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Nesting Doll
- University of Nevada Press
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: : 238 : : Brad gave up drumming for Sofa, the brothers’ band, and went off to Arizona to work with premiere golf course designers at the Anthem project north of Phoenix. He’d been offered scholarships at top-notch schools, but decided to make it on his own without college. Jeremy and Chris were both living in my basement, trying to make Denver connections for their band. I was happy to have family around me again, though I was reminded that maybe I wasn’t doing such a great job as a mother if I had two sons living in my house, both in their twenties, who should be striking out on their own by now. My job had been to give them a good start but not to care for them indefinitely. Mother bird/baby bird time/enough of the nest. When the dishes in the sink began piling up again, when the boys started sleeping in and relying on my good will, when I started nagging them to keep some semblance of order in the house, I realized they’d soon have to find their own place. I told them so. Meanwhile, up in the second-story bedroom with only Ivan at the foot of my bed, I still yearned to have a man by my side. Not just a man, but Spinner. I missed him. Something as tight as the grip of bulldog’s teeth resisted my attempts at letting go and moving on. But why could I tell my sons to get on with their lives and not say the same to Spinner? On Sundays I continued to sit on metal folding chairs at the tiny lds branch in Denver’s lower downtown. So what if they were more marginal :: The Nesting Doll :: The Nesting Doll : : 239 Mormons than the ones I’d known before? They could each be my teacher in some way, that I believed. Slowly, slowly for a few weeks as I opened up the hymnbook filled with songs I’d sung during my childhood, songs like “I Need Thee Every Hour” and “Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd,” I felt my connective tissue reconnecting to something that had nurtured me as a child. I loved the familiar music and the sense of community, though I still wasn’t ready to attend church more than occasionally. On Thursday nights, I attended Al-Anon for families dealing with family members’ addiction. I was becoming wiser. Stronger. Prepared. Something inside me, against my reason and common sense, was formulating the idea that I was strong enough to deal with Spinner one more time. Trouble was, even though he’d had the audacity to pawn two antique bentwood chairs and a quartersawn oak headboard and bed frame while I was on the bike trip, and even though he’d pawned my acoustic guitar and vcr at least six times since then, Spinner and I were like the insides of a rubber band. Both of us were caught in the stretch and the limp of the elastic and unable to escape the loop. We were caught, encircled, still codependent. And there was a phenomenon called love in the works. After warming up to each other again on the telephone, little bit by little bit over the summer, he invited me to come to Minnesota to go fishing and exploring back roads in the full splash of autumn. He’d been keeping his word about making car payments. He sounded stronger than before. He sounded good. I’d always wanted to see that part of the country at that time of the year. On impulse, I decided it would be a good idea. I said yes. Where Chippewa and Ojibwa once walked and where oranges, deep oranges, deeper oranges, greens, and scarlets shimmered brilliant in the sunlight, we drove on graded roads between Bemidji and Williams Narrows . We rented a cabin for a week’s vacation. “I’m glad you could come,” he said as he drove over unpaved lumber roads. “You always bragged about Minnesota in the fall, and this is so . . . I can’t think of words fine enough for how great this is. Everything seems so right when you’re out of doors under the sky.” “I knew you’d like it.” [54.226.25.246] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:41 GMT) 240 : : r a w e d g e s Suddenly, out of the stark, clear blue of the impeccable Indian summer sky...