Last week in a flurry of inspiration (and in anticipation of a Superhero costume that never materialized), I dyed my hair burgundy. Burgundy was a nice marketing scheme by Clairol. Burgundy sells better than PURPLE. Other people's insistence that my hair was PLUM or EGGPLANT or even (my favorite), "In the dark it looks more brown," did not change the fact that my hair was purple.
So. This week I decided I didn't feel the need to be a funky, punky purplehead. I called my mother's knowledgeable hairdresser, a woman known to understand the ways of hair color. She took me through a do-it-yourself regimen that would, she insisted, take my hair color to a neutral boring color (she didn't say boring, but I know she meant it).
Imagine my surprise when...as the hair dries...my new boring neutral hair color is...
In the dark, however, it still looks brown.
My paternal grandmother is looking for a second chance. In 1969, Audrey left behind an abusive husband and five young children. Rumor was that she left with the mailman. Leaving one small town in Georgia for another. Most likely leaving one painful family situation for one equally painful.
When Herbert, her first husband and my grandfather, died from the cancers eating his stomach, liver and lungs, Audrey came back. She came back looking for those children: Leroy, Wilma, Brenda, Larry Clyde and Johnny. She came back to that small town in Georgia, hoping for a second chance. Apparently her second husband had also passed and she wanted her family back.
But what happens when a mother leaves? Is a hole left by her absence? Was she missed and mourned? Most likely, yes. Most likely for the first ten years, she was missed like crazy. When her children began to marry and have their own children, they probably wished like hell that Audrey could see those grandchildren. But a lot changes between ten years later and thirty.
By the time she returned, those grandchildren were beginning to have children. The hole left by Audrey’s departure 3 decades earlier was covered up by years of ritual: Christmases, marriages, births, deaths, divorces. The newest members of her family had no idea who she was. Even their parents only knew her as a face in one or two fading photographs. She never even had a color as far as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren knew; only a black-and-white woman who didn’t seem to smile.
Audrey hasn’t had an easy life. She married young, married an unhappy alcoholic young man who worked hard at the sawmill and even harder at the hootch. By the time she was twenty, she had two children and a new bruise each week. Her beauty (she was truly beautiful, something rare in that small apple picking town) and her love for life were quickly marred by the everyday life she led. I can imagine that the mailman offered something she could only imagine: a world beyond the end of the road. Maybe even a world beyond the borders of such an oppressive life.
I can almost give a damn for her. I can almost give her a second chance. But I know what happened to that family after she left. Her abusive husband became an abusive daddy. The oldest boy went from handsome high school jock to alcoholic jerk in five years. The two girls grew up to be old and bitter, taking their only pleasures from fatty foods and fat juicy gossip. The youngest son became a slob who gambled other people’s money and sold dope for a living. And Larry Clyde married six times by age 40. Always trying to find his mother.
There is no second chance. As a granddaughter to Audrey, I will forgive but not forget. Or rather, I will not remember. I only know her as a black-and-white woman who never smiles. My son will never know her at all.
From 3:00 pm Saturday until 3:00 pm today I was totally alone in the house. I didn't answer the phone or watch tv. Okay, I did cheat and get an outside look at the world on my computer, but that hardly counts, considering the Internet is a portal to hell (and not reality). (This, by the way, is a direct quote from someone I know. Have I mentioned this before?)
So what's the significance of being alone? For a lot of people, it's a constant and lonely reality. For me, it's a retreat...
Since Jake's birth, I can probably count on my hands the number of times I've been alone in the house. I've had plenty of time away from home alone, but when Ike keeps Jake, generally they stay home to play while I go out. This is a funny outcome to my life, considering that at one time I thought I'd always be alone, living like my aunt Dottie in the woods. (Kimi, that's the aunt who reminds me of you, by the way. If you're reading this. Not because you're alone in the woods, but because you look kind of like her.) I enjoy being alone. When I think back to life pre-son, I realize now that I took my time alone for granted. I enjoy having time to reflect and rejuvenate. And for me, I have to be alone to do so.
This weekend Ike went on a "working retreat," and Jake stayed with his grandparents. After Ike left, I spent a little time with our elderly neighbor/landlady, then walked back to the house. Huh. Should I lock the door, I wondered? Normally, I would not in the middle of the day, but now it was just me. Somehow that seemed different. So, yes, I locked and deadbolted the door: stay out, world. From the door I wandered inside. I piddled around, cleaned a bit, read a lot, got sucked into researching yoga on the web (current life ambition: be a yoga instructor. Give me a week, I'll want to be a chef.)... Really, what I did was insignificant.
But it was how I did it: alone. There's something about complete silence, broken only by my own breathing or my occasional mutter to myself. I made it a point not to speak, but I was surprised by how often I talked to myself. Why? I can hear me think.
Oddly enough, though I'd been looking forward to this time "away," I kept forgetting no one was here. I left the bathroom door cracked open so Jake would know where I was (but why was I even shutting the door in the first place?). I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye, especially when I passed his room. When I went to bed, I almost left the reading lamp on for Ike...when I remembered he wasn't here.
I suspect that I will never truly be alone again. I have a family with which I feel extremely close. One that is with me even when they are not. I feel them even if they are miles away.
My elderly neighbor, Mrs. Davis, has been a widow for 9 years. Her two children have moved away and had their own children (and their children have children). What was it like for her yesterday when I said, "I won't know what to do with myself without my family at home with me"? Did she think of her family, perhaps remembering a time when she too longed for just a little time alone? Or instead, maybe once you've shared a life with a spouse and watched your children grow you will never truly be alone.
That's what I hope.