I Found Eavan Boland's essay "Lava Cameo" from her collection Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time to be a beautifully written account of the history of turmoil occurring in Ireland around the time of her grandmother's passing. This reading brought a flood of those forgotten and faded memories of my own grandmother about whom I have asked very similar questions. Like when Boland says, "A hundred years ago she was a child once. But where? Strange to think that once the circumstances of her life were simple and available. They have become, with time, fragments and guesswork."
When I read where she wrote, "I have pieces but they are few enough," it made me stop and consider what I know of my own family history and how easily we do loose so many pieces of those memories over the years and eventually sometimes we end up with just fragments and how frustrating and disappointing that can be. I can relate all too well to that feeling of wanting to know more about a loved one who passed before you had the chance to ever really get to know them. There were several points that this essay brought up some very strong emotions and memories for me because of that. It put me back in the year I graduated high-school when we found out my mom's mom had sinus cancer and I think how horrible I felt in that moment I was told because of all those times that we didn't go to see her, because she was a bit of a hermit with too many animals living in a trailer in the foothills about an hour from where we lived. I remember hating the drive up there because it made me carsick and how when we got there my brother and I would flee from her kisses because they were the gross, sloppy, wet all over your face ones and when she gave them to you, she'd try to squeeze you tight. But she smelled like mothballs and dust because of all the raggedy old wool sweaters she'd collected over the decades on adventures abroad. They were stained with animal stuff from making parrot food and cleaning up after all the puppy litters, birds, horses, llamas, donkeys, and mastiffs (which terrified me then). My brother and I would sit and watch television while she tried to visit and get to know her grand kids. I remember being annoyed by all the advice she tried to give, letter's with newspaper clippings on how to improve your math skills and phone calls, once a week at least, and how my brother and I never really listened. I remember how mom was so much worse with her so, we rationalized it.
I remember so vividly how that phone call halfway through the first semester of my junior year changed it all. After that, I remember my counselor telling me leaving high school early was a bad idea. But I didn't care, because I hated it anyways and she needed me there. By now, mom had already left to another state, my brother had a family of his own, and my aunt, the only other relative my grandma had here, lived nine hours away. I remember how my counselor said she understood and went out of her way to help make sure I woud graduate. I remember the day before I turned seventeen how proud grandma was that she knew I'd finished school before she died and that I had let her sit and help me with my English class online without resistance, happily taking her advice. It was the first time I'd ever live away from both my parents but she let me take care of her for those three months before she got too bad for just me. I remember loathing that word, terminal, and my grandpa for being the cause of this. I remembered the story of the radon rod the psychiatric ward had shoved up her nose. I remember being told in England, at the time, a husband had the right to put his wife that place if he so desired. And that's what he did when she tried to leave him with her girls.
I Remembered her hospital room and her frail bony frame on the bed, a shadow of the buxom woman she'd once been and how I could see every vein through her papery skin. I remember not sleeping, in a chair in a bed by her side, running on hospital coffee because I couldn't stand the thought of her dying alone the way she'd lived most of her life. I remember when my mom and brother came to visit and watching them cry, realizing I still never had. I remember them babying her, wounding her pride and how I got to help her shut them up when they were debating her ability to reason and think, like just because she had cancer she was some kind of vegetable with nothing left upstairs. I remember how angry it made me. The chemo took a lot, but never that, she held fast to her fighting spirit and her whit. I asked her who was the current president, and what she thought of him though I already knew what her reply would be. I remember She scoffed at the taste of President George Bush's name on her lips. She knew I was a Republican and supported him. Though her eyes were barely slits, and her mouth was perpetually dry since the chemo had destroyed all of her salivary glands , she signaled for me to moisten her mouth so she could reply. I dampened her mouth with a lubricating swab like the nurse did and watched the other two's faces as she let out a torrent of complaints about his policies and for the war we are still in ending it all with, "He's a piece of shit." I allowed myself a smirk because even if I disagreed, I was proud of her for once again being the brazenly opinionated woman that I knew.
I remember after that she started to get better again so after mom went back to Tennessee and brother left; I took her home again. I remember the first time I had to start helping her dress, and the first time she asked me if I could clean the animal's pens. I remember sensing her pride was wounded by her weakness and when she demanded that I let her pay me for the work. I remember how naked her hill looked as all the animals started disappearing, sold off one by one. I remember days of CNN and FOX and endless political debates between phone calls to the local area papers to sell off her heart's passion, the animals she loved so much, and how it broke my heart that she felt that it was what she had to. I remember the day she went to the neighbors' after her her prized stud horse was hauled away and how I wanted her to come home to a clean place and a warm meal, if she was willing to eat that day. I remember I cleaned the whole place until the brown-grey cabinets had turned white to my surprise. I remember her shock when she came home, and the smile that followed it as she smelled the pasta I'd made . I remember as she sat down next to me, how she took my had and kissed it and said thanks. It was such a cherished moment; I remember I pointed to my cheek and told her, "This is where that belongs, I'm sorry I was such a brat about that for so long." I remembered her laugh, as she waved my apologies away and asked if I was sure, and I nodded my consent. I remember how I needed that moment. I remember, that was the last week we lived there before she went to the place that killed her. I remember that negligent nursing home and that I wasn't there for her like before but she never complained. It was her firm decision that I move back to Dad's because they both agreed that I needed to start college and I remember how adamant she was that I start as soon as possible so I wouldn't "get behind." I remember riding my bike across town from the local college to see her when I had long enough breaks how by that point she'd just smile at me and gurgle my name because within a month of living in that place her ability to speak was essentially gone; so I'd tell her about my classed and all the things that didn't really matter but made up my day. As I'd leave I'd think of all the stories my mom said had never happened, and the ones she verified. These were the stories that I begged my grandma to tell me, the last months of her too short but incredibly fantastic life. I remember my aunt asking me to write her eulogy and how honored I felt. I also remember that as I got up there to read and I sad the first few lines my eyes began to water and it was the first time that I cried because despite all the amazing things I had written down to say about her on the pages in my hand, all I could think of was that it still wasn't enough and wanted so badly to hear her voice telling another of the stories of her life. I remember instead, my aunt putting her arm around me and her soothing voice telling me the same mantra my mom has told me all my adolescent life when I got angry at my tears. "Meggy baby, it's okay to cry. It's good for you. You need to let it out.You don't have to be strong for, or take care of anyone else." Then I remember as I looked over at my mom in the pew, my aunt saying it wasn't my wasn't my responsibility. I remember how bad it hurt that I couldn't fix her hurt, I couldn't even fix mine. I remember her coming up to the podium too, and them standing with me as I finished reading those pages about her through my tears. I remember I hated hearing that I had given a beautiful tribute, because all of those memories were still not enough; the details were too fuzzy, I couldn't get them right. I wished so badly that I had been able to hear more of her stories, but she didn't really think they were as important as I did. So there were only a few that summer. Mom and my aunt were perfect skeptics of Grandma's tales and I think she was afraid that I wouldn't believe her either but I did; they were the hilights of her life. She used to say, "Oh honey, it's been such a long time, I don't remember right now. Ask me another night." That was her way of brushing me off gently, before she'd wander and go to sleep.
After remembering all these things myself to the best of my ability, there is one line in Boland's piece that stood out more than the rest and that I found really inspiring as a writer and it's where she is talking about the memory of her great grandmother's father's history. She says, "And the way I build that legend now is the way I heard it: out of rumor, fossil, fact, half memories." I think it's beautiful and it makes me want to play somuch more with and build my own memories of moments in my life, memories of things i've seen and those fragmented remembrances of ancestors and moments stuck on a country lane watching the kids and cows go by. Her descriptions are so vivid it's impossible not to congure them up in my mind. This whole article connects so well with what we have been discussing in class about paying attention, walking, and writing; this whole paper is saturated with calls to the reader to pay attention to the details around you and draw from your memories and what has ever left you with a memory as fuel to feed the fire of creativity in regard to writing. There is one last point on page twenty eight which I noted and relate to. It's where she addresses one of her struggles with writing saying that she could go through the motions but there felt a disconnect which she later realized was: " my powers of expression made my mind as a human being the subject of the poem, my life as a woman remained obdurately the object of it." I feel like this is still really hard for me not to avoid and I'm hopeful that the lessons she shared can help with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment