THIRTY-ONE AMERICANS

by Dawn Downey 

 

An ambulance shriek closes in. From which direction? Where? Where? I slam on the brakes midway through a left turn, and the ambulance screams past, dangerously close to my front bumper. After traffic nudges back to life, I’m frozen for a second, trying to remember how to drive. 

I’ve just come from the art museum. I’d gone solo, so the visual images could sink into my cells, unobstructed by conversation. 30 Americans—an exhibit of American life, as interpreted by thirty contemporary black artists. It was a bad idea. Not the exhibit. My going to see the exhibit. 

An engine revs; an SUV speeds by. Now I remember how to drive: Look both ways. Turn the steering wheel. Press the gas pedal. I cruise through the leafy neighborhood that surrounds the museum’s manicured gardens. Several blocks ahead, the ambulance is shrinking, its siren receding. # 

 

I felt out of place among the white onlookers touring 30 Americans, even though I was an onlooker, too, gawking at my own life. Four hundred years of color-infused emotions—mine, the artists’, our ancestors’—compressed into claustrophobic passageways and alcoves. I chuckled at a montage of our hair in its myriad configurations. Yup, I used to sport that stick-straight coif, thanks to a lye relaxer that—swear to god—I could still smell. And I fairly levitated with joy at a human-shaped sculpture made of flower blossoms. You couldn’t identify gender, race, or age. Yes, let me see cabbage roses when I look at my enemies. Let the fragrance of gardenias hang in the air between us. Apparently, I have a greater capacity for despondence than optimism. Despite the intermittent uplift, four hundred years beat me down. # 

I pull up for a red light at a crossroad where high-end white Kansas City smacks up against low-end black Kansas City. Fast food. Bus stop. Cell phone mart. An urban apparel store sits across the street from a health clinic. Anchoring the corner is Walgreens, the place I stock up on eye shadow in shades designed for women of color. # 

The exhibition flowed into a corner housing an installation called “Duck, Duck, Noose.” A circle of nine wooden stools. On each stool sat a KKK hood, empty eyeholes facing the center, where a rope dangled from the ceiling, the end pooled in tidy coils on the floor. I gasped. Run. Get the hell out of here. Stop looking. But “Duck, Duck, Noose” forced me to stare, like an assailant holding my head underwater. I stumbled past in a stupor. # 

The car in front of me sits a beat too long after the light turns green. Cell phone distraction? The driver creeps into the intersection. Stops again. What is he—? 

In the fast food parking lot, the ambulance. 

Two white policemen. 

A black person flat on the ground. Face-up. 

Bright flowered fabric across thighs. Skirt. A woman. 

Still as a rock. 

I clench the steering wheel. Hyperventilate. My vision blurs, and I realize I’m sobbing. Need to pull over, to park, to say oh my god, oh my god, but I can’t remember how to stop driving. Automatic pilot glides the car past the scene, but my heart stumbles past it in a stupor. 

On the highway, as grief makes a slick mess of my face, a slide show plays the images my brain has photographed. She’s on her back, arms and legs spread. Her head is inches from the policemen’s polished shoes. Her legs span the sidewalk. The patrolmen stand beside their car, hands resting on their heavy-laden belts. They appear to watch traffic go by. If she were alive, they’d be kneeling at her side, wouldn’t they? They’d be making her comfortable, wouldn’t they? The EMTs would be rushing to her aid, wouldn’t they? There is an absence of urgency. 

She’s alone. May she find peace. Her family’s going to get a bad phone call. May they find peace. 

I grip the steering wheel hard, to squeeze life back into its proper shape. So I can buy makeup again at Walgreens. Maybe she’s part of an art installation. I want her to be an art installation.

 

She’s lying in savasana—corpse pose. She’s anonymous. I name her Grace. Who lies at the intersection of life and art. 

Thirty-one Americans.

Copyright © Dawn Downey. All rights reserved.

Dawn Downey writes essays about her journey through everyday life. The question she strives to answer: How does a sensitive elder woman of color thrive in an insensitive, white-centered, male dominated, youth-oriented culture? The author of six books, she also writes “Dawn Downey’s Teachable Moments,” a Substack newsletter. Blindsided: Essays from the Only Black Woman in the Room earned Book of the Year Finalist honors from the Independent Author Network. Downey lives with her husband in Kansas City, Missouri. Learn more at DawnDowneyBlog.com

Comfort Food

by Dawn Downey 

The to-go box on the kitchen counter held a piece of apple pie, a reward for toiling at my computer all morning after a breakfast date with my husband. I savored the anticipation as much as I was about to savor the pie. I imagined the treat nestled inside the box—a deep wedge of sweetness, the peaks of the crust a golden brown and the valleys glinting with sugar. It would be overstuffed with thick filling, an apple slice or two escaping the triangle. How the house would fill with the sweet aroma of hot apple pie when I heated it in the oven. Fork in hand, I opened the box. Staring me in the face was a pile of burnt crust pieces and goop that looked like something swept up from the floor. You call this pie? Scraps. 

Assholes. I can’t believe they pulled this. I should have checked the box before we left. No. I shouldn’t have to check. Maybe they didn’t pull anything. Sometimes pie comes out of the pan messy. Don’t make excuses for them. You might give this to a relative, not to a customer. Who did it? And did they know who the customer was? Assholes. 

As my husband and I pulled into the parking lot of a neighborhood cafe, freezing wind whipped the Stars and Stripes around a flagpole. The lot was packed with pick-ups, except for four off-duty police cruisers. I shoved my hands in my pockets and used Ben as a wind-break, crossing the lot to the restaurant, a red barn with green awnings. The kind of place frequented by regulars, which did not include me, my experience limited to one catfish lunch. Ben ate there often with a buddy. 

A bakery case spotlighted cobbler, cake, cinnamon rolls, and golden wedges of apple pie. The cops lounged at a round table, heads bowed, fingers at work on the keys of their cell phones. I scanned the room for non-white faces (There were none.) and simultaneously chastised myself for the automatic reaction. Beside the pass-through to the kitchen, a life-sized wooden pig held a sign ordering Eat More Chicken. Above the case, another sign boasted Home Cookin’. Just what I needed. Comfort food. In comfort food cafes, the servers were efficient, and they always called me honey. I had a soft spot for both qualities. 

A hostess approached, her expression set in a snarl. She glanced in my direction just long enough to ignore me, then shifted her slitty-eyed attention to a spot near Ben’s feet. “Two?” she asked. 

I knew that move. My sister and I had used it on each other when we were feuding. 

The hostess might have intended the attitude for me in particular, or she might have intended it for both of us. It was also possible a general bad mood had plastered the sneer on her face before we walked in. Ben didn’t seem to notice, much female nonverbal communication being under the male radar. He pointed to a vintage motorcycle balanced on top of a waist-high room divider. “Yeah, two. There’s a spot I like over by the Indian.” 

She’d already shuffled toward stools lined up at a counter. She veered from her original course and headed toward the divider. 

Ben said, “I mean the other side. It’s quieter. That okay?” 

“Wherever you want.” I only saw the back of her head, but I could tell she was rolling her eyes. She led us to a booth, where she dropped two menus onto the table. “Your waitress … “ Her departure swallowed the remainder of the sentence. 

A hook poked from a nearby coat rack, so I reached out to hang my parka. A customer was sitting across the room, glaring over her shoulder at me. I was used to catching an initial gawk when I walked into a room, and then the gawker’s face usually warmed into an embarrassed smile. This woman was ice. She spooked me. She parted her lips, and her companion slow-motioned his stare in my direction. I refused to turn away. Mouths set in twin grimaces, they stared for as long as it took me to hang my coat and fumble out of scarf and hat. I’d seen the expression before—on a couple of good ole boys in a little mountain town. They’d been sitting on chairs outside a pool hall, their legs stretched across the sidewalk, blocking my progress. Mouths frozen in twin grimaces, they waited a beat, then slow-motioned their resentful legs out of the way. 

When I shuddered into the booth, the placement of the table put my back to the couple. Damned if I didn’t land in the path of another poison stare. The woman sat alone in a corner, elbows on her table, coffee cup cradled in her hands. Eyes narrowed, she peered through the steam rising from her cup. Her shoulders were squared as she leaned forward, facing me head-on. She didn’t break eye contact. I was shocked. It was the glare that a guy in a rusted pick-up had used on me years before—both of us stopped at a red light. He’d made eye contact, held it, and then spat out his window. 

Ben studied his menu. I simmered. 

If I mentioned the incidents, how would the conversation go? Me: These people are staring at me. Ben: Well, yeah. You’re beautiful. Me: It’s not funny. And then I’d throw a fit. Or, Ben: Honey I’m sorry. Want to go somewhere else? Me: Let these people chase me off? And then I’d explode. Whatever he might say, I’d blow up. Anger concealed a tangle of other feelings I couldn’t unravel on the spot. Better to bury the knot under pancakes. 

Our server walked over. She was blue-collar skinny, and tension parted in the wake of her unhurried ease. “How are you folks, this morning?” She filled Ben’s cup without needing to ask him, warmth radiating from more than the coffee pot. “Need another minute?” 

I pointed to Number 6 on the menu. “Nope. Pancakes and eggs.” 

“How you want your egg, honey?” 

Servers who called me honey always took good care of me. I relaxed. 

“Scrambled.” Ben said, “Biscuits and gravy.” 

Before I had time to enumerate the ways that choice would shorten his lifespan, she set the plates in front of us. “I’ll be back to check on you.” After the pancakes did their job, I sipped hot tea. A border of chickens marched along the top of the walls, complemented by vintage tin signs. We Feed Our Chickens Gooch’s Best, bragged one. I chuckled at another, a hen that proclaimed He Rules the Roost, But I Rule the Rooster. My rooster and I solved the world’s problems, in between groans of satisfaction. Our server breezed by again to top off Ben’s cup. It seemed her timing was set by a secret code that passed between coffee-drinkers and servers. The magic of the transaction made me smile, and I shook my head in wonder as she walked into the second dining room. “How does she—” I froze. There above the doorway, next to Sweet Lassy Feeds, hung a movie poster for Gone With the Wind. 

But I did not see Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler. I saw bloody stripes on naked black backs. I did not see a love story, I saw slavery. 

Despair and rage threatened to boil over. But I was on a spontaneous date with my husband; it had been my idea. Hell, I’d even picked the place. If I succumbed to my feelings, then the restaurant won. If I shared my feelings with Ben, the restaurant won anyway, by controlling my conversation. I would tell Ben later, at home. The restaurant would not win. 

A phantom self, covered in the slime of partially-digested insults, slipped from her tomb deep within my gut. While I caressed my husband’s fingertips, the phantom wailed, smashed plates, and threw chairs. She ripped the poster from the wall and set fire to— 

Our server gathered up our dirty dishes. “Honey, you got room for dessert?” 
 “Apple pie, please. To go.”

Fork in hand, I opened the box on the kitchen counter. Inside was a heap of burnt crust pieces and goop. 

Assholes. They’d piled scraps in my to-go box. I stared, open-mouthed. Scraps where there ought to be pie. But sometimes pie comes out of the pan messy. Don’t make excuses. But who filled the box? Maybe they didn’t know who the customer was. Maybe this is just about sloppy customer service. Yeah. Maybe. 

I was sick of the constant onslaught. Little things and big things. Repeatedly pulled over blocks from my house for two miles over the speed limit. People who bragged they were color blind. Magazine covers—their dark-skinned celebrities photo-shopped four shades lighter. Pairing up in diversity training class, my white colleagues picked each other and left me standing alone, the black trainer and me staring our disbelief/belief at each other. The neighbor who’d confronted me on my daily walk. “I’ve never seen you. Where do you live?” The straight-haired friend who wanted my nappy-hair dreadlocks, but she sure didn’t want my nappy-hair life. I was a news story on a loop: assault, protest, investigation, no indictment, protest, silence. Repeat. 

Maybe they hadn’t known who’d ordered dessert to-go. Yeah. Maybe. I lay my fork beside the open box. 

White privilege: the ability to attribute mangled pie to bad service. 

© Dawn Downey. All rights reserved.

Dawn Downey is the author of three memoirs: Searching for My Heart: Essays about Love, From Dawn to Daylight: Essays, and Stumbling Toward the Buddha: Stories about Tripping over My Principles on the Road to Transformation. She writes to spread kindness. By writing about her daily challenges, she sees the workings of her mind. In conversations with her fans, she learns that most minds work the same way. She hopes readers will lovingly accept the similarities—in themselves, their loved ones, and the people who drive them crazy. She lives in Kansas City MO with her husband, Ben Worth. Connect with her at dawndowney.com

Dawn Downey on How to Survive Christmas Alone

December 17. 

Pull the covers over your head to block the morning light, and rest in the spot where your husband ought to be. 

Remember sitting here in bed beside him, propped up with pillows, a map spread between you. You had traced the highways and picked the overnight towns between home and the retreat center out east, where you had planned to spend the last two weeks of the year. It turned out you had wanted to stay home. It also turned out Ben had still wanted to go. Ordinarily your disagreements ended with one of you saying I don’t feel strongly. Let’s do what you want. This one had ended with him standing quietly in his truth and you standing quietly in yours. Remember how your certainty had caught you off guard. 

Wince at the prize you’ve won by standing in your truth: Christmas Alone. Your family spread across the country and you without a plane ticket, your friends with families of their own and you without an invitation. 

Think about being one with what-is. 
Think about surrendering to each moment. 
Think how un-enlightened you are. You don’t want to be one with Christmas Alone. 

Suspect if you were a better person—generous, kind, considerate—invitations would flood your email and your voice mail. 
Get out of bed and check your voice mail. Feel ridiculous. 
Eat breakfast. Write. Eat lunch. Write. Eat dinner. 
Drive to yoga class. 

On your way home, curse the shortened winter days. Curse the dark driveway. Curse the gloomy house. Fumble with the remote control. The garage door groans open. Hesitate as the car idles. Idle with the car. Once inside the garage, pause before pushing the button to close the door behind you. Before crossing the threshold into the house, pause again, one hand on the doorknob. 

December 18. 
An out-of-town friend calls. Recognize her country-singer drawl and calculate: she lives by herself four hours away; you could visit her, stay overnight, return on the twenty-sixth, the whole Christmas Alone problem solved. 

A country-singer drawl cuts through your calculations. Your friend is worried her forgetfulness is turning into Alzheimer’s. She’s panicked she’ll be trapped inside her mind, inside a nightmare. 

Remember your grandmother. Fighting with the lock on the front door. She’d tugged the handle, and the deadbolt had banged against the door jam. Her boney fingers had stuck out from the sleeves of a jogging suit, and the pants were falling off her skinny bottom. 

“Where you going,” you’d asked. 
“Home,” she’d said. 
“You are home.” 
 A country-singer drawl cuts through your memories. You should console your friend, but instead think at least you’re not afraid of Alzheimer’s. Feel un-enlightened. 

December 19. 
Make a joyful noise at Second Baptist Church. “Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king.” Pat your feet. Sing off-key. Feel both anonymous and essential. 

Twin girls read the announcements in high-pitched pubescent voices. The church is providing dinner for anyone who’s Alone On Christmas. Laugh when the pastor interrupts the twins, “Don’t get between me and the sweet potato pie.” 

Remember sweet potato pie, cinnamon and clove on your tongue. 
Imagine little boys in grown-up suits and red bow ties. Imagine old women clucking at you to “fill up your plate, child, you ain’t bigger than a minute.” 

Jot down 3:00 Xmas dinner on the back of the worship program, and stick it in your purse. 

Hum to yourself all the way down the church steps and across the parking lot, waving goodbye, God bless. 

Remember your house. It lies in wait, slack-jawed, ready to suck you into its belly. 

Drive to Target. Pretend you don’t see the Salvation Army bell ringer. Push a squeaky cart toward cosmetics, while Bing Crosby drones on about a white Christmas. Pick up a bottle of lotion. Set it back on the shelf. Pluck a cardigan from the sweater rack. Return it to the rack. Inspect a pair of headphones in electronics. Set them back on the shelf. Jimmy Stewart plays on the big screen televisions. Half a dozen Jimmy Stewarts handing out cash to the bank customers. You’re annoyed. Buy dental floss. 

At home, discover eBay. Bid on a coat you’d tried on at a department store but were too cheap to buy. Search the Internet for yoga tights. Search for luggage. Feel the life force leech out through your fingertips. Search for headphones. 

Slam the laptop shut. 
Scream, “What are you doing?” 
Try to recall the rhythms of your weekly routine. Check your calendar for last Sunday. Nothing’s listed, because Sundays are free days. You don’t feel free. 

See your grandmother fighting the front door. 

December 20. 
Stick a note on your laptop: no Internet shopping today. 
Eat breakfast. Check your eBay bid. 
Pick up War and Peace where you left off last month. You don’t recognize the characters. You can’t tell whether they’re at peace or at war. 

Meditate. 
Fall asleep. 
Read. Fall asleep. 
Go to bed at 7:00. 
Don’t fall asleep. 
You have no reason to sleep, read, or meditate. 
You have no reason not to. 
Hop out of bed at 8:00. Run the dishwasher. Mop the kitchen floor. Write a check for the water bill. Lay the pen gently on the counter. Whisper, “What are you doing?” 

December 21. 
At 2:00 AM throw a down coat over your pajamas and venture onto the patio to witness the eclipse of a blood moon on Winter Solstice. An icy breeze bites your ankles as patchy clouds drift across the heavens. The clouds part and then close. Part and close. Dissipate and reassemble. Each time, the moon re-emerges as an ever-thinner crescent, until the final sliver disappears. 

Witness yourself on the patio, in the middle of the night, alone, and calm. Feel yourself dissipate and reassemble. 

Go back to bed. Get up again at 7:00. Decide to do something fun today. Try to remember fun. Draw a blank. 
Check your eBay bid. Search online for yoga tights. Search for luggage. Search for headphones. Read celebrity gossip. 

December 22. 
Attend your Wednesday night book group. They’re surprised to see you. Your Catholic friend says, “Thought you were on retreat with Ben.” Remember how welcome you feel at her place. Ask what time she’s having Christmas dinner. Paste a fake that’s-great expression on your face when she says, “I’m not. I’m going to my sister-in-law’s.” Feel like a cage door has slammed shut behind you. 

Call your out-of-town friend; anticipate her country-singer drawl. 
She’s four hours away and at the same time right there in the palm of your hand. 
She tells you her girlfriends are all going away for the holidays this year. You laugh ironically at how the universe is handing both of you Christmas Alone. Say, “If the weather’s okay, I’ll come down.” Fail to appreciate the irony when she says, “I won’t be here. I’m driving to Little Rock tomorrow.” 

December 23. 
Check your eBay bid. You win. The coat is yours. Feel triumphant. Feel let down. Insist on fitting entertainment into your day. Write a To-Do list: art museum, grocery store, bank, drug store. You hate all that running around. Scribble out art museum. 

Check the forecast. The weatherman is wearing a Santa hat. He says snow all night tonight and all day tomorrow. He looks proud of himself. Curse the weatherman. Curse his Santa hat. Dig the worship program out of your purse, with its 3:00 Xmas dinner note. Toss it in the trash. 

Grab the grocery list, and point the Honda toward the store. Let the car take you to the art museum. Find yourself in front of “Mill at Limetz.” Find yourself in front of “Guanyin of the Southern Sea.” Feel content. Find yourself confused trying to exit the parking lot. 

Navigate through stacked-up traffic on your way to the store. Feel the drivers lean forward against their steering wheels at the red lights. Only two shopping days left! Everything must go! Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? You’re not part of it; you’re an alien floating in an alternate space-time continuum. 

Park, and float across the lot. 
Pretend you don’t see the Salvation Army bell ringer. 
Notice the turkeys and hams and tubs of whipped cream in the other carts. 
Toss your bag of frozen dinners into your back seat. 
Loneliness encases you like a casket. The casket walls press against your arms and the top of your head. Feel the coffin lowered into the ground, shovels of heavy dirt raining down on the lid. You can’t see. You can’t breathe. You don’t want to. 

After a block, that whole feeling evaporates. Your car is in drive, but your body and mind are in neutral. 

Pull into your driveway and discover you left the living room light on for the plants, and now the interior is backlit through the etched glass of the front door. Notice the sight of it feels like opening a present to find exactly what you wanted. 

Every few days, your phone rings. Expect it to be Ben, even though there’s no cell phone service where he is. Think this is what it will feel like, if he dies before you do. 
Lie in bed, read, feel drowsiness coming on. Nothing happened today. No museum. No grocery store. No today. There is only the bedroom. Right before sleep descends, understand there’s no bedroom. 

December 24. 
Fold clothes that are bunched up at the foot of the bed. Vacuum. Sweep away a cobweb from the ceiling near the window. Dust the nightstands and the headboard with lemon oil. Take a whiff. So clean. 

For dinner, treat yourself to pizza and a fire in the fireplace. Pop a movie into the DVD player. After the credits roll, you don’t want to go upstairs to bed. The flames flicker and wrap a smoky scent around you. You want to linger. Stretch out on the couch with a book. Let your fingertip relish the soft edges of the pages. Ask, “What are you doing?” Sleep there, in front of the fire. 

December 25. 
Bundle up for your morning walk. It’s only fifteen degrees. Even though there’s no snow (curse the weatherman for making you worry for nothing), marvel at the stark beauty of winter. Naked branches of oak and cyprus trees, evergreens poking into a steely gray sky. The shocking quiet in the middle of the city. Feel the urge to tiptoe. 

You stop abruptly further down the block. Someone has parked too many cars in their driveway. Your tidy neighborhood usually has nothing out of place. Two-car garages. Two cars per house. Weave a C-shaped path around the cars, into the street, and back onto the sidewalk. 

Wait. Turn around. One, two, three—six cars. What’s going on? Football party so early in the morning? 
Family visiting … from out of town. 
Realize: today is … Christmas. 
Wonder when it happened. Was it Christmas before the overflowing driveway, back there under the steely gray sky, beneath the naked oaks? Did Christmas arrive in one of those six cars? 

Picture the travelers crowded into the house, children in sleeping bags on the floor near the tree. Are they awake yet? Are the parents saying wait ’til after breakfast, honey? 

Realize Christmas arrived when you painted that picture. 
Feel calm. 
Remember when your grown siblings came home to your parents’ house for Christmas. 

Try to hear the word honey. Hear your father ridicule your brother because the handcrafted rug he designed for your sister is taking too long to finish. “You planning to give it to her next year?” Hear your mother count the presents she’s bought for each member of the family, because “somebody complained about getting fewer than everybody else.” Hear the handcuffs snap around your cousin’s wrists, the cops helping your father teach her a lesson for hot-wiring your car, even though you didn’t press charges and your mother’s crying “Bill, don’t do this.” 

Realize the Christmas you miss never existed. 
See your grandmother fighting the front door. 
“Where you going?” 
“Home.” 
“You are home.” 
Walk back to your house on this ordinary day. 
Wash clothes. Write. Play a Bob Marley CD. Sing off-key. At bedtime, watch a funny movie. 
When it ends, sob. 
You speculate you killed Christmas, and you’re grieving its loss. Then speculate you’re grieving the loss of a past you never had. Sense it doesn’t matter. 

Blow your nose. 
Picture Ben on retreat, meditating with the other retreatants under the gaze of a golden Buddha statue. Say, “Night, Sweetheart. I miss you.” 
Catch a faint scent of lemon oil. Take a whiff. So clean. 


© Dawn Downey. All rights reserved.

Dawn Downey is the author of From Dawn to Daylight: Essays and Stumbling Toward the Buddha: Stories about Tripping over My Principles on the Road to Transformation. Publications featuring her work include Persimmon Tree, Kansas City Voices, and Skirt! Magazine. She lives in Kansas City. 

Connect with her at dawndowney.com

Homeland Insecurity

By Dawn Downey

I struggled for balance as the tide sucked the sand from under my feet, wrapping kelp around my ankles. The receding surf blanketed my toes with foam and left them icy, even as the setting sun warmed my shoulders. Gulls screamed at dogs let loose by their owners. I backed away from the water and strolled uphill to join my best friend Angie at a picnic table in the grass.

We were spending the night on East Beach with her siblings and her cousins who had driven up from Mexico. We had a job to do: stake a claim on a spot for the following day’s Fourth of July gathering. Mothers and abuelas from different families would arrive early in the morning to cook chorizo and eggs, but the night belonged to us teenagers. We danced, gossiped, and smoked pot. I flirted with Angie’s cutest cousin. We wandered along the beach to see who else was camping out. Mariachi music drifted from a car stereo. When we finally crawled into our sleeping bags, stars were poking through an inky sky. I pulled the bag tight against the cold California night until only my eyes were exposed. Phosphorescent waves rolled in, as sparks rose from our fire pit along with the scent of burning wood. An occasional snap broke the lull of the ocean’s roar.

That summer in high school, the cadence of Spanish came as easily to my tongue as English did. Lying on the beach with Angie and her cousins, I scrunched into the sand until it conformed to the contours of my body. They were my tribe, the beach our homeland. But it was a borrowed sense of belonging. It receded when our friendship ebbed.
 
This morning, I planted nine seedlings
in a strawberry pot, seeing,
instead, the lane leading up to the farm.
If you can’t go home again then why
do I go home so often? Why trace
my bloodline down the side
of a red clay pot?
            –––From A Red Clay Pot, by Janet Sunderland

 When I was a child, home was a bright yellow two-story in Des Moines,. A brick sidewalk led up to our screened-in front porch, which offered scant protection from mosquitoes or june bugs. Dad hung a razor strap on a hook beside the door between the porch and the living room, warning my siblings and I to stay on our best behavior.

I suppose we farmed a bit––helped Mama pick rutabagas and dandelion greens for supper. Hard packed clay soil poked my knees. Sweat traced lines down my forehead, the salt stinging my eyes when I wiped it away. Mama studied the Burpee seed catalog at the kitchen table and planted marigolds, but our yard was more arsenal than farm. It grew snowballs, rocks, and buckeyes, which bullies threw at my head. After ten years in Des Moines––I was fourteen at the time––Dad moved us out to California. The brick sidewalk leading up to the yellow house did not burn an after-image in my heart.

Home was a place I could not fathom, the mythical Land of Oz, instead of the farmstead Dorothy tried to get back to. 

I spent five winters in Minneapolis with my first husband. On the February day we first pulled into town, the temperature dipped well below zero, yet joggers and bikers in brightly colored tights crowded the trail around Lake Harriet. An environment that froze your nose hairs from October to May could not be ignored. You had to come to terms with it, or else build your life around hating it. I adapted. I learned to navigate downtown skywalks. I learned the value of front wheel drive and a manual transmission. Mastered plowing my Honda CRX through bumper-deep slush. Prided myself on the ability to take off from a stop sign at the crest of a slippery hill. Those were the survival techniques of a foreigner. Locals, on the other hand, traced their bloodlines in the rituals handed down by the tribe. Certain behaviors defined fitting in. Ice skating. Ice fishing. Ice sculpting! I signed up for a class, but failed to master staying erect on cross-country skis, atop snow crusted over with ice. I could not discern the names of the people leaving messages on my office phone: Lena Larsdatter, Hans Helland, Tormod Oefstedal. And what was a hotdish?
 
For every house I’ve called home, I did not go home again. Iowa, California, Oregon, Minnesota, Missouri. A roll call of places where I failed to set down roots. A litany of states describing a single state of mind: outsider.
 
I’ve been in Kansas City thirty years, certainly long enough to develop an attachment, but by the time I’d moved to my suburban split-level, a wary relationship with place had already set in. I planted marigolds in red clay pots around my patio, in a simulation of homestead, but when I leave for a daily walk, neither pots nor patio linger in my mind’s eye. The front steps cease to exist as soon as they're behind me. I don’t look at my street and see the snow packed lanes of Minneapolis. And nothing pulls me back to Santa Barbara’s shoreline. I live near a wooded area crisscrossed by blacktop trails. A deer once startled me on a day I’d braved our miniature forest. She stood at attention a few yards away, her head lifted in my direction. We eyeballed each other and then she stepped daintily into the brush. I envied her sure-footedness, the way she seemed to know where she was headed and where she’d come from. The environment looked opaque to me.

Copyright © Dawn Downey. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dawn Downey is the author of “Stumbling Toward the Buddha: Stories about Tripping over My Principles on the Road to Transformation.” An essayist, Downey finds inspiration in everyday situations. Topics under her scrutiny range from her pursuit of the perfect purse to her search for the meaning of life. Toss in jealousy, prejudice, guilt, and inadequacy for good measure. Thanks to a spiritual path that winds through the teachings of the Buddha and around to non-duality, she now enjoys a kinder, gentler relationship with her eccentricities.

Downey’s essays have been published by The Christian Science Monitor; Shambhala Sun; Skirt! Magazine; Kansas City Voices: A Periodical of Writing and Art; and The Best Times. Her work is anthologized in Alzheimer’s Anthology of Unconditional Love: The 110,000 Missourians with Alzheimer’s; My Dad is My Hero: Tributes to the Men Who Gave Us Life, Love, and Driving Lessons; and the Cuivre River Anthology. Her writing has earned awards from the Missouri Writers Guild, Oklahoma Writers Federation, Northern Colorado Writers, and the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. She lives in Kansas City with her husband, Ben Worth (aka publisher, roadie, and driver). He spoils her rotten. She reciprocates. Read her weekly blog at www.dawndowney.com

Driving Toward Yes

By Dawn Downey

The desert wind whispered yes as it blew across Dad’s brow. In the summer of 1964, he and three of his teenagers (my older sister Michelle, younger brother Bill, and me) waited impatiently at the edge of the Mojave. Our road trip interrupted, because our family cat was having kittens in the back of the station wagon.

Five days earlier, at age forty-three, Dad closed up Bill’s Body Shop, his car repair business. He waived goodbye to relatives and friends, and drove away from Des Moines, leading a four-vehicle caravan down Route 66, off to California in pursuit of dreams.

Only a high school graduate himself, Dad insisted his kids would go to college. He had five children, number six on the way, and no means to finance all that education. But he’d read the University of California was tuition-free for the state’s residents. The fact that no job awaited him in the golden state—he’d work that out later.

He drove the station wagon and pulled a U Haul trailer. Michelle, who’d earned her driver’s license two weeks before, drove a second car. She towed a VW Bug, which Dad planned to sell in California. Bill and I rode shotgun.

A water pump or two broke along the way. An eighteen-wheeler mangled the trailer hitch. And Dad and Michelle parted company for a while—he following the arrow on a detour sign, she driving around the sign and heading toward Canada. But the four of us ended up together at the edge of the Mojave. While waiting to cross it in the cool of the night, we watched Cass birth her kittens, while the sun painted the sky pale pink, then navy blue. As we fussed over the cat and complained about the heat, Dad towered over us, as big as the desert.

Early the next morning he delivered his brood—three kids and five cats—to Pasadena. (The kids went on to college; the cats did not.)

Long before our cross-country trek, my father had outgrown his life in Des Moines. Between pounding out fenders, he’d written his first novel on a legal pad. A year after the move to California, the Santa Barbara News Press hired him, on the strength of an article he submitted. He was their first African American reporter. He walked into the interview straight from his job as a mechanic at the local Ford dealership, his muscled six-foot frame stuffed into a pair of blue coveralls.

While working at the paper, he typed his second novel during lunch breaks, in the back of his camper.

He stretched the newspaper job from obituary writer into outdoor columnist. Every week, he expanded Gone Fishin’ beyond the expected descriptions of the best camping spots and the latest model boats. His readers got to know his old Uncle Russell in Ottumwa, and his brother Al, a TV weatherman in Des Moines. When Uncle Russell got sick, he received hundreds of get-well cards from all across the country. I suspected then that Dad might be more than just the guy who grounded me.

After a ten-year stint as newspaper columnist, he transformed himself into freelance writer and then again into published author, with five books to his credit. He supplemented his income by teaching memoir writing through adult education. And that’s how he became a guru. Others taught; Dad cheered, encouraged, cajoled, nudged, nagged, poked and mesmerized. One of his students described the classroom experience as a cross between a quilting bee and a revival meeting.

Repeaters were common. Many took his course five years in a row. One returned fifteen times. On the rare occasions that illness kept him home, Dad learned that his substitutes had been greeted with surly expressions and sarcastic complaints. My father had groupies.

Over the thirty years he taught, he told his students to take more risks and write to their edge. After he died, a group of loyalists continued meeting, reserving an empty chair for him.

Decades later, I feel him pushing me too. Through divorce, lay-offs and career changes, he's challenged me to take a risk. When I’m typing against a deadline in the middle of the night, I catch sight of him standing at the edge of the Mojave. And I remember Dad driving toward yes.

Copyright © Dawn Downey. All rights reserved.

Dawn Downey, an essayist, finds inspiration in everyday situations. She writes about topics ranging from her pursuit of the perfect purse* to her search for the meaning of life--with jealousy, prejudice, guilt and inadequacy thrown in for good measure. She views them through the lens of a spiritual path that has wound through the teachings of the Buddha, around to non-duality, and has stopped for a while at devotion—a kinder, gentler relationship with the sweet goofiness that makes us human. She secretly wants to be a rock star, but since she can't sing, settles for reading her stories at coffee shops, galleries and book stores, anywhere there's a microphone and an audience. She lives in Kansas City with her husband, aka groupie, roadie and driver. He spoils her rotten. She reciprocates. 

Dawn Downey is the author of “Stumbling Toward the Buddha, Tripping Over my Principles on the Road to Transformation.” www.dawndowney.com