Wind Phone

Year before last, on your birthday, I visited a Wind Phone. Do you know about those? Old fashioned handset telephones with curly cords, not connected to any pesky wires, placed in parks or gardens around the world for people to use.  

Remember when I was in Dallas and you were in the hospital and I'd call every day to check in, and I kept calling every Sunday after you got home? Remember I always said, "Hi, it's me," and you'd say, "Hel-llo," a song that was a mix between comfortably expected and comical, your voice dropping a few notes between syllables? 

Remember my senior year in college when Brandon broke off our engagement four months before the wedding, and I called, wordless, only to sob into the phone, and you sat on the other end of the line for hours listening to me cry, just being together?  

Remember that time I called and told you Amy's grandmother died, and you moaned that nobody tells you anything, and I said they might talk to you more if you didn't complain the whole time, and you said if I didn't want to hear it then don't call, and you slammed down your phone and we didn't talk for a month or two?  

Wind Phones are everywhere, but not always close. I drove an hour east through a cold, wet, blustery November day to find one. The sky was that gray-white color that won't let go of anything. 

Remember that time I was in town and took you to Sonic for lunch because you used to love their grilled chicken sandwiches? Remember I thought you knew the way but it had been so long since you could drive that you'd forgotten, and we got lost driving through the sprawling neighborhoods in Humble? And then we found the place, but you could only eat half of the sandwich anyway? 

Remember when you drove two hours to visit me at my first apartment in Lufkin and you were so incoherent and disjointed that I didn't know how you'd made it alive? Remember you said Stephen was urging you to take more pills, but the visit and the calm and the quiet made you realize you were over-medicated?  

Throughout the drive I listened to sad songs that spoke of disappointment and disillusion and loss. Words that reminded me of you, words I sung aloud to echo my feelings. Some things we've carried for so long that we must let go of them over and over.

Remember when I was in seventh grade and you used to stand in the doorway of my bedroom and listen to me practice my flute? Remember that time I flew you to Dallas so you could hear me perform in Meyerson Symphony Center, but you fell asleep in the audience during the concert?

Remember the time I drove from Dallas to Houston because you were in the ICU after a suspected heart attack, and I showed you some photos from Vegas and we took a digital camera selfie and you met Mike for the first time? Remember before I left your hospital room you asked me to buy you some cigarettes and when I refused you got so angry and called me a terrible ungrateful daughter? 

Warm breath and mist clouded the windshield but the sky refused to rain as I traveled a two-lane blacktop road that followed the shoreway. Every color I saw - saltbox houses, rectangle street signs, the few dried leaves that had the audacity to hold on - was muted and drained of vibrancy. Wind whipped the dark gray lake like it was angry. 

Remember while you were visiting Lufkin and I had just gotten paid, my first adult job, and I wanted to buy a dress at Belk? You said it was sixty dollars - sixty dollars! - the most expensive dress you'd ever seen, what a waste of money, and I simmered in angry guilt for the rest of your stay. Remember I drove you to Walmart because you only owned four pairs of panties, and you were washing them out in the sink to get through the weeks? 

Remember when I was in college and you and Stephen drove to campus so he could ask me to borrow a couple grand for the down payment on a house that would have no heat in winter? And I said okay but you had to move in with him because I couldn't support both my mom and my brother? And you came up to my dorm room and sat on the bed opposite mine, remember? You must have had another respiratory infection because your long eyelashes were gummed with dried yellow-green crust. Remember I ran a washcloth under warm water and wiped your eyes gently until you could see clear?  
    
I finally found the location - a deserted park that wouldn't see visitors again for months. Before I left the car I layered myself in gloves, hat, scarf, and snow pants as a shield from the shivery cold wind. Then I walked down a winding concrete path, over dormant grass, past the disused baseball diamond that reeked of childhood, and located the phone attached to a tree. I held the receiver to my ear and twisted your number into the rotary dial. 
 
Remember when Mike and I came to town and took everybody to dinner at Outback Steakhouse? You wore your portable oxygen machine and a pair of little girl's jeans embroidered with purple flowers or butterflies, jeans Angel's daughter had outgrown, and you were so proud of how pretty they were. Remember when we dropped you off at home and you said, "Thank you, that was a superlative steak," and I laughed because I was twenty-five and had never heard that word used as an adjective before?

I started, "Hi Momma, it's me..." but there was only silence in return. It wasn't like the heartbeat of time I used to wait for you to respond; this line sounded closed and dead. Empty. Heavy.

I waited, but I couldn't think of any more words for the wind to deliver to you.  

Remember the time I sent you a birthday card with a gift card inside, and you told me the gift card had been stolen out of the envelope? The time you told me you needed more cash for the health food store because your food wasn't digesting and your joints ached and I said to have the owner call me to charge items directly, but they never did? The time you called me crying, saying you made a mistake and ordered Stephen a magazine subscription to get a free gift and then canceled the subscription and now they wanted you to pay a hundred dollars penalty and could I please please write you a check, and I told you no?

Remember our last conversation, where I was angry that I had paid thousands upfront for your dentures and you promised to repay me in installments but barely paid anything, and it had been months, and our last words to each other were all criticism and frustration and resignation and humility? 

I meant to say I love you and I miss you and I wish you could see me now, my life and my kids and my successes. Instead I stood there, black plastic receiver in hand, dumb in the cold, churning lake at my back, trying to unpick the knots of my grief.

Remember the Monday before you died, Angel called to tell me you were doing so poorly but refusing to go to the hospital any more times, and I said to tell you that if you really cared about attending my wedding in six months you'd go to the hospital, because otherwise you might be dead? 

Remember three days later Angel called again and said you'd collapsed in the driveway, the ambulance had taken you to the hospital, and this was so routine I said to call me when you got a room, and she said I didn't understand?    

After too long standing under the tree silent and dripping tears, I told you I had been doing some thinking and maybe you weren't the parent I had wanted you to be most of the time. I think I said goodbye again. Then I hung up the phone, slowly and gently, and pressed my forehead against the rough bark of the tree. 

I don't know whether those words got picked up by the gusty wind and made their way to you. But if you want to call me back, I'll be sitting here every Sunday, at this picnic table by the lakeshore, waiting for the Wind Phone to ring.