ROSES

ROSES

1979

            It’s October in magical Utah, the sound of cottonwood leaves softly applauding on wind-tossed branches, thence floating to the baked earth.. There’s just a hint of early morning coolness before the Great Oppressor blazes over the cliffs. My second season guiding on the Colorado river in Cataract Canyon just ended, so I’m off to hike my brains out, gratefully alone once more, conversing only with the gravel crunching underfoot, the caw and swoosh of ravens soaring along the red cliffs above. I need the rapids in Cataract Canyon for how small they make me feel, love the desert for its intensity. That’s why I’m here, doing just this. This tension, this unknowable immensity.

Like most immortal twenty-five year old boatmen, I burned it hard all summer –  rowing into the biggest waves, cleaning up stinky “groovers”, cooking dinner in the 110 degree desert oven while intermittently diving into the blessed river eddy to cool off for five minutes, keeping wide-eyed clients from killing themselves whilst hiking their brains out to some of the most awesome views on the planet.

Goddam lucky to have escaped the life I once thought was all there was back there in Chicago. In the end my mother saved my unworthy backside, tossing a Reader’s Digest article about Outward Bound onto the table her long-haired hippie son was nodding at in the breakfast nook, stoned as usual, as she stood there, arms folded and watching.

“What do you think?”

“Um, yeah, looks cool enough, why?”

“Your father and I are giving you the choice… Outward Bound or military school.”

That got my attention alright.

“Um, ok, I’ll take Outward Bound I guess.”

“Which one… sailing, hiking, climbing?”

“Well… this place called Yo-see-might looks okay I guess.”

“Ok, take your Bar Mitzvah money out for the course fee and we’ll pay for the flight.”

For a time she regretted how that seminal moment stole me forever from her civilized world of white picket fences, marriage, and “real jobs”. But after watching how this new life changed me from lost-soul hooligan into a somewhat worthy seeker, she came around. It did take a few years for them to comprehend the enormity of her gift. I’d devoured Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett stories as a young kid, deeply depressed, angry that my secretly cherished “wilderness” was long gone. But in her desperation she granted me something measureless… what I was meant to be for the rest of my life.  I eventually took her and dad down our Stanislaus river to try and give them a tiny glimpse of the magic of moving water, and how it moved me. Afterwards she put her hands on my waist, looked me in the eyes, smiling, and said simply “Now I get it”.

I was pretty good at this outdoor adventure thing, felt respected for the first time. Found peace of mind gazing into a hundred thousand campfires flickering under the stars, climbing cliff and mountain. Then I found the tribe of river rats.

XXX

For a few days I relax climbing ancient Moqui steps up stupidly dangerous cliffs, fording the clearest of streams in soggy tennies, crawling along airy ledges to inspect Indian rock art in places so remote I won’t spook anyone whilst howling at the moon. The idea of rescue in case of mishap is laughable, stumbling across my mummified carcass far more likely, eye sockets emptied by the buzzards. After this sanctification I toss my river gear in the back of my rusty ‘57 Dodge flatbed to rattle along with me down Interstate 70 to my current home base in Santa Cruz. Time to dry out, heal my cracked heel pads, spend the winter like a hermit, alone with earth and sky.

Soon I’m sitting cross-legged on an old rug covering the bare ground in my hand-built tipi, in front of a warm homemade tin-can woodstove, pondering my lucky escape. I metamorphosed into the wandering Jew, heading West geographically and spiritually from the Big Smoke. Rivers and the tribe they sustain allowed me to accept and be accepted. Being the lone-wolf, rejecting tribe, turned out to be just another role to play along my winding path, an essential element on an unlikely road right back to tribe. To be a lone-wolf required that there be something out there to be apart from in the first place. As mountaineer and boatman, this new river tribe replaced the Jewish one I’d left behind, mistakenly thinking all tribes were not for me. Really I was seeking self, I just didn’t know it at the time. Then I fit in with all them other anti-authoritarian, rogue-ish, individualistic, rebellious folk. There is a great camaraderie amongst these talented misfits. I have not yet learned how to manage the hot sauce of newly found skill and respect, but I will. It’ll take getting slapped around some, but this too will come in its own time.

So there I am, humming in the gentle afternoon sun, caretaking at Emily’s, hoeing her garden, trading for tipi space in the redwoods, when out of the blue this electric lightning bolt jolts up the length of my spine, and I drop the forgotten hoe to the ground. Before I know it I’m madly sprinting past the pigeons cooing in their cages towards the main house on the hill, mom’s voice filling my head.

            I call the folk’s apartment in LA, but no answer. As I’m replacing the handset on the cradle I barely catch Dad’s fading voice wah-wah-wahing out of the earpiece, pull it back to my ear.

            “Pop? Hey it’s me. How’s mom?

             Dad replies “How did you know?”

            “Whaddya mean, how did I know? How did I know what?”

            “I just walked in the door from taking your mother to the hospital. She’s real sick.”

            With what, he doesn’t have a clue. I drive the six hours to L.A. overnight, the Dodge’s pedal jammed into the floorboard, brain spinning.

            I do not believe in hocus-pocus. But that goddam spine thing...

            Mom’s tough. Apparently lasted six years after being given only six months, not that I cared to know anything about it. All she ever mentioned as an offhand aside during yet one more of my early-twenties mad-rush phone calls from somewhere far away was that she “got kinda sick” – probably from the chemicals in hers and dad’s dry cleaning business ­­­­– lost her hair from some kind of “medicine”, but she was “okay”. Or so she said. Lost in my macho youth, I took her word for it and went on about my important business. She shared her inner terror with my sisters, who rightly didn’t see any point in sharing it with me.

            I arrive at the hospital tired and cranky. “Can you give me Mrs. Aronson’s room number, please?”

            “I’m sorry. Are you family?”

            “I’m her son.”

The look in the nurse’s eyes makes me flinch. Reluctantly, I aim towards the elevator.

            I was a paramedic, and I know this; different hospital floors harbor different broken ships. The belly floor. The cancer floor. The Cardiac floor.

            The closest rooms to the nurses’ station are where they put the ones most likely to code on them. Even the cancer floor – which in those days meant adios – has this devilish hierarchy. Staff’s little secret.

Mom’s room is at the far end, right there next to the nurses station, first in line. I glance into each room as I pass. There’s some pretty damn sick people in every one of them. TVs are switched off. Silent, immobile, ashen grey figures stare from under crumpled covers in a leaden web of tubes and wires and infernal beeps. Huddled groups of relatives raise haunted glances to me as I pass, then look away. Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Damned. By the time I get to her room, my chest feels like someone’s sitting on it. I stop outside the door, wipe sweat from the back of my neck. Shit. I’m such a fucking idiot. How could I have missed this?

I grasp the doorframe, look at my feet, draw a breath, set my mouth, peel in. Like entering the tongue in Lava Falls – the biggest and most out-of-control rapids in the Grand Canyon – its a one way ticket.

Was she always that tiny? Her skin’s so gray, her always perfect hair mussed and matted. I swallow bile. Okay, you screwed up. Figure it out. Make it right. We hug and talk, her offering me everything she has, like always. But its like I’m seeing her for the first time – there’s this… this person in there. A horribly sick, terrified woman battling brain-addling gobs of painkillers, which calm the pain but also keep her far from us.

            I wander back to the nurses’ station when she closes her eyes to nap. The nurses stare hard when I request her charts, refusing. I ask for her doctor. He just so happens to be right there at this same desk doing charts, and looks up, scowling.

            “What do you want?”

            “I want to know what’s wrong with my mother.”

            He replies “She has Aplastic Anemia, son. Blood cancer. Its spread to the bones. I’d be surprised if she ever leaves this hospital again.”

            Lucky I don’t have a gun.

            My daddy’s “I am mightily-pissed-off” growl comes out of my own throat. Not growl as in tone of voice – growl as in large predator, ears back and big round bloodshot eyeballs. This gets their attention. I speak quietly. What comes out is anyone’s guess, but they hand over the charts. Head in hands, I struggle through the sterile clinical notes, trying to look as if I’m educating myself instead of like I’m a fragile wooden craft being dashed by monstrous currents of mud against a big black cliff. Closing the folder, I compose myself, call my sisters.

            “Should I fly in?” Linny asks. Hard call. Hopeful, I judge not.

            I reply “She’s pretty tough, Linny” while staring at some stupid advertisement on the public phone.

            She does indeed leave the hospital this one last time. I have the goddamn doctor changed.

            After my return to Santa Cruz we begin a little telephone ritual which, if I believed in a God, I would have thanked Him for. Just talk. My mommy, pretty much the only person who could overlook my arrogance, still trying to help me see all those beating hearts out there. Not an ending – more like a beginning, another gift from her like how to walk upright not so long ago. We talk of nothing really, laughing easily, discussing books, love, tribulations (mostly mine).  Young Jeffrey, meet Florence, she’s actually pretty cool. No sense of the falling axe, just easy and close with a son in his early twenties who until just about this very moment owned the fucking world.

            Its not long before sister Suzie calls from L.A., frantic, and I’m back in the truck for the long drive. I’ve seen a lot of death in my previous job as a paramedic, and I was damn good at being the calm in the storm. Took that skill into my life guiding rivers. Focused, steady, poised under fire, always knew what to do.

            Bullshit.

            The easy sharing of the past weeks is done, bam, just like that. My beautiful, neurotic Jewish family crowds into the hospital room and spills out into the halls to jabber, wail, argue. Thankfully, Mom is too out of it to take much notice.

            During evening hours, after visiting hours end and they were able to throw everyone out except for the scary guy with the earring and moustache and blazing eyes, I pull a folding chair next to her sleeping form, listen anxiously to her ragged breaths, and read.

            I used to think old people moved slow because, well, because they were slow. Nope. It’s because it hurts. Hurts real bad. I’ll get that picture next year for my own self.

Slowly she rolls over, works up a smile, and with effort, croaks: “War and Peace…I read that twice.” That’s all she can manage. Our eyes meet. She rolls back.

            Next day, same deal: the clan takes over the hallway. Jew’s are dramatic in that passionate Mediterranean way. An aunt collapses to her knees in the hallway, clutching my legs and wailing, “Oh my God! Jeffrey is crying! He knows she’s going to die!”

            That shit drives me nuts. I need solitude and quiet or I cannot process. Mom, the glue, the one everyone called for advice or a spare pack of cigarettes. The one everyone; Cousins and aunts, uncles and grandparents, no matter age or seniority, called “Sissy”. Big Sister. Now they’ll have to make it without her. So will I.

I call sister Linny in Chicago. “You might wanna come.” I speak softly, precisely, which scares the shit out of her. She takes the next flight.

            Dad collapses, again, this time in the elevator. They give him a Valium. He’s a total wimp with drugs and passes out on a plastic couch in the hall. I gotta take a walk.

            Exiting the hospital, a painful memory returns of me making a mean crack about phoniness to my beautiful mother, who liked to wear makeup and “did” her hair. I’d swallowed the hippie Kool Aide in some kind of fucked up search for myself. A few minutes after that disgrace my bedroom door flew open, and in stormed my quiet, calm, easy-going father, face red and contorted with an anger that riveted me where I stood. He grabbed me by the collar and slammed me into the sliding closet doors, bending them and nearly taking me off my feet. Eyes blazing and near tears he whispered… “NEVER EVER hurt my darling Florence again!” Ragged breathing scorched my face for another moment, he let go, dropped his head, and silently walked away. It was never spoken of again. I didn’t move from those closet doors for a long, long time. Come to think of it, maybe I never have. The silver lining is that his true and beautiful love struck and poured over me like a mountain of boiling lava. Blazing, complete, unflinching. Wow. I could now try and fix this thing I’d never seen or known about, by trying to fix me. It took a while, but mom and I became close. Real close. She felt it, I felt it. Thank you father.

            Numbly I trudge through the noise and dirt of LA, clenched fists pressed into my pockets, head bowed, eyes staring at cracked pavement. All I need is a little calm space to be with her, please, just a little bit more. My mouth twists at all that wasted time. Gone.

            Where I go, whom I pass, its impossible to say. I’m a guide by nature, not to mention by trade. Since I was little I always seemed to know where I was, whether in city or mountains or Forest Preserve, which is how I ended up doing what I do, being who I am. Now, for the first time ever, I’m lost in a featureless manmade desert, adrift on this unrunnable river of cement. I can’t read the water, can’t find a rock to cling to, no campfire to sit by and listen to the soft crackle of its voice. Oh man this is terrifying. Do people actually live like this?

            I find myself sitting on abandoned railroad tracks, staring at nothing, tossing gravel. A rusty, beat-up pickup truck slowly drives into my line of sight. It creaks to a halt in the middle of the frontage road, just there in front of me. Two Hispanic guys look at me from the cab, gauging. The driver, sporting gold tooth and straw hat, leans out the broken window and asks in his beautiful accent if I want some work.

            “Hey, Señor. My crew did not show up this morning. We gotta bust up a whole parking lot at this apartment before dark. Amigo. I need a third man. Sí?”

            Hard smile. “No, thanks.”

            “Señor. Five bucks an hour!” His open hand is out the window, supplicating. His head tilts to one side.

            I shrug and silently hop in the bed of the truck with the shovels and sledges and cement-splattered wheelbarrows. A few blocks later, we’re at the job site.

            Straw Hat hands me a sledge and we get to work. I am blind and deaf. I have never felt this cockeyed. In the near future will learn it pretty good though.

            Time passes. With each swing of the sledge, asphalt crumbles at my feet. After a time, sweating, I blink, look around. My arms are strangely sore, though I’m sure I’ve only just begun. My colleagues are sitting on the open gate of the pickup, drinking beer and eating lunch, saying nothing, staring and apparently keeping out of my way. The entire lot is broken into chunks of asphalt. It looks like a volcanic field. We begin loading the chunks into the truck. Again, I fall into blankness, awake once again. Now there is nothing but bare dirt and a pickup on flattened springs overloaded with asphalt. The two men sit on a stoop, quiet, watching me with quizzical smiles. It’s not like they’re lazy – more like they’re watching a magic show or something. I do not feel separate. More like family. The family drunk. The weak-minded one they get into fistfights to protect.

            Straw Hat says, “We’ve been watching you for the past half hour, amigo. We couldn’t keep up with you, so we sat down and had a beer.” He lifts his can up to me. “You’re the best worker I ever seen. You want a permanent job, I’ll hire you on the spot.”

            “No thanks.” I have to go.

            “Wait, Señor. Your pay!” He holds out a small bundle of folded bills.

            “Keep it.”

            I leave them puzzled, mouths half open, beer cans forgotten. Later in life they’ll probably tell their grandkids about that crazy gringo who broke asphalt all day for free.

            I get my bearings. I can see the imposing hospital a mile or so away, lean on in. After a block or two I pass a house with a front yard bursting with roses. Perfectly pruned. Whites, reds, yellows. So beautiful. I stop and gently bend one delicate flower towards me over the fence, inhale deeply, exhale. The world pauses once again, as it has so many times lately, but the one thing I really wish would pause, won’t. At long last, my eyes blur and I let go.

An old man I hadn’t noticed is watching me, kneeling within his garden sanctuary, pruning shears frozen in his gloved hand. My words spill out.

“My mom’s up there in that hospital, and she’s gonna die today.” My mouth curls, I glance downwards. “She loves roses.”

            Rising slowly, he says “Take one. Take all you want. Take them all.”

            I pluck one white and one red and turn away. There is a muffled sound from behind me, so fragile and human I can’t look back.

            I return to The Room at twilight, put the roses in a vase and place it where she can see them if she ever opens her eyes again. She hasn’t woken since I left. Only Dad and my sisters remain. They’re exhausted, dad’s still a bit drugged. He looks like a stray puppy in a kennel. I cannot cope with this, hand him to my sisters, trusting in their strength.

            “You guys should go home and get some rest.”

Just keep your feet downstream, Nose and toes up, breathe when you can.

            As she’s leaving, Linny turns to me. “What do you think?” she whispers.

Just like that.

And mom’s voice comes back from long ago, rocking me in her arms and singing me into the safety of dreams; “Ahhh, ahhh, bay-bee”.

            I manage “Go home and get some rest. I’ll call if anything comes up. It’s ok.”

            Surprisingly, nobody calls me a liar. They kiss her cheek, each in their turn. Silent tears except for daddy. He holds strong. Their whole lives together, and he gets just this one last time and he knows it. He holds her head in his hands, kisses her forehead slow and sure and it makes her eyes blink open. This love is strong and sure my darling, for ever and ever.

Awkwardly, they gather their stuff. Before they depart, all three pause and look at me. They just stand there, looking at me. I want to howl. How they manage to turn and leave, I’ll never know.

            Mom starts to toss and turn, moaning. The nurses arrive with more morphine. They’ve already removed all the tubes. As they give her that last shot, she fights them and moans, “Noooo….” I find myself elbowing the nurses away, leaning in to touch my cheek to hers. I kiss her forehead, that sacred spot.

             “I won’t let them do it again. I promise.” She blinks. Our eyes are inches apart. She frowns, concentrating hard, trying to speak. The drug, and that other intruder – the one that brought us all together here this day – they are too powerful.

            “I know, Mommy. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Daddy for you. I promise.”

            Her eyes slowly drift, blink, roll up, come back to me. She’s trying so hard.

“Do what you need to do, Mommy. I love you. It’s ok.”

            Her world narrows to my eyes, then close. Farewell.

            Visiting hours end. Somewhere, someone turns off a light. I hold my mother’s hand, stroking it, and dream…

            She’s up there on the Biltmore Resort’s dinner stage, singing Judy Garland, her favorite. Tables of elderly Jews on vacation eat, drink, clap. Dad’s there too, proud of his darling Florence. Her eyes find me hiding at a corner table, embarrassed. She can tell. She smiles for me anyway.

            I awake, sitting on the floor, still holding her hand, now cool, resting my head on the edge of her bed. The room is soft, quiet. It’s done. Let go. So simple. I place her hand under the covers and stumble across the empty hallway into a storage room, collapse onto a cold, bare stainless steel gurney, my arm as my pillow.

            A fly buzzes through my head, a glaring light pierces me awake. An angry nurse scolds “Get up! What do you think you’re doing? Who told you you could sleep in here?” Her finger jabs the air.

            “You gonna arrest me?”

            Tight lipped, she remembers why she came. “Your mother has passed away.”

            “Yeah. I know.”

Dawn is nearly here. She lies there, coverless. How can someone be so naked, even with a gown on? And so very small. I never thought she was that tiny. Fifty-six years, no more, no less. I grab the blankets the nurses threw on the floor in their stupid zeal, glad I missed it, and cover her back up.

A nurse comes back with a puzzling suggestion.

“You should take her wedding ring off. You never know.”

I ponder a ring’s value to someone who robs mothers’ corpses, remove it for Pop.

She has a peaceful smile on her face, like a saint in stained glass at some church. It gives me the strength I will need.

I call the house. Suzie answers. I say nothing, but she knows anyway. They all know.

There’s a thump in the background – Dad hitting the floor, his voice in the background wailing, “Noooooooooooo!” I picture him there on the linoleum, that cold dirty floor all that lies between him and oblivion.

They arrive, I depart. We sense she still needs company for a while longer. Just a little. None of us have any experience with this, yet we know it’ll be easier now than at the funeral with all that caterwauling. Like a newly-hatched turtle, the ocean beckons. I see not one street, not one traffic signal as I drive and somehow arrive in one piece at some random beach. The edge of the world.

A crescent moon rises out of a cold April ocean. The sky turns red, then gray. The surf beats like a heart, dumping onto the steep beach.

Thump…sigh…shhhhh.

Thump…sigh…shhhhh.

XXX

Five years prior…

We were scouting Rainie Falls on the Rogue river, my second fire-eating river season ever. Most people are smart enough to portage this waterfall. I had good excuse to do the same, unsure of the outcome of this recklessness. Unusual for me. Not to mention the raft I’d borrowed was, shall we say, rather flabby. It didn’t feel right inside, but I didn’t let on, played the hero, and let the father talk me into running it to “make his son a man”. Later in my career I’d learn how to really guide people – sometimes in spite of their “I paid for this” baloney, sometimes getting a bad letter post trip. One of my clients once shared with me this mantra he used on his sons; “Tell me what you need, and I’ll show you what you can do without.” Back then, like most novice guides, I had much to learn. In any case I chose my line, shoved off, and in no time we were over the edge.

My bow riders were buried under exploding foam right off the bat. All they could do was close their eyes and hold their breath. I tried a panicked stroke or two as the boat stopped dead vertical in the hole, both oars ripped from my hands, and I was hurled overboard before I knew what hit me. I curled up into a little ball in the deep dark turbulence, tossed like a shoe in a washing machine, waiting it out.

It was some time before I came to the surface. It would take me a few more years of getting my ass kicked to learn about the nuances between self-respect and being prideful. For the time being, however, as I gasped and spluttered and shook sheets of water out of my eyes, I had to figure out what next. First time I blew it rowing a river, and boy did I blow it bad. Neal’s bulging eyes surfaced right in front of me, and then I heard Jack sucking air behind. All safe, no thanks to me, despite the nearly useless horseshoe life vests. Neal spun and looked at me as we stroked hard towards shore while our whole world floated off downstream; upside-down raft (the only one we had), all four oars (again, all of them), oranges, apples, heads of lettuce, waterproof bags, crapper, self-esteem, everything.

“Wow”, he gasped. “Nobody told me that the worst stuff was down there where you can’t see it!”

No shit, my brother.