Home

Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors, and Retirees

Frog Spit

Jackie Spinks

                                                                                Chapter Six

           Ever since Laura’s death the melancholic downers side of the family could cry at the drop of a corncob.  For example they’d cry in a Laurel and Hardy movie. Wil would pay for a silent movie—a big treat for the sisters, but instead of laughing at the movie, they’d sit in stoic silence.

           “So how did you like the movie?”

           “What’s so funny about falling down and getting swatted on the side of the head?  The guy will probably end up in his second childhood before his time.  Do you really think that’s funny?”

           “Yeah,” said Wil and Walter.

           “Well, I’ll try to see the funny side.  But I think it’s pathetic.”
           ‘My gosh?  Are you crying now?  So why are you crying?”

           “I’m just feeling so sorry for that guy always falling down and getting swatted on the side of his head.”
           “But that’s what’s so funny.”  And the uppers would shake their heads and roll their eyes.

           The Downer half of the family averred that, if anyone had, they had—earned the right to hefty does of the blues-- so far away from home in Sweden.  Immigrants.  This would never be home.  Never.  Laura gone.  They hated it all.

           Selma and her sisters enjoyed their misery.  In fact, I think nobody enjoyed a good case of the blues or a good cry, more than the Larson sisters.  And running hand in hand along with their despondency, they gave Rasputin -like digs to those they considered insensitive to their feelings.  They had a reputation for sensitive feelings.

           “Now there’s one hurting bunch of people,” was the sympathetic buzzword around their extended family.

           “Can you blame them?  All the misery and tragedy they’ve had.”

           With all this recognition of their finer, more delicate natures, these depressed feelings took on a pleasant flavoring.

           All could be well with the world.  The birds could be chirping, the flowers blooming, the dogs snoozing, the trees drooping with fruit, the cows nibbling in the fields and best of all, money accumulating in First National—and they’d be slumped on the front porch of the farm, dropping tears in the shelled peas or shucked corn.  Signe and Agnes, both born in the U.S. made the sisters a foursome, although Adina with her wild ways was more or less out of the loop.

           Adina would join them, now and then, in their vigil to keep Laura’s death alive, any time she wanted, but mostly she didn’t want any truck with their seriousness, as the three other sisters seemed to love tragedy.

           Whenever any one of the three was in any danger of becoming cheerful, the other two would say, “Poor Laura.  Dead at such a young age.”  And the danger of getting over their depression was averted.

Later:

           “Why do you feel bad, Mama?” I’d inquire of Selma (now my mother) as I watched the tears running down her cheeks.  This seldom occurred when I was her only audience, therefore, I took note.

           “No reason.”  Melancholics prefer that you guess why they’re feeling dejected.  A little perplexity adds interest.  So you guess.

           “Did I do something?” I’d probe.

           “No. I’ll be fine.”

           “Okay.” And I’d pick up my schoolbooks.

           “Life is so hard,” Mama would whisper.

           “Sometimes it’s okay, Mama?”

           “Life is nothing but a valley of tears, and I’ve had my share, let me tell you.  Just you wait.  You’ll see.”

           “I got an “A” in spelling.”

           “That’s nice.”

           “Mama I heard a funny joke at school today.  It goes like this—knock, knock…”

           “Never mind.”

           “Should I go get Aunt Adina?”  She was the closest neighboring sister.

           “Good God no!”

           “Okay.”

           “Just you wait until you grow up and then you’ll know.”

           “What, Mama?”

           “That life is unfair.”

           “Should I go get Agnes or Signe?”

           ‘Okay.”

           Actually, only half the family relished a good cry.  The other half were considered to have hearts of ice and regarded as taking after the savage Viking bloodline.

           The melancholic half would shake their heads over the jovial half and think, “Silly fools.  Don’t they know, all their future holds is a grave-run?”

           And for these despairing, weeping ones, well, they recognized reality when it bit them.  Unlike some other obtuse you-know-who’s, who ducked around, trying to void contact with them as they didn’t want to hear Laura’s name mentioned.

           “Ah, life is so hard,” the three younger sisters would reiterate to each other.  And that immutable question would come up, “Why was life so hard?”

           The cheerful half, Lars, Walter, Wil, Adina and other relatives and the younger cousins made comments about “a silver lining being in every cloud,” and “a brighter day tomorrow,” but these cheerful savages never caught on to the idea that “glad”  “up” talk seldom works with those who enjoy melancholy.  “What’s there to live for?” they’d sadly whimper.

           “Grub?” the savage Uppers sometimes grabbed at straws. 

           “You just don’t understand.”

           “Gotta make the best of the cards life deals us.”
           “What a boor.”

           And not only would they weep their blues into mega-depressions, but they’d criticize each other for not being as exquisitely fine-tuned and as properly sad as they themselves were.

           They’d tear into each other with their repositories of guilt.

           “You never do anything around here.  I have to do everything,” Salma said.

           “What are you talking about?” Adina would reply.

           ‘Just what I said.”

           “Are you trying to say I didn’t do my share, that I didn’t take care of Laura as much as you?  Are you saying that?”

           “I’m not saying that, but if the shoe fits…”

           “Who took most of the care of Laura all those months,” Adina said.

“We all did, and how about when you went off berry picking the day before Laura died?

That didn’t seem like such a caring thing to me.”

“I don’t want to talk about Laura anymore and don’t look at me like that?  I hate it when you look at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?” Selma, who’d been sobbing and whose eyes now

brimmed with tears, stopped shucking corn and looked at Adina.

           “Funny…you looked at me funny.  Like it’s my fault Laura died, like you’re blaming me for her death because I went berry picking the day before she died.  I think you’re saying I didn’t really love her like you did.”
           ‘As I said,…”

           “I know if the shoe fits.  You are such a jack ass.”

           ‘Ok, all right, I’ll drop the subject.  But one final note, I don’t show my underpants when I dance the Charleston.”

           “Yeah, and you’re so perfect.  Laura and me were like twins, ten months apart, but you will always blame me for going berry picking the day before she died.  I’m sick of being blamed.”

           “Please,” Signe said.

           “How come you haven’t been talking to me, Sig?  Do you blame me, too?” Adina asked.

“I’ve been talking to you.”

Oh, yeah, like where’d you put the coffee?”

“So what else is there to talk about?”

“Waldemar, maybe.  You know.  Really talk!”

“But not Laura?”

Selma jumped up, dashed inside, slammed the screen door and knocked over a nearby flowerpot.  Waldemar had been dead five years and his death, unexplainable, would remain a mystery forever.  It was as unfathomable as these strange American ways.  But Laura, well, maybe, they did something wrong there.  Others survived.  Why not Laura?

           “Selma, you clumsy cow,” Adina picked up the flower pot “Can’t you look where you’re going?”

           “Can’t you just shut up?” shouted from the interior.  Selma reappeared at the door.  “You have no idea how sick of you I am.  You treat me like I’m slime.”

           “You do that to me, too.”
           Selma came back to the porch and dropped into the empty rattan Victorian chair.  Nobody said anything, but Agnes, born in America and the youngest by somewhere between ten and fifteen years had been silent during the whole exchange, stared anxiously at Selma.

           “What I need, what we all need, is a really, really good cry.  In fact, I need to scream.” Selma finally said. “Or maybe go to a Laurel and Hardy movie.”

           “Why don’t you believe me when I say I loved Laura?”  Adina said.

           “I’m sorry.”
           “I’m sorry, too.”

           Tired of their bickering the tears still flowed.  Now though, after they’d had their good cries they’d tied on their aprons and go to work, cleaning. 

           “Cleaning was their antidote to depression.  It was also tied in with Laura’s TB.  Cleaning got rid of germs.  And it was germs that caused diseases like Laura’s.  If they cleaned, germs would disappear and voila, so would diseases.

           This Downer half of the family, lived in a permanent state of siege with these invisible combatants.  They knew Satan’s work when they saw it and only lye soap and elbow grease would fry his miniscule horns and hooves.

           Although, with time, much of their obsessive concentration on Laura lifted, they continued to be a despondent bunch and if things started going too happily for them they always had Laura’s death to bring them back to a dejected earth.

           When I’d come home from school, I’d find all the members of the pessimistic side of the family, crying.

           “Go wash your hands,’ Mama would sob, mopping at her face with a dish towel.

           “They’re clean,” I’d reply.

           “Do you want to get TB?”

           And I’d know they’d been talking about Laura’s TB and how she was such a good person and questioning each other as to how she’s gotten TV.  “But we were so clean,” they’d tell each other.

           The whole shebang was hopeless.  The despair rose up like Godzilla from an ocean.  And there it was.

           But probably the depression sat better with them because when they were dispirited they could fire off those verbal cannons at each other, and get rid of their frustrations.

                      But they not only talked to each other, they visited weekly all their lives,  fiercely loved-- and helped each other when any one of them was in trouble. They also couldn’t bear any criticism by an outsider of a fellow sisters. 

 I remember Mama (Selma) who managed our family finances, drawing money out of our meager bank account to pay Adina’s taxes. I was with her at the time. She said, “Don’t tell Daddy about this.”  I never did.