the 100 day project 2022

Coal River Road, St. Albans, WV

When the box arrived on our doorstep, Grandmother called her best friend, Ora, who showed up soon after. In the kitchen, they opened it to see what they had painstakingly chosen and ordered from a novelty catalog weeks earlier.

One thousand daisy-shaped plastic key chains in a variety of neon colors, glowing with possibility.

Imprinted in the center of each ring was her signature tagline, “Cakes For All Occasions DOROTHY A. BRYAN” in metallic gold on a black background. Grandmother was a 1970s marketing genius.

I stole an orange one and stashed it in the wooden box under my bed.

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Before Dorothy was a Bryan, she was a Davis and in the 1940s she honed her cake-decorating skills at several bakeries before striking out on her own with D. Bryan’s Sweet Shop in the 1950s.

When she outgrew the home-based bakery, she and Ora opened the Kountry Kitchen on Walnut Street in town. Because of her cake artistry, the governor’s office chose her to bake a 250-pound cake for the celebration of West Virginia’s Centennial in 1963.

Some years later, she closed the shop and went to nursing school.

Right before graduation, she had emergency gallbladder surgery. During recovery, Granddad promised her a new car if she would forget about being a nurse.

Mom tells me today Grandmother once told her she grew to hate that car.

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By the 1970s, Grandmother was back in business, based in her home kitchen. When I asked her why she decorated cakes, she said, “Two reasons. One, I love who I am when I make something beautiful, and two, I make my own ‘pin money.’”

I had to look it up. It’s money given to a wife from her husband as an allowance. This was my first lesson in irony. Or was it sarcasm? Maybe a little of both.

She used that money to buy those key chains, much to Granddad’s chagrin.

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Grandmother was in her fifties when she described the creative flow and how she felt about herself when she was in it. It took until I was in my fifties before my heart heard what she meant.

The wooden box from my childhood is long gone. Its contents disappeared into tubs filled with a lifetime of keepsakes. As I riffle through yellowed newspaper clippings and sepia-toned photos, I find it. An orange plastic daisy.

It has lost its luster, the black center scratched. The chain is missing.

Now, I keep it with me in a car I love. It’s as if Grandmother is riding right beside me.

Camp Lejeune

Mom joined the marines on her 18th birthday, finished boot camp at Parris Island, and stationed at Camp Lejeune, where she met Dad.

It was around this time, 59 years ago, a Saturday night in mid-February when Dad told Mom he was Catholic and he knew a certain method. She, being in love or in lust, (or maybe both), trusted him.

They married on March 25, 1963 in our hometown of St. Albans, WV, at the First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1868. The bride wore white. I was technically present at the ceremony, but I remember little.

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Dad was overseas when I was born and the story goes Dad was on the phone and Grandmother pinched me so I’d make a noise for him to hear. As years passed, Dad insisted Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World” was playing when he first heard my voice. Dad swore I made his world wonderful just by being in it.

But he didn’t stick around to prove the claim. He was gone by the time Satchmo released the song in 1968.

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Grandmother passed away 16 years ago and among her things, I found Mom’s USMC ring, a yellowed newspaper clip about the day she joined, and her service coat. I tried it on and it’s two sizes too small but the ring fit. I keep the clipping and ring in my jewelry box, her coat in the spare closet.

Mom says she has no use for these things. I really don’t either. But I keep them anyway.

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Out of the three, only the scarf remains

Cleveland Clinic

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My husband left me on Valentine’s Day in 2014.

It’s not what you think. Yes, he left me, but it was because he had to drive five hours home to tend to an emergency. Which left me at the Cleveland Clinic, alone, for a third day of tests and more overnights.

He was by my side through two blood transfusions, a liver biopsy, and many tests. And now I was without my advocate, my cheerleader.

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The sun shines through the window in my 5th floor room, but there’s no warmth, only long shadows.

Hordes of doctors and residents gather around my bed. Their voices a quiet murmur, but words like Pre-leukemia and Wilson’s Disease get my attention. My heart monitor beeps faster. 

I search their faces, their expressions. I want to know what they see, what they think of my extreme yellowness, and what they will do to fix my broken body.

They exit en masse and leave behind a vacuum of silence. Dust motes dance in the cold sunbeams.

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A knock at the door announces a visitor. It’s the staff chaplain come to see if there’s anything I need.

Let’s see, what do I need? I need answers; I need not to be sick; I need a miracle; I need to go home.

Inside my head.

Out loud, “I’m fine, thanks.”

He takes my hand and says a prayer. My fear melts into hot tears. I cannot hold them in.

He returns a few hours later with a gift. A tin of ginger peach tea. I make a cup, sit by my window, and watch the cars below rush around like ants, so busy. Living their lives.

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Another knock, another stranger. A lady volunteer ambles in with a smile and a turquoise vase topped with a red tipped carnation. She places it on my windowsill right next to the tin of tea and says, “This is for you for Valentine’s Day. I hope you feel better soon.”

A second gift from a second stranger. Magic.

Maybe I’ll take a walk in the corridor.

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There is an area at the end of my hallway for visitors. I notice a woman crocheting a curly scarf. She tells me her adult son is here for a liver transplant, but it wasn’t a match. They’ve admitted him and are not sure when he can go home.

She’s making scarves to raise money for their medical bills. They’re $10 each. I give her a $20, wishing I had a $50, and tell her to keep the change and the scarf. But she insists I take the scarf, so I do.

I return to my room and wrap it around the flower vase and the tea tin in my windowsill. It’s like a mini-shrine of sorts. An altar to kindness and love.

I get back in bed and stare at the objects sitting in the late afternoon sunlight. The shadows have grown longer, it’s getting late. Time is running out for the day, and for me. And that man. For so many.

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In the eight years since that day, the vase and tin disappeared. The scarf I keep. 

When I wear it, I think about the miracle of second chances. I think about the strength of love; a mother who does whatever it takes to help her dying son.

And I’m reminded that even on our darkest and loneliest days, the power of kindness, both received and given, can lift and heal broken spirits.