Lisa

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my older sister turning 56.  I spoke of remembering that day and what was going on in our lives at the time.  We were waiting for a baby.

We were living in a basement apartment in Salt Lake City, Utah at the time.  I have no idea what we were doing in Salt Lake.  I remember the apartment well.  The windows were very high.  You walked down the stairs from the front door to one large area - the kitchen, eating, and living room were all one big space.  Linda and I shared a bedroom straight off this room.  And what I remember most were the water pipes that ran all over our ceiling.  My mother was 24, my dad, 29.

There was a lot going on around that little apartment in Salt Lake.  Once, a little girl on our street was abducted and returned within a short time.  I remember being right there watching as the mother, on her knees in front of her little girl, kept alternating between holding her daughter away from herself to see her face and clutching her close.  And I remember the urgency of panic and concern and relief on her face.  I think I knew this kid but that is a detail I can't remember well.  The police were there.  They wore hats at the time.  My mother told me later that she talked to Linda and I after the incident, warning us of the dangers of talking to strangers.  After serious counseling she asked us: "So now, what would you do if a stranger offered you candy to get in the car with him?" and apparently I quickly answered: "I'd take the candy and run!"  I was four.

My mother started a little theatre group in that basement apartment.  (I heard somewhere a long time ago that it still exists.)  But a group of their friends would meet in the apartment and read plays.  I didn't understand it at the time.  I just thought they were talking.  Linda and I were in bed so we only knew what was going on by what we heard through the door.  One night they were reading "A Streetcar Named Desire".  My mother was either playing Blanch or Stella but my dad - my dad was playing Stanley.  In life, my dad was a yeller.  He had a horrible temper and he could get really loud and it could be scary.  So when Linda and I, lying in our beds, heard my father roaring "Stellaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" we thought all hell had broken loose and started screaming for my mother.  She came running to the door and I do remember her quickly whispering to us: "It's okay girls.  Your daddy's not mad.  It's just pretend".  But it didn't sound like pretend.  We didn't believe her.  That night was crazy scary.

At Easter time, I was in the bathroom with my sister and discovered the Broadway soundtrack album of "The Sound of Music" with Mary Martin hidden in the clothes hamper.  I went running out with it to my mother - to show her the "miracle" of my find.  I remember her saying that the Easter Bunny must have come early.  I seemed to have a knack for ruining surprises.

My point in all these stories is to say that there is so much I remember of that time surrounding Lisa's arrival.  My nearly-five year old life seemed already full on the morning of May 21st, 1962.  It was the middle of the night I guess because when we woke up, my grandmother was there.  I can't remember if it was she or my dad who told us that we had a sister.  But I do remember being there in that little basement apartment and learning it for the first time - and being very excited.  And then my grandmother made us oatmeal.  It was also strange to think there was someone new coming into our world.  I do not remember seeing her for the first time.  I don't remember her as an infant at all.  I do remember my mother watched us carefully to make sure we wouldn't try to hurt Lisa.  (My mother had been 5 years younger than her sister, Barbara, and Barbara used to bite my mothers fingers when she was a baby.) But my memories of our family in that apartment stop after the morning of May 21st.

Soon after Lisa was born we moved back to El Paso, Texas and lived for a brief time with my paternal grandmother until finally settling permanently in Fremont, California.  (That is where my mind pick ups again.)  But it was in El Paso that Lisa took her first steps and I remember that vividly.  We all sat on the floor in a circle - arms held straight out - calling for her to come to each of us.  She excitedly waddled from one of us to the other and we were all so thrilled - happily watching our smiling, pretty baby, on her feet, enjoying all the attention and love literally circling her.  In her cloth diapers and plastic pants.

Now she is a grandmother.  I can't reconcile these two images.

Lisa has dyslexia - school was very difficult for her.  Being the baby had its drawbacks.  She was separated by years from Linda and I and grew up at a time when there was a lot of turmoil between my parents.  She was always trying to find her place.  It sometimes led her to the wrong place.  She has not always had an easy life.  I have spent a good deal of my adult life worrying about her.  But at 50 she is beginning to realize and experience some of her untapped potential and that is a wonderful thing to see.  She has lost over 100 pounds and has started to paint.  Beautifully, I might add.  She is a gifted writer.  She was recently baptized.  She is working and making plans for her future.  Happily, her plans involve moving out of god-awful Modesto.  It seems she is learning to walk.  And like watching her the first time around, I couldn't be happier.

Happy Birthday, Lisa.  If life begins at 50, the best is yet to come.