I had a plan...

Then Covid came knocking

The cereal eaters on a winter’s morning in Tennesseee - Little Lucy and Aunt Sam xo

***

I found the above scrap of paper in a box and remembered how I had typed it up and pasted it above my computer for years. I had just finished reading Isabel Allende’s Paula, the book about her daughter and I remember crying in the garden in our backyard in Silver Lake late one night. My children were young and safe in bed, but Isabel Allende had to live through losing a child. I knew I couldn’t survive it.

https://www.isabelallende.com/en/book/paula/summary

In that backyard, Kiffen had built a King Kong topiary out of jasmine, and Kong leaned over the blue picnic table fragrant with benevolence. I cried for Paula and Isabel and then I went inside and kissed my sleeping children. I mean, maybe I did this. It’s likely I did kiss them because I kissed them every night, and I loved seeing them sleeping warm in their bunk beds. It made me feel safe. We could protect them. I remember reading one of Paul Monette’s books, and his mother told him something like - you only feel safest when your kids are little and in bed but after they grow up that’s when the real worry begins.

Ha. I didn’t want to believe that for a minute. But I wrote Paul Monette a fan letter after reading his book, Borrowed Time: An Aids Memoir, and he wrote back the most wonderful, engaging letter.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780151135981

I wish I could find that letter.

You never get over the confusion, because life is chaos and confusion.

So I tested positive for Covid yesterday after feeling horrible late on Monday afternoon - fever, congestion, headache. So far Kiffen is negative. We are masked and isolating over the packing up of this house.

These words are a little scattershot as I write them now. How can this be? I have people to visit and say goodbye to for now - all of it. I have boxes to pack, letters to sort, a hair appointment, and classes to prepare for... I had managed to dodge Covid until now.

Did it have to be now? I need to be strong and clear-eyed, not a lump on the couch.

We went to skid row on Friday to drop off books and puzzles for the Sidewalk Project and spent the day with Flannery. We went to a crowded movie theater on Saturday night after a day of packing. It could have been anywhere. But I actually think I caught it from worry.

https://www.thesidewalkproject.org/

Friday was a hard day with constant glimmers of love and light for our boy. It always begins so hopeful and then it becomes something else, and we re-traumatize each other in little hurtful ways. When will I learn?

You never get over the confusion, because life is chaos and confusion.

Then, on Sunday night, Kiffen dragged in the dustiest of dusty boxes, hauled in from the deep darkest corner of the garage. Good Lord, what could it be? I honestly think the box hadn’t been opened since 1998 when we moved from Dillon Street to Elevado Street in Silver Lake when I was pregnant with Norah. I found old college photographs, papers, and all the letters we had written to my Kansas grandparents over the decades. They had saved every single letter along with a lot of cards simply signed, “Lois,” who, a sister-in-law, and lots of holiday cards from Sister Anne Callahan, and letters from “Dutch” who was my grandfather’s choir director for the Protestants. Sister Anne Callahan was his choir director for the Catholics.

A school picture fell out of a Christmas card that said, “Gail Habbel. Paper girl.”

My grandmother would say, ‘Throw it away!”

But she didn’t throw any of it away.

I hope they tipped the papergirl.

My grandfather, Jerry Baker, whom we called “Papa Jerry” played at the Leavenworth Pentintuary on Sundays for the Protestants and the Catholics. Then he went to Fort Leavenworth and played Mass there too. How did I come to have these letters? I think Mom must have let me take them when I was writing Offsides, as I was wanting to know more about my Aunt Jeanne, who struggled with mental health and addiction, but who was magical and gave me books to read. She became the character of Aunt Betty in the book. She died when I was fourteen. I found a letter from the 1950s written by my great-grandmother detailing a lot of aches and pains. Many of these letters had to do with health, St. Jude, and Mass cards.

Now I have another fat sprawling novel with Dutch and my grandparents that roams from Maryville, Tennessee to Manchester, England. Dutch was in for armed robbery, but he got out and came to see my grandfather when he was in a memory care unit at the end of his life. I’ve always wanted to thank Dutch, who was so grateful for my grandfather’s friendship, and I found these letters from Dutch - such kind loving letters.

After my grandmother died and my grandfather, Papa Jerry, came to live with my parents, my mother said to him, “Daddy, you never complain.”

He looked up and said, “Nobody likes a crybaby.”

I kept all of Aunt Jeanne’s cards and the cards and letters we’d written to my grandparents because it’s a history of our childhood, and I want to share the letters with my siblings, but I let go of the ones that were from people I didn’t know. I didn’t like letting any of the letters go. On each envelope or letter, my grandmother had written: “ans.” - even to Lois who never wrote a letter, who simply signed “Lois” under said holiday card. I’m sure my grandmother just signed it, “Liz.”

She wasn’t one for wasted words either.

I have found a few turgid/overwrought/handwringing letters of my own that needed a clear editor’s eye. In my twenties, I lived one year in England and another in China, far away from all familiar things so I wrote long letters to try to show the relatives and friends my worlds. I couldn’t call unless I had a stack of heavy coins in England, and in China, it just didn’t work.

Mother would say, “It’s like talking to a black hole. You fade away.”

I remember my grandmother, GrandMary, my father’s mother told me about the time she received a letter from me from England or China and she asked her cousin, Margaret Whoolihan, who was living with her - “I have a letter from Kerry. Shall I read it?”

Margaret Whoolihan sighed and said, “How long is it?”

I thought I was doing them all a loving favor, describing landscapes and food, sparking debate, suggesting curiosity, encouraging travel - like I knew anything at all about their worlds.

I was definitely influenced by Isac Dineson’s Letters from Africa, and I was reading so much 19th Century literature and they all wrote letters, long letters, so I wrote long letters too. I found one I’d written as a teenager telling my grandmother I didn’t want to move again. I was in high school in Tennessee. We had just arrived and Dad was already applying for head coaching jobs. I wrote, “I know I’m being selfish but I’ve finally made friends. I don’t want to move again.”

But somehow you get to see the pattern of your life.

And so years ago, I would read Isabel Allende’s words each day before I began to write to give me hope - that I would find my way through the morass and find some courage along the way too.

One thing this Covid is doing is making me keep still and notice and be quiet and look. And I don’t have to say goodbye to anyone in person, because it wouldn’t be safe, so for today, I’ll reach for another box to see what I discover or maybe just rest a little while and start again.

***

Other treasures have popped up too. I found this “Happy Anniversary” fax from my sister. We’d been married nine years. I love it so much.

First Santa…

Charlie Chaplin kids…

Dad and Flannery

My grandparents in the music studio in Leavenworth, Kansas where my grandfather prepared hymns for weddings and funerals and Protestants and Catholics and for skating rinks too.

Paper Girl - Gail Habbel

A high school graduation present that traveled across continents.

A beloved late high school friend, David Coode, who met Kiffen long before I ever did and helped paint Kiffen’s boyhood farmhouse in Lynchburgh, Tennessee after Kiffen’s father died when Kiffen was 16. Kiffen’s mother, Frances, adored David.

With Dad in Mississippi on the rattan furniture…

“When I write, it is as if I’m in a maze, a labyrinth,” writes Isabel Allende. “You never get over the confusion, because life is chaos and confusion. But somehow you get to see the pattern of your life. Then things become more bearable.”