Heidi Beth

Meet Freddy. He’s big, huge, enormous! He sheds, drools, barks and wags. He lives in a small house owned by Little Man. Freddy takes up 1/3 of the house. Little Man Loves Freddy. Freddy lets Little Man use him as a bed and pillow each night. Freddy and Little Man play fetch with broom sticks on the prairie.
Little Man hates pickles. Freddy loves Little Man. Freddy loves pickles. Freddy and Little Man live 5 miles from town and travel by horse drawn wagon. Freddy actually only eats pickles, so Little Man built a storage shed next to the house. Once a month, Little Man travels to town, buys pickle barrels to fill the wagon. These he stores in the shed. This is better than traveling 10 miles a day to feed Freddy. Hmmmm….Freddy eats a lot.
Little Man misses Freddy when he’s outside eating. Little Man invites Freddy in to eat. Little Man breathes in and out carefully, adjusting to the horrid smell of pickles. Freddy eats with a consistent repetitive smack, smack, chomp, gulp, chug a chug a chew. Little Man finds he enjoys this new music. Soon he is doing a pickle jig. Love goes this way for Freddie and Little Man. By the second day, Little Man is used to the smell of pickles. By the 5th day he doesn’t mind the smell of pickles. By the 10th day, Little Man enjoys the smell of pickles…almost as much as he enjoys dancing.

I promise myself I’ll get to balance the check book, eat a spoonful of chocolate frosting and stretch out my crossed legs once I write something.
Allison and I used to walk through clothing aisles for fun. We’d search for the ugliest article, hold it up for the other to see across the way, make a sound like only a 13 year old can and laugh like crazy. Really it was a sport for us, at least once a week for many months. I thought not once about who we might be annoying or not impressing. We weren’t impressed and everybody should know right? Gblaahch!
We also rode our bikes between our homes, through the middle of Evanston, mostly down Wesley. Lots of yellow houses on that route. We cleaned her house once a week too because she had chores to do but we wanted to be together. I avoided her cat. Beautiful but unfriendly. We sometimes spent an afternoon in her parent’s bedroom den where the typewriter sat and wrote stories and poems. We danced all over the living room, we cried (a lot) at all the trouble life was becoming as we got older, we sang real loud to Duran Duran and Simon and Garfunkel as it played on the turntable that sat in the corner of the dining room I don’t remember ever seeing anyone eat in since there was a more convenient dining table in the kitchen. We watched Alex, The Life of a Child more than once and cried every time. I can’t even write that with out starting to cry. We played badminton in her yard most warm afternoons, our only objective to see how long we could keep the birdie in the air. When I looked toward the house from my side of the net I always saw a gallon of tea basking in the sun on a yard table. We walked to the beach, walked aimlessly around downtown Evanston. One summer she helped me watch a couple brothers who were 10 and 12. By then we were 14 and 15.
Time went by.
I went to college for a semester and discovered Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down the Bones. I was 21. Most of what I can remember from then on is sitting across from each other at a small cafe table, cigarettes burning in the ashtray, 2 cups of coffee in white ceramic mugs, our heads bowed over our spirals, each writing rapidly, aiming for our first thoughts for a full 10 minutes. When time was up we’d raise our heads and look at each other, eyes dazed, bodies resettling into the moment, breathe deep and smile. Then we’d each read aloud what we’d just written. Her pieces were these intense journeys into the heart. Her imagery was rich. I don’t know what I wrote. I have all or most of it in a box in my bedroom. We’d immediately choose another first line or topic then bow again to the rush of creativity.
I wrote with many friends over the years in just this way. I’ve been there when people who never thought they could write looked up after reading what they’d written (or listened as I read aloud with their permission since they felt embarrassed) either with a full smile or holding in a smile of pride, delighted at their work. But it was the hours with Allison that are the foundation. At one point we lived in the same building, sharing morning coffee with our legs stretched out before us, a crate for an end table, keeping a close on eye on her most recent cat Cassidy who was aggressively playful and more than a little scary. We’d talk shop in the evening after our shifts of waiting on the public, helping them eat. Eventually I moved away into the cornfields and she moved away to another state.
Time keeps us aware through the harder tests of becoming an adult as well as the inevitable challenges of an expectation of maturity.
A few months back I saw a friends daughter with her friend at Target. They didn’t see me. One of them held out a fascinating shirt from the round rack for the other to appreciate, crinkled her nose, made a unique noise and they burst out laughing.
At first I thought about immaturity. Then I thought about friendship.

I ate breakfast at 3pm when I worked in the North Loop. I worked at a nice clean diner til 1am every shift. After work I took the red line subway north to the purple line rail through Evanston to Davis. I waited naively/confidently for a cab to take me to my friends house where I would sleep on the floor til late the next morning or early afternoon. The cabs were green. I always asked the driver to wait til I was inside the 2nd floor back door. Sometimes I shared the ride with a young man whose name I wish I remembered. He felt protective since I lived in a rough neighborhood. We became friends. We’d go out before work or on off days, to the pier, or just to walk downtown talking life. He felt there must be some way out, some way to make it as an adult, but his hope was full of doubt. I always felt peaceful with him.
Anyway, on to less interesting memories. I ate breakfast at a carryout hamburger joint around the corner from the diner I would later work at for 8 hours serving soup, salad, pancakes and Greek chicken. For breakfast I almost always ordered an omelet with sausage and cheese with hash browns and wheat toast. I particularly liked jelly on my egg dish, spread on evenly. This is where I was quiet. My book, a crossword, anonymity, people all around quickly accomplishing more than I could fathom. They all walked by the wall sized window so fast, so purposeful. When I was on the street, going to the places I went, I ambled. I looked at the cars passing by. I looked at the sky, the store windows. I remember the huffs of impatience behind me right before some determined pedestrian blew past.
I was a regular at that burger joint. I liked being recognized but not known. This made my late breakfast kinder as I wasn’t much interested in being known just then.

You know, it doesn’t have to be anything. It could be a few words, a few lines. Mundane. It could be about going to the grocery store and following my list exactly. It could be about diaper changes or cooking fish for the first time. It could be interesting or fall flat with a dull thud. But if it’s a piece of writing, it counts.
We were newlyweds. I was in our 2nd apartment, down the hall from our first apartment (that we left after only a couple weeks when the prettier bigger place opened up) in down town small town on the same street as 5 bars that let out at 1am, let out screaming drunks in an economically depressed town, seemingly all geared up to have a good fight, under my window…at 1am, when I usually woke from horrid nightmares, woke to their vicious slurring anger at volumes passing sirens reach. High ceilings and radiator heat don’t have enough appeal to stick around that nonsense for long.
But…in the two months we did live there, while David was at work one afternoon, I tried to cook cat fish.
Pan on the burner, fish in the pan, heat beneath, a bit of oil, all set. Domestic in the kitchen I was not at all, or even properly knowledgeable. Here’s how it went. The pan started smoking and in a flash flames had engulfed the fish and spread through out the pan. I did not know about grease fires. I did not know to cover it instead of douse it. I was a DORK! I doused it, the flames grew, I panicked, rushed the pan to the bathtub where it would have more room to be a fire while I continued to panic. In the tub, the flames licked up higher. What happened next was a blur, but a little voice deep inside, the one that heard Mr. Fireman when he came to my elementary school 15 years earlier, suggested that covering the pan was the only hope. I don’t know what I covered it with. I only know the fire was put out, my heart was pounding and fast! I was in a cold sweat. I felt like an idiot, and I would not be using stainless steel frying pans for a long time if I ever would again. This moment is so embarrassing I have only told a few people, maybe only David. Now I’m telling you.
Later, when we moved to a little bit larger town in the corn fields I asked a friend, an older woman we liked to visit, how to cook fish. She didn’t even know how to answer my question, the answer was so obvious. Pan, heat, oil or water, wait til it’s done all the way through, put on plate. Yeah, now I know and cook fish all the time. Regardless, I didn’t use a stainless steel pan for another 9 years. The difference between the one I tried to melt and the one I use now is qualitative. The first one was thin and cheap, this one is thicker and sturdier.
Lessons? Too many to count.
You know what else I remember from that afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day and I liked how the light settled on everything in the living room, which contrasted with the dark scary bathroom scene. Ugh.

I’m waiting for you she says.
She waits.
I’m waiting but I can’t hear you.
She listens, hopeful.
I’m waiting for you and I don’t know if we will ever meet again.
She sets aside the wash cloth, picks up her diapered dear, sits in the squishy chair they’ve adopted, dear nestles in to her lap content and she begins to read, “My name is Nicholas, I live in a hollow tree.”
I’m waiting but I’m happy now she realizes.
When we meet again we’ll hardly recognize each other.
What will we have to talk about?
We won’t. We’ll watch the sunrise over a corn field and remember how it looks over lake Michigan.
Then we’ll look at dear sleeping in his bed, adore his baby face more than we ever enjoyed the most beautiful sky, even in New Mexico.
When darling arrives, I have forgotten I am waiting.
Darling in my arms, dear by my side, both napping, I breathe slowly, in and out, quiet like never was.
There you are.

It was because of my neighbor across the street. He was the first person I was completely afraid of. I found out that he’d bent Jonah over the iron rail out front of his building, just to be mean. Jonah was OK, but in a lot of pain, physical and emotional. They were supposed to be friends. I could see the black railing from the front room window, the room with a thin carpet full of big colorful flowers and their long green stems. We lived in the basement apartment, the kind with windows level with the front lawn, with pipes that clanked and hollered any time for any reason (I thought everyone lived with this fancy utility concert). Sitting at the window (which I did often, idly observing the world as only a young child can), when my eyes wandered to his front step and I saw the black rail, neighborhood boys leaning on it, standing around it (which was many hours a day), I’d feel afraid. I was afraid because I knew someone who could purposely harm another and not seem to care. I was 6, just becoming aware of the world and Jonah was my friend (only a year older than me). We lived in that apartment until I was 10. I remember that every time I looked across the street I became freshly aware of meanness, the kind that goes beyond harsh words, the kind that scars. I would feel upset and worried, worry with no words. Now I might say that I wondered if he would ever hurt me, but I don’t think that was it (though I was always afraid for Jonah). I believe I was worried about meanness and not a particular person. I never heard of him hurting anyone else, but that once was enough to leave a scar.

From the kitchen sink at our house on Wiley I could turn my head to the right and see the back yard. We lived there 9 months. Let’s see, Devyn was 13 months old when we moved in. While we were packing up the apartment we lived in prior he helped move boxes. One afternoon he eyed a particularly large box in the dining area and decided to move it. This little baby, just barely walking (less than 2 months) put 2 hands on the top edge, bent one knee, straightened his other leg behind him, lowered himself just a bit and pushed the box! His technique was so…advanced…and surprising. Impressive too! During our last month in the same apartment we became acquainted with Devyn’s interest in all things decorative and with in reach (even if he had to jump for them). Packing started early.
So having a yard for this little guy was great. It was also my first experience living in a little house on a quiet street with a fenced in yard and attached garage. We decided to try the extended family thing so my mom moved in with us. She took the room over the garage. A good learning experience, but a story all it’s own for another day. Our time at the house on Wiley could be a book actually. As I type, a list of key experiences, beautiful memories (like watching my dad and Chris go into their own world inside the steady base beating of their djembe drums on New Years eve), turning point realizations, adventures in possibly owning a cafe then not, and the two long visits my dad enjoyed with us come to mind and beg to be shared. But not today.
In this yard, on hot summer days, David would often pull out our long blue plastic sled, fill it with water and call it a swimming pool. Then we’d strip Devyn to babyness and let him splash and dance until he was ready to stop or got too cold. I was still newly married, an only child trying to adjust to life with a husband and now a cheerful, playful, energetic, curious, intelligent little boy. I struggled with wanting order and clean dishes more often than necessary. I struggled with letting in all of this wonderfulness that was now my family life. So I spent many hours washing dishes. I’d be at the sink, quietly feeling in control of my world, content to be seeing tangible immediate results for my efforts and from that place I’d look out and see Devyn and David having a grand time getting wet, experiencing life fully. I liked the way afternoon sunlight slid in to the room with the sounds of their laughter. I liked how Devyn would come in and out on various toddler errands only he could define. I liked making food for the boys. I liked being outside with them too but I wasn’t nearly as good as David at being present with Devyn, aware of the possibilities for joy and what a little one may find entertaining. Fortunately for me and probably for Devyn too, he was easily absorbed in a given task, like taking apart a mechanism on the screen door for hours, which David would later put back together, or looking out the window at squirrels eating the scraps of food I threw in the yard, because I was often only comfortable if I was cleaning, washing up after dinner, sweeping the floor. I did spend plenty of time nursing Devyn (the upside down kid), helping him paint at his little wooden desk, hanging out with friends and family that came by often, taking bus rides to construction sites where Devyn would be mesmerized by the real life big machines he first saw in little board books, but I had a limit that always came sooner than I wanted it too.
Fortunately I’ve grown since then and dishes can wait (but not too long…)just like the phone (no matter how much it annoys certain people that I ignore the ringer often ;)), because I have a beautiful family to enjoy (which has grown since the Wiley place to include Matthew, another energetic, intelligent, inquisitive boy) .

I stopped over 8 years ago. In the sweet haze of first thoughts when the sun was new, bright and peaking through our black curtains decorated with jungle animals, an insight washed over me. This particular morning it was in words. First thing upon waking I often realize important things easily, as if all along I’ve known and now it’s just so simple, a matter of course. Sometimes the knowing comes in images, faces of friends, a vision of what should be. Other times in a prayer or verse of Baha’i Writings to a kind melody, a deep peace. This day my thoughts conversed. “If you’re going to keep nursing Devyn, you should give up caffeine.” “That’s true, it can’t really be good for him, even the one cup I drink each morning.” So that was that. Weaning Devyn for good coffee wasn’t a reasonable trade off in my mind so the decision was made and firm that quick.
A certain detail here should not be left out. At the time I drank one cup of coffee a day, first thing after morning prayers. This was a beautiful cup of coffee. We had a drip/espresso maker so…as I had, for years, brewed my coffee with double grounds, that’s what I still did at the time. Then I added to this a single shot of espresso, then heavy whipping cream. Perfect! That was my one cup. 3 cups in one mug actually, but I didn’t think about it at all. The nursing video at the Health Dept said I could have that one cup and my baby would be fine.
In reality he was fine. I’d avoided caffeine through the whole pregnancy and never deviated from the one cup rule since he was born. But here now was this clear directive from me to me and I listened. For the next 3 days, Devyn and I slept. We got up for meals and for a bit of play, but we were both sleepy and slow. Fortunately for all of us, I didn’t experience withdrawal headaches. After our days of sleepiness and long naps, Devyn was back to his incredibly energetic playful self. Still, those 3 days were all the memory I needed if I ever was tempted to drink another yummy cup of regular Joe during the time he nursed. By the time he stopped, Matthew was born and happily nursing and I had lost the desire to experience the caffeine type energy. In fact, it began to seem undesirable and still does.
If only there was a way to enjoy the wonderful, rich, creamy taste of coffee the way I used to make it, with no consequences. Oh well, there’s always dark chocolate 😉

I wasn’t very old, still too young to be completely in my body. I was at a point where I walked around hollow, listening to my heart beat, listening to the empty space where I could not bear to think about what was most painful (healing would come later, in waves and moments, through prayer and courage). Adulthood loomed and I felt utterly without guidance. I had dropped out of high school and started waiting tables at Pizza Hut on Dodge, then the IHOP in Wilmette. Many people didn’t understand. “You have so much potential” they said. “That’s nice” was my inner reply. I don’t know what I said out loud. Maybe I smiled and enthusiastically explained all the reasons I’d left or maybe I just assured them it would be OK, knowing they weren’t convinced, but I had made up my mind firmly.
When I was off work I was writing in that cafe on the corner by the Dempster el stop, the one with brick inner walls they eventually painted white, the one that I saw closed recently as I rounded the corner onto Sherman Ave or at Steep & Brew in the back, the smoking area. I spent my time in Northwestern’s music rooms with a few friends when they were out of school for the afternoon. I read Richard Bach and hoped life could be as beautiful as he hoped it could be, as he claimed to experience.
Around this time, my grandma Katz was getting old and sick. The kind of sick that comes from worry. She lost weight, seemed to unlearn how to talk, needed to sleep a lot, be fed with a spoon by another. I watched in observation mode as I couldn’t hold on to an image of her for long and certainly no thoughts about her condition. It was what it was and I was her kin, so I sat with her in the kitchen, listening as she struggled to be understood, when she may have only wanted to have a sip of water but the effort to communicate that simple request was exhausting.
In February 1990, she went in to the hospital for several days. It was serious, so we were called to her bed side in St. Louis, several floors up in a quiet hospital wing. It’s the nicest hospital I’ve ever been in. Enormous windows, good natural light, serene and quiet (to my recollection). There was even a large room full of couches and tables near her room. This is where I spent most of my time. I had a pair of head phones and several tapes of Simon and Garfunkel. I had an 8 1/2 x 11 cardboard bound spiral with a bright yellow cover. I’d wander into my grandma’s room, see my aunt Marsha, Agnes or my mom by her side, holding her hand. They were often silent. I might linger in the doorway a moment but since I had nothing to offer, I’d slip out again, head for that large comfortable lounge, turn on my music, open my notebook and write what I saw. I’d write about the sun coming in the window just so, about grandma laying there so small and helpless, about the quiet. I’d also write poems about flying, paint word pictures of gorgeous sunsets and share my hopes for the adult I would one day become.
We were there for 3 days. I went to another universe during that time. The universe of slow sadness, of beautiful wondering. Hours and hours each day, from morning til night, I wandered back and forth between the lounge where I was cocooned by my art to grandma’s room. Sometimes I’d go to her side, talk to her, but it was awkward. It didn’t seem to be my place. As I write this I can still feel the air brush past my face, the still air of a hospital corridor as I wandered about knowing I couldn’t feel impatient. I nearly filled that yellow spiral. I would leave the overhead lights off in the lounge until the last bits of light faded each evening. No one ever joined me in there.
Grandma didn’t die in February. She held on until December. December 1990 in her house is less clear to my memory than the hospital. I know the house well, but no details of the mundane aspects of the trip have lasted. I only remember that my grandma was in her corner bedroom, in her bed, small, so so small. I was always aware of the antique mirror on the inner wall, huge, reflecting bottles of perfume and a hair brush she kept on her dresser. Her legs moved of their own accord beneath the green covers almost constantly. It was her breathing though, her labored, raspy breathing that I could hear clearly no matter what room of the house I was in that penetrates every thought of that good bye.
At that time in my life I was a heavy sleeper, often hard to wake, even aggressive toward anyone who disturbed me. But not that night. I fell asleep after midnight to the hollow rattle of her sighs. I was on the couch in the front living room, the one with the prettiest furniture, the fireplace and ornaments collected over a lifetime. I slept on the couch where I sat with my grandma 10 years earlier explaining the Baha’i Faith. It was the only time I remember having her full attention. My legs stuck straight out over the edge of the cushion, grandma and I angled toward each other in deep conversation. I patiently explained progressive revelation over and over. She wanted to understand but only asked the same questions over in over in the most earnest tones. I remember that my grandma was always busy cooking and cleaning, usually afraid, often uncomfortable, so to have her sitting there with me, just us on that big couch, together in the middle, her listening to me respectfully, having a regular kind of conversation was Gold. Tears spring to my eyes as I write this, as I recall us sitting there, side by side. You’d have to have known grandma Katz to know how wonderful this was. This was the couch I slept on, the one I woke on a bit before 8am December 19th when something unseen drew me up out of bed to the doorway of her room. My mom woke at the same time and we met there, looking at Molly Katz, unexplainably aware that we were witnessing her last breaths, both aware that this was a time for her to be alone, like an invisible shield kept us respectfully on the other side of the open doorway.
Right now Carlos Nakai Earth Spirit is playing on Pandora. This is the one I listened to in the delivery room the miracle morning Devyn was born. Now I listen to it as I re-experience the moment my much loved grandma was born into the Abha Kingdom. Oh God, I didn’t know I had any sadness left for her parting, anything I’d miss. But then I saw us in the pretty living room, grandma with her only grand daughter, talking the way I wish we could have done more often while she was alive in body.
I have talked with her many times since that December morning we said good bye. She has hugged me and comforted me through countless painful times in my young adult life from her new home. Sometimes she jokes around and cracks me up. I’m willing to accept this may be wishful thinking but I believe it is more real than the floor I stand on when I wake each day.

After midnight, I sat at the foot of my bed. The room was simple, no decorations. I was being helped by a friend of a friend who lived in a trailer in a small town surrounded by cornfields somewhere in Illinois. They had a spare room which I called home for a couple months. I was a 3rd shift waitress, serving biscuits and gravy, coke and gallons of coffee to the regulars, the local farmers and mechanics, the factory workers and my fellow lost 20 something peers.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing with my life, other than writing, making money and hanging out with friends…but it wasn’t enough. This early morning, in the quiet, the empty flat quiet of the edge of nowhere in central Illinois, I was trying to write a beautiful anything. My letters were big and chunky, sloppily scrawled across each line. The paper was recycled so had an off white tint and it was wide lined. I remember the big spaces available for each word made me feel childlike and inept, as if my life at that moment was hopelessly stuck.
Sitting alone in this emptiness I temporarily called home, cross legged on my blankets, I listened to a hard rain dance on the roof, splash on the cement, slosh onto the muddy patches of earth outside my window. I would write for 10 minutes then sit stone still, listening. I’d sit and only sadness sat with me, a determined alert sadness that cannot sleep, that only hears the rain, the scratch of a pen and my racing thoughts. Then I would write for 10 more, over and over in this way, all the while under this natural symphony, until dawn.
I love the tap, slop, swish of a downpour, the tink thunk of water patting window pane, even when I was stuck with what I perceived as my pitiful lost self.