Dances and Rhythms - 7

"Grammar school?" I repeated the question - another pause as Dad traveled back in time. "I went to the sixth grade in a one-room building," he said proudly.  "Back in those days we walked a mile to school and in the winter time when we got there, we took off our shoes and warmed our feet by the pot-bellied stove in the center of the room.  "Were there cloakrooms?" I asked. "There were two of them - one for girls and one for boys." I imagined my own elementary school cloakroom in the early 50's in Pennsylvania.  The memory was rich with smells of bologna, waxed paper, and apples in brown paper bags. Dad had brought his lunch in a lard can.  In the winter, he'd carry a hot potato to warm his hands during the mile-long walk to school.  When the bell rang, he'd place the potato on the stove to keep it warm and set his can in the cloakroom.  "Kids of all ages went to school together back then.  The older ones helped the younger," he said. "How many grades did they have?" I asked.  "Eight, but I quit after six to go work in the coal mines. We had to help Mother and Dad out. You know there were fifteen of us." Dad continued.  "My youngest sister Martha died at birth." "What a shame," I said, keeping emotions in check.  I'd learned the hard way that emotional display caused my father to withdraw and often made him angry.  Dad got up to retrieve his shoes from a back room.  His slippers were worn with the backs flattened like a pair of old moccasins.  A chill absorbed me as he pattered across the linoleum floor to his bedroom - a haunting sound from years before.  Brushing past with shoes in hand, Dad took a chair at the kitchen table.  His left elbow rested on a ring of grease from his breakfast plate.  A circle of crumbs clung to his elbow.  I looked away not wanting to call attention... 

Dances and Rhythms - 6

Dances and Rhythms - 6

     Both of my parents were born in the early 1900's.  Hungry for stories related to my parent's early life, I asked my father how he got into Westinghouse Electric, as we waited for his doctor to call in his prescription.  "Your mother's brother, Henry and I left West Virginia for Pittsburgh to find work.  If they took you on as an office boy and you stuck around without getting into too much trouble, they made you an apprentice and taught you a trade."  My father scratched the top of his head, his long fingernails slicing through the fine crown hairs I used to refer to as, "six hairs on top." "So that's how you became a tool designer," I asked? "Yeah."  Dad went on. "George Westinghouse patented many inventions, which included the railroad air brake and alternating current.  To manufacture them, he opened dozens of plants which demanded thousands of workers.  I was one of them." Dad picked some fuzz off his olive-green work pants as he spoke, unconscious of the sizable holes in the elbows of his gray wool sweater.  I loved the look of him.  He paused as though thinking deeply.  "Anyway, Henry and I stood outside the plant waiting to be called, when a foremen walked up."  "We'll hire you right away - he says.  Next I tell him I have to ask my mother.  He goes - we're not hiring your mother boy, we're hiring you."  Laughter. "What did you say," I asked?  "I took the job," Dad replied laughing out loud.  It was uncharacteristic of him to be so animated.  We had seldom conversed over the years.  This made it difficult to really know my father.  Dad played with the gold signet ring on the large knuckled middle finger of his right hand.  He'd worn it for as long as I could remember. "Was Uncle Henry hired too?" "Yeah," he responded.  I determined to ask him about grammar school....

Dances and Rhythms - 5

Dances and Rhythms - 5

     Before WWII, prior to the advent of television, my parents relied on radio for entertainment and inspiration. Throughout their married life, my mother Iva tended to the needs of home and family while my father, Carl scraped a living from the coal-smoked town of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  I remember one day in the mid-eighties in October, when I was in my late 30's.  I'd planned to drive my father to the pharmacy and arrived early at his unusually stuffy trailer.  Droplets from his steamy shower hung in the air as I entered.  The smell of Mennen aftershave lingered. My father seemed to manage well on his own in spite of the fact that he had been twice widowed.  "Hi Daddy," I said.  "Mornin'" he mumbled, looking up.  Dad buttoned his grey work shirt then grabbed his glasses and sweater from the bedroom.  His eye sockets were pasty white where his smoke-rimmed glasses blocked the sun.  The rest of his upper body was darkly tanned as though he were full-blooded American Indian rather than one-eighth Seneca. I approached the kitchen sink for a glass of water.  Heat pumped furiously from the vent just below my feet.  A small greasy pan, a spatula and a few ham bits rested in the porcelain sink below.  I moved them before turning on the water and reaching for a glass. With autumn on its way, Dad had the heater set to 80 degrees.  I was burning up.  At least the water was cold.  I slurped down a full glass and went for more.  Dad, well into his eighties and depended on family to take him for groceries and medicine.  This day he was out of heart medicine.  While we waited for the doctor to phone in a prescription, he told me the story of how Westinghouse Electric had hired him as a teen...

Dances and Rhythms - 4

Dances and Rhythms - 4

     "This is the first time I ever remember sharing closeness with a female member of my own family, and well, it's also my first really good look at myself.  I must be beautiful too!"  Bertie's acceptance of my innocent appreciation and hunger for feminine solidarity brought a rush of tears.

     At the sound of my crying, Helen peered out from behind her slacks.  Then, in a direct voice as if commanding an army, Bertie said, "Helen, take off your bra!"  Helen's eyes widened, her Lutheran modesty quickened.  She looked at me, then Bertie, and with one quick move of her hands, rose up bare-breasted.  "There, it's off.  Now which one of us is bigger?" Helen shook her breasts with a forced boldness. I was ecstatic, prancing about the room like a giddy child.  After forty-four years of wandering without a sense of family or identity, it was suddenly before me.  I stared wide-eyed at my blood sisters' gracious show of flesh, deeply satisfied with the glimpse they had given me of myself.  That day we shared a remarkable trinity - three sisters caught up in a rare and private bond.  The next time I take an African Dance Aerobics class, I hope to sink even lower into the drum's beat and enjoy my own rhythm as it tickles me from the tip of my spine to the bottom of my soul. The rhythm of our parents' lives, however, was quite different from my own...

Dances and Rhythms - 3

Dances and Rhythms - 3

     Six years earlier, my sisters, Helen, then age 67, Bertie, then age 61, visited me in Florida for my college graduation. When the ceremony was over, the girls and I went into my bedroom to change.  I plundered their suitcases while chattering - savoring the moments we had missed as sisters growing up together.  Glancing up from Helen's suitcase, I noticed my sister Bertie was naked from the waist up.  Her large breasts flopped back and forth with each movement. Fascinated by our striking similarity, I crawled across the bed, "Oh my gosh - we look exactly alike!"  Bertie raised her head.  Though speechless, I could not take my eyes off her cream-like skin.  It was a perfect replica of the velvety-smooth interplay of light, color, and sensuality of Renoir's female figures.  It was the same kind of skin I had so often bathed on my own body, yet never realized how stunning it was.  "I've never seen you like this before...you, you look just like me," I stammered.  "I look like you!"  In the opposite corner, Helen panicked.  "Sherry, you're embarrassing me!"  Helen covered her half-clothed body.  I looked back at Bertie for understanding.  Did she get where I was coming from?  "It's okay, Sissy," she said.  "You haven't been with us your whole life so it's natural for you to be amazed that we look so much alike."  Bertie drew herself up into a reverent posture to allow me a full view, while Helen teetered on the edge of needed life support.  We ignored her, rising above embarrassment.  "It's more than that for me..."

Dances and Rhythms - 2

Dances and Rhythms - 2

     "It's all in the attitude girls - show some attitude!" I was determined to find mine.  One day, while performing the "attitude" moves, the ones that looked like the bump and grind of exotic dancers, I said to my partner in the mirror, "I've got it in here.  I just have to get it out!"  The others laughed.  Beside their floral-wrapped smooth sophistication, I was a misplaced fishing bobber in red stretch pants and a white top. Their high-pitched yells added to the mix of color and drums, widening our cultural differences.

     I boosted my efforts, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the beat.

     Suddenly, a tiny bloom of rhythm rose from deep inside.  It moved up and down my body, as I glided across the floor.  I opened my eyes to see.  The shock of my image in the mirror drove it away.  I tried again.  Another stir from inside - a sliver of something I'd never felt before...I melted into it.  Approving sounds from the room told me that I had joined them.  I sunk low into the tempo, not wanting to lose the sensation that tickled me from the tip of my spine to the base of my throat.  It was unusual to feel so relaxed.

     I had grown up sandwiched between two Patriarchal systems: my father's and the Lutheran church.  Raised without my natural mother and sisters or close friends, I didn't know much about femininity, had unintentionally skipped the formation stage of friendship and married my boyfriends in my search for intimacy.  After three divorces, the truth of my limitations finally hit.  I longed to nurture my own thoughts and dreams - unpack what it meant to be a woman, and bring my underdeveloped female self out of the closet.

Dances and Rhythms

It's been a little over three years since I lost my son.  He was the one who created this blog as a forum for my writing.  Today I will begin that journey with anyone who wants to come along...

Dances and Rhythms

     To break away from the tedium of graduate school studies in mid-life, I joined an African Dance Aerobics class at my local fitness center; however, I was taken back by the sensual dance moves we were asked to make.  They involved parts of me that I didn't know existed, and a mind-body connection that barely passed eleventh-grade sports.  But, I was prepared to challenge myself as the drums began, hoping to loosen up my aging body.

     "Is this how?" I gestured to the woman next to me.

     "You're doing great!" she said.

     For weeks, with the grace of a sack-race runner, I committed my body to the fast-paced tempo of surround sound drumbeats.  Unlike our instructor, who arched and gyrated effortlessly across the floor, my strides were stiff and forced.  Elena was all charm with brown sugar skin and an English accent.  She was a hummingbird.  She was a willow tree, her arms limb-like flowing around and across her thin body.  Mystified by her grace, I let go of awkwardness, turned once and caught an image of myself in the mirror.  Staring out was a thin-lipped, middle-aged, white woman.  She was a painful reminder of the fact that I'd never exercised regularly or played sports, and that my greatest ambition in life had been to visit the nearest library.

     "Come on, don't be inhibited," Elena called back, laughing.  I worked harder with no visible improvement.