In my mind’s eye Lucy remains forever young, pigtails swinging, as she walks the freshly turned loam, singing a Spanish folksong, oblivious to the heartache, which lay ahead.
She lived and died in the same house, too young when she married at 15 to fathom the responsibility that came with each of the five children who followed in quick succession.
She grew restless, living with a man whose maturity could not even match her own. She became, in R.S. Thomas’ words, “the strong body, the safe island, Where men may come, sons and lovers, Daring the cold seas of her eyes.” Those “cold seas” I knew nothing of as her “first grandchild,” the crown I wore, the abrazar that I’ve never forgotten, “her wise lap” my refuge.
Love is knowing someone and loving them in spite of the knowing.
My earliest encounter with that notion of what academics call “unconditional love,” I learned from a plaque above my mother’s stove. I give you Edgar Guest, whose simple lyrics graced many homes in the 40s and 50s. “A friend is not a fella who is taken in by sham. A friend is one who knows our faults and doesn’t give a damn.” An early reader, self-schooled on Prince Valiant and the lush illustrations in the Sunday paper, I began to read stuff my parents probably didn’t know I was able to understand.
Guest’s declaration of unconditional friendship bound me to my Grandma Lucy, my “safe island” of another kind of geography. When her letter came, announcing her second marriage to a man I always feared, it was for me, the crazy decision of a girlish woman acting like an irresponsible teenager. I hadn’t lost a grandma—I had lost a grandpa. That other fella would never be anything to me: He was Edgar Guest’s “sham.”
But the ranch remained, where Grandma and "that guy" lived--still a constant refuge. She was still my Grandma, my Lucy with those Spanish diamond eyes.
A memory floats into my mind as I write tonight. Lucy and I went down to the shed to milk Rosa, her cow. While she milked, she told me about growing up on the land and explained to me how she chose marriage over school. "Larry, my Darling First Grandson, we have you, because your Grandpa and I had your mother." As we walked back to the house, the fog rolled gently from the sea, quietly enveloping us. She took my hand tightly and carried the milk pail with the other. "Larry, we won't forget this little vacation, will we?" I nodded. She stopped, knelt down, and kissed me on the cheek.
And we never forgot.
Have you ever wondered why God’s gifts appear, at least, to be random—at least random to us? I love that so-called “inconsistency” with which God distributes upon genius poets and composers, craftsmen, scientist and inventors. Why would my Lucy, with the “cold sea eyes” and the generous lap also have a sixth sense gift? But that gift, mind you, didn’t help anyone.
“I’m worried about Jack,” she said. Jack, her oldest son, the glue that held this tottering, now broken, family together. Jack, whose artistic hand illustrated everything he did. If he wrote a paper [always a brilliant paper] on John Greenleaf Whittier, there was a drawing of the very likeness of the poet. Jack, the student at San Diego State; Jack the quiet, solid one. “I’m worried,” she said.
Jack, killed in a yet-to-be explained car wreck. The driver? The “Sham Fella’s” one-eyed son. I remember the telegram to Dollie—yellow paper, black print, and the message short: “Jack killed tonight. Love, Mommy [Lucy].” We climbed into one of several cars Dad kept trading up and down for, looking for the “right rod,” he said. But the war was on. Even at 4-years-old, I remember the “consolation,” drive—into the Mojave Desert, the wind whipping our Blue Beetle, as Pop called it. Mom wept, her face turned to the glass. Lucy knew but what she didn’t know was that the complete unraveling of the family would accelerate.
The Sham probably didn’t worry. He had 200 acres, worth 350 million dollars now, but not then, 350 million, that is.
Then came the dream. Gene, Lucy's second son, worked at Convair, building the B-29s that set all of Japan afire. A drinker, restless on those warm ocean breezy evenings, he came home late. “I wanna join, Mom, everyone else is over there. My military waiver isn’t enough for me anymore.”
Gene trains fast, is flown to Scotland for six weeks additional training, and then finds himself in what history would call the Battle of the Bulge. Lucy dreams uneasily, night after night. Then, one morning, her braided hair combed out and touching her waist, she leaves the hairpins and comes down the stairs. “Gene’s dead,” she says solemnly. The “cold seas” of her eyes, now the Red Sea, full of salt.” Irene, the daughter, says later, “Mom said, ‘I saw Gene, his head full of blood. ‘Mom,’ he cried out.’” Two days later, another telegram, yellow paper, with the print nearly the same. “Gene killed at Bastogne. Mommy.”
Again the comfort drive. Dad quiet, lost for words. Mom searches for answers. “Maybe it’s for the better. I think he was already an alcoholic. Maybe this is a blessing … maybe.”
How did Lucy cope? “In her wide lap … a quiet music, hers being the voice “That coaxes time back to the shadows.” The Farm House, huge and filled with the smell of apple pie and old wood, the creaky stairs, the musty smell of over a century. Ghosts. And an attic full of strange treasure. A month before she died Lucy took me to the secret attic. The Sham is out searching for water. “If we only had water,” he muses, his mole-riddled, massive body and razor-sharp voice gone for the day. Peace—alone with Grandma Lucy. She hands me the German helmet and bayonet Gene sent home. Jack’s ashes sit quietly in an urn. Or not? Later stories place him under the Box Elder tree in the circle drive, closer to Grandma Jauregui, where everyone felt more safe, away form The Sham.
What flitting dreams haunted Lucy once the Farm House emptied? Only Roy remained. Black, shiny eyes, “cold as the seas”? Glared at The Sham Grandpa, the oversized Swiss water-seeking, land-grabbing, brother-in-law, now the husband and the landowner.
Dollie has been “loaned” to Lucy’s sister in Beaumont, California, sent there because of a promise of “braces” for her teeth, a stable, Basque environment: Lots of love. Five years pass blissfully. Then death. With Dollie’s aunt gone, she is left to be raised as Pip, in Great Expectations tells us, “by the hand,” the hand of his angry sister. Not mom’s sister: her cousin, Juanita Arro—cold, sizzling, black-haired banshee with a voice, yes, like a razor. ET enters and begins to take over. “Mommy” never calls. No Farm House to return to. Time. They begin raising each other. But that’s Another Family Story.
Roy grows slowly but is witty—and dangerous. One autumn afternoon he takes his trusty .22 rifle and climbs the hill that towers over the Farm House. “We might catch water draining down into that gulley beyond the hill,” says The Husband-Brother-in-Law. He eats breakfast, heads for the door, water-douching stick in hand.
Roy takes aim and fires. The tiny bullet hits the door jam, The Sham falls back into the house. Angry, yes, always angry. This time, though, he’s scared and Roy is on a Greyhound bus that night, on his way to Dollie, to Bishop … and the Mojave Wind.
