Scraps of Paper

The flyer says April 2010 Public Skate at the very top and the days of the week across with boxes below for each date from April 1st to April 30th. I am scribbling my thoughts around the preprinted information and so many words are tumbling out I flipped to the back and feel the freedom of the blank white space. I cannot sit here while my daughter skates and simply watch her. I need to feel some movement in my own body even if it is just the pen in my hand moving from left to right. The physical movement helps keep the mental movement from spiraling downward. I forgot to bring in my journal which is why I had to take one of the flyers to use.

I have been doing this for decades, grabbing scraps of available paper to write on when I don’t have my own spiral notebook handy. I would write around the margins of the newspapers, magazine ads or on the outside of envelope and then store the writing in a pocket or my purse. Sometimes I would lose them or inadvertently leave them to drown in a load of laundry. But when I managed to hang on to one, I dutifully placed it in a file folder labeled “writing scraps”. I guess they are like leftovers from a meal I never really finished eating. Every once in a while I will open the folder and look back at what I have written as if searching for the lost key that will open up the safety deposit box where my unwritten novel is stored in its entirety. Sometimes it is difficult to decipher my own writing either due to poor penmanship or the thoughts being so disjointed it is hard to tell why they began flowing from my mind to my hand gripping the pen in the first place. Yet, I save the scraps. It would be a crime to throw away perfectly good words. Unlike food, words never spoil.

I almost accidentally threw away the Ice Rink Flyer when I found it tucked into the visor of my Van along with directions I print out from map quest every time I travel somewhere. Then I noticed my own handwriting and started to read. I was surprised to find both the front and back of the flyer filled with my usual messy penmanship but I was easily able to follow the train of thought and could almost feel the cold air from the ice rink as I read the words I wrote not that long ago. Yet, I did not remember actually writing it. That is one of the things I like about writing. I can go back and read something I wrote and it will feel brand new to me since I have a horrible memory. While I sat and read my own words this afternoon I thought, “Wow, I really can connect with this person” which is a good thing since “I” am “this person.” At least I am still connecting with myself even if I feel I am in the process of disconnecting from the rest of the world. So, here are those words I wrote on one hot day in April while sitting in the lobby at Glacier Ice Rink, while waiting for my daughter and missing my mother.


I bet I appear normal to the outside world. Well, okay, maybe not normal, but unchanged. They cannot possibly hear this internal running conversation I am having with my deceased mother. I want to say out loud “I see dead people” as a way of explaining what I am imagining. To me the running dialogue represents an obvious disconnection to this world but I am not sure the world sees it in the same way because there is only silence surrounding me as I scribble away. My conversations with Becky are between my own two ears and exist only in the secret world where daughters and mothers no longer breathe the same air. The other parents and skaters and hockey players don’t hear my “crazy” thoughts. Luckily I am staying silent and just try to look normal by busily writing on this flyer I found with the Ice rinks’ monthly schedule.

What if I am like that little boy in the blockbuster movie “The Sixth Sense” who can see and communicate with dead people. The movie featuring Bruce Willis was far more suspenseful then the fable I am weaving from the loose strands of my shared life with Becky. The movie contained numerous surprises and plot twists. There is no surprise here in my mind. I am following a well worn path. My mother talked incessantly to her relatives who died too soon for her own mental health to go unscathed. She spent the remainder of her life crying out to them and asking for assistance in all matters from health to business to child rearing.

My mother spent a great deal of time in hospitals whether it was due to urinary tract infections going septic, cardiac issues, arthritis related problems or simply the wear and tear of age and stress. So going back as much as 20 or 30 years, my mother would spend days or sometimes weeks worth of hospital visits talking to her sister Ruthie, her mother Rose and her father Ben. When I was younger it frightened me. As years passed by it became less frightening and more irritating. Finally, it was neither. I just accepted that her communications with the dearly departed were no different then the fortune tellers at carnivals, harmless entertainment, and a necessary distraction from the scary and boring life found in hospitals.

These days I cannot wait for my kids to get on the bus for school so I can have the house all to myself and begin speaking to Becky about all the unfinished business of our life together. If the door bell rings and it is Bruce Willis, I am in big trouble!

SPOILER ALERT

At the end of the movie we realize the character Bruce Willis is playing is actually “one of the dead people.” Is it possible just a part of me died with Becky? Of course it is. What else would explain all these strange sensations of being disconnected that only I seem to be noticing?

Missing My Mother, Part 1

There is never any “going back” but there is always a lot of “starting over.” So over and over and over I go, stumbling forward. I am somersaulting my way through life. Most mornings I wake up thinking about my mother. I just lay there, eyes closed and picture her in my mind. I see her laying in the twin bed across from mine, a puzzle book in her left hand and a pencil in her right. The light on the nightstand between the beds is always on. That nightstand followed her from the bedroom she and I once shared all the way to her apartment in Lincolnwood where she spent the last five years of her life. I gave that nightstand away. Now I wish I had not. I wonder why. What could I possibly have done with it? My house is already a mess. It was not an attractive piece of furniture. I have plenty of mementos to remember her by, and I always have the floating photo of her in my mind.

I miss her. I miss the nightstand too. I should have kept it. I should have kept all the dreams that floated over our heads while we slept across from each other. I cannot have her, the nightstand or the dreams back. She had to leave, the nightstand I voluntarily gave away, and the dreams are lost in limbo somewhere between my broken heart and my mother’s invisible spirit.