Five Days

It was both big and very small, the dying of my father. Enormous in its finality, but barely perceptible in the tiny steps that took us to that moment. The changes in his breathing – where the time until the next breath gradually lengthened until the next one just did not come at all; the message in his eyes that moved from fury to confusion to knowing and then to not; the gradual, smooth slowing of his heart beat, ticking on the monitor softer and then softer again, until it was gone like a perfect live fade.

There were the thin, razor-like creases in the scrubs of the handsome young nurse who greeted him with a determined, “Good morning, Meeester Meeeller!” No matter that it was 2 AM. And Dad would reach out, often without opening his eyes, to shake his hand. Dying or not, you shook a man’s hand when he greeted you. It was a simple enough act. And yet I had to keep my eyes on those creases, because the weakening grip would have undone me at last.

There was the saying of thirty years worth of things unsaid with a wink and a rearranging of his pillows. He’d wake just long enough for me to say “Hi, Sunshine,” and bend down to kiss his forehead. The last time he opened his eyes and rested them on mine, he only saw love. Pure in a way I’ve not known it before or since.

There was the constant presence of a hand on my back, on my shoulder, coffee appearing in my hands, and a desperately needed toothbrush appearing on the sink, arms around me curled up on the cot in his room, a whisper of a kiss on my own forehead when she thought I was asleep, giving me what I needed to get through the next day way before I knew how to ask.

There were two friends and four words, “We will be there.” And they were.  The day after he died, driving, non-plussed, across west Texas and onto the Clovis plains, past the lone landmark of a three story mound of cow crap outside Muleshoe - in time for me to try out the obituary on them and in time for a long, hard hug before climbing into the family car.

It took five days. A Friday to a Tuesday and everything changed. Everything. But in living every moment, it was more like a slow sunset – you know it’s happening, you expect it - the sky goes purple, but you still feel the sun after it crosses the horizon and you squint a little to catch the last of it...just to be sure.  Until there is that one moment, that one, when it is definitely and certainly gone, and there’s no getting it back.

Ed Pontier 1953 - 2009

Ed Pontier 1953 - 2009

I should have paid more attention to the stories, to the wine, to the food. More specifically, I should have paid more attention to the stories about the wine, about the food. By definition, the realization of missed opportunities comes with a sense of regret, and this round is searing.

Ed always overwhelmed me a little bit...with the number of words he could find to describe perfect garlic, with the mind-numbing detail he could offer in stepping through the making of his latest batch of wine...starting with the stomping of his own grapes. These conversations were had almost always at Easter or an occasional Thanksgiving. A group of nine or ten of us have gathered for better than fifteen years now on these two holidays in a strange, unspoken tradition. On those days a hodge-podge of friendships and connections somehow solidifies into a family.

Ed would find me in a corner, hand me a glass of his wine, and launch..."Michelle, taste this. I made it with muscadine grapes this time, thirty pounds..you know the muscadine grape is a wild grape - different than a wine grape like a Merlot...". It was the same with garlic, with tomatoes, with the perfect tiramisu recipe. It wasn't that I wasn't interested, I just could not physically take it all in - my God, it was so much. My mistake was that I was listening to the wrong thing. I listened to his words...I did not listen to his heart. Ed didn't care whether I understood the merits of muscadine grape over a Merlot grape. He was trying to give me who he was.

In many of those conversations, Ed would also tell me about his favorite restaurant, Savarino's, and tell me of his 'club'. He had recruited several fellow lovers of all things Italian and begun a Nashville chapter of the Amerigo Vespucci Society. The Society describes itself this way: "This society is one of the oldest Italian Societies. We respect and obey all laws and strive for equality for all brothers. We enjoy the happiness and the sorrow of our adopted AMERICA. We honor our Italian heritage." Now, the only thing that Ed may have loved as much as food was his Italian heritage. He and his friends spent countless hours at this 'little restaurant' he would tell me about. "You have to come by, Michelle, it will be the best food, the best you will find in Nashville. Anywhere in Nashville. They named a sandwich after me, you know, it has a kick, a little kick - you have to come by." After meeting the Amerigo Vespucci, virtually all of whom were at St. Joseph's the day of Ed's funeral, I understood. At Savarino's, surrounded by his people, Ed's heart was heard.

Savarino's is no more than a mile from my front door - a twenty minute walk I could have made a hundred times to sit with him, share an Ed Pontier sandwich and a glass of his wine, allow him to introduce me to his Italian friends, tell me about the pasta, the imported garlic, the secret ingredients. I could have laughed, and listened, very closely, to the man's heart.

I should have paid way more attention.

Bea's House, Too

Hearts will heal here.
Eyes will shine
and laughter will echo through the tops of trees
and across the water.

Rest will come here.
Rain will fall
and work out the worry held in the crevices
of our furrowed brows.

Paths will cross here.
Memories
will be made and saved and tethered to history
already in these walls.

Love will live here.
Strong and sure
as the oak and stone that frames the rooms
and holds them true.

Hearts will heal, Rest will come, Paths will cross, Love will live.

Bea's House, Too sits on a perfect acre or two on Lake Barkely just outside of Cadiz, KY. It was built by two good friends - one with a relentless sense of history and the other with relentless sense. The oak is from the former's Grandmother Bea's home - oak and poplar logs and beams a hundred years old or better, saved when Bea's was torn down just off the Natchez Trace to make way for something less important. So Bea's house became Bea's House, Too, a place preserved in love...and a place where love is preserved.

The Affinities of Beauty

“We shall never learn the affinities of beauty; for they lie too deep in nature and too far back in the mysterious history of man.” Robert Louis Stevenson.

There is a place on Pawleys Island, SC that I think is only mine. From that place I watch the setting sun – not as it crosses the ocean horizon as it does in the gulf – but as it burns the sky blood red over the salt marsh. It is quiet and best when the tide is high and the marsh is full and smooth, interrupted only by the occasional splash of a silver fish breaking through the surface into an easy arc.

I hold my breath in those moments and will time to stop. I do that because even standing in the middle of the very reality, with the sounds and smells and salt all around me, I am missing it already. I know full well that I cannot take it in...not really. It is too much, too beautiful, too good. And while it restores me some, it always, always leave me aching because there is something beyond the red sky, beyond the quiet, that I know is there...but that I cannot have as my own. It lies too deep, too far back.

So this moment will leave me as suddenly as it came, and as I make my way back to the people I love I will carry with me only a faded, imperfect memory of what it really was.

Damn if that’s not frustrating.

Imperfectly Vertical

I've moved my original blog Imperfectly Vertical here. I wanted very badly to steal that title but could not talk myself into plagiarism that blatant. The person who really came up with this most excellent title is Billy Sothern, a writer and criminal defense attorney in New Orleans. His blog is here and you should check it out.

The words Imperfectly Vertical are found together in the pages of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces as a means of describing Mattie’s Ramble Inn in the Carrollton section of New Orleans – “Mattie’s Ramble Inn looked like all the buildings on its block; it was low, unpainted, imperfectly vertical. Mattie’s rambled slightly to the right, tilting toward the railroad tracks and the river.”

What strikes me about the phrase, and I wonder if it also did Mr. Sothern, is how apt a description it offers of the human condition. Most all of us are doing our best to walk upright and do it convincingly, but more often than not we lean and ramble one way or the other. Though we’re positioned in the general direction of vertical, we can’t quite get it to hold.

So, I changed the title of my blog because it’s just bad karma to so obviously rip off an idea like that. But this imperfection in us, the funny to be found in it and the life that comes from it, is sure worth noticing. And whether I’m able to keep the words coming or not, I’m hopeful Mr. Sothern will, because it’s worth writing about, too.