from
the sea (5) – merging and menopause by freda karpf
“There
is not a drop of water in the ocean, not even in the deepest parts of the
abyss, that does not know and respond to the mysterious forces that create the
tide.” Rachel Carson
Homilies are confusing animals. They
burrow in the psyche. Mrs. Scattergood
barely understood them in school. There
was a time in her twenties, her thirties too, when she wanted to have them in
her head the way others did. She didn’t
know the stories everyone grew up with and at least these sayings, she thought,
would create a structure of the world for her, provide a ready wisdom. A bird in the bush, two in the hand. That
sort of wholesale cultural knowledge about commerce and frugality. Eventually
she did absorb some of those into her vocabulary. But she had no idea what sayings she needed
now.
~
“How do you know how to trust yourself?” A
young woman at work asked her. ‘How do
you know?’ Mrs. Scattergood didn’t know. The woman didn’t understand the idea
of trust. She didn’t at that age either. Mrs. Scattergood couldn’t summon up a
way to explain. She learned later that
the young woman was living with another woman. Was that what was going on
then? Her fear of being who she was in
the culture that, at the time, could only accept heterosexuals? How in the world do you tell someone how to
listen to themselves? Should she tell
her to listen for the snow? Or listen
for her inner pirate? Or put a shell to
your belly and listen to the ocean? Some
questions accumulate against the fence. Some blow through and you forget you
even had them.
~
Her feelings were the ladder she used to
climb to that part of her brain that was words.
Translation is often a matter of time and experience; of knowing the
idiom. Yes, it can take decades. She
would pause when asked a question. Not
to gather her thoughts. She wasn’t sly
or deliberate. Although she recognized
its function she couldn’t even figure on how to cultivate either quality. She
had to taste her thoughts and words.
~
Mrs. Scattergood had an impossible time
remembering something and really wanted to.
It was something she thought she had caught and it felt important. But
what was it? She had no clue; only the
certainty there was something. The desire to remember remained like a watered
down pheromone. Whatever it was, even without topic, subject or key word, it
still seemed important. That’s menopause. But it could also be a mind
distracted with worry and woes.
~
Mrs. Scattergood was lost in her
thoughts. It used to be her favorite
place to be. There she cooked and
plotted, planned and stewed, steeped and sautéed. Then she’d gently fold them into her mind and
drift through another moment. She captured her awareness as if she had netted a
butterfly. Of course she wouldn’t do that to a butterfly. She read that Nabokov and his scientist
friend were walking through the woods sampling everything that came their way.
Crickets tasted like lobster. Butterflies didn’t taste good at all. If physicists that posit that form and form
alone is itself matter she would think it bad form to eat butterflies. Still she thought about their delightful
patterns of color and shapes sliding down and merging with her being. Delightful tasty thoughts that form and form
alone would bring her.
~
It all goes. It flows. Memory has very
large openings between the knots in its net. There are laws to protect small
fish from the catch. These laws are truly loop holes, larger openings so that
the fish can pass through. That is memory.
A small fish. At times, even a
school.
~
Without knowing it Mrs. Scattergood was
trying to claim herself back from the wild blues. Back from grief and concerns over her home,
even tried to recall the tomboy tenderness she fashioned from her own hands.
One lover would come to her and say she needed a hug. If she held her too long,
embraced too deeply, she would pull away. Nothing was said. Seemed like Mrs.
Scattergood wanted to take something from her.
She thought all she had wanted was to send her love. But was she trying to send a message? A feeling with no voice? Was it a desire to
purge her affection? Mrs. Scattergood wanted to give these feelings away, to
find relief from the love. She should
have known. Mrs. Scattergood should have known. This one was attractive because
she recognized melancholy as a legitimate way to entertain the hours. But it was not livable.
~
People share memories and try to find
connections the way children work at pick-up sticks, paying careful attention
to the details, how one piece of their common history touches another.
~
“She wasn’t for you,” Baubo said as if
that were a choice. “I know. I know,”
Mrs. Scattergood answered. “Her complaints became a barrier. I was too close,
too far, not specific, too many details. I was a bad butch. I was a butch in
training, a Pygmalion butch, a soft butch. A butch with no sense of style, with
strings hanging from my clothes and a heart that got tangled. I was mishpucha.
I was Diaspora dyke; I wasn’t butch enough.”
~
Mrs. Scattergood told Baubo as if she
didn’t know already, “If I can't share my woes what good is sharing my joy with
you? You won't know how high they can be without the measure of quality
assurance that a woe can do.”
~
It was foggy out just like her
memory. Dampness hanging in the air. All
these years later Mrs. Scattergood still sized up trees now as a reflex. Her hands remembered the feeling of bark that
might have looked dried but held the morning’s moisture. The tender times are
often in the morning when you can climb a tree or see the beautiful curves on a
woman’s back and steal tenderness from her limbs.
~
Mrs. Scattergood remembered moving up the
tree. Every limb was coated with dirt that the wind blew. She had patches of
dirt here and there where her sweat didn't keep it off her body. She was
climbing through the shadows. You don't always look up when you're climbing but
when you do, you see pieces of blue. It feels like you're breathing in the sky.
