#TBT: My Mom on Twitter

So right, my mom was never on Twitter. If Twitter had been a thing when I was kid I'm sure she would have been posting these quotes from her four-year-old son just like I do with my kids. Instead she had the first two pages of this journal where she put down some of her favorite quotes.

I think this first one was influenced by my love of West Side Story

I've written about my mother's journals before, and I've posted a passage from the diary I kept when I was nine-years-old. I'm still packing up for our move and I'm still looking through everything as I go.

So happy Throwback Thursday, here's the wit and witticisms of preschool Berto.

 

Sorry kids, I've been making these terrible jokes since I was your age

1568 Part III

Down in the kitchen Jayne put on the kettle and whisked her three-quarters of a cup of coffee into the microwave. Mr. Pelican sat at the table looking out the window at the side yard from the same chair in which Jayne had first seen him. “I sat here in this very spot,” he began, “when I was eight years old. We had woodpile just there and one evening we watched about a dozen raccoons come clambering out, one at a time, from what seemed to be a perfectly solid woodpile.” Jayne regarded him over the rim of her mug trying to picture this old man as an eight-year-old boy. Imagining him very small but still wrinkled and dressed in a suit is as far as she could get with him sitting there in front of her. But when he spoke she felt like she could see the figures of his family moving through the house like a time lapsed photograph.

When the tea was ready he thanked her for the cup and they moved out to the back porch. He told her about his parents putting in the brick patio just beyond the porch, about his mother putting in the greenhouse window over the sink. He spoke at length about how the kids next door and two houses down to the south were all in a close enough age range that their parents took boards out of the fences in the back yards so the kids could go back and forth. He talked about the epic games of hide and seek and make believe the kids played in the three adjoining yards. She learned that his was the only one without a tree house. Jayne mentally committed to talking to June Grunwald about their fence even though her son and Jayne’s own kids weren’t very close.

“Well,” said Walter Pelican, “I’m afraid I’ve ended up giving you a tour instead of the other way ‘round. I hope I wasn’t to forward with my wandering.”

“You were fine.” replied Jayne. “I enjoyed hearing your memories of the house.”

“The one place I was truly happy.” he sighed. “Did I mention that before?’

“You did. Do mind…” she paused and he gave her a slight nod of acceptance. “Do you mind if I ask what you mean? Why you left?”

“Not at all. It’s an important part of the story I guess. You see Malcolm and my mother weren’t married. He wasn’t my father, but oh I wanted him to be. So did she. Then somehow it just didn’t work out. They broke up and sold the house and we moved away. At that time, at that age I mean, I didn’t know what had happened. They both gave me the speech you’re supposed to give kids. It wasn’t my fault, they both love me very much. To his credit Malcolm stayed in touch and would come and visit and take me out every once and while, until he had his own kids and moved too far away. Even after that we were in touch periodically through my early adulthood. But at that time it was like my life had been replaced with another. Like the prince and the pauper, or like when you come to the end of a good book and you look up and you’re back in the real world sitting on a train with a bunch of very average people.

“When my mother was with Malcolm it was the last time I felt like I was part of real family. The kind you grow up believing in like the Seavers or the Keatons. Malcolm’s family was normal. They were all still married for the first time. They had the 2.8 children, and we still went to his parents every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas. When they broke up I lost all that and I never got it back.

“I tried to provide the kind of stable home I’d always craved for my children. I hope they know that.”

Jayne felt an urge to take the old man’s hands, to look into his eyes and comfort the hurt child inside him. She longed to reassure him that he’d done a wonderful job with his children. Instead she turned towards the stove and rearranged the pans that had been drying there. She didn’t want to delve any deeper in to the old man’s pain but she couldn’t stop the question from eking its way from between her lips, “Do you know what happened?”

“Oh, I think it was a lot of things.” he replied. “The kind of things that happen to people sometimes, work, stress, neediness, jealousy, diverging interests or careers or goals. I guess sometimes people just grow apart.”

“You mentioned a brother, was your mom…”

“At some point yes. I think it happened around the time they were breaking up. I found her journals after she died. I read through them, hoping they would provide answers to questions I'd never thought of asking. In them I found that my mother wanted to have a child with Malcolm, that one was conceived but never carried to term. She didn’t write down the reason. I guess it was too painful even to commit to her private notes. Even though she never told me about it I think I knew on some level that I was supposed to have a sibling that never came. I kept hoping for one and when she and Malcolm split that dream died too.

“My mother did end up having another son eventually, with another man. But by that time he was a different kid and so was I. I was thirteen and as jaded as a kid that age has a right to be. But that’s another house and another time, one that I’m not as anxious to relive.

     I’m sorry. I don’t mean to leave you on a sad note. This really was a happy place for me. I’m glad to see it in the care of a family like yours.”

Jayne stood leaning against the range. They looked at each other for a long moment. “Well, I should be going.” said Walter motioning the hat in his hand towards the door. Jayne shook her head slightly as if waking from an extended daydream, “Yes, of course.” she said and followed him towards the door.

When they reached the threshold she opened the door for him and he stepped out onto the porch. He turned towards her and took her hand in his placing his left hand over her right. “Thank you Jayne.” he said. The look of calm in his eyes overwhelmed her and as he turned to go she felt that she couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him again, of not getting the rest of the story. “Mr. Pelican.” she called after him. “Walter. You can come back again. We’d be happy to have you visit, meet the kids.”

Mr. Pelican paused on the stairs and turned himself halfway so that he could address her without facing her. “Thank you Jayne, but I think I’ve got what I came for. Anything more may be too much.”

Too melancholy to watch him make his way down the stairs Jayne closed the door and looked at the rooms around her. She knew that she would never be alone in the house again. The ghosts of former occupants that she always felt in a vague way, the spirits, the feeling of history in that old house which had helped her fall in love with it had become tangible. Now when she watched her children rip through the house chasing after each other she would see that little boy riding circles on his first bike. When she cooked lunch or did the wash she would do it alongside that other young mother who seemed to feel as happy and as uncertain as she sometimes felt. In the sun room she could see the cradle of the baby boy who was never able to call this house his home, and an alternate space where the happy little boy who grew up to be "Walter Abraham Pelican, Retired," stands cooing at his little brother. Outside the humming birds resumed their frenetic zigzagging flight.

1568 Part II

As she stepped back into the entryway to let Walter Pelican in Jayne fixed on the old man’s eyes. As he stood in the sunlight of the foyer his pupils dilated as if to let in as much of past as possible. “I had so many good times here.” He breathed the words as if talking to someone very close by. Jayne felt that his words were not meant for her so she said nothing. Mr. Pelican placed his hand on the railing of the stairs leading to the second story. “I remember running down these stairs on birthdays.” he said still not looking at her. “I would try to peek over the railing there to the dining room to see what kind of cake she’d made.” He looked down the short hallway towards the dining room, then at Jayne still holding the door standing slightly behind as if to ward off the strength of the old man’s memories. She noticed that she was hiding there not wanting to disturb him in a place she had long felt was her own. It was a puzzling feeling. “She always made the best cakes, very creative, in different shapes.

     When we started looking for houses I said that I wanted a house with stairs on the inside. For whatever reason that’s what a home meant to me. They took me on a lot of the trips to look at houses. I remember vetoing a few because they were only one story.” Jayne finally closed the door. His gaze remained fixed on were she had been standing through that spot and on to the sitting room.

“The Christmas I turned six years old I followed a trail of clues to the front porch. Sitting out there was my very first bicycle. Mom let me ride in circles through the sitting room, down the hall, round the corner of the dining room, the living room and back through the sitting room.” As he spoke he traced a path in the air. “It must have been a small bike.”

“Should I show you up stairs?” asked Jayne. She didn’t wait for a reply, uttering the phrase and moving towards the stairs almost simultaneously. She realized she’d taken a few steps up the stairs before checking to make sure he was following. He was. He took each stair slowly always stepping up with his right foot then bringing the left foot up to meet it. She waited for him on the landing before proceeding up the last four stairs. When they reached the top he paused leaning slightly on the railing. He looked at the three bedrooms running left to right from the back of the house to the front. “The middle one was mine.” he said after a moment.

“That’s my son’s room now. Would you like to look inside?”

Walter paused, “No.” he said, “Even though it was my room for those years I don’t have many memories of it.” Instead he moved to the left, to the bedroom at the back of the house. The door was ajar and he paused at the threshold. “You can go in.” said Jayne. “It’s my daughter’s room. She’s older.”

The room’s dimensions hadn’t changed in the eighty-one years since Walter had last been there. In his mind he could see the roll top desk, the couch, and the TV that had once been there. At the back of the room was a door leading to a sun room. The room, about eight feet wide, at the very back of the house, had windows running along its length with a short bench stretching wall to wall beneath the windows. It had been his mother’s sewing room and now was strewn with dolls and games. “It’s my daughter’s play room.” said Jayne. She had been trailing along behind him, allowing what she thought was an appropriate space between herself and his past, and now stood leaning in the doorway between the two rooms. “Ryan kind of dominates the rest of the house with his toys and she needed a place to play without worrying about a little brother crashing through.”

“I think this would have been my little brother’s nursery if I’d had one at the time. But that didn’t happen until much later.” He trailed off and she followed his gaze to the floor at the far corner of the room. Poking out beneath the dollhouse was the corner of a rectangular burn mark. Walter pointed at it.

“That was me.” he said. “The burn mark is from and old toy oven. A really old one like the kind my mother must have had when she was a child. It was all metal with a plug so old the cord was wrapped in fabric, from a time before widespread use of plastics. One day I was playing with it and I realized I’d never plugged it in. So I did and nothing seemed to happen. I put a little plastic pie pan filled with mud in the chamber and waited. Eventually I went outside to play. My mother smelled the plastic burning some time later and when we came up to investigate this electrified hunk of metal had been sitting there getting progressively hotter for over an hour. That’s when I learned about fire safety. I think my mom learned something about child safety too.”

“So there it is.” thought Jayne, “Another mystery solved.” Walter started back towards the hall taking a last look around the young girl’s suite as he went. He proceeded down the hall past the middle bedroom to the room at the front of the house. Although the door was open this time he paused again. Again, Jayne trailing some distance behind him, more curator than tour guide, gave him the OK to enter the room.

The front bedroom was sparse but still homey. Along the south wall a queen bed stuck partway into the room. At the west wall near the window was an old armoire. Otherwise there was no other furniture. Jayne stopped and took up her now customary position leaning in the doorway. Walter stood in the middle of the room and made a full shuffling turn. When he was facing Jayne he began his story again.

“I don’t think I’ve been in here more than a handful of times. My parents slept here. I don’t think it's that I wasn’t allowed in here. I remember the door being open almost all the time. I think it’s that, with so many other places to be, it just never really occurred to me to come in here.

“I do remember my mother had a big freestanding mirror that stood nearly in the middle of the room just about here” he said pointing few feet to his left towards the closet door. “I remember wondering if the boy in that mirror was having a better life than I was.” He paused staring into the mirror that was there eight decades in the past. “I read a lot of Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle when I was kid.” he sighed.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” asked Jayne.

“That would be lovely.”

Continued Here

1568 Part I

It was the kind of spring day you imagine when you think of spring days. The morning had been bright and clear without the layer of fog that usually took until mid-morning to fully burn off. There were humming birds darting in and out of the creeping flowers that no one had planted but still grew along the south side of the house. The house stood there as it had since 1908. Set back from the street and on a bit of a hill so that you had to climb two set of stairs to reach the porch. The bees buzzed in the north east corner of the yard but she was content to leave them alone since trying to eradicate them in past summers hadn’t worked and the kids didn’t seem interested in playing in that corner of the yard anyway. The erratic motion of the humming birds and the bees highlighted the fact that it was an otherwise still day.

Jayne sat with her second cup of coffee. It was almost eleven-o-clock but she wasn’t rushing into chores today. Instead she was reading, sipping that indulgent second cup and skimming the gossip blogs. She liked having this time to herself though she rarely took the time to really enjoy it. As she clicked through photos of ugly things celebrities had worn it only half occurred to her that she’d seen someone outside along the side of the house. A stooped but well appointed figure somewhat aimlessly walking along the side yard between her and the Grunwalds. The man had such a casual air about him he almost seemed as though he belonged there, as if he were looking at a house he had just noticed had come on the market.

The house was not on the market. Jayne had lived at 1568 Milvia St for about five years and was happy there. It was nice neighborhood, quiet with good schools and walking distance to the more chi-chi Walnut Square part of downtown. Jayne went out the back door to the side yard to see who the man might be. They’d had a couple homeless people wander into the yard over the years. Never with any ill intent, just looking for a quiet spot to sleep or sit. They never gave her any trouble when she approached them, and went on their way without being asked. Once Joe had even found a woman sleeping in his car when he was off to work. “Rise and shine” he’d said to her as she nervously gathered herself and exited through the rear door. But this man did not seem homeless. Though she’d only seen him for a second she did not get the impression that the man was down and out. Maybe he was lost.

When Jayne reached the gate at the side of the house, the gate they’d put in to keep people from getting all the way to the backyard, she could see that the man wasn’t there. She went back in intent on finishing her coffee and figuring out if she hadn’t imagined the whole thing when the doorbell rang, which to her surprise, gave her a bit of a start. As she walked down the hall she could see through the three crystal cut panes of glass, a man’s hat. It was the type of hat she’d seen in the Country Gentleman ad in her grandmother’s old Life magazines. The hat put her at ease as she thought that only very old men wear that type of hat. Despite her new confidence she opened the door they way one does for a Jehovah’s Witness, or someone holding a clipboard. A way that says “You’ve got about six words to convince me not to close the door again.” Sure enough, there beneath the hat, stooped in a way that suggested both age and a lifetime of poor posture, stood an old man.

“I’m sorry to bother you ma’am” he said. He was dressed the way old people used to dress. Rather than the elastic waistbands and jogging tops worn by on-the-go seniors of today he wore a tan shirt with a button down collar topped by a green tweed vest and a brown blazer. Below that his tan slacks, when viewed in the right light form the right angle revealed a hint of very thin corduroy.

“You were at the side of the house.”

“Yes ma’am. I’m sorry about that. It was so quiet I wasn’t sure there was anyone home. My name is Walter Pelican and I am ninety years old just recently.

Jayne briefly pondered the figure standing before her. He didn’t look like a beggar, at least not a modern beggar. If he was about launch into a sob story and request money she knew she’d have a hard time not at least listening so she started to plan her escape. She silently prayed for the phone to ring. “How can I help you Mr. Pelican?”

“Well this may sound a bit,” he paused searching for the right word, “peculiar” he finally managed. “But you see I used to live in this house when I was a young boy. I think it was the only time in my childhood I was truly happy.

     I’ve passed by here now and again over the years on my way here and there and I’ve often wondered about the people living there now. I’ve longed to see the place but I never had the confidence to approach it. I’ve always wanted to knock on the door and see who was here. What they’ve done with the place. Mostly I guess I just wanted to take a few moments to be this space and reminisce about those years. I wondered about it in my twenties when I couldn’t knock the door without seeming suspicious. I wondered in my thirties and forties when I was busy with my children and unwilling to revisit my own childhood. I wondered in my fifties and sixties when the desire seemed foolish and immature for man with grandchildren. Now I’m much older and I’ve finally found courage to knock on this old door.

     So I’m wondering ma’am, if some time, when it’s not too much trouble, if you’d be wiling to give me a tour of the place. I understand it’s an odd request but it would mean a great deal to me.”

He reached inside his pocket and produced a business card, which he handed to her. “Well that’s what I’ve come to say.” And with that Walter Pelican turned to leave. Jayne stood in the doorway unsure of what to say. She looked down at the card in her hand. It read, “Walter Abraham Pelican, Retired” with a phone number. “Mr. Pelican.” Walter Pelican did not turn back but cocked an ear towards her. “I’m not doing anything right now. I’d be happy to show you around.”

“I don’t want to intrude on your morning.” he replied already moving back from the top step to the porch.

“Oh it’s no bother Mr. Pelican.” Jayne answered. “I’m Jayne.”

Mr. Pelican stuck out his hand and stood as straight as he could, “Walter. It’s good to meet you Jayne.”

“It’s good to meet you Walter.”

Continued Here

Legacy

I'm sitting here writing this with my my son strapped to my chest like a reverse Quato, listening to my cousin's version of "My Lean Baby," and thinking about my mother. It's a nice family moment. Today I started a project I've been looking forward to for a while now. I'm reading my mom's journals. After mom died I found journals going back to October 1978. My mom was 25, I was a year old.

It's a strange experience reading this first hand account of a young woman I never knew. The person I knew was mom. The woman in these pages is Chiori and is all the things my mom never was. She's younger than I am, less experienced, naive, immature. She's full of self doubt. My mom was confident, insightful, worldly. The woman in this book is a woman I never knew.

Knowing how the story ultimately ends provides some interesting moments. At one point she mentions that as someone who is almost twenty seven years old she feels mature and grown up. Then there's a couple times when she writes about how much more time she has to live. She indicates that she has a long time left, as much as fifty more years which means she predicted her life span as 77 years. She didn't know it then, but at 27 she was exactly at the half way point of her life.

Reading these early accounts is like peeling back the curtain on another life revealing a woman who's primary concern in life is being loved on her terms. She mentions that she does not write much about motherhood because she has so many other things to figure out about herself before she can reflect on parenting. Indeed she often references her "adolescent self" as though the issues that teenaged Chiori had yet to work through were following her into adulthood. This idea makes sense to me. My mom moved out of her mother's house at seventeen. It seems likely that having to grow up early also stunted her emotional development. Many parts of her journal do read like something a teenager would write. Her views on personal relationships don't seem as mature as I would expect from someone her age. I look at my wife who is now the age my mother was at the end of the first volume I've read, and see someone who seems much more mature and confident than the woman in this journal.

This experience has caused me to wonder what kind of legacy I will leave for my son. I don't keep a journal. There is no day to day account of my life or my thoughts. I doubt any of my forays into this type of expression out here on the internet will remain after I am gone. Besides, there seems to be very little romance in reading an online journal. It can't compare to holding a bound volume in your hands. Knowing that these pages were there in that time. Reading the author's words in their own hand. I don't know if I'l be able to give that to my son and that makes me sad.

Reading mom's accounts of her life when I was a toddler has brought me closer to her. I understand her better now. I wish I had been able to read this five years ago when she was alive and I could talk to her about it. I wish I could ask her what she thinks of the young woman who wrote these entries. I wish I could dig deeper into her experience of being a twenty four year old single mother. I think we could have been closer if I'd been able to understand her beyond what she was able to tell me. But I am grateful to have these journals. I am happy that I will be able to paint a more complete picture of Grandma Chiori for my son. I look forward to starting the next volume.