Under the Birch Tree Read online

  When I was a young girl, Mom insisted photo opportunities were best served when taken in front of the house’s picture window. I obliged her because my birch buddy was near, plotted in the center of circling greens where it stood tall and arabesque in front of me, as if to say, look here and smile, when my photo was waiting to be taken on my first day of kindergarten. The tree’s branches did not shade my eyes, squinty from the sun’s high-noon rays. My pixie haircut was aglow in sun-bleached hair; my tanned body offset my navy dress, patterned in tiny white polka dots, with an appliqué of paintbrushes and an artist’s palette in primary colors at the hem. A white Peter Pan collar mimicked the roundness I was trying to evade. But the dress was too small because the sleeves did not meet my wrists, and the skinny elastic around my forearms left an indented pink ring on my skin. My chubby feet were crammed into blood-red Mary Janes, whose straps Mom had struggled to pull just to the first hole on the buckle. Standing at attention with my feet together and my hands folded in front, I posed with my heels brushing against the yellow marigolds in full bloom. Connecting with my birch buddy made the irritations of a too-small dress and short-strapped shoes diminish as my buddy’s arms welcomed a toasty blanket of sun overhead. The tree ushered a smile on my face and a squint in my eye on that Indian summer day, allowing my contentment to win over my physical discomfort. I was present with my house and my birch buddy. I was at home.

  Ballet and Brownies initiated my girlhood. Though my occupations were a short-term investment, I learned that working with others was intimidating and difficult as I tried to keep up on toe and in Brownie points. I dropped out of both ventures, but not before I reveled in wearing the pink-and-brown uniforms in membership and belonging.

  I loved summer vacations. The months begged for idleness, overshadowed by excitement in the morning not knowing the day’s offering. Mom signed Tim and me up for swimming lessons at Exmoor Country Club, where Dad played golf on Saturday mornings. But our fear of water became a hurdle to overcome if we were to get past the first lesson, let alone put our faces in the pool. One summer morning, the sun was warm and bursting out of a deep blue sky when we arrived at the club for our lesson. I sat on the rough ground poolside and resisted the coarse cement pull at my bottom. Rocking back and forth, the water and I fell into a rhythm. The sun’s reflection off the white cement made me squint hard as I stared into the bright water, watching the ripples inch toward me. I became mesmerized by the visual chant distracting my sense of place as I looked deeper, hypnotized by the bottomless pool. Its depth fooled me. I was underwater. My eyes popped open, arms fanned, and I kicked my legs. I struggled to reach the top, or maybe I was moving deeper toward the bottom. I remembered the Catholic nuns at Holy Cross School telling me to be faithful to God when faced with hardship, so I yelled at him to get his attention fast and to invoke my faith in my savior: “Get me out of here! Where do I go?” I prayed to find my way to the surface. I heard my ears fill with water, and then I couldn’t hear. Soon I found light. The light’s beam had guided me to the water’s surface.

  I learned that nothing really bad would happen to me and that I would always be protected. I think that’s what the nuns meant back then when their mighty voices said to always be faithful to God and he will show you the way.

  A savior scooped me up, wrapped me in a towel, and rushed me to the arms of my unsuspecting mother, where we took to our chaise to let the sun relax our emotions.

  A household aura, created by my mother’s unending quest for perfection and a less than perfect me, made me nervous and anxious. The night before a school test was one of panic, and the day of was trauma. Test taking jump-shot my nerves, flushed me with impending doom, resulting in giving my stomach an ache. I worked myself up to the point that I had to be excused to the nurse’s office because I wasn’t well. The pristine white office with a tall, slender lady in a white dress and matching cap declared my malady official. The nurse instructed me to sit on the toilet for a while. When no results followed, she sat me outside the bathroom to wait until my stomachache passed. It never did, so Mom was summoned to pick me up. When I got home, Mom directed me to the bathroom. “But drink this first,” she said. “It’s prune juice.” I’m not sure if I was better because of the magic juice or because I was at home. Mom sat downstairs in the den penciling in the crossword puzzle and watching Days of Our Lives on television while I remained upstairs. The contentment from being at home relieved my ache. My home relieved discomforts.

  When I became a fifth-grader, the music teacher introduced my class to musical instruments. The teacher played the flute, then the trumpet, the clarinet, and finally the saxophone. He said we could learn to play these too. That night before dinner I waited to show the permission slip to Dad until he was seated in his leather chair and had his cocktail in hand.

  “We had an assembly today. I want to play the clarinet,” I told Dad. I spoke softly, hoping he’d had enough sitting and cocktail sipping to respond.

  I was drawn to the clarinet’s solid ebony wood trunk with shiny silver buttons, tabs, and holes positioned like a zipper, creating music with choreographed finger placement playing the right sequence of notes.

  “I could be in the band that plays concerts.” I wondered if he was listening as he stared at the slip. I hoped my optimistic, clear tone of voice would divert his attention to me.

  After a pause, Dad signed the slip. I wasn’t sure if he approved, though, because of his lack of emotion and reassuring words. I considered his signature on the slip as his communication to me. We were off to the music store the next Saturday to rent a clarinet.

  I was to play a solo for the spring concert, and while I waited for the audience to be seated, my friend Lucy, the flutist, and I stood at the door of the music room and peeked inside. My excitement and sense of importance grew when we saw a full house. Mom sat with arms folded in her chair as her eyes scanned the audience. Suddenly, her head turned to us in the doorway, and the glare from her eyes to mine was the beginning of the end. She got up from her seat and rushed to the door. As she bent over, her face matched to mine, her heated breath clung to my embarrassed red face.

  “What are you doing? You’re so loud with that squealing and laughing. You need to be quiet,” she said.

  “I … I was just looking … to see who was here,” I said. I was mortified. My outburst of zealous chatter had been too much for her. I considered how bad I had acted but didn’t believe that being excited and happy just like everyone else was wrong.

  My excitement deflated. Just when I thought well of myself as a solo clarinetist, her scorn blindsided me. As much as I thought she was going to be proud of me, she wasn’t. After the concert, there was praise and pride everywhere else, but for Mom and me, there was a quiet car ride home. The silence was heavy with her disappointment in me.

  My deportment lacked perfection, and I don’t remember Dad even being there. My hope for earning my parents’ pride disintegrated. How easily a child’s enthusiasm and self-esteem can be negated by one parent’s scolding and the other’s absence.

  When I got home from school one afternoon, Mom was sitting in her chair in the den, watching the Cubs baseball game on television and reading the Chicago Daily News. I plopped on the leather ottoman in front of her and waited for her acknowledgement.

  “So, how was your day?” she asked. I hesitated to answer. Mom didn’t usually ask me this, so I grabbed the opportunity to chime in with details. I welcomed her interest in me.

  “Oh, okay, I guess okay. I did better on my math test than I thought, and the extra science work I did was collected. I thought I’d go bowling with Shirley later today. Her mom would—”

  “You know, they just can’t seem to get any hits today,” Mom interrupted, her eyes still on the television screen. I had momentarily lost her attention to a baseball team.

  “So, aren’t you going to ask me what I did today?” she asked.

  “Okay, so, what did you do?” Maybe she did something special
for Tim and me.

  “Can’t you tell? Can’t you see what I did all day long?” She waved her hand back and forth.

  “What? What is it?” I asked, alarmed and frustrated. I didn’t understand.

  “The house. I cleaned the entire house, did all the laundry, and washed all the downstairs windows.”

  “Okay, sorry, I didn’t notice,” I whispered.

  I escaped to my room to wait to go bowling with Shirley.

  I never understood why she was so upset with me just because I didn’t notice her spotless windows and empty laundry bins. I thought every mom worked like this to achieve the same domestic results Mom did. I reasoned I was just a kid and it was adult, mom stuff. But then I realized moms don’t get gold stars in recognition for outstanding achievement like I did when I’d ace a spelling test. I had failed to give her a gold star.

  My only consistent companion, Martha, my school pal since kindergarten, lived in the corner red brick house up the street. We would ride our twin green Schwinn bikes with matching green-and-white baskets up Deerfield Road to Holy Cross School. The crossing guard at the traffic light considered us sisters because we looked alike with matching short pixie haircuts, round faces, and chubby torsos. I think I was considered the thirteenth child and an interloper to her family of twelve.

  Once when Martha was at my house after school, we went upstairs to watch television in my parents’ bedroom.

  “Can we be in here?” Martha asked. She hesitantly put one foot through the doorway. I understood her reluctance to follow me because no friends were allowed upstairs at her house.

  “Yes, I’m here all the time, doing stuff or just watching TV.”

  “It’s a big room, and with a television too?” she said. “There’re two beds in here, like that show on TV with the Petries. They’re not together?” I noticed her wide-eyed expression as she got to see the bedroom of her friend’s parents.

  I didn’t consider the question, let alone the answer. It was just something that was.

  Mom and Dad weren’t in their bedroom much—together. Dad waited for Mom to shower and dress, and then it was Dad’s turn. In the dressing area, the double sinks never appeared to be occupied at the same time, and their closets were on opposite sides. A nightstand separated the two single beds. Splits and opposites characterized their room.

  There was something about being upstairs in my parents’ bedroom, though. A chair and television accompanied each other in the corner, and there was enough floor space for me to occupy in front of the screen to watch Andy Hardy movies. I napped on Mom’s bed after my hot dog lunch on a Saturday afternoon when Mom was getting her hair done and Grandma stayed with me. Weekend afternoons and hours after school were spent in their bedroom where it was quiet, and I was alone. It was a covert way to connect to Mom and Dad through their bedroom and personal space. The open cover of Mom’s vanity invited me to touch a few of her many telltale items. Peeking at her lipstick tubes, I discovered her favorite colors, how she made her nails indeed shine—like the bottle said—like cotton candy, and the wide-toothed comb that explained how she kept her permed hair in its round shape. Dad’s vanity tray atop his dresser was simply displayed with just enough space for his watch, bracelet, and billfold. There was nothing more; it was just as unrevealing as he was.

  Sitting in Mom’s corner chair, I would look out the window to see the tips of my birch buddy below, as it stretched to reach my face. I had greeted its waving branches in contentment. My comfortable familiar surrounded me.

  The summer days were long, and the nights hung on until the sun dipped in our backyard and for many more yards thereafter, illuminating the horizon with splashes of pink and golden yellow against darkness that signaled time to squeeze more out of the day. I would pedal my bike along the streets with speed in tandem with the night’s fall, reciting who lived in each house and extending my home’s boundaries. Darkness pushed the day’s dawn into the earth. Coasting along Carlisle nearing home, I saw my birch tree signal me like a beacon with its top branches, young and sprouting, tickling the roof. I walked into a warm home from the cool night air and retreated to my bedroom, where I stayed awake until I heard Timmy’s bedroom door click shut, well after dark.

  one with Julia, and all that jazz

  I thought Mom was good at what she did in our home. From her clever use of vinegar to wash windows and newspaper to dry them, to ironing bed sheets and Dad’s boxers, I noticed her hard work and her sweaty brow. Perhaps one of Mom’s most dedicated housewifely duties was cooking and being one with Julia—Child, that is. Watching Julia on television was as regular a practice for Mom as going to Mass on Saturday nights as a family. Julia was perfection, and Mom strove to be one with her because of that, even when she fell short. “This is not how it turned out for Julia,” she’d say, standing over the stove.

  Mom often referred to her Good Housekeeping Cookbook, a treasured wedding shower gift in the early fifties, which reflected its use with grease stains, stuck pages, and torn binding. Even though her menus were redundant, especially on Friday nights, she saw the elegance in a fillet of sole, Le Sueur’s (the only acceptable, tender pea), and rice (required to be fluffy), even if Tim and I never noticed the details in her cooking or her perfectionism, which she consistently demonstrated on a plate.

  Once, enthusiastic for culinary innovation, Mom gave Hamburger Helper a try when it was first invented. It was as if she had found a new recipe on a clean, unread page of her faithful cookbook. I stood by her in anticipation while she read each step from the box. However, upon first sight of the creation, she knew she couldn’t possibly serve the gray blob. We shared the same adventure with trying to turn dried stuff in a box into a moist meal in a pan.

  I reflect on these domestic practices and see how much they have influenced my own. I have my mother to thank for the understanding of cooking my own box-less meals, cleaning my windows twice a year, and washing clothes once a week. These practices are more than just learned; they are connections I carry with me today.

  Mom believed in the value of preparing three meals a day, from scratch, and Timmy and I as young ones never felt neglected because of the availability of food. “Oh, what a happy, fat baby you were. So cute. You kept eating as along as Mrs. Butterwick fed you,” Mom said to me. “She helped me after you were born, while my leg was still in a cast. She was always cooking and you were always eating.” Mom thought if you were fat, you must be happy—and cute.

  During one yearly checkup, when I was entering fifth grade, Dr. Kaplan said, “Let’s talk about going on a diet.” He showed me an illustrated pyramid with food groupings and what to eat as you went up the pyramid. I didn’t get it. It was too complicated, and Mom wasn’t going to be bothered with following a chart when her home-cooked meals sufficed for the family diets. So the chubby kids ate, and as long as we continued to do so, Mom would dish it up.

  Oddly, my mother didn’t think there was anything necessarily wrong with my plumpness; she considered it a mere flaw in me that could be corrected with a catalog. She reasoned to work with what she had, a chubby girl, and let the department store Montgomery Ward solve the issue. At the start of each school year, arguments would ensue at the sight of a new catalog in the mailbox.

  “But why do I always have to get clothes from here?” I’d say.

  “Because you don’t fit into anything anyplace else,” said Mom.

  Hence, Ward’s “husky” clothes, available to those who required more of a generous fit. I didn’t want to be dressed like I came from a catalog, but for Mom, masking any flaws with stylish clothes was a valid approach. So I wore matchy-matchy outfits that illustrated “perfection,” such as pumpkin-colored, elastic-waist polyester slacks and top with cream yoke and knobby, gold buttons at my shoulders. These garments ensured I stood out from the other kids, not because I was chubby but because of my wardrobe. My clothes made me different.

  I could argue that I was blessed with a uniform requirement for gym class. I
didn’t quite fit into the school-issued blue one-piece with snaps up the front, so I issued my own gym clothes: polyester purple shorts with elastic waistband and a navy T-shirt. One day, Miss McGuire signaled me from the gym’s doorway waving something blue in her chubby hand like a victim waving a white flag in surrender. “Psssst, Nancy, here’s your new gym suit. I think this one will fit you just fine,” she said with a smile. She was excited that the discrepancy of an ill-fitting uniform had been cleared up, as if she had just fit the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle. I didn’t have to be different anymore because of my uniform. This one was similar enough to be like the others. I had surrendered to conformity. I had indeed been blessed.

  Despite our battle of wills over my clothes and the erratic nature of our conversations, which ranged from heated arguments to calming words, I knew Mom was a dedicated fixer, working hard at what wasn’t perfect in her home and with her kids. She was always there for Tim and me, as a provider of the basic necessities of life through her cooking, our catalog clothes, and a clean and tidy house.

  By contrast, my early memories of my father are few and far between. I assumed there would be an inherent connection simply because he was my dad, but really, we were two people who always encountered each other as if meeting for the first time. Our silence and awkwardness about what to say and how to be with each other was palpable. Connecting with him in similar ways as I did with Mom eluded me.

  My earliest memory of him was when I was seven or eight, and Dad would take me with him to run errands on Saturday mornings. I’d tag along as customary and quickly learned to associate Saturdays with taking care of one’s home and personal needs, a practice I keep to this day. In the summer, Dad wore a light blue or yellow cotton polo shirt and polyester navy or tan golf slacks, readying himself for a possible Saturday-afternoon golf round. Our first stop was to see Rudy at the barbershop. When Dad and I would arrive there, Rudy was always ready for him. I waited, seated in a corner in a big chair, nonchalantly fingering sport sections of folded newspapers and other well-handled manly magazines. I wondered why it took so long for Rudy to cut a brief line of thin hair that grew like a horseshoe around the back of Dad’s shiny bald head. But the real time-spender was on Dad’s manicure following the haircut. Oh, how his nails were shaped and polished to a shine. His nails shined just like his shoes.