Safe at Home

A single sheet of notebook paper sits in a desk drawer. The desk was mine in college. My father and I finished it with coats of varnish when I moved into my first apartment in Berkeley. Later, it became my brother's, and traveled with him from his fraternity house, down to his apartment in LA, and eventually to my parent's house, where it is now, in my old room.

The paper has been there for ten years, or maybe a little bit more. It doesn't look like much: light blue lines, three holes down the side, a few words and lines in pencil. Unremarkable at first glance.

I remember the first time I saw this piece of paper. I stayed composed (as was my custom back then). The pencil lines were drawn in the shape of a diamond, with smaller diamonds at the corners, like a baseball field. And at the bottom point of the diamond, where home base would be, a single phrase. "He is safe at home."

My brother had sketched his graveyard.

There are some other details on the page as well. Bill, shortly after a second surgery for a brain tumor that left him partially paralyzed on one side, had included what was to be placed at each base and the various positions throughout the field. It is, as he was, remarkable.

Although he was never a baseball player, my brother was a lover of the game. He analyzed and remembered the great players, old and new. Bill wasn't just a fan. He felt the game. Even as he was dying, long after he had eaten his last hot dog, after his mind and his body started to leave him, he enjoyed a good baseball game.

When I visit my parents' house, and stay in my old room, I always open the desk drawer that holds this piece of paper. I cry now (as is my custom now), thinking of how long my brother knew he was dying, even while the rest of us still held out hope.

And when I have the chance, I visit his grave as well. He is buried among the rows of others, with space around him where my parents will someday lie. His stone is simple.

William Monroe Ress

1976-2002

Safe at home

Today's post was inspired by the prompt "write a fiction or creative non-fiction piece in which an epitaph features prominently."

Road Trip

Oh, how I ache for those days. I long for the time of family road trips, my brother and I in the back seat, our parents' presence making itself known only to break up the occasional squabble.

We'd pass the time playing games. Sometimes we played travel sized versions of popular games, like checkers or Connect Four. But usually we played games meant for the road. Spot a license plate from every state. Tap the beat of a song and guess what it is. Find each letter of the alphabet on passing billboards. The rules were developed as we played. Letters could come from road signs but not from bumper stickers. The songs have to be current top 40 hits. The older we got, and the longer the road trip, the more elaborate the rules became.

We'd arrive at our destination, or maybe just an overnight stop along the way. My mom would present us with the individual cereal boxes she brought for our breakfasts, the kind of sugar cereals we would never get at home. We took turns claiming them for ourselves to avoid arguments in the morning. Bill always chose Apple Jacks. I chose Fruit Loops. Or maybe it was the other way around.

We stayed one night at a motel that had a tennis court. It was more grey than green, the paint faded with the years. The net sagged and weeds grew along the sidelines. But for two kids released from the backseat with a few hours of remaining summer sunlight, we could have been at Wimbledon. We had no tennis rackets, so we used what we could find: a stray tennis ball and some paperbacks for paddles. And we invented "book ball."

My brother and I spoke often of book ball, though we never played it again. It was a game known only to us, a memory we shared that is now mine alone. My eyes well with tears as I remember him, just a boy, fair hair shining in the afternoon sun.

They All Came

I wish you could have been there for the sun & the rain & the long, hard hills. For the sound of a thousand conversations scattered along the road. For the people laughing & crying & remembering at the end. But, mainly, I wish you could have been there. –Brian Andreas, StoryPeople

The sun was strong and the air was crisp and we marched up the hill. We traveled in twos and threes, the mass of us turning into a line stretching long and thin. We were silent, save for the click-clack of heels on the pavement.

You were 25 when you died, and had gathered friends throughout your years. And they all came, from elementary school teachers, to high school friends, to travel your companions in Spain. They came to witness the end, to try to make sense. They came to bury you, to say goodbye, to find solace in remembering. But most of all, they came.

Except for one. Did you know that? All of the cousins came. Jane was there and Sally and Joe. Lauren and Diana and Stephanie came. Even Josh showed up. Only Allison didn’t come. She said it was too hard to travel across the country, couldn’t leave her kids behind. It was an excuse and we weren’t in the mood. We thought her choice was unforgiveable. We didn’t shun her, but didn’t go out of our way either. That was 9 years ago.

A few months ago, I got an email from Allison. She regretted that she hadn’t been there. Said it was one of the biggest regrets of her life. She was sorry, wanted a relationship. I thanked her for getting in touch.
Remember when Grandma was dying? Dad got in a fight with Uncle Paul about the shared responsibility of her care. Dad didn’t want to forgive then either, said he was done with his brother. But you told him to make amends. You told Dad he had to forgive, because he is his brother.

But you see, Bill, without you, I don’t have a brother or sister. I need our cousins to play understudy. So I’m going to forgive her. Try to have a relationship if I can. I think it is what you would have wanted.

And if it isn’t, I hope you’ll forgive me.

Only in Florida

The long sharp knife deftly cuts each orb in half with a single slice. Six demi-spheres lie on the counter, rocking slightly, revealing their yellowpink flesh. My grandmother chooses a new tool, a curved knife, slightly serrated, created just for this job. Each segment is separated from its membrane, but left intact inside its fleshy bowl. She places the fruit on little plates, and hands them to me to bring to the table, one half grapefruit per person.

Only in Florida is grapefruit considered an appetizer.

I pick up my spoon, specially designed for the task: oblong with a serrated edge. I take a first taste, feigning a test of the grapefruit’s astringency, but knowing full well that I will reach for the sugar bowl. No grapefruit on earth is sweet enough for an eight year old’s palate.

I sprinkle the sugar, just a light dusting, and watch as the crystals melt shimmering onto the fruit. And now another taste, this time bright and vibrant, tart and sugary. I dig down, making sure to get some of the now sweetened juice in every bite. This was the taste of sunshine, of visits to Grandma and Grandpa, of swimming pools and shuffleboard, of humidity, of winter break in Miami.

Every so often, back home in Southern California, my mom would serve a grapefruit before dinner, but it was never the same. I’m sure the fruit was just as good (the grapefruits probably even imported from Florida) but we didn’t have the special plates, the serrated spoons, the glass of sun tea on the side. We didn’t have the carefree days of a school break.

But mostly, we didn’t have Grandma and Grandpa.

This post is part of The Red Dress Club memoir writing series, RemembeRED. This week, we were asked to write about our favorite fresh fruit or vegetable. Although grapefruit is hardly my favorite fruit, it does hold some special memories.