Ghosts and Citronella Candles - A Parenting Lesson from My Father

 

When I was in the second grade, Halloween fell on a Saturday which meant that as a family, we could escape the city for the weekend for our cottage in Westhampton Beach. The best part of this was trick-or-treating with my best friends who lived next door. After that, we went to a party at the elementary school complete with apple bobbing, hanging marshmallows, and a terrifying haunted house courtesy of those larger than life sixth graders. My neighbors dressed as bunnies. I dressed as a bumble bee. Another friend was a “ballerina fairy.” Such was the simplicity of little girl costumes.


That was the last Halloween I spent with my father. He died that winter. I still remember his walking with my friends’ mother, keeping a safe distance and a close eye on the little girls collecting their pennies (yes, pennies), candy corn and pop corn balls at each neighbor’s house.


The ballerina fairy, who had been left in the care of my parents for the weekend, refused to wear a jacket over her costume. A litigator, my father knew better than to negotiate with a child. Without raising his voice, “Claire. Just. Put. The jacket. On.” Then he walked away. She hurumphed but put the jacket on. For some reason, this is one of my most vivid memories of his “parenting style.” It’s probably because I struggle with it. Perhaps I’d say, “Claire, the temperature is falling, put your coat on, please.” I would open the door for the inevitable, “I’m not cold.”


Jack Lowe parenting lesson #1 — Don’t open the door for discussion. We don’t negotiate about coats with seven-year-olds. Even years later, when something just had to be done (say snow boots with that Betsey Johnson miniskirt in high school), those of us who watched Claire’s coat battle would say, “Claire. Just. Put. The Jacket. On,” and dissolve into giggles.


Even then, I knew there were ghosts everywhere. Many houses on the street were already closed up for winter, haunted with the summer before, suspended in time until the days grew longer and the owners returned for another season. Ghosts hid in the unraked leaves crunching under our sneakers, in the tunnel underneath the giant rhododendron in the front yard, in the little red shed with the spider web covered windows out back. What I didn’t understand were that the ghosts, figments of my imagination, would persist and co-exist in my life as memory and dreams. When they used to hold just enough power for me to fear them, now they hold the power to ground me. They come when I least expect them, but most need them. Halloween holds magic for children — it’s different than other holidays because they invent it for themselves as they dress-up and decorate homes. They are the characters, not some abstraction in a red suit. This year, my own daughter will dress up as Laura Ingalls Wilder. She’s been waiting for this for weeks. Our yard has a “friendly” ghost hanging from a tree that has the effect of scaring me every time I see it out of the corner of my eye.


This morning, as I went to wake six-year-old Ellie, the smell of her citronella shampoo took me back to that house. My mother lit the evenings eating on the porch with yellow citronella candles in metal buckets. I remember that Halloween and can only hope that she’ll remember this one some day. That smell is the ghost of that house and those days, just back for a brief visit. Happy Halloween!

5 Things I Wish You Knew About The Suicide Griever

Today is National Suicide Prevention Day. I lost a friend and father figure to suicide when I was twelve. In many ways, I believe that loss had more effect on me than the loss of my own father when I was eight.  I can never speak for all the grieving or any of them. Either way, here are some things I wish people knew.

1.  I don’t tell you about this loss because I can’t stand the look on your face when I do. Many people in the U.S. are very uncomfortable with death and mortality. When it comes to suicide, it’s even more pronounced. That flinch – you know the one I’m writing about – it says “Oh I’m so sorry,” and “Please don’t let that happen to me.”  It also says, to me, “Didn’t you know?”  Of course I didn’t (at least not at the time) and for that I am forever sorry.
2.  My head knows it wasn’t my fault but my heart does not. Every time I think about the night he locked himself in that basement, I wonder if I hadn’t tried harder to open the door, blocked him as walked down the stairs, behaved better, whined less, showed my love more and a million other things if he’d be sitting across from me today. Clocks only turn in one direction and I don’t have that choice to make again. I have different choices.
3.  Mental illnesses can be terminal. There are people walking around today with profound depression. We don’t understand and they aren’t getting the help they need. Their illness is as acute as someone with stage 4 liver cancer but we don’t think of their illness that way. When they die, we don’t think of them the same way as we do someone who died of stage 4 liver cancer. It is because we still blame the person even if we don’t mean to. This is wrong and we must change our thinking.
4. I can’t unsee certain things, but that doesn’t mean I am broken. The memory of his body being wheeled out in a black zippered bag, attached to a stretcher with yellow stretchy seat-belts, will forever haunt me. I saw it from my bedroom window. It bounced, without reverence, over the lawn into an ambulance in the driveway. It’s dark and horrible, but it’s always there. If I look like my mind is far away, it probably is. Even with that, I am able to live my life. Just because have a traumatic memory doesn’t mean I can’t live a happy, mentally healthy life.
5. Life with him was wonderful. When someone dies from suicide there in an underlying assumption that person was visibly depressed, possibly making bad choices, and hurting others around them. That’s not the case for me. My neighbor was capable of the greatest joy of anyone I’ve ever known save my six-year-old daughter. I never knew an adult who could play with such childlike enthusiasm and abandon. We played an elaborate game of tag. He was lizard-man. His long arms were his jaws snapping at us as we ran away to base squealing in delight/terror. I miss that and only hope that I can bring one tenth of his warmth to my own play with my daughter.

My neighbor loved us. I know that he did. I still love him and remember his capacity for joy, excellence, and compassion. He understood what it was like for me to have lost my father when I was eight because he did too. It took me a long time to realize how ill he was – to comprehend that he was a terminally ill man living his life right in front of me.

This year, I promise to ask the questions I am afraid to ask. I will not be shy if I think someone is struggling. It may not help, but it may stop one child from growing up without a dad, a father-figure neighbor, or always worrying that someone they love is going to die.  I can do that. We all can. 

Be A New Orleanian Wherever You Are

The radio played Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” I started to cry waiting for the red light to change. It’s been ten years to the day since the Friday night a group of us ate dinner at G.W. Fins, drank the champagne of beers out of plastic champagne trays (Miller Hi-Life for the uninitiated) at Lucy’s Retired Surfer Bar before ending the night in the courtyard of Pat O’s. We teased our friend about having to go to the bank’s recovery center the next day. He worked in IT for the bank and always had a trip to Shreveport when there was a storm in the Gulf. 

Have I changed since then? Perhaps. Defintely. Not at all. I have a new career, a child, lived in four more places, but I still can be the same person who drove out of New Orleans on the Saturday of August 28, 2005 with three days worth of clothes, my husband, my West highland terrier –Cole  (for John Coltrane), and my wedding album in my overheating car. 

I forgot my toothbrush. It's comforting now to know that I can survive anywhere with very little. Like thousands of other people, we drove to a hotel in Houston, thinking it would only be for a few nights. Unlike thousands of others, we were among the lucky ones. Our apartment was virtually undamaged and I had a job. The bank I worked for had a place for me at work by 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning, figuring out how we should talk to our customers. We all thought we'd dodged a bullet. Then, I heard someone yell, "The levee's gone." I popped my little gopher head out of my cube and looked around. The two others from New Orleans popped up as well. This changed everything. No one was going home on Tuesday.

Because my husband and I lived just over the Parish line, we were allowed back into Jefferson Parish for one day to pick up things from our home. We stopped at the business banking center just outside the city to collect some files and my husband's car - parked three stories up for safety. We walked onto the dark floor and saw light coming from a corner office. "There's power!" I must have said.

"No. That's the sky." My husband answered.

I always go back to that moment when I underestimate life. "No. That's the sky." Life will throw at your more in a day than you could handle when you woke up. By the time you go to sleep, you're better for having had to look at whatever reality the day gave you. The sight of National Guard Tanks and troops on Clearview are my only understanding of what it must be like to live in an occupied territory. Nothing is real and nothing is yours. Everyone is afraid. Many of those men and women had families strewn across the country, lost homes themselves and yet there they were - saving their homeland. To this day, a nation owes them its gratitude. We drove back to Houston that afternoon and stayed until the end of December.

I moved away from New Orleans in June of 2006 for my husband’s schooling. It was the hardest move I’ve ever made. The last night in town, I ate dinner at Jacque’s Imo’s. Jack Leonardi came over to the table, “Ah, the last supper. We’ve had a lot of those,” he said as he scratched his beard. I choked back disappointment and regret. There isn’t a good word to describe what it feels like to leave New Orleans. People have tried. Louis Armstrong “Knows What It Means to Miss New Orleans.” Kermit Ruffins reminds us, “when you’re feeling down and out and there’s no way out, you get dropped off in New Orleans.” But how do I explain this to someone who hasn't’ lived there?

New Orleans is more than a place to me. It’s a Universe. The air in the city, that humid, muggy steam. It’s a ghost constantly touching your shoulders, sometimes suffocating you, sometimes tapping you just lightly enough to know it's there.  There’s music everywhere. It sustains you. But what’s really different about New Orleans is the people. For me, it was the first time I found people I trusted enough to let myself be myself in public. It was probably the only time. It works there because the people I met didn’t simply identify with their work or their accomplishments, they identified with what made them happy – being in a great city, eating great food, listening to great music, and being together. It didn’t matter how much money you made or what car you drove. Somehow we were all in together. 

I remember watching fireworks over the Mississippi River on New Year’s Eve 2005. We came back from Houston that morning darned if we weren’t to start the new year in the place we loved more than anywhere. With each boom, another exclamation point added itself to the rebirth of the place we’d seen take such trauma.  The last six months I spent in New Orleans were among

the happiest in my life. I knew we were leaving and I felt guilty and sad about that but I also let myself say “Yes” to everything the city offered – every festival, every restaurant, every re-opening.

Our bank was acquired by a much larger national bank. We had great laughs when our new boss from far away called to ask me if everyone had the flu? “The Jazz Fest flu.” I replied. It was the local’s Thursday of Jazz Fest. Our office was empty. He was a good man but he’d never be one of us – the ones who stayed until Bruce Springsteen closed out the first weekend – the ones who didn’t waste time arguing about how to recognize Mardi Gras in a national company (it didn’t matter. No one was coming to work that day so policy was irrelevant) – the ones who cannot abide a sazaurac made with anything but Peychaud’s bitters – the ones who think that all anyone in heaven eats is Crawfish Monica. So even though, I miss that city that care forgot, I am lucky. My life is blessed with the ability to “Be A New Orleanian Wherever You Are,” and to know exactly what that means. 

Perhaps my greatest honor, was bringing my own child back to the place I love so much. She was four and thought Mardi Gras was a party the city put on just for her. It was my birthday so I told her, "No it's a party they put on just for me. And the whole world too." Many of my friends in Northen California raised an eyebrow, "You're taking your child to... Mardi Gras?" "Yes." I replied. New Orelans and Katrina taught me not to explain. Those who need an explanation will never understand and those who don't understand already. She sat atop her father's shoulders collecting throws, she saw the white tiger at the Audobon zoo, she played with the children of my dear friends and she learned to love a place much earlier than I ever did. How lucky she is that the city picked itself up and made a path out of the flood water?