Dodie and I are\ntaking shifts sitting by mama\u2019s bedside in the ICU. Dodie being the \u201cup at the\ncrack of dawn\u201d kind of person, takes the morning shift and I the afternoon. We\nmeet for dinner in town and both of us visit her in the evening, carrying on\nconversations to the cadance of the breathing machine, and the rhythmic chimes\nof life support as if it were the most normal thing in the world. We hold her\nhand and talk about the future. I read aloud from some of her favorite books in\nthe afternoons as if we were sitting on the veranda, enjoying a mint julep. But\nthe steady hiss….thump of oxygen being pumped into her lungs has no place in\nthat other world, the one I\u2019m beginning to long for, the world I ran away from.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wish that this was all just a bad dream, and that when I wake up, mama\nwill be sitting at the kitchen table, cigarette in one hand and chihuahua in\nthe other, musing over the morning paper. But it\u2019s been five days now since the\nsurgery and the odds that she will suddenly wake up and breathe on her own are\ngetting pretty slim. Every once in\nawhile I look up from my book or my conversation with the wall and search for a\nflutter of consiousness. Just a flicker of an eyelash or the squeeze of a hand\nwould do. At this point I\u2019d take anything as a sign that this isn\u2019t all going\nto end where I think it will. And I haven\u2019t even begun to have that\nconversation with Dodie. You know, the one about the plug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere\u2019d you go, mama?\u201d I whisper so the nurse won\u2019t hear. \u201cAre you\ndancing? Can you hear me?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I may as well be talking to a stump for the response I get. My petite\nand slender mother who has kept her dancer body in spite of the bad habits that\nlanded her in heart surgery, once had jet-black and straight hair, like mine.\nShe favors her mother and the Mexican side of the family, most of whom live\nSouth of the Border. You can see the ever-so-slight reference to Grampy Bates\nand his Irish Texan clan in the bridge of freckles spanning her nose beetween\nthe high cheekbones, and skin that is slightly fairer than mine (except when\nshe gets some sun). Now her hair is streaked with gray and cropped short. She\u2019d\nlook a lot like Joan Biez were her hair not sticking out in spikes all over the\nplace. I reach for a hairbrush in the little metal cabinet next to the hospital\nbed and try to tame the remnants of her battle with surgery and her present\ncombat with death. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can\u2019t quite recall when mama cut her hair short. Maybe back in the\nseventies after my brother Timmy died. Everything seemed to change then. The\nspark seemed to fizzle right out of her. She used to wear her hair in a long\nbraid down her back as my Mexican grandmother still does. Funny how you spend\nmost of your life trying to avoid being anything like your mother, and then one\nday you look in the mirror and there she is. You wear your hair the same, hold\nyour mouth in the same pucker of vanity in front of the mirror, and find\nyourself picking up the familiar gait of her footsteps. Not so long ago I would\nhave found this appalling, but lately I\u2019ve been feeling the faint stirrings of\nmy Texan roots calling me back home. I\u2019d been even toying with the idea of\ngiving up my law practice in Boston and moving back to the McCullah Ranch to\nhelp mama manage the place, maybe set up a practice in El Paso. Of course I\nnever would admit any of this to Dodie, and I sure as heck didn\u2019t let it slip\nin front of mama. My living so far away has always been a bone of contention\nbetween me and the rest of the family. Maybe if I make a vow to come back, mama\nwon\u2019t up and die on us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I put the brush down and take her hand in mine and raise it up to my cheek\nand I\u2019m surprized that there are tears in her palm when I bring her hand back\ndown to the bed. Although she is merely a remnant of what she used to be, her\nhands are as I remember them. Just like mine, mocha latte softness and long,\nslender fingers. I notice that she still wears her wedding band and a sapphire\nengagement ring even though Daddy\u2019s been gone at least five years. My own hands\nare unadorned except for a small turquoise band on my right hand. I have no use\nfor the institution of marriage. I don\u2019t know why Mama stuck with it, but she\nmust have had her reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus Christ! What the hell\u2019s the matter with me? I can\u2019t\nquite wrap my head around the emotions I\u2019m experiencing. When did I start\ngetting all sentimental? After all, I\u2019m the cool-headed one in the family. The\none who could win a debate with a pole cat in a dark ally. Not like Dodie, all\nfire and red like the McCullah side of the family. She and daddy, whom we affectionately\ncalled \u201cColonel Joe\u201d, would boil over like a steam engine at every little\nmishap on the ranch. But me, and mama – well we just watch and wait. Like I\u2019m doing\nnow \u2013 watching and waiting to the hiss \u2013 thump drum beat of life support\nwondering if my mother, Magdalena, is holding the hands of all those other\nMagdalenas that go way back in our family history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I finger the tiny key she gave me the night before her surgery. It is tied\nto a thin, red ribbon, long enough to wear around my neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is yours, Queirida,\u201d she\u2019d\nwhispered so the others wouldn\u2019t hear as they left the room, \u201cif anything\nshould happen, take this key to the bank. Everything in the vault is\nyours…..\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had laughed it off as Hall Mark Sintimentality. After all, heart surgery was nothing these\ndays. She would be up and about, back home in less than a week. Hadn\u2019t the\ndoctor said that? Hadn\u2019t they promised?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I realize that I am not prepared for this. I am not prepared for the death\nof my mother or the flotsom of her life which she has left in a bank vault for\nme to retrieve. I am not prepared to\nlook at her through a microscopic lens so that I might construct a eulogy as if\nI ever knew who she was. The fact is, I don\u2019t know her. She is my mother. A\nquirky artist, former ballroom dancer and journalist once married to a\nprominent rancher. A military wife, mother of two living daughters and one dead\nson…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWho are you?\u201d I whisper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hiss \u2013 thump. Hiss \u2013 thump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you stop me?\u201d I wonder almost out loud, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you try to\nconvince me to stay close to you and Texas and our crazy mixed-up family? Why\ndid you disappear from us so long ago? Why didn\u2019t you share all those secrets?\nThe ones that are locked away in that bank vault you want me to open like\nPandora\u2019s Box.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am drifting into sleep, lulled by the emptiness of her response and the\nlullabye of the machines that tether her to this life. I am searching for a\ndream or a memory to hold onto. There is that familiar flashback which has\nhaunted me ever since I can remember. The one where I am waving goodbye to Mama\nas she drives away in that turquoise convertable \u2013 and Abuelita Lena holds my\nhand \u2013 and out of the red dust trailing behind her like a jetstream I notice\nthat man, a tall, dark stranger standing nearby. His hands are buried deep in\nhis pockets. His smile is sharp and white against burnt sienna skin. He throws back his head\nand laughs and the laughter frightens me because I know that it is real and\ncloser to her heart than I have ever been, and I close my eyes with the fists\nof my adult woman self because I do not\nwant to know who that stranger is and also because I know somehow that a heart\nthat strong can singe and I will never\nlet that happen to me. I will not be like her. I am awakened by the silence of\ndeath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so began a journey I did not sign up for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two months later<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus H. Christ,\nMama, I thought as I lay stretched out across the bed reading the random entry\nfrom the plain, black, hard-cover sketch book she must have used as a journal.\n\u201cWho the hell are (were) you!\u201d I said out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had rummaged\nthrough her drawer and found a pack of Virginia Slims, and finally broke down\nand lit one up as I sat surrounded by the contents of \u201cthe vault\u201d. It had been\ntwo months since mama passed away during her heart surgery, and it had taken me\nthis long to drag my sorry ass back down here from Boston so that I could tidy\nup the loose ends of her estate I had been appointed the family lawyer several\nyears back when I first set up my practice up north and daddy started feeding\nme ranch and real estate business to take care of in order to entice me to move\nback home. Thank God for the internet. I\ncould just as easily close a deal online and with a short plane trip, as I\ncould by setting up shop in the walnut paneled library on the ranch. But being the executor of mama\u2019s estate,\nthere were things I just couldn\u2019t accomplish from my office in Boston or my home\nin Newton Heights. Namely, this mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was not\nprepared for what I found in mama\u2019s bank vault. \nShe didn\u2019t even hint to me what I might expect to find there before she\nwent into surgery. Although I think she\nknew she was not coming home, I had every faith in the doctors and the\ntechnology that she would come out of it just fine. I had placed her vault key in the bottom of\nmy purse, figuring we would go there together some day when she was feeling\nsentimental or spunky enough to tell me whatever the hell she had been keeping\nfrom me all these years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That key had\nslipped into the annals of one purse and then another until it was forgotten.\nIt wasn\u2019t until I was fully packed for a six-month leave, having left my office\nin the hands of my two partners (who will probably rob me blind, being the good\nlawyers that they are), that I remembered the damned thing. Already late for the Homeland <\/em>Security routine at the airport, I searched frantically\nthrough every purse in my closet, trying to remember which ones I was using two\nmonths ago. When I found the tiny\nenvelope tucked in the credit card section of a red canvas purse with leather\nhandles, I grabbed it and bolted down the stairs to the cab. My bags were\nalready in the trunk, and my briefcase on the seat. I had e-mailed other important documents down\nto Texas, already. My laptop was in my briefcase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We had just\nentered the Big Dig Tunnel on the way to Logan Airport, when I finally\nunclenched my hand and poured the tiny key onto my palm. I was suddenly\novercome with sobbing grief, just looking at that key and remembering that the\nlast time mama really spoke to me was when she handed me the envelope and told\nme to go to the bank. I cried like a\nfool all the way to the airport with the cabby, some young, jazzy punk from\nBerkley School of Music, looked warily in his rearview mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were\nall sorts of things I ought to be tending to as executor of the estate. Namely, getting Dodie off my back regarding\ninheritance taxes. For someone who is rolling in so much dough, she has turned\ninto the biggest cheap-scape there ever was. \nShe\u2019s not going to fork over one single penny to the government if she\ndoesn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are\ndecisions to be made regarding the ranch, the business, and other assets, and\nwhether to sell out or keep it for the grandkids. I really don\u2019t have the time to be doing\nthis. I mean, rummaging through mama\u2019s past which was ever-so carefully packed\naway in two old steamer trunks she must have stolen from granny McCullah\u2019s\nattic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I went to the bank vault about a week\nafter I arrived back home on the ranch. I don\u2019t know what I expected to\nfind. Most people leave their loved ones\na little tin box with a couple of jewels or maybe great, great granddaddy\u2019s\nConfederate sword. But not two frigging\ntrunk loads of apparently worthless stuff! \nThe bank manager was ever-so-kind to help me cart the big old trunks to\nthe truck, and we lifted them into the pick-up bed and bungee tied them to the\nsides so they wouldn\u2019t be slamming around in the back. I\u2019ve lately taken to driving daddy\u2019s big old\nextended cab Dodge with the ranch logo on the side. I feel at home, now. Much more so than were I driving mama\u2019s\nMercedes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had the\ntrunks lugged into mama\u2019s old room, where I\u2019ve set up camp for the duration of\nmy stay. It\u2019s roomy and airy, and\naffords me the capability of watch-dogging over Dodie who would just love to\nget in there and rummage through mama\u2019s stuff with her kids in tow. Although there\u2019s not much I want or need that\nhas sentimental value to me, I don\u2019t want Dodie coming across some other dark\nsecret mama may have forgot to hide in her vault. I have felt a little\nprotective of her secrets, being the last thing she said to me and all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I\nfirst opened up the trunks, I felt like I had just unearthed Captain Kidd\u2019s\ntreasure. Imagine my surprise to find a bunch of fancy old clothes, and a whole\ntrunk full of letters, journals, photographs, and news clippings. I just don\u2019t know what to make of this\nmess. I haven\u2019t even had time to examine\nany of the documents or even pull out the old clothes for examination. What the hell was she thinking I would do\nwith all this stuff! <\/p>\n\n\n\n But then\nthere\u2019s this. This writing in a voice I don\u2019t even recognize as my mother. The voice flows onto the page like syrup,\nsticky with sentimentality and something I can\u2019t quite put my finger on. Is it passion? Is it poetry? I guess I knew my mother had had aspirations\nto become a writer before she married my father. She had even gotten a scholarship to study\njournalism and went to school for a year before she picked up a job writing for\nthe local newspaper. But all that got put on the back burner when she married daddy. He was a man who valued hard, physical work,\nnot the ephemera of words on a page. His\nletters from overseas were terse and pragmatic, and they had their own little\nplace in the scrap book where family photos were kept. But these letters, these\njournals and Lord knows what else, have been kept sacrosanct in their own\nlittle crypt. I had no clue what the content of the letters may be, nor the\nparties involved. I had only just begun\nto crack open a journal which happened to be lying near the top. I don\u2019t even know at this point if this is a\nwork of fiction or my mother\u2019s own thoughts. \nThe handwriting is definitely hers, perfectly tidy and legible. All I can say is, \u201cHoly Shit!\u201d Did she really expect me to make sense of\nthis much paper in the limited time I have to spend down here? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Magdalena\u2019s Diary: 9, May, 1961 COME PASSION<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Come passion, the\nbreath we long for in this life. But we taste that wine and then we go to\nsleep. We walk bleary eyed and stunned about our daily lives, collecting clues\nin our fragile little baskets which we sort through in our dreams at night. If\nwe are fortunate to have been blessed with certain sensibilities on this earth\nthen we find our bliss buried deep in that basket, and we wear it like a shroud\nto protect ourselves from the very thing that will set us free. But come\npassion in our lives and we teeter totter on the edge of that precipice\novercome by the vertigo of our own undoing. Do I leap? Do I fly? Do I breathe?\nDo I laugh? Do I cry? Do I dare to let go of the shrouding veil that protects\nmy heart? Do I live to die in the arms of another?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Come passion into my life <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the wings of a tiny bird<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And I can fly the deepest canyon <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Or scale the sharpest edges<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On your wings I can rest my soul<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And I am not alone.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nmost dangerous intersection in a marriage is when there is no road to\ncompassion. Once the incidental wounds\nand resentments have collected their toll and drained the purse of passion, we are lost without a\nroadmap, and who will be the one to dare to ask for directions in that maze of\ndead-end streets? Who can be trusted to send you on your way back to that place\nthat drew you together so long ago? It is the devil\u2019s fork in the road \u2013 when\nthe choices are far too many yet few. You can each set out on your separate\npaths \u2013 exploratory missions \u2013 trying to find your way back to each other. But what if your work is done? What if the life you have lived is only one\nlayer of your life, and now you are ready to live another, and then another,\nand then another? When given the choice, we all prefer the road of familiarity.\nThis is what I know. This is who I am. \nBut that smooth coated road doesn\u2019t rock the soul. Complacency is a slow\nand steady as you go kind of road. It doesn\u2019t pump the heart; it cushions the mind\nlike a soft pillow in a warm bed. It is green and soft and nostalgic, but it\ndoes not pull you forward. You stand frozen at this crossroads because one\nfalse step could send you reeling backwards into the fires of old patterns\nwhich desire nothing more than to continue burning for us.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But what about the\nsummit? Which road leads to the crest of our eternal sense of being? Physical\npassion can be short-lived. A road to\nnowhere that fizzles out the way a deer path disappears in a thicket and you\nwonder if those deer have wings to fly above the trees, or do they melt inside\nthe density of wood. Passion without heart can leave you groping in the dark\nfor solid footing on a steep climb with a short peak. And then we all end up alone in the end.\nAlone in our marriages, our lovers arms, our coffins.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And here we stand, together\nreeling and teetering, wings unfurled yet milky and heavy of heart because we\ndo not dare leap and leave those we love behind. But this I know: I have been\nawakened as if from a deep, walking sleep. I have seen myself in the reflection\nof your love in your eyes, and I have fallen deeply into those black pools,\nbelieving in beauty and myself and faith once again. In your eyes I can do\nanything. I can overcome the other side of lonely. I can climb the tallest\nmountain on my knees and sail the deepest ocean with no breeze. I can fly away\nto heaven with no wings because I have been reminded by a big, strong heart\nthat I do exist on this earth to experience the joy of such things as your love.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is when I\nvacillate. I go back and forth with no rhyme nor reason between incredible joy\nto know that my heart is full of love for at least two people on this earth,\nand why would God not want me to experience both? You can see that I am not a practical kind of\nperson, and I do not always understand the ways of this world. But then I find\na thread of guilt which I worry between my fingers until it is snarled into a\nknot, and this is the unraveling of the soul when we start worrying our\ntattered threads and forget to breathe. \nI am panicked if I dare to stand on that bridge. I am scared because if my feet dare to touch\nthose weathered boards and cross that murky water, I am buying a construct from\nwhich there is no return, because I have raised the question in my heart: What\nif? What if this is our only chance?\nWhat if this is it \u2013 the love of our life? Do we squander it? Do we put it\nthrough the fires of hell at the expense of others \u2013 only to fizzle and dry into\nhardened lava? And what kind of bedrock is that for a foundation of love?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But then \u2013 do we turn\nour heads away and pretend it does not exist? Do we ignore the visceral pull\nbetween us that makes us want and want and want to be closer than the breath we\nhave not even tasted?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no reason or\nlogic in this murky world of love. Who knows what forces lifted the veils that\nclouded our heart and mind for too long? But there it is, a raw and fragile\nthing waiting to be nurtured, and it seems that the soil in which this seed has\nbeen planted is the fertile ground of our art \u2013 the creative realm where we can\ndraw from the passion of the dance and transform this power between us into\nmusic that touches the soul.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was mesmerized\nby the words I was reading in my mother\u2019s tidy handwriting. If this were a\nnovel she was working on, the plot was not yet clear. There were no characters,\nonly her meandering voice, a seemingly random monologue emerging from some\ndeeply recessed cavern somewhere in her brain with thoughts I wouldn\u2019t have\nknown she was capable of. Perhaps had I not been so busy most of my life\nrunning away from my family and rebelling against my Texas and Mexican roots, I\nwould have noticed my mother had a deeply rich inner life. But while I was\nspraying round-up on every external leaf that shot up from those roots,\nexterminating the past, my mother passed quietly through the walls of this\nhouse with that cat-like smile upon her face. I know now, it must have been a\nsmile of secrets. She was somehow able to transgress the brick and mortar of\nthe boundaries which were built around my father and the ranch, the McCullah\nclan and the Bates family, and live her inner life as she pleased. I wondered\nhow she kept the journals from \u201cThe Colonel\u201d. My dad was as covert as they\ncome, at least in the military realm. If he noticed that his wife was having\nsecond thoughts about the meaning of marriage, he had the good grace not to\ninterfere. That\u2019s probably why the marriage, in-spite-of all the water which\npassed under that broken bridge had lasted so long \u2013 until daddy\u2019s death did do\nthem part five years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thumbed\nthrough the pages of the first book, the book of Magdalena. Every entry was\ndated 1961, which meant that there was probably a full book for each year. The\npages were neatly written \u2013 almost like calligraphy, and there were occasional\nsketches which surprised me. I never once saw my mother pick up a pencil to\ndraw. But right there on the third entry\ndated: 12th<\/sup> May, Monterrey, Mexico<\/em>, was the beautiful sketch of\nan evening dress with matching shoes. On\nthe first page of this entry was the dress, which appeared to be built for my\nmother\u2019s long and lean body. It was a simple design, slender with one bare\nshoulder. The shoulder strap on the\nright side was delicate and feminine, attached by a silk magnolia flower. The\nmagnolia flower pattern was repeated on the lower skirt of the dress, which was\ntiered at the bottom, and split up the left side, dangerously high. The dress\nfit perfectly over the headless form of its model in several sketched positions\nto show various features, including the hint of shoe beneath the hem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the second page of this entry\nwere the shoes. Oh and what shoes they were. No woman in her right mind would\nimprison her feet in such a jailhouse of form over function. A close-up of the\nshoe was carefully constructed, showing off a ridiculously high arched and\nfeminine foot encapsulated by the design which followed the lines of the foot\nperfectly. Spiked heels that could aerate a lawn in the dust bowl, ended in a\nthin cup for the back of the heel and a strap around the ankle. The arch was\nleft bare to show off the shape of the foot, and the toe of the shoe was\nwrapped in a soft leather just so that a glimpse of painted (I\u2019ll assume red)\ntoes beckoned in a seductive come-hither sort of way. And, of course, topping\nthe shoe was a silk magnolia matching the dress. Oh, what I wouldn\u2019t give for a pair of shoes\nlike that, but they wouldn\u2019t get any further than the bedroom \u2013 for\nrecreational use only. A shoe like that\noughtn\u2019t to be worn out in public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought\nof my mother\u2019s high-arched foot and how perfectly deformed it was. Those shoes\nwere made for her dancer feet. I recalled how in later years the top of her\nflexible arch foot became deformed with calcium deposits from constant\ninflammation. After arthritis set in, she could no longer wear a pair of\nsneakers or any shoe that had a tight fitting top. We used to joke about her\nhaving a secret life in Japan as a foot-bound Geisha Girl. Mama would only\nsmile that cat-grin knowing smile. Perhaps she really did have a secret life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It occurred\nto me that the dress and the shoes may be connected to the other trunk. The one\nwhich stunk so strong of moth balls, I had it put in the storage room off the\ngarage where mama kept her Mercedes. In the trunk which was there in the room\nwith me, I counted out twenty-five black hard-covered sketch books which were\nplaced carefully in order, top to bottom and interspersed with letters from\neach year, which I hadn\u2019t even started to read. It was a biographer\u2019s dream –\nan organized time-line of thought and historical record. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Were my mother someone famous or\nhistorically significant, I would be dancing on cloud nine by now, given all\nthe material culture for the makings of that dissertation I never did finish in\nmy attempt at becoming a historian. If only I had unearthed this much material\non Emily Howland, a nineteenth-century abolitionist and philanthropist who had\nstarted up schools for blacks in the South after the emancipation of slaves,\nand provided an endowment for George Washington University. I had been trained as a historian both in my\nundergraduate and graduate education, and though my ultimate goal had always\nbeen to become a lawyer, I toyed with a doctorate program in American Studies\nat Clark University when I was in my mid-twenties. I found the research and the collecting of\ninformation easy to organize, being well-versed in mathematical thinking and a\nnatural sleuth. But when it came to the writing, I just couldn\u2019t pull it all\ntogether. Somewhere in the attic of my home in Newton Heights, is a trunk full\nof documentation for the life of Emily Howland, and an unfinished dissertation.\nIn the end, there were too many gaps for me to fill in, unlike the treasure\ntrove of letters, diaries, and who knew what else, which my mother graciously\norganized in her own little time capsule for me to unearth. I began then to toy\nwith the idea of writing my mother\u2019s biography. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Who said that history had to be\nfilled up with stories of famous and significant people? It\u2019s really the\nextraordinary lives of the ordinary that provide the foundation for\nhistory. By studying the material\nculture of the ordinary 18th<\/sup> century farm wife, we get both a narrow\nand a broad view of the American Revolution and pre-industrial America. It is\nthe dance of everyday lives that makes the music of the American\nexperience. My mother, in her ordinary\nlife as a military wife, half Mexican, half Texan ranch family, lived through\nsome extraordinary times. Through the lens of her experiences I could reexamine\nthe early days of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile\nCrisis, and the coming and going of The Beatles. It did not occur to me that I\nwould also have the opportunity to examine my own roots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dodie and I are taking shifts sitting by mama\u2019s bedside in the ICU. Dodie being the \u201cup at the crack of dawn\u201d kind of person, takes the morning shift and I the afternoon. We meet for dinner in town and both of us visit her in the evening, carrying on conversations to the cadance of … <\/p>\n