Denise, 2006
The winter of ’86 was especially bitter. An early December blizzard left mountains of dirty brown snow on the shopping center parking lots and later snows froze on the roads and sidewalks. The holidays had been particularly restless ones for Dan, who disliked holidays, birthdays, and anything requiring emotional participation. So one morning in early January, when I found him packing up the trunk of his car, I wasn’t really surprised.
“I need some space, Barbara. I need to decide what I really want in life.”
“You’re not sure if your family is included in that?” I asked. He carefully wedged his tool box into the corner of the trunk. He prided himself on his ability to pack efficiently. He opened the back door and George, our beagle, jumped into the seat. “Wanna go for a ride, George?” he said.
“George will be staying with us,” I said, picking up the dog and held him under my arm.
He said he was going to drive out to Ohio and work at his brother Mark’s solar panel company. He would come back, if, after he spent some time meditating about his inner unhappiness, he decided it was what was best for him.
At first I told the kids he was visiting Uncle Mark, but when he came back for his guitar and then left again we all had a feeling it was permanent.
I called my friend Franny and we talked about how she felt when Phil ran off with his accountant.
“But when you have kids,” she said, “ life just keeps going on.”
The girls were in 4th and 6th grade that year at Peter Zenger Elementary School, where I taught, and so we drove together every day, slipping and sliding down the East Main Street hill. Central Marylanders are not known for their ability to drive in “weather”. I am not known for my ability to drive in anything. The usual half-hour commute got longer and longer and we often got stuck in low-lying sections of the road. When we did, Joy would cry and say, “Let’s call daddy to come get us,” and I had to explain all over again that that was not an option. One time we got stuck in front of the high school and four big boys came over to push us out. I was torn between grateful for the help and afraid they would fall under the car and get killed.
CBS had broadcast the movie “ The Sound of Music” during the first week of Lent. The girls had loved it and we spent some of our commuting hours singing “My Favorite Things,” making up new verses as we went. Joy had taken to wearing an assortment of odd hats and I could look in the rear view mirror, and see the black derby she had found at a rummage sale bopping in the back seat as she sang, “ . . . and then I don’t feel so bad.”
Sometimes, we would read from their assigned reading texts. Cassie had chosen from the 6th grade list, “Family on Wheels: The Further Adventures of the Trapp Family,” and she would read it aloud when we got tired of singing; or too nervous about sliding around on the slippery roads to sing. I knew Cassie also didn’t want to have to listen to the oldies station that I liked on the radio. She thought Elvis and Fabian were unbelievably tacky. Ricky Nelson was the only singer of my generation that either of the girls tolerated and they laughed at him a lot, especially when he sang “Traveling Man”.
We enjoyed the book, and admired the good humor of Maria Von Trapp during her hard times, and we envied the large and cohesive family she shepherded out of Europe. When we found out from the book jacket that she and her family owned a ski resort in Vermont, we determined that we would go up there in the summer and meet her.
We spent the rest of February planning the trip, marking the route on auto club maps and looking up interesting spots in the New England Guide Book. We saved money by taking peanut butter sandwiches for lunch every day, and Cassie would sometimes draw pictures of mountains with wandering sheep or lines of dirndl-clad children with musical notes hanging over their heads to include in our lunchboxes.
We wondered if the Von Trapps still gathered around after dinner to sing, and if they would let us sing along. Could we sing Ricky Nelson songs? We knew all the words to “Garden Party” and “Hello, Mary Lou”.
We also had read that on the many birthdays of their ten children they would each give handmade presents and have a huge dinner. Perhaps we would be there for one of those events. As we scraped and dug the car out of snow banks in the mornings, we reminded each other about picnics in the sunny mountain valleys and huge communal breakfasts in the chalet. The morning that I locked myself out of both the house and the car, and had to climb down through the snow covered lift-up storm door and make my way though the dark, cobweb filled basement, while listening to George, who was nervous at the sound of someone in the basement, tearing though the house knocking over furniture, I imagined myself sitting on a breezy hillside listening to the sounds of children singing.
On March 28th, I got to school a little early and I sat down in the lounge with a cup of coffee and the Baltimore Sun. In the Style section there was a small story headlined, “Maria Von Trapp, dead at the age of 82.” I felt a sense of failure, that we had somehow arrived at this idea too late, and that we would never be invited to join any family sing-alongs. When we got home that night, we folded up the maps and the put away the guidebooks and lapsed into a vague, sad, yearning for spring.