Mi Barrio: Washington Parque

Un Barrio y un Parque

Washington Parque: Mi tierra, mi hogar.

Pisoteo el mismo campo donde seguí a mi mamá por la nieve cuando apenas tenía dos años.  Por este barrio tan conocido y tan pegado a mi alma, yo sigo mi propia sombra mientras ando abriendo nuevo camino. 

Washington Parque: el mismo terreno

Mi escape desde teenager ditching class from South y escuchando a Bob Dylan.

Ando en bici por la misma ronda donde andaba cuando era adolescente deprimida escapando la angustia de mi existencia no sabiendo quien era ni a donde iba.

I remember the time I threw up on Mrs. Payne's purse in the little Field house library.  She shrieked.  The little house is no longer a library.  The statue of Winken, Blinken & Nod is there, thankfully not vandalized.

Miro a los vecinos andando en sus trajes de gimnasio con sus lindos perros grandes de raza.  I don’t blame them, but they bug me with their whitebread brand name blandness.  But wait, are they me?  Am I them?  OMG, me temo que sí.

If the annual Furry Scurry fuera una manifestación contra la probeza del mundo, huy!  ¡Qué más lindo sería mi barrio!  Imagínense miles de manifestantes con sus perros lindos caminando a correas--todos unidos contra la injusticia.

Washington Parque, un barrio liiiiiindo con tantos estilos de arquitectura, tipos de flores coloridas y olorosas y especies de árboles, razas de perros, pero pocos rasgos de sus raíces del barrio de la media clase obrera de Denver en los 50s y 60s.  Las casas se han hinchado y ya están convertidas en maisones grandotes y lujosos.    

¿Cuál es mi nuevo camino?  Coincidir mis circulos por el parque con mis rondas de vida y seguir contemplando la ruta mia con la del parque--a rodar y rodar hasta el fin.

Where I'm at

Straddling the old school and the new tech; the baby boomer and the hipster; the old world fairytale and the new world savagery; the sanitized history and the dirty present; the beauty of nature and the environmental devastation; the gains of society and the crumbling of economics. In short, trying to maintain some balance in the midst of uncertainty, while raising kids and keeping some peace and beauty in my life.

Sammy Every Sunday

I remember supressing the anguish rising up in my ten-year-old soul when he threw himself desperately into the arms of my parents.  He knew the visit was coming to a close.  One of the "attendants" had to help pry him off my mom.  I looked away and instantly smashed the image of his pain into that little black box of my soul that I kept padlocked.

Despondent and crushed, his wails of grief echoed through us all the way home, but we pretended not to hear.  This time we did not stop to unwind and decompress at the bowling alley at 6th and Sheridan as usual.  This time we did not talk much on the way home.  It was a particularly painful good-bye.  My parents must have been wondering why.  It was always bad, but this was horrible.  Was Sammy being abused?  Had there been a violent incident this week?  Their little boy who was now 13 routinely had bruises, so how could they know?

His range of human emotions seemed completely normal, although their expression was unbounded; the look in his eyes was intelligent; how could this brother of mine be determined to be "severely mentally retarded?"  His vocabulary of 20-odd words frustrated him beyond limit.  It sometimes consisted of several four-lettered ones, and when he became frustrated in his attempts to communicate, he would routinely strip off his clothes, yell out a string of words, and run across the field where we played with him every Sunday during nice weather.  I would watch my folks do their best to catch him and get him dressed again.  Sometimes I rooted for Sammy and sometimes I rooted for Mom and Dad, but mostly my heart just ached.

Along with the chokingly pungent odor of the resident hall where Sam lived, those images of his profound grief and anguish were most impressed upon my mind, body and soul.  He was freed from his institutional dungeon in 1975.  Not an easy exit, but a brutal violent death.  Poor Sammy--his life was tragic in so many dimensions and his death was just as full of anguish.  However, to this day, I believe that not only is he our guardian angel, but he is in a place of ultimate love and transcendence.  He can finally articulate his emotions, and he never has to say good-bye to our parents again.

My Mother

Born Roberta Ruth Claybourne, in 1924, my mother was raised on a diet of hearty food, and love and laughter.  Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father a bookbinder.  The only daughter in a family of five kids in a Minnesota farming community in the '20s and '30s, she found a haven among her books.  Her love for reading showed at an early age—her only true digressions from obedience were the literary contraband under her covers and the rolled-up towel hiding the bar of light under her door past bedtime. She was the only family member who had her own bedroom on account of her place as only girl.  Her other great love was for dogs.  She met the author, Albert Terhune, whose many stories of canine heroes she had followed.  She was editor of the school newspaper and class valedictorian at Albert Lea High School Class of 1942.

The most memorable day of her childhood came at age 13 when she was finally afforded much-needed prescription eyewear.  Her entire world came alive in sharp detail.  For years she had sat in the front of the class; she had squinted and waved at blurry passersby who called her name, and she had failed to distinguish the most basic elements of her visionary world due to acute astigmatism.  Her parents failed to respond earlier to her request for eyewear in keeping with their consistent favoritism displayed to their boys.  She was never one to complain, but she revealed to me, her only daughter, that while she was growing up, it was always, “Mom’s boys this and Mom’s boys that.”  Not until my grandma lay on her deathbed did she admit the error of favoring her sons when, “it was you who always came through for me, Ruthie.”

She learned the classics at the knees of her maternal grandparents, Charles and Ella Hill who also resided in Albert Lea.  The Sunday afternoons spent in their house afforded her a much-needed refuge from the teasing of her brothers.   Here she read aloud the Greek classics, Whitman, Longfellow, Emerson, and nonfiction at the behest of Grandma and  Grandpa Hill.

She was not only bright, but attractive; however, she had no use for boys (for god’s sake, she had four brothers) until she dated in college.  Once on a date when a boy teased her by saying that men never make passes at girls who wear glasses, she replied glibly, “But girls who wear glasses of men can make asses.”

When she met my father, I believe she saw a soulmate at last.  Indeed, my parents maintained a passion for each other right up until the end.  He was so refreshingly different from her brothers—he was every bit a gentleman, an intellectual, an equal partner.  She wrote to him on their 44th anniversary, the last one celebrated before she died, “Forty-four years ago I met and married the best of men, and you’ve never once let me down.”

The loss of her second son, Samuel Claybourne Woods, was the tragic culmination of his sad, short life.  She often told me that she felt that he had died three times.  Once when they discovered his developmental disability, again when he was no longer able to live at home (he went to live with Lavinia when I was born and was subsequently institutionalized at age four), and finally when he met his untimely end.  The accident that ended Sammy’s life happened in 1975 when my mother was working for the state legislature as an aide under the administration of Dick Lamm.  Once a few weeks after his death, she broke down at work.  She sat right down on the step up to the podium and cried during the session.  Her boss helped her back to her desk.   I think of her with love whenever I am in the house chambers at the Capitol.

One of her many gifts to me over the years was intangible.  I has suffered a miscarriage after finally getting pregnant.  I lost the pregnancy just before Mother's Day.  She let me know that she preferred not to celebrate it this year.  Whew!

Always the prim and proper WASPs, my parents were punctual, honest, dutiful and unable to express many of their deepest sentiments.  Excessive emotion was a disqualifier in any discussion.  If you lost your cool, you lost the argument.

When they lowered Sammy's ashes into the ground, she crumpled and cried out in grief.  Her body then shook with silent sobs; she was on her knees.  At first we were dumbfounded at her reaction since it broke from the wooden automated motions we had been going through since Sammy died.  Then my father recovered enough to decide it was inappropriate and insisted on lifting her up to allow the process of interring the cremains to continue.  I was frozen.  Why didn't I join her on her knees?  Why didn't I offer more comfort?

In the weeks that followed, she cried daily.  This provided me with an epiphany.  My parents loved me!  If she cried this much at Sammy's loss, then their love for their kids was real.  I loved my mother more than ever then.  I wanted to be by her side, help around the house, just be in the same room as her and my dad.  My cooking skills improved as I spent much time in the kitchen.  My friends called, but I made excuses.  I couldn't leave my folks alone, and I didn't want to leave home. 

When I married and became a stepmom, my mom was a wonderful grandmother.  We had so much fun with Anesa, and Anesa was such a cute and fun little girl to do things with.  Those were good times. 

I'm sorry she never got to meet my boy Mario, but she's been a profound influence even so.  So much love she gave us, it spills over into everything I do.