My sleep was interrupted with additions that my mind wanted to make to yesterday's post. I guess the blessings and curses of being a writer are visiting me early and I'll take it as a good sign!
The images were of Rosette. How our friendship bridged her entire lifespan. How it bridged coasts and bodies of water. How it bridged long distances and sometimes a year at a time passing without seeing each other face to face. How our journey together began and ended on North Haven, the island in Penobscot Bay where her family has a multi-generational and multi-home parcel of land that rolls down to the sea. The sea that we both loved most of all and to which we spread her ashes on her favorite sun bathing rock for the tide to collect after we left.
She was the glue between the Nazor/Lattimore/Linnell families. On the day of the memorial celebration, those present were mostly Nazors, Lattimores, Pettits and Johnsons. I can't remember if any Linnells were there or not, I was too overcome with emotion. When that happens, as my children and siblings attest, I can forgot entire films or events in my life. Usually it's fear that triggers this erasure mechanism. This time it was a profound, and to the soul, sadness the had left me bereft of my usually acute memory.
What I do remember is music being performed by multiple generations (both on the stone beach and up in the dooryard of her mother's house), sweet words from her twin brother, Evan. Her sister, Clare with her dog Rosy who drove all the way from Alaska and took the ferry to be there. Rhodec, Rosette's son, being so kind, sweet and open to us all. Emily, Rosette's mother being so gracious to include my mother, my siblings and more at her home before and after the seaside service. I remember it was a clear, sunny August day in Maine, with a slight breeze ~ can't get much finer than that.
The time we spent taking turns with Rosette in those last months in Eugene did something no amount of talking or writing or wishing could do. It had bound us together the way none of Rosette's beautifully woven blankets could do. She was our shared love. We learned how to share her and love her together. No easy task, as our family is full of strong personalities combined with subterranean sentiments that can take years to parse fully. This was a gift she cultivated with us as she lay dying and we've continued it since her death by extending it to being able to share and equally love Rhodec; he has become the next generation of glue ,that we all treasure, and forms a new bridge of love to the past and future.
I met Rosette on that Island. Named the only doll I ever attached feeling to after her; Rosey. It was given to me by my grandmother; an antique china and plaster doll with cotter-pin hinged joints. Rosette and my stepsister Maggie made clothes for this doll as Christmas gifts to me when I was a girl. I still have the doll and the clothes. As I stated yesterday, that turned into a letter correspondence that continued until the advent of email, roughly two decades. We were both journal writers, too. We'd often copy passages out of our journals and write them again as a letter. We shared our deepest thoughts, fears, dreams and desires.
As kids we skinny-dipped on the stone beaches of North Haven, later off the dock at Dingley Island, once in a lake in CA and our last shared water experience of wading in the Willamette River, which has a smooth rocky floor, much like the beach in Maine. Having her ashes on her sunning rock was one of those moments where I wished I could magically make her morph back to life. Yet, with each of us placing another rock on her sunning rock, it became apparent that no such magic would occur.
Rosette is not the only touchstone person I've lost before we could grow old together. Another friend, whom I shared with my sister Leslie and Rosette in SF, was Alton Belcher who died on 12/11/97...so we're coming on an anniversary (imagine that spoken in as Joni Mitchell singing "Coming on Christmas" in a deeply Southern - Huntsville, AL- accent and that would sound like him). The other dear-heart I lost in the fall was my touchstone of youth, Carolyn Glass. Her sister's book "I See You Everywhere" was a nice tribute, but I can't help feeling like I may have to write one of my own. We were partners in crime together. Adrenaline and Animal Adventures Crimes. No one was hurt (except her boyfriend Paul, skiing, even though I warned them not to go, but that's another story), and many animals were saved. I miss swapping adventures and learning about animals from her. Plus barrel racing and jumping her family's foxhunting horses over the stone walls and through woods of Lincoln's conservation lands.
I've outlived them all and they each knew my essence so truly, that it's hard not having access to that shared history any longer. So one idea has been to write about loss as a series of touchstones. Another has been to write about adventures (living on the boat, New York in the 80's, SF in the 90's, and my wild childhood--or traveling). Each has a different frame of reference and lens to focus on a different stage of my life and how I bridge/processed moving from one frame to the next. That is what my students and children most want to hear/read. At least that's what they tell me....
Speaking of students, I must return to grading and my hour of writing is just about up (and yes I type straight into the keyboard and know I should correct typos/added-dropped words/tenses, but will once I start to structure a draft of something her); they also want to hear about how I met or know so many "famous people". My stock answer is that they weren't famous when I met them, they were artists (of one sort or another) or business folks who wanted to do good work. They wanted to master something or invent something that hadn't been done before and were choosing to live an uncomfortable existence and stay committed while they did it. The famous authors I met at various writer's conferences or conventions had started off the same way: wanting to do good and meaningful work.
This ends my daily meditation and going forward I'll start to thing about one narrative to develop.
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