Lace

Marcel Proust was an influential French writer of the early 20th Century, whose most celebrated work is the novel Remembrance of Things Past.  A famous passage in the book is about a man who sits down to enjoy a small pastry called a “petite madeleine,” which he dips into his cup of tea; and the taste of the crumbs and the smell of the tea flood his mind with memories of his grandmother’s kitchen.  This stirring of strong memories by one or more of your senses has become known as a “Proustian Experience.”  My Proustian moment takes place when I encounter the man standing not far from the Target store.

He is often there on the slender median as you drive out of the shopping center, holding a tattered and hand-scribbled cardboard sign which reads ANYTHING HELPS GOD BLESS.  He wears dirty and shabby clothes and scuffed-up shoes.  His hair is unkempt, his face unshaven.  He has about him a most dispirited air.  Homeless.  Pitiful.  Beat down.  Threadbare.  Humiliated, just to be standing there, begging.  Usually I ignore him, hoping with no small amount of shame that the light will stay green until I pass by; but on this day the light changes, and my car is stopped directly opposite him, not four feet away.

In my shirt pocket is a Trader Joe’s gift card; and without too much thought I pull out the card, lower the window and hand it over.  He reaches out and takes it with muttered thanks.  Even though our hands do not touch during this brief encounter, he is close enough, and it is time enough, for me to catch more than his sad appearance.  It is his smell.  I know it well.   

It is the same smell that froze me with fear on that mournful night so many years ago, a recent high school graduate, coming home at dusk from a summer job, saving up for college.  As soon as I opened the door, you could hear and smell what was wrong.  My mother was choked with tears, and there was that familiar odor that seemed to hang in the house whenever my dad fell off the wagon. 

It had been almost two and one-half years of sobriety, the longest dry spell ever.  A periodic drunk, he would go on benders two or three times a year. We knew this enemy called alcoholism could rear its ugly head at any time.  We knew it was never really cured.  Yet, after all this time, we had slowly built up unspoken hope.  The smell was devastating.

For about a week I had sensed something, but could not put my finger on it, or did not want to.  In earlier days when the pattern was measured in months instead of years, I had been able to see it coming more easily.  There was a nervousness that was not in my dad’s character usually.  There was the slightly more deliberate speech.  His words were a surgeon’s scalpel, biting, especially towards our mom.  And there was that smell.  His diet obviously changed when he launched on a bender, and this normally fastidious man who always shined his shoes would stop shaving and bathing.

What snares me in this remembrance is not just the sound and the smell; there is also a visual.  Audrey is sitting in the green chair, and on the ottoman in front of her is a Kleenex, the last one.  Between wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, there is not much left of it.  She is carefully spreading it out before her, as if to dry it out.  It is tattered nearly beyond use, and hardly recognizable as a tissue.  It is a ragged and forlorn remnant, full of holes, a sad piece of lace, a metaphor about how fragile our family seemed at that moment.  Oh, how lonely she must have felt, her older sons flown the coop, her youngest son about to bolt, her nest emptying out, and the love of her life passed out on their bedroom floor.   

“Oh, Mom, what are we going to do?”

She took a few moments to answer while her tears dried up a bit and she went to the Kleenex one more time, and then she said this incredible thing.  “I’m going to brush my teeth, Son.  Then I’m going to bed, and so are you.  We both have jobs that we need to get up for tomorrow morning.”   

And so she did.  Brush her teeth, and floss as always, and it took a long time.  She marshalled her anger, her fear, and her crushing disappointment into one focused response, and committed an all-out and violent assault on her teeth and gums; and when she emerged from the bathroom, an incredible transformation had taken place, almost as if this evening of horror had not taken place.

Then she did another incredible thing; she told me an unprintable joke, and with that she gave me a kiss and went off to bed.  Not that it was all that shocking, the joke; Audrey could be earthy.  It was the timing that faked me out.  In a most agonizing moment in our lives, my mom went ribald.  Looking back, however, it was a good move on her part.  She knew we needed something to break the surface tension in the house.  She knew we needed some levity.  She knew we needed some normalcy.  She knew we needed to move on.

Years later my wife and I would binge on “The West Wing,” and there is a recurring line in which President Bartlet, after resolving one major crisis or another, yells out to his secretary, “MRS. LANDINGHAM!  WHAT’S NEXT?” 

That’s what Audrey did — the next thing!  Teeth!  Cheer up the son!  Go to bed!  Go to work! 

She was a tower of strength; and if you asked her, she would always say her strong tower was the Lord.  At the heart of her was a hunger for God.  It was her faith that enabled her time and again to put one foot in front of the other.  She lived this verse: “Blessed are those whose trust is in the Lord; they will not be dismayed by bad tidings.”  In good times and bad she would turn her face to the Lord and ask, “What’s next?”

My mother was ninety-three when she came to live with our family, and for several more years we shared many stories and tears about my dad.  It had been twenty-five years since he died and thirty-five years since that time when he was flat on his face.  Time and forgiveness had changed our hearts.  The tears we shed were no longer bitter.  When I tucked her in bed at night and sang to her, I always made sure she had a full box of Kleenex on the bedside table.