Hooked

Last night, I bought you your first bra. Correction: I bought you three of them, all different styles and fabrics—because my first bra was just that, one bra, and I always wished I could have had more of a choice.

In my day, Queens girls went to an old-fashioned lingerie store to get the momentous first bra. In the window of the store would be translucent plastic legs modeling pantyhose, headless shoulders with bustlines in nighties (both daring and demure), quilty bathrobes and stretchy girdles. The door would be heavy, all glass, like you were pushing to get into some brightly-lit tomb. The store was invariably staffed by older ladies who wore bifocals on a chain around their necks, called you "dawling" and asked "Isn't this one beauty-ful?" in a raspy smoker's voice.

Before you actually tried a bra on, you had to submit to a mortifying tape-measure around the chest—two times, once right across, and the second underneath your swelling shape. Then the saleslady would retreat behind the glass counter, pulling a big box down from a shelf that was labeled "32AA" in BIG black letters (this felt really embarrassing, as though everyone now knew you'd be wearing the smallest possible size). She'd then fish around inside the box and bring out a bra. The box was too high to see into, so you had no idea if there was some other style in there you might have liked...no, there it was: your assigned bra.

The white trifle felt lightweight and silly in your hands as you headed for the dressing room. Like this is gonna make a difference, you'd think, recalling the ouchy feeling you were now getting whenever you ran down the sidewalk playing tag, or when you took the stairs at a gallop. Regardless, you pulled a little curtain across the dressing room doorway and struggled out of your T-shirt. The bra was alien to the touch, and the straps dug right into your shoulder as you reached behind you--how the hell do they do this?!—trying to hook the closure. It felt like minutes were ticking away as your mom stood patiently at the glass counter, waiting.

Finally...hooked. In the mirror, you turned and contemplated this new shape on your body. The cups of this bra were thickly lined with synthetic batting; alas, the stuffing was too dented-looking to actually improve on your slender shape. In between your breasts (breasts! still an absurd new word), there was a tiny white satin bow with a tinier white fake flower in its center. You'd shrug around then, trying to stop that digging sensation on your shoulders. And then you'd jump in place (just a teeny bit, so that the ladies in the store wouldn't think you'd lost your mind)..and whaddya know? they didn't bounce and ouch! Whew, you'd think,that decides it.

You'd poke your head into the corner of the curtain then, and multiple women (including Mom) would turn to look at you. "This one's good," you'd say. "Can I, um, wear it home?"

"Sure," said the saleslady. Mom nodded. Back in the dressing room, you reached for your T-shirt and tugged it back over your head. And then, the first womanly thing you'd really ever done in your life: you tucked your shirt into your jeans, pulled taut; stood up straight with shoulders back, and checked out your bustline side-to.

Still you.

Neveromance

What would I really say if I could? That your face, on the edge of sadness always--even through a supremely goofy smile--never left my mind? That I can still feel the damp press of your hand on my back, slow-dancing to the Beatles? I can still feel the belly-whop in my stomach, the times when I thought that maybe now, now was the time, tonight was the night that you would turn to me and look in my eyes, and instead of a fond smile, it would be a knowing gaze. We would connect, and all the imaginings would be more than that, and better than that too. Maybe I never realized that your need was probably deeper than mine. Mine was all over my sleeve, yeah, and scary enough to send legions running--but yours was an unanswered call, a lock without a key. All my trying was never going to open that door and relieve that tinged sadness.

 

I wanted to make you happy because I knew it would make me happy. And it was a bob-and-weave proposition--couldn't get too close; you'd go the other way. But when I lessened up on the tension, when I just gave in and danced those wild dances at your high school with you--the Doors, the Beatles, the Stones (how can they say these songs aren't danceable?!)--we were electric together. Afterwards, we'd all walk in a teenage clump towards our NYC bar-hangout, and you'd pull an icicle off an awning and give it to me, and I'd just naturally suck on it, the greatest gift I ever got. Or in the bar, our crowd commanding the jukebox and the laughs and hoots swirling around us, you'd lean in and say to me, "Come here often?" in a low tone.

 

(Never, ever often enough.)

 

How sensible is it that sixteen years later, I still wonder what it would have been like to kiss you. We touched plenty...one night your hand rested on my neck for a long time, massaging while I cried--still wrestling my home demons, and the insecurity ones too. You were there when I lost my boyfriend, too, hugging me and encouraging me. "Turn It On Again" always makes me think of you and that night--because his action made me persona non grata with everyone else, yet you didn't drop me that easily.

 

But we never kissed. That might have turned the tides--either that, or you still would not have wanted to get involved with me, and I would have been destroyed.

 

That may well be why you never followed up. But I remain unconvinced that we were hopeless. I am nothing if not faithful to a dream.

 

You were that: a dream. Blond wavy hair, wry smile, amazing sarcastic wit, rich dramatic talent--but unassuming. Lankier than anyone else I can think of. And teenage-hot when we danced close, chests just-touching, to "Because" and "Sun King".

 

A kiss would have been unbelievably intimate between us. I have to believe, dear one, that doors would have flown open. That's why I replay this memory record sometimes--not because I've never known such intimacy; no, truly, I have been blessed to know and love deeply in the intervening years. But because we just will never know.

 

So the only other thing I can say that I didn't say is thank you. Thank you for the fruit and the walk through Central Park when my speech contest bombed, and the yearbook signings that made my heart sing, and your opening monologue in "Godspell"--riveting and moving; our quiet moments during teenage wild parties; sharing the Chartreuse buzz with me; the touch of your hand on my neck; and finally, all the Italian ices in lower Manhattan, summer of 1983, when we both worked at the base of the great city. Cool and sweet, tasty and tactile, they gave me a great excuse to hang around with you while you sold them from your white-cold cart. Because even when I had someone else in my life (and that summer, I juggled two in desperate, ecstatic misery), you represented a swooping hope, a purer thing.

 

Here's how I wrote it in December of 1981, after watching dusk glow in the sky over Central Park with you, seeing a diamond-chip star:

 

you flicker ever, a Paschal candle in my heart...

yet still ever now

Living in the House by the Side of the Road

A jumbled reflection on the election just past

There is a moment from my Catholic-school education that I will never forget, circa sixth grade--a year of stern nuns with fearsome face-smacking and hair-pulling disciplinary styles. We were being prepared for Confirmation in that flinching, maturing setting. One day, we were taught that over the centuries, Catholics have often been persecuted and even murdered for their beliefs. Even in our lifetimes, the teacher explained, such endangerment may lurk right around the corner. If persecutors arise in modern times, she said, and if we were ever challenged at gunpoint to state our faith, it would be a mortal sin to deny being Catholic at that moment just to save ourselves. Clearly, martyrdom was a long-standing tradition we were expected to uphold. 

I see now how this was the perfect Confirmation prep, as we were about to choose a saint's name to represent our Christian ideals going forward. I recall many of my classmates handily choosing names that were familial or sonorous (e.g. Marie), but I could not do that. Instead, I spent hours perusing a book I found in Mom's library, The Lives of the Saints. This 1930s volume featured lush artistic renderings which increased my interest in a saint's tale; unfortunately, it seemed that every passage I read with eagerness would suddenly end in martyrdom.  In fact, the saint I really connected with was Cecilia, she of cascading long hair, beatific face (seated at a piano in her picture, interestingly), and musical patronage. But Cecilia was martyred under brutal and vivid circumstances. I could not hitch my star to that, so to speak.

Finally, my deliberations led me to Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, sophisticated world traveler, finder of the True Cross, cat-lover, and an exceptionally long-lived saint who died of natural causes in her early 80s. Multiple Christian sects revere her--I liked that, too. Even at age 12, I was beginning to realize that my Christianity was less bordered than the Catholicism in which I had been raised. Helena, as it happens, is the patron saint of discoveries, converts, difficult marriages, and divorced people. I could not have chosen more accurately. Moreover, three decades later, I realize that Helena was the root saint's name for my great-great-grandmother, Ellen Finn, whose teenage journey from Ireland to Maine was surely guided by this adventurous patron saint of discoveries. (I didn't know enough about etymology or genealogy to put that together at age 12, so here's a retroactive pat on my preteen back.)

I've been reflecting on these moments from my childhood because they caused me to become immensely less brave about my beliefs…to cocoon them inside, so as not to be challenged. Martyrdom, to me, seemed much less persuasive a way to effect change; I rather preferred Helena's approach: traveling among disparate peoples, inspiring hope, living as an independent maverick female, and maternally supporting her son's world-changing reign as emperor. (Adult Nessa has learned that Helena and Constantine were imperfect, sometimes authoritarian figures, but let's remember them as Lives of the Saints did, for these purposes.)

My young-adult transition from Catholicism to the Society of Friends has not been kept secret (and lest we forget, Quakers have been martyred too), but I don't proselytize, and I believe that prayer is best held privately, as Christ demanded (fascinating information about that here: http://www.religioustolerance.org/prayer.htm). For some reason, political beliefs dwell in the same realm for me. Thus, my lifelong liberalism (honestly! I supported George McGovern, even!) has been something I've rarely promoted. In college, I did find myself arguing vigorously with some of my fraternity brethren, because I just could not tolerate Reagan's policies anymore--I felt those were dangerous, teetering as they did on a chilling Cold War precipice, and damaging as they were to the poor as well as children's educational futures. Those passionately defended arguments left me thwarted and shaking. I stopped doing that sort of thing thereafter.

So, here's a little retroactive bravery for you. I voted for Mondale and Dukakis, Clinton and Gore, Kerry and Obama. Many of those ballots ended up as hopeless as my college-age debates, pushing against a tide of conservative bluster and anti-intellectual sentiment that constantly made me feel beleaguered and disenfranchised. Yes, friends, I'm one of those saps who espouses that Christ himself was a liberal. I believe our government exists because we citizens need its myriad services: protection, infrastructure, education, guidance, all of which I believe the Constitution set up firmly.

Now, I'm not a hook-line-and-sinker liberal, and I won't share why because, see above, not so brave and usually private. But I am someone for whom the last three-odd years of national political discord has been painful in the extreme. Friends on Facebook, pundits on Fox and elsewhere, all decrying loudly and angrily many things that I hold to be self-evident. And I have kept my counsel because I was a scared potential martyr. Seriously, that is exactly how I felt. If Romney won--which the right wing insisted he was on track to do--I feared for myself, and my beliefs. The same fears arose in me during the second Bush administration, when citizens were advised that speaking out against the President in a time of war was tantamount to treason. Gosh, that seemed martyr-like to me. I've wondered why that policy did not apply to the 44th President, but who am I to judge?

I do not like to offend people whom I love, and I despise arguing and discord. So I have tolerated months of ceaseless Internet propaganda that inflamed and infuriated me. I tried very hard not to answer that propaganda in kind. Today, I find myself at a dizzying pass: my presidential vote has been successful for the second time in eight years. Even more to the point, policies I believe to be humane and important have been enacted; women's personal rights have been upheld. There has never been a time in my entire adult life when I felt this nearly in step with my government. (Let's not consider my pacifism…not likely to see that honored in the near term.) 

I seek to peacefully believe. Story of my life. Perhaps I should be more of a crusader, but as we sang at my childhood folk Masses: "Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me." For those friends whose political landscape has just shifted seismically, who are feeling beleaguered and disenfranchised: I empathize with you entirely. I will not mock you, berate you, or despise you. But I am allowing myself joy this week, internally, and here in this modest little post, as bewildering as it is to feel such satisfied inclusion.

Coda: Years ago, I bought an embroidered sampler at a yard sale that reads: "Let me live in my house by the side of the road/and be a friend to man." Having written the above, I was reminded of that phrase--which I always loved, but never quite knew why. Googling just led me to the full poem by Sam Walter Foss, which I'd never read before. Joyfully, it completely summarizes what I'm trying to say. You may read it here: http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/foss01.html

228 Maine Street/Alpha Delta Phi

House where I lost my virginity
and found myself.
House where I drank more beer than a body ever has a right to
and stopped drinking beer, for good.
House where I lost all pretense that purple eyeshadow looked good
and learned the feminine power of vintage dresses.
House where I made more friends and kept more friends
than any other place I’ve ever been.
(House where my children have made friends too.)
House where I’ve greeted the dawn
by eating Froot Loops floating in a bowl of beer.
House where I’ve shared morning showers
and heard laughter echo off the tile walls.
House where I’ve worn someone else’s bathrobe at breakfast
and started raging rumors.
House where I sat in front of the fireplace
ruminating and procrastinating, cuddling and debating.
House where I watched MTV and “V” and Bugs Bunny
and listened to the music, loud, that continues to sustain me.
House where I learned how important it is
to hit a cup of keg beer with a ping-pong ball.
Again and again and again and again.
(And where I learned how hard it is to keep sipping your beer
when it gets hit in rapid succession.)
House where I tried pot, acted incredibly stupid,
and gave it up gladly.
House where I ceased to be defined by my ancestry.
House where my room was such a mess
that friends came in and tidied up in my absence,
laughing at my stuff.
House where I cheered the ground-shaking THUMP of a urinal
hurled off the roof.
House where I dispensed advice
and sought it in equal measure.
House where I shed my angst
and found my soulmate.
House of love. House of laughter. House of hope. House of belief.
Our House.

Thoughts After a Stressful Day

I don't know what I want. A new mother, swamped with responsibilities and saddled with work so that our family can keep its collective head above water, I just don't see where my wanting things makes sense.

 

Occasional whiffs of wants pass me almost constantly. They're tantalizing, and they make me ache and yearn, but they vaporize immediately. The baby fusses, or the phone rings, or the magazine I've been reading fitfully forces a different world-view on me...and those dreams, thoughts, ideas just float off, defeated.

 

And in retrospect, when I try to excavate the day's assemblage of wants for my husband (who probably fears for my sanity when he sees me lying in bed at impossible hours THINKING without resolution), the list I begin to renumerate sounds absurd and trite. I want to write books for a living. I want to have my own business instead of being at the mercy of a mercurial, imposing boss. I want to be home with my children where I belong. I want to continue to have the freedom to cook fabulous meals for my family (which I've been doing, as a balm, ever since my maternity leave began). I want to be the person I was once, who believed in herself, trusted in others, and wasn't afraid.

 

And that's really it: I'm afraid all the time. Bolluxed by fear and paralytic with uncertainty. Too many competing elements in my life; they overwhelm my inner urges and squelch them utterly.

 

Meanwhile, like clockwork, my breasts ebb and swell with my daughter's meals, and I continually anticipate those respites with relish. My kids, worn with the changes they're going through, try to make the bus every morning, tired and sluggish, infuriating their dad. Their dad, my husband, wants desperately for our household to return to a semblance of predictability: financially certainly, but also the basic functions of schedule and emotional stability (what we had of that, anyway). And our new family member, Lydia Frances, demands so little and gives so much to all of us. She is in no way the cause of the juncture I've come to. She is only part of its emotional urgency.

 

I can only sigh, reviewing this mental landscape in which I dwell. I don't imagine there's anything I can do to assuage the malcontent I feel. I can shrug it off quite frequently, buoyed by interactions with others, but it always returns, like an incoming tide encroaches on the sand. No amount of "spontaneous" consumerism can defray the feelings; no amount of talking it through can answer the questions. And nothing gets written. This last phrase is the neat, strong summary of what is wrong.

Everyone Called Her Nana: A Life

One of the first blog posts I ever put up on the Internet, via The Jackson Lab's old system of "personal" webpages.
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People know you in Millinocket, Maine by your family name. "Isn't she a Hathaway?" "He's one of them _____________s" (fill in the blank; I'm no fool.) In this vein, I'm one of the Pinette girls, only two generations removed. My grandmother, affectionately called "Tut" or "Tutta" by nearly all the adults in her acquaintance, was one of the original Pinette girls of Millinocket. To the children on and around Penobscot Avenue in the 1970s, she was Nana.

This could be hard to take. My proprietary sense--heightened by the fact that I only had summers to spend with Nana, while my compatriots could see her year 'round--was challenged by the varied voices of those kids, peeking in the back door and asking Nana for a molasses cookie. Or just shouting "Hi, Nana!" as they rode by on a banana-seat bike, waving to her as she sat on the front porch. But I felt proud, too. I knew that their affection for her was only half of what I felt, and I was pleased that they knew as well as I did how special she was.

She was special from the start. Theresa Mary Pinette was born on September 28, 1896 in a farmhouse near Eagle Lake, Maine. Her hair was flaming red even at birth, family legend has it. More importantly, she was a precious, exact-lookalike replacement for the infant girl who had died the year before. Her parents, Elizabeth and Joseph Pinette, named her Theresa after this lost sister. Nana always reported this fact with gentle pride, conveying a sense of responsibility for the near-twin who'd preceded her.

After the birth, there was reason to fear that my grandmother might not make it, either; she was premature, and that autumn was unusually harsh. The Pinettes kept the newborn next to the woodstove, warmly swaddled in a box. I always imagine the life of the farmhouse swirling around her in those early days; the busy activities of her older siblings--Eddie, Percy, Nellie, Essie, Bill, and Diddy (Elizabeth)--enhanced by her presence. Their games were a little easier now that a new baby was in the house again.

Tutta's nickname came from Diddy, three years older and obviously having trouble pronouncing names. She grew up as the imp of the family, occasionally exasperating them but always amusing them. Diddy would despair that her sister was just young enough to escape chores; Nellie, the oldest girl, would chide Diddy calmly and hand her a broom. All the Pinette children had to pitch in; their parents took in boarders, and that increased the workload. I'm not certain when the family made the exodus south to Millinocket, but it was the home Nana remembered most strongly, and the place she attended school.

Tut was not particularly fond of school, as a concept. She was impatient with the process of learning; she liked palling around with the boys better, although Diddy was by far the wilder tomboy. "In the winter," Nana used to regale me, "Diddy would climb up to the barn roof and jump right off it into a snowbank." (As I grew older, Nana maintained that Diddy's uterus had "tipped" as a result of her exploits, rendering her barren. The image has never left my mind.)

Meanwhile, the older Pinette girls had discovered men. Nellie was plainer than Essie, but her smile was friendly and welcoming. Essie took pride in her beauty, and her creamy complexion is evident even in sepia-toned photographs. The above photo eloquently depicts the Pinette girls' dilemma: Essie (left) and Nellie are seated on a beautiful grassy knoll with their unidentified dates. All are dressed in their finest summer attire. Lush leaves shade the background. In the exact center of the photo, an arm slung around each sister's shoulder, is Tut Pinette. She looks about twelve. Her sisters' hair is contained in demure buns; Tut's obviously red locks are flying free from the effort to contain them. In contrast to the dress-up outfits that surround her, my grandmother is wearing what looks like a nightie, some brief white cotton playdress that allows her to climb a tree if she so desires. The gentlemen smile gamely, the sisters can't help but smile wider, and Tut's giving a hearty laugh.

School continued to bore Nana (she admitted to me once that she had leveraged her friendships with boys into a cheating system for getting classwork done: "I just wasn't good at things like math," she smiled, and that seemed like an acceptable answer). In tenth grade, she announced that she was quitting. Rather than resign herself to a life of domestic drudgery, she decided to go to work. She was a clerk in a Millinocket store for awhile, but ultimately found the best career for her breezy personality when the local Bell telephone office hired her as an operator.

She had already decided that she would be the child who would remain at home and care for her parents. (Her open good nature was always tempered with an overriding sense of responsibility, it seems.) The years passed easily; Nana loved her job and had a good circle of friends. She was the favorite Pinette aunt, because her single-and-working status allowed her to provide gifts and made her less careworn than her older siblings. Joseph and Elizabeth certainly benefitted from having their youngest around. She contributed to the finances of the house, and reassured them that they would not be alone as they grew older.

In 1928, while she worked the switchboard, a call came in that changed her life. In Millinocket as in any small American town of the day, switchboard operators had their fingers on the pulse. If someone new arrived, they'd be the first to hear the voice and spread the word. Nana heard a new male voice, and liked the sound of it very much. Knowing my grampy, he must have sounded by turns manly and impatient. And some tone in that voice must have suggested that good humor lurked within. Nana began a campaign of practical jokes, operator-style. Whenever Fred Arnold's voice came across her headset, she connected him to the wrong number. Poor Grampy encountered the parish priest, the undertaker, the fire department...anyone but the party he'd requested.

Nana's foolery attracted the Canadian emigrant's attention. (He'd come to Millinocket to work at the B & A Railroad station as a telegrapher.) When Fred and Tut finally met, they realized that she was eight years older than he. Tutta, ever the spark-plug, started fixing him up with the younger girls in her acquaintance. Fred returned from each date feeling impatient ("It's you I want to be with, Tut!"). After awhile, she got the message.

Their courtship was unusually long--four years. I've theorized that perhaps Nana was holding him at bay, feeling committed to her parents and the life she had made for herself. But Grampy ingratiated himself with the nieces and nephews (much as Nana had) and made it clear that he supported her intention to care for her parents. When they finally married in 1932, they set up house in the Pinettes' upstairs rooms.

Given Nana's age--36--they had only one child: a daughter, Maryann. They doted on her, and she did not disappoint. With her red hair and her amazing talent for playing piano, she was as recognizable as her mother was to the people of Millinocket.

Nana's life settled down with marriage and parenthood to consider. As my mother tells it, Nana was somewhat of an anxious parent, perhaps even more so after she left her parents' home and set up her own with Grampy. The older-parent, only-child situation played out much as it always does; my mother ultimately felt stifled in her small-town home, and left Millinocket as soon as she graduated high school. Maryann was gifted with her mother's youthful sense of adventure: she became a jazz musician in New York City. Nine years later, she started her own family: her son Sean was born in 1959, and I was born four years later.

As a grandmother, Nana was irrepressible and mothering at the same time. She made my childhood a joy, instructing patiently and always remaining optimistic. She taught me to knit, bake bread, make Saturday-night beans, sew on a treadle machine, bake molasses cookies, braid my hair, dress neatly, save money and shop enthusiastically, laugh uproariously, respect elders and love unabashedly. My mother shared many of these lessons with me, too, but Nana made companionship out of them. I spent every summer with my grandparents until I was 17 years old. Rarely was I bored, and always I felt safe. Having grown up in New York City, this latter was a wonderful gift to me.

Nana died on March 29, 1986. In her afterimage--memories, photos, even a precious recorded snippet of her voice--I still feel safe and hopeful, joyous and family-centered. Lessons you don't learn at school. I'm glad those who knew her in Millinocket sensed what she could teach. I'm glad she was mine to know.

Essie Pinette Gonya, me, and Theresa Pinette Arnold, 1974