roses and gunpowder tea
An untimely death in our community last week got me to thinking about a blog story that's been in the queue for several years. Not much of a story really, just a couple of curious incidents marking the sudden passing of someone close to me.
In the fall of nineteen eighty I returned to the university after ten years trying to make a living in the fish business. A couple of middle school teachers from California ran a boat out of La Push in those days, encouraged me to get the teaching credential, thought I'd be good at the job. Things could have gone either way that fall. Interested enough in teacher training that I had gone through hoops to attend classes third week of September, I also invested in crab pots getting ready for Dinginess season in Bellingham Bay in October. Dislocated knee from a careless fall on the stairs put me on the bus up to campus instead of the back deck of the boat.
Fifteen credit hours, couple into to elementary education classes, two hundred level astronomy and a seminar for high school art teachers. Interesting and fun. Until grades came out at the end of the quarter. 'F' in a two credit reading instruction class. Little more than a sales gimmick for the prof's books, only a single graded assignment for the quarter, the final exam in which students were asked to hand write an essay in praise of the prof's revolutionary approach to reading instruction. Allowed a two sided hand written crib sheet, the expectation being that we wrote our essay at home and copied it into a test booklet. Not very challenging. Even with the crib sheet my exam averaged two misspellings per line. Prof advised me to drop out of the program before embarrassing myself further.
Certain that practice and mastery of spelling rules were the key to success, I decided not to follow his advice. Our neighbor across the street worked with an adult literacy program, she may have been a retired teacher, had a spelling curriculum designed for one on one direct instruction. She offered to work through it with me during winter quarter. Don't recall her name, or a whole lot about the sessions beyond personal support from a respected older person at a turning point in my life. At the end of the quarter I still couldn't spell worth shit, but she gave me the next best thing. Quick reference spelling dictionary. As many words as any desk top dictionary, white vinyl soft cover fit into a large packet. Used it several times a day.
A few weeks later, a car crash took this woman's life. Intersection at the edge of town, stop sign watch for traffic crossing at sixty. Something happened that nigher driver expected, my tutor's ashes were scattered around the beds where she grew the loveliest roses in the neighborhood. Even now with lights and turn lanes my heart goes to my throat approaching that intersection, Bakerview and the Hannegan.
The day we heard about the crash her spelling dictionary disappeared. Almost ocd about having it with me at all times, carefully zipped into flap of my back pack. More than a reference tool, the book symbolized personal support from a mentor and friend. Searched high and low, figured it would turn up in some unexpected place in a day or two. Nothing. Never saw it again. Never found another quite as nice either. Couldn't get along without one, but never really liked the little hard cover volume I ended up using for the next dozen years. Thinking back I realize grumbling about that damned book became an inadvertent memorial to the lost friend, the little book may have vanished but the personal support and encouragement from the departed friend lives on with me to this day.
So then twenty or thirty years slip under the keel and it happens again.
Box of gunpowder tea. The last time my brother Justin visited this house before they flew him back from Sitka cold in a box. May have been my birthday. Way he pulled the tea out of his coat reminded me late sixties when pot came in Prince Albert tobacco cans in the CD and he came in showing us his score. He liked all things guns and gunpowder as well as having a sophisticated pallet for interesting flavors and gunpowder tea satisfied in both categories. Still see my hand placing the deep green cellophane wrapped box in the back of the middle pantry shelf.
The night Justin passed Mary Jane saw someone at the foot of our bed. Mother, staying at Annah's place on Queen Anne saw a figure standing at the foot of her bed, two other friends I spoke with at the memorial also woke to some unexplained anomaly that night as well. Maybe he came through our house to retrieve that box of tea. Just like the spelling dictionary, the tea disappeared from the pantry. We still got tea left over from fondue parties in the seventies, boxes of tea didn't just accidentally get trashed along with some general spring cleaning around here. Once again, a gift with more emotional importance than real value, sudden vanishes at the moment of an untimely death.
One or both items may yet turn up. Used to have a Ruger .22 pistol. Went missing in a similar way. This time I lost a fun job, hardly on the same level as death but a significant life milestone nevertheless. Remembered, or thought I remembered, packing the gun in a leather holster between layers of bath towels in a big box for transit between the summer job in Alaska and Seattle. No where to be found when we unpacked our things. Searched high and low through everything that had been on the fish barge where the gum could have been stashed, no gun. Assumed it had been stolen.
Dozen years later, in a place mere inches from regularly used storage shelves, I suddenly saw the fanny pack containing the Ruger. So close, and seemingly so obvious I couldn't help but recall the missing book and green tea. Maybe the fabric of time space does occasionally fold over things obscuring our view, sometimes gone for ever, but not always. Loss of a career path can be tough, but not necessarily a permanent setback, thus the gun returned. Death is another kettle of fish altogether, unlikely to see the book or tea ever again.
In the fall of nineteen eighty I returned to the university after ten years trying to make a living in the fish business. A couple of middle school teachers from California ran a boat out of La Push in those days, encouraged me to get the teaching credential, thought I'd be good at the job. Things could have gone either way that fall. Interested enough in teacher training that I had gone through hoops to attend classes third week of September, I also invested in crab pots getting ready for Dinginess season in Bellingham Bay in October. Dislocated knee from a careless fall on the stairs put me on the bus up to campus instead of the back deck of the boat.
Fifteen credit hours, couple into to elementary education classes, two hundred level astronomy and a seminar for high school art teachers. Interesting and fun. Until grades came out at the end of the quarter. 'F' in a two credit reading instruction class. Little more than a sales gimmick for the prof's books, only a single graded assignment for the quarter, the final exam in which students were asked to hand write an essay in praise of the prof's revolutionary approach to reading instruction. Allowed a two sided hand written crib sheet, the expectation being that we wrote our essay at home and copied it into a test booklet. Not very challenging. Even with the crib sheet my exam averaged two misspellings per line. Prof advised me to drop out of the program before embarrassing myself further.
Certain that practice and mastery of spelling rules were the key to success, I decided not to follow his advice. Our neighbor across the street worked with an adult literacy program, she may have been a retired teacher, had a spelling curriculum designed for one on one direct instruction. She offered to work through it with me during winter quarter. Don't recall her name, or a whole lot about the sessions beyond personal support from a respected older person at a turning point in my life. At the end of the quarter I still couldn't spell worth shit, but she gave me the next best thing. Quick reference spelling dictionary. As many words as any desk top dictionary, white vinyl soft cover fit into a large packet. Used it several times a day.
A few weeks later, a car crash took this woman's life. Intersection at the edge of town, stop sign watch for traffic crossing at sixty. Something happened that nigher driver expected, my tutor's ashes were scattered around the beds where she grew the loveliest roses in the neighborhood. Even now with lights and turn lanes my heart goes to my throat approaching that intersection, Bakerview and the Hannegan.
The day we heard about the crash her spelling dictionary disappeared. Almost ocd about having it with me at all times, carefully zipped into flap of my back pack. More than a reference tool, the book symbolized personal support from a mentor and friend. Searched high and low, figured it would turn up in some unexpected place in a day or two. Nothing. Never saw it again. Never found another quite as nice either. Couldn't get along without one, but never really liked the little hard cover volume I ended up using for the next dozen years. Thinking back I realize grumbling about that damned book became an inadvertent memorial to the lost friend, the little book may have vanished but the personal support and encouragement from the departed friend lives on with me to this day.
So then twenty or thirty years slip under the keel and it happens again.
Box of gunpowder tea. The last time my brother Justin visited this house before they flew him back from Sitka cold in a box. May have been my birthday. Way he pulled the tea out of his coat reminded me late sixties when pot came in Prince Albert tobacco cans in the CD and he came in showing us his score. He liked all things guns and gunpowder as well as having a sophisticated pallet for interesting flavors and gunpowder tea satisfied in both categories. Still see my hand placing the deep green cellophane wrapped box in the back of the middle pantry shelf.
The night Justin passed Mary Jane saw someone at the foot of our bed. Mother, staying at Annah's place on Queen Anne saw a figure standing at the foot of her bed, two other friends I spoke with at the memorial also woke to some unexplained anomaly that night as well. Maybe he came through our house to retrieve that box of tea. Just like the spelling dictionary, the tea disappeared from the pantry. We still got tea left over from fondue parties in the seventies, boxes of tea didn't just accidentally get trashed along with some general spring cleaning around here. Once again, a gift with more emotional importance than real value, sudden vanishes at the moment of an untimely death.
One or both items may yet turn up. Used to have a Ruger .22 pistol. Went missing in a similar way. This time I lost a fun job, hardly on the same level as death but a significant life milestone nevertheless. Remembered, or thought I remembered, packing the gun in a leather holster between layers of bath towels in a big box for transit between the summer job in Alaska and Seattle. No where to be found when we unpacked our things. Searched high and low through everything that had been on the fish barge where the gum could have been stashed, no gun. Assumed it had been stolen.
Dozen years later, in a place mere inches from regularly used storage shelves, I suddenly saw the fanny pack containing the Ruger. So close, and seemingly so obvious I couldn't help but recall the missing book and green tea. Maybe the fabric of time space does occasionally fold over things obscuring our view, sometimes gone for ever, but not always. Loss of a career path can be tough, but not necessarily a permanent setback, thus the gun returned. Death is another kettle of fish altogether, unlikely to see the book or tea ever again.
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