True Stories Well Told

By Patricia LaPointe

Way back when I was married to my first husband and had four kids under the age of six, we would occasionally be invited to my in-laws for dinner. This was not my favorite thing to do, but I thought it was only right to accept their invitation. Besides, with my parents living next door to them, they saw how often we ate at Mom and Dad’s.

Mother-in-law would greet us at the door dressed in a “hostess” gown, complete with long skirt and chiffon sleeves. Father-in-law in shirt and tie. Husband and I in jeans and t-shirts.

We’d arrive on time, but wouldn’t eat until the adults had their cocktails. No appetizers were served–not even crackers for the kids.

Mother-in-law would always have an elegantly-set table. She would proudly bring the roast and side dishes from the kitchen, announcing, “Hope everyone is hungry.” Duh, what else would we be?

There were four adults and four children at the table. Plastic sheets were always placed under the kids’ chairs.

When the roast arrived, it was sliced into seven rather thin pieces. Each adult received a piece, and the two kids old enough to chew meat were given a half slice each. There would sit the last slice until Mother-in-law would ask, “Who would like a half slice?” Since Father-in-law already had his fork poised to grab the last slice, my husband and I would answer, “Oh no, we’ve had enough.” I suppose if we’d asked for more, Mother-in-law would cut the piece into thirds.

We were left to gobble down the side dishes: cucumber salad, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Each bowl contained about two cups of food. The kids were often left with a tablespoon or so of the potatoes.

Obviously, dinner didn’t take long. Dessert for the adults was usually some Jello concoction. Each kid got a store-bought cookie.

The kids, God love them, would create our escape. “Can we go next door and see Grandma and Grandpa?”

We’d answer yes, perhaps a bit too eagerly.

As we crossed the lawn, we could see Mom peeking out the window. She had a clear vision of the in-laws dining room, and we knew she’d been scoping it out as we sat for dinner.

Entering my parent’s house, we’d be greeted by Mom, clad in her favorite terrycloth “house dress”. She would lead us to the dining room table filled with a ten-pound roast, about three pounds of mashed potatoes, a huge bowl of corn, and announce, “Dinner’s ready. Anybody hungry?”

It always amazed me that no child was trampled on as we raced to the table.

©  2020 Patricia LaPointe

Pat LaPointe, editor of Changes in Life, a monthly online women’s newsletter, is contributing editor of the anthology, The Woman I’ve Become: 37 Women Share Their Journeys from Toxic Relationships to Self-Empowerment.. In addition, she conducts writing workshops for women — both online and onsite. Pat’s essays and short stories have been published widely. Currently, Pat is completing her first novel, forthcoming late 2021.

By Pat Detmer

Dad was dying and in Intensive Care, so hooked up with wires and tubes that it made the digital tangle behind my office desk look minimalist. He’d failed to take care of himself and was paying for a sedentary lifetime of smoking, eating poorly, and liking his liquor too much. So on Easter weekend, after a call from his wife, we left our family holiday get-together and flew 450 miles to be at his side.

It was an odd and uncomfortable trip for his three daughters. After divorcing our mother, he’d remarried and had scant contact with us, preferring instead to be with his new, younger wife and her family. Given the lack of response and contact, we believed ourselves to be estranged, but he thought everything was A-OK, this in spite of the fact that we would sent him gifts with no response, and had once, on a rare visit to his home, listened to his wife breezily admit that she swiped addresses of famous people from the database of a well-known confectionary company where she worked and had sent birthday cards to Ginger Rogers, Monty Hall, and Richard Simmons, prompting me to blurt out in a family-packed car on the drive home, “Jesus Christ! Richard Simmons got a birthday card? Anybody in this car ever get a birthday card?” No hands were raised.

We weren’t staying at Dad’s on this trip. We’d squeezed into their home once before, a set piece for “Hoarders” before “Hoarders” existed. My husband and I slept in an extra bedroom filled with cartons of canned peaches, and we had to clear boxes of cereal off the kitchen chairs so we could sit down. The unused treadmill carried three brand-new bread-makers on its pristine running belt, gifts he’d purchased for his daughters but had never mailed. So although our mother had raised us to honor our family and do the right thing even if it was difficult, we took the easy way out and booked a hotel. Besides, Mother wasn’t with us.

The hospital visit was awkward. Sometimes there’s no good thing to be said over a hospital bed. It can be a struggle even when relationships are clear and deep. We sisters had always been able to cut through family tension with humor, impersonations, or breaking out in three-part harmony, but this was Intensive Care, and this was our father and his hovering stranger of a wife. The conversation ebbed and flowed. No. That’s a lie. It only ebbed.

Dad kept trying to say something that started with “M,” and we tried to help. Could it be a question about our mother? As the eldest, I knew better than anyone how she would appreciate that. Her name was “Marian,” so could it be? But no, that wasn’t it. Middle sister Susie figured it out. She shared my father’s fascination with money (which he didn’t have) and his desire to get a lot of it (which she eventually did.) Dad was trying to ask about her stocks, Microsoft, specifically. In ICU, his lungs rattling, he wanted to know how she was doing with it. Youngest sister Barbie and I faded away to the place we always went when numbers were in play. Time for a trip to the bathroom. Anybody have change for the candy machine? What’s in this magazine I thumbed through already? Eventually even that conversation stalled and died, unlike my Dad, and we decided to call it a day.

Wordlessly, we took the elevator to the lobby, pushed through the wide front doors, and stepped out into a lovely evening, walking abreast down the sidewalk and pausing at the street. Now what? He could die tonight or live for days. We were saddened, travel-weary, and cranky, in a town where we didn’t even know how to get to the nearest bar. The sun was setting behind the mountains while 400+ miles away, our families would now be headed home from a warm and lovely holiday together.

Being the eldest, I felt the need to lead. “Well … ” I began. And then stopped. What could be said? Susie was reaching into her purse, digging at the bottom of it. She found what she wanted, popping a cigarette out of the pack. “Seriously?” I cried. “Are you kidding me?” Barbie, the peacemaker, reached for my forearm as Susie dug in again, looking for a lighter. “I cannot believe you! Were you just in there with us? Do you want to end up like that?”

Unruffled, determined, she locked eyes with me as she clamped the cigarette between her lips, lit it, took a deep, deep drag, blew smoke in my face, and rasped, “I’ll dance on your fucking grave!”

For a moment we stood immobile, and then we started laughing like Dad wasn’t trussed up and dying in a room behind us. We howled, double over, hooted, coughed and fought for breath while people turned to look. It was the shared, irreverent laughter that always saved us when things were darkest and we were our most anxious and fearful. This we would always have, no matter who left us.

The eldest leads. I wiped at my teary eyes. “Let’s find a bar.”

©2020 Pat Detmer

Pat Detmer, who turned 70 in this amazingly shitty year, writes a weekly blog for her company, has written humor columns for newspapers in the Seattle area, and appeared in Newsweek’s My Turn when it was a print-only venture. She’s won fiction contests having to do with brevity and speed, and her short stories have appeared in multiple anthologies.

We interrupt this series on our experiences under COVID-19 to bring you more apocalypse. The following is adapted from a note sent to former members of the Association of Personal Historians, who have stayed in touch since its closure. Members on the West Coast were asked to check in and let us know how they were faring as fires raged. This is Trena’s response from September 16, 2020.

By Trena Cleland

Last Monday night, Robert and I rode our bikes to a friendly Labor Day block party in a nearby neighborhood. There were musicians jamming, vendors selling boho-chic items such as pottery and jewelry, and a group of young girls making balloon animals for $1 each.

Weirdly, at about 8 p.m., it started smelling like a smoky campground. Oh, and look — there’s gray smoke coming over the trees way down the block. Whaaahhh? Like fog rolling in, the party turned from warm and summery to dusk/smoke.

It’s been like a nuclear winter since then — thick, dense smoke — with only infrequent dashes outside to pick a tomato or buy groceries. Each time, you come back smelling like you’ve been hanging out in an ashtray, and have to wash off the soot. I don’t like to touch anything outside — forget about the coronavirus, I’m talking about the dirty ash on the garden plants and the car door handle. N95 masks are de rigeur, not the pretty cloth masks that are my everyday pandemic wear. (I can’t believe I miss them!)

NASA image courtesy of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) project.

Fire-wise, we are well out of harm’s way, and feel very fortunate. The closest fire, the Holiday Farm fire, is about 30 miles east of us. Sadly, it is right along the forested wonderland/playground of the spectacular McKenzie River. Some small hamlets have been destroyed, along with magnificent nature. Someone forwarded a poem that says, “Do not forget that the ashes falling from the sky are all that remains of the pine and grass and thistle and bear and coyote and deer and mouse that could not escape.”

Not to mention that the smoke, while mostly trees, contains some percentage of immolated cars, buildings, tires, fuel, even burnt-up Christmas ornaments from Christmas Treasures, a year-round holiday store.

The Air Quality Index number in our neighborhood has routinely been above 500, which is the highest number on the AQI chart. 500 is beyond ‘very unhealthy,’ it’s ‘ hazardous.’ So, what’s beyond hazardous? Something tells me, if you have to ask, you’re already dead.

Robert wrote the following:

We are at day six of the epic Eugene smoke-in. As of today, the Holiday Farm fire is 6% contained. The slow progress is mainly due to highly inaccessible terrain, and an under-staffing of fire fighters. The fire is mostly burning on north and south fronts. The eastward and westward progression is minimal, which is really good because the cities of Eugene/Springfield lie due west of the fire location.

Our tap water now has a distinct ashy off-flavor. Our water supply is the McKenzie River, and it is the McKenzie watershed which is burning. EWEB (our local water and electric utility) has water and hydroelectric plants potentially in harm’s way, but so far, no imminent threat. Some good fire news, the historic Goodpasture wooden covered bridge, at the Leaburg reservoir, was saved from the flames.

For now, we are sheltering in place — a lockdown within a lockdown. What these last six days have reminded me most of are the ‘snow days’ of youth, when heavy Midwestern snowfall kept us home from school. Rob and I have baked, done arts and crafts, played Scrabble, and watched documentaries. The hope is that either wind and/or rain will arrive by Wednesday or Thursday to move away this dense fog of impenetrable smoke.

We’re so fortunate to have a well-insulated house, with good air circulation. Eugene also has many folks who camp out in parks and along the river year-round, and that’s just unimaginable, to think about their 24/7 immersion in smoke.

We already surmised that the COVID pandemic would lead to more homelessness, poverty, mental and physical illness, and closed businesses; and these fires will only amplify those trends up and down the West Coast. A cousin of Rob’s lost her home in the Boulder Creek fire near Santa Cruz about three weeks ago. Welcome to the rest of our lives, living with the impacts of this world-gone-awry.

Despite the gloomy feelings, I accept that the world is unfolding as it will, for reasons outside my understanding. World history is full of plagues and cataclysms, and it seems logical that our time should be no exception. Soon the fires will stop and the sun will be revealed and the air will clear up, as it always has. The wheel of life keeps turning around and around.

So, we’re trying to stay positive and keepin’ the faith, and are very grateful for our comfort and abundance.

On Thursday, September 18th, the rain came.

Trena Cleland, personal historian in Eugene, Oregon, with one of her books.

© 2020 Trena Cleland

Trena Cleland started her personal history business in 1998, and joined Association of Personal Historians that year. She has produced dozens of heirloom memoir books based on oral history interviews and coordinated many smaller legacy projects. She has also volunteered her time on several community history projects, documenting the lives of homeless seniors and women with HIV. She now lives and works in Eugene, Oregon. www.trenacleland.com