The path curves back and forth. The sky and distant lights are visible through the tree branches. I catch occasional glimpses of the Creek itself below. Tiny drops of snow soundlessly swirl to a stop behind my glasses, and as soundlessly melt and join others and slide, like tears, from my eyes. And I remember:<\/p>\r\n
Most recently, talking to my father the day after his fiftieth birthday. He told me, \u201cYour brother wrote me a letter. He said, \u2018As always on your birthday, I\u2019m thinking of Marcy.\u2019 And I realized that for the first time, I didn\u2019t think of her yesterday. It\u2019s not that I want to forget her, but maybe I\u2019m finally beginning to let her go.\u201d I didn\u2019t say much. I\u2019ve never said much about her to Peter. Or to anyone, really. But I remembered that for days before the 11th, I\u2019d thought of her and reminded myself to do something in her memory on the 11th. But the day came and went, and I couldn\u2019t reach Peter, and I forgot.<\/p>\r\n
I know so little of the woman who shaped so much of who I am. Born August 17, 1943; died November 11, 1980, of leukemia. We were out of school, of course, for Veterans\u2019 Day. Marcy had been in a clinic up in Washington state for a while, and had, a day or two earlier, gone into a coma. At about 10 or 11 that morning, Peter answered the phone. We knew it was bad news, from the way he talked. He gathered us together, and told us that she had died. We sat, the three of us, and held on to each other, and cried. Half an hour later, wandering through the house, I found Peter in his bedroom, and I demanded, \u201cCouldn\u2019t she still come back? Haven\u2019t people been dead longer than this and been brought back?\u201d I had read articles on near-death experiences of people whose hearts had been stopped for upwards of forty-five minutes. He told me, firmly, \u201cNo, Jed. You have<\/em> to let her go.\u201d<\/p>\r\n I think Joaquin and I stayed home from school an extra day. When we went back, a girl who was pretty much a friend of mine, in my orchestra class, smiled at me and told me, \u201cI\u2019m really sorry about your mother, Jed.\u201d I don\u2019t think I spoke to her for months, and I didn\u2019t understand for years that the smile had been expressing sorrow and sympathy and not making fun of me.<\/p>\r\n And so we were left with some papers of Marcy\u2019s and, later, some letters<\/a> that she\u2019d sent her mother over the years (including a couple describing me just after I was born). And, even later, some photos of her growing up<\/a> and photos of her and Peter and my brother and me<\/a>. And memories. I have a cassette tape of her reading a kids\u2019 book out loud to me. It occurred to me recently that I don\u2019t really know even what her taste in books was. She and Peter read The Lord of the Rings<\/cite> to Joaquin and me, all the way through, when I was no more than 8 or 9. I still haven\u2019t read all of it to myself, but I remember most of it. She used to sing to us, every now and then, and though Peter said she couldn\u2019t carry a tune, I couldn\u2019t tell. She\u2019d sing Dona, dona, dona, do-o-na\u2026<\/i>, or Greensleeves was my delight\u2026<\/i> (still one of my favorite songs), or sometimes Three times around went our gallant, gallant ship\u2026<\/i> or Whack-fol-de-daddy-o, there\u2019s whiskey in the rye!<\/i><\/p>\r\n She was born in Philadelphia, to parents named Jack and Ethel. Ethel was never the most stable of people; she\u2019d lost too many family members, starting with her father when she was ten. Jack (Joaquin was later named after him) died in early 1968, of lung cancer or something similar; he\u2019d been a heavy smoker all his life. Marcy graduated from Antioch in 1966<\/a>, with a degree in elementary school education, and headed west. (She had previously taught at a Hopi reservation<\/a> for a while.) In California, she met and married Peter.<\/p>\r\n She worked as a substitute teacher at times, and at a bookstore. Peter worked various jobs in various places. In Santa Rosa, they started Hearthlight, \u201ca foster home for emotionally disturbed children.\u201d Joaquin and I had always called them Marcy and Peter, and the foster kids called them that as well. (\u201cWhy do you call your father Peter?\u201d my friends would later ask. I learned to reply, \u201cThat\u2019s his name.\u201d)<\/p>\r\n She went back to school for a little while when Joaquin and I were old enough, doing Anthropology at Sonoma State University\u2014I remember going with her to a site one day and helping sift dust and dirt, looking for bits of pottery left by American Indians who had once lived there.<\/p>\r\n In 1978, we moved to Palo Alto. Marcy had had leukemia for three years by then; I think she had already lasted longer than the doctors expected her to. I was going into the fifth grade. Two years and a couple months later, Marcy died.<\/p>\r\n She was cremated. Peter, Joaquin, and I, with a couple of family friends, scattered her ashes (as she\u2019d requested) in a state park not far from Palo Alto. I don\u2019t think it was strictly legal, but nobody stopped us.<\/p>\r\n She was kind and loving, a good mother and a good person. And now I want to know more about her, to read her letters, journals if she kept any, to find out what she was really like. I\u2019ve always felt silly telling people I didn\u2019t really know her, because I lived with her for twelve years; but I was only just beginning to think of her as a person<\/em> rather than as my mother. I\u2019ve always been annoyed at the phrase (as used in stories) \u201cyour mother would have been proud of you,\u201d but I occasionally find myself thinking, that would have pleased Marcy<\/i>, and that makes me a little happier.<\/p>\r\n And here I am in my last year of college. I wish I could have shared some of the last nine years with her. But Peter has done his best to raise Joaquin and me, and on the whole he\u2019s done a good job. I have him, and I have other family, and I have wonderful friends and a pretty good life and a woods filling up with snow, and isn\u2019t that a lot to be thankful for? I think it is. But sometimes\u2026sometimes I\u2019m sad anyway.<\/p>\r\n I eventually find the amphitheatre, silent and snow-filled, and make a wide loop of footprints around the stage area. I continue on, past the trestle, not sure at all that I\u2019m going the right way to the meadow any more. Distance and direction get confused. It\u2019s getting cold, and probably late. If I don\u2019t find the meadow, maybe this\u2019ll take me out of the woods somewhere closer to home; I can leave my books at the lab overnight.<\/p>\r\n And then, of course, just as I decide that it\u2019s all right if I don\u2019t find the meadow tonight, there it is. I watch the sky for a little while, wander to the bank of the creek, brush snow off the corner of the stone table in the circle of Crumhenge (thinking: The Stone Table, from before the beginning of time<\/i>). By this time I\u2019m getting tired and cold. I retrace my steps back to the path and continue along it, pausing only to brush more snow off the corner of a huge stone triangle pointing upward at the sky like a giant stone road sign, pointing the way to somewhere or nowhere. The path quickly leads me to Fieldhouse Lane; I traverse the whitened field, cross Route 320, and am, at last, home.<\/p>\r\n\r\n I wrote this originally for SWAPA in late 1989. Edited it somewhat for various other forums, and then edited it more for Web publication. I first posted it online on the day that would\u2019ve been Marcy\u2019s 55th birthday.<\/p>\r\n![\"Marcy](\"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/11\/1.jpg\")
<\/a>And in a way, yes, that\u2019s good\u2014letting go can be a good thing. But I know I haven\u2019t really let go, not completely, and that\u2019s good too. On her birthday, August 17, very early in the morning, I sat out on the stone Swarthmore College sign by the College Avenue entrance and thought of her. And I came home and put on Uncle Bonsai\u2019s song \u201cSilent Night,\u201d and Michael and Marguerite were very understanding, and I cried, and they gave me a back rub, and we talked. They\u2019d both lost close grandparents recently, and it helped (at least for me) to talk about it. I tried to find some framed pictures that I got from my grandmother\u2019s house, including one of Marcy as a teenager; that photo was sitting on my desk one day freshling year, and Rick\u2019s mother saw it and later asked Rick if that was my girlfriend, because she looked awfully familiar. People always said I looked like Marcy.<\/p>\r\n<\/a>Letting go. Distances and directions. My brother, Joaquin, has one really nice photograph of Marcy: framed, 8\" x 10\" or so, with her sitting in a chair in our living room, smiling, and sunlight suffusing her hair. That\u2019s how I want to remember her.<\/p>\r\nNotes<\/h2>\r\n