What happened next was Mary’s father insisted the child be put up for adoption. Her mother, who seemed opposed to the idea, stood by and said nothing. Mary had not the strength to resist. She saw her child for less time than she had seen Virgil. Shortly after, when her father was at work and her mother running errands, Mary disappeared. Her parents searched for years with no luck. As the baby was gone from Mary, so too was Mary gone from her parents. Her parents, without letter or call, would die bitter, entrenched in their own unspoken views. Mary neither knew nor cared. To the end she maintained innocence of the irony.
She had moved to Tennessee. Same area as Virgil’s parents.
I suppose those that saw me, morning after morning, just painting vertical lines of various shades of green, must have thought I was crazy. I really don’t know since no one ever approached me. Grief doesn’t much like a party. So I went for months without uttering a single word. Just watching sunrises and sunsets, morning glories and fireflies. Pain is this way. If one is talking, no matter how much they complain, there are no worries, the shore is still within sight. But I was someplace else, beyond the shore, beyond sight of anyone else, and in this way, beyond words, beyond the salve of language. I needed him around me. I needed our baby in my arms. I had neither.
And the thought, and keep in mind, at this time I was in my twenties, but the thought was I had had my chance. But thoughts come and go. Feelings, however, the kind that live in your gut, are a different matter, and the feeling I had was that what I once had, I would never have again. So tell me, how does one live this way? How does one get up every morning and pull breath from the air? (no response) You dive into it. You paint it in streaks of green in the morning and streaks of blue in the dusk. There is no other way.
7 comments:
Image taken from the front of a M.I.L.K. card. Look for them in your local bookstore.
very poignant. You can almost hear the shattering of Mary's psyche when her child is taken away from here...and her words, spoken from the lips of a dead person who comes back to life.
Humans are odd, aren't we? When we break and shatter and can't figure out why we're still alive because our spirits are bleeding out day after day, somehow - and in such unusual ways - the healing comes.
I love it that she was painting greens - it's "the" healing color in many circles...health and renewal. And blue- peace...tranquility.
Thanks Grace. I feel for Mary. Scarred so young such to carry that pain all her life and yet, in her own words, she wouldn't trade the experience for all the world. I wish I better knew what she meant by that. Maybe in a future chapter she will tell us. :-)
As always, thanks for the kind words. Nothing pleases a writer more than to be read. Thank you.
I love the ending
You paint it in streaks of green in the morning and streaks of blue in the dusk. There is no other way.
This is writing at its best. Without pretense, without thought, divine.
The measure of pain here is clear in your method, in the 'lack' of description, as though only in taking a step back can one even begin to talk thereof, sticking to facts for to handle emotion is equally devastating each time.
With your writing, there are touches, ideas, movements, thought that are such a large part of the reason why your stories are more than appreciated, quite simply adored, as this is a wonderful example of, Mary going to Tennessee, so logical, of course she would, and yet that it is written, to see the words one by one upon the page creates such a great desire to hug you. In plainest terms, what is so lovable about your writing (not to be misunderstood in the slightest with being predicatable, must stress that to the highest level) is the sense of rightness, the sense of meant-to-be that follows through the good times and the bad times.
You have such a beautiful, insightful, precious and poetic soul, Poppet, how I do adore you. Have a wonderful weekend.
My Dear Autumn,
You have visited when I most needed you and I wonder if you knew. Of how I have missed your comments. Of how I need them. Of how they breathe life into my desire to write. To put it simply: Thank you. :-)
This chapter is so very different from all the rest. The opening two sentences, and we will probably revisit those events in detail, but as you know, normally, I would have spent weeks fleshing out those events. Yet, yesterday, I just felt the need to blurt it out. That baby had been weighing on my mind. ;-)
You know, I had always thought the baby would have either been aborted or stillborn but I could never write of such events. I could not bring myself to even contemplate the pain. So, now, there is a child out there. A son. Virgil and Mary's. And for the life of me, I cannot believe, even for a second, that Mary doesn't seek to reconnect with that child. And I can't imagine a day goes by she doesn't think of the child as I think of Christopher. Already, the chapters are appearing in my mind.
I had started the next post yesterday and planned to finish it today but my schedule for the next 2 to 3 days is full. So, here is what I have so far, completely unedited:
I arrived in Tennessee in October of 1945. Virgil’s parents lived in the country, just outside of a small Civil War town. I moved into a garage apartment in town. The lady who rented to me was a widow and not a lot unlike Kathrin. We talked some but she didn’t ask a lot of questions and I didn’t volunteer much information. Mainly, just small talk.
The town was small, conservative and if not quaint, neat. Main street was as it appeared in pictures a hundred years ago, with old brick facades and canvas awnings. People were friendly without poking into your business. That I had served in the war seemed to go a long way with both being accepted and left alone. Many in town had lost boys, just as the Kanes had lost Virgil. To talk about it was to relive it and there wasn’t much economy for that, although you knew it was all anyone thought about. So I lived mainly among, or perhaps between, two generations.
Virgil’s father was a retired university professor who dabbled at farming. Each morning, after chores, he would come to town for breakfast, talk with the men and drink coffee, black. His skin, tanned as the others was not the same, had not the mileage of the others who had lived all their lives off the land. I watched him drink and talk, but mostly I watched him listen. And if I looked just to the side, holding his profile in my peripheral, I could smell him--Virgil. Father and son. Same roman nose. Same slopping forehead cliffed by thick hair, parted to the side and cut short over the ears. But in that profile, was Virgil, his only son.
There are few things that I love more than spending time here.
And that I hope to do more of what I love in future when a personal schedule change comes about middle of next week.
To have their child, living somewhere she knows not, is a living, breathing sense of loss in the same way that Virgil is. To have had a child still-born or aborted, I imagine there would have been thoughts of how he/she would have looked, sounded, lived, but it would have been futile, a closed issue, an unnecessary delving into pain if you will, the desire to do so would eventually dim, I believe, but to have this, to know somewhere walks an outcome of their one night (/eternal love), is a loss, a torment unfathomable, to have lost them both..not that her love for Virgil was not enough, but to have lost his child also permeates the knowledge that we have of her, the scenes that we have observed her in..when I think of then, and now (coffee mornings), the cemetary and especially at this time to what you have begun above, his smell, his profile, I don't know where to begin there seems so much to say, yet in the simplest of terms there would be two main points, firstly Mary is amazing, secondly with the greatest of pleasure, as reader mind, I see elements of Mary and I know who created her, and thus I know with your grace, time will make her still dearer to us.
Thank you, for sharing your gift, for enriching our souls and for creating such love in our hearts.
Still not sure how to explore this dual sense of lost--the child and Virgil. The "missing" is different. Virgil's loss is clean. The child's is not. With Virgil, there is nothing that can be done. The child, however, mixes elements of how and what, of an intrusion, of a decision made for and to, of her own choices, both then and now. The ache is different too. For Virgil, the ache is dull, a longing fueled by memory. For the child, the ache is anything but dull, it feels alive, as alive as the child--and too the anger, of her own separation from her parents and the constant vigil to keep bitterness at bay. In Mary we see such a lovely contradiction and complexity and at times, the parts don't seem to match--and, in a way, I suppose, this is what makes her so interesting, such a wonderful reflection, for I believe strongly we are all a multitude, sun and rain, love and indifference. What is amusing, at least to me, is I feel I know Mary, and perhaps you too, better than I know many in my own family.
As always, your comments and enthusiasm for the writing never ceased to amaze me. Thank you.
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