An odd meeting with the past

Last night, doing my between-semesters catch-up in cleaning and organizing, I ran across some handwriting that I recognized as mine. Two pages hidden toward the back of a lab book I'd used for a biology class in 1993. The script was familiar, but the words were not--a disconcerting meeting with myself in the past, my current self embarrassed that I didn't recognize me at first:

C: What do you do to prepare for something like that?

G: Emotionally, physically, what do you do...

"It was like a big piece of wood falling on me. It knocked me flat."
Woman sits on the couch in a hotel room. Death creeps from under the bed.

G: So the best thing to do is pick up the pieces. Do what you have to. Do without. Do with this. Anyway, that's the way it is.

===

G: What time is it?

C: 8:30, Saturday night.

G: Okay. I go home tomorrow. Do I take the morning bus?

C: No, I go with you. I have a car--it will only take a half hour.

G: So that's the way it is.

==

"I hope you take warning from this and be very careful when you can't drive. Be prepared."

C: You drove a lot longer than many people. You were fortunate.

G: I was, but he was brutal.

C: Was he...

G: I drove a little way. "Stop." Through and through. Shed a lot of tears and drove the rest of the way to get home. Turned in my car. And I will never forgive. They don't even say sorry. "You can't drive anymore." Just like that. I was too slow, so careful, too slow answering. And I thought I was so well-prepared, that'd I'd sail right through it. It was just facts. Nothing's ever hit me so hard. I'll never get over it.

G: Anyway, I say, be prepared at some time in your life. No matter how good you are, it can slap you right across the face--wham!

G: What's going to happen to Glenn when he can't drive? He's got Kenny, but he's lost his independence.

G: Where do I go from here? That's the rhetoric. No matter where I am, that's the rhetoric.

Mouth constantly trembles. Minear's (sp) syndrome.

G: Well, I let one tear go, so I'll call it a day.

G: Find my way home. I have no idea how I get home.

C: I take you home. And every step of the way, I tell you where we are.

G: I guess that's how it is.


It took a while but I remember now. A February weekend, in a rented cabin at Kalaloch, on the NW Washington coast, about a half hour drive from Forks, my birthplace, childhood home, where all my dearest relatives lived (but no more). My great grandfather had died that year, 93 years old, and his wife survived him, but her mind was going. My mom had the idea of taking her for the weekend at the beach, and it was me, my mom, stepdad, great grandmother Netty. She was probably nearing 90 herself, though she never divulged her age. We thought she'd fail quickly after her husband died--they were very close, spent nearly all of their 63 years of marriage working, traveling, constant companions. She went on to live another 6 years, although by the end, she was not recognizing anyone anymore. She still worried about her son, Glenn, and she outlived him by a few years (He died in '95, age 71).

My chicken scratch notes recorded a conversation between C (my mother) and G (her grandmother). Netty had lost her driver's license a few years before and it had been a huge blow for someone so independent. At the time of this interview, she had moments of clarity, and she recognized what was happening to her mind. It was heartbreaking to see. I think she took some sort of comfort in remembering and railing over the loss of her independence--it was a break between wondering where she was and how she was going to get home, and watching other memories twist and disappear. The driving test and the indignity of it were still very, very clear.

I don't remember writing this down. I remember her eating yogurt. I remember it was gray and stormy at the beach. I remember bald eagles perched in the wind-sculpted trees on the cliffs...