Saturday, August 25, 2012
Saturday Musings, 25 August 2012
Good morning,
My droid tablet rests on a wicker footstool. The high note of a sea bird reaches my old ears, penetrating the slight fog of a short night and the ever-present drone of tinnitus. Walls clad in the timelessness of pine surround me. I have arrived at the destination which drove me to work ten-hour days these last few months: Maryland Cottage, Epworth Heights, Ludington, Michigan.
I chose to travel by train. I settled into the wide, comfortable front row on the Chicago-bound train out of St. Louis after spending the night at the home of my brother- and sister-in law, my host and hostess in this land of sand and towering trees. Whit drove me to the station and had a quiet word with the counter-agent to insure my safe passage from the crowded terminal to my seat, a journey made in a narrow tram driven by a relentless woman whose gritted teeth warmed my heart. A sister leopard.
A compact woman dressed in stylish jeans with turned-back cuffs settled into the seat next to me, but after the first stop, she left to find a spot that didn't face the way we had come. She said it made her dizzy. I did not mind. The passing scenery looked the same whether I watched it arrive or watched it flit past. I settled back into the width of the two-passenger seat, alone, undisturbed, finding myself releasing each breath with increasing comfort.
North of St. Louis, industry gave way to small towns with dingy houses and dented cars. My book fell from my hand, landing on my small duffel, its pages briefly rippling before they softly closed. I leaned my head against the glass and watched Illinois slip south.
Towns gave way to farmland, field after field of burnt corn, between which lay long expanses of the green vegetation that could only be soy. The desolate fields of dead stalks brought home the brutal reality of the midwest summer. We stopped in a small station, maybe Granite City, maybe further away, and I raised my cell phone to take a shot of a railway yard filled with rusting cars labelled "Corn Products". They'd become a taggers' paradise, these useless vessels. On the flat surface of one labelled "Corn Starch only", an artist had carefully painted three-foot letters announcing JESUS SAVES.
The dry land gave way to untamed vegetation as we continued northward, flanking the tracks on either side. Through gaps in the woods, I saw neat backyards with above-ground pools, vibrant blue against the verdant green. Church spires rose above the rooftops. An occasional car waited at the crossings, the drivers evident only in the glint of sun on their glasses or an arm dangling from an open window. At one intersection, several people had turned off their engines, and stood between their vehicles, chatting. They watched my window as though waiting for me, and I could have sworn one of them nodded in my direction.
After Joliet, there could be no doubt that we neared Chicago. Trees yielded to the rangey clutches of weeds adorned with discarded rubbish. I saw a long trail of what I took for film stretched in the spindly branches of second-growth pin oak. A movie someone no longer wished to watch; a documentary that disappointed its director; porn filched from the seedy backroom of a video store, thrown over the side of the viaduct. Who could say?
We pulled into Chicago an hour late which I did not realize until I retrieved my suitcase from the rusty tram that toted the disabled from track to terminal. My connection to Michigan still had three hours til boarding, so I hauled my belongings through Union Station and found a sandwich shop in the Food Court. I blew several days' carb allotment on a chicken panini; I went hogwild and did not tell the smiling man behind the counter to hold the cheese. I'm on vacation, I reasoned; or perhaps that was rationalization. Either way, the melted swiss warmed my stomach and brought a smile to my face. Small indulgences.
I sat beside a woman briefing a young man on the niceties of employment at the Corner Bakery. I could not ignore the kind cadence in her voice, or the nervousness in his. She assured him that the many rules which she outlined would soon become second-nature to him; she gave him a little quiz and prodded him along on a few of the thornier questions -- such as, When is it okay to give your friends a discount (never) and what do I do if I am going to be late to my shift (call). I leaned across the six inches between our table, and told her that I had rarely heard someone speak with such gentleness. I gave her one of my law firm pens, and told her to call me if she ever needed a friend in Kansas City.
I watched wild pandemonium for the four o'clock northboard train, and realized that I would be trampled if a similar crowd gathered for the 5:20. I timidly approached the gate agent and identified myself as one of the less robust, and voiced trepidation at the thought of mustering myself to answer the pre-boarding call with a hundred Michiganders chaffing at the bit. She released the long expanse of canvas strapping that blocked entrance to the back waiting area, and helped me roll my suitcase through the opening. I sat where she told me to sit.
A lady resembling a gypsy staggered around the area. By shameless eavesdropping, I learned that she had been found wandering in the station. When approached, she tendered a legtimate ticket, for a 7:30 train. The TSA folks determined that she had some impairment -- possibly neurological, possibly alcohol-induced -- and fetched her along to the gate from which she would later, presumably, depart. As I had been, she had evidently been instructed where to sit, but periodically succumbed to panic and approached anyone who would talk to her, including me, for reassurance. They finally brought two female agents to sit with her. She huddled into her chair, with black hair falling over her lacy blouse, long skirt draping over her legs, a suitcase and a large pocketbook beside her on the floor. I averted my eyes. I have my own moments of folly; I recognized hers, and spared her the stare of a condemning stranger.
As we left the Chicago station, I plugged my phone charger into the outlet next to my seat and activated my wireless hotspot. I logged into my email, and learned that a client's child had been caught in a hotline of her mother relative to one of her half-siblings. I had just gotten temporary principal residence for this client, after his daughter's mother had taken her to California without leave or notice. Now, the Children's Division investigator had cautioned him not to let the child have the visitation outlined in our temporary order until the allegations of abuse of her half-siblings could be resolved. His short email asked what he should do. I phoned him; and followed with a call to the investigator. Then, convinced that I could do nothing more until Monday, I settled back into my seat and opened the Maigret trio that I had brought to read on the trrain.
My eyes drifted back to the window before too long. Now the pin oaks rose taller, and the narrow strip of parkway between the tracks and the frontage road had been tamed by county mowers. The churches seemed more plentiful, as did the above-ground pools. The fields held richer bounty.
My sister-in-law texted, Where are you? and after learning of my approximate destination, told me to watch for the Lake near the town of St. Joseph. I got my cell phone ready, one eye out the window, one on the pages of the Simenon novel. Soon, I let the book alone again, and gazed upon the roadways of the towns through which we traveled. The sun started its drift towards the horizon, bold bright light raising the sky. I shot a few frames of its brilliance, and posted them to Facebook.
The conductor heralded the approach of the St. Joseph station, and I got my camera ready. But still, I missed the best shot, mesmerized by the wide expanse of Lake Michigan and the unbridled kiss of the setting sun on its grey surface. We pulled to a smooth stop. In moments, we left the town of St. Joseph, headed north to Bangor.
A sturdy man in the seat behind me rose to flirt with the young girl across from me. The two decades between them meant nothing in the happy isolation of the train. His jokes did not threaten her; nor did his over-friendliness alarm. The confines of a train have given license to travelers since tracks first laid upon the earth, long before an even greater freedom with the invention of electronic mail. You can be who you like on a train, for hours at a time: shyness yields to daring, a chronic frown melts with the rays of the setting sun.
The man left the car in Bangor, waving, calling out that we ladies should have a wonderful weekend. And then another text, another query, and I said, We are almost there, can you hear the whistle? Not yet, came the answer. I leaned down to gather my belongings.
An attendant helped me down from the train and guided me to the sidewalk. She asked if I was being met in the tone that paralleled that used by the agents to the drunk gypsy. I forgave her; forgiveness comes easier in Michigan. I assured her that someone would come for me, and just then, I saw the broad sweep of Virginia's arm from the curb beyond the station fence.
And now, I am here. The Lake lies in all its splendid permanence a few hundred yards below the porch in which I sit and write. The sun unfolds its sweetness over Ludington. I wear the Vera Wang pajamas broght to ward off the chillness of northern August mornings. I am alone; Virginia stirs on the second floor but she and I are the only people here. Our husbands will arrive next week, shaking the grime of the city from their khakis and throwing on their shorts before striding down to the beach. But for the next few days, I will be accountable to no one.
We will take long walks in this beautiful place, and drive to the charming towns. I will send as few emails about work as I can. I know that some work must be done remotely; I am a bit concerned that I did not get August billing out before I left. But this is Maryland Cottage, the unexpected bonus that I got when I remarried -- the chance to spend a week each year lounging in wicker furniture, sleeping past six, and listening to the sounds of the Lake, which even from this distance fill the air.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Saturday Musings, 18 August 2012
Good morning,
Something about the drone of the highway, the sterility of our homogeneous hotel room, and the sodium level of three days' of restaurant food numbed me to this moment -- my second awakening as an empty-nester. We have deposited my stepson in the halls of Rhodes College, after a last Target run for the few things that I forgot and the microwave he had declined but which it became apparent would be wanted.
I cannot overlook the irony of moving him to Memphis at the same time as hordes of Elvis-worshippers descended on Beale Street in fake sideburns, clutching PBandB sandwiches and wailing notes of the long-dead crooner. As we searched for Memphis barbecue on the night before the opening of the dormitories, we encountered detours and limousines, and ghostly manifestations: Elvis posing for pictures at the entry to Marlowe's Ribs, a silk rose left on our windshield. Thank you, thank you very much.
Only a few bumps rose in our the road, including misplaced car keys and an unpleasant, grease-filled breakfast at a place alleged by some website to be among the ten-best of morning joints in town. My stepson smiled throughout, patient, only a slight tinge of anxiousness apparent in the set of his jaw. I watched the two men -- the young one, an inch or two above six feet; his father, several inches shorter -- each trying to appear nonchalant. All the while, I fought my own ghosts, thinking of the son who had left for college with little fanfare the day before our southern voyage, bound for the start of his last year on the Indiana campus at which I hope he has found the first gold brick on his path to fulfillment. I've cried a thousand tears since Patrick's convocation, in August of 2009, and I daresay, I will cry a thousand more. Some of them fall from overwhelming joy, some from the burden of worry.
The dorm room in which we unpacked Mac's belongings -- Mac, who chose to revert to his birth name of Ansel for the start of college, but whom I met as Mac and grew to love as Mac -- had quite a few square feet on the one in which I ensconced Patrick three years ago. On one side, his new roommate had already staked a claim, with inspirational posters on the wall, and a bible on the bookshelf. The air held stifling silence, broken by the occasional enthusiastic proclamation from my husband or myself -- avowals of pleasure at the correctness of a choice in ordering, assurances that something which did not quite fit the need would nonetheless suffice, exuberant thanks to the roommate and his sister for lending a helping hand. Most of the time, our son worked without speaking, and the roommate sat in his chair, alert, smiling, awkward, while his sister swung her legs on her brother's lofted bed and chattered.
A helpful pair of green-shirted Peer Advisers directed us to Cafe Eclectic, where we ordered soups and salads, and pretended it was an ordinary day. We wandered the length of campus afterward, found the room where he had to take his laptop to get certified, and waited for an hour while he did so, making small talk about the difference between his college enrollment and my husband's experience in 1974. I answered some email and drafted an opposition to a motion for continuance, wishing for a real cup of coffee. An hour later, after eating a bad imitation of a Dream Cycle, we left our son. He had located the friend from Orientation Weekend whom he felt would give him a way of surviving the difficult first few days, and seemed to be letting down his guard. For the moment, he had no need of us.
We could not find a parking place on Beale Street, so we ate dinner at Huey's, grilled chicken with pineapple for me and Buffalo wings for my husband. The onslaught of emotion left us giddy and testy in turns, but we rode the waves and found our way back to the hotel, and, eventually, the sun rose on the morning of Convocation. I had my Kleenex ready. I've been there -- done that -- and I knew I could not navigate the experience with dry eyes.
And so we sat, shoulder to shoulder; and stood, the same. We watched the Rhodes College Class of 2016 process, and halfway through the group, spied our student, dark head rising above those around him. My heart clutched, as I saw that he had chosen to wear a blue Oxford shirt and khakis, while many around him donned only shorts and T-shirts. Thank you, thank you. He learned well.
The strains of music slowly receded, and the college president rose to welcome us. A faculty award or two was announced, and the keynote speaker introduced. A fiery, vibrant speaker, he told the entering freshmen to honor three pillars of success: Strive for excellence, be conscious of the community, and persevere. I could not do his fervor justice by description. His powerful voice and strong emotion filled the auditorium.
The college anthem was sung; a blessing spoken. And then the moment for departure arrived. Our son allowed one photograph, his practiced smile beaming, his father's less bright, as they stood in the aisle, other weeping parents filing past us. We made our way to the open air, and exchanged embraces. Within minutes, we had walked away, he in one direction, we in another, to our car, to the highway, to the rest of our lives as parents whose children have gone.
I felt the stab of the moment less keenly this time around. I have a companion now; the house does not sit in silence, free of the voice I had heard for eighteen years and the strumming of my son's guitar with nothing to replace them. While the door of Mac's bedroom will not slam and his bounce will not creak the floorboards, my husband's tread while fill the empty spaces each morning. And I only had a hand in raising Mac for eighteen months, since I married his father and he came to live with us full-time.
But my mother's genes tingle nonetheless. I spoiled a lace handkerchief and half a packet of Kleenex during Convocation, and allowed myself only that last small hug, not nearly enough, not nearly adequate to quell the motherly longing until Thanksgiving. I miss them both: Son by birth and son by marriage. I feel the stillness in their rooms, and see the empty places at the table, and I wonder, what will become of them?
The black cat has come home for breakfast and a cuddle, and slipped from the porch to wander in the coolness of the morning air. A magpie calls in the distance -- or a crow, perhaps; I am not even sure if magpies exist or live in Missouri. But the call of the bird to its mate sounds through the otherwise unbroken quiet. I raise my head and listen, waiting for the answering song.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Something about the drone of the highway, the sterility of our homogeneous hotel room, and the sodium level of three days' of restaurant food numbed me to this moment -- my second awakening as an empty-nester. We have deposited my stepson in the halls of Rhodes College, after a last Target run for the few things that I forgot and the microwave he had declined but which it became apparent would be wanted.
I cannot overlook the irony of moving him to Memphis at the same time as hordes of Elvis-worshippers descended on Beale Street in fake sideburns, clutching PBandB sandwiches and wailing notes of the long-dead crooner. As we searched for Memphis barbecue on the night before the opening of the dormitories, we encountered detours and limousines, and ghostly manifestations: Elvis posing for pictures at the entry to Marlowe's Ribs, a silk rose left on our windshield. Thank you, thank you very much.
Only a few bumps rose in our the road, including misplaced car keys and an unpleasant, grease-filled breakfast at a place alleged by some website to be among the ten-best of morning joints in town. My stepson smiled throughout, patient, only a slight tinge of anxiousness apparent in the set of his jaw. I watched the two men -- the young one, an inch or two above six feet; his father, several inches shorter -- each trying to appear nonchalant. All the while, I fought my own ghosts, thinking of the son who had left for college with little fanfare the day before our southern voyage, bound for the start of his last year on the Indiana campus at which I hope he has found the first gold brick on his path to fulfillment. I've cried a thousand tears since Patrick's convocation, in August of 2009, and I daresay, I will cry a thousand more. Some of them fall from overwhelming joy, some from the burden of worry.
The dorm room in which we unpacked Mac's belongings -- Mac, who chose to revert to his birth name of Ansel for the start of college, but whom I met as Mac and grew to love as Mac -- had quite a few square feet on the one in which I ensconced Patrick three years ago. On one side, his new roommate had already staked a claim, with inspirational posters on the wall, and a bible on the bookshelf. The air held stifling silence, broken by the occasional enthusiastic proclamation from my husband or myself -- avowals of pleasure at the correctness of a choice in ordering, assurances that something which did not quite fit the need would nonetheless suffice, exuberant thanks to the roommate and his sister for lending a helping hand. Most of the time, our son worked without speaking, and the roommate sat in his chair, alert, smiling, awkward, while his sister swung her legs on her brother's lofted bed and chattered.
A helpful pair of green-shirted Peer Advisers directed us to Cafe Eclectic, where we ordered soups and salads, and pretended it was an ordinary day. We wandered the length of campus afterward, found the room where he had to take his laptop to get certified, and waited for an hour while he did so, making small talk about the difference between his college enrollment and my husband's experience in 1974. I answered some email and drafted an opposition to a motion for continuance, wishing for a real cup of coffee. An hour later, after eating a bad imitation of a Dream Cycle, we left our son. He had located the friend from Orientation Weekend whom he felt would give him a way of surviving the difficult first few days, and seemed to be letting down his guard. For the moment, he had no need of us.
We could not find a parking place on Beale Street, so we ate dinner at Huey's, grilled chicken with pineapple for me and Buffalo wings for my husband. The onslaught of emotion left us giddy and testy in turns, but we rode the waves and found our way back to the hotel, and, eventually, the sun rose on the morning of Convocation. I had my Kleenex ready. I've been there -- done that -- and I knew I could not navigate the experience with dry eyes.
And so we sat, shoulder to shoulder; and stood, the same. We watched the Rhodes College Class of 2016 process, and halfway through the group, spied our student, dark head rising above those around him. My heart clutched, as I saw that he had chosen to wear a blue Oxford shirt and khakis, while many around him donned only shorts and T-shirts. Thank you, thank you. He learned well.
The strains of music slowly receded, and the college president rose to welcome us. A faculty award or two was announced, and the keynote speaker introduced. A fiery, vibrant speaker, he told the entering freshmen to honor three pillars of success: Strive for excellence, be conscious of the community, and persevere. I could not do his fervor justice by description. His powerful voice and strong emotion filled the auditorium.
The college anthem was sung; a blessing spoken. And then the moment for departure arrived. Our son allowed one photograph, his practiced smile beaming, his father's less bright, as they stood in the aisle, other weeping parents filing past us. We made our way to the open air, and exchanged embraces. Within minutes, we had walked away, he in one direction, we in another, to our car, to the highway, to the rest of our lives as parents whose children have gone.
I felt the stab of the moment less keenly this time around. I have a companion now; the house does not sit in silence, free of the voice I had heard for eighteen years and the strumming of my son's guitar with nothing to replace them. While the door of Mac's bedroom will not slam and his bounce will not creak the floorboards, my husband's tread while fill the empty spaces each morning. And I only had a hand in raising Mac for eighteen months, since I married his father and he came to live with us full-time.
But my mother's genes tingle nonetheless. I spoiled a lace handkerchief and half a packet of Kleenex during Convocation, and allowed myself only that last small hug, not nearly enough, not nearly adequate to quell the motherly longing until Thanksgiving. I miss them both: Son by birth and son by marriage. I feel the stillness in their rooms, and see the empty places at the table, and I wonder, what will become of them?
The black cat has come home for breakfast and a cuddle, and slipped from the porch to wander in the coolness of the morning air. A magpie calls in the distance -- or a crow, perhaps; I am not even sure if magpies exist or live in Missouri. But the call of the bird to its mate sounds through the otherwise unbroken quiet. I raise my head and listen, waiting for the answering song.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Saturday Musings, 04 August 2012
Good morning,
I concede the battle to the sun. My struggling plants valiantly opposed the onslaught of fire but more have faded into crinkling strands of brown vegetation. Sweet, cool air soothes them in the earliest part of the day, but too quickly yields to fierce hot waves of radiance on the deck, and my watering can holds only so much solace. I sit amongst my wilted, former glories and wonder if this is global warming, or just a trick of Missouri summer.
It's been a lumpy week, another five-pack of ten-hour days, the brutality made more tolerable with the pleasant presence of my son's cheerful disposition. I face two trials next week, the second of which looms larger, like the flood of anger lurking in the tightened muscles of a lover's face. One of the parents of a twelve-year-old girl will leave the courtroom gripped in sorrow; and one will leave believing that they have bested the other. On polar ends of the parenting proposal, each demands to be residential placement, and as surely as the baking of the August sun, one will lose. I fervently hope that my client, whether triumphant or defeated, will be gracious.
This pending trial defines the fallacy of family law. Even the name mocks its purpose. Whether dueling over principal residential placement in a divorce or paternity action, or struggling to regain custody in the dingy courtrooms of the juvenile court, litigants in "family law cases" focus not on the family but on its disintegration. I derided the change of name when our Juvenile Detention Center became the Family Detention Center and our Juvenile Courts morphed into Family Court. I wish they would detain the family, but only the children find themselves sleeping on the narrow, thin mattresses in rooms smelling of disinfectant. And in the hallways of the "Family Court", the focus remains due diligence to the ostensible need for maintaining family integrity while concurrently planning for its funeral.
I recently found myself a bit player in a staging of the middle act of one such drama. My client beside me, slender, dim, pretty; her guardian ad litem on the other side of her narrow frame; I rose to cajole the commissioner into expanding the services for this young mother with her low IQ, her tendency to giggle, and her total unawareness of the headlights panned in her direction on the lonely road. I got what I wanted, but remain unconvinced that any services my client receives can compensate for what nature failed to give her.
Days before that hearing, I had sat in the same chair next to a father desperately trying to conform to the expectations of a system that took his children from their mother without his awareness of the filth in which she had been rearing them. Estranged from the three toddlers, bound to a new wife and their small family, this man had at first rejected the notion of allowing the Children's Division to stare into his living room and poke around his psyche under the feeble guise of readying him for placement. But his young wife fought for a foothold in the jungle of the system, and clung to the entangled forest, one hand around a vine and the other holding his. They slowly climbed from slippery rocks and the potential plunge into a raging ocean, and stand precariously in the treetops, looking for a strong branch on which to rest.
For her efforts, this valiant stepmother has been branded as "uncooperative" and "hostile", and ordered by the Children's Division to take anger management classes. They've decided she has an anger issue because she yelled at the members of the Family Support Team. I smiled when I heard about these events. Too well I understood what drove her to lash out at them, because I have seen the expressions on their faces. At times, I have wanted to do the same, not as the parent of a child in care but as the lawyer of such a parent.
Their expressions often seem to derive from a feeling of superiority -- the human tendency to think not "there, but for the grace of God, go I", but rather, "there, but for my vastly better understanding of the way of the world, go I". I watched the members of that Family Support Team talk to my client and his wife after the hearing, and saw what plays from the outside as the stamp of smugness. They praised her for maintaining her cool in the courtroom. Why shouldn't she? This time, for the first time, they had representation. Before that hearing, she and her husband sat on their own in the courtroom, with no one to advocate for their position but themselves. Of the two, she is the more articulate, but unschooled both in the law and in the delicacies of human interaction. Even after thirty years of practice and fifty-seven years of living, I make bonehead mistakes in dealing with people -- how can we expect her to navigate rocky waters from slightly more than two decades of experience, during the last three or four years of which she has been birthing and caring for babies?
I say, Well done, young lady. Her children have a roof over their heads, their father and mother lawfully wed, both employed, busily making room for three more children whom I have no idea how they will feed. But feed all five they will, and mostly because of her passion combined with his steadfast dedication to improving their lives. We might condemn him for not knowing that his first wife was not caring for the children of whom she had custody, but we cannot condemn him for the vigor with which he and his current wife now struggle to include those children in their world.
Such are the tales with which my workaday world has become crowded. Men and women battling over the structure of their children's lives, whether against each other or against a system that judges their deficiencies, with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy. It's a hell of a way to earn a living.
I entered the attorney lounge in the Clay County courthouse yesterday, an hour before I guided my client through a stipulated change of custody to make him principal residential custodian of children whose mother had chosen as her second husband a Nazi skinhead prison inmate. In the lull before this brief record would be made, I chanced upon a member of this wonderful list-serve, who introduced me to a law student working with him. He described me as someone who should have been a writer, and I protested that I am a writer. All right, he conceded, she's someone who should be a writer full-time. We laughed.
But in these quiet mornings, my feet resting on the smooth surface of our deck, my laptop propped on the metal table next to a struggling impatiens plant, I feel the truth of his words. I became an attorney only because I feared that writing would not pay enough, and thirty years later, the acid in my stomach reminds me of the flimsiness of my justification for choosing one pursuit over the other. If I had foreseen my path in September 1983, when I sat at a wooden high-top in a bar south of the Plaza, and raised my right hand to take the oath of my office, I might have deliberately spilled my single malt across the license that my then-boss would shortly sign, and loudly call for another round.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
I concede the battle to the sun. My struggling plants valiantly opposed the onslaught of fire but more have faded into crinkling strands of brown vegetation. Sweet, cool air soothes them in the earliest part of the day, but too quickly yields to fierce hot waves of radiance on the deck, and my watering can holds only so much solace. I sit amongst my wilted, former glories and wonder if this is global warming, or just a trick of Missouri summer.
It's been a lumpy week, another five-pack of ten-hour days, the brutality made more tolerable with the pleasant presence of my son's cheerful disposition. I face two trials next week, the second of which looms larger, like the flood of anger lurking in the tightened muscles of a lover's face. One of the parents of a twelve-year-old girl will leave the courtroom gripped in sorrow; and one will leave believing that they have bested the other. On polar ends of the parenting proposal, each demands to be residential placement, and as surely as the baking of the August sun, one will lose. I fervently hope that my client, whether triumphant or defeated, will be gracious.
This pending trial defines the fallacy of family law. Even the name mocks its purpose. Whether dueling over principal residential placement in a divorce or paternity action, or struggling to regain custody in the dingy courtrooms of the juvenile court, litigants in "family law cases" focus not on the family but on its disintegration. I derided the change of name when our Juvenile Detention Center became the Family Detention Center and our Juvenile Courts morphed into Family Court. I wish they would detain the family, but only the children find themselves sleeping on the narrow, thin mattresses in rooms smelling of disinfectant. And in the hallways of the "Family Court", the focus remains due diligence to the ostensible need for maintaining family integrity while concurrently planning for its funeral.
I recently found myself a bit player in a staging of the middle act of one such drama. My client beside me, slender, dim, pretty; her guardian ad litem on the other side of her narrow frame; I rose to cajole the commissioner into expanding the services for this young mother with her low IQ, her tendency to giggle, and her total unawareness of the headlights panned in her direction on the lonely road. I got what I wanted, but remain unconvinced that any services my client receives can compensate for what nature failed to give her.
Days before that hearing, I had sat in the same chair next to a father desperately trying to conform to the expectations of a system that took his children from their mother without his awareness of the filth in which she had been rearing them. Estranged from the three toddlers, bound to a new wife and their small family, this man had at first rejected the notion of allowing the Children's Division to stare into his living room and poke around his psyche under the feeble guise of readying him for placement. But his young wife fought for a foothold in the jungle of the system, and clung to the entangled forest, one hand around a vine and the other holding his. They slowly climbed from slippery rocks and the potential plunge into a raging ocean, and stand precariously in the treetops, looking for a strong branch on which to rest.
For her efforts, this valiant stepmother has been branded as "uncooperative" and "hostile", and ordered by the Children's Division to take anger management classes. They've decided she has an anger issue because she yelled at the members of the Family Support Team. I smiled when I heard about these events. Too well I understood what drove her to lash out at them, because I have seen the expressions on their faces. At times, I have wanted to do the same, not as the parent of a child in care but as the lawyer of such a parent.
Their expressions often seem to derive from a feeling of superiority -- the human tendency to think not "there, but for the grace of God, go I", but rather, "there, but for my vastly better understanding of the way of the world, go I". I watched the members of that Family Support Team talk to my client and his wife after the hearing, and saw what plays from the outside as the stamp of smugness. They praised her for maintaining her cool in the courtroom. Why shouldn't she? This time, for the first time, they had representation. Before that hearing, she and her husband sat on their own in the courtroom, with no one to advocate for their position but themselves. Of the two, she is the more articulate, but unschooled both in the law and in the delicacies of human interaction. Even after thirty years of practice and fifty-seven years of living, I make bonehead mistakes in dealing with people -- how can we expect her to navigate rocky waters from slightly more than two decades of experience, during the last three or four years of which she has been birthing and caring for babies?
I say, Well done, young lady. Her children have a roof over their heads, their father and mother lawfully wed, both employed, busily making room for three more children whom I have no idea how they will feed. But feed all five they will, and mostly because of her passion combined with his steadfast dedication to improving their lives. We might condemn him for not knowing that his first wife was not caring for the children of whom she had custody, but we cannot condemn him for the vigor with which he and his current wife now struggle to include those children in their world.
Such are the tales with which my workaday world has become crowded. Men and women battling over the structure of their children's lives, whether against each other or against a system that judges their deficiencies, with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy. It's a hell of a way to earn a living.
I entered the attorney lounge in the Clay County courthouse yesterday, an hour before I guided my client through a stipulated change of custody to make him principal residential custodian of children whose mother had chosen as her second husband a Nazi skinhead prison inmate. In the lull before this brief record would be made, I chanced upon a member of this wonderful list-serve, who introduced me to a law student working with him. He described me as someone who should have been a writer, and I protested that I am a writer. All right, he conceded, she's someone who should be a writer full-time. We laughed.
But in these quiet mornings, my feet resting on the smooth surface of our deck, my laptop propped on the metal table next to a struggling impatiens plant, I feel the truth of his words. I became an attorney only because I feared that writing would not pay enough, and thirty years later, the acid in my stomach reminds me of the flimsiness of my justification for choosing one pursuit over the other. If I had foreseen my path in September 1983, when I sat at a wooden high-top in a bar south of the Plaza, and raised my right hand to take the oath of my office, I might have deliberately spilled my single malt across the license that my then-boss would shortly sign, and loudly call for another round.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Saturday Musings, 28 July 2012
Good morning:
For somewhere, it is morning. In London, I suppose; six hours ahead of us, where the Olympiads have already trod upon the British soil with their heads thrown back, jubilant eyes shining towards the cheering crowd. As I watched the 530 American athletes, a strange sensation rose within me, starting with a clenching in my stomach. I found myself overwhelmed with something that still haunts me, hours later: an undefined, unsettling emotion that leaves me wakeful and draws me from my pillow to the keyboard of my computer.
I am not sure what it means to be an American anymore. I find myself re-examining long-held notions. I sat over breakfast with a long-time Democrat activist this week, early enough that the hostess had had to unlock the front door to admit me and brought my coffee as her co-workers threw on the lights and drew open the blinds. My breakfast companion was an old acquaintance, one of the brains behind many campaigns on which I worked in my younger years.
We could not restrain ourselves from discussing the election, and I listened to his keen analysis. He acknowledged the same sort of weariness with the whole process that makes me recoil from political activism, decades after I willingly acquired a stinging sunburn working the polls from morning until long after the setting of the blazing sun. Though we agreed that neither of us could ever switch parties, we forlornly conceded the devastation that the stark divide between the two factions has occasioned. Ten years that separate us in age and cast us into different generations, but we both keenly feel the overbearing fatigue that comes from endless enthusiasm too long unrewarded.
But none of that means anything when I see the colors of my country held aloft by strong young arms, when I follow the path cut by the firm steps of American athletes marching on foreign ground, arms entwined, cell phones held aloft to record the entrance of Team USA from the first person. On the other side of the world from these young men and women, I pause in my reading of a dull Italian mystery to watch their entrance, thinking to myself, these are Americans, these are my brothers and sisters.
I remember an evening, long ago, when I stood at the base of a flagpole with my Camp Fire Girls troop. I had drawn flag duty that morning, and the sun would soon set. One of our members lowered the flag. I reached, with my small hands and clumsy fingers, to catch the cloth so that it would not touch the ground. She undid the clasps that held it. We each took two corners, and I walked backwards so that the fabric stretched between us, stumbling only a little. The sounds of Taps drifted from the loud speakers on nearby poles, each mournful note reverberating through the still air. My companion and I folded the flag as we had been taught and tirelessly practiced. My hands trembled; I pursed my lips so tightly that they grew numb.
We met in the middle, and finished the last fold, tucking the edges to form a solid triangle. I tendered the flag to my troop mate. She turned, crisply, and placed it in the waiting hands of the staff member who had come to monitor the process. Our job done, we silently marched across the empty quadrangle and made our way to the bunks which housed us.
As I lay in bed that night, sleepless even as I am this night, I reflected on the ceremony in which I had just participated. I listened to the sounds of my bunk mates settling for the night, staring out the window at the starlit Ozark sky. I had no sense of loyalty to my country at that age. Flashes of understanding only occasionally fired through my otherwise lazy synapses.
I remembered being held over the cheering crowds at a rally for John F. Kennedy, my older sister's strength hoisting me above the clamoring din so that I could slip my tiny hand into the large, warm clasp of the young senator who would soon be crowned and take his place in Camelot. A few years later, after the King had been slain, I chanted anti-Goldwater songs as I skipped rope, to the consternation of my best friend whose parents must have been Republicans. And always, I listened to my father talk of going to War, the war that followed the one that had been intended to put an end to such human folly; but I did not then equate my father's march down the Burma trail with any kind of patriotism. To me, his effort seemed sad and useless, like the work of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
Somewhere in time, my vague sense of belonging to a nation took solid form. I fly the Stars and Stripes and have for the 19 years of my occupancy of my present home. I did not form my loyalty while working on any of the many elections in which I stuffed fliers and telephoned to cajole voters into leaving their comfortable recliners to vote. Those efforts benefited candidates, and my enthusiasm stemmed from allegiance to those candidates.
I hear again the haunting sound of Taps, and realize that somehow my national pride is connected with the song's long mournful notes. I close my eyes and try to trace the route from that camper's bunk, from which I listened to the sounds of crickets and the calls of night owls, to the lurching of my stomach as I watched Team USA enter the Olympic stadium. In the forty-five years between those moments, I became an American by choice.
The words of Taps drift through my mind:
Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky
All is well, safely rest
God is nigh.
Fading light dims the sight
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright
From afar, drawing near
Falls the night.
Thanks and praise for our days
Neath the sun, neath the stars, neath the sky
As we go, this we know
God is nigh.(1)
Sorrow mingles with awe as a tableau arises unbidden in my memory: From the window of a slowly moving car, I see a row of soldiers lining the road. I slip from the car soon after it stops, and walk over unlevel ground towards a raised white tent. I stand beside my sister as a coffin is carried from the hearse, my infant son clutched against my breast. The bugler plays. Standing on a nearby rise, three riflemen lift their weapons, and discharge their three volleys into the afternoon air. Silent soldiers take the flag from the coffin, fold it as I had folded the Camp's flag so many years before, and, silent still, present it to my nephew Eric, the oldest grandson of a fallen giant.
On many afternoons in my childhood, I stood in my father's workroom and traced the contours of his Muleskinner's stirrups, gingerly touched the ivory brought home from that desolate beautiful country in which he served, and read the faded typing on the pass that he had created for himself. I held in my hands a creased photograph of my father as a young soldier. The intentness of my scrutiny creased my brow as I studied the light in his eyes, first in the picture and then in his aging face. I watched him while he told his stories, wondering if his obsession with war flowed from the terror that he saw, or because in that war, he had a sense of purpose derived from the service that he rendered to his country. I never knew. But when I stand on my porch and watch my flag tossing in the breeze, the eyes of my father come to mind.
I have just a few hours left in which to find some rest. When morning comes, I will drag myself to the office, where I will brew coffee before the other lawyer and our two clients arrive. From the seeds planted in a late-afternoon call at the end of the Friday workday, the terms of a settlement will be painfully negotiated. Signatures will be cast upon the lines at the bottom of the final drafts. Notary seals will be affixed; and hands shaken. When the meeting is done, I will find a coffee shop with a television, and for an hour or so, nothing will matter but the quest of my fellow Americans for gold.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
(1) written by Horace Lorenzo Trim
For somewhere, it is morning. In London, I suppose; six hours ahead of us, where the Olympiads have already trod upon the British soil with their heads thrown back, jubilant eyes shining towards the cheering crowd. As I watched the 530 American athletes, a strange sensation rose within me, starting with a clenching in my stomach. I found myself overwhelmed with something that still haunts me, hours later: an undefined, unsettling emotion that leaves me wakeful and draws me from my pillow to the keyboard of my computer.
I am not sure what it means to be an American anymore. I find myself re-examining long-held notions. I sat over breakfast with a long-time Democrat activist this week, early enough that the hostess had had to unlock the front door to admit me and brought my coffee as her co-workers threw on the lights and drew open the blinds. My breakfast companion was an old acquaintance, one of the brains behind many campaigns on which I worked in my younger years.
We could not restrain ourselves from discussing the election, and I listened to his keen analysis. He acknowledged the same sort of weariness with the whole process that makes me recoil from political activism, decades after I willingly acquired a stinging sunburn working the polls from morning until long after the setting of the blazing sun. Though we agreed that neither of us could ever switch parties, we forlornly conceded the devastation that the stark divide between the two factions has occasioned. Ten years that separate us in age and cast us into different generations, but we both keenly feel the overbearing fatigue that comes from endless enthusiasm too long unrewarded.
But none of that means anything when I see the colors of my country held aloft by strong young arms, when I follow the path cut by the firm steps of American athletes marching on foreign ground, arms entwined, cell phones held aloft to record the entrance of Team USA from the first person. On the other side of the world from these young men and women, I pause in my reading of a dull Italian mystery to watch their entrance, thinking to myself, these are Americans, these are my brothers and sisters.
I remember an evening, long ago, when I stood at the base of a flagpole with my Camp Fire Girls troop. I had drawn flag duty that morning, and the sun would soon set. One of our members lowered the flag. I reached, with my small hands and clumsy fingers, to catch the cloth so that it would not touch the ground. She undid the clasps that held it. We each took two corners, and I walked backwards so that the fabric stretched between us, stumbling only a little. The sounds of Taps drifted from the loud speakers on nearby poles, each mournful note reverberating through the still air. My companion and I folded the flag as we had been taught and tirelessly practiced. My hands trembled; I pursed my lips so tightly that they grew numb.
We met in the middle, and finished the last fold, tucking the edges to form a solid triangle. I tendered the flag to my troop mate. She turned, crisply, and placed it in the waiting hands of the staff member who had come to monitor the process. Our job done, we silently marched across the empty quadrangle and made our way to the bunks which housed us.
As I lay in bed that night, sleepless even as I am this night, I reflected on the ceremony in which I had just participated. I listened to the sounds of my bunk mates settling for the night, staring out the window at the starlit Ozark sky. I had no sense of loyalty to my country at that age. Flashes of understanding only occasionally fired through my otherwise lazy synapses.
I remembered being held over the cheering crowds at a rally for John F. Kennedy, my older sister's strength hoisting me above the clamoring din so that I could slip my tiny hand into the large, warm clasp of the young senator who would soon be crowned and take his place in Camelot. A few years later, after the King had been slain, I chanted anti-Goldwater songs as I skipped rope, to the consternation of my best friend whose parents must have been Republicans. And always, I listened to my father talk of going to War, the war that followed the one that had been intended to put an end to such human folly; but I did not then equate my father's march down the Burma trail with any kind of patriotism. To me, his effort seemed sad and useless, like the work of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
Somewhere in time, my vague sense of belonging to a nation took solid form. I fly the Stars and Stripes and have for the 19 years of my occupancy of my present home. I did not form my loyalty while working on any of the many elections in which I stuffed fliers and telephoned to cajole voters into leaving their comfortable recliners to vote. Those efforts benefited candidates, and my enthusiasm stemmed from allegiance to those candidates.
I hear again the haunting sound of Taps, and realize that somehow my national pride is connected with the song's long mournful notes. I close my eyes and try to trace the route from that camper's bunk, from which I listened to the sounds of crickets and the calls of night owls, to the lurching of my stomach as I watched Team USA enter the Olympic stadium. In the forty-five years between those moments, I became an American by choice.
The words of Taps drift through my mind:
Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky
All is well, safely rest
God is nigh.
Fading light dims the sight
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright
From afar, drawing near
Falls the night.
Thanks and praise for our days
Neath the sun, neath the stars, neath the sky
As we go, this we know
God is nigh.(1)
Sorrow mingles with awe as a tableau arises unbidden in my memory: From the window of a slowly moving car, I see a row of soldiers lining the road. I slip from the car soon after it stops, and walk over unlevel ground towards a raised white tent. I stand beside my sister as a coffin is carried from the hearse, my infant son clutched against my breast. The bugler plays. Standing on a nearby rise, three riflemen lift their weapons, and discharge their three volleys into the afternoon air. Silent soldiers take the flag from the coffin, fold it as I had folded the Camp's flag so many years before, and, silent still, present it to my nephew Eric, the oldest grandson of a fallen giant.
On many afternoons in my childhood, I stood in my father's workroom and traced the contours of his Muleskinner's stirrups, gingerly touched the ivory brought home from that desolate beautiful country in which he served, and read the faded typing on the pass that he had created for himself. I held in my hands a creased photograph of my father as a young soldier. The intentness of my scrutiny creased my brow as I studied the light in his eyes, first in the picture and then in his aging face. I watched him while he told his stories, wondering if his obsession with war flowed from the terror that he saw, or because in that war, he had a sense of purpose derived from the service that he rendered to his country. I never knew. But when I stand on my porch and watch my flag tossing in the breeze, the eyes of my father come to mind.
I have just a few hours left in which to find some rest. When morning comes, I will drag myself to the office, where I will brew coffee before the other lawyer and our two clients arrive. From the seeds planted in a late-afternoon call at the end of the Friday workday, the terms of a settlement will be painfully negotiated. Signatures will be cast upon the lines at the bottom of the final drafts. Notary seals will be affixed; and hands shaken. When the meeting is done, I will find a coffee shop with a television, and for an hour or so, nothing will matter but the quest of my fellow Americans for gold.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
(1) written by Horace Lorenzo Trim
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Saturday Musings, 21 July 2012
Good morning,
A shrill bird sounds its six-note call high above our home. The impatiens have slightly wilted in their clay pots but have otherwise endured the vicious heat of the last week. I saved several pansies by transferring them from the open deck to the shade of the high-ceilinged porch, but the Gerber daisies droop on their wicker stands. In their lamentable state, they seem to reproach me.
I think about the aging cedar that we removed last year, and gaze over the railing at the holly bush struggling to rise in its place. Though the basement floor drain seems to run significantly better without a steady diet of cedar needles, I still miss the spindly, struggling majesty of the tree. From kindergarten's task of memorizing the Joyce Kilmer poem, to senior year, lying beneath a tree with my religion case, gazing into its boughs and learning to meditate, I have been drawn to trees.
A day or two ago, I drove down the long hill on Broadway, leaving my office, descending to the Plaza and the Brush Creek area. The installation of this Corps of Engineers project insulted Kansas Citians by the stripping of old groves of trees. The walkway depicted in models as tree-lined had nothing at its inception but spindly newly-planted saplings with their wooden supports and delicate leaves. But now those tiny trees have grown, and as I turned the corner to traverse the northern edge of the creek, I smiled with the pleasure that a city dweller reserves for nature.
And then, under the swooping bough of one of the taller trees, I spied a scraggly three-some: Cross-legged, dirty, in tattered clothes, with piles of grungy belongings pushed to the middle of the group. I've seen them there before -- or ones like them. The homeless of Kansas City; the disenfranchised, the drop-outs, the derelict. My friend Katrina brings them food from her church's kitchen, and has even befriended several, including one who later met a sad and lonely death, famously, the news of which darkened the pages of our local paper for weeks on end. I have never joined her efforts; I have never approached the cluster of men who gather by the side of the Creek, passing around a bottle, or a plate of food from a nearby restaurant, or something crumbled in the depths of a paper bag.
I drove past the men without slowing, without even thinking about the protein bars in my purse that I could have stopped to give them. I averted my eyes from the filth of their clothes, and the streaks of grey in their uncut hair. I glanced back only once, before the light turned green, but from the angle at which I looked, I could see only glimpses of them through the thickness of the tree's summer crown. The light changed. I turned the corner, and made my way south, leaving them to whatever fate the evening held for them. I closed my eyes and drew in a little breath, feeling a small little clutch in the pit of my stomach, and unable to restrain myself from checking to be sure the windows were up and the doors were locked.
The rest of my trip home afforded me views of other trees, just as beautiful as the young ones on the Plaza's edge. Lining Brookside Boulevard and rising from the yards of the old homes, they stood tall, serene, undisturbed by gatherings of men with nowhere else to go to cool themselves. The occasional bench, situated in a carefully chosen spot, awaited a cheerful child or a tired dog-walker. But none appeared. The wind occasionally tossed the long branches. At stoplights on my route, I watched songbirds swoop from perch to verdant perch. Other than me, nobody seemed to be taking special note of the trees in my neighborhood. Nobody sought refuge under their boughs.
I pulled into my driveway, and found myself looking at the rising growth in my neighbor's yard. His trees tower over his rooftop, planted at the fresh start of our 100-year-old neighborhood. His children have grown, and nobody sits under his trees anymore. He has taken away the chairs that once rested at the base of his biggest maple, and let the yard reclaim the bare spot where his sons once played basketball far into the night.
The trees of my neighborhood endure. They shelter the homes in which we live our lives, the homes we vacuum, and clean, and decorate with meticulously chosen trinkets. Those trees sway in what little breezes kiss them, and send their wide shadows over our shingled houses, reaching high to block the sun and give us what coolness they can. But you never see anyone sitting, cross-legged and comfortable, unclean and unaware, in their comforting shade.
In the highest branches of my own maple, I see brown leaves, burnt, I imagine, by the brutal sun of our summer. The tree has regained most of its shape since being split by an ice storm years ago, and has spread wide, and grown taller, and its girth guards my house. As I sit, quiet, contemplative, on the deck, with my neck crooked back, a realization rises within me. But then the bird gives a final call, and whatever wisp of knowledge whispered in my soul slips away.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
A shrill bird sounds its six-note call high above our home. The impatiens have slightly wilted in their clay pots but have otherwise endured the vicious heat of the last week. I saved several pansies by transferring them from the open deck to the shade of the high-ceilinged porch, but the Gerber daisies droop on their wicker stands. In their lamentable state, they seem to reproach me.
I think about the aging cedar that we removed last year, and gaze over the railing at the holly bush struggling to rise in its place. Though the basement floor drain seems to run significantly better without a steady diet of cedar needles, I still miss the spindly, struggling majesty of the tree. From kindergarten's task of memorizing the Joyce Kilmer poem, to senior year, lying beneath a tree with my religion case, gazing into its boughs and learning to meditate, I have been drawn to trees.
A day or two ago, I drove down the long hill on Broadway, leaving my office, descending to the Plaza and the Brush Creek area. The installation of this Corps of Engineers project insulted Kansas Citians by the stripping of old groves of trees. The walkway depicted in models as tree-lined had nothing at its inception but spindly newly-planted saplings with their wooden supports and delicate leaves. But now those tiny trees have grown, and as I turned the corner to traverse the northern edge of the creek, I smiled with the pleasure that a city dweller reserves for nature.
And then, under the swooping bough of one of the taller trees, I spied a scraggly three-some: Cross-legged, dirty, in tattered clothes, with piles of grungy belongings pushed to the middle of the group. I've seen them there before -- or ones like them. The homeless of Kansas City; the disenfranchised, the drop-outs, the derelict. My friend Katrina brings them food from her church's kitchen, and has even befriended several, including one who later met a sad and lonely death, famously, the news of which darkened the pages of our local paper for weeks on end. I have never joined her efforts; I have never approached the cluster of men who gather by the side of the Creek, passing around a bottle, or a plate of food from a nearby restaurant, or something crumbled in the depths of a paper bag.
I drove past the men without slowing, without even thinking about the protein bars in my purse that I could have stopped to give them. I averted my eyes from the filth of their clothes, and the streaks of grey in their uncut hair. I glanced back only once, before the light turned green, but from the angle at which I looked, I could see only glimpses of them through the thickness of the tree's summer crown. The light changed. I turned the corner, and made my way south, leaving them to whatever fate the evening held for them. I closed my eyes and drew in a little breath, feeling a small little clutch in the pit of my stomach, and unable to restrain myself from checking to be sure the windows were up and the doors were locked.
The rest of my trip home afforded me views of other trees, just as beautiful as the young ones on the Plaza's edge. Lining Brookside Boulevard and rising from the yards of the old homes, they stood tall, serene, undisturbed by gatherings of men with nowhere else to go to cool themselves. The occasional bench, situated in a carefully chosen spot, awaited a cheerful child or a tired dog-walker. But none appeared. The wind occasionally tossed the long branches. At stoplights on my route, I watched songbirds swoop from perch to verdant perch. Other than me, nobody seemed to be taking special note of the trees in my neighborhood. Nobody sought refuge under their boughs.
I pulled into my driveway, and found myself looking at the rising growth in my neighbor's yard. His trees tower over his rooftop, planted at the fresh start of our 100-year-old neighborhood. His children have grown, and nobody sits under his trees anymore. He has taken away the chairs that once rested at the base of his biggest maple, and let the yard reclaim the bare spot where his sons once played basketball far into the night.
The trees of my neighborhood endure. They shelter the homes in which we live our lives, the homes we vacuum, and clean, and decorate with meticulously chosen trinkets. Those trees sway in what little breezes kiss them, and send their wide shadows over our shingled houses, reaching high to block the sun and give us what coolness they can. But you never see anyone sitting, cross-legged and comfortable, unclean and unaware, in their comforting shade.
In the highest branches of my own maple, I see brown leaves, burnt, I imagine, by the brutal sun of our summer. The tree has regained most of its shape since being split by an ice storm years ago, and has spread wide, and grown taller, and its girth guards my house. As I sit, quiet, contemplative, on the deck, with my neck crooked back, a realization rises within me. But then the bird gives a final call, and whatever wisp of knowledge whispered in my soul slips away.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Saturday Musings, 14 July 2012
Good morning,
The heat finally eased its relentless grasp on our lives. For the last few days, the morning's cool has stretched later than it had for weeks, and rain kissed the surfaces of our world. My foggy mood cleared.
But then I opened the newspaper on Thursday, and learned of the passing of one of the legends of my younger years, William F. O'Sullivan. Billy O. The last of the group of heroes who welcomed me into this often brutal life of law. I remember him best on a bar stool, cigarette in one hand, rocks glass in the other; or standing off to the side in a courtroom crowded with dark-suited defense lawyers, in his muted green serge, short-clipped hair, crinkled, deep blue eyes. Never less than cheerful; never without his grin. Billy O.
For Billy O's sake, or to appease the rise of bile within me at the thought of his death, I donned a dress and drove to a Catholic Church in Waldo yesterday. I parked against a barricade of concrete rubble, and tip-toed round the sign that said, "Sidewalk Closed", crossing over on a red light, ignoring the glares of drivers who had the right of way. I drew in a long, deep gulp of sweet, cool air and pulled the glass door outward, stepping across the threshold of the one place I have promised myself I wouldn't have to go. But for Billy O's sake, I dared.
I slipped passed the obligatory funeral guy, in his poorly fitted suit and somber expression. I gently placed my card into the waiting basket, beside the picture of Billy O and his wife, gleaming with love, unconcerned with the lens turned upon them. I dipped one knee, as only cradle Catholics do, and slipped into a pew, lowering my small frame onto the hard wooden bench just about the time a man high above the congregation started the next decade of the Rosary.
My eyes drifted around the church. I saw familiar faces. Silent men, lawyers who shared a stronger connection to Billy O than I do, by virtue of their having maintained the bond and not let it lapse through dint of inertia. Clutches of weeping women, some of whom I think must have worked at the courts. At the front, rows of family, people I did not know, his children who were small when I last saw them, grandchildren born long after I slipped out of the wide, welcoming swathe of Billy O's charm and became just another lawyer he helped along the way, with a life of my own, and my own album full of disappointments, dreams, and devilment.
To the right, a flat screen displayed a steady stream of pictures of the event's of Billy O's life: days on the dock; weddings; parades; parties; stolen, quiet moments. Billy O invited me to a few gatherings in his home, back in the day, but twenty-five years, three marriages, and a grown child have accumulated in my own album since then, and I did not recognize any of the scenes depicted in his memorial. Did I call him a friend? He had been, I suppose; but more than that, a mentor, and someone whom I would have been better for having not let slip from the pages of my life.
I felt a sob escape my lips, and rose. That little dip of the knee; a turn; and I stumbled back down the aisle. I saw people whom I have known for decades standing at the back of the church. I squeezed a few elbows, smiled back at a few faces, then thrust myself out into the air of a late summer afternoon.
As I drove home, sobbing, I scolded myself. I knew that my tears were not for Billy O but for the worthlessness of my sorrow. I had heard that Billy O was sick. I knew that he had had several ugly bouts of cancer over the years. Even as distant as I keep myself from the lawyers who occupied those past days, who sat on those bar stools and drank those tumblers of Scotch, I heard that he had worsened. And I made no effort then, and little effort now. I scrawled my name on the bottom of a card, beside that of the husband he never met, and made the funeral guy get the book out even though he told me he planned to display it after the service. I wrote a little note to Billy O's wife on the line beside my name, and left. I cried crocodile tears, more for my own failure than for the loss of Billy O, I think.
I parked my car behind our house, and turned to walk up the driveway. At that moment, my son's old white cat slipped from behind a bush, and soundlessly collapsed onto the asphalt. I hastened my step, and dropped my pocketbook. I saw her face, and knew that death was not done with me. I spoke her name, and she opened her eyes, and I bent down to put my hands on her. With a shudder, she died. My first thought was of my son; my second, that she must have been waiting for me to come home.
When Patrick left for college, he extracted a promise from me not to let any of the pets die before he graduated. I felt the press of my broken vow. On the telephone, sitting on my porch beside his little cat's silent form under its towel shroud, I told him that if he had only graduated a year early, I would have been able to keep that commitment.
My husband came home and we buried Sprinkles in the little pet cemetery on the side of our house, by Tiger, and Chief, and Chocolate. Her grave marker is a large rock stolen from Yellowstone National Park by Patrick and his friend Chris Taggart. She rests under the branches of a mysterious but beautiful bush which grows there, the bush that shades all of our fallen pets in their last sleep. I said a prayer for her, and thanked her for her years of service to my family. I closed my eyes, and sent a little thanks to Heaven, where I am sure Billy O sits by the side of a celestial lake, his tan legs stretched out, a dust of sand on his bare feet, a cold drink by his side, grinning that Billy O grin, raising his clear blue eyes to the wide patch of sky above him.
Muguwmpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
RIP Sprinkles, our first pet, 08 June 1994 - 13 July 2012. A life well lived.
The heat finally eased its relentless grasp on our lives. For the last few days, the morning's cool has stretched later than it had for weeks, and rain kissed the surfaces of our world. My foggy mood cleared.
But then I opened the newspaper on Thursday, and learned of the passing of one of the legends of my younger years, William F. O'Sullivan. Billy O. The last of the group of heroes who welcomed me into this often brutal life of law. I remember him best on a bar stool, cigarette in one hand, rocks glass in the other; or standing off to the side in a courtroom crowded with dark-suited defense lawyers, in his muted green serge, short-clipped hair, crinkled, deep blue eyes. Never less than cheerful; never without his grin. Billy O.
For Billy O's sake, or to appease the rise of bile within me at the thought of his death, I donned a dress and drove to a Catholic Church in Waldo yesterday. I parked against a barricade of concrete rubble, and tip-toed round the sign that said, "Sidewalk Closed", crossing over on a red light, ignoring the glares of drivers who had the right of way. I drew in a long, deep gulp of sweet, cool air and pulled the glass door outward, stepping across the threshold of the one place I have promised myself I wouldn't have to go. But for Billy O's sake, I dared.
I slipped passed the obligatory funeral guy, in his poorly fitted suit and somber expression. I gently placed my card into the waiting basket, beside the picture of Billy O and his wife, gleaming with love, unconcerned with the lens turned upon them. I dipped one knee, as only cradle Catholics do, and slipped into a pew, lowering my small frame onto the hard wooden bench just about the time a man high above the congregation started the next decade of the Rosary.
My eyes drifted around the church. I saw familiar faces. Silent men, lawyers who shared a stronger connection to Billy O than I do, by virtue of their having maintained the bond and not let it lapse through dint of inertia. Clutches of weeping women, some of whom I think must have worked at the courts. At the front, rows of family, people I did not know, his children who were small when I last saw them, grandchildren born long after I slipped out of the wide, welcoming swathe of Billy O's charm and became just another lawyer he helped along the way, with a life of my own, and my own album full of disappointments, dreams, and devilment.
To the right, a flat screen displayed a steady stream of pictures of the event's of Billy O's life: days on the dock; weddings; parades; parties; stolen, quiet moments. Billy O invited me to a few gatherings in his home, back in the day, but twenty-five years, three marriages, and a grown child have accumulated in my own album since then, and I did not recognize any of the scenes depicted in his memorial. Did I call him a friend? He had been, I suppose; but more than that, a mentor, and someone whom I would have been better for having not let slip from the pages of my life.
I felt a sob escape my lips, and rose. That little dip of the knee; a turn; and I stumbled back down the aisle. I saw people whom I have known for decades standing at the back of the church. I squeezed a few elbows, smiled back at a few faces, then thrust myself out into the air of a late summer afternoon.
As I drove home, sobbing, I scolded myself. I knew that my tears were not for Billy O but for the worthlessness of my sorrow. I had heard that Billy O was sick. I knew that he had had several ugly bouts of cancer over the years. Even as distant as I keep myself from the lawyers who occupied those past days, who sat on those bar stools and drank those tumblers of Scotch, I heard that he had worsened. And I made no effort then, and little effort now. I scrawled my name on the bottom of a card, beside that of the husband he never met, and made the funeral guy get the book out even though he told me he planned to display it after the service. I wrote a little note to Billy O's wife on the line beside my name, and left. I cried crocodile tears, more for my own failure than for the loss of Billy O, I think.
I parked my car behind our house, and turned to walk up the driveway. At that moment, my son's old white cat slipped from behind a bush, and soundlessly collapsed onto the asphalt. I hastened my step, and dropped my pocketbook. I saw her face, and knew that death was not done with me. I spoke her name, and she opened her eyes, and I bent down to put my hands on her. With a shudder, she died. My first thought was of my son; my second, that she must have been waiting for me to come home.
When Patrick left for college, he extracted a promise from me not to let any of the pets die before he graduated. I felt the press of my broken vow. On the telephone, sitting on my porch beside his little cat's silent form under its towel shroud, I told him that if he had only graduated a year early, I would have been able to keep that commitment.
My husband came home and we buried Sprinkles in the little pet cemetery on the side of our house, by Tiger, and Chief, and Chocolate. Her grave marker is a large rock stolen from Yellowstone National Park by Patrick and his friend Chris Taggart. She rests under the branches of a mysterious but beautiful bush which grows there, the bush that shades all of our fallen pets in their last sleep. I said a prayer for her, and thanked her for her years of service to my family. I closed my eyes, and sent a little thanks to Heaven, where I am sure Billy O sits by the side of a celestial lake, his tan legs stretched out, a dust of sand on his bare feet, a cold drink by his side, grinning that Billy O grin, raising his clear blue eyes to the wide patch of sky above him.
Muguwmpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
RIP Sprinkles, our first pet, 08 June 1994 - 13 July 2012. A life well lived.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Saturday Musings, 07 July 2012
Good morning,
The heat has broken, at least for one sweet morning, though the potted plants on my deck have shriveled despite the constant watering and desperate deployment of a spray bottle. A few petunias gamely struggle; the begonias sighed and died; the Gerber daisies have shriveled; one of the two bright pink plants, the names of which I no longer recall, turned to dusty shreds. The other has blackened buds, hard and sad, that foretell its pending demise. I should have brought the plants into the house when the heat wave struck, I tell myself; now it is too late.
In times past, when the children whose high, happy voices gave vibrant life to this home cavorted in the driveway, we dragged a large pool to the backyard, stood it in the middle of a twelve-foot wide sand pile, and created our own beach. A Little Tykes slide angled over the side of the pool into the shimmering water. In a box, in the attic maybe -- or on a high shelf in the basement -- pictures of those summers rest against old letters, fading drawings made from Cray Pas, and gilded, ribbonned, letters of commendation.
As I conspired with him the other day to orchestrate a repair to a much-cherished guitar belonging to my son, my friend Alan paused and raised his hand. Do you remember this, he said, palm turned towards me, keeping me still, while Alan summoned the memory. Do you remember when you said, "A boy? What on earth am I going to do with a boy?"
I remember.
I lay in a gigantic heap, on a gurney, in a sterile room in Little Rock, at the University of Arkansas' genetic testing laboratory. A technician sat on a low stool between me and a monitor, with an ultra sound wand in one gloved hand, the head of the wand pressed against my belly. Do you want to know the gender, she asked. No, I don't, I replied. It's a boy! she crowed, unable to contain herself.
A boy? A boy? What on earth am I going to do with a boy?
I have my answer now.
With that boy, I learned so many life's lessons that they fill my heart and spill out into the world around me.
That boy announced, in a baby's voice, that he would be the one to get the newspaper from our apartment doorstep, the first winter we moved back to Kansas City. He could barely reach the knob of our front door, but turn it he did. He bent down to get the Kansas City Star for me, the January before he turned two, and each day thereafter until we moved in May. Your legs don't work so good, Mommy, he told me. Patrick get the paper for you.
When I fell on the ice at the end of our driveway, in the home we bought that year, he toddled down the street to our neighbors' home down to get help. He was two and a half.
When I tripped over a gutter hiding under the snow in the dog run one dark night the next winter, that boy felt that I had been outside too long, and telephoned the same neighbor. All ten of my toes were broken. The neighbor found me lying, nearing numbness, at the side of the house on a bed of crystalline snow.
At five, that boy reached down into a hotel swimming pool to grab my shoulder as I sputtered and struggled, gasping for breath, my spastic legs unable to propel me from the deep end. He held me out of the water, patiently waiting for someone to come. A passing guest saw this stunning tableau through the large glass window that fronted on the lobby, and ran into the pool area. Through my coughing, as I sagged against the concrete, I heard the man say, You did good, son, you did real good. Your Mom's going to be okay.
With that boy, I climbed a mountain, conquered my fear of heights, and stood on the edge of a canyon to watch a cluster of birds swoop into the depths from which we had come.
Beside that boy, I journeyed deep into Carlsbad Cavern, beyond the accessible trail, raising my eyes to see the wondrous formations above me, slithering through narrow passages, my hand in his small one, his seven-year-old frame leading the way.
I traversed uneven ground, leaning on a walker, with a newly operated knee, to see that boy receive his Arrow of Light, which to this day nestles in a box on my dresser.
I walked the halls of the Mayo Clinic with that boy, and watched him pedal his bike around a lake in Rochester. I laughed when he asked if we could live in that hotel forever. With that boy, I sat in a small office to hear the verdict: The doctors in Kansas City were wrong. Your boy does not have Addison's disease.
A year later, I ignored that boy's determined refusal to board a plane to Mexico, despite the weeks of planning, the months of speaking Spanish by text message, the doctor's clearance to travel, the hours of filling out paperwork for the scholarship. I ignored his expressions of apprehension. I knew the time for him to fly had arrived.
Six weeks later, I barely recognized him as he followed other passengers into the waiting area, with his dark tan, his once-long hair now in short, thick curls around his head. I was not just the tallest kid in the group, he chuckled. I was the tallest person in the whole country! Later, after we dropped off the friend who had ridden to the airport with me, he softly admitted: I am so glad you made me go!
I quietly listened to that boy tell me a classmate had said that he was "too white to go to this school", and I smiled, three years later, when that boy was elected president of his senior class. There were five candidates, he said, dismissively. I just split the vote. Still.
I slid into a ditch in a blizzard with that boy, en route to my cousin's funeral, our hearts racing. We looked at each other with something between terror and glee. With the white raging all around us, we crept up the exit ramp in our Chevy Blazer, slowly edging into the parking lot of a restaurant, where we ordered soup and waited out the storm.
That boy has walked me down two aisles, visited me in three hospitals, traveled to ten or twelve states with me, and invented characters and voices to make me laugh in times when my despair permeated the air.
I walked across urban Chicago campuses with that boy, assuring him that yes, he could manage far from home. I stood at the entry to a broad green campus, in Indiana, in March of 2009, and told him that we would find a way to make his attendance there happen.
I watched him struggle through that first year of college, and regroup, the summer after.
I watched him soar for the next two years, with friends, heartbreaks, good grades, and a crummy summer job from which he learned a valuable lesson. I have read the stories published under his name in his campus literary review, year after year. I've sat in a distant room, listening to the increasingly complex sounds of his guitar.
And a month ago, I packed that Chevy Blazer, and sent him off to Hollywood.
At 1:50 p.m., CDST, on Sunday, 08 July 2012, that boy will vanish. He will be 21 at that very moment. He will stand as he has always stood despite his many fears and trepidations: Smiling that slight, steady smile. Determined, strong, capable. And at long last, I will have my answer.
What on earth am I going to do with a boy?
Watch him grow to be a man.
Happy Birthday, Patrick Charles Corley. My pride in you is boundless.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
The heat has broken, at least for one sweet morning, though the potted plants on my deck have shriveled despite the constant watering and desperate deployment of a spray bottle. A few petunias gamely struggle; the begonias sighed and died; the Gerber daisies have shriveled; one of the two bright pink plants, the names of which I no longer recall, turned to dusty shreds. The other has blackened buds, hard and sad, that foretell its pending demise. I should have brought the plants into the house when the heat wave struck, I tell myself; now it is too late.
In times past, when the children whose high, happy voices gave vibrant life to this home cavorted in the driveway, we dragged a large pool to the backyard, stood it in the middle of a twelve-foot wide sand pile, and created our own beach. A Little Tykes slide angled over the side of the pool into the shimmering water. In a box, in the attic maybe -- or on a high shelf in the basement -- pictures of those summers rest against old letters, fading drawings made from Cray Pas, and gilded, ribbonned, letters of commendation.
As I conspired with him the other day to orchestrate a repair to a much-cherished guitar belonging to my son, my friend Alan paused and raised his hand. Do you remember this, he said, palm turned towards me, keeping me still, while Alan summoned the memory. Do you remember when you said, "A boy? What on earth am I going to do with a boy?"
I remember.
I lay in a gigantic heap, on a gurney, in a sterile room in Little Rock, at the University of Arkansas' genetic testing laboratory. A technician sat on a low stool between me and a monitor, with an ultra sound wand in one gloved hand, the head of the wand pressed against my belly. Do you want to know the gender, she asked. No, I don't, I replied. It's a boy! she crowed, unable to contain herself.
A boy? A boy? What on earth am I going to do with a boy?
I have my answer now.
With that boy, I learned so many life's lessons that they fill my heart and spill out into the world around me.
That boy announced, in a baby's voice, that he would be the one to get the newspaper from our apartment doorstep, the first winter we moved back to Kansas City. He could barely reach the knob of our front door, but turn it he did. He bent down to get the Kansas City Star for me, the January before he turned two, and each day thereafter until we moved in May. Your legs don't work so good, Mommy, he told me. Patrick get the paper for you.
When I fell on the ice at the end of our driveway, in the home we bought that year, he toddled down the street to our neighbors' home down to get help. He was two and a half.
When I tripped over a gutter hiding under the snow in the dog run one dark night the next winter, that boy felt that I had been outside too long, and telephoned the same neighbor. All ten of my toes were broken. The neighbor found me lying, nearing numbness, at the side of the house on a bed of crystalline snow.
At five, that boy reached down into a hotel swimming pool to grab my shoulder as I sputtered and struggled, gasping for breath, my spastic legs unable to propel me from the deep end. He held me out of the water, patiently waiting for someone to come. A passing guest saw this stunning tableau through the large glass window that fronted on the lobby, and ran into the pool area. Through my coughing, as I sagged against the concrete, I heard the man say, You did good, son, you did real good. Your Mom's going to be okay.
With that boy, I climbed a mountain, conquered my fear of heights, and stood on the edge of a canyon to watch a cluster of birds swoop into the depths from which we had come.
Beside that boy, I journeyed deep into Carlsbad Cavern, beyond the accessible trail, raising my eyes to see the wondrous formations above me, slithering through narrow passages, my hand in his small one, his seven-year-old frame leading the way.
I traversed uneven ground, leaning on a walker, with a newly operated knee, to see that boy receive his Arrow of Light, which to this day nestles in a box on my dresser.
I walked the halls of the Mayo Clinic with that boy, and watched him pedal his bike around a lake in Rochester. I laughed when he asked if we could live in that hotel forever. With that boy, I sat in a small office to hear the verdict: The doctors in Kansas City were wrong. Your boy does not have Addison's disease.
A year later, I ignored that boy's determined refusal to board a plane to Mexico, despite the weeks of planning, the months of speaking Spanish by text message, the doctor's clearance to travel, the hours of filling out paperwork for the scholarship. I ignored his expressions of apprehension. I knew the time for him to fly had arrived.
Six weeks later, I barely recognized him as he followed other passengers into the waiting area, with his dark tan, his once-long hair now in short, thick curls around his head. I was not just the tallest kid in the group, he chuckled. I was the tallest person in the whole country! Later, after we dropped off the friend who had ridden to the airport with me, he softly admitted: I am so glad you made me go!
I quietly listened to that boy tell me a classmate had said that he was "too white to go to this school", and I smiled, three years later, when that boy was elected president of his senior class. There were five candidates, he said, dismissively. I just split the vote. Still.
I slid into a ditch in a blizzard with that boy, en route to my cousin's funeral, our hearts racing. We looked at each other with something between terror and glee. With the white raging all around us, we crept up the exit ramp in our Chevy Blazer, slowly edging into the parking lot of a restaurant, where we ordered soup and waited out the storm.
That boy has walked me down two aisles, visited me in three hospitals, traveled to ten or twelve states with me, and invented characters and voices to make me laugh in times when my despair permeated the air.
I walked across urban Chicago campuses with that boy, assuring him that yes, he could manage far from home. I stood at the entry to a broad green campus, in Indiana, in March of 2009, and told him that we would find a way to make his attendance there happen.
I watched him struggle through that first year of college, and regroup, the summer after.
I watched him soar for the next two years, with friends, heartbreaks, good grades, and a crummy summer job from which he learned a valuable lesson. I have read the stories published under his name in his campus literary review, year after year. I've sat in a distant room, listening to the increasingly complex sounds of his guitar.
And a month ago, I packed that Chevy Blazer, and sent him off to Hollywood.
At 1:50 p.m., CDST, on Sunday, 08 July 2012, that boy will vanish. He will be 21 at that very moment. He will stand as he has always stood despite his many fears and trepidations: Smiling that slight, steady smile. Determined, strong, capable. And at long last, I will have my answer.
What on earth am I going to do with a boy?
Watch him grow to be a man.
Happy Birthday, Patrick Charles Corley. My pride in you is boundless.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
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The Missouri Mugwump®
- M. Corinne Corley
- I've been many things in my life: A child, a daughter, a friend; a wife, a mother, a lawyer and a pet-owner. I've given my best to many things and my worst to a few. I live in Brookside, in an airplane bungalow. I'm an eternal optimist and a sometime-poet. If I ever got a poem published in The New Yorker, I would die a happy woman. I'm a proud supporter of the Arts in the California Delta. I vote Democrat, fly a Peace flag, live in a tiny house on wheels, cry at Hallmark commercials, and recycle. I am The Missouri Mugwump. ®