The Day Before February 5 [2021]

[Note:  This entry is an example of two SSW sessions written during workshop with my freshman writing class at the start of Spring Semester, 2021.  SSW stands for “silent sustained writing,” a weekly practice of 40-minute writing sessions conducted throughout the semester where the entire class, including the instructor, “looks at the world as a writer,” selects genres and topics of the author’s interest, and writes.  The weekly sessions build into a “writer’s notebook,” that explores what Nancie Atwell calls an author’s “writing territories,” and that approaches the task of “teaching” writing through a process of “cultivation” of a writer’s identity, rather than through specific instruction in teacher-chosen skills.  Early in each semester, I try to model how the process works for me–and how it has evolved for me as a writer over time.  It’s about writing as a way of being, rather than something learned, mastered, and checked off….]

Clearly, this notebook project is inseparable from my grieving process for Ang, which now approaches that magical mark of 10 years, and the restarting of living. At least my notebook in recent spring semesters has functioned this way. Last year, my first ENGL 120 SSW entry was on Ang’s birthday (January 23), and this year, we’re five days later, and just about dead center between the January 23-February 5 nadir of the year for me. And by a moment of grace the past weekend, I was given a story to write about by Ang’s brother, Terry.

Terry deserves, as do all my kids, his own writing notebook. He’s been impressing me so much this past year, as he wrote both a book (A Wonderful Waste of Time) and an eleven-part pretty massive podcast called “Chicago’s Civil War”—a documentary on a little-known Chicago treasure, the baseball city-series between the Cubs and Sox that ran from the early 1900s to 1940s. We had Terry over for dinner on Saturday the 23^rd, when we celebrated Ang’s birthday, and he surprised me—with something I knew, but had forgotten. He told the story so well, it made me laugh and cry—and appreciate in his telling and his memory, just how present Ang is to him. Ang’s spirit is there, and in different ways, in each family member’s little and big stories.

Terry actually told us the story in the morning of Ang’s birthday, when Loretta and I drove over to his apartment to finally deliver his Christmas present, a brand new, leather recliner. Terry needed some moving help to clear space in his apartment. So he and I first had to throw out his very junky blue reclining chair. We carried it to his alley, and looked at it there, and then he sat in it, almost as though to say goodbye, almost as though this were all wrong—this throwing away of that chair that had been in the family since 2000.

Terry, as always, knew the exact date we had gotten the blue recliner. He sat in the chair, and rocked, and we wondered if this would be the last time he or anyone else would sit in it. The weather was nice for January 23rd, with a bright sun, and Terry began his story. It just seemed so right to see him there, in his chair in the alley, with the sun on his face telling the story of Adriana’s chairs—plural, for they started out as two chairs in 2000. I began to wonder if Loretta and I made a mistake in buying him a new recliner for Christmas. Before we delivered it to his apartment, we set it up in our living room, and kept it there for the four weeks between Christmas and Ang’s birthday. And we grew to like it there. We teased him that he wasn’t going to get it—that it seemed to fit our house pretty well. Well, looking at Terry, telling his story in his old chair in the alley in the sun—led me to think, maybe we should have just let well-enough alone, and kept the new chair at our house for Terry to use when he came over, and for him to just hold onto Adriana’s blue chair…

Adriana was a nurse, a co-worker of Loretta’s at NMH. Back in 2000, she offered Loretta two blue rocking recliners that were in really good shape. They were swivel recliners (an important detail to get the full effect of what follows). Adriana had to move cross-country, and so she had to unload lots of possessions. We had a big old Chevy Astro van with removable bench seats, so I said, “Sure, I’ll pick up the chairs.” Thankfully, I could enlist Terry, Age 12, just the right age to be of real use in moving furniture. Terry recalled every detail of the ride to Adriana’s northside condo on that morning 21 years ago. “It was a Monday,” Terry said. He commented that the ride to Adriana’s was uneventful—because he had a seat in the van—the passenger side seat in front. However, his seat was not guaranteed for all the driving we had to do that day. Since the day of the pickup was a Monday, it was my day to pick up my mother, Terry’s grandmother, from her afternoon dialysis treatment. So, Terry and I were, first, an efficient moving team, and then a ride share. And then we had one more stop, even after dropping Grandma off.

We got to Adriana’s condo, made pleasant small talk, and loaded the two chairs into the van, upright, as though they were Captain Kirk’s command chairs from which to control the fate of the universe with placid ease and resolve. They took up the whole back of the van, so there was no question we made the right choice in removing both benches.

Off we went to Howard and Ridge on the north side to pick up my mom. And here’s where Terry’s storytelling kicks into another gear. With Grandma in the car, he couldn’t sit up front. So the only place for him to go was in the back, and the only place to sit was in one of the recliners. His description of that trip to Grandma’s house from dialysis had all the joy and terror of a 12-year-old driving home in a bouncing van, in a recliner, no seatbelt; it was priceless. It was one of those new, weird experiences that becomes memorable when one is at that threshold age. To me, I listened in a mixture of delight and horror at my decision to let him travel in such a dangerous way. I think back now on how I tried to be efficient—pick up chairs, use son’s help, pick up Grandma—and, last on the list, pick up Ang who, in his summer before high school, was at his first cross country practice.

Part of the delight of Terry’s story was the memory of my mother’s reaction upon her first realizing the situation. She was like, “Oh,” and she nodded and got in. That “Oh” spoke of an accepting disposition of the chaos of “life with people”—of a regular ride home with a reckless/responsible son she trusted; who was in the midst of that busy, insane time of raising numerous children, some small; who himself was raised by Italian, voluble, chaotic parents. She said “Oh” acceptingly, got in, and began talking.

There may have been a comment from her, or even a judgment, but all I remember was the typical, water-off-a-duck’s back, opposite of non-plussed reaction of my mother to the antics of, well, just about everyone about her. In her later years, my mother was serene. Accepting, not pushing back. She had been through it—whatever “it” was—the Depression, WWII, emigration and immigration, a difficult marriage, five kids, widowhood—and at the end she exuded grace and gratitude for all she had—her kids, her grandkids, and her health—such as it was. Terry’s story didn’t delve into all that feeling, but his story, as my kids’ stories so often do, brought the memory of the “Oh,” back to me. I heard it. Truth be told, she might not have said “Oh” that way that time—but it was her signature gesture and attitude in that last, blessed phase of her life, about 4 years’ worth of widowhood and weekly, shared pickups and drop-offs for dialysis. In telling the story in the alley, Terry was activating so many memories of our family—my role as beleaguered parent/son, his role of a 12-year old mover/adventurist, and Ang’s role as a cross country novice that summer before high school, dutifully taking on a summer activity, not necessarily the one of his choice, but something that kept him focused and purposeful—a responsible oldest child transitioning to a new phase in his life.

What Terry did tell about Grandma was the way she invited us in when we reached her home, and told us that she had some leftover pizza from the night before. “Did we want any of it?” Of course! So we ate and talked and soon it was time to embark once again on our multi-pronged mission of the day: Leg 3 of our cross country extravaganza, driving to Fenwick to pick up Ang from that first cross country practice, that, by now, had ended quite some time ago.

I think back now, as I must have thought then: it all made sense: Fenwick was on the way home from Grandma’s house, so why wouldn’t we plan it this way? As we were leaving, my mother said, “Do you want to take the rest of the pizza with you?” Of course! This was before the time when Gen would develop the theory of the “pizza clock” and how it resets (or doesn’t need to). But we knew even then, you just don’t say no to a box of pizza you could take home with you.

The ride to Fenwick was uneventful. Terry was back in the front seat, in a seatbelt, and we were just two moving guys driving home, with a short stop to pick up Ang. Ang needed to be picked up, and not just for transportation. His practice was a rough one. While he was never in horrible shape physically, he was not especially conditioned for long distance running either. This was Ang’s introduction to the Fenwick way, the competitive, “we’re distinctive,” we’re special kind of aura of that proud institution. So of course, a first workout was going to be … challenging to the point of being brutal, and brutal it was.

Here’s where we need Terry’s deadpan narrative style. He painted a picture of Ang’s appearance or mood or state at that time. First, Ang wasn’t all that enthused about having to do an activity—any activity—that summer. But as the oldest child, he often got, as is common, the rawest deal in “requirements,” strictness, and toeing the line. He had to get a job in high school, whereas the younger ones didn’t. He had to run errands and give up his time for various family responsibilities. He had to organize his pursuits around the family’s schedule in ways not so focused on in later years. And on it went. So Ang was a little dispirited to “have to” go to cross country in the first place. And on this day, as Terry told it, there were so many compounding factors: the hot temperature, the workout, the lateness of our arrival, to name a few. And so, we arrived to see a completely defeated new member of the Fenwick community—wilted and annoyed, slouching to the car.

Terry got out to greet him. He told him, “Ang, there’s no place for you since the back is filled.”

Pause. Then with the flair of a game show host, he opened the side van door with outstretched hand. And there it was, positioned just right: a reclining chair and a box of pizza waiting for him. And it was one of those moments … when the harp plays, the slant of light glistens, the hand of God touches you, and salvation opens up before you.

I remember such moments with Ang when there’s a turn: things are going so bad, but then not so much anymore. And then the storytelling starts happening (the “best of all breathing,” Faulkner called it), and the smiles start coming, and all the “what happened before” is just part of the setup of the joy and fulfillment that will become a story, years later, told by a guy in the alley with the sun in his face, saying goodbye to a worn-out, over-used recliner.

There’s that. But there’s also Angelo’s way: the way things would work out for him up until the very end. All of that sweat and responsibility and grousing led to a comfortable chair and a pizza. Like the man chased by tigers in Kahn’s story (another family go-to meme), Ang found the strawberry on the mountainside, and “it was the sweetest tasting strawberry he ever had.” Angelo, and I bless him for this, could turn on a dime, and let go of a bad moment and lean into the new thing that was happening and inviting a smile and a different conversation. And Terry’s reaction to it was something of a unique possession of his alone (for it was completely lost to me till he told the story and brought it, and my mother’s “Oh,” back to me). Terry has held on and helped us remember, and on February 4, I couldn’t be more grateful to both sons, to all my children, to Loretta, as we close off, this very day and in SSW, our first ten years of life after—and still with—Ang.