Flapping began and I knew my time was up. Andrew didn't want it. I gave the eggs to a happy dog and even though I don't eat a lot of white bread -- something about its warm familiarity tempted me today. The first bite transported me right back to childhood sitting at my elderly neighbor's house for a bit of sanity and coffee accompanied by a piece of bakery white bread (not the cheap bread you can purchase with food stamps) with real butter melted into golden pools of hope.
I wrote a piece about my neighbor, Ann for a writing class at a college when I was in my late thirties. It will follow under this post. When all hope seems lost and exhaustion has seeped into every bone, a piece of white toast with butter can provide the same anchor as Ann always did.
This is Ann - right before she passed away.
Remembering Ann
What experiences from our childhood influence the type of adult we become? A combination of people, places, and events contribute to the growth and nurturing of character and strength. Equally, negative experiences can warp one's character. Fortunately, the person who influenced my formative years was far mightier than my parents, whose own characters had been warped at some point in their misguided lives. My influential person was my elderly neighbor, Ann Miller.
Ann lived in a four-room structure, the epitome of a rundown shack. Roaches and mice, "my uninvited guests," she called them, gained entrance by slithering through cracks in the worn exterior and foundation. Curls of peeled paint hung from walls adorned with artwork and cross-stitched samplers. Buckets and pans placed sporadically would catch the rain that seeped in from the leaky roof. In the unforgiving heat of a St. Louis summer, an ancient fan, perched before a bowl of ice cubes, would whirl hot air around. The winter winds brought the cold faster than the tiny heater churned warmth in the living room. Despite the dilapidated condition of the building, Ann sprinkled the interior with antiques, quilts and other objects of art. More than the furnishings, the crumbling dwelling contained the most incredible power and strength and gave me an overwhelming sense of freedom and unconditional love. Ann was that power.
With Ann, I could shed tears and laugh. She'd serve hot toast with real butter and the world's best coffee in fine china cups while she told stories of beautiful far away places. We would discuss reading, writing and refined things. Time spent with Ann allowed the luxury of dreaming. I could hope to dream that I had a future. She told me repeatedly that I was beautiful, smart and talented. She drilled into me that everything my parents told me I was, and would not be, was a product of their illness. All the negatives were canceled for those moments I shared with Ann. She gave me a sense of "home," a safe haven.
Ann was comically serious, an intellectual who was lost in a fast-paced world. I was seriously comical, an aspiring intellectual lost in a sea of unacceptable behavior. I was old at age eight; Ann was young at age sixty-five. She was my best friend who just happened to have six decades on me. Although she never asked a single thing of me, I helped her with household chores and aided her in the care of her great-nephew, Jason, an infant left in her care a majority of the time. My unsolicited repayment was kindness, love and a sense of well-being.
Ann had known real pain: her mother had mistreated her (yet, Ann took care of her elderly mother for years); her first husband was an abusive alcoholic; her only daughter, son-in-law and baby granddaughter died in a hotel fire; and her second husband died after a sudden heart attack. Ann was evidence that a person could overcome painful obstacles, she was heroic.
A short, grandmotherly-plump woman with wild, white hair righted the wrongs in my life. My unlikely hero left the house one day with a toilet paper trail cascading out of her pants, which thought still brings me to tears of laughter.
A few special nights I slept over in a tall bed with an elegant headboard. Safely nestled in the glorious bed made up with white eyelet sheets, fresh scented pillows and one of her prized quilts, nothing could harm me. She told me repeatedly how precious I was and how she enjoyed spending time with me. Precious? Me? It was hard to believe a word so foreign to describe me.
Many wonderful memories she gave to me. Ann was thrilled when my senior English term paper, An Analysis of Ernest Hemingway, over which I toiled, received an "A." Ann predicted that I would be a great writer one day. When I escaped from an eleven-year marriage that was horrid from the start, I received Ann's full support. My mother told me "don't leave him...no one else will want you...so what if he hurts you." The woman who said these things I supported for twenty years after my father died. Because of Ann, I became the type of person that would behave in that manner.
Remembering the night of my high school graduation, I was exhausted after burying my father, three days before, who had not made life easy. Ann drove me home from the ceremony and honked her horn nonstop for three miles. She hooped and hollered out the window for the whole ride. That night, I smiled as I imagined the other graduates at their parties as I drove with the Medicare brigade's ring leader. I would not have traded places with anyone.
After a long battle with heart disease, Ann died. The last six months of her illness I felt betrayed by her when she developed panic attacks and dementia; she became so much like my mother. I tried to be with her as much as I could but it hurt me beyond consolation to see her so mentally weak. I was 33 years old and I should have handled the situation better.
How could my hero be defeated by something innocuous as an illness when she had successfully battled all my demons? I should have visited that four-room shack more often; I should have been her hero and stayed for one more cup of coffee from a fine china cup. For reasons that haunt me today, I was not strong when she needed me most. I should have done more. I hope she understands my fear and forgives my weakness. She led by example, taught me to be a better person. Because of my own fear of seeing her deteriorate, I hadn't been that better person for her. When covered in the warmth of a quilt she gave me, I think about Ann and know that she is now happy and reunited with all her loved ones. The little girl in me wants to believe that. Ann gave me a home when I did not have one; I feel in my heart that she is now, once again, home.
