Tea

Several months before my grandfather died, Mam- mam was making tea and as she carried a soup-pot of boiling water to the table where the cup and tea bag waited, somehow – for some reason - she fell. Boiling water splashed on her upper chest and down her left arm. She was alone but somehow managed to reach the phone. When admitted to the hospital she took a room on the floor above my grandfather’s. She had multiple operations in which the top two layers of her epidermis and a layer of her dermis were taken from donor sites on her upper thigh and grafted to her chest and arm. She was in excruciating pain when she visited her husband from her own hospital room but she never told him about the accident – he died there without knowing.

Many years later, and after the third teakettle in as many weeks, my mother started wondering what was happening to them. After the fifth she found out. The snow was heavy that winter and when it finally started to melt in early March it revealed the remnants of four aluminum teakettles; the bottoms of each were melted away. Mammam would put water on the stove for tea and then forget to take it from the electric burner, the water would dissipate and the aluminum would dissolve on the red-hot surface. She hid the kettles in the snow under the hydrangea bush because she knew that evidence of such an incident would certainly prompt disconcertion – especially with her tainted record of teapot toting. She was correct. That spring, concerned with her ability to navigate the necessities of the everyday, my parents took her to a nursing home – the same one in which she had worked as a nurse’s aid years earlier.

Spelling and Alzheimer's

As we cleared the last of Mammam’s belongings from her house we found several notes that she had written. They were written for anyone - including herself. My favorite was found in a box under her bed on top of a carefully folded George Washington coverlet . It read, "Bedspred. Bedspread. Beadspred. Here it is. There it is. Ha Ha Ha."

Keepings

On the side of the kitchen cupboard near the entry to Mammam’s dining room, hung a dinner plate. Carefully cut felt was glued to the surface - the word ‘Rose’ was near the bottom and the image above it was a woman’s profile. She wore a black hat and tulle covered the top half of her face. Mammam had wrapped the plate with Saran-Wrap.

When I was eleven or twelve I drew a rose for Mammam – her name was Rose. I drew it on half a sheet of loose-leaf paper. I drew it in pencil and next to it I carefully printed, “A Rose for Rose.” Years later, my father found it among things she apparently valued. It was in a small black leather change bag that she kept in her purse. It was folded a few times and it was stored there for safe keeping along with one clip-on earring, several bobby-pins, a holy card and a ‘Keep on Truckin’’ key chain.

A Later Version of Now

I never arrived at Mammam’s to find her sleeping – regardless of the time of day. And the fact that she used her queen size bed as a storage surface made me wonder where she slept – as well as when. I remember considering that perhaps she didn’t sleep – that it wasn’t just her mind that wended through memories merged with dreams and vice versa. I considered that, in our absence perhaps her reality shifted to a site, made in part, from an earlier version of then - the places we only find in our sleep and our half-waking thoughts and the space between remembering and forgetting. I make it sound pleasant because I wanted it to be that way – with sepia tones and blurred edges - but I’m certain it must have also been for her, at times, horrifying.

My father remodeled Mammam’s house in the years before she went to the nursing home. The alterations included the addition of a large ‘picture’ window in what was originally the second living room - now her bedroom. The upstairs had been separated into an apartment many years earlier when my parents lived there as newlyweds.

We entered the bedroom with Mammam leading the way – calling us in eager to share her discovery. Laid out on the bed was the entirety of Mammam’s jewelry collection – all that she had accumulated over many years. It was laid down with precision, the necklaces in teardrop shapes with the matching earrings inside. Bracelets lined the one edge of the bed and several small jewelry boxes, now empty, rested on the pillows. Rings were placed in lines and pressed into the texture of the George Washington Bedspread to lay flat. “Look!” she said, “The jewelry store truck just backed up to the window and this is what came out!” She moved her hands in a slow gesture that mimicked that of a magician guiding a levitated body. The jewelry had moved just as we saw it there, from the truck, through the window and on to the bed. All of it was new to her and she was stunned by its sudden appearance.

I have kept one of her clip-on earrings as I found it, in a small leather change purse that she carried in the handbag she had to often hide from the son-of-a-bitch that tried to take it.

Hopping Hearts

Certain visual cues would prompt specific stories from Mammam. My brother used to enjoy pointing out the various cues – sometimes repeatedly. Mammam would unknowingly oblige – again and again and again. It sounds mean, I know, but we needed to laugh - we couldn’t cry any more.

When Mammam walked in our kitchen in Tharptown, something there would prompt her to tell us about Dyngus Day – a story that took place in her youth, as most did, when the girls chased the boys with long switches – whipping their legs as they ran. Only now, with a knowledge of that tradition, do I realize the humor she saw in that story. Frankly, I also find it easy to imagine the joy one might get from dumping water on some one’s head to wake them in the morning – something else that was apparently common on Dyngus Day.

Mammam would look out her front window at the low ridge where the railroad track used to be and she would tell us about the time the train hit the cow. In its repeated telling the story slipped away from its inceptive moment and as it slipped, exaggerations and related notions clung. Every time she told a story it was a new truth.

As I recall it, she and the other neighborhood kids were playing in the field around the tracks when a train struck a cow that was standing in its path. “That train hit it SO hard it knocked its heart right out of its body, but that heart kept beating and beating! It beat so hard that it bounced all the way down the tracks to the silk mill!” She would imitate its movement with her hand on the counter in a gesture that might also illustrate the hopping of a bunny. The silk mill was about a half mile from where the cow was struck. She’d continue, “That heart beat and beat all the way to Franklin Street and we chased it and chased and it just kept hop-hop-hopping! – all the way down to the silk mill! – we chased it and laughed and laughed!”

This current map of a section of Shamokin shows the route the heifer's heart hopped (A) – it went in a westerly direction. B is the site of the former Eagle Silk Mill, C is where Mammam lived most of her adult life, D is where my parents currently reside and E indicates the house where my father was born.

Son of a Bitch

It was always the fault of “some son-of-a-bitch.”

Whenever something didn’t go well, when something like Mammam’s purse was missing, she always blamed “some son-of-a-bitch.” “Some son-of-a-bitch stole my purse!” she’d say on the phone, “You better get up here!” We would search her house thoroughly and find it wrapped in a large towel and hidden in the back of the linen closet. She would hide her purse from the son-of-a-bitch, forget where she put it and declare that some son-of-a-bitch took it. When we would find it she’d say, “Who’s the son-of-a-bitch that put it there!” It was an endless son-of-a-bitch of a cycle.

“Hia Mammam, it’s Allen, your grandson.” I was never certain she knew who I was – she seemed to, but one would expect that.

“Oh, hiya!”

“Mammam, I’m going to come up to your place in a little while, why don’t you tell me if you need any groceries.” Her short-term memory was nearly gone so I made an attempt to talk her through a process that would lead me to the acquisition of some sound information. “Go to the refrigerator and see if you need milk or butter – milk or butter Mammam – try to remember that. Tell me what you’re looking for?”

“Okay. Yeah – yeah, milk or butter, milk or butter –“ I repeated the plan several times and I was certain she had it. She set the phone down on the table near the entrance to the kitchen and I could hear her, “milk or butter, milk or butter.” She said it softly and as she walked into the kitchen her voice faded further. I could hear a few noises in the background and I waited. I waited some more and I could hear her talking but I couldn’t decipher her words - until she approached the phone, then I heard, “Who is the son-of-a-bitch that left the phone off the hook?” a click and then a dialtone.

Gettysburg's Cannon

The phonebook that year had a grid of nine images on its cover; each celebrated part of Pennsylvania’s history: the Liberty Bell, a covered bridge, a statue of William Penn, a round barn, Independence Hall, a locomotive, an Amish horse and cart and some Mountain Laurel. The lower right image was a cannon from Gettysburg’s Civil War battlefields.

The phone rang. It was what we called “Mammam’s hotline.” My parents had decided to get an additional phone line. We listed only our new number and we gave our new number to family and friends; except Mammam, she had our old number – 648-9649 – scrawled on a piece of paper beside her phone. She would dial it, talk to us, and frequently, after just hanging up, call us back, having no recollection of just speaking to us. We would make a point of answering it every once in a while but some days the phone rang continuously. My mother counted 40 calls one afternoon. Other days she wouldn’t call at all; we’d always make sure we drove over to see her those days.

“Hia! Hey, - hey” she would start talking before we would even say a word. She only needed to hear the ringing stop and her lips took off like horses from the gates. “I got the new phone book here!” She was very excited. “It’s nice on the front there. There’s the Liberty Bell, a covered bridge like the one there in, uh, you know ? Down by the – it has a roof on it, there is the statue of George Washington and the Amish buggy and then after that there’s – uh – some flowers and then, uh, there is, that uh – “ She went from left to right down the grid of nine images. When she got to the last one her synapses just failed. They didn’t connect to something similar in function, they didn’t connect to something similar in appearance. They connected to nothing. If she didn’t know it, it was unknown. There” she said, “ - there is something you or I know nothing about.”

Lost Spitball

My father claims we were related to Stanley Coveleski – cousins. The brothers that owned the gas station on the corner of Sunbury and Shamokin Streets – they were our cousins. The woman that lived across from St. Ed’s playground – she was a cousin. The guy with the handle-bar mustache - a cousin. The number of cousins that my father claims we have prompts a concern that somewhere along the line there was some accidental inbreeding.

The newspaper delivery-girl stood just inside Mammam’s kitchen door; our silence made the circumstance a little awkward. The longer it took Mammam to find her purse, the more awkward it got. “Mammam, she’s waiting to get paid.” I yelled. “Yeah, yeah, I’m comin!” - but she wasn’t. When I called to her a fifth time she interrupted my words with a sudden entrance. “Hey! Looky at what I got!” She was holding a set of rabbit ear antennae – the kind to receive UHF-VHF television channels from inside the house. “How about that!” She extended it toward the delivery-girl and I wasn’t sure if she was offering a closer inspection or an alternative means of payment. The girl took a small step backward toward the closed screen door. Mammam asked, “What the hell do you think somebody’d do with this?” I said, “Mammam, where’d you get that? “ and immediately, “I don’t think she wants that - you need to find your purse.” “Oh yeah , yeah okay.” She set the antennae on the table right in front of me. The one side was half-way retracted and the other fully extended, the thin flat cable attached to it almost reached the floor. She exited the kitchen again to return, surprisingly, almost immediately, with her purse. After some further coaching and a few reiterations of the amount due, the delivery girl was finally able to provide change and leave.

At that time we had already long gotten over any embarrassment Mammam used to cause us – we no longer even tried to explain her behavior to anyone. And we didn’t ask her about it either. When I pulled up to the curb that day to find her outside in 35 degree weather without a coat, I didn’t ask her why she was out, I just ushered her in. Like most days, she was wearing a light blue hat that looked like a turban. She also wore a loose fitting flowery blouse with a small white terry-cloth wash cloth safety-pinned to it at an angle just under her chin. Her sleeves were rolled up and so was one of her pant legs – half way up her shin – the other was down to her foot. Her shoes were a bit too dressy for the occasion – especially considering that the occasion was merely a trip outside to the patch of grass in front of the house.

It was the delivery-girl’s brother that we suspected of stealing from Mammam. His first name ended with a ‘y’ – like Timmy or Jimmy I think. I’m guessing that the baseball with Stanley Coveleski’s signature was among the first things pocketed . It disappeared one day after years perched on top of a silver bud vase in the living room. I've always hoped that Jimmy didn’t know any better and just used it as a regular baseball. I hope it got hit into some over-growth and stayed there for years - until it decayed.

A Rose for Rose

I sat at the small kitchen table with Mammam Topolski, my father’s mother, standing next to me. She cut a thick pat of butter from one of the quarter-pound sticks I just brought her from Weis’s market. She ate it off the knife. She ate it like it was cheese. And she enjoyed it – she said so.

I was 16 and the fact that Mammam’s Alzheimer’s disease had progressed to the point that she needed daily visits worked out well for me. I jumped on every excuse I could to get in the car with my new driver’s license. The extensive time I eventually spent with her impacted the direction of my art making like no other singular experience.

Mammam talked incessantly; because of this there was little difference between the notions that passed through her mind and the ones that passed through her lips. I’ll devote the next bunch of entries to Mammam’s stories. It is significant to note that these are recollections of recollections – gathered time and time over, they are both incredibly precise and entirely unreliable.

I recall one very specific instance where, in the midst of a narrated recollection of hers, I realized that she was there – inside her story - and I was with her. She was in that prior time and place and I was next to her in a revised reality. She didn’t know who I was specifically but she knew I was some form of the actual blood-relationship we had – I was her husband, or her son or her grandson – that didn’t matter really. I was familiar and comfortable in a significant way.

She wrapped the butter as she continued to speak, put it in the box and turned away to place it on the door shelf of her avocado-green Amana side-by-side refrigerator.

Sammy

His fingers, some of them stubs, grasped his half emptied thermos of tea - he leaned under the arch of our kitchen entry, "Lets hit the bricks Annie." He’d say that every time they got ready to head home. Behind him, the cabinets he built lined the rear wall of our kitchen. They were freshly repainted bright yellow. The black colonial-looking handles had little faux dings all over them – as if they’d been rendered from raw steel with a ball-peen hammer – they didn’t fool me.

Uncle Sammy was a small-framed guy, patient and quiet. He taught my sister and my brother how to drive – mostly because he was patient and quiet. He died before I was sixteen and I didn’t get the privilege of his tutelage. My driving record, however, remains much better than that of my siblings. And the fact that he was never able to teach Aunt Anna has me considering that he was more willing than (cap)able.

Uncle Sammy worked in the silk mill his entire life. He was the mechanic that repaired the machines as they would break or jam. Over years he lost the tips of several of his fingers to the gears of the looms – some, just a bit – others below the first knuckle. I’m guessing that the losses occurred with little drama – that he was back to work the next day, changing his bandages at break time.

The things Uncle Sammy made in the evenings in his garage – the kitchen cabinets, the toy boxes and lawn ornaments – supplied him with rare opportunities to work beyond the purely functional.

He cut a mother-duck and three duckling shapes from ¾” pine, painted them and extended a metal rod from the base to form the lawn ornaments that I found myself pulling up before mowing many years after his death. I’d replace them carefully - in the same exact spots Aunt Anna placed them - when I finished mowing.

Being Where I Want to Remember

Aunt Anna never drove a car – well, except for that time she tried. The dark blue Hudson got strung up on the high curb outside 1064 Pine – its back bumper against the phone pole at the sidewalk’s edge.

I was seven before I knew her name was ‘Anna.’ (The coal region slur mingled the words – we called her, “Andana.”) I was eight before I knew that Uncle Sammy was her brother, not her husband. I was seventeen before I knew she was still a virgin. I was forty-three when she died that way.

My mother was raised in that tiny house with four adults plus Joannie during the summer. There was only a toilet; aside the stall – between that and the shelves with the canned goods - they leaned the large galvanized tub that they’d fill with water for a bath. We would hear Uncle Sammy call up from in the basement kitchen, “Annie, come wash my back for me would ya?” My sister would say “Eeeeww!” with her lips but stop the sound from coming out. My mother would tell me to pick up the toys before we left and I’d put them in the sea-foam green bucket that was kept behind the couch. Though it lacks some of the best toys it held then, like the red Cadillac with the white interior, the bucket is in my studio. It is tucked back on the shelf near what I claim to be my father’s childhood violin - or what is left of it.

I keep things like that - or facsimiles - in my studio hoping that their histories will leak out and seep in.

Remembering Where I Used to Be

Mammam Dando’s chameleon moved unseen among the leaves at the window and the lace curtains. Invented stories and wooden blocks busied me. Mom would close the bedroom door to keep me out while she cleaned the bed.

I don’t remember the bathroom.

I don’t remember the room off the kitchen.

I do remember the living room where I played on the floor near the broken TV. Above the bristly green couch was “Christ In The Garden Of Gethsemane.” The linoleum near the wall looked like wood and the carpet was worn to the backing in a path that rounded the coffee table. Everything was old but everything was clean.

I only ever had one cap gun, but she called me “Two Clicks.” A good name, even next to “Buckles and Bears,” the uniformed cop that often visited for reasons that only now prompt conjecture. The woman from upstairs had no teeth; I don’t remember her name – or her nickname. It wasn’t Mable – Mable and Red were her other friends that lived on Sunbury street. The woman from upstairs would often sit on the steps just outside the apartment door in the large foyer where it always felt cool. My mother would stop to talk and their voices would bounce off the high tin ceiling. I’d look out the door to Tom Olsey’s Pharmacy where the people behind the counter knew my name.

I don’t remember Mammam ever out of bed.

I don’t remember ever staying very long.

As I Recall It

"... the transactions between people and the things they create constitute a central aspect of the human condition. Past memories, present experiences, and future dreams of each person are inextricably linked to the objects that comprise his or her environment" (Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. The Meaning of Things. Cambridge University Press. 1981.)

What I make in my studio is both the transformed material evidence of my past and a surrogate for the missing. I draw on images, objects, and memories to form reliquaries of unconscious associations.