the objects

June 2014, Ashland, KY

38° 28’ 48”N, 82° 38’ 40”W

Behind the wheel, at a red light, I can see the intersections ahead and know I need to turn left at one of them. The names swirl in the fog inside my head. Which street, or is it an avenue? Who am I going to see today?

I turn and all I see are four lanes of cars headed toward me. They’re speeding up, I can tell. Horns blare and I yank the wheel left into a parking lot and I watch in the rearview as the cars rush by.

I do not remember how I got home. You would think me inebriated, but I wasn’t. I had quit drinking 14 months previously.

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Cleveland Clinic

41° 28’ 8.256”N, 81° 59’ 7.429”W

I’m in a small office with my husband and a doctor. Her mouth moves, but I can’t grasp what she’s explaining. The words flow around me, but they don’t stick. 

If I smile and nod, she’ll think I’m okay. But I’m not okay. Is this what dementia is like? Do I have dementia? Her expression looks stern. I am afraid to look her in the eye. Anymore, when I look at someone’s face, I see what they see and it makes me queasy.

“I don’t understand,” I blurt as my eyes fill.

She’s so patient. I’m a child now and she’s the parent, drawing a picture on a napkin she pulls from a container on the wall. She clicks her pen and writes what I am experiencing in words I’ve never heard before.

“Hepatic encephalopathy” with a frowny face beside them and two underlines, so this must be important.

Confused —> lethargy —> coma —> death.

You know how a roulette wheel works? That first spin, the ball bouncing and careening—that’s how I felt sitting there, waiting for the ball of truth to land in a slot of understanding.

She drew a rough sketch of the abdomen and tried her best to show where I was on the confused/lethargy/coma/death scale.

The drawing helped. I *understood* it was serious, but all I knew was I wanted this to be over. I wanted to go home.

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It was later that month I met the criteria to be placed on the transplant list for a new liver. I keep this napkin as a reminder I survived.

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For more about organ donation, visit UNOS.

This is the 8th story in the Objects as Waypoints Writing Project series.

Coal River Road

38° 22’ 53”N, 81° 51’ 36”W

Today I call myself a BaptiPresbyMethoEpiscoChristipalian because I tried every one of these denominations on for size in my nearly 60 years. However, I can trace the roots of my religious influence.

They sprouted with help from my great grandmother, G.G. for short. She, King James with his Bible, and the Lower Falls Baptist Church did their best to set me on the path of righteousness.

G.G. lived with us and even though a widow and in her 60s, her bedroom was fairytale-esque. What wasn’t white was pink, including the shag carpet. But her bedroom was the best. It’s where time slowed down.

She would read passages from a Bible, like bedtime stories. I laid beside her on her bed, pink comforter pulled to my chin. When there was a verse she felt I should memorize, she would uncap her red Flair® pen and trace along a ruler, underlining the words for emphasis.

I relished the defiance of writing in a Bible. I thought it was a big no-no. She let me press the four-leaf-clovers we would find on our walks within the pages, too. We were rebels.

The 13th chapter in the book of I Corinthians, became a favorite because it was about love, an emotion, at seven-years-old, I struggled to define.

G.G. said, “I love you always, in all ways,” and I knew this to be truth. The phrase and its unconditionality filled a spot in my heart that needed filling.

She gave me this zippered Bible in 1970 and over the years, the ink from my Flair® pen enhanced the texts we spent hours discussing, surrounded by the cotton candy glow from her bedroom lamplight.

The last time I laid beside her was on a hospital bed, a nondescript blanket pulled to her chin. I held the Bible she gave me on her chest and whispered sing-song the lyrics of Amazing Grace in her ear while she waited to leave the confines of her tired body that summer day in 1987.

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Today I pull my old Bible from the shelf to revisit this story. I open it to the letter from Paul and find a four-leaf-clover tucked beside the last verse of chapter 13. 

“… but the greatest of these is love.”

Always, in all ways.

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This is the 7th story in the Objects as Waypoints Writing Project series.

This is the 6th story in the Objects as Waypoints Writing Project series.

In the woods on the ridgeline

St. Albans, WV

38° 22’ 58”N, 81° 51’ 45”W

There were about four acres of woods that separated the back of our house from a neighboring subdivision. In the center of these woods is a ridgeline, a high point where you can see for miles. The rocks and fallen trees made an excellent playground for an eight-year-old in 1972.

I don’t remember the details about how I found the fossil, but I remember tearing through the woods downhill at breakneck speed to show Grandmother.

The Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopedia at home wasn’t enough to answer my questions. I begged to be driven to the library. Books and librarians became my best friends and from this research, my life’s path became clear: I would become a paleontologist. Or a geologist. Could I be both?

So maybe not so clear.

And did I become either? Well, no. 

What I became, though, was an intensely curious person.

The moment I found the fern fossil was the moment I had an internal shift. It’s the first conscious memory I have that a world, other than my own, existed.

This is the 5th story in the Objects as Waypoints Writing Project series.

Coal River Road, St. Albans, WV

38° 22’ 55.02”N, 81° 51’ 37.404”W

It was early 1969 and even though I was only five years old; I remember with clarity how I created this piece of art.

Grandmother had exclaimed through gritted teeth, “He’s driving me up the tree,” a few times the day I sat down with pen and a strip of paper, so that’s what I drew. I added ladder-like limbs to explain how she climbed the tree. 

While I drew, her earlier aggravation evaporated. She watched me over the top of her horn-rimmed glasses.

The Easter holiday was near, so I added eggs both decorated and plain, on the ground and in the tree branches.

Her smile returned when I gave her caricature a bouquet of inky flowers. She assured me it was okay if I didn’t know how to draw arms. I would learn later.

I added some color and considered it done.

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Forty-three years later, I find this envelope with my name on it among Grandmother’s belongings. Postmarked New York, 1969, Grand Central Station and I don’t recognize the handwriting. The return address McCall’s Magazine, 230 Park Avenue. It was previously opened.

Inside was a certificate claiming my membership into the Junior McCall’s Club, just for contributing. And there was my original artwork. On the back, in her handwriting, ”GRANDMOTHER UP A TREE”, the title she chose.

If Grandmother showed me any of this, I don’t recall, but I remembered making the art, the quiet moments beside a woman who encouraged my creativity. Who gave me her undivided attention, her unconditional acceptance.

She who believed in my art enough that it needed to be shared with the world. Or at least the readers of McCall’s magazine.

It wasn’t chosen to appear on their pages, but that’s not what I think about when I look at these objects. 

No, I don’t think.

I feel.

I feel her belief in me. 

The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

—Aristotle

…you have a brother.

This is the 4th story in the Objects as Waypoints Writing Project series.

The cottage overlooking Strawberry Road

38° 22′ 49.5624”N, 81° 51′ 35.8056”W

Dad left home in 1966 when I was three. In 1969, he had made a new family. And sent us a card to let us know.

It was just weird. I didn’t know this man, my father. Not really. All I knew and wanted more than anything in the world was for him to come home. For us to be a family, just like the ones everyone else had. A Mother and Father and happily ever after. 

Six years later, in 1975, I flew to Florida and met my brother, met his mother, and watched Dad play the role he was supposed to play for me.

As the tragic heroine, come to wreck lives, I created as much friction as I could muster. My mission was clear: break these people up and Dad would come home.

That didn’t happen. Not that year, anyway.

It took two days to drive home to West Virginia. I clung to hope he’d change his mind and stay, but he bought me a new bicycle and said goodbye.

There was a box under my bed where I kept some of my favorite things. Julie Andrews suggested this, and she couldn’t be wrong. I would pull out the card and focus on what Dad wrote. 

I love you and miss you. All my love, Daddy xox

I knew it wasn’t ALL his love, but it was some, and maybe that was enough.

I love and miss you too, Dad. xoxo