Fishing at Tioga

I’m sitting on the rocks near the dam on Tioga Lake. My dad’s fishing pole is propped up in the rod holder, the line disappearing out into the water.

I had a bad moment when I was putting the pole and line together – I couldn’t remember which way the water bubble float needed to go. And was that before or after the swivel with the lead line?

I had frozen, my breath catching.

Dad wasn’t sitting near by to remind me of the proper way to assemble my fishing line. Usually we would sit together outside his trailer and slowly build our poles and lines making ready for the next day of fishing. I counted on his tackle box having the right hooks and leaders.

This time, it’s my tackle box.

Staring at the pole and pieces in my hands, I had stepped through the memories figuring that I would quickly discover whether I had it right or wrong the first time I cast the line out. So far, it seems I remembered what needed to be done.

I didn’t bring down his best pole. I couldn’t bring myself to use it. Black and glossy, I remember him proudly bringing it home from the Fenwick factory visit he made long ago. Stuff happens to fishing poles. Tips break, scratches. The pole has its own leather case and is wrapped in a long flannel bag. Okay, so does the one I did bring with me – another Fenwick pole – but the black one, no, I couldn’t use it yet.

My sister is using my pole that dad gave me one year for Christmas. She purchased her first fishing license just for this trip and even though she hasn’t fished since she was a teenager, she still is able to cast like she’d been fishing her whole life. We both brought in a fish at Lundy and have plans to enjoy a trout dinner tomorrow.

Tioga Lake is breezy at 7 am and its cold. The sky is a brilliant blue and the sun is just starting to hit the mountains of Tioga Pass. Its difficult sitting here without dad. We’re both teary eyed and hollowed out by our memories and grief. He is everywhere – and nowhere. As I sit here pondering the lake, the pole, and the Folgers coffee in my mug, I realize how incredibly happy I am that this place – this  wild and natural pocket of space won’t change. At least not in my lifetime. Sitting here on rocks that I’ve sat so many times before, fishing in the same deep-water hole, drinking the same coffee – I realize that it is here that I feel closest to him.

I have countless memories of watching the sun come over the ridge mountains surrounding this spot. Dad taught my children to fish here. There were days when we caught dinner, others when we left happy and empty handed. It’s over 9000 feet at the edge of Tioga Lake and the hills around us are bare rock and slate. Copper, grey and white. Whitebark and Jeffrey Pines dot the landscape. Alpine meadows are golden brown this time of year and there are a few hints of the fall colors coming.

This is his monument, his memorial.
His resting place permeates these rocks and trees and water.

And that makes this the place that I will come when I need to feel his spirit. I carry his love in my heart – but it’s here and at Lundy Lake and back beyond Saddlebag Lake that I feel so close to him. I’ve whispered to the land, giving over my grief to this beautiful landscape. It’s hard right now to feel anything beyond the searing sense of loss; and yet, this stunning wild place brings its own comfort and peace. When I’m ready, this is where I can walk with him.

The fish aren’t biting at Tioga.
I turn to the water and say, “I’m here, dad.”

Even as I speak, a lone eagle flies along the water towards me, directly over my head, and back beyond the rocks. I’ve never seen an eagle up here in all the years I’ve come. I gasp. Smiling, my heart cracking open, I start to cry.

What do the Holidays mean to me now? Not an easily answered question...

I'm not sure what the holidays actually mean anymore.
To me personally, to my family, to this country that I live in.

Is this sense of dissonance due to the current sociopolitical climate? Is it a shift within my own perspective as a parent who no longer has young children to feed the magic of the season to? Is it the rabid consumerism that has been ingrained into our cultural psyche that feels terrifying when seen against the latest tax bill?

Its a positive mix of answers that can be given to each of these questions; and yet, it is truly my response - or lack of response - that has me mulling this over as I write.

Years ago, I tried to filter out the religious Christmas carols from my usual December playlist. I am not a Christian - even though I was raised in a secular Christian household.  What do I mean by that? My family celebrated the high holy days of Christianity - Easter and Christmas - but we never attended church. Christmas was about Santa Clause and Easter was about egg hunts and chocolate. The rituals of the holidays were studded with family, food, and gifts. It was all a rising crescendo that culminated in what was under the tree Christmas morning.

When I was around twenty one, my parents had the audacity to grow tired of these rituals and it was The Year Without a Christmas Tree. I was horrified. How could they not want to immerse themselves in the glory of ornaments, stockings and outdoor lights?

I understand now.

I digress, let's go back to what I was saying about Christmas Carols. So I cut out the overtly religious carols (with the exception of Silent Night because I - gonna be honest - I love singing that carol in the shower. I change the words a bit, but its in my range). This year,  I've had my ear tuned to the myth of the perfect gift - the manic buy, buy buy that is the holiday season. Cyber-Monday. Black Friday flow charts. The news reporting about whether people are spending or not. The rich getting richer, cost of health insurance going up. Its a cacophony of frantic and hyped need - for more stuff. I guess I'm not feeling like "stuff" is going to fix any of the larger problems facing my local community let alone my country.

Listening to my streaming Christmas music I've had some wayward thoughts. Why is the Grinch such a horrible person? He's mean because he doesn't give gifts. I'm not talking about the cartoon where, sure, he steals all the gifts, decor, and food - and then gives them back when his heart opens up to the magic of community. No, listen to the song - he's a Horrible Person because he doesn't want anything to do with Christmas. The song has become an iconic holiday track. Talk about scapegoating. Baby It's Cold Outside - I don't need to say anything about that song, right? Santa Baby, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Its Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas, Silver Bells... the list goes on. As I listen, I wonder what marketing firm for which department store wrote these songs. They insidiously tie the season of peace and love to the buying of gifts. Its consumer programming at its best. Brilliant.

My playlist now is all instrumental holiday music.

I didn't think about all of this for so many years because I was busy crafting the most marvelous holiday experiences for my kids. I think I wanted them to believe in the magic - of something. I wanted them to have rituals that had them taking time to be with those that they love.

Actually, it was about fifteen years ago that I realized how hollow some of the holiday traditions were - for me. Most of that hollowness (and exhaustion) had to do with the purchasing of "the perfect gift"off of the lists that we were given by family members. It was woven into decorating Christmas trees, outdoor lighting displays and participating in multiple events that required hosting or participating in heavy food laden activities. Holiday recitals, class parties, concerts and, not to be forgotten, the foray into downtown Seattle to see Santa or the Nutcracker. I never did so many holiday oriented activities when I was a child - why were we doing all of these things with our kids?

I took a survey of my children - and Andy - and asked: What is the most meaningful parts of the holiday season to you? Trimming the tree - together. Opening stockings on Christmas morning - together. Spending time with family. That was eye-opening. We made changes to our family rituals - giving gifts that we made or experiences that we could do together. We stayed in our pajamas on Christmas day and ate leftovers. I kept trying to evolve our family holiday in a way that didn't give me this hollow feeling inside. Holidays continue to evolve - shifting, changing - but the five of us (and now the six of us) try our best to find time to simply be...together.

But what I'm realizing is that perhaps my holiday experiences have never been any more hollow than the lack of meaning which is at the heart of the American Holiday Extravaganza called Christmas. In actuality, my holiday experiences have probably been more relaxed and filled with love and meaning than a lot of people's. But its all still built on a mythic house of cards that is the high holy day that is Christmas - a day set aside to celebrate the birth of a savior that isn't mine. In fact, it seems to be a segment of his followers who spew the most spite and hate in this country at the moment - and this hypocrisy never fails to astonish and sadden me. There are some beautiful, kind, compassionate devout Christians out there - I just wish their voices were being heard. I'm digressing again...

Actually, no, that's relevant. It is all of this that has had me so very conflicted. The holidays have become the perfect storm of consumerism and experiences all geared to make us happy and joyous. And wow, we American's sure put on a good show.  Its a moving feast/play/recital/shopping frenzy - with a few lovely moments spent with people that we care about.

Now, with the kids pretty much out of the house between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I am wrestling with an ambivalence that is hard to shake. And maybe that's also perfectly acceptable because I've been hosting this Christmas performance for over thirty years. I'm ready to pass the baton to the next generation - just as my parents passed it on to me. I have a hunch that there is often a holiday renaissance when little children begin to sprout on the family tree. Regardless of that, my dearest hope is that my children will think long and hard about what they choose to celebrate - and how. My hope is that they are savvy enough to understand what is spooned fed to them by our current social meme. My hope is that they've had a chance to step out of the raging river that is the dominant mindset around the holidays - and will seek out those moments of love and giving.

And I hope to be there with them as we come together to celebrate the return of the light to our dark little corner of the world.

My Father's Hands

Sitting with my father the other evening, I notice his hands. He has a bump on his thumb and is telling me how he went to get it checked out by the doctor and had to get it x-rayed. It's a kind of cyst, totally benign but annoying. I continued to look at his hands. He looks down at them too, turning them over, bringing the fingers and thumbs together. 

These hands have done so much over so many years, he says, isn't that amazing? 

I mention, with a smile, all the babies those hands have held.

I put my hand next to his and realize that our hands are about the same size in length but his fingers are a great deal thicker than mine. Why is this a surprise? To me, my father's hands are huge and strong. His skin is mottled with age, bruising and tearing easily like tissue paper. He tries to be careful but, more often then not, his hands and arms have one or two bandages covering tears and dark bruises. He refuses to NOT do all the things he needs those hands for. I think this week alone he has changed a tire; driven to a hospital with his wife's niece; changed out my sister's faucet; tried to fix his dishwasher; shepherded and helped dozens of kindergartens with their reading, computer skills and math assessments - along with who else knows what. I'm sure he's done all his yard work, vacuumed and opened at least a couple bottles of wine. He has texted me over his mobile phone. I'm also sure he has held his wife's hand as often as possible.

That's just the stuff I know about his week. He is a man who will always attempt to fix something first - and usually does. He builds furniture and he will edit photos in Photoshop. He'll tune his HAM radio and hitch up his trailer. Those hands of my father are probably the most capable, competent hands that I know - just by the skills and experiences that has filled their days.  Seventy seven years of DIY projects, drafting architectural plans, holding small hands...holding grandchild hands. Painting. Gardening. Comforting.

Pausing in that moment, really looking at those hands - time seems to stop and cascade briefly backwards. Image after image flows through my mind and I realize how blessed my life has been by my father and those hard working hands of his. I've watched him fix or build just about anything he put his mind to and sit on the floor with my children playing with plastic dinosaurs and blocks. The blessing he brings is in the truth that he has been a integral part of my life experiences. I don't just have the father figure, I have a father - man - in my life who has helped shape the way I look at the world. 

Literally, with those hands. 

I learned how to use my own hands and to look at the world as a place where my fingers belong in the soil or speckled with paint. 

The world is a hand's-on kind of place.

Thanks, dad

September 9, 1937 - August 2, 2018

A Walk with Aaron

Under the stunning shadows of the Grand Teton mountain range, along the banks of the Snake River, I’ve decided to take a walk with my grandfather. Yes, the man had been dead for close to fifty years, but I picture him by my side as we meander along the rock and sand landscape bordering the river. This man is a mystery to me – gone long before I was born and rarely talked about. Aaron Westley Moore isn’t remembered with fondness; and yet, my maiden name comes down through his shadows, through that murky past. I want to know more about this guy.

I actually have a lot of information about Aaron discovered through the flotsam and jetsam of living in a bureaucracy. Census records, birth and death certificates, court records – all of this digital or microfilm information can flesh out many holes in an ancestor’s life. I’ve been trying to sort out the circumstances of Aaron’s life for years. Having a handful of facts doesn’t tell the complete tale and no one is alive to explain what happened approximately a hundred years ago. Wandering along the trails that follow the river, pausing to admire the elk across the wide expanse, I talk to Aaron as if he was right there with me, sharing with him what I know.

And so I say out loud for all of nature to hear: "I know that within six years of your birth, your father was gone from your life and you, with your mother, were living once again with your mother’s parents. With that information in hand, I tracked down your birth certificate and what I got was a delayed birth certificate that your mother filled out close to fifteen years after your birth. But Aaron, here’s what is odd: the name of your father on that birth certificate doesn’t match the name that is on your mother’s marriage license - yeah, I dug that up at the court house in Modesto. On the delayed birth certificate it has your father’s name as Marvin Albert Moore. The marriage license says his name is Richard A. Moore."

I walk – we walk – in silence.

There are a handful of pictures of my paternal grandfather, Aaron Westley Moore. He was a handsome man with an easy smile. My grandmother told me that they met at a dance in the early 30’s and she thought him handsome and charming and "with lots of experiences". He must have fascinated the Hollywood princess that she was. Well to do, studying teaching at USC, Maxine was probably all of twenty when she met Aaron who was so much more worldly at the age of 28. I fancy there is a sparkle in his eye as he smiles for the camera. He looks like he stands maybe six feet tall, fit and strong but hardly carefree. A photograph captures the moment, a handsome face, a piercing gaze. I picture that young man next to me. Stoic, an enigmatic smile on his face. None of this background information matters to him but he is a patient ghost of my imagination and waits for me to continue.

"What you may not have ever known, grandpa, is that your father’s name was Richard Albert Moore. The marriage certificate he signed said he was born in California in 1875. The only Richard Albert Moore born that year in California happened just north of Modesto in Green Valley. Your mother may have purposefully changed the first name on the delayed birth certificate – but she got the middle name right. I just don’t understand why she did it.


The wind whispers back to me – she had her reasons.

"What reasons? What did she not want anyone to know?" Aaron smiles at me and shrugs. He doesn’t care, why do I?

Because I want to understand.

Aaron’s half-sister, Marjorie, told my grandmother that Aaron’s father’s name was "never mentioned in front of her" and she suspected there had been a divorce. But Aaron and Marjorie’s mother had secrets of her own – when she had married Richard Moore in 1903, she had been married before as well. That wasn’t her maiden name on the marriage certificate. Laura Albatine Turpen Elkins Moore Sherman had a bit of a story all her own. I share that with Aaron – did he know? According to my father, no one knew.

"Grandpa," I said, "You were born into a world of secrets and lies."

His parents were first generation westerners – families that pioneered Oregon and California. This was a world that secrets could actually flourish – if you wanted to lie about the father of your child – you could. If you wanted to change your name, you could. In the west, disappearing off the face of the planet wasn’t that hard when all you had to do was leave town and head to a mining camp or another state. According to court records, there is no divorce on record for Laura and Richard but she could say that she divorced the man and for reasons that no one will ever know – Richard wasn’t going to be saying anything different. And just because I can’t find a divorce decree in Modesto, California circa 1910 doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. These old paper records get ruined all the time. It might still be there.

Why do you care, child?

I walk with that question. The wind is blustery, a touch of the winter only weeks away, while the fierce blaze of autumn colors shimmer in the fading sunlight. Wyoming, with the backdrop of jagged mountains and sage hills is the perfect place to hold this question.

I answer, grappling with my own thoughts.

"I could say that I am simply trying to trace back the surname that I carry with me – to find the Moore’s that came to California with the restless expansion west. But it’s more than that. I think about my dad and how he was formed as a child and young man. You, Aaron, left a mark on your son and I don’t know quite what it is. Legacy, I guess. Families pass down legacies in all manner of ways and I’m trying to figure out what yours was."

The wind sighs, brushing my hair back from my face.

Many of the pictures I have of Aaron are on the decks of various ships as he was a merchant marine during much of the 1940’s. Other pictures show him with his soon to be bride and later with his baby sons. The pictures grow less frequent as his three sons grow into young adulthood and the story goes on to tell how he died alone in Modesto from complications due to alcoholism. Separated, reunited, - and separated again – the rift between him and his family is acutely apparent as my father at the age of eighteen legally changed his middle name from Aaron to Alan.

There are the requisite photos with wife and children by his side and then, probably somewhere around 1950, an interesting picture comes to light where he is trying to share the chair with his wife. My grandmother looks like she is in pain, squished up against the wall of the chair doing everything to make sure that her body does not intimately touch his. Aaron doesn’t look much happier – the cocky young man has aged, looking tired and bloated. I imagine by this time his drinking had already crossed the line into alcoholism and the marriage was a fragile, brittle thing.

What are missing from the pictures are the experiences and emotions that were woven through his life. The fights, the tension and then the abrupt departures. All that exist are the stories as either retold to me by my mother - who was retelling what she had learned from her mother-in-law - or my father’s impressions that he finally shared because I kept asking him about this man who was his estranged father. The tale in its many permutations has taken on the mythic qualities of a simple fable of anger and abandonment. The storytellers in the family seem perfectly content with this abridged version of a life, content to put Aaron on a shelf marked Alcoholic and Black Sheep. It’s taken my own experience with aging and relationship to know how deeply complicated and entangled Aaron was with his own history and that of the other people around him. So who the hell was this guy?

Interestingly enough, it was Maxine, my grandmother and Aaron’s widow who shared some of the most perceptive information in a letter that she wrote me around 1998. She reminisced about the wartime depression and how Aaron built their house in Alta Dena, California with his step-father, Ray. She wrote about how Aaron went back to the merchant marines during WW2, ferrying troops back and forth across the Pacific. And then there is an observation that stuck with me. She says, "As to a legacy to him, it would be that Aaron gave more than received. As to my father, who was a very successful contractor, he had a very strong dominating personality causing pros and cons in my life."

Gave more than received. A man who would rather give everything he could but had a harder time receiving help or support from others. That just might have driven Maxine’s father crazy. His daughter had married a man who would resent his support. My dad remembers the fights that his parents had. Maxine wrote about hitting financial hard times. His older brother was sent to boarding school and there was a time when my dad and his twin brother lived with their mother’s parents. He would tell me later that his mother and father separated numerous times – and reconciled just as many. Funny, I don’t think I ever asked what happened to send his father out the door for good.

All that I knew growing up was that this man, Aaron Moore, was not an elder to be honored. He had forsaken his family and they literally cut ties with him.

As I walk with Aaron, I think about this world that he grew up in. He was a child born into a lie and something so deeply shameful that no one would ever speak of his father. His own father abandoned him and he became a step-son to another man, whom he loved, and watched his mother forge a new life with another child. He thrived enough to go to college and become an engineer. As I picture the young man walking beside me, I wonder what led him to Los Angeles and the Merchant Marines.

"What were you yearning for, grandpa?"

I ask him after a long pause why he chose to marry my grandmother. They seemed so different – as if coming from two different worlds. And then I start to get an inkling as to what had really attracted Aaron. This woman, could she have possibly represented what he wanted in himself? To win her hand, so to speak, meant that he, himself, was worthy? Educated, poised, wealthy, she lived a privileged life in Hollywood. And to top it off – what a father she had! John Breedlove has wrestled his fortune out of Arizona’s fading Wild West. Being a powerful, self-made man meant something a little different in a part of the world where the veneer of civilization was pretty thin. He made his own rules. He wasn’t an easy father. He wouldn’t have been an easy father-in-law. Aaron was a self-made man in a booming new world. Had he rescued Maxine? Giving her a way out from under her father’s thumb? Was she the unattainable that he attained?

"I married up," he says with that careless charm - but I see the sardonic gleam in his eye. Guess all you want, child, that looks says, those and a hundred other reasons are why I married Maxine.

 

The shadow of my grandfather walks softly beside me as I think about what happened in the ensuing years. His was not a generation of men who spoke about emotions and it is most likely that the tensions of relationship were different than what both of them had thought in the beginning.

"Marriage is like that", I say to him, "We have all sorts of ideas of what we think we want and it can be quite a surprise when that other person doesn’t fall in line with what we think appropriate."

Knowing my grandmother for many, many years, I’d say that he would have been hard pressed to live up to her family’s expectations. On the other hand, maybe her bitterness was crafted out of that simmering quagmire that had been her marriage. When he was home, he and Maxine fought bitterly – and off he would go again. Theirs was a brittle relationship, fragile and fraught with continual abandonment. Aaron’s life was a loop of trying to find home and yet continually leaving home for new ports of call. Coming and going.

Much as his father had?

I would pretty much guess that Maxine’s parents were still very involved in their daughter’s life which may have made it even more difficult for Aaron to find his sea legs when he was on land. And so this man, whose life had begun under a shadow of disillusionment, found his own world unraveling deeper and deeper into the bottle.

The man who smiles back in all of those pictures never knew who he was.

"I knew who I was, girl," There’s a bit of snap in what is now a deeper, older voice.

I smile because I’ve been psychoanalyzing a ghost.

Walking along the Snake River, I know that my interpretation of Aaron is simply that: a story that I am actively building. I ask my questions out loud and let the tumble of water in the river answer me as it can. I sit with the silence and a deep compassion for this man who stumbled and then crippled himself with alcohol and probably never believed (or allowed himself to even think it) that he was truly worth loving. I wish I could have loved him even if just for the fact that he brought my father into this world.

Aaron would never know that he had an uncle and grandparents up in Green Valley, CA. He would never know that his father and grandparents were miners who had come over from Cornwall, England with the rumors of gold in California. Perhaps if my great grandmother had known that she couldn’t completely control the flow of information, she might have not perjured herself by falsifying his birth certificate. Perhaps she had very good reasons to do so. Yes, that has crossed my mind. There are reasons that may go far beyond the embarrassment of divorce to explain why Richard Moore was gone from her life so quickly.

There is no one living who can refute my story about Aaron’s struggles. My father remembers the fights, his brother will not speak of anything to do with his childhood. Their older brother is gone. My father never knew about the falsified documents or about the marriage records. He finds it all very interesting – in an anthropological type of way.

You could say to me, well, that’s an interesting story you have there, Jennifer, but what bearing does it really have on anything you are doing today? Leave the past alone and concentrate on the future.

There is some wisdom in that advice.

But it’s not what I believe. The powerful cultural and family influences that have been with us since the first breath are pieces of the lens through which we look at the world, relationships and yes, our selves. If we don’t dissect, untangle and poke around in those influences, we run the risk of not ever being able to determine who we want to be and how we want to live our lives. As a woman, I am pretty clear on a great many of the messages that I received growing up about what it means to be a woman. I watched and experienced my parent’s marriage as the way that couples interact and I took in strong messages about what being a family (or tribal) member meant. There were roles to play, feelings that had to stay hidden, rules about emotional outbursts and pain that had to be managed. My father did not fight with my mother; he did not yell or shout – he held it inside, fiercely controlling his temper. I can imagine that watching his parents fight indelibly marked him and he tried to craft a relationship with my mother that was the exact opposite of his parents – one of stability and civility. My mother, a rather emotional, head strong woman, was looking for stability for different reasons. And so, when life intervened in all its messy, horrible glory, our world felt like it was ending. Anger and arguing meant that someone was out of control. Out of control meant that all hell was going to break loose. And when it did, because inevitably something comes along that pokes that kind myth hard enough, the fragile at-all-costs-stability shattered.

The story of my grandfather has haunted me for years. The mystery and the shadows that swirled around his birth as well as the way he died ‘buried in a bottle’ with good riddance have bothered me. He is more real to me now – complex, imperfect - which in turn brings compassion and acceptance. I can see the influence Aaron’s life had on my father and I can claim my own legacy through his story – not only because I was born – but from my sense of how he struggled with worthiness. He turned away, time and time again, from the harder choices that might have given him a longer life and sons who honored him instead of literally writing him out of their lives.

I’m moved and surprised that creating this space for Aaron has brought his presence into my life. My ancestral stroll out in the wilds of Wyoming with him puts his ghost to rest. There is peace in that. My heritage feels richer for it. I worry that my father will not appreciate my re-visioning of history. But then, re-storying the past is something we humans do so well. I haven’t whitewashed Aaron Westley Moore. I haven’t allowed the harsh experiences he wrought in his children’s lives to vanish. Instead, I’ve simply allowed him to be yet another flawed human being who grew out of his own roots and time period.

I let Aaron go as I step back on to the trail leading to my cabin. The breeze has died down and instead of the chill of winter to come I feel the last warmth of yet another summer day