Mount Hope
Sunday Morning, February 16, 2003. Oakland.
I’m at the Mount Hope cemetery. The newer headstones now have laser etchings of the deceased. At what age would I portray myself when I ceased? My sixteen-year-old daughter wants her birthday picture from when she turned five – it was a happy time, the innocence, and the parents that used to be in love. Some of these photo headstones have smiles, some are portraits taken in younger years, some in the last years of long lives. One could spend a whole life contemplating which picture deserves to be headstoned.
We’re at the cemetery because she is learning to drive. It’s quiet, relatively safe, and no one to maim. I do think about my own mortality as she winds her way up the narrow hillsides. She cannot see the acidic wedge she’s driving into my gut.
The cemetery is a place to think, to contemplate, and to see the complete picture. I don’t want a picture of myself right now. I want one of when I’m in love, an uplifting image for others to pause before and inspire after. Life doesn’t have to be dull and dreary, full of acceptance to situations fate controls. We can do better with what we’re given. Second choice would be a poetic portrait reflecting deep concern, but I haven’t any because those kinds of moods are not conducive to photographing unless you’re president or heading off to jail. Third choice would be a family portrait when everyone is in great spirits and grand health. Haven’t any of those either. Fourth choice would be a birth picture and an old-age death-approaching image. In both of these examples the being portrayed probably isn’t conscious of the situation. A snap shot of a baby; a picture of a time-whipped face -- putting them together might work out all right. Look, see what life did – the poor innocent baby-woman!
Pictures don’t show the twisted strings Fate manipulates us with. Pictures are indicators, images of how we want to be perceived, what message our billboard face wants to sell to the unsuspecting. Living with someone has shown me how little you can actually get to know another human. I keep changing, I hardly know myself. How can I possibly know anyone else if I don’t know myself? This discontented person is who I’ve become, not who I am. We work out of patterns of behavior and that becomes who we are to others – but it’s not who we are. Marriage frames your every move, people always relate accordingly, as a wife or mother. These are roles we play. Just roles. Some people don’t mind it because it’s a place to hide, a character to hide behind until the real one emerges on a tombstone. Not who we are. I don’t want to play this game anymore. Life is incredibly short. :( The poet e. e. cummings wrote that death is more than a parenthesis. I’d take it further; life is more than a parenthesis…
When we take a break from driving I stroll around respectfully and look for cemetery vacancies. Nice views. Happily-ever-afterville. Maybe this is the Promised Land.
There was a bearded, white-haired man (with flowers) kneeling beside a recent grave. His graceful, thoughtful movements stopping between graves to ponder the interred touched me when we first passed him two weeks ago. He waved and seemed to acknowledge our driving lesson / life lesson excursion. Last week we intersected between plots 39A and 40B in the midst of foggy mist. He seemed younger than I had pictured him earlier. Despite my being tucked tightly under a warm hooded sweatshirt, he looked at me endearingly -- the best that I can describe it is that we converged into some zone that completely unveiled all my safeguards, all the mechanisms that have been developed for shielding my inner core. This is intuition, something I haven’t felt in ages. I have never felt so close to a stranger. What we are, who we are, seem superficial. Our beings connected beyond any fate-related information like names, occupations, economics, social status. We’re a decade apart but ageless. All of this in a split second.
Today I had to bully my daughter to get going ‘on time’ for our four-wheel Sunday school. She complains, “On time? Mom, what’s the rush? It’s Sunday! The Cemetery? Really..."
“On time, sweetheart --” I explain patiently while contemplating the odds of running into this man again, “-- is when I’m ready to take you.” The odds are good, if we leave now. “Now!”
When she goes to college I am heading for a new life. Mommytown is going out of business. I’ve already buzzed my beautiful brown mane into new millennium fuzz – I can surely shed wedded weight too, join a gym, start running again, get into yoga… walking the lake is not enough.
And there he is – lean and peaceful in the bright sun.
“Stop the car,” I order. The car brakes and jolts my head forward. My chest gets punished with a cross lash by the seatbelt.
“Sorry,” she says, “let me know ahead of time.”
“Traffic will not allow such a thing. It’s better to get those reflexes down,” I blurt out and get ready for the gentleman who is approaching our just-ended demonstration of quick stop.
He waves as we exit the car. We acknowledge him with a gestured greeting. Sara wanders over to the other side of the plot lot, an area we haven’t explored. I know she’s expecting me to go with her, just as she’s expecting me to take care of this friendly stranger (that her mother has sweaty palms over).
He has lost someone recently. The romance of such a thing stirring my own dreams of everlasting love. Life is a losing proposition, we’re born to die. I used to picnic up there on the hill. Never thought of time as being finite, but it is when you lose someone. That’s a shocker. I mean, you understand these things mentally but when death occurs you get a metaphysical jolt and nothing’s the same again. Can’t unlearn something like that. You can’t go back. Poor man.
Can’t keep living as if life is going to go on forever -- that the future holds the true promise -- that you are going to hit your stride the day after tomorrow... Today’s the day. The stride is now. Whatever you’re doing at this moment is the most important thing to do…
“Was she your wife?” I say from a safe twenty feet away-- I’m hitting on a man over his wife’s grave. God forgive me. He could be my father. Forgive me father.
“No, my mother,” he says with a sad inflection. “She didn’t believe in birth and death dates -- ‘life is eternal’ she said, and so it says,” he points to the inscription. I move closer.
“So young and attractive.” I say, my squinting eyes avoiding his sunglassed peepers. We’re focusing on her gravestone. I had already looked at this plot last week after he’d left. She was a beautiful woman. But today I can’t see a thing.
“That’s from her twenties, before marriage.” The tone of his voice is inviting, friendly and familiar.
“That’s a good age.” I sigh.
“Yeah…” he says. His ‘yeah’ has a lot of other meanings attached --
like lost opportunities, loss of innocence, erosion of freedom.
“Yeah...” I say. Twin yeahs… A part of me died at that age – well, part of me was buried at least, the part that is slowly resurrecting lately. Trudy’s risin’ from her compromised crypt.
“Life isn’t easy…” he continues, “but, it’s a little bit better than this. – wouldn’t you say?” ‘This’ being the graveyard.
“Let’s hope so.” I say.
“Mom!” Sara interrupts, hollering across thirty rows of dead stillness.
“Excuse me,” I turn and shout, “Wait a minute!” Shouting in the cemetery. This can’t be good. Must be a sign of something. Disrespect? A woman on the verge…
“Go ahead and take care of her,” he says kindly, “it was nice talking with you.”
“Always on the run,” I try to explain. I don’t want this to end. My raised right hand becomes a sun visor to stop the incessant squinting. Looks like I’m saluting him. I am. “See you next week?”
“No, I’m going back East, Tuesday. I came out as a kind of retreat. Roots, that kind of thing.” He starts to turn, “Take care and good luck with everything. It’s been a pleasure.” He looks at me directly for a moment, smiles warmly, and then walks away.
“Good luck,” I say and watch him disappear down the hill. I was supposed to say something more, but all thought crashed when he started to leave. My sun visor salute falls away like egg on my face. This has ended so fast I want to scream at Sara for her impatience. Mom, the hypocrite. “Your father can take you driving next time. Let’s go.”
Once strapped into our car capsule, the conversations resume. “Mom,” Sara starts, from the tone I know that it is a serious issue, for her at least, “I’ve got a crush on someone at school.”
“Crushes are great, turn here.”
Sara slows down from 10 mph to 5 mph, clicks on the right turn signal, then stops. “This is a BIG crush. I really think I’m in love and don’t know what to do.”
Hearing this stirs my own romantic vat, “Love at any age is good and positive. Let things flow naturally.” I let him get away. We need to flow down the hill a little faster to maybe catch him leaving. “Go ahead. You know the way down.”
“But he’s a little older.”
“Older can be okay. So what, like he’s a senior? They can be very good too.” I try not to laugh. There’s a double meaning here: Sara’s a junior so there’s one big year difference with her crush; Cemetery man and I are a decade apart and it doesn’t make a damn difference. “The age is not as important as how comfortable you feel together. Take it slow. No, not the car, go a little faster. The relationship, I mean.”
She’s getting mixed instructions. We’re crawling at 12 mph through headstone city. I’m dying in anticipation. We’re going to miss him. “Why don’t you pull over here and I’ll drive the rest of the way. Good job!”
Sara does as instructed. I don’t bother readjusting the mirror or the seat. My knee hits the steering column and I almost sideswipe a ghost of a white van when I pull out without looking. Blame it on the glare.
“Good job,” Sara notes, “Put your glasses on.”
“Not right now.” I adjust the mirror to look at myself mostly. “Having strong feelings for someone else is a special thing. Don’t give up too easily.”
“I’m not,” she says, “but there is an age issue that maybe some people might have a problem with.”
“Not with me. Age is not a problem. We can learn from everyone; love can be ageless.” We’re nearing the mausoleum just before the cemetery exit.
“Thanks for saying that, because – “
“Wait a sec…” I interrupt. He is standing on the side of the road as if waiting for someone. It doesn’t occur to me who he is waiting for. He waves and flags us to stop. He approaches Sara’s window.
“Roll it down, don’t be impolite!” I tell her without moving my lips like a seasoned ventriloquist. Sara, my temporarily wooden alter ego, obliges reluctantly.
“Could you give this to your mom,” he hands my bewildered half-adult child a note with numbers and a name scribbled on the back of torn newspaper. He leans closer, all I can see is his whiskered mouth which looks like talking vagina -- I let out an inappropriate nervous giggle -- Sara stares me down immediately, disgusted with my social skills. He pauses, then says, “I have a houseful of things I’d like to give away. In case you’re interested. Give me a call.”
“I’d like that.” I say and clutch the paper like a hawk grabbing its next meal.
He has a quirky smile of someone who knows something that I don’t know, like maybe I left a price tag on my blouse or mascara is running down my clownish face or an inside joke has been launched in my pitiful direction.
“Well, bye.” I ease off the brake and the car rolls slowly.
He backs away and waves. “Bye, Trudy!”
“Mom, that’s a little strange.”
“Yeah, I guess so…” My heart is slamming my chest, as if it is going through a series of heavy braking while trying to race away, as if learning to drive, “people need people.”
I want to tell her that when that stranger said “Trudy,” I felt like Sleeping Beauty awakening. I’ll call tonight.
“You were saying about your senior…”
“What senior?”
“The older guy you have a crush on.” Mother and daughter. Falling together. I’ll have to check our horoscopes. How’d he know my name?
Sara, somewhat patiently, “I didn’t say he was a senior. He’s an artist, intelligent, funny, single.”
“Do you know anyone married?” I say. Sara can be so silly. What will I say tonight – thought I’d call… you remind me of someone…
“Mom, I think he’s your age,” she says sheepishly.
“Not quite...” Cemetery man looks young but not that young, and I’m not following this conversation. Usually I can get away with a little miscommunication, but somehow her tone won’t allow it. “Why do you think he’s my age?”
“Because he is.”
“What are we talking about?”
“My art teacher, Mr. Porter.”
“What about him? Are you doing okay?”
“No, I’m not. And you’re not listening. You haven’t listened in years!”
I slam on the brakes and look at the note.
“Pascal!”
excerpt from "Lemon & Rain", © 2003 by John Kirkmire, © 2013 Kirkworkshop. All rights reserved.
return to stories page
Sunday Morning, February 16, 2003. Oakland.
I’m at the Mount Hope cemetery. The newer headstones now have laser etchings of the deceased. At what age would I portray myself when I ceased? My sixteen-year-old daughter wants her birthday picture from when she turned five – it was a happy time, the innocence, and the parents that used to be in love. Some of these photo headstones have smiles, some are portraits taken in younger years, some in the last years of long lives. One could spend a whole life contemplating which picture deserves to be headstoned.
We’re at the cemetery because she is learning to drive. It’s quiet, relatively safe, and no one to maim. I do think about my own mortality as she winds her way up the narrow hillsides. She cannot see the acidic wedge she’s driving into my gut.
The cemetery is a place to think, to contemplate, and to see the complete picture. I don’t want a picture of myself right now. I want one of when I’m in love, an uplifting image for others to pause before and inspire after. Life doesn’t have to be dull and dreary, full of acceptance to situations fate controls. We can do better with what we’re given. Second choice would be a poetic portrait reflecting deep concern, but I haven’t any because those kinds of moods are not conducive to photographing unless you’re president or heading off to jail. Third choice would be a family portrait when everyone is in great spirits and grand health. Haven’t any of those either. Fourth choice would be a birth picture and an old-age death-approaching image. In both of these examples the being portrayed probably isn’t conscious of the situation. A snap shot of a baby; a picture of a time-whipped face -- putting them together might work out all right. Look, see what life did – the poor innocent baby-woman!
Pictures don’t show the twisted strings Fate manipulates us with. Pictures are indicators, images of how we want to be perceived, what message our billboard face wants to sell to the unsuspecting. Living with someone has shown me how little you can actually get to know another human. I keep changing, I hardly know myself. How can I possibly know anyone else if I don’t know myself? This discontented person is who I’ve become, not who I am. We work out of patterns of behavior and that becomes who we are to others – but it’s not who we are. Marriage frames your every move, people always relate accordingly, as a wife or mother. These are roles we play. Just roles. Some people don’t mind it because it’s a place to hide, a character to hide behind until the real one emerges on a tombstone. Not who we are. I don’t want to play this game anymore. Life is incredibly short. :( The poet e. e. cummings wrote that death is more than a parenthesis. I’d take it further; life is more than a parenthesis…
When we take a break from driving I stroll around respectfully and look for cemetery vacancies. Nice views. Happily-ever-afterville. Maybe this is the Promised Land.
There was a bearded, white-haired man (with flowers) kneeling beside a recent grave. His graceful, thoughtful movements stopping between graves to ponder the interred touched me when we first passed him two weeks ago. He waved and seemed to acknowledge our driving lesson / life lesson excursion. Last week we intersected between plots 39A and 40B in the midst of foggy mist. He seemed younger than I had pictured him earlier. Despite my being tucked tightly under a warm hooded sweatshirt, he looked at me endearingly -- the best that I can describe it is that we converged into some zone that completely unveiled all my safeguards, all the mechanisms that have been developed for shielding my inner core. This is intuition, something I haven’t felt in ages. I have never felt so close to a stranger. What we are, who we are, seem superficial. Our beings connected beyond any fate-related information like names, occupations, economics, social status. We’re a decade apart but ageless. All of this in a split second.
Today I had to bully my daughter to get going ‘on time’ for our four-wheel Sunday school. She complains, “On time? Mom, what’s the rush? It’s Sunday! The Cemetery? Really..."
“On time, sweetheart --” I explain patiently while contemplating the odds of running into this man again, “-- is when I’m ready to take you.” The odds are good, if we leave now. “Now!”
When she goes to college I am heading for a new life. Mommytown is going out of business. I’ve already buzzed my beautiful brown mane into new millennium fuzz – I can surely shed wedded weight too, join a gym, start running again, get into yoga… walking the lake is not enough.
And there he is – lean and peaceful in the bright sun.
“Stop the car,” I order. The car brakes and jolts my head forward. My chest gets punished with a cross lash by the seatbelt.
“Sorry,” she says, “let me know ahead of time.”
“Traffic will not allow such a thing. It’s better to get those reflexes down,” I blurt out and get ready for the gentleman who is approaching our just-ended demonstration of quick stop.
He waves as we exit the car. We acknowledge him with a gestured greeting. Sara wanders over to the other side of the plot lot, an area we haven’t explored. I know she’s expecting me to go with her, just as she’s expecting me to take care of this friendly stranger (that her mother has sweaty palms over).
He has lost someone recently. The romance of such a thing stirring my own dreams of everlasting love. Life is a losing proposition, we’re born to die. I used to picnic up there on the hill. Never thought of time as being finite, but it is when you lose someone. That’s a shocker. I mean, you understand these things mentally but when death occurs you get a metaphysical jolt and nothing’s the same again. Can’t unlearn something like that. You can’t go back. Poor man.
Can’t keep living as if life is going to go on forever -- that the future holds the true promise -- that you are going to hit your stride the day after tomorrow... Today’s the day. The stride is now. Whatever you’re doing at this moment is the most important thing to do…
“Was she your wife?” I say from a safe twenty feet away-- I’m hitting on a man over his wife’s grave. God forgive me. He could be my father. Forgive me father.
“No, my mother,” he says with a sad inflection. “She didn’t believe in birth and death dates -- ‘life is eternal’ she said, and so it says,” he points to the inscription. I move closer.
“So young and attractive.” I say, my squinting eyes avoiding his sunglassed peepers. We’re focusing on her gravestone. I had already looked at this plot last week after he’d left. She was a beautiful woman. But today I can’t see a thing.
“That’s from her twenties, before marriage.” The tone of his voice is inviting, friendly and familiar.
“That’s a good age.” I sigh.
“Yeah…” he says. His ‘yeah’ has a lot of other meanings attached --
like lost opportunities, loss of innocence, erosion of freedom.
“Yeah...” I say. Twin yeahs… A part of me died at that age – well, part of me was buried at least, the part that is slowly resurrecting lately. Trudy’s risin’ from her compromised crypt.
“Life isn’t easy…” he continues, “but, it’s a little bit better than this. – wouldn’t you say?” ‘This’ being the graveyard.
“Let’s hope so.” I say.
“Mom!” Sara interrupts, hollering across thirty rows of dead stillness.
“Excuse me,” I turn and shout, “Wait a minute!” Shouting in the cemetery. This can’t be good. Must be a sign of something. Disrespect? A woman on the verge…
“Go ahead and take care of her,” he says kindly, “it was nice talking with you.”
“Always on the run,” I try to explain. I don’t want this to end. My raised right hand becomes a sun visor to stop the incessant squinting. Looks like I’m saluting him. I am. “See you next week?”
“No, I’m going back East, Tuesday. I came out as a kind of retreat. Roots, that kind of thing.” He starts to turn, “Take care and good luck with everything. It’s been a pleasure.” He looks at me directly for a moment, smiles warmly, and then walks away.
“Good luck,” I say and watch him disappear down the hill. I was supposed to say something more, but all thought crashed when he started to leave. My sun visor salute falls away like egg on my face. This has ended so fast I want to scream at Sara for her impatience. Mom, the hypocrite. “Your father can take you driving next time. Let’s go.”
Once strapped into our car capsule, the conversations resume. “Mom,” Sara starts, from the tone I know that it is a serious issue, for her at least, “I’ve got a crush on someone at school.”
“Crushes are great, turn here.”
Sara slows down from 10 mph to 5 mph, clicks on the right turn signal, then stops. “This is a BIG crush. I really think I’m in love and don’t know what to do.”
Hearing this stirs my own romantic vat, “Love at any age is good and positive. Let things flow naturally.” I let him get away. We need to flow down the hill a little faster to maybe catch him leaving. “Go ahead. You know the way down.”
“But he’s a little older.”
“Older can be okay. So what, like he’s a senior? They can be very good too.” I try not to laugh. There’s a double meaning here: Sara’s a junior so there’s one big year difference with her crush; Cemetery man and I are a decade apart and it doesn’t make a damn difference. “The age is not as important as how comfortable you feel together. Take it slow. No, not the car, go a little faster. The relationship, I mean.”
She’s getting mixed instructions. We’re crawling at 12 mph through headstone city. I’m dying in anticipation. We’re going to miss him. “Why don’t you pull over here and I’ll drive the rest of the way. Good job!”
Sara does as instructed. I don’t bother readjusting the mirror or the seat. My knee hits the steering column and I almost sideswipe a ghost of a white van when I pull out without looking. Blame it on the glare.
“Good job,” Sara notes, “Put your glasses on.”
“Not right now.” I adjust the mirror to look at myself mostly. “Having strong feelings for someone else is a special thing. Don’t give up too easily.”
“I’m not,” she says, “but there is an age issue that maybe some people might have a problem with.”
“Not with me. Age is not a problem. We can learn from everyone; love can be ageless.” We’re nearing the mausoleum just before the cemetery exit.
“Thanks for saying that, because – “
“Wait a sec…” I interrupt. He is standing on the side of the road as if waiting for someone. It doesn’t occur to me who he is waiting for. He waves and flags us to stop. He approaches Sara’s window.
“Roll it down, don’t be impolite!” I tell her without moving my lips like a seasoned ventriloquist. Sara, my temporarily wooden alter ego, obliges reluctantly.
“Could you give this to your mom,” he hands my bewildered half-adult child a note with numbers and a name scribbled on the back of torn newspaper. He leans closer, all I can see is his whiskered mouth which looks like talking vagina -- I let out an inappropriate nervous giggle -- Sara stares me down immediately, disgusted with my social skills. He pauses, then says, “I have a houseful of things I’d like to give away. In case you’re interested. Give me a call.”
“I’d like that.” I say and clutch the paper like a hawk grabbing its next meal.
He has a quirky smile of someone who knows something that I don’t know, like maybe I left a price tag on my blouse or mascara is running down my clownish face or an inside joke has been launched in my pitiful direction.
“Well, bye.” I ease off the brake and the car rolls slowly.
He backs away and waves. “Bye, Trudy!”
“Mom, that’s a little strange.”
“Yeah, I guess so…” My heart is slamming my chest, as if it is going through a series of heavy braking while trying to race away, as if learning to drive, “people need people.”
I want to tell her that when that stranger said “Trudy,” I felt like Sleeping Beauty awakening. I’ll call tonight.
“You were saying about your senior…”
“What senior?”
“The older guy you have a crush on.” Mother and daughter. Falling together. I’ll have to check our horoscopes. How’d he know my name?
Sara, somewhat patiently, “I didn’t say he was a senior. He’s an artist, intelligent, funny, single.”
“Do you know anyone married?” I say. Sara can be so silly. What will I say tonight – thought I’d call… you remind me of someone…
“Mom, I think he’s your age,” she says sheepishly.
“Not quite...” Cemetery man looks young but not that young, and I’m not following this conversation. Usually I can get away with a little miscommunication, but somehow her tone won’t allow it. “Why do you think he’s my age?”
“Because he is.”
“What are we talking about?”
“My art teacher, Mr. Porter.”
“What about him? Are you doing okay?”
“No, I’m not. And you’re not listening. You haven’t listened in years!”
I slam on the brakes and look at the note.
“Pascal!”
excerpt from "Lemon & Rain", © 2003 by John Kirkmire, © 2013 Kirkworkshop. All rights reserved.
return to stories page