Shangri-La

In the Company of Women

I was one of four daughters, attended all girl catholic schools my entire life, never knew what a jock strap looked like, have no idea how to change a tire and never experienced the bright stadium lights at a night-time football game. My father did put up a basketball hoop once in our driveway, short-lived when the ball sailed through the glass pane of the garage door. There it stood neglected for years a sad testament to the son my mother never had.

My Scottish reared father never once expressed regret at not having a son. Rather, he reveled in his four daughters and life among them. He loved his girls. Though there were times we tried his patience. A flashback of his screams from the shower after being cut by a worn down razor blade used on too many female teenage legs. Or his aversion to the smell of nail polish remover. He hated the smell of nail polish remover. He was equally content watching a rugby match as he was a cooking show.

During his daughter’s bridal showers, all four of them, rather than fleeing for the afternoon as most men might, my father would delight in being part of the celebration. There he would sit center stage, in his recliner, newspaper in hand (a ploy to feign disinterest) among the squeals and chaos of thirty females. Every now and again as a new gift was unveiled he would lift his head up casually and remark “Ah what’s this one? Hold it up a little closer Kath…”

My sister Sheila, too experienced this sometimes disadvantage of not having grown up with or been schooled among boys. When she and my mother visited Lord and Taylor to buy her first boyfriend a birthday gift, the saleswoman paused in puzzlement as she inquired as to where she might find the men’s “blouses.”

In addition to my father there was in fact one other male in our family. A big, beautiful Irish wolfhound, brought back from a holiday in Ireland. I recall listening in on a now famous conversation in our family between my mother and the vet. “I need to bring Connell in to be spayed,” The vet’s patient reply: “You mean neutered Mrs. Dickinson. Connell is a male dog.” My sister and I stared at each other, and then burst into laughter. We thought that something must have gotten lost in translation as my mother, Irish-born, often had her own interpretation of words. Looking back however, I think she simply believed Connell like the rest of us, was female, at least in theory.

I married and ironically, have two sons. My husband has taught them the things his own father taught him; how to throw a ball, using common tools for simple jobs, being kind and respectful. My sons are equally in touch with their feminine side and have as many female friends as male. They have five female cousins whom they see frequently further adding to their comfort level with girls, not to mention the added bonus of always have a date for the prom.

You might ask how it feels being on the reverse side at this point in my life, living among three men as opposed to my mother and three female sisters. I take a little solace in the fact that our new dog, a tiny toy fox terrier named Anabel, is female. My father would have loved her.

Spare The Phone

While talking to my friend one morning, I heard the distinctive sound of a child’s heavy breathing from the upstairs extension. “Is someone there?” Silence. “Can you please hang up? I am using the phone.” I hear an abrupt click followed by fleeing footsteps and the slam of a bedroom door. The culprit was no stranger but rather my ten-year old son . I sat him down and explained that conversations are private and it is impolite to eavesdrop.

Oh the hypocrisy…

Flashback 30 years to my teenage self lying in the coolness of my suburban Long Island bedroom. It is midweek during the summer and raining. I am bored having not yet begun my summer job. I hear my mother from the kitchen downstairs talking to Bridie who is both her cousin and best friend from childhood. They grew up in Ireland together on adjoining farms. They enjoy an often complicated relationship, as close relations sometimes do. We still do not know who is the older of the two. I knew the drill well. The two would chat for a while and then Bridie would suggest she “come over for lunch” the following day. My mother loves her cousin dearly but some days is not in the mood for hosting a lunch but as always, cannot bring herself to say no. After they hang up, she complains bitterly but Bridie nonetheless, arrives the next day. All forgotten. And so it goes.

I pick up the receiver knowing it is wrong. My mother and Bridie are making small talk. I wait for the next pause in conversation. Putting on my best Irish accent in imitation of my mother, I ask “Bridie, why don’t you come over tomorrow? “ Bridie does not miss a beat, “Why I was just going to suggest that dear.”

The next few moments remain to this day, both vivid and jumbled in my memory. I recall a momentary silence as my mother dropped the receiver and her thundering footsteps ascending the stairs toward my room. In my haste to lock my bedroom door , I leave the receiver dangling on the bed. Bridie is still on the line. I try to hold the door shut but am no match for my adrenaline pumped mother who with the strength of Goliath pushes the door forward and lunges toward me. Generally a nonviolent woman, the incident has unraveled her to the core. Grabbing the only available weapon in sight, the phone, she begins to pummel me with it. In the ensuing chaos, I do recall one thing oh, so clearly… Bridie’s voice calling out from the other end “Hello! Hello?” HELLO? Is everything alright? Dear?” in between the strains of my screams of “Mom, NO PLEASE, I’m sorry!” MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Strangely enough, though I saw her numerous times after, Bridie never mentioned the phone incident. There is no doubt in my mind that having lain witness to the payback, if not in physical presence but in audio, was all she ever needed. And, I learned my lesson in spades. Sometimes though at family reunions, my sister with a gleam in her eye will ask my to recount the story of mom hitting me with the phone (nicely downplayed) which my father too always delighted in hearing.

I think I will have another talk with my son.

Screwdriver Parties

Pulling into my driveway late one afternoon, my eyes fell upon a dark sedan sitting idly. Unable to recognize a face through the tinted windows and noting a New Jersey plate, a state from which I knew no one, a slight feeling of unease ensued. And then as if in slow motion, a window went down and a familiar voice I had not heard in over ten years bellowed, “Kathy, it’s me, Jim Cappello!” I drove all the way from NJ to visit you. Look in the trunk!”

My old boss Jim Cappello whom I had worked with for over ten years at a publishing company in midtown Manhattan. Now eighty three years old and long retired, he had driven over two hours, on a whim to visit me at my home in Connecticut. It was the pretzels, he said. The pretzels made him do it.

He explained he was at his supermarket in New Jersey saw a bag of pretzels which reminded him of me and, the screwdriver parties. Every Friday at 5:30PM, in our small office on the 12^th floor of the Chanin Building, we had a screwdriver party. Jim and I who sold the display advertising and Barbara and Irene the Classified Department.

I can still hear his voice now, “Irene, get the ice, Barbara open the pretzels, Kathy go down and buy the O.J!” and Jim, well Jim always was in charge of the vodka. He was the perennial salesman. Outgoing, tenacious, social and charming. He loved a party. Our own little madmen ritual in that tiny office on the twelfth floor.

“Look in the trunk!” He said again. I gazed down at two brown paper bags, one filled with a giant bag of pretzels and a container of orange juice, the other, a bottle of vodka. “Let’s have a screwdriver! For old times.”

We sat in my kitchen, Jim and I, and talked of our lives since the magazine closed. He shared how his beloved wife of fifty years had died three months before and how lost he felt in the weeks that followed. I told him of the difficulty I experience in leaving my life in New York City behind for a small CT town in the suburbs.

We telephoned the classified girls, Barbara and Irene, who as luck with have it were both home. As each picked up the phone I would announce “Do you recognize this voice?” And then hand the phone to Jim who would bellow “Irene! Barbara! It’s Jim Cappello! I am at Kathy’s house. We’re having a screwdriver party! For old times.”

But it was not those Friday parties that bound the four of us together but rather the cadence of life, the highs and the lows as we worked side by side in that tiny office as the years ticked past.

The last thing we did together before he left was to walk down to the bus stop where my two sons, whom he had never met, were due home from school. As we walked back up to the house I wondered…was it the pretzels he had seen in the supermarket that prompted his visit or rather the need for comfort often found in days past? The reason was unimportant. It was a great day.

Gregory’s Goodbye

He left us yesterday. My twelve-year-old son’s best friend. It was not unexpected, yet we were not really ready to say goodbye as we stood in his driveway that balmy September afternoon.

He was to attend a therapeutic boarding school in the rocky mountains of Colorado, for the next two years. A school that specialized in the emotional as well as the intellectual needs of boys who were struggling. He had battled anxiety and ADHD for as long as we knew him but lately a more sinister villain called depression was taking over. Public school was not working for him and his daily trips to the counselor left him dejected and angry. He hated school, he told us again and again.

He took refuge in nature. Whenever upset, he would flee to the solace of the woods, headlamp in place along with a survival kit he had purchased on the internet. Gregory loved the forest which seemed to hold for him, its own therapeutic powers. As a going away gift we gave him a lithograph night-light with a forest of trees etched within, the golden hue soothing and calm.

He is a beautiful boy with deep red hair, fine features and porcelain skin. His face reflects an impishness that is infectious. He is highly intelligent and intuitive. My son and he became fast friends three years ago and enjoy a special bond as best friends do. We both knew this path was the best thing for Gregory but it did not make his leaving any easier as he had become a fixture in both our lives and home.

All contact at his new school was to be via letter, no social media of any sort, so I made it a point that we would write to him, at least once a month. I have a book of postcards, each one a different flower fairy illustrated by the brilliant Cicely Mary Barker, an English artist known for her life-like depictions of fairies in nature. I chose for Gregory a red-headed mischievous faced boy fairy and penned in the margin “this reminded us of you!” I then enclosed a second self-addressed card already stamped for him to return to us.

The next card we sent to him contained a dried wishbone from our previous night’s roast chicken. Growing up my father would always save the wishbone for me and my sisters. I thought it was just the type of ritual Gregory would enjoy. “Find someone you like at your new school and break the wishbone!” I scrawled. “We miss you.” But then, a week later thinking again about the wishbone, I was filled with dread. What if gets the long end and his wish is to come home? What had I done? In trying to comfort him I could possibly have made him feel worse.

One afternoon several weeks later, I paused at my son’s bedroom door after hearing him talking on the phone to what sounded like Gregory. He was clearly upset, distraught and his words a hurried jumble of emotion. “I want to come home. I hate it here. I miss you so much!” He had sneaked his mother’s phone while she was visiting to make the call. After several moments, my son replied in a calm voice “You have to push through…” I had never before heard the expression nor my son use it. When I asked him what he meant by “push through,” he explained that his middle school track coach always told the boys to push through the pain no matter how hard and they may just find they were stronger than they thought.

I worried about how he felt losing his best friend “Do you miss Gregory?” His response was always the same. “It’s fine mom.” And then I realized, perhaps the strain of seeing his friend in so much pain was harder than letting him go.

The last thing we sent him was a care package right before Halloween. It contained fake fangs, a calendar book with different photos of forest scenes, two packages of his favorite gummy bears and a small stuffed owl that had strangely beckoned to me from high on a store shelf. I imagined the little owl sitting on his night table. I also included a pre-stamped fairy card he could send back to us with ease. When I called his mother to review what I was sending, she paused when I had mentioned the stuffed owl. “He asked me if he could have a real one last week for a pet!”

Several weeks later, we received the fairy card by return mail. Gregory’s familiar hurried scrawl contained the following sentiments: “I loved the red-headed fairy card — I am learning to play the banjo! — Thank you for the owl, I keep him in my backpack.” But it was the last line that remains with me. “I still don’t like it here” he confided, “but I am going to push through…” And those simple words were all I needed.