Les and Mae, 1946
If these walls could talk
they would speak of vivid moments
of drowned worries and over-leveraged resilience.
They met in England during World War II.
He, a dashing American soldier,
She, a vivacious redhead British bombshell.
She left her fiance, her family, her country and
her wartime job in munitions earning more than her father,
to begin a life in California with the American equestrian.
She was afraid of horses.
The turning of the key would unlock
prescription-strength hopefulness
and unnameable overturned cathedrals
where childhood warriors came out to play.
They married in England in 1945
after an argument the night before:
She was certain the groomsman with the glass eye
would ruin their wedding pictures.
Her long white gown had been worn by four wartime brides before her
and was booked for its next gig mere hours later.
She packed the white silk blouses
lovingly sewn by her mother out of tattered parachutes.
Along with a few favorite piano songbooks
she boarded the basement of a ship
for over a week of seasick anticipation.
Arriving first in New York
then traveling by bus to meet her new husband on the west coast.
Fresh polished photographs advertise adventure.
Pale fire born with sunlight.
In the kitchen lemon meringue slices of pure joy outlast time.
Though they had little money
He gifted her with a piano and
She bought him a Quarterhorse.
Soon with newlywed excitement they built the house they would live in forever.
Home movies show a long wished for baby,
adopted three days after his birth.
There were horses, dogs, cats, ducks and chickens.
A barn to build and fences to post.
A roaring fire in the winter mornings and at dusk,
so blustering that at times the flames had to be stomped out of the carpet.
Piano music and her singsong voice.
Tea at four and rack of lamb for dinner.
True homes are a kaleidoscope of emotions,
loss reverberates through time
and the parameters of grief are wide and careless.
A car accident took their only child as a teenager.
She bravely felt that pain as it surfaced and resurfaced,
long after people expected her to move on.
She refused to pretend.
I think I loved this about her most of all.
Their marriage endured.
They traveled and laughed again and drank vodka tonics with dinner.
They experienced the difficulties that harshly accompany growing old.
They were a comfort to one another,
and I would imagine a pain in one another's ass sometimes too.
But I was there at the end,
I saw how they fell asleep, hands entwined, sixty four years later.
I noticed how they left this world only days apart.
Whistling echoes of the dented aluminum tea kettle
now belong to the archive of crowded remembrance.
The barn recounts its own story of
long passed youth and inexperience.
My eyes close to the fragrance of fading honeysuckle
and the threaded texture of decades past.
My song is a noble farewell.
Friday, March 18, 2011
