Miyasan’s Daughter

Today I went to my nephew’s birthday party. It’s been a while since I’ve been back to that area. I think the last time I went was his birthday the year my sister died, three years ago.

I wasn’t expecting the emotional reaction I got driving past the exit off 695, where 83 veers off and goes straight into Inner Harbor and Johns Hopkins. There was a pull in my heart as I made that curve to get on 695, a pull to stay in the right hand lane and go downtown instead.

It’s not that I wanted her to be sick back in the hospital…her suffering was more than anyone should have to go through, and I would not wish her back there for anything.

I just wanted to see her. I wanted to cry and might have had it not been for my little girl sitting in the front seat. But I could feel it, that space - not empty, but cavernous, nonetheless, full of sorrow, grieving opening wide.

When was the last time I fell into those depths? It comes up periodically, threatening to swallow me, but I always manage to sidestep it. A tear or two…maybe…if I’m alone, but quickly an errand or some other thing needing my attention spirits me away.

But the cavernous feeling threatens not to be sidestepped so easily today.

We finally come upon the off ramp to the main road. Left, goes to her house. Right to the park. I turn right. There’s a stoplight now. When did that go up?

“It’s been there a while, Mom. You must have not been here for a long time.”

Yes, it has been a long time. But it feels like just yesterday and like Vernice should be here waiting for me when I get out of my car.

“It’s about time,” I said. “This used to be a very dangerous intersection.”

We drive to the park. I pass a restaurant she and I ate at the summer before she died. The cavernous feeling grows wider.

I pass a bank, she needed to go to shortly before one of her last downward spirals. She was like Lazarus, coming back from the dead over and over again, each doctor thinking this was it, she would not make it this time. But she always did…until she didn’t.

I think I might get a headache.

We pull into the park. I get out and my brother-in-law greets me with a warm embrace. I step into the pavilion, and there on a column is a board with pictures of my sister and my nephew. Tears well up, but I will not let them escape my eyes.

My brother-in-law’s lady comes to greet me. She is gentle and kind. I speak with her a while. Explain how raw I feel. I speak to my brother-in-law briefly. The tears are escaping anyway. I say, “I need to go for a walk.”

And I do, but only a short one. The children are coming up the path. They bring me home to myself. Today is a day of celebration. I walk back with them.

The day goes well. There is a picture of my sister where her smile is absolutely radiant. It was taken before her cancer struck. She holds her son close to her. I ask if I can have a copy. My brother-in-law says of course. I can’t take my eyes off her smile.

Funny, how when she was on death’s door in the Berkshires, she said she needed to smile more. Her smiles were like deep rich wells of joy and subtle pools of kindness.

I get ready to leave, say my farewells and go to tell my little girl who is in the playground that I have to go. She asks, “Mom, are you okay?”

I say I’m feeling sensitive, and explain I’m missing my sister.

“Don’t feel sad, Mom. Maybe you don’t see her, but she’s here.”

I hold her to me, she’s right, and we walk to my car, arm in arm.

This morning I look out my front door and see the morning glories. They always make me smile.

When we were living in New Mexico, we had a whole string of morning glories on our back fence. I used to stand by the back sliding door in the early morning hours and look at their beautiful dark blue faces looking out at me. They seemed such a contrast, these flowers, with the wide dusty desert behind them.

It always amazed me that such delicate flowers could exist in such hostile climate. The hot desert sun made their show of color last only briefly and in the earliest part of the day, which made glimpsing their beauty all that much more special.

In ways I could not comprehend then, but am realizing now, they were an inspiration to me, speaking to me about the stubborn insistence of beauty to exist even in the harshest conditions and the power that lies within that which seems so fragile and vulnerable. They were telling me to hang in there.

Some part of me must have heard, must have responded with my own fierce “yes” within the petals of my own tender youth.

It’s funny, how we often feel like we’re alone, but support exists all around us and is offered and we accept, even when we don’t know we are.

It still makes a difference.

“I can watch this without laughing”, my father said.

We were watching Red Skelton show, my favorite. Along with the Wonderful World of Color, Walt Disney’s Sunday night show, Red Skelton was the highlight of my week. In that short time segment, I was transported to a world of fun and laughter, of wonder and delight.

My dad sat there stone faced to show us how Red Skelton couldn’t move him to even crack a smile.

We all followed suit. None of us laughed outloud after that. None of us even laughed within. Each of us had to imitate my dad. To bust out laughing would be falling short in my father’s eyes ( not as strong as him) or worse yet, defying him by suggesting that it’s wrong to even try not to laugh.

It’s “funny”…out of all the things my dad did, I think taking away our right and our ability to enjoy Red Skelton and to laugh at his show, or any other comedy show afterwards, as if refusing to laugh was some kind of victory, is probably one of the most hurtful things he did to us. Even if he never laid a hand on any of his children, doing that was mean and hurt each one of us deeply. We were robbed of the right to find delight in something.

But the fact that he was so abusive in other ways, and our world was already filled with so much pain that most of us were already so numb in our attempts to deal with the oppressiveness of it, for him to take away that one hour a week where we could actually be delighted in something, was just plain evil.

Maybe he was jealous. We all were taken by Red Skelton. We just loved him, how cute he was, how his eyes sparkled, his wonderful laughter and how he blessed us at the end of each show. We all adored him.

Can’t have that.

What a gift it was for me to sit there with my daughter and reclaim my stolen laughter, to share it with her and to listen to the sound of her “little girl” giggling at this wonderful man’s silliness and comedic artistry.

My dad thought it something great to be able to refuse to laugh.

I think it’s great that somewhere along the line, I refused to believe that anymore.