I am not my mother, Pure Joy

“Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”

by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

Long ago, nearly 30 years ago, I was in a support group in which one of the members worked, as a volunteer, for the James Wright Review.  He was gay -- the guy in my group. And wound up so tight.  He always seemed tense and, like me, didn't really fit anywhere. This guy devoted countless hours to the James Wright Review, a labor of love. I wonder if he was a writer, in hindsight. He never said he was.

Once, when my daughter and I drove to Chicago to visit my brother and mother who was visiting Chicago, this guy rode along.  Our agreement was he would stay with a friend of his. My brother's apartment was almost too small to accommodate Rosie, mom and me, much less an uninvited stranger -- stranger to my brother and his partner.

The guy spent one night with his elderly artist friend and then called me and begged me to let him stay with us. My brother and his partner were kind enough to let him, although he had to sleep on the floor. I picked him up. The artist friend lived in a huge house crammed with art.  I got the vibe that the visit had been a disaster. Having that relative stranger invade our weekend was a little odd, for I barely knew him. I had only agreed to give him a ride to and from Chicago, I had never expected him to hang out with us the whole weekend. Being the polite family my family can be, we all were nice to him.  My mom treated him when we ate out, for he was poor. My brother and brother-in-law chatted with him, included him in their gourmet meals and they tried to find some common ground around their shared gender identity.  It was a weird weekend.

My mom drove back with us when we left Chicago. We got snowed in half-way home, and checked into a pretty fancy hotel, because all the cheap ones were full with others fleeing the blizzard.  That guy just assumed my mom would pay for everything for him. He never once suggested he might have contributed something.

And then he did something that tormented my Rosie.  He used all the tiny bottles of hotel shampoo. It was a family tradition that everyone in our family used their own shampoo and gave the tiny hotel shampoo bottles to Rosie. Rosie freaked about that. We called the front desk, they went up a couple more but not the large supply initially provided for four people in that room. At least that odd interloper got the rollaway bed. Mom got one queen sized, Rosie and I share done and our uninvited guest, a very tall man who was longer than the rollaway got the rollaway. His feet extended at least a foot past the edge of the bed. He grumbled about that, hinting he should get his own room since a rollaway was the best the hotel could do. Another room for a stranger mooching oddly off us all weekend.

In hindsight, I feel empathy for the guy. I speculate that he had heard me discussing our trip to Chicago, that he was lonely and thought it would be an inexpensive change of scene. I think his visit with the elderly artist friend had gone badly, although he never spoke of the visit. And why would have have spoken of it?  We weren't friends.

I remember his voice when he called and, with a desperate tone, pleaded to be allowed to stay with us for the next three nights -- a long visit, no just a weekend -- that I felt a wrench. I felt his pain. He had imagined a happy reunion and his visit with his old friend had been a fail.

I think he had a nice time. We Fitzpatricks can be very cordial, going into an autopilot mode of politely civil behavior. Plus, I think we all sensed the guy was miserable. At the time, I didn't think much about his oddness but, in retrospect, I suspect he had a mental health challenge.

And these ruminations have nothing to do with this lovely James Wright poem.