This Knotted Life

I spoke with the little old lady who cuts prosciutto like she’s in Boston’s North End. I called her an hour before my shower, an hour before writing class, to glean last minute details of Annie, the one who killed herself with a doorstop. The one that is shaped like a house and keeps my front door open when I want it to.

“No, Annie was not my grandmother. She was her sister. Alberta, my grandmother’s sister,” says my mother. “She lived with me until I was 11.”

“Why did she do it?” I ask and she tells me and about Alberta and Annie’s mother, my great- great-grandmother Margaret, who killed herself too.

“Why did Margaret do it?” I ask.

“Well,” she says. “Seven bad things happened in 2 months’ time. It was in 1913. Read my genealogy book. Page 12.”

“I thought you said 13,” I like to rib her.

“No, Anne, 1913, page 12. I can’t control the page.”

We laugh and I learn the secrets of the doorstop that drowned Annie that now lives in my house. How Annie married two Herberts. One Herbert lived on the Cape making jam in the house that is now an ice cream store.

We talk about intergenerational trauma of my grandfather’s sister Margaret being given to his grandmother Margaret when she was young. The grandmother Margaret who then killed herself and gave the girl Margaret away.

The anger that my grandfather carried in his life, freezing out people, driving wild, scaring and mentally abusing my mother until she learned anger was a bad thing. And how she held anger that she can’t acknowledge. How her children act out anger, my sister, her daughter, the worst of all.

And then we talk about our oldest children, her daughter, my sister; and my son, her grandson. The ones who are cleaning out our closets, so they don’t have to when we die. They are burying our bones as we are still flesh. And we remember when I had COVID, and she nursed me in her home. We had pizza delivered by my sister who screamed at my mother the worst time ever. But she forgives and keeps the peace. Something I can’t do.

“Why do they say you’re such a good deli-slicer?” I ask. She’s so slow - it’s her worst trait really.

“Because I package neatly. I slice, fold, paper, slice and fold again. It takes longer but it is nicer for customers to make sandwiches. I just want to do it right.”

I smile knowing that’s really all I want to do too. Isn’t that what we all are trying to do?” I hang up with love with the woman who often annoys the hell out of me.

I will get ready later to clean out my garage with my son, the slave driver. I know that he will carry my stories in his bones, and I hope that I can clarify, distort and laugh at the truth of anger, lies, trauma, resilience and everyone just trying to do it right. However imperfect we are.