On Gifts & my Sister

I thought a lot about what I wanted to write for the dawn of this New Year – which I have every expectation of being glorious & celebratory.  Somehow it seemed natural that I would write this.

Sometimes you receive gifts you long for, sometimes you receive gifts you need, & sometimes, miracle of miracles, you receive a gift that you did not know you wanted or needed but fits perfectly in the center of the note.

Years ago, before I had children but still visited my parents’ house, my sister Janet gave me one of those gifts that fit perfectly in the center of the note.  Sitting at our parents’ table, she listened to my tales of my life in the inner city & my obsession with one graffiti laden wall in downtown Houston.

That Christmas, Janet gave me three black & white photos of my favorite graffiti laden wall.

I still cherish them, spending too much time trying to create the right frames for displaying them again.

We no longer sit at our parents’ table, my sister & I.  Sometimes we sit at one of my barley twist tables to share a holiday meal.  These are fine moments.

But my sister listens to me on Facebook just as she once listened to me at our parents’ table.   And this year, although we have never discussed the PBS show I crave, she gave me the first four seasons of Downton Abbey on DVD for Christmas.

Amazing.

A few days later, I asked her to have her daughter Emily Kate Douglas deliver Janet’s copy of Frozen, which I had not seen but so needed to hear about letting go.  (And, in all honesty, this was a manipulative move on my part so I could meet Emily’s boyfriend Zach.  How great is that name?)

I could have downloaded the song, but I really, really wanted to see the movie Rosie O’Donnell claims is the best animated film ever.  And I really wanted to see Emily Kate & meet Zach in person.

So Janet brought over Emily & Zach (never was there ever a more adorable couple) & my own copy of the sing along version of Frozen.

Right in the center of the note.  Again.

That is my sister.  Whose voice is so different from mine.   We have different takes on so many things, we are so very different, but we both have a voice.   I write.  She sings.

She sings like an angel who has yet to be created.  She lifts up her voice & everyone listens.  It is a beautiful, awesome voice, a lovely soul behind it.

That is my sister, who gives me gifts right in the center of the note.

The most glorious & totally undeserved gift is her love.

Chasing Tamales in Sugar Land

Sleepless, once again, in Meadows Place.  Past midnight & I am on my second cup of Sleepytime Tea with Valerian root & listening to Bill Medley. 

Today was amazing & adventurous.  I set out in search of tamales, got lost in Sugar Land searching for the First Colony library (my local library is closed for the installation of new carpet), managed to find my way to Barnes & Noble to purchase The Giving Tree for an anticipated visit from my grandnephew John.

Because I have no sense of direction, I found a creative way to  get lost within Barnes & Noble & had to ask Customer Service where the frack the check out registers were located.

Of course, in my defense, I don’t get out much & I hate malls so a trip to Barnes & Noble is a major event.  It is the closest bookstore & located in First Colony Mall in Sugar Land, which is worse than shopping in Houston’s Galleria district during Christmas & its aftermath.

But the Children’s Section in Barnes & Noble has a lovely reading area & it was filled with children & parents in rocking chairs.  All reading.  Even the parents sitting on the edge of the area waiting for their offspring were reading.

So it was worth getting lost in Barnes & Noble (not to mention wandering the parking lot for my car) to see so many young people reading.

Upon my exit, I drove the masses looking for parking spots crazy in the search for my car.  Parking is, at best, problematic at Barnes & Noble.  I did make a note of where I parked – two trees away from the entrance to Dillard’s.  Barnes & Noble straight in front of me.

But somehow, I did not process the fact that my car was parked two spaces from the road between the parking lot & the entrance to Dillard’s.  So I wandered, people in cars following me, wanting my parking space.  Frustrated people – who was this ridiculous woman in a purple wool coat with a really fabulous pashmina?

My son Nicholas says I have become a cliché.  In my defense, I have always been a directionally challenged cliché.  In the second grade, I got lost walking from 3511 Morningstar Lane to Cabell Elementary, a distance of approximately .03 miles.

And although I have lived in Meadows Place, a literal square mile city nestled between Sugar Land & Houston for the past forty-odd years, I am quite capable of getting lost here.

A directional cliché, indeed.

Part of the awesomeness of the day was talking to both my sons.  Nick, in the midst of packing to move to the new property his wife the Lady Jane will be managing, assured me that he would make time tomorrow to come & visit.  I tell them that it is no big deal, I understand but what I really want to do is guilt him into coming.

Greedily, I call my son Sam, thinking that he won’t pick up & I will have to wait for him to call me back.  But he picks up & we talk.  We talk about the gifts he has waiting to be picked up & about the car he is buying from my sister Janet.  And he tells me that he is seeing a woman named Veronica.  

Which is huge, because Sam is very private & does not readily share intimate details of his life with his mother & has only once introduced me a young woman he was seriously seeing.  (I was very fond of that young woman & grieved when they broke up).

When I tell Jean about my day & adventures & talking to the boys who are grown men, she smiled.  As I was fluffing pillows & rearranging positioning wedges, she smiled again & said, “Veronica.”

And then I remember.

One of Jean’s favorite games to play with me is Things I Could Have Named You Besides Jaki Jean.

Veronica was one of the choices she offered me.  A beautiful name, she said.

It is now no longer the day I began writing about in my sleepless state.  In spite of all the wanderings throughout Sugar Land & Barnes & Noble, the 30^th day of December, 2014,  was a good day for Jaki Jean.

And I found tamales.  Without getting lost.

Jaki Jean & Jean on Alternative Names: Veronica? Minnie Jo?

Wednesday, December 10^th, 2014

So this morning, waiting in a room for Jean's neurologist, Jean says:

I have thought of something else I could have named you.

The last time Jean suggested that she could have named me something other than after herself & my father, she told me could have named me Veronica.

At the time, I asked Jean where she got Veronica & she said she did not know.

But it is a very pretty name.

The thought of being named after a character in an Archie comic book series did not please me.  

I was wary of finding out what other name I might have been called these last six decades.  But we were wedged in the room, the stretcher faced toward the doctor’s entrance & I could not sit behind Jean & work a crossword without interacting.

Because I have already gone through the November 3^rd issue of People  magazine with her, I asked her what else she could have named me except for Veronica or after my father & herself.

I could have named you Minnie Jo.

I think of Minnie Driver & Minnie Mouse & then I tell her that no one in their right mind names anything but a puppy or a doll or a cartoon character Minnie Jo.

Jean replied:

Actually I was quite fond of Minnie Jo.

And I wonder who  was this Minnie Jo who might have been the inspiration for my name & why Jean was quite fond of her.  So I ask & Jean tells me a story. 

Minnie Jo was the product of a marriage between my Aunt Flora’s husband’s brother, Tule (Jean spells out T – U – L – E) & a woman I think was named Bessie.

I verify Jean’s Aunt Flora as her mother Luna’s sister.

Minnie Jo was very tall, with light brown hair & nice, dark skin.  I seem to remember she had blue eyes.  She started dating Billy John Burns.  I liked him first.  I wasn’t happy about that.

The last I heard, they were still happily married.

Minnie Jo used to send me cards from time to time & and she would congratulate me on whatever was happening.

I once wrote back to her:  I hope you only have enough clouds in your life to create a beautiful sunset.

I am sure I read that somewhere.

Every time I have one of these conversations with Jean, I marvel at what I don’t know about her.  And I marvel at how much of who I am is embedded in what she has given me.

And, not for the first time I realize, from whom I first learned to be a story teller.

There is a reason I am not named Minnie Jo or Veronica.  I am very much Jack & Jean’s daughter & my name, as my cousin Vicki Willimon Barkley once pointed out, suits me.

I think of a poem by Vassar Miller, a Houston poet I was privileged to meet.   I cannot find the small book containing the poem – but it had to do with naming.  That we name what we love, we love what we name.

Naming is an enormous power – given to Adam by God, it granted Adam dominion over all that was created after him.  The names we give our children define them, dictate the course of their growing into their own identities.

Veronica is  a very pretty name.  It still invokes only two memories – the Archie comic book figure & a flash of the actress Veronica Hammel wearing Furillo’s shirt during a bedroom scene in the TV drama Hill Street Blues.  Minnie Jo still invokes images of Minnie Mouse. 

Jean did tell me that at some point Minnie Jo dropped the Minnie & signed her cards & letters Jo.

I told Jean that I was quite content being named after my parents.  Even it is does sound like a character in a Faulkner novel, if Faulkner had written about a fictional town in East Texas instead of a fictional town in Mississippi.

There are worse things than sounding a bit like a Faulkner character.

After all, Jack & Jean named what they loved & continued to love what they named.

I really need to find that Vassar Miller poem.

Jaki Jean, Jean, & Remembering the First Baby You Ever Held

Tonight I tell Jean that her niece Lawana saw her picture on Facebook & said that she looked so good.

Jean smiled & then said:  Her name is Lawana Jean.

This is new to me & I ask:  After you?

And Jean says:  Yes.  She was the first baby I ever held.

For a moment I am speechless, but because I am never without words for long, I touch her & smile & say:  The very first baby you hold is very special.

Jean smiles & I tell her that I am going to write for a while & she asks: 

What is on TV?

I tell her nothing much, but I see two VHS packages & offer her a choice between The Lion King  (complete with my rendition of From the day we arrive on the planet And blinking, step into the sun There's more to see than can ever be seen More to do than can ever be done)  & Air Force One & Jean quite wisely chooses Harrison Ford over animation & anything I recommend with what passes for my singing voice.

I tell her that Air Force One is one my personal favorites but I do not tell her that seeing The Lion King on stage is on my bucket list.  Even if it is Disney’s really poor version of Hamlet.

And then I sit down at Luna's sewing machine to write & I forget why it was so important to write tonight. 

All I keep thinking is what Jean told me about my cousin Lawana Jean:

She was the first baby I ever held.

Jean was the youngest of nine, far too young to hold my cousins who are so close to her in age.  Far too young to hold her nieces & nephews who did not live on the farm.

I think it was my first realization that I was not the first baby she ever held. 

Because I was the first of Jack & Jean’s children, the first babies I ever held were my siblings. 

There is a running joke in our family, one which I perpetuate, that I am still not over the birth of my sister Janet.  It is true that I have no memory of her birth.  But I do remember holding her.

And I remember all the grownups warning me to be careful, not to drop her.

While I don’t think I ever dropped her, I know without a doubt that over the years, Janet has never dropped me.

I remember holding our brother John – I was so worried about him – why did all the grownups let that ugly thing cling to his belly button?  Who was in charge?

By the time our youngest brother Jason arrived, I was thirteen & an expert at holding babies.  But I had a lot of competition from my two other siblings – everyone wanted to hold Jason.

Over the years, I have held all my siblings’ children - Felicia Marie, Emily Kate, Johnny Alexander & Sarah Jane.  Each time, I remembered how it felt to hold my sons Nicholas Jordan & Samuel Jean.  

And how it felt to hold my baby sister & my younger brothers.

Today I once again held my late brother John’s grandson.

Tonight, writing, I think of how it felt to hold little John, named for my brother & his grandfather John Simpson Ettinger, who was named for our grandfather, John Simpson Alexander Ettinger.  To feel the connection of what came before, of what is & what will continue.

And I think about Jean, how she must have felt to hold that little girl, the first baby she remembers holding, Lawana Jean.

Preparing her for holding her own daughters & sons & grandchildren.  Jean can no longer hold a baby - Parkinson's has robbed one of her arms of its strength.  

But my niece held little John close & Jean spoke to him & his eyes shined & he responded to Jean's voice.

The first baby you remember holding is very special.

And perhaps, so is the one you cannot hold.