This is the Kronprinzessin Cecilie. I know that she sailed between Bremen Germany and the U.S. from her birth until WWI. I know she was seized and used by the U.S. Navy. And at her death, she was scrapped. I know she carried important cargo, something that meant the world to me. She brought tiny Mary Perla to the open arms of America. I don't know how Mary arrived at her port in Germany. I don't know if she walked or rode, what she ate, what she wore, if she had any luggage. I know there was steerage in the deep belly of Cecilie. Little toddler Mary and her mother were there for 14 days. I don't know the smells, the motion, the sounds.
In my head, baby Mary looks like a tiny, tiny version of Mary at 75. She is wearing a little kerchief on her curly gray hair. She has miniature blue polyester pants covering her plump, custardy toddler legs. Her baby body is covered in a pink house dress with purple lilacs dotting the thin material. Her pink angel arms are covered in an old oatmeal colored sweater, with a tissue balled up in the cuff near her dimpled wrist. Her little feet that are just getting their bearings, are slipped into lack luster blue canvas shoes.
It's odd to me that as the sun rose on my life, dusk was coming to Mary. What I know about her comes from the vantage point of a child. I try to leech out every little thing from all of the recesses and pathways of my brain. I dream of her and every time I wake, I've been crying the kinds of sobs that lurch right under your heart. In my dreams I hug her. That's all I do. I hug her like I am squeezing myself into her. Her soft upper arms, with the beautiful folds and canyons etched by a long life that I know little of, are around my body, and it is as real as it ever was.
In my head I collect things that no one else would want if they found it lying about. I would dress my head in the thin scalloped material that fell softly about her curls on her wedding day. On my table I would place the little white and turquois butter dish with the glass lid. In my head, Rex lard means, "I love you. You are safe." There would be mothballs in all of my closets. I would wear thin, flower printed housedresses with no waist. My feet would rest on a little stool meant for easing the swelling. In my kitchen there would be a chippy old step stool that has a pull out step. On my counter I'd have a metal bread box full of zingers. Do you know I can't say Capri Sun without a catch in my throat and a sting in my eye? I can remember the exact way it came from her mouth, with the emphasis on the wrong syllable. Capri Suns would never run out in my fridge.
I only know what I know. I only know what a child knows about someone they love. My eyes were blind to any fault there may have been. I'm privy only to the life we had together. The parts of her that I thought belonged to me. I don't know who she was and the lives she lived with all of the other people, her parents and siblings, her husband and children, her other grandchildren. I don't know if she knew her grandparents. I don't know what her house.....if she had one, looked like in Pravutina.
I know the labored breath and acute drop of her limp as she hefted me to her creaky metal bed each day before dawn. I know the feel of her dry hands, the topography laid out by beautiful blue and green veins, the knuckles larger than the thin bones of her fingers. I hear the sound of her skin catch on my peacock blue tights as she helped me get dressed. And when we rocked, oh I remember when we rocked. The carpet warped enough to have some give and with each depression of her foot and the crescent of the rocker against the floor, the carpet moved and lulled me away. Her ears. I know those too. Is that weird? I so often saw her close up that I can remember her pieces. The lobes were like a velveteen rabbit, soft and crinkly. I wanted her to wear earrings, but they bothered her ears. So I would sit on her lap while the hot afternoon sun broke through the cherry trees and made streaks of light and falling dust motes. And I'd gouge at those soft lobes feeling for the little bump inside and I would squeeze and squeeze, hoping if I could get out the tough little nub, she could wear earrings. Her ankles, covered with nylon stockings, like two aspen trees, one larger than the other at times, marked with veins and taught with fluid. I love aspens you know. And the little stool with the copper colored legs and the olive green and golden flowers. Just there by the chair to rest her feet. The sliver of silver around her finger caught the eastern light, there in the back of the house, has her hands pushed and pushed the warm yeasty dough. So many fragments of one person. The hairnet! I nearly forgot the hairnet! I'd watch her stretch it, with her fingers that I adore, over her curls, EVERY weekday morning. I'm sure on weekends too, but I didn't see that, so it didn't exist for me. My eyes slit open, pooey over my nose, flat wet thumb in my mouth, and I'd watch every morning the quiet struggle of her pulling on her dress over her slip, and then the hairnet that she would pick up from her sturdy wood dresser. Keyholes. I think there were keyholes in the dresser. If I had that dresser, I'd keep a hairnet on it, and I would run my fingers over the dark keyholes everyday, like the bead of a rosary.......which was also on top of the dresser. I know the green sink, and the soapy water every day after lunch. I know the rinse water in the plastic container. I know she always said 'snatch!' in our afternoon card games of Snap! Those cards......if I had those cards, they would be on my wall. I know the letter opener that was in the little wood mail holder. It opened letters asking to feed the starving children in China. Those starving children were why I had to eat the cereal even after the marshmallows were gone. And some days we would send out mail too, back to China, with coins in the envelope. Out to the black little mailbox on the porch. The brown porch with the green astro turf. The porch she didn't like me to climb off of to go down to the cherry trees. The cherry trees that had red and yellow cherries we would bottle every year. And in the trees there was an owl made of plastic....to scare the woodpecker that would peck during my naptime. And she would swat at that bird with a broom!
You see, I am collecting little pieces. I want to mold them back together. I want to smell the bread, and hear her feet rub the floor. I want the eyes with cataracts, the rogue eyebrows, the brittle nails, that right knee that always bothered her, the front tooth with the gold rim, the soft chest where I could drop my tired head, and her arms.........I'll never have enough of those arms.
All the times my eyes well with tears, it's not always because I'm missing her. I'm happy that I can recognize the hand of God........finally! You know, I'm a little dense that way. I'm blessed that someone loved me the way that she did, gently, softly, like I was the best thing ever. I'm so glad that I have that ideal to work for when I just can't.........when I just can't be patient or sweet anymore. I know that we all deserve a Mary that will love us just the way we need to be. And I think of her when my good graces are gone and I want to say something mean, or my voice sounds hollow, like dry bleached bones, leeched of love.
Finally, here's what I know. Heavenly Father is brilliant. He knew if he could bless us with families, with people that knew us, really knew that we are self centered, too hesitant, realists, easily derailed and overwhelmed, that we seek for justice for others and mercy for ourselves, He knew once we fell in love with our families and they with us, love so deep that it fills us up and keeps growing, and love so hard and so aggressive that we would stand in harms way for them, well then, we would know Him as well. We would finally understand a little glimpse of how He and the Savior love us.
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