have been able to return to school before the end of the school year.
I used to have photographs of me as the March of Dimes poster child. I was wearing a purple and yellow dress with pearl buttons. I was posed with a famous actress and two monkeys in front of TV cameras. Those posters were never published. Most March of Dimes posters showed children in leg braces. Maybe with only an arm brace, I was not pitiful enough to draw the sympathy of the public.
By the time I was 13 years old, my muscles could no longer hold my arm in the joint and I was repeatedly running into the house in excruciating pain for Mom to put it back in the joint. The doctor finally said that there would have to be surgery because it would continue to get worse. But this is a subject for another story.
So, back to Aunt Wilma and the letter.
Aunt Wilma, by all rights, was a wild child. I want to honor her memory so I won’t go into great detail about her personal life, but what I will share with you is common knowledge to the world and to me. She drove a black chrome-encrusted Ford Fairlane. The back floor was covered in candy wrappers and coke bottles. She’d rather eat Chinese food than anything else and she worked at the bowling alley by my grade school as a soda jerk and later tended bar.
Aunt Wilma could jitterbug like no one’s business, skirt flying up around her head as her partner swung her over his head. She had trophies for swimming, bowling, softball, and I can’t remember what else. She could hunt and fish and swam with the sea lions with Dad and Grandpa out in the ocean. She loved to camp and she loved the family. Sometimes on the weekends, she’d take us kids to her bowling tournaments and it felt like we were traveling across the country. When we asked her where we were going, she’d say Timbuktu. We knew we’d get candy, hamburgers, milkshakes… sometimes all but sometimes just one or the other.
I thought Aunt Wilma was the best thing that ever happened to me, except for Grandma. She was so athletic, so well dressed, so gregarious, so much fun. There was always a bit of a feeling that we were being naughty but Aunt Wilma made it O.K., gave us permission to be a little naughty. I didn’t learn until much later that Aunt Wilma was naughty. At 5 years old, I didn’t even know then all the fun that she could be.
When we went to her house, she put us to work folding clean laundry, dusting and doing dishes. She was too busy having fun for these mundane chores. One time, Kristi, who was probably 4 or 5 years old, was standing on a chair at the sink, scrubbing a double sink full of dishes. As Auntie Wilma walked by, Kristi said, “You work me to the bone”. Aunt Wilma swooped her up and took her straight out to the car without a word and drove her home and didn’t have her over for weeks. Kristi was shocked not really knowing the extent of the truth she had spoken.
So, Aunt Wilma lived dangerously. She was an expert flirt and as she aged into her 30’s and 40’s she wanted to wear our clothes and embarrassed us no end with our boyfriends. Having male attention was an important aspect of her life. I think I have said enough to illustrate why I have questions about this letter.
Her lifestyle does not preclude her religious beliefs. I don’t doubt that she believed in God. I am sure that she was sure that she might be dead or worse except for his intervention, and if I were a believer in a god that intervened in our day-to-day activities, I would say it was so.
So now we come to the letter. Just exactly what does this suppose to mean? “Grandpa and me were so happy and having such a good time and never thought anything could happen, so God thought we needed to be taught a lesson. He didn’t want to hurt you, so he just made you sick.”
God punished me because Aunt Wilma and Grandpa were so happy? Doesn’t it sound like she felt guilty about something? Doesn’t it?
I have transcribed the entire letter except page 13. That page is missing and I am sure it will never be recovered. This makes me sad but the letter is old, it has traveled with me and has been stored precariously for nearly 7 decades. Could I be the only one to think that at least that one statement on page 14 is curious?
Read on and tell me what you think.
1/ Hello Karen, I hope that you are not mad at me for not coming over to see you, but I have had a cold and I don’t think the doctors and nurses would like me to bring that to you. All the other little girls and boys in the hospital
2/ with you might get more sick. I want you to get well fast so I don’t want you to catch a cold from me. Santa Claus said to get well fast so you could see him when you come home. He’ll probably wait till you
3/ get there to come to bring presents. If he does have to go back to his home so Kristi and Stevie won’t break them and your momma can keep them for you. Maybe he’ll bring them to the hospital.
4/ I don’t know, I think you will be home by then though. Gee, I sure hope so. You do everything the doctors and nurses tell you to and maybe you will be. My house is so dirty. I can’t get it as clean
5/ as you do when you help me. You’re such a big help and can do so much I can’t hardly get along without your help. But we’ll make up for lost time later. Your momma keeps telling me how
6/ you are and what you do and say and about the things people send you. I think that’s real nice and you are right when you say that all hospitals are nice. Because if it weren’t for them, you might never get well.
7/ We both know that God is in there with you just to watch and make sure you and the rest of the boys and girls like you will get well and get what they need to make them well.
8/ I tell him every night what a good girl you are and all the good things you’ve done and to help you all he can. And if anyone can make you well faster, it’s him, so you talk to him too, ’cause He’ll hear you
9/ and help you more than any of us can. He talks to the doctors and nurses and tells them what to do for you, so you talk to him all you want. When you get lonesome, don’t cry, just
10/ pretend he is right where you can see him and talk to him, then you won’t be lonesome ’cause you know He’s with you and that is the best company in the whole wide world. That’s what I do when I’m
11/ lonely, so I know God is always with you, honey, but you can’t see him. He hears everything you say and sees everything you do Even when you sleep, He’s awake to watch
12/ and see that you are all right. Sometimes you will wonder why you should be sick if God is supposed to take care of you. Well, He didn’t do it because you were naughty or because he was mad at
13/
14/ Grandpa and me were so happy and having such a good time and never thought anything could happen, so God thought we needed to be taught a lesson. He didn’t want to hurt you, so he just made you sick. That
15/ is how wonderful He is. So you talk to Him and tell Him anything you want to. People don’t talk to Him just at night before they go to bed. Anytime you want to talk, He listens. Even if you want to tell him a secret, and you want to whisper it, he’ll still hear you. Isn’t that going to be a lot of fun to know that you aren’t ever going to be lonesome and will always have someone to talk to? You try it and see. It sure helps.
eyeamdust 