Awakening

     The antique Coca-Cola thermometer registered 92° in the attic of my childhood home. Sweat pearled on our foreheads and darkened our shirt-backs but my dad, sister-in-law Rita, brother Howard and I laughed and talked as we helped Dad sort through boxes, bags and furniture full of old papers and various family heirlooms. Just after Mother died, several years earlier, more than 100 birthday, Christmas, anniversary and Easter cards had yielded hundreds of dollars in fifty and twenty dollar bills as well as silver certificate tens, fives and ones; we were searching for more. Dad’s white dress Marine Corp uniforms slept in his old footlocker with gold and brass buttons, each batch in their own respective socks along with their own polishing kits. The footlocker’s main compartment, a library of every letter Mother had written to Dad during WWII and the Korean War, effused memories of locked closets and forbidden drawers. Everything found since Mother’s death reeked of secrets and alienation.
     There would be no money in those envelopes so I filed their location in my mind for later reference and moved on to the clothes closet, which now contained all of Mother’s church dresses and several Marine Corp day and field uniforms. Dad focused on a stack of luggage he and Mother carried on trips as newly-weds in 1933, all in the original boxes. Rita sat surrounded by boxes of filed papers in the attic floor; a doll chair from my grandmother’s childhood in the 1860s rested beside her while two crackled leather briefcases, also full of files, stood on the seat. Her lap overflowed with stacks of cards in their envelopes and browned postcards spilled into the floor. Howard, my 44-year-old mentally handicapped brother, two years my junior, dug through boxes of his toys he’d had as a child as if it were their first Christmas morning. “I cannot believe Santa bring me this,” he said repeatedly before showing each toy around. His smile filled the exhaustingly humid attic and kept us from noticing.
     Bent down, I reached to the back of the closet and began dragging more boxes into the attic main. I almost fell as I, accustomed to the weighty boxes of paper, pulled a lighter box into the sunlight. Its contents clinked the familiar sound of Sterling. I startled. “Dad, I think I found Mom’s tea service,” I started to say as Rita said, “Debra, you might want to see this;” her loud whisper rushed at me just below Dad’s hearing level. When I turned to Rita, she stood up and set a large manila envelope on the doll chair. She pointed to it as she turned to Dad; picked up a tiny, intricate camera; and asked him, “Was this from Iwo Jima, Mr. Lanham?” I looked at the envelope for a long moment before I picked it up and carried it to the window.
     An old desk chair leaned against the window frame and an ashtray sat on the sill. I sat in the light, lit a cigarette and slid the envelope’s contents onto my lap: on top of the stack, a tiny card envelope dated July 12, 1957. Formal and rolling cursive graced its center and reached outward like sunrays, drawing my full attention to it. It was addressed to Mr. & Mrs. I carefully took the card out. A stork carrying a sparkling-with-glitter baby flew across the cover under the word, “Congratulations,” written in a flowing, elaborate and ornate script. I ignored the card's message and read the note handwritten at the bottom. “So happy to hear about your adopted baby girl. God answered your prayers. May he continue to bless.”
     A white heat ran through me from my feet to my crown and back down to my heart, which tightened and then began to race. All sound – their voices, the scraping of boxes across the floor, rush-hour traffic in the street below – spun away from me as if I flew through a tunnel. My mouth filled with saliva; I thought I was going to puke. I started to jump and run out of the attic but vertigo kept me seated. “I’m not going to cry. Don’t let Dad know I’m upset,” I kept telling myself. I lit a second cigarette and drew deeply on it, trying to calm myself.
     My mind, emotions, oscillated between anger, shock, enlightenment, joy and back. A light, the joy end of the spectrum, filled me, rushed at me, overflowed me suddenly with a feeling of being at peace with myself. Always I’d been the black sheep. Never had I lived up to the Butcher or Lanham or Croson or Allen standards. Always I had felt sorry for something, anything, everything that constituted “me.” Suddenly, freedom rang! I understood the locked doors and their secrecy. I was adopted and they’d never told me.
     No longer did my life alienate me from my family. Never before had my choices made so much sense to me! They loved and lived Christianity and “The Church”; I believed in the energy everything carries and my church is the mountains. They loved the city, the craziness of bustling around amid and amongst hundreds, thousands of people; I preferred the woods with its trees, hills, rocks, wildlife, birds, and my husband, my kids, my dogs, my peace. They followed the path of propriety and pretention; I followed my path of freedom: peace and love. The overwhelming rush of self-acceptance shook me and for the moment, I was gloriously happy. I tried to hold on to that rush, but as quickly as it had come upon me, it was gone and I felt empty, alone and betrayed.

SunflowerSelf

        SunflowerSelf

 

Soaking rains

soften

hard shell

      -- black on white.

snowy, seeking tendrils

reach

                  stretch

                                    down

devour soil nutrients,

drink water,

drink

                                    Life.

 

Warming beams

beckon

frail stalk

                  -- light on dark.

verdant, groping fingers

reach

                  stretch

                                    up

photoSynthesize sun rays

rise tall,

rise

                                    Strong,

unfold and greet the Sun

with outstretched arms.