Archive for December, 2005
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May the New Year bring you the fulfillment of your greatest desired dreams…
December 29th, 2005 |Posted In: General
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What is a Cracker Queen. She is Loretta Hannon, close friend of one of my husband’s brothers since their days at school in Athens, Georgia. Her popular, nonfiction tales are related to standing-room-only crowds at the childhood home of Flannery O’Connor. She’s had a number of stories on Georgia Public Radio.
You would enjoy her story, “Mamma and the Chain Gang”, the first of her stories picked up by NPR.
A book is in the making.
At her website, you can sign up to be on her mailing list (she doesn’t blog).
We are back. H.o.p. did not want to go to the Memorial and we didn’t press–the hundreds at the service would have been too much for him. And the two hour receiving line afterward. So I stayed at the house with him and helped friends of the family prepare, as they arrived from the service, for the luncheon. There were around 30 people at the luncheon. Maybe more.
H.o.p. was the only child present.
“It’s just like a movie,” he said several times.
I met more Mobile and New Orleans members of the family, cousins of my husband’s on his father’s side, mostly Roman Catholic. Nice people. My husband’s father’s father was straight-up Irish (though born and raised in Mobile) and Roman Catholic (in the South via the potato famine) and when my husband’s father’s parents divorced some went RC and some went Baptist, which is what my husband’s father’s mother had been.
I didn’t know relatives were flooded out of New Orleans (family of the cousins). Some of the members of the family had elected to stay, but one of them is a professional meteorologist and called and said, “Get out of there, this is nothing like you’ve ever experienced.” He is an associate research professor at the Stennis Space Center office in Hancock County of the university’s GeoResources Institute and is publishing a reference book on hurricanes which closes with Katrina, to which they lost their home.
They talked about family living with family while waiting and waiting to dry out and rebuild. Talked about those who don’t know yet if they will be rebuilding. Talked about cleaning out the houses. Talked about the mountains of debris. Talked about mountains of debris six stories tall. Talked about how sad it was to go back and drive past the houses with the X’s and the number of people found dead within.
There was a lot of talk about the Mississippi coast. A lot of anger over how it’s felt Mississippi has simply been abandoned and the news has not shown just how flattened it is, how the news and photos are still not coming out that would show the devastation that is now southern Mississippi. A fair amount of anger over hearing it repeatedly said that god socked it to New Orleans because it’s sin city. A lot of anger at people who talk about not rebuilding New Orleans. A lot of anger at Trent Lott and Bush. I don’t know what their politics were beforehand but there was even discussion of the evils of Wal Mart and boycotting it.
They talked about how my husband’s father’s mother, when in her 90′s, could recall every detail of just about any meal she’d had in her life. And that she kept the tame books on top of her sofa and the “spicy” books. “Harlequin spicy?” someone asked. “No, very spicy,” was the reply.
Marty says it was a very nice memorial. But the two hour receiving line was exhausting.
On the other side of my husband’s family, I met my mother-in-law’s brother for the first time that I can recollect, though Marty says I’ve met him very briefly before. An Assemblies of God minister. He looks a lot like her. Was very easy-going, smooth conversational and though I liked him right off I couldn’t tell if it was the family in him talking or the preacher in him but Marty says he really likes him, that he’s a nice guy. I kept staring at his shiny black patent leather shoes. I haven’t seen shoes like that in a long time and they looked pretty natty. Spotless. He wore a black shirt and black slacks and black patent shoes the first night and somehow he looked very Louisiana to me (they’re also from Louisiana). He reminded me some of his uncle, Estus, who was a spiffy dresser, at least in some photos. A kind of look that runs in the family the way Estus and he and Marty all have a similar way of standing, when in a suit, very casual but spiffed up in what I will always think of as a Louisiana look, hands in pants’ pockets, suit jacket tucked back behind hands. They have broad shoulders that are magnified by suits.
“Look like we’re either going to cheat you at cards or sell you a used car,” Marty said. “Ma’am, wanna buy a bible? Sure is hot out here. I could use some iced tea…”
Indeed, a Sunday-would-have-gone-to-church-but-on-my-way-there-I-got-waylaid-by-a-flashy-piano-on-Saturyday-night look. Except for Marty’s mother’s brother.
Marty’s mother’s brother had the story of how their Uncle Jodi was captured in WWII; he had told him a little about it and a little about Stalag IIB. They’d parachuted in and most of the men had been killed right off. Jodi was in a fox hole with another individual who kept sticking his head out to look and see what was going on. He kept telling him don’t do that, don’t do that. The man was finally shot. Three grenades were lobbed in the fox hole. Jodi managed to get two out but the third went off, which was how he was injured. He said the men who couldn’t walk to the POW camp were killed, and he passed out but for some reason was carried there. He spoke of laboring in the work camps and the diet being rutabaga soup, always rutabaga soup.
They had a Harper’s picture of the magazine being blown up in Mobile during the Civil War. They talked about the magazine being blown up and the “Federals” and “some said it was sabotage” like it was yesterday.
And I kept thinking how very different Southerners are from Northerners.
I was the only Northerner.
Papers were purchased for copies of the obituary and funeral notice.
There was lots of food. A lot of desert. It was all good. Except the macaroni and cheese and asparagus casserole that arrived late and was set out for dinner, I have a sneaking suspicion it’s what got my stomach gurgling and cramping. I don’t know why I ate it. It seemed a not very good idea at the time.
Several months ago I wrote about how I needed a new pair of boots, not having purchased any shoes in years. I wrote about how I keep saying I needed a new pair but never got around to buying any. I said in my post that now was the time, and asked for an opinion (no one offered one, fie on the lot of you). I knew I just wanted a pair of logging boots. I also knew that one day soon I’d have to be buying a pair of fancier shoes for my father-in-law’s funeral. But I didn’t want to be buy them yet and I knew it wouldn’t be appreciated if I showed up in logging boots so I ended up buying nothing and just kept wearing my beat up steel-toed Caterpillars with the eaten-up tops.
The day after Christmas is not the day to go shopping for memorial gear. But we’d no other choice. Marty, needing a jacket and some pants for the memorial, went early to Macy’s at North Decatur mall and returned with reassurances that they had a bevy of boots and certainly among them I’d find something I might not absolutely hate. I figured otherwise, that they’d all have tall skinny heels and be show boots rather than real shoes that are made for walking. I also figured since things were on sale they might have something very cheap that I wouldn’t feel guilty about never wearing again.
Cruel is telling a salesperson she will be the only individual manning the woman’s shoe department, floor and register, the day after Christmas. Which is what Macy’s did. They’d left it all in the care of one harried woman.
Over in the men’s department, Marty earlier had earlier problem, but then he didn’t have to wait for anyone to bring him shoes.
I found a pair of boots which didn’t have baubles and weren’t texturized and looked suitable to wear with the black skirt I’d borrowed from my sister. I watched the sole saleswoman running back and forth. I waited and waited. That was fine. I was amazed she was struggling to smile at everyone. I was amazed, when she finally got to me, that she managed a smile. Had I been her I would have been shooting daggers out my eyes. “What? You come to Macy’s on the Day After Christmas expecting personal service?” But I’d no other choice. I needed boots. And I was glad she wasn’t shooting daggers out her eyes as I was buying boots in which to bury the dead. Nothing else to them.
She got them for me. They didn’t fit. They were made for someone with calves three times larger than mine. I found another couple of pair to look at, one of which I decided weren’t a total loss as the leather looked vaguely decent, like it wouldn’t tear if you stubbed your toe. I had ample time to look because the saleswoman didn’t get back to me for an unbelievable amount of time. I suppose we could have ventured out into the mall, to another store, but I kept thinking that if I’ve waited this long it could only be a few minutes longer. But those few minutes kept stretching into many other few minutes and I’d think if I waited this long…and I figured that it would be just as manic elsewhere, though I’d chosen to do my shopping at the ragged end of the day (when I’d figured it would be not as chaotic). And H.o.p. simply wanted to leave. He was being pretty good, as good as an eight-year-old is going to be. But dragging him around from store to store didn’t sound like a good idea. Especially when he started to complain in earnest about being bored. By then he would have complained and groaned mightily over venturing to another store. He occasionally sank to the floor from his chair and I’d tell him to take his seat again and he would.
Actually, he was all eager for me to buy a pair of boots. He had nothing against that. He was very supportive of mom buying boots. He just wanted it done with, and we were waiting and waiting and waiting. He followed me around, trying to be helpful, or maybe just hoping to help get me out of there. “I like this boot. Why don’t you try on this boot?” He leaned against a glass table filled with boots, expecting it to be a real table and not the chimera of a table. Marty and I averted disaster narrowly, one grabbing him and another grabbing the glass in time. I did the same thing once, only I was in my 30s and went down to the floor with the table and contents. Come to think of it, I was in the same store. Thirteen years later, at least, and my son is in the same store leaning against the glass of another non-table and almost lands on the floor with the big pane of glass and a pile of shoes. Certainly, I think, someone else during those thirteen years has leaned against those non-tables. Certainly, I think, they’d realize this wasn’t a great idea. Or maybe me and my son are the only leaners who have ever entered the store.
As we waited, H.o.p. started asking questions about his grandfather’s death.
Loudly.
“How did they know grandfather was dead?”
Questions like that. Real loud. Which is kind of funny as he hadn’t wanted to address the subject of his grandfather’s death until I was trying on shoes. He has wanted to avoid the subject completely. Then suddenly, out of the blue, in a department store when we are surrounded by other people and I’m trying to find a pair of boots, “How did they know grandfather was DEAD?”
Huh? It took a moment to register that now was the time H.o.p. had chosen to talk about his grandfather.
“How did they know grandfather was DEAD? How did they know?!”
Boots dangling from my hands, wearing boots that didn’t fit and made me feel gravitationally like I was walking on another planet (which was fairly disorienting), my eye on the saleswoman, waiting for the moment she was briefly done at the register, hoping to catch her attention before one of another dozen customers, I was, frankly, unprepared and looked at H.o.p. blankly.
Marty answered something, I couldn’t hear what.
Again, real loud. “But HOW did they know grandfather was dead?”
I think I answered something stupid like, “Because he wasn’t breathing.” At least it sounded stupid at the time, though true. I was so distracted and distracted with wondering why he was suddenly willing to talk about it now that I couldn’t listen to the part of my brain that was saying I guess it’s time to talk so hunker down and discuss.
“But how do they KNOW he’s DEAD?” H.o.p. questioned as he slid off the chair to the floor for the tenth time.
“You can’t lie on the floor. Sit back down.”
“OK.” H.o.p. sat back down. “But how do they KNOW grandfather’s DEAD?” he demanded, sliding again off his chair onto the floor.
“Get off the floor and sit on the chair.”
“OK.”
Then I hear H.o.p. talking loudly about replacement grandfathers, and idly asking if there’s going to be a replacement grandfather, even as he’s holding boots up and saying, “Do you want to try this on? Will I get a new grandfather? Can they give us a replacement grandfather for Opa?”
The mind, the mind. H.o.p. talking about replacement grandfathers, as he went through boots, an image of his dead grandfather wrapped in white sheets lay before me on the glass table, surrounded by the shoes through which H.o.p. was looking. And that was certainly distracting.
“No, H.o.p., there will only be one Opa,” I said stupidly, taking shoes from him and putting them back up, “they don’t do replacements.”
Then he was asking again only this time Marty was answering as I was looking for an opening again with the saleswoman and I had decided Marty could ably take care of this set of questions.
The store turned out to be out of one of the other pair of boots I wanted to look at. The saleswoman handed me the pair that they had, the ones I kind of liked, and flew off. I tried on one boot. It fit. I was mistaken when I’d thought she’d handed me a pair in a box. There was no mate to the boot in the box. I looked three times. I even looked under the tissue paper flattened at the bottom of the box. I knew it wouldn’t be there but I had to look.
One time when our car was towed, I looked under the neighboring cars for it. I knew it wouldn’t be there. But I needed that time to accept the fact the car had been towed.
I waited another fifteen minutes (at least) for the saleswoman to get back to me. Then waited another ten minutes until she had time to return and tell me that there was no other pair and she couldn’t find that shoe’s mate. I had started to become irritable with things in general. I had on one boot that I didn’t like much at all and didn’t fit. I had on another boot that fit and I halfway liked but it had no mate. There were a couple of other pairs I might have tried on if service had been available but none was. I didn’t get cranky with the saleswoman because it wasn’t her fault and I was amazed she wasn’t unhinged and throwing shoes. I did tell H.o.p. that he was in trouble if he didn’t get in that seat and stay off the floor. Marty told me I was getting irritable.
If he thought I was irritable then, he wasn’t ready for how irritable I was about to be, walking out to the van with a pair of boots that didn’t fit right and I didn’t like. And me having just that evening learned where the memorial service would be, which had finally sunk in fully and I was about to unload just how angry I was about it.
I was suddenly angry that every time there’s been a major event in our lives like a funeral or wedding that’s involved a church, it’s been accompanied by ill-fitting, god-awful department store clothes picked up cheap and in a hurry, clothes we’ll never wear again and for some reason pile up their shadows in the mind’s corner like insults against what should be treasured life-marking events. Instead of devotion to what matters, a rush to see to the particulars of attire, otherwise it will be ruled a lack of respect. If you wear the clothes you live in, it’s a lack of respect. But if you plunk your money in Macy’s coffers and wear some god-awful, ill-fitting, not-you-at-all pair of shoes to a too-meaningful event where you’re expected to walk-and-talk a cardboard role then the world goes round smoothly spinning on its axis, all matters of life and death neatly tucked into place, except I walk away feeling ill, like I wasn’t permitted entry. Instead it was the clothes that were given a pass. My shoes got closure but my heart was left pumping in the cash register drawer, where it was really appreciated, especially if my shoes could be taken off and worn by the next person over, and the next, and the next. I remember Kathy Carllisle at Thumb Carllisle’s’ funeral, in her jeans and barefeet, and how it remains to this day the best funeral I’ve ever attended. Celebratory and full of grief. Nothing stilted. From the heart. I think maybe it wouldn’t all feel so foreign and bad to me time after time if I believed at all in the ritual, and it has no meaning to me, I don’t believe in the shoes and the Christ-centered self-sacrifice, hope-for-future-ressurection limboland in which ghosts wander as their flesh lives. I don’t believe in the church speaking for you and living for you lest you speak and live for yourself. I simply don’t believe.
But that the problem is more complex than that, if I’m able to listen to a plainchant mass and enjoy it.
“In some places, all you have to do is tie a black band around your arm when someone dies. They don’t force you to go out shopping for clothes for funerals,” I said.
Marty said, “Yeah, and in Hawaii they knocked out their front teeth when the King died.”
“That’s not my father-in-law,” I snapped.
The place the memorial is to be, there’s simply no skirting it, but I hate the church at which his father was a minister for many years, and which his parents afterwards attended. I’d hoped the memorial would be at a funeral home or at another church at which his father had ministered, which wasn’t so loaded with issues. Because I hate that church and haven’t set foot in it in many years.
I hissed and fumed and spat my rage in as quiet a manner as I could, H.o.p. in the back seat. Finally, I was furious at a huge segment of the population. “I hate Southern Baptists,” I blurted, because thinking back on it I decided I’d never been around Southern Baptists when I wasn’t feeling unhappy and like they were intent on eventually changing me into another person. If they gave me a roaring good time, even half a roaring good time, while trying to change me into something more suitable, then that would have been another thing. But no. And that is pure middling vanity compared to the banquet table I have of truly outrageous, life-altering, god-awful stories about Southern Baptist cruelties and life-altering cruelties inflicted by people who happened to be Southern Baptist, some things which have to do with me and some which have to do instead with others. But it was all to do with this particular church. That church was the problem. I hate that church less for what it has meant to me than what it has meant to some others in my life. I hate it for having ripped peoples lives to shreds and being permitted to walk on and never an accounting demanded of it. Because it was a damned sacred cow more important than anyone whose lives it touched.
Marty asked me to end the discussion, like yesterday, because H.o.p. wouldn’t understand and didn’t need to hear it even though I was only hissing broadly rather than specifically. He was right. I canned it. But we were still bickering.
We were bickering as we parked the van.
We checked the mail and in the mail was a package from Santa, from the North Pole, that Santa being Kate over at Klondike Kate’s Aurora.
“H.o.p.! Look! It’s a letter to you from Santa! A real letter from Santa!”
With a wax stamp on the back. We opened it and little sparkly trees and reindeer tumbled out.
A beautiful letter. A wonderful letter.
“H.o.p., in all my years,” I told him, “I’ve never gotten a letter from Santa.”
H.o.p. beamed, amazed.
Santa’s letter encouraged H.o.p. to continue with his art work, saying there aren’t enough artists in the world, and that he would bring joy to those with whom he shared his dreams, through looking at his heart’s work. It says the best gift you can give to your parents is to let them know you love them.
You don’t need a church as intercessor for that. Indeed, the church, with it’s scripture sword, preaches tearing asunder. Or at least that has been the common interpretation. The tearing asunder is preached and the people receive it as such.
Anyway, this posting is partly to do with a man who loved his sons and his sons loved him and that is what mattered. He wrote his own memorial service two weeks before he died. I don’t understand why it is being held where it is, but I hope on Wednesday that what he scripted for the memorial communicates a joy and dream of his heart’s work that transcends the place, a song of the greater man. I hope in it is also the song of the lesser man, which addresses sorrows and explains sacrifices made. Because there’s that too. And also whatever he learned from the past seven years, because he endured a great deal and a part of that, it seems to me, should be sung, what he endured.
One day–I’m counting on it–H.o.p. will be present at the scattering of my ashes. I’ll tell him he needs to pay attention to which way the wind is blowing. Because only a touch of my dreams should linger with him.
So, as I posted, yesterday AM Marty’s father died. Then he got back in time last night where we were planning on going out to look at Christmas tree lights but we instead sat here while police were swarmed outside our apartment with guns drawn looking for what we don’t know but when we realized they were gone there was a hospital sheet lying on the sidewalk. We still don’t know what happened.
Marty spent the afternoon in the emergency room. We had gone to my sister’s for Christmas dinner. Marty was in the back yard helping my brother-in-law and his oldest son set up the safety barrier of a trampoline when a purely freak accident happened which is no one’s fault. One pole somehow struck another aluminum pole which shot up into the air, and the pole was covered with foam padding except for its end, and the end not covered with foam turned earthward, which Marty didn’t see coming as he was sitting on the ground working on some other equipment, and it landed square on the top of his head. The skin of which is now stapled back together.
Other than that we had a great time at my sister’s. Great food and company.
H.o.p. is watching a new movie. I’m going to go lie down on the futon and pretend to watch but instead I will, I think, fall fast asleep.
There’s been a hospital sheet lying on the sidewalk since the police left.
Darn, saw that a draft I’d done on this had accidentally posted and I’d not intended it to be. Oh well. Forget it. Didn’t happen. Agreed? S’right.
I’ve not pulled together my blog of “Santa vs. Satan” but plan to. Here’s one I did last year of “Santa Conquers the Martians” which stars a child Pia Zadora. It’s actually an anti-war film that had me clearly thinking way too hard, being as overwhelmed as I was. A fascinating bauble from the 60s.
Santa Conquers the Martians
Directed by Nicholas Webster
Story by Paul L. Jackson, Glenville Mareth
John Call – Santa Claus
Leonard Hicks – Kimar
Vincent Beck – Voldar
Bill McCutcheon – Dropo
Released 1964
Rates: Too good. Way too good.
Eggnog’s in the fridg. Must be Christmas. Hooray for Santa Claus! That’s the theme song that greets with the intro credits of the too delicious “Santa Conquers the Martians” starring John Call as Santa Claus. My husband was out picking up paper at the office supply store and I called to remind we needed canned chili for H.o.p. and during that phone pause he saw the DVD “Santa Conquers the Martians” which he confused with “Santa Claus” (a.k.a “Santa Vs. Satan”) and brought home. We put it on while supper cooked. I got laryngitis and inspired. It’s been a long time since I’ve completely forgotten my surroundings and troubles and cares and the mind’s basement not echoed with some sub angst, but “Santa Conquers the Martians” put that voice to rest. That’s how full of question marks this freaky Babes in Martianville movie is.
Wham. I start the movie several times over because it’s like ramming into a wall, no preparatory lubing, wonderland with no warning. The title backdrops remind of 60s glitter-strewn television variety show curtains laced with 50s seaweed art inclinations (I want these in fabric on my bedroom window) and as the bright horns for the “Hooray for Santee Claus” theme blast not quite Tijuana Brass style, sleigh bells jingling, one waits for Dean Martin to enter the screen to croon about the moon and pizza pies, but instead it is all titles slid in by a white-outline illustrated St. Nick. “On Christmas Day you’ll wake up and you’ll say, hooray for Santa Claus”. Invisible singing kiddies spell his name out M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E style, cheery and bright. “Conquers” is a good-times kid flick, happy are we and so shall you be after your visit with Santa Claus.
Cut to futureama. We’re not talking the futureama of the babybird nuclear era, but what the 30s imagined with built-in black and white wall television surrounded by placebo knobs and projecting sculptural antennae, but it’s post Eisenhower rather than pre-New Deal and a KID TV news-spokesman announces the event of the year, a reporter on hand at the North Pole. The camera pans to metal flower sculpture growing out of the wall and end table free-style sculpture reminiscent (I suppose) of Brancusi (or wants to be) which says something about the citizenry when early twentieth century art is the property of aliens. The door is a big round hole in the wall. Where are we? Hollywood? New York? An art gallery without wheelchair accessibility? Two greenish, helmet-head zombie-children sit before the television (eerie guitar strum), and if this was my movie the antennae probing the air off their helmets wouldn’t be static decoration but carrying on wavy conversation with the television’s.
Or the kids are kind of green. The color of the feature has deteriorated so they’re more brown now. Maybe they were always brown but no one said anything because they’d been told to expect green. I realize that green is brown in this film and they will embody a statement on integration. Indeed, the Martian children represent Civil Rights. Good show!
Wait, I just realized that the KID-TV television announcer has the same dimples as the Mickey-Mouse club’s announcer, but I’ve no time to think about that because suddenly I’m at the North Pole with a reporter, and the dark North Pole has never been so artificially not very cardboard cold. Via Tel-Star, Andy Henderson is saying there’s Only one direction you can go, South! Solstice feature indeed (my husband says I give the writers too much credit). A frozen food joke follows, referencing pop-popular television dinners catering the new television culture.
Now we go inside the prototypical Santa’s workshop. Midgets for elves, of course. John Call makes a great Santa welcoming the camera. The shivering reporter asks if i’s true he’s going to use a rocket sled this year. No sir, it’s traditional with Prancer, Dancer, Thunder Blitzen and Nixon…
Nixon? Did Santa say Nixon? Yes and he winks at the camera. He’s full of laughs stepping over to Winky elf who is in charge of the space department and shows us Winky’s toy idea of a Martian. Hopefully the Martians have a Santa to bring joy to the children.
There, the film’s premise, just in case you were going to be wondering later what the film was really about.
We also now know that Santa’s Toyland and his elves not only bring us Christmas joy but life itself, or are the shapers of the machinery through which life presents itself. But let’s not think too hard about that unexpected peep behind the curtain.
We’re back to the alien art museum with no windows that has a smattering of space age furniture on exhibit, and find that the curator is a man in 30s thriller serials green tights and long green cape. He calls for Dropo, the lazy good-for-nothing comic side kick who is sleeping on the floor. Punishment is a tickle wand with which Dropo is awakened. Where’s Mommar? Dropo knows because Dropo is a male clown who is permitted as a clown to have somewhat female properties, as evidenced when he’s later observed vacuuming, a truly sidesplitting activity for a man of this era when not a professional with a license to clean. Momar (mom) is out getting food pills for the kids who are glued to the tube!
Kimar (dad) just doesn’t understand the kids! The door to the kiddo’s room, decorated with stars from a crazy quilt, slides back and dad steps through to see the kids being told by the telly about dolls and tender-loving care. The poor robotic, emotionless kiddos don’t have a clue what tender-loving care is because dad is an authoritarian, robotic, Charlton Heston clone. He is, however, well-meaning, mindful of their health, and wanting a chance to brain percolate he orders the kids to get to bed. Do they have to? Sigh, yes. (The real-time parents should be shifting in their theater seats knowingly, a significant identification point touched that the kids wouldn’t get.) No comfy beds, a tenish Pia Zadora in her film debut climbs onto a round table and is zapped artificially out.
When bubble-helmeted Momar returns with the food pills we realize how far we’ve ventured from 1958 and “Queens of Outer Space”. Blond extravagance has been replaced by beatnik turtleneck, mini-skirt, tights and (almost) go-go boots. Halston took notes. So did Kubrick. Slender Momar is a predecessor of “2001: A Space Odyssey’s” sisterly bubble-capped stewardess, emotionless, efficient, and well-meaning with her chocolate layer-cake pills.
Charlton Heston’s clone complains about having to use the sleep spray on the children again. “Why don’t you go to the forest and see Chochem the ancient one?” Momar suggests, a capable queen who also does her own shopping. This was 1964 for sure. The Martians, advanced beyond humans, self-reliant rather than chowing down on subservient underlings, our supposed social future, never-the-less have problems. They have reached a point of crisis the genesis for which was located somewhere in the twentieth century, after Flash Gordon was sewn into his stylish hernia belt.
So aways Kinar to Thunder Forest with the Council Chiefs for some grandfatherly advice. Wisdom of the ages. Sages. Hollywood style.
The strap-on helmets the Martians wear are making me think too hard with their peculiar oxygen tank tubing winding from some part of the brain apparently to another, or so we have been taught by previous movies, that tubes are not only decorative but channels of conveyance. What does that tube mean? What is its function? And the peculiar glittery plate bonded to the front of the helmet. What does it do? Certainly, it must have purpose. The overlarge push-button belt the Martians wear, it too must have purpose. But what?
I’m given no time to ponder what have escaped being subtleties.
Chochem’s chair in Thunder Forest is sprinkled I now realize with webs. Before I just saw spidery veils. And there’s a difference between spidery veils and webs. Spidery veils are sexy. Webs indicate age. Thunder Forest. Chochem’s chair. Shades of pagan origins, the Martians are friends of Merlin. The Council Chiefs congregate for what appears to be ancient Druidic advice. Voldar (the one whose persistent irritability drives to evil intent) has a mustache and biceps, complaining they are like a kindergarten class having to consult Chochem. Can’t they think for themselves? The wizard appears with his staff, the rings of Saturn clearly seen in the background. Whassup? Poor, old-fashioned, Woden-dialogue dad angsts as to the children that, “They eat not, they sleep not, their only interest is in watching meaningless earth programs on the video.” Wizened Chochem croaks it’s the time of Christmas on earth and that’s the problem with the kids. Joy, peace and childish anticipation of Santa and his gifts. The children on Mars are adults plugged-in from birth. Information fed into their minds in a constant stream. They have to learn to have fun and to love.
Martian daddy isn’t a baddie. He wants the best for his kids, and will do anything to save them, the penultimate in daddy desperation, for which reason it’s off to earth to kidnap Santa.
The Martian spacecraft causes me to mentally hiccup all that has remained undigested about this film. Like the uniforms, the helmets. Everything comes into question. Why is one of the Council Chiefs fat? Why does he have a beard? Who is he? Who are these guys? Who are any of them? Did they ever do any acting before this? After?
Coming in from Outer Space is alchemic objectifiction where we theater-bound earthlings get an overview of our situation. The Martians automatically head for New York and via their spycams are confused by a multiplicity of Santas. But this turns out to be a good thing. If there are so many, earth won’t miss just one! In the meanwhile Voldar huffs over the primitiveness of earth people with their above-ground buildings which apparently beg to be destroyed just because they are. No, no violence, we’re just here to kidnap Santa, says Kimar. And what of the earthlings? Having spotted the spaceship, newscasters promptly announce to the Cold War beleaguered world that Russia insists they have nothing to do with this new blip on the radar.
It was around now that it began to bother me that mustached Voldar’s helmet seemed somehow off-kilter, the only one that too obviously fit oddly. Why? And were the helmets made of paper mache? And why did Kimar’s face look graveled with cosmetic sand?
Cut to American Air Force and Defense, to military and radar and computer wheels slowly turning, stock footage of the adult world and its missiles.
Cut to pre WWII Hollywood movie serial style Martian spaceship interior again with funky oversized flashing lights (either that or this film is a secret time travel tunnel outfitted with Doctor Who’s warehouse of 70s-80s staging that the Teletubbies will later raid) and stowaway Dropo the Clown being dragged out of his hiding spot in the big radar something chest where he could have unplugged the whatever that will cloak the Martian ship from human view. Those Martians sure have it head-and-tails over us Earthlings technology-wise! Oh no, their spaceship disappears behind its anti-radar shield and the U.S. Armed Forces spring to high alert, jets taking skyward. Contrails splice the sky. But with the help of their shield the Martians elude the best the Cold War World has to offer and land next to a lake where a little boy and girl, Billy Foster and Betty, have been musing about what Martians might look like, informed on the crisis by their Japanese transistor radio. Can’t escape technology! A commentary on modern physics (creation theory already covered in Santa’s workshop), as soon as the children contemplate Martians, the green men in tights appear on the studio winter set background to sneak up on them. Have no fear, say we as we smile and point our big gun at you, kiddies–who readily and fearlessly dispense their childish wisdom to clueless daddy on the reality of Santa, that there is only one, the rest roaming New York are homeless begging dimes.
No, scratch that. They’re Santa’s helpers dragging about their cauldrons of regeneration, bells calling for donations to the kettle of mercy. Something like that.
Ultra-big rounded rivets, that’s the key to Martian spaceship architecture. (Just occurred to me and seemed worth noting.)
Eight year old Betty’s bulky cable knit sweater and her miniskirt brought back memories no one under the age of forty-five would appreciate or understand. Something about the old (cable knit) not quite knowing how to live comfortably with the new (miniskirt) yet. But even in 1964 Billy in his dog-eared cap was Norman Rockwell retro “Leave it to Beaver quirkiness” revealed to have a bb gun hidden under the leaves. Something to do with Kennedy and Oswald, I’m sure.
So how are we going to explain away being well-intentioned kidnappers to the theater-goers who the year before were shocked out of Camelot into the tumultuous sixties and Vietnam by one supposed shot from a Dallas book depository? With film candy. That’ll do it. Leave the kids by the lake and they’ll inform the authorities we’re stealing Santa. We have no choice but to drag you off at gun point up to the North Pole!
Again, more cuts to real world jets refueling in mid war followed by Martian spaceship Whoville technology and Dropo telling the kids all about how things work, like the radar shield! And that light that flashes bright red when someone’s coming up to the navigational deck! Better hide! Never mind what then transpires. I never minded while watching and mused on the green tights and how some of the guys had looser fitting drawer-type leotards and others had tighter ones. Seriously, I wondered if costuming planned this or if the leotards were leftovers that happened to fit some and didn’t others. And I wondered some more about the helmets and the tubes and the plaques on the helmets and the belts and the tights and the big rivets and the beard on the fat guy and the mustache on Voldar and if these people were all friends and that’s how they came to make this film together, like some cult of dope-fiend poets maybe, and how much were Billy and Betty paid and was that cable knit sweater of Betty’s actually a fashion statement in 1964 that I’d managed to miss and my second grade mind mistook for grandma’s total failure to grok and adapt when faced with textured fishnet pantyhose, which come to think of it was just a new twist on the old as in did you know that the fine art of knitting owes itself to knotting and knitting fishnets?
Evil makes for adventure. Despite his badness, it’s Voldar who suggests taking the kiddies to Mars. Will this later win him points in court?
I also started thinking (much earlier) about how Voldar gets all the straight-man funny lines. Kimar is Edgar Rice Burroughs space age biblical while Voldar gets the lines about how looking for Santa is like looking for space dust in a comet’s tail. Usually actors play off one another. One calls this inter-acting. But seems in this film the director wanted to make a comment on how each man really is an island unto himself, despite trade routes. A really new stand-out one opened with Santa ferried to Mars.
But not yet. Betty and Billy must warn Santa and escape from the ship into the soap flake style chill of the earth’s North Pole. Yes, we’re still on earth. For once, as Kimar descends the ship’s ladder, his cape isn’t half draped over his right shoulder, it’s flung back over the left. Oh, now it’s draped over his right shoulder again. I’m actually relieved they caught that, stability being reassuring.
I realize Kimar is the only one with a cape. This is suggestive of his superiority but later in the film Errant Ones in Hiding on Mars are in tattered capes, so I don’t know what’s up with that.
The Martians must hunt down the kids. Torg is ominously called from the ship by Kimar. What is Torg, we ask? We are intended to ask, “What is Torg”, though we all know, even those who have not seen the movie posters. This is a meaningless question, as we all know. Still rich with suspense. The kids hide from Voldar in a nice warm snow cave. Voldar is scared off by a man in a polar bear suit that zips up the back. It has got to be one of the best bad polar bear costumes I’ve ever seen. Horror film style extreme close-ups of the bear swiping its paw at the kids in the uh snow cave. “Who’s the man in a bear suit,” my seven year old son says.
‘ The kids are freed of the menace of the polar bear only to freeze, freeze, freeze some more, freeze longer, remain still frozen in their tracks for as long as it takes (longer than one expects then expects again) for Torg, the man in a cardboard suit Robot, to slog up to them and grab them up one in each arm. But Kimar has set Torg’s controls so it can’t hurt the children, which irritates Voldar, who complains, “What has happened to the great warriors of our planet? Mars used to be the Planet of war! Your softness will destroy us!” Yes, games and laughing children are everyone’s undoing. Zoom in on silver-painted cardboard robot’s tummy. Robot now knocks in the door of Santa’s workshop and my seven year old son is all eyes, talking about what he needs to make his new robot. “A big box. A not so big box. Construction paper.” The elves pick up wooden sticks but don’t thrash out with them lest they dent Torg’s cardboard. Santa laughs that Torg’s the biggest toy he’s ever seen and Torg becomes a toy. Santa and his elves create and transform. Santa says and it happens. And I wonder if the robot was created by Santa and his elves in the workshop (as had been the Maritians) and thus happened on Mars, or if the robot was a result of the creation of the Martians who continued to go on and create on their own and so what they made were creations of Santa by extension and did Santa plan the warped threads in the weave or did they just happen? Did Santa and his elves know his creations would come to kidnap him to bring joy to their world again? Voldar freezes the elves and Mrs. Claus with a be still and be quiet ray. The pacifist Santa is relieved to know that the Martians haven’t placed their elfen gods in terminal limbo. So, he must not know all.
Of course he doesn’t know all. Claus didn’t know they were coming to kidnap him, did he? No. So much for his omnipotent seeing while you’re sleeping and while you wake.
Maybe Santa doesn’t want to know all? He could know all, but he likes surprises. So he turned off his know-it-all switch.
In order to keep the world from discovering they’ve kidnapped Santa, the Martians carry the kids with them to the spaceship, but Mrs. Claus spills the beans (Santa has already commented on her verbosity) and the headlines inform the world of the disaster and a German scientist goes on about something to a microphone with Film Noire WW II background lighting cutting the back wall of the office in half with shadow and light. Sigh, Torg’s usefulness is done with so they leave him on earth. Such is the magical influence of the none know-it-all, peace-minded Santa that if he thinks you’re a toy, then, well, y’know, swords become ploughshares. That kind of thing.
Following me here? Get it yet? Why does everyone say this movie is too bad to be good?
Never mind the question of free will that arises when the creator Says and you Are. This blogged review has evolved beyond its scope.
Did I forget to mention Torg’s laundry room arms and legs?
This film is filled with question marks. There isn’t a single detail that isn’t a question mark. Not a single costume. Not a single peculiarly-cut door. Or extra. I have never paid so much attention to Extras.
The race into space is sped up by Santa’s kidnapping. Astronauts forego essential training so they may be blasted toward Mars with the hope of retrieving the the jolly red suited guy who has the Martians laughing over toasted Martian-mellows, the kind Voldar loathes because they’re soft and weak.
Santa tells a joke about how it wasn’t a big chimney at all but the smokestack of the Queen Elizabeth in which he finds himself…
Never mind.
More question marks with the jail cell cum submarine-style bunkers with the metal beds and government issue blankets on which Santa sits with the kids. When Betty and Billy don’t laugh at his jokes, he embraces them compassionately. Droppo, who’s trying to convince the kids to eat Chocolate Ice Cream pills, went on to Sesame Street. Where did John Call go? What did he do after this? He really is quite a good Santa.
And now comes one of the more peculiar moments of the film. Voldar is determined to get rid of the kids. He takes them and Santa on a supposed tour of the ship, straight to the air lock. Which has an uhm airduct in it. Why is the interior of the air duct red? He locks them in. Good bye kids. What will they and Santa do? Sixty seconds tick by for three minutes (Santa must suspend time). Voldar celebrates his littering space with kid debris. He and Kimar fight. Batman and Robin style. Close-ups. Jiggly hand-held shots. In walks Santa and the children.
“But the air duct is just a little…and you’re so big…”
“But you’re talking to Santa Claus son…”
“But how…”
“You wouldn’t want me to tell my secret….poor man, he’s fainted just like someone who’s seen a ghost.”
Secrets, secrets. That would be telling. Whose side are you on? That would be telling. Oh, right. “The Prisoner”.
Ask me what other old ditties I’ve been watching on the DVD lately.
I don’t know why they make a big deal every time the landing legs of the ship are lowered.
It’s almost impossible to get across how everything in this film is a question mark. Every element is a jigsaw puzzle part which suggests it should fit with another one but nothing fits together.
Tinkly music as we return to Momar’s Martian realm (she’s dusting the abstract art objects) which has no chimney. Kimar and Momar reunited, affection is displayed by touching foreheads together. Santa promises Momar with heart-felt sincerity to help the children. Billy offers his hand to the Martian kid to shake and the Martian kid doesn’t understand until Billy says to shake it and then the Martian kid understands. It’s like the Yin and Yang twins only in Green (or brown-green) and white. Billy is ten and Betty is eight, just like the Martian kids! Santa has them all laughing in no time and I notice what big teeth Kimar’s son has.
Did I mention the weird built-in dressers in the Martian children’s room, set into the wall? Even those are question marks, all right angles and odd slants and Dr. Caligari style leanings the mind can’t quite wrap around when all the furniture is circular and rounded forms and the doors are circular.
Voldar, the opposer, has escaped to some rustic Martian cave where the other miscreant outcast Martians dwell.Those guys in tattered capes I mentioned earlier. And their antennae are crumpled. They talk like Brooklyn type television gangsters. Yet even they are vulnerable to seduction by Santa, their spy returning with talk of Mars about to be flooded with toys–and coiled springs that walk down stairs…Slinkies! It’s an ad!
Santa’s Martian workshop jolts. The Earth workshop was Gingerbread. The Martian is automated, buttons, but never mind that. The walls! Or the wall that dominates the set. How to describe? It’s 1997 and people are making big web navigation 3-d shaded buttons again and this wall is built o them. But the lighting is such that the huge navigation buttons look like peculiar painted on designs, squarish gray shower curtain geometrics, tricky mental gags, the “look again what do you see” visual illusion of negative become positive space and positive receding to negative. That is the main wall of Santa’s workshop. Over the other hangs a gigantic multi-colored flute.
Betty’s mini-dress, a pseudo jumper over a blouse (those were popular then) is decorated with rick rack or velvet ribbon that looks like rick-rack on my television.
This Martian place is odd. Except for those stuck out in the caves by the canal, the Martians must dwell in a dome like bees in a hive. Here Dropo is trying on a Santa suit and his place looks like the interior of a kind of submarine. The doors are octagonal whereas the doors in the home of Kimar and Momar are circular. Back to Santa’s workshop, with its door that …. well, I can’t describe its shape. I guess like a giant comb? The Three Stooges, Voldar and his chummies, are there to cause trouble, dropping their bag of wrenches, armed with a flashlight (I was thinking, idiotically, how peculiar that Martians had wrenches and flashlights and Three Stooges style villains–and why do character villains come in threes?) They screw up the works. Despite his helmet, Dropo does such a good job playing Santa that they grab him and take him back to the cave. We’re in character actor land with Voldar, and then we’re back to Momar and Audrey Hepburn and 60s fashion and then comes in 1940s serial spaceman Kimar to greet his wife. I’m telling you. This film, it’s all question marks!
Why in the world was I wondering why the Martian Santa’s workshop had plastic laundry baskets for catching the toys as they came out of the chutes? Why do I keep trying to figure out the insignia on the Martian suits? Watching Voldar is like watching Phil Hartman’s twin brother. His cohort is like watching Klinger from “Mash”–maybe he is the guy from “Mash”. The film is before “Mash” and referencing “Mash” and has nothing to do with “Mash”. Why does Dropo as Santa have a rabbit’s ear dangling from one of his antennae? Why is there a fire extinguisher in the hall of the Martian community dwelling? Why is there a ski in the storeroom? Do Martians ski? Kimar is slugged with the ski! I’ve fallen out of “Santa Conquers The Martians” into “Batman” again. How did it happen? Did they film this scene in a storeroom that had already been built on another set? Did a prop person intentionally put the ski there? Was it scripted? Now Kimar gets slugged with a ski?
Dropo escapes the Martian cave by reversing the light bulbs that control the Nuclear Curtain. Shades of Winter Solstice! Something like that.
And now to the big crisis scene. Voldar is going to relax Santa, permanently! The real one! He threatens with his gun. But Santa and the kids have the drop on Voldar! It’s cut and paste action packed editing. Voldar is hit with bubbles. Toy soldiers are on the march. Robots. Kids joyfully strike Voldar with bats. A toy soldier sounds its horn. Tanks roll. Pia fires a bow and Arrow. An Indian toy drums. Voldar is helpless. All weapons have become toys, just as Torg became a toy and was left on Earth. Voldar collapses in frustrated tears. Santa belows laughter. Who knew that world disarmament could be so simple? Just say no and fire back with jokes.
I was trying to imagine sitting in a theater and watching this on the big screens of the time, an experience I somehow managed to miss, and I simply couldn’t envision it. It was too beyond its time, backwards and forwards.
Where did the majority of these people go? What did they do? Had they a clue when they were filming, or is “Santa Conquers the Martians” a tacky, happy accident and I’m the lowest common denominator?
Note: Released the same year as “Dr. Strangelove”, “Santa Conquers the Martians should serve as a companion feature for home viewing at least once. Seems the same Air Force footage used in Strangelove was also used here and both are anti-war films. Interesting.
Our Christmas Story keeps coming in hideous installments
December 24th, 2005 |Posted In: General, This Old Apartment (Building)
So, Marty calls and I have H.o.p. in the tub, washing his hair. Marty’s gotten in from his mom’s and is outside but he can’t get to the building because it’s surrounded by police cars. He has purchased Chinese food along the way. We always eat Chinese on Xmas Eve. He says he’s right out there but not able to park and get in yet.
I go back to washing H.o.p.’s hair. The phone rings again. It’s Marty. I hear him say, “It’s important, pick up.” I pick up the phone. He says the police are all over outside our building with their guns pulled, looking for someone, they’re all around our apartment. He tells me to be careful. I say ok, and return to washing H.o.p.’s hair to finish and get him out of the tub.
Then in a few minutes Marty is unlocking the door. The police are still there, they let him through. They say they will be there for a while. Now that H.o.p. is out of the tub I go and look out the window and the cars are all outside the apartment and police with flashlights combing the alley beside our apartment and in the alley outside the back of our apartment.
This has been some hell of a Christmas week.
I’m not telling H.o.p. about this. His Uncle is supposed to spend the night here on the way in from Mississippi and he keeps asking if “Opa, uh, my uncle is going to be here soon”? I ask him if he has his Opa on his mind right now. He says, no, he doesn’t remember his Opa. He says he remembers his Oma and would like to see her but that he can’t remember his Opa.
Which is how eight-year-old H.o.p. will deal with the death of his Opa for right now.
I’m going to go eat my Chinese food.
Please tell me that we will be living in less interesting times next December.
I am so over Christmas.
This morning, my husband’s mother called to say she had just discovered my husband’s father had died. He has been declining the past 7 years with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). With the exception of several hospitalizations from illnesses caused by complications with the ALS, he remained home throughout. Hospice people began visiting during the summer. This morning my mother-in-law woke and her husband was dead. She had cared for him intensively during the past seven years.
She phoned at 7:18. I had just gone to bed, actually, had been unable to sleep. I looked at the clock when I heard the phone ring. No one calls us ever this early in the morning. I have been expecting this call for a couple of years. The few times we have gotten a phone call early in the morning I would think it must be her, but it would instead be a wrong number. This morning I looked at the clock and thought, “It is perhaps her,” and it was.
It felt odd that I’d been awake when he died, miles distant, amusing myself with Christmas entertainment. I go to bed late anyway but last night H.o.p. was unable to sleep for a long time and we ended up sitting and watching “Santa vs. Satan” together, and I’d done a little blog of it that I was going to put up later, and may yet. By the time the movie finished he was ready to sleep, was curled up in my lap. He had exhausted himself of thinking and talking about Santa. He went to bed. I tried but couldn’t sleep. I stayed up a couple of hours longer doing this and that. Then I decided it was time for me to go to bed too. I thought that now I’d be able ot get some sleep. I crawled into bed. I put the pillow under my head. The phone immediately rang. Looking at the clock, I was surprised to realize it was 7:18. Marty immediately awoke and was the one to answer the phone. I stared at the clock, listening as he realized it was mother and I thought all right, this is it. He said he would be down there immediately.
Marty’s brother from Mississippi phoned and Marty talked to him. Marty said he thought his brother was already with his mom for Christmas but he was still in Mississippi. I called Marty’s mom back to see if anyone was with her. She asked me to call Marty’s other brother, who she’d been unable to reach, had gotten his answering machine. I hung up and he phoned instead. He mentioned his dad having had the flu last week. We hadn’t known about that.
Now come the details. Marty’s driven the 120 miles today to be with his mom. Marty’s brother from Mississippi is on the way. The other brother has had the stomach flu, was very sick with it last night, but he managed to be able to drive over with Marty.
We opted for me to stay here today with H.o.p., rather than H.o.p. going down there yet. I wanted to prepare him for this. He just turned eight and death and mortality are still disturbing subjects for him. Death and mortality bother him. We talk about the cycle of life and occasionally he’ll cheerfully say that it is part of the cycle of life. Out of the blue. Just like for the thousandth time, out of the blue, he asked the other night why people had to die and what happens afterwards. I tell him that a lot of people think they know what happens after death, but the only thing we know for certain is there is the cycle of life. I tell him that death and mortality bothered me a lot when I was seven and eight, that I didn’t know how anyone could live with awareness of one’s own mortality, that it frightened me, and that there are some questions that sometimes all you can do is try to make them matter a little less by occupying one’s mind instead with the living.
This fall he still would occasionally ask what could be done for his grandfather to be well again. We’ve talked about his grandfather’s health. But now his grandfather is dead and I knew I would have to tell him that when he got up and that over the next few days we would need to prepare him for the funeral. I was thinking I would need to talk to him at some point about caskets, in order to prepare him for that, and I would need to talk to him about burials.
H.o.p. still believes in Santa. I stopped believing when I was five and was the kind of child who would exclaim, in awe, when hearing another child my age still believed, “You believe in Santa?!” It wasn’t my intention to be mean. I just didn’t understand. I had assumed H.o.p. would not believe in Santa by the time he was eight. Santa was something he decided to believe in on his own when he was about three and when he took up believing in Santa we helped Santa happen. I read a number of children still believe at the age of eight. His cousin who is six months younger than him still believes. And H.o.p. still believes.
So, last night we spent talking about Santa. A lot. He is quite excited about Santa showing up sometime during the wee hours of the morning on December 25th. We were watching something and Marty said that wasn’t what Santa was like, and H.o.p. said no one had ever seen Santa so no one knew what he really was like. Something we’ve told him coming back at us. There won’t be time for Santa tomorrow morning. We will need to do him tonight, sometime after Marty gets back.
I’ve been thinking it’s a big thing when you stop believing in Santa, depending on how and why that happens and it can happen naturally in a growing up, prepared for it kind of way or in an unprepared way. I’m just thinking it’s two big things for him to reckon with at once…and I hope he manages to hold onto his belief in Santa for one more year because I’d prefer for him to grow out of it in the “I’m prepared to let go and realize it doesn’t exist” way. I’d prefer for him not to be absorbing his grandfather’s death when he realizes there is no Santa.
H.o.p. is well aware his father’s dad has been ill and for a long while. The past year and a half, H.o.p.’s visits with his grandfather were few and very muted. H.o.p. was always good but his grandfather would become quickly exhausted and kids have energy to burn. H.o.p. would go outside and play, unable to play inside. He would come inside and hang out a while in the family room where his grandfather stayed, where he eventually had too his hospital bed, and then H.o.p. would return outside or wander down to the basement. At Thanksgiving he didn’t say anything about his grandfather being on oxygen. He didn’t say anything about the catheter in his abdomen through which he took some medicine and extra nourishment. He went over quite frequently to give his grandfather a kiss. He kissed him goodbye several times at the end of that visit and gave him as best a hug he could when we left. It’s difficult to give someone who’s unable to move a really good hug. Especially if a person hasn’t been much the type for physical displays of affection (H.o.p. is). You want to give a meaningful hug and kiss and the best that can be done is a half hug. You want to give a good hug but don’t want to make the person uncomfortable. Yet you are thinking this may be the last time you see this person, and here all there is will be a half hug and a kiss. You don’t want to invest in that hug the feeling that you wonder if it may be the last hug when the end and the road traveled to it hasn’t been talked about, when you visit and exchange tidbits of news and you sit and watch while the person watches football and this is just how it is, because that’s just how it is and you’re going to watch football because it has always been this way. You realize there probably never will be a time when you say goodbye or talk about goodbyes. So you exchange more little bits of news and then it’s time to go and you give a hug that you are thinking may prove later to be the last hug, and it will be a half hug, and that will have to suffice. You say, “I love you” and try to measure it so it is not too meaningful but is just meaningful enough, knowing it may be the last time you say it. And it will have to suffice. It’s easy to measure hugs with a person who can hug you back. In an instant you understand by the pressure of their hug, just how big your hug should be. You can’t do this with a person unable to hug back and you don’t want to overstep. So you give a half hug but you make it real firm, if short, with an extra squeeze. Will it suffice for them? You look in their eyes. They are unable to nod. They look back and say they love you too and you figure that’s enough to suffice, you know they are thinking as well this may be the last goodbye. They can’t nod but you do. They thank you for coming. It will need to suffice perhaps for the past 30 years of knowing this person, and it will have to suffice for the fuure.
I almost started to cry there and I thought I would and I thought I’m just writing until I finally dig up the tears. Then I didn’t cry after all.
At Thanksgiving, on the way home we were about twenty minutes out on the road when H.o.p. dissolved in big tired chunks, furious at me for some little thing I’d done, I think I’d taken a sip of his water. He remained furious until we got home and he came inside and suddenly was all right and said he was sorry and fell promptly asleep. He didn’t mention the visit all the way home. Said nothing about his grandparents. He didn’t mention the visit for a long while. I thought, the way he was not saying anything at all about the visit, that there was something going on here.
When H.o.p. got up, I waited a little bit and then told him about his grandfather and that his father was with his grandmother helping her out right now.
“I need to brush my teeth,” H.o.p. said, jumping up and running offf to the bathroom.
I waited a little while then told H.o.p. we would be going down to see his grandmother tomorrow.
“No,” said H.o.p. “I don’t want to be around sad people. Sad is schmad. I don’t want to be sad. I don’t want you to be sad. I’m not sad. Look, I’ll be silly and goofy and you won’t be sad any more. ” And H.o.p. began a silly, goofy dance, making faces.
As he danced, the manner in which he danced and made faces, I couldn’t help but see superimposed flashes of skeletal costumes from the Day of the Dead mocking death with their dance.
And he said, “Look, I’m a ghost.”
I waited a little while. Then we talked again about going down tomorrow. And I told him many people he didn’t know would be coming by to be with his grandmother. He said again he didn’t want to go. He said he wanted to be here for Santa. “Sad is schmad! I don’t want to be around schmad people. I’m not going to cry.”
I asked H.o.p. to look at me, to look me in the eyes. He reluctantly came over but avoided my eyes.
I told him it was all right if he cried. I told him if he was sad it was all right and it was all right if he wasn’t sad. “All right,” he said in his natural voice, sounding relieved.
For all I know, H.o.p. may not feel too sad about his grandfather dying, though the idea of death itself is disturbing to him. His grandfather has been ill for a long while and H.o.p. has watched, from visit to visit, the progression of the illness. Sometimes death is anticlimactic.
“Am I only dreaming?” H.o.p. later said. “It would be better if it was a dream and Opa died and I woke up. I don’t want to think about dead.”
His dad called. H.o.p. said he would make silly, funny noises when he talked to him so that he wouldn’t be sad. He got on the phone and made silly noises for a little bit, then said, “Ok” to something his dad said and talked briefly with him then handed the phone back to me.
It thunders. It’s raining. H.o.p. says, “It’s the Thunder Birds,” and runs to the window.
Marty calls, on the way back. He says that after being with his mother today he’s unsure if we should go back tomorrow with H.o.p. His mother suggested we wait. He says they spent the day cleaning things out, that his mother wanted everything out that would remind her of the ALS. H.o.p. talks with him on the phone again and I hear him say he doesn’t want to talk about Opa, that he’s thirsty, he wants some chocolate milk.
Marty’s father, I’m told, had on Monday a good visit with many friends. On Tuesday he learned a publishing deal had been gone through for a musical piece he’d written, an adaptation of some music by a popular film composer for whom Marty’s brother worked as a personal assistant for several years recently. Marty had long said that he thought when his father had the piece published he would die.
His children were going to start arriving for Christmas today, staggered, some of us coming before Christmas and some of us the day after. He died beforehand. Marty’s mother was up at six with him then fell asleep. He died between six and seven.
There had been a small pre-birthday birthday party for H.o.p. at his grandparents’ at Thanksgiving. Things were muted. H.o.p. was quiet. They had given him a movie. H.o.p. wanted to watch it. His grandmother suggested putting back on his grandfather’s football game. His grandfather said no, that it was H.o.p.’s birthday, let him watch his movie. That visit, a new thing, he looked less like himself than he did in pictures I’d seen of him as a boy.
Marty calls again. He is an hour out and tired. He is driving back in the van that is equipped for the wheelchair. His mother wanted it gone. He asks me to get the info for the ALS Foundation to call them and let them know it’s up for sale. There will be no visiting at the funeral home. No graveside service. There will be a memorial service on Wednesday. His father donated his body to science. I realize I have a difficult time with that because I have physicians for relatives and I have heard a couple of stories. Just a couple. But those were about students. I have no idea how his body will be used or who will be using it. I think that I hope whoever it is will treat that body with respect. I have to assume it will be. He donated his body to science, , hoping something might be learned from it that might help someone else. If it does, we will never know. One can hope that it will. I think it is a last brave act. He was a minister and lived with certain ideas about faith and healing. They had prayed a long while for healing. And I think it is a last brave act, donating his body to science.
