Looking for Bobby by Liz Flaherty

Our prompt at Black Dog Writers' Group in September was to write about something between our ages of 18-22. We could tell the whole story, pieces of it, or just recount a moment. The stories people told were amazing--it was one of the best meetings we've ever had. This one was mine. 

I wasn’t eighteen yet, although less than two months lay between June 6, 1968, and my August birthday. I was freshly graduated from high school, working a job I disliked intensely, and seething with the words to Peggy Lee’s song, “Is That All There Is?”, even though it hadn’t been recorded yet.

But I was having a good time, having shaken off the shackles of having to seek permission for virtually every move I made. I’d stopped—for the most part—sneaking out to smoke and taken to staying out well past the midnight curfew that had accompanied me through my previous dating years, swearing without fear, and developing ideas of my own that seldom coincided with those of my family.

Something that happened well before that time, though, was my interest in politics, one that had its foundation in the presidential election in 1960. Our fifth-grade class discussed it on a daily basis, debating the pros and cons of Kennedy and Nixon with raised voices and very little actual knowledge. The election board lent us a desk top prototype of a voting booth, and we held our own election. The results were predictable, although not nearly as much then as they are now.

We saw things through those years. Even where I went to school, the student body was silenced and horrified by JFK’s assassination. Not so much when it was Dr. King. We were not diverse there in the cornfields, people around us still used the n-word frequently, and being different in any way wasn’t something to be encouraged; while I had met black people, I didn’t actually know any. None. While I was sorry for Dr. King’s death, I couldn’t begin to understand the grief, anger, and hopelessness everyone in his race must have felt. I bought into “different” because I didn’t know any better, but I should have. I should have.

Because Bobby Kennedy was my hero, I should have.

It didn’t occur to me until June of that year that I should have dug deeper to understand. When Bobby Kennedy died, it was my first up-close acquaintance with social hopelessness, my first bout with sharp, sustained grief that didn’t have to do with someone I personally knew and loved, my first anger at people who think hate is okay. More than okay, it’s to be revered, shared, and cultivated.

I should have dug deeper.

But I didn’t mean for this to be a soliloquy on politics or how I feel about hate. Except maybe I did. I remember that day in June when Bobby was shot. My mom woke me to tell me, and even though he was still alive, we knew it wouldn’t be for long. The madman with the gun was very thorough in his destruction of the person many of us thought would be our country’s savior.

History Nebraska

I’d seen him that April on his whistle-stop tour. I skipped school to go to the depot in Peru and listen to him talk from the rear platform of a train car. Oddly enough, I can’t remember if it was a caboose or not, which sounds like a non sequitur but has been fidgeting around in the back of my mind all the while I’ve been writing this.

I was short and the area was packed. Although I could hear, I couldn’t see until the man behind me, easily a foot taller, put his hands under my elbows and steered me straight through the crowd to where I stood right at the end of the train. Right there! I could see Ethel Kennedy’s makeup that drew commentary from my Republican friends and their children looking bored and Mr. Kennedy speaking earnestly.

I thanked the man behind me, bursting into laughter when I saw that the front of his shirt was plastered with badges supporting Eugene McCarthy for the presidential nomination.

“Things will be better,” I said. “When Bobby’s elected, things will be better.” I was buoyant with hope, with faith in someone who was up for rattling the cages of tradition and conformity that had kept me so unaware.

While I had been interested in politics since I was ten, I’d taken little time to widen the scope of that interest. Even that month, that same month that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, the scope remained narrow. But Bobby would widen it, not just for me but for everyone. Our generation, all those others like me who skipped school to stand at the end of that train and cheer until we were hoarse, were going to make things better.

We’d get us out of Vietnam.

We’d end the hate.

We’d see to it that there was No More War. As a matter of fact, violence would disappear altogether.

No one would ever be hungry.

Everyone would have not only freedom of religion but freedom from it, too, if that was what they wanted.

We’d save the planet.

Racism would disappear. (That was an afterthought with me—I still didn’t get it.)

But then Bobby died.

My life changed irrevocably that year I turned 18. Because Bobby Kennedy lived and because he died. Our generation didn’t do any of the things we thought we would, but I learned to widen the scope as much as a white girl from the cornfields could manage. I learned to keep trying. Keep trying. Keep trying. And never, ever give up.

And at the end of the political day, I’m still looking for Bobby.

Have a great week. Be nice to somebody.   

For better...for worse...for always...

I'm not sure when I wrote this, but our 30th wedding anniversary was in 2001, so somewhere along in there. It's been around the publishing block a few times, its last incarnation being in The Saturday Evening Post. As of today, we've been married 47 years. When I read through this before using it again, I asked myself if anything had changed since then--other than my hair color and his golf score and how many grandkids we have.

Not much. I still think of Peggy Lee's song sometimes and I'm sure Duane does, too. We still have days we wonder what in the world we're doing here. We're still not in love every day. But even then, when sadness is like a veil or anger a disruptive rattle in the cadence of the day, we know (and say) that we love each other. And we do.

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” – Mignon McLaughlin

What’s it like, you ask, being married to the same person for over 30 years? How do you do it?

Well, it’s like this.

You know every word of his body language, can identify every freckle that dances across his shoulders when he walks into the sun, can buy him a year’s wardrobe in 15 minutes flat counting the time you spend writing the check and asking the store clerk how her kids are doing. You know better than to cook tuna casserole even if you like it, that a sure way to get him to talk to you is to start reading a book, that if you’re not feeling well, he’s most certainly feeling worse.

You’ve learned by now that there’s no possible way you can be in love every day.

Sometimes, let’s come right out and say it, he’s just a jerk. Sometimes, since we’re not holding back, you’re a pain in the neck. On those days, you look at each other with glazed eyes and wonder which lawyer to call. Then you go to bed, mumble “I love you” with doubtful sincerity, and lie in the dark and mentally parcel out the furniture, the dishes, and the retirement accounts until sleep overtakes you.

There are days, indeed, when Peggy Lee’s voice echoes in your mind, Is that all there is? In the time when you had a flat stomach and naturally glowing skin and hair that was …well, a different color than it is now, this isn’t what you counted on, was it? Once you got the kids raised, you were going to travel, wear expensive clothes, dance the night away. You were going to have fun.

Okay, you say, if it’s that bad, why do you stay married?

Well, because, that’s why.

Because he can tell by the set of your chin if you’ve had a bad day, because he’ll bring home takeout food just when you’re positive you can’t cook one more meal in this lifetime, because he tells you he thinks you’re really cute and means it even if you’re not wearing any makeup and you haven’t sucked your stomach in.

He still takes the street side on sidewalks because that’s the way he was taught, tells your daughter she’s almost as pretty as you are, and never reminds you you’re getting more like your mother every day. He knows the words to the same songs you do and he doesn’t mind that you can’t carry a tune in a bushel basket. He doesn’t laugh when you can’t finish singing Puff, the Magic Dragon because you are in tears you can’t explain. He just tucks his arm around you and hands you a tissue and kisses the top of your head where the roots are starting to show a bit.

Well, fine, you say, but isn’t it boring?

Oh, I suppose, once in a while.

But a long marriage is like the sun. It’s there every day and night, sometimes hidden by dense and sulky cloud covers, sometimes blazing red and vital and exciting. During cold spaces in your life—and life offers a lot of those—marriage wraps itself around you and keeps you warm.

The other side of that is that long marriages are uncomfortable now and then, like when you and your spouse disagree on matters of fundamental importance, such as values, religion, politics, money, and thermostat settings. And you do disagree about these things even though you think you never will. This is when you look at him and think, Why am I still married to this person who is so wrong about everything?

Maybe because, when you get right down to it, the marriage isn’t boring, but a definition of fun you never imagined. And then there’s the irrefutable fact that when the world is out to get you, it has to go through him first. Or, trite as it sounds, perhaps it’s glued by those promises you made when he was just safely home from Vietnam and you were a size five, the ones about loving and cherishing and sickness and health...you know the ones I mean.

Or maybe because, like the sun, marriage is different most every day. Those differences are what have landscape painters and photographers lying in wait for sunrise and sunset. Some days they go inside in disappointment because the cloud cover hangs low and dismal over the show, but on other mornings and evenings they sit spellbound and work as fast as they can, holding onto the light for every precious second.

And there you go. There’s the answer to the questions, What’s it like, being married to the same person for over 30 years? How do you do it?

You just hold onto the light.

...let's keep dancing... @Liz Flaherty

This is from 2005, I think--Duane and I were both still working. I thought my writing days were winding down (that was about 10 books ago) and I was on the reinvention wheel once again. I'm not sure I've ever gotten off. Anyone else been on that ride?

"If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing..." 

from "Is That All There Is?" by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, sung by Peggy Lee.

There are times — long, achy days of a bad knee and raging sinuses and throbbing finger joints — when I resent that I’m 50some and tumbling inexorably down the wrong side of the middle age slope. Is this all there is? I whine, channeling Peggy Lee. Have I worked all these years so I could afford to go more places and see and do more things just to learn I’m too old, too sore, and too damn tired?

I have time, now that I no longer preside over carpools, hold down bleachers, or operate a short-order kitchen and 24-hour laundry, to read all I want to. I have stacks of books and magazines beside my chair, along with a strong reading lamp, a spot for my coffee cup, and a blanket to cover my cold feet. However, if I sit in one spot for more than 15 minutes, I fall asleep. Most of my reading these days is done in the car, where I feed CDs of my to-be-read list into the player and “read” all the way to work and back. I love audio books, and listening to them makes my commute downright enjoyable, but there’s something lacking without the reading lamp, the cup, and the blanket.

Now that tuition, six-boxes-of-cereal weeks, and expensive shoes and jeans are in my past, I could, if I was interested, buy much nicer clothing for myself. But gravity and years of eating too much and exercising too little have made buying clothes a nightmare instead of a pleasure.

At this stage of the game, we could spend our vacations in exotic places, where my husband could play golf as often as he wanted and I could lie in the sun reading and sipping drinks that come with straws, spoons, and umbrellas. Except my skin is already dry and taking on a leathery consistency and reading in the sunlight gives me a headache. Right before I fall asleep, that is.

There is time to write nowadays, especially in the lengthening evenings of spring. But I’m no longer sure I have anything to say. I used to think — only to myself, thank goodness — that I’d never have writer’s block because I was way too full of hot air to ever run out of words. But the hot air has flattened and stilled and, in full panic mode now, I’m afraid I’ll never get it back.

And then there are other times.

I spent a week in Vermont with my son’s family. While my year-old grandson’s parents worked, I got to spend my days with him. We crawled around on the floor, played with noisy toys, and squealed with laughter at nothing and everything. I read to him and he listened and watched my face with his father’s bright blue eyes before falling asleep in my arms.  I’d push back the recliner and pull the quilt his mother had made over us both and we’d nap together in warm and sweet contentment.

Another of my grandsons comes here on Thursday evenings while his brothers have Cub Scout meetings. He’s newly housebroken and toddler-verbal and has his grandfather and me firmly wrapped around his sticky little finger. The half bath in our house is now his, since it’s small and so is he, and the full bath is mine, which leaves grandpa without one. This is okay, though. Grandpa can use Nana’s. If he asks first.

Each day for the last week I have walked my couple of miles and my knee has not protested. My hands, though stiff and a little swollen, have not ached. The roar of my sinuses has quieted to a dull murmur. The finches are putting on their bright yellow summer coats as they jabber at the feeders. Everywhere I look, lilies and crocuses and spiky green shoots are lightening the landscape. They’re brighter now than they were in my 20s, when I was too busy to look at them properly.

This morning, as I drove to work, the quarter moon hung huge and orange in the eastern sky. God’s thumbnail. Beautiful. I opened the car window and breathed deep of the soft pre-dawn air.

I’m grateful one more time that I no longer smoke. It’s been three and a half years, though I hardly ever count anymore, and there is an almost spiritual joy in having beaten it.

It’s not so bad after all, this wrong side of the slope, where the colors are brighter and sharper and scents are sweeter and laughter is like music and grandchildren — anyone’s; they don’t have to be yours — are your reward for the difficult climb up the other side. Sometimes it’s almost … yes, it really is … better than it used to be. Yeah, Peggy, that’s all there is, and sometimes … most times … it’s enough.