At their annual family reunion inside the National Guard Armory in Hays, Kansas, he was placed at the head of the table – once occupied by his mother, and, before her, his grandparents, great-aunts, and great-great uncles – the spot reserved for the eldest.
Words and sounds ricocheted, reverberated.
She used to-
He said-
Then she-
When they were-
At one time, he-
It was the same thing every year: photos, newspaper clippings, gossip. And he loved it. Maybe it was the only reason he came.
His favorite cousin stood next to him. He watched her push one chair away, then pull out another almost identical chair, and plop down. God, she looks like our grandmother. Then he heard a slap, slap, slap as if she were dealing cards. He looked at the photographs splayed across the table. She’ll have her own agenda for this.
She detailed each picture. Descriptions written on the back. The 1953 Flood, The Grand Canyon, Pikes Peak, Grampa John, Aunt Josephine. Then, more photos – Pauline and Eddie – That’s your mother and my dad. Pauline and Adolph – That’s your mother and Uncle Gus. Followed by newspaper clippings interspersed with her commentary.
- Check the dates.
- Gra’ma died in March of 1918.
- Grampa remarried in December 1918.
- Uncle Johnny was born in April of 1919.
- Now, read this.
- Grampa’s second wife was a nun at the convent next to the church.
- Across the street from his house.
Then he saw the photo labeled – Pauline 1937. An old photo, a print-out actually, in various shades of coral and sienna. The photo of the woman who bore him, and who knew everything worth knowing about him.
His mother as a young woman in a flapper’s shimmering dress, long cigarette, bell-shaped hat, and wavy hair. His mother in her mid-twenties, fresh out of nursing school standing outside a plain frame house with two bare steps leading to the peeling front door. Her head bent – demure or disappointed? Lonely? Isolated? Eyes cast down – remorse or regret? Hands forming a cradle – embarrassment or expectation? That’s my mother before me.
His mind drifted toward her stories – of dancing in Chicago at the Palmer Hotel, skating in the below-ground ice rink, the unexplained large white leather cigarette case with the engraved initial on top – the one she kept jewelry in all her life.
He was dizzy with memories. Stories from ghost towns, graveyards, country schools. School books in German with her name written in them. Nashville wanderings, then to Topeka, then Goodland. That period in her life when she followed another independent, young woman from Goodland to Pratt. The woman who would become his Aunt Gayle. That one photo – the old one in sepia tones – sealed it all. She had a life before me!
That’s it! That’s who she was. He had completed his mother’s puzzle –loops and sockets, keys and locks – photos on the table, letters nestled in the bottom of cedar chests, stories about her brothers and sisters. She – the Volga-German ethos crystalized: Strive! Achieve! Achieve more! He had heard the words himself, and more likely than not, so had everyone at the reunion. Achieve! But don’t think too much of yourself. Achieve! Do better than we did. Achieve! But you’re no better than anyone else.
He had long been puzzled about her stories, searched for stray pieces. From Hays, Kansas, to Nashville, Tennessee, nursing school and graduate school. Why had she abandoned Nashville to go to forlorn Burlington, Colorado, then tiny Topeka, then isolated Goodland, Kansas, then to desolate Pratt, Kansas?
Still more questions. Why would a professional woman, the head of a county public health agency, a women in charge of an entire department in a building twenty feet off Main Street, marry a man so clearly a momma’s boy, a raging alcoholic who morphed into a dry drunk with an anger quotient that never balanced?
That elegant lady who wore Chanel-inspired clothing before it was commonplace, who eschewed traditional nursing whites before it was acceptable. Who, as Director of multiple nursing departments, dominated hospital corridors before it was in her job description.
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And now, in the National Guard Armory, tides of relatives rushed forward. He felt dizzy again – familiar faces with no names. Younger bodies with faces of his long-dead granddad and his septuagenarian cousins with youthful voices without accents, faces of all ages as familiar and unfamiliar as yesterday.
He sat where his mother once sat, where the great aunt after whom she was named sat, her father, a great-great uncle before that – at the head of the table reserved for the oldest – the one most likely not to be here next year.
Thomas Elson’s stories appear in numerous venues, including Blink-Ink, Ellipsis, Better Than Starbucks, Bull, Cabinet of Heed, Flash Frontier, Ginosko, Short Édition, North Dakota Quarterly, Litro,Journal of Expressive Writing, Dead Mule School, Selkie, New Ulster, Lampeter, and Adelaide. He divides his time between Northern California and Western Kansas.
