My Mother In Vermont

If you’re reading this, you may or may not know my Mom.  That’s okay.  I’m going to tell you about her.

When my Mom was a junior, she went to Vermont.  I’ve forgotten details about it.  I know that she’d become a Mormon by then and that she was staying with a Mormon family.  It was far from the industrialized rust of Michigan.   Away from the complications of parents and brothers.  She was gone for almost a year.  An eon in teenage life.

It’s not even the story.  It’s the way my Mom tells it.  The excited quality of her voice.  I’ve tried to write a poem about it multiple times.  Here’s examples of lines from the poem:

It’s okay to say Vermont like that,

like a prayer-word, like a rainstorm—

And this later:

It seems odd to want my own undoing,

but many times I wished you in Vermont.

Because I wonder what life would have been like for my Mom if she hadn’t left there.  If she’d stayed.  A lot of her story, of the man who helped to create me and Candace, how young she was, and how it spun her away, is her own.  Only she can tell you of those later years.  I can't retell her story.  I can only tell you a story I imagine.

She told me how in Vermont the neighboring asylum wasn’t great with security and how the full moon drove the patients crazier.  She’d find them wandering on the lawns.  The father of her host family was a doctor there.  I imagine my mother, long haired and wild-eyed, racing out in the night, leading these nomads of the mind back to their rooms. Barefoot in the dew settling on Vermont.

To me, my Mom in Vermont is forever barefoot.

I’m sure she’ll tell you that we, her kids, are her greatest joy.  And I’m sure we are.  And like all experiences, it’s hard to say if we would trade that experience for who we are now.  The amalgamation of ourselves is a hard thing to argue against. The Lord has granted my Mom a lot of strength and foresight because of her life.  You can’t dissect that out from her.

In Vermont, she lived in a mansion.  She was the New Girl.  She was alone and full of destiny.  She could recreate herself.  She could be any version of her she wanted.  When I picture her, I don’t want her to meet my Dad.  I want her to stay. Visit her family in the summers and roadtrip far to the North.  Go to Prince Edward Island. Look out over the ocean. Know that she could swim it if she wanted to.

I’m an adult now.  I’m well adjusted despite the rollercoasters of childhood.  Our Mom pulled us through all that.  I don’t think she had a bad life or wasted it.  That’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying that as an adult I want the most happiness for her.  As a child you only want happiness for yourself.  Now I wish I could go back and give her Vermont.  Give her the place that puts the most light in her voice.  Even if it derailed my life.  Even if I never happened.  I would want my Mom to have any existence she dreamed. Vermont ever after.

Valerie, They Know You Not

It's hard to sum up a human.  It's harder to sum up Valerie.  I could gush to you for hours about her.  To some of you, I have.  Let me give you a bare bones account at least.  Let me sliver open the door.

Valerie is the most talented person you don't know.  As in you don't really know her.  Here's a small example: in college I was in a comedy improv group.  For some reason, Valerie never tried out and we never asked her to.  She managed the team, maybe we assumed that's all she wanted to do.  Then she and I get to New York.  We decide to take some improv classes at the Upright Citizen's Brigade.  And Valerie kills.  Right off. Nails everything.  The improv instructors love her.  And I find out she's amazing at something else.

It happens that way a lot.  I don't know why I get surprised.

Here's why you don't know her.  She doesn't tell you.  She doesn't advertise.  She took ballet and modern into college.  Do you know that?  No.  She's never mentioned it to you, has she?

Did you know she has dozens of nursery rhymes memorized?  And children's songs?  She wasn't memorizing them because she was going to have a baby.  No.  She just memorizes things.  And they stick.  Forever.

I didn't know this.  Our baby was born and wham! Songs flying out her mouth, lullabying this newborn to sleep.

Valerie doesn't have a great memory...she has a vault.  An underground fortress full of file cabinets.  When she can't think of something, she tells me she'll remember it.  And she sends down her little neuron sized librarian to find it.  And she does find it.  If she learned it, she'll find it.  Her mind is astounding.

We haven't even begun.  Have you seen her act?  Or did you know she acts?  Old friends from college know.  New friends don't.  Why?  Because there's no broadcasting.  Me? I tell everyone every little thing that comes up in my life.  Valerie?  She's an enigma between two slices of mystery with secret sauce on the side.

Here's the way she acts.  It's not like watching an actor.  It's like watching a real person jump off a page.  A real person walk from the audience and make their way onto to set.  Her lines are as simple as speaking. Because her lines to her are just speaking. She gets it.  When she reads a play, she unlocks it.  She's not fretting over words.  Trying to discover meaning.  She's past that.  She's digested it.  She's run these words through nuance machines, through inflection analyzers.  And she puts those words right back into the world. Like she wrote them with her own mouth.

If you ever get the chance to see her act (in a play that she likes) you will be impressed.  You will understand what I mean.  But you better ask me when the play is.  Valerie is not going to tell you.  She's not doing it for other people.  She's not looking for your adoration.

Valerie does it because it's her.  Because what else is she but this?  But the sum of her abilities?  She is the smartest, most talented person I know. I haven't even gotten to her writing.  Her cooking.  Her abilities with people.  Her naturalness at raising a child.  Her easy smile.  The way she befriends everyone.

Do you know what else?  Valerie was pretty in college.  But she just got more and more attractive.  So I win.  I invested early.  I saw what all of you didn't.  Maybe I'm the prize winner then.

Happy Mother's Day, Val.  Many more to come.