Looking Out My Backdoor

I woke from my dream with that southern hill-country woman’s voice in my ear. The voice, the memory, from past years, was triggered in that non-linear way of memories, by a phone conversation with my daughter the previous day.

My oldest granddaughter is in a precarious place in her life. A baby with babies. Jessica is young, alone with two babies, lonely, no job, no direction and thinking biologically instead of using her logical brain. I remember those feelings; I was young once.

Harper’s father sent her train tickets for a visit. Harper is Jess’s older daughter, my great-granddaughter. Jess wants to leave three-year old Harper for a few days with her dad, whom she has not seen in two years, while Jess goes off with old friends and has fun. I say this with complete understanding of and compassion for Jess’s need to escape fears and uncertainties she lives with daily.

What we know of the father’s family is that Jess would walk into a situation fraught with high risk that the other grandparents could snatch her child, among other dangers.

My daughter’s quandary, of which her sharing has given me ownership too, is, where are the borders between interfering, helping, and enabling? Jess is an adult. Well, a baby adult. We know. We understand. We once were all-wise baby adults too, making decisions with body-parts disconnected from brains.

Dee Dee gave Jessica a home when the baby, born to a mother flying high, was a mere six hours old, adopted her and raised her. Jessica is a beautiful young woman and a good mother. But we don’t forget the years of work with a severely fetal-alcohol damaged child, the lack of understanding the consequences of her actions, the areas of brain damaged beyond repair.

We know the dangers. We know the consequences. We know the pain which has no end. We’ve walked that road of bad decisions, my daughter Dee Dee and me, separately and together.

We cried, slobbered on the telephones. Jess is an adult. She’ll make her own decisions, good ones and otherwise and we cannot control her, only love her.

So I took that to bed with me last night and in that night-time anti-logical way, mixed family worries with recent X-Rays of my own body, riddled with arthritis throughout.

Dreams and memories merged into horse-back riding across the plains, miniature blue buffalo, and a visit with my own mother when she lay dying in a hospital in southern Indiana. Dreams are another anti-logical mechanism.

My mother was committed to the hospital and left my life when I was four, back when there was small understanding of mental illness and treatment thereof.

The visit, when I was in my 40s, was no dream. My mom was a shriveled up little thing, I could have held her on my lap. We spent hours just loving each other without words, forgiving and accepting forgiveness.

Across the hall an elderly man lay, also silently dying. He had a stream of relatives in and out his hospital door. One morning I overheard his wife complain. “Ah don’t right-ly know, “she said. “Hit might be the Ar-thur-i-tis.”

I’ll always remember that scene. When nothing seems to work, when life is a muddle-puddle, when faced with the impossible, I think, Hit might be the Ar-thur-i-tis.

——

Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com. Email [email protected].