Our Family History
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We sat on the chintz sofa originally bought by
Grandma Jordan. Every stick of furniture in our home was pristine and cared for with love and affection, for every piece seemed to have its own history, whether it be Great-Great-Grandpa Jordan's hickory wood rocking chair or Great- Grandpa Jordan's homemade stepladder. Nothing could be discarded or misused.
"Personal possessions that are cherished hold the spirit of the owner in them," she said. "Sometimes. when I sit in my great-grandfather's rocking chair. I can feel him in me," Mommy told us. and I'd be fascinated by the expression on her face as she rocked herself. Her eyes seem to grow darker and her lips tightened. Folds formed in her forehead suggesting she was filling with heavy thoughts, and for a long moment, she didn't hear us or see us. Then she would blink and smile. "My grandfather spoke to me," she would say.
It was an idea that took seed in my mind. Everything
I touched in our house had power. I thought. Perhaps some day I would
look into the old mirror in the downstairs powder room and see the face of my grandmother or even my great-great-grandmother Elsie. Maybe I would sit on a kitchen chair and see one of my cousins sitting across from me. Mommy made me believe it could happen that way. Surprises just waited to be unpacked and opened in our home.
On the sofa Mommy put her arm around Noble and made me sit close. Through the open living-room window, we watched twilight begin and night seep in through the maple. oak, hickory, and pine trees and over the long, wide lawn and meadow that surrounded our house and the barn. Sitting here after dinner was something we often did now, especially when Daddy was out late working on one of his big jabs. Mommy thought our time to "cross over," as she put it, was getting near. and I was very excited.
Even when we were very little, playing with our toys at her feet. Mommy would sit quietly and look out the window for hours and hours. I would glance up at her from time to time, especially when I would catch her eyes widening and narrowing like the eyes of someone listening to another. Sometimes, she would smile as if she had heard a funny story, sometimes she would look sad. Noble never seemed to be interested in her looks. He was always too wrapped up in his playing.
Occasionally, she would catch me looking at her and she would tell me not to stare. "A lady doesn't stare. Its not polite," she would say. "Staring in, politeness out." she recited.
When we began to sit with her at twilight on the chintz sofa, it was late spring of our sixth year and the aroma of freshly cut grass flowed in over us. Noble was restless and squirmed a lot more than I did. but Mommy kept him close to her breast. And he took deep breaths and waited, glancing at me occasionally to see if I was behaving or if I was as bored as he was.
I barely looked at him, afraid to take my eyes off the approaching shadows for fear I would miss the sight of one of Mommy's spirits. I so wanted to see one of our ancestors. and I was not at all afraid of ghosts. Mommy had spoken so long about them and how they would always protect and watch over us. Why should I have any fear?
You must never think of them as ghosts anyway," she once told me. "Ghosts are fantasies, storybook inventions meant only to haunt. They are silly. When the day comes that you see one of our family spirits, you will understand just how silly ghost stories are."
Noble was always impatient when we sat on the sofa. Tonight, before it became too dark to see anything, he wanted to go out and explore the anthill he had discovered. Mommy knew that. She knew he had far less patience than I had, and he wasn't as intrigued about the possibility of seeing one of her spirits. but Mommy had been a grade school teacher before she married Daddy and so she knew how to keep Noble attentive.
"Stop worrying. Noble. Well take your flashlight if we have to. and I'll go look at your anthill with you," she promised him. "But only if she added. "you watch night fall with me and perhaps see them come in with the shadows. They ride shadows like surfers ride waves. You must see them. You must understand and feel what I feel," she told him, and me of course, but she always seemed to want Noble to feel it more and to see them before I did. In fact, sometimes it seemed to me she was talking about the spirits only to him or to me through him.
It wasn't something she talked about in front of Daddy, however, not only didn't he believe in her spirits, he was upset that she spoke about them to us or in front of us. At first he told her she would frighten us, and then, when he saw we weren't exactly frightened and rarely, if ever, had any nightmares because of her talking about spirits, he began to complain that she was distorting our view of reality and making it impossible for us to be social.
"How will they get along with other children their age in school if they have such weird ideas. Sarah? It's all right for you to believe in such things, but wait for them to grow older before you tell them these stories. They are just too young," he pleaded.
Mommy didn't respond. She often didn't when she disagreed with something he said, which could make him angrier or just send him mumbling off, wagging his head.
"Your father means well," she told us afterward in soft whispers. "but he doesn't understand. Not yet. Someday he will, and he won't be as unhappy with me. You must not let it bother you, children," she said. "And you must not let it blind you to the wonderful visions that await you."
Noble didn't understand the disagreements anyway, and again, all this talk about invisible people and voices only Mommy could hear was something boring to him. He was far more interested in his insects. I didn't want to make either Mommy or Daddy sad and favor one over the other. but I didn't know what to do.
"Listen to me. Celeste," Daddy would say when he pulled me aside or when it was just me who was with him. "You and Noble were born the same day, practically the same minute, but you're brighter than he is. You'll always be smarter and wiser than your brother.
Look after him and don't let Mommy make him crazy with her strange ideas.
"She can't help herself," he explained, speaking about her as if she were someone with a terminal incurable illness. "It was how she was brought up. Her grandmother was out there somewhere all the time, mumbling chants, finding magical herbs, and her mother wasn't much different, often worse in fact.
"Don't misunderstand me." he said quickly when he saw me curl my eyebrows toward each other. "Your mother is a wonderful, very intelligent and loving woman. I couldn't be happier about being her husband, but when she talks about seeing and talking to her ancestors and spirits, you have to listen to her with half an ear," he said.
He loved that expression: half an ear. I knew that he meant to pretend to pay attention, perhaps to take in what was said, but not to let it stay long.
"Sometimes," he said. "words just rent a space in your head. They don't stay forever, and lots of times there are words you don't want to remain even for a minute. And then," he said with a sigh. "there are those words you want to be permanent residents, especially words of love."
When Mommy and Daddy weren't arguing about her obsession with spirits and the forces of the other world, they were truly a loving couple and the handsomest and prettiest daddy and mommy that could be. I was sure they had just stepped out of a storybook to become our parents.
Mommy was the most beautiful woman I knew or had seen, even in the magazines or newspapers Daddy brought home. She kept her soft, rich hazel brown hair shoulder length and spent hours and hours brushing it. Daddy said she had a figure and a face that belonged on the front covers of magazines, and sometimes he would just stop, look at her, and say. "Your mother moves with the gracefulness of angels. She sheds her years like a snake sheds his skin. She'll never look old."
I thought she wouldn't either.