It's one and a half hours up to Vermont.
Dad's driving tailgate all the way.
Mom's talking over talk-radio, changing the volume so loud I can't hear. The dog buries her nose in the sheet covering the back seat--ostensibly to protect us all from her hair. Secretly, I think it is in honor of her. She hogs the back, both pissed she has to share and proud she gets the middle. Like all Divas, she knows who rules the car. I put down the window. Dad says, innocently, " Does someone have a window open?"
"I do."
"Oh." He hits the power button and closes it an inch.
"Dad, I'll puke if we have all the windows closed...it's like eighty-five back here. The sun is broiling us alive--"
"Oh."
Mom interjects, " Do you want me to sit back there with the dog?"
I try not to roll my eyes, or sigh, or do anything but put the window, the one window in the back, down, and stick my head out.
"I just could feel the breeze," Dad says, but doesn't hit the button again.
Maeve looks at me. She rolls her eyes. She sighs, audibly.
When we get to the winding road that leads us to the mountaintop cemetery, Maeve recognizes it. She begins whining.
(I also recognize it. Last time I was there, Mom and Ann and I took a Sharpie and inserted the hyphen in Gram Minns-Bushway nee Kelley's name on the tombstone. It was the only act of "vandalism" that Mom ever engaged in...though it hardly counted. Even Dad agreed, Gram would have wanted it that way, given short shrift as the second wife.)
I also recognize the road from the first time I drove. Gram's funeral, age sixteen, my license newly minted. Nobody warned me Gram's casket would be open--or that she would be sitting up. Nobody warned me that because Mom and Dad were the first generation of kids, they would be riding in the official death cars, provided by the funeral parlor and Grampa. I had to drive the "kiddie car". Our giant turquoise station wagon up a steep mountain in a funeral procession that included enough cars to be bumper to bumper around all the hairpin turns.
Yeah, I recognize the cemetery. Not much has changed.
"What happened to Jesus' hand--his left one?" I ask as we drive slowly in past the gates.
"Kids!" Mom sighs.
"Are you sure?" I ask. This is not the kind of place where teens run wild breaking off pieces of Jesus.
"Well, they put a beer can in Jesus hand at the cemetery in Gardner!" Mom spits.
I don't contradict. They probably did.
"Maybe it was an offering?" I offer.
Nobody responds.
The dog licks my cheek.
We roll up to the big Bushway stone.
It is bare naked in the glinting spring sun.
"Take the dog to pee," Dad points to the edge of the graveyard. The woods.
While he and Mom wrangle the several bouquest of silk and plastic out of the trunk, I try not to sprain my ankle in a disguised sprinkler hole, while holding the dog back from full tilt boogie escape into the dark trees.
Once we get away, we enter the shade.
Cool pine and maple and high bush blueberry greet us like old friends. Literally, I feel I'm embraced by the forest--that I can breathe again.
Looking down, however, I find the edge of the grass marked by a border of empty soda cans, ice-tea
and beer bottles, empty flower pots--some with dried and rooty after growth still clinging to the edges. A few fast-food wrappers and it feels as if I pull away from the pines and I'll enter a landfill.
Both sad and upsetting.
I sit on a big chunk of uncut granite, listening to the birds unwind.
Maeve poops. I scoop, though wondering what's the point out here amid the trash and wildness...but I scoop.
I watch Mom and Dad, fading in the sun. They argue and wrangle wire and clippers and make sure no Vermont vandals will get away with our family's artificial bouquet.
Mom crosses herself, praying too long in Dad's opinion. He informs me when I get back to the car.
I give Maeve some of her designer water we always travel with. (For her, not the humans. We have to wait...)
When Mom finishes, she orders me to take Maever again, around the graveyard, "so she won't pee in the car."
Maeve has never peed in the car.
(Mice have gotten into the engine and peed all through the exhaust system, but not the dog.)
It also doesn't work quite that quickly.
I don't argue.
It's a cemetery. I am still the struggling-to-do-right grandchild of all those people laying down around us.
I walk Maeve around.
She happily pees on every stone she can manage--even lifting her very female leg up when she's empty. (Such are Divas in the world.)
Dad drives around behind us, almost running us over. He stops when I flag him down. I push the heavy-ended pup into the back seat, now dry as a proverbial bone.
I shudder.
I open the window, again, praying nobody has followed us inside.
Dad's driving tailgate all the way.
Mom's talking over talk-radio, changing the volume so loud I can't hear. The dog buries her nose in the sheet covering the back seat--ostensibly to protect us all from her hair. Secretly, I think it is in honor of her. She hogs the back, both pissed she has to share and proud she gets the middle. Like all Divas, she knows who rules the car. I put down the window. Dad says, innocently, " Does someone have a window open?"
"I do."
"Oh." He hits the power button and closes it an inch.
"Dad, I'll puke if we have all the windows closed...it's like eighty-five back here. The sun is broiling us alive--"
"Oh."
Mom interjects, " Do you want me to sit back there with the dog?"
I try not to roll my eyes, or sigh, or do anything but put the window, the one window in the back, down, and stick my head out.
"I just could feel the breeze," Dad says, but doesn't hit the button again.
Maeve looks at me. She rolls her eyes. She sighs, audibly.
When we get to the winding road that leads us to the mountaintop cemetery, Maeve recognizes it. She begins whining.
(I also recognize it. Last time I was there, Mom and Ann and I took a Sharpie and inserted the hyphen in Gram Minns-Bushway nee Kelley's name on the tombstone. It was the only act of "vandalism" that Mom ever engaged in...though it hardly counted. Even Dad agreed, Gram would have wanted it that way, given short shrift as the second wife.)
I also recognize the road from the first time I drove. Gram's funeral, age sixteen, my license newly minted. Nobody warned me Gram's casket would be open--or that she would be sitting up. Nobody warned me that because Mom and Dad were the first generation of kids, they would be riding in the official death cars, provided by the funeral parlor and Grampa. I had to drive the "kiddie car". Our giant turquoise station wagon up a steep mountain in a funeral procession that included enough cars to be bumper to bumper around all the hairpin turns.
Yeah, I recognize the cemetery. Not much has changed.
"What happened to Jesus' hand--his left one?" I ask as we drive slowly in past the gates.
"Kids!" Mom sighs.
"Are you sure?" I ask. This is not the kind of place where teens run wild breaking off pieces of Jesus.
"Well, they put a beer can in Jesus hand at the cemetery in Gardner!" Mom spits.
I don't contradict. They probably did.
"Maybe it was an offering?" I offer.
Nobody responds.
The dog licks my cheek.
We roll up to the big Bushway stone.
It is bare naked in the glinting spring sun.
"Take the dog to pee," Dad points to the edge of the graveyard. The woods.
While he and Mom wrangle the several bouquest of silk and plastic out of the trunk, I try not to sprain my ankle in a disguised sprinkler hole, while holding the dog back from full tilt boogie escape into the dark trees.
Once we get away, we enter the shade.
Cool pine and maple and high bush blueberry greet us like old friends. Literally, I feel I'm embraced by the forest--that I can breathe again.
Looking down, however, I find the edge of the grass marked by a border of empty soda cans, ice-tea
and beer bottles, empty flower pots--some with dried and rooty after growth still clinging to the edges. A few fast-food wrappers and it feels as if I pull away from the pines and I'll enter a landfill.
Both sad and upsetting.
I sit on a big chunk of uncut granite, listening to the birds unwind.
Maeve poops. I scoop, though wondering what's the point out here amid the trash and wildness...but I scoop.
I watch Mom and Dad, fading in the sun. They argue and wrangle wire and clippers and make sure no Vermont vandals will get away with our family's artificial bouquet.
Mom crosses herself, praying too long in Dad's opinion. He informs me when I get back to the car.
I give Maeve some of her designer water we always travel with. (For her, not the humans. We have to wait...)
When Mom finishes, she orders me to take Maever again, around the graveyard, "so she won't pee in the car."
Maeve has never peed in the car.
(Mice have gotten into the engine and peed all through the exhaust system, but not the dog.)
It also doesn't work quite that quickly.
I don't argue.
It's a cemetery. I am still the struggling-to-do-right grandchild of all those people laying down around us.
I walk Maeve around.
She happily pees on every stone she can manage--even lifting her very female leg up when she's empty. (Such are Divas in the world.)
Dad drives around behind us, almost running us over. He stops when I flag him down. I push the heavy-ended pup into the back seat, now dry as a proverbial bone.
I shudder.
I open the window, again, praying nobody has followed us inside.
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