Memoir and Metaphor
In which I present a geographical metaphor in my memoir
In the middle of a farm field in north-central Kansas is the geodetic center of North America. This is the exact center of the continent from which maps are made.
I lived near there when two life-changing events started my life unraveling. On back-to-back days, my father-in-law died in Virginia, and my brother committed suicide in Portland, Oregon.
This is both the beginning and the center of my story. These are the inciting incidents that create the initial push of the snowball to roll down hill for a decade.
We flew from coast to coast to coast, taking care of the business of death and family, suffering trauma after trauma, only to return to the middle of the country, separated from it all, having to relive the traumas in our minds, like reverberating echoes.
Upon returning, we took a trip to the geodetic center of the north america. Of course, at the time, I wasn’t thinking that I’d write a memoir in 15 years and that I should save this moment to use as a metaphor for my book. One doesn’t collect life’s moments in just that way.
But in writing my book, I see the metaphorical implications of our life’s events with a prism-like clarity, glittering as if looking into a crystal, fragmented and blinding all at once.
The repeated traumas are tucked away into stream of consciousness, an after-the-fact rendering as we’re standing in the center of the continent, physically as far away as possible as we could get from these events, yet emotionally, they gnaw at our central core.
With that introduction, I share with you from my memoir: Chapter 16 - Geodetic Center. (Comments appreciated about the writing.)
(This is where many substack writers will put up a paywall. I haven’t done that as of yet. But I encourage you to subscribe, so I can keep up my efforts to write and find a publisher for my memoir through the querying process. Thank you for your support! I hope you enjoy this offering from my memoir.)
16 – Geodetic Center
Didn’t see it
Musing upon my brother’s wreck
Didn’t see it coming
We were trapped by heat. The heat that overwhelms. Thunderstorms bloom like atom bombs in the distance. This heat cracks the earth into deep, dry crevices. This fucking heat.
We piled the dogs into the back of the Rav4 and drove, took SR-24 west as far into the center of the country as we could, into the prairie, to the center of North America. Despite the blasting air conditioning, the dogs panted in the back seat, dripping spit it’s so hot. We don’t talk, there is no music. We drove past the Flint Hills near Manhattan with its prairie grasses that burn each spring, past the largest ball of twine in Cawker City, past nearby Lucas, Kansas and the baroque Garden of Eden where the goth kids pilgrimage, to THE North American Datum, where a small, lonely plaque in a small park surrounded by corn fields on the plains of northcentral Kansas marks the geodetic center. The exact fucking center of North America. The furthest point from the East coast, where QT’s mother lives in Sterling, Virginia, and the furthest point from the West coast, where my family lives in Olympia, Portland, Los Angeles. We lived in the middle of nowhere, separated by half a continent from what we know, from who we are, she to the east, me to the west. And it was hot. A heat that kills. The center cannot hold.
It’s September, and August heat yet clutched the land. The shores of Lake Perry and the river Kaw bore the refuse of summer: cans, wadded napkins, torn condom wrappers, fishhooks, tangled fishing line in the dry rocks. The vacationers had departed. The air was heavy with the throbbing of cicadas, no relief from the noise or heat. Cicada molt stuck to trees, sidewalks, window screens, like abandoned carcasses from a forgotten war. To be alive was to sweat. There was no relief from this death.
It’s so hot the dogs didn’t want to get out of the car. Reluctantly, they jumped out to pee and leapt back in the car out of the dangerous sun.
We read the plaque.
KANSAS
(SUNFLOWER) HISTORICAL MARKER (SUNFLOWER)
GEODETIC CENTER
OF NORTH AMERICA
On a ranch 18 miles southeast of this marker a bronze
plate marks the most important spot on this continent
to surveyors and map makers. Engraved in the bronze is
a cross-mark and on the tin point where the lines cross
depend the surveys of a sixth of the world’s surface.
This is the Geodetic Center of the United States, the
“Primary Station” for all North American surveys. It was
Located in 1901 by the US. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Later Canada and Mexico adopted the point and its
supporting system as the base for their surveys and
it is now known as the “North American Datum.” What
Greenwich is to the Longitude of the world, there-
fore, a Kansas pasture is to the lines and boundaries
of this continent. It must not be confused with the
Geographic Center of the United States: which is 42 miles north, in Smith County.
Erected by Kansas Historical Society and State Highway Commission
The corn fields melted in our vision even with the windows up and the air conditioning on full. It was difficult to breathe. The dogs panted as if they had run a marathon. And in the center of Kansas, of the country, of the continent, in the exact location of our souls, we took stock
and after they turned the machines off, they said tell your stepdaughter to fly out now it’s time, you will speak with the grief counselor and the minister, there is a chapel, they whispered, poor man his brother, and the minister worked Lynn into the prayer around Edward’s bedside, said, and Lord give us not more than we can bear for Lee is here for Edward and now says goodbye to his only brother, your own servant Lord, and after grief counselors and hospital administrators and hospice said, he was so kind, and Mady scoffed, can I drink beer now, and QT, sure mother you can do what you want you’re a rich woman, and Mady, oh goodie I’ll have beer there is some in the refrigerator in the garage, she says “GAR-ahhj” with her Belgian accent despite 60 years in the country, she beamed and we shopped, made the rounds of big lots and costco and splurged at red lobster, and Mady, get what you want my treat oh watch your purse ah-nuh, there’s a black family just walked in, still so shockingly casual with her racism for one who saw people jump out of burning buildings as the nazis marched into Belgium as she clutched her pocketbook, QT said, mother stop, and Mady, but it’s true they shoot at the birds and squirrels in my yard from across the street, and QT, mother stop no one’s going to steal your purse at red lobster all a bit too loud
and I, you have to go QT, they’re expecting you, and she, but mother will be alone, and I, the doorbell hasn’t stopped all day between the neighbors and visiting angels and the mormons, your mother has seen more people today than she’s seen in a year, I need you to go, it’s my brother, and Mady, but I’ll be all alone, who will take care of me, and QT, okay, okay, I’ll go
and the flight was only half full, we took turns trudging up the aisle, most everyone under blankets spread out taking up three seats and the lavatory was so small, but she bent over to press her face against her ankles, and I stood behind her pumping stress until the familiar moan and wetness, and QT, you go first, I’ll follow, no one the wiser though there would be no plaque for this mile high club
and the nightmarish service, my brother’s face looming large on the photo display in the bare church, the slideshow of family pictures, we sat in the back while Jody and the kids sat in the front pews, and the preacher said a special prayer for Lynn’s family, for long-suffering Jody and his four children Anna and Seth and Elly and Mary and his two grandsons, but what about his family? Aunt Marilynn said into my ear, we’re not family? we were forgotten in the back, the mother that bore him and the father that raised him and the aunt who took home movies of him and the sisters he played with and the brother he shared a room with, the photos not reflecting the life he led growing up but a current version, the serious bible scholar, the reverend, the jogger and dog lover, grown gaunt, bespectacled, ill, but still the dark red hippie jesus beard
and everyone spoke, even the psychiatrist--he had an illness as sure as cancer and we couldn’t reach him–who was shaken up because he was doing so well, speaking on behalf of NAMI and the other patients loved him so (and I thought, they could have done something, something else, not this tired “he-was-in-a-medicine-change” bullshit “it-happens-during-the-medicine-adjustment”)–and my sister read her poem and his kids spoke and his only son fiddled with a pack of cigarettes and spoke, and there was food, there must have been food
and after, we visited Jody in her mourning bed among the quilts mom made and she smiled and cried and got out of bed and said she must rest but go to the hotel and have fun with Kyle and Logan, and in a hawaiian bathing suit with faded blue hyacinths, I threw Kyle and Logan one after the other in the courtyard marriott pool like my brother threw me when I was small while the grandparents and aunt watch, wrenching their fingers not able to smoke in the steamy glassed-in pool area, where Kyle grabbed my hand and thrust it into the air, the great nephew I had only just met, can see the resemblance in the eyes and hair and skinny frame, that haunted Hornbrook look of bone and blood passed from mother and father to son to daughter to son, and he thrust my hand in the air, shouting--mom! mom! he has grandpa’s hands--and I looked at my pruned fingers and don’t see my brother, but outside, through the steam and fogged-up windows, in the woods, his ghost, like Hamlet’s father’s, trudged
and after, he left a note and presents (he knew! he planned it!) everyone got a Frisbee, claimed it was his favorite, and dad got his baseball glove, a mitt he called it, and there was a note to Jody sounding upbeat--see you later in heaven dearest--after all that, after the Job-like 13 years, committed, still obedient to his God despite the hellfire raging through his soul, renting everything apart, drowning him in the pits of despair, in the Willamette River . . .
and after, the sisters said, we want to see the bridge yes let’s go see the bridge is it weird to want to see the bridge? yes, it’s weird, I think, we don’t say so to each other but we went, in two cars, and I drove in the dark in my grief and QT entertained from the front seat and the sisters drove in the other car, I didn’t know the roads and followed along and looked up in the darkness and saw the massive structure, which we circled under trying to find the bridge, the spot, the place where someone saw him and made a call—jumper! come quick--but we found the halfway house, his writing on the small desk in the long narrow room, a few knickknacks remained and we recognized his left-handed scrawl, it’s my scrawl too, and my sister’s eyes were covered with sunglasses even in the dark sunglasses won’t cover my glasses so my glassy eyes must blink away the tears and we drove to the spot, to the bridge with its falcons, with its arched frame visible even on that dark night, we slouched toward the bridge and each saw the grand spectacle slinking, lurking in the dark
and after, we returned to Mady in Virginia and again went to big lots and burlington coat factory and bed bath and beyond and costco and the grocery store and then home to sort through the papers and the 6,000 books all neatly categorized on the shelves labeled with one of those handheld press punch labelers science fiction, fantasy, geography, astronomy, history, and on, and the small interior room of the library covered by a confederate flag behind which was an island in the center with filing cabinets on top and mysterious drawers and shelves surrounded by a square of books and all the national geographics neatly bound and labeled and 4 x 6 index cards cross-referenced each story in each issue and smaller index cards with the weather temperature rainfall heat index by date going back thirty years handprinted meticulously neat and a trunk of every checkbook he ever had dating back to nineteen-fifty, fifty-four years of checkbooks, and highly varnished wooden boxes with checkerboard dark/light wood patterns and dovetailed corners, and handstitched rabbit sheathed rolls of silver dollars and coins, and bonds and more bonds the face value of which was more than one hundred thousand dollars, and Mady was a rich woman and QT saying that he had hidden money in that basement, tapping walls and looking in the rafters, quietly so mom doesn’t hear
. . . what did I know of Edward other than the things in that basement, the wood working equipment and large pickle jars with labels for each type of screw, and the two big fights, QT said he’d chase them around the house with a belt, Nara and she and he favored Nara, the daughter who may not be his own, favored for her artwork but was also cruel to her as well, the doubted paternity, while she, QT, was mother’s pet, and that first visit, that awkward Christmas, almost a year after she had fled Maryland for Kansas, and we drove back to have Christmas with Mady and Edward because that’s what QT did, and we got dressed up and it was awkward af as they say today, everyone stiff and giving presents no one wanted, ties and socks and little nothings, and then Edward bellowing one night near the end of the trip, he’s swindling you, if he’s a college professor, which I doubt, he makes far more money than you know, I overhear, want to tell him, I’m a graduate teaching assistant and make far less money than everyone knows and god the student loans, but Edward was the kind who knew everything and pushed all of QT’s buttons, he the one who told her, drunk on his front stoop when she was 17, sure you can come in, you can come back either married or not pregnant, and so she came back married and unhappy, fleeing later without her daughter, Denise, then only 2 ½ years old . . .
and later, after years of therapy, QT still greatly unhappy, making some progress in counseling but still unsettled, every month a new crisis, the revolving arguments at home, and I, QT, please, it’s not like that, quit fighting with me, I’m not your father, and she wrung her hands and looked at me with tear-stained face and blotchy skin and said, yes, I see now, you’re not him . . . her sight clearing for an instant and then clouding again almost immediately
and the fight at christmas with her father in virginia, when she fled the house--come on, we’re going!--and she drove for an hour at 90 mph in the icy December dark while I held onto the door handle terrified, Neesie in the backseat, quiet for once, and finally after an hour I said, slow down please slow down please, my knuckles white holding onto the door handle, and shaking I emerged from the car and walked around in front of the blinking yellow hazard lights and opened the driver’s door and she was crying and muttering to herself and I walked her to the passenger’s seat and got in the driver’s seat and said, never EVER will you drive like that again -- what were you thinking -- with me or your daughter in the car again, and I drove for the rest of our lives together until she was driving that one day . . .
and on her father’s bookshelf the horror, and the index cards of big words in the nightstand, that he works into incongruous conversation to impress, nonsensical and fanatical, and the book the horror with its gold embossed cover a black leather bound edition like a Bible with the simple words Mein Kampf and in the back written neatly on the flyleaf a mathematical formula looking like matrices, a calculus of hate, the answer to which is scrawled neatly in block letters underneath the formula following the equals sign God hates Jews . . .
and the next morning, mother, we need a break, we’re going to Georgetown and the museums for a day, it’s dark and on our way back, we stopped at an ABC store and she picked up little bottles of booze, not looking just taking one of each from the rotating caddy, and after we said goodnight we played darts in the basement and drank until the dartboard swam and we had loud, drunk sex to kill the stress, to find the feeling beneath the grief, beneath the horror, surrounded by books
and the day after, we shopped for an urn at the mortuary, a wooden box made the most sense, and Mady, you take him I don’t want him he was your father I lived with him for 50 years that’s enough, get him a wooden box, and QT and her mother laughed and laughed HA HA HAHAHAHAHA, and the mortician asked, which model, and Mady, the square one with the gold plaque on top HA HA HAHAHAHAHA, and they couldn’t stop, reached for tissues to dry their eyes from laughing, and I looked apologetically at the mortician, who smiled and said, it’s okay, everyone experiences grief differently, and they howled, HA HA HAHAHAHA, and said, the square wooden box can it be sent to Kansas I don’t want it in my house that’s too creepy, and QT, HA HAHAHAHA I told you I’d get you to Kansas, dad, you’ll like it out there
and back in Kansas after another flight, the answering machine, its red blinking light with calls of condolence, from work, and the ghostly voice of my brother--hello Lee, this is Lynn, I was just calling to say hi and see how you are doing. (sigh) I guess I’ll talk to you later. Love ya brother--and that was it, the electronic voice recording the time as August 15 at night, and I checked the records, that was the night, a call for help and the tears fresh and whole, I wasn’t here, I could’ve said something, but I wasn’t here, and QT, it’s okay baby, it wasn’t your fault, it wouldn’t have mattered, he struggled for so long
Didn’t see it coming
I wasn’t home to answer
I wasn’t home to
My nerves tonight . . .
It’s okay. Everything will be okay.
My brother’s death ushered in the season of loss and betrayal. They burn the Kansas prairies in April, the cruellest month. But it’s August when my mouth fills with the taste of ashes.
After a month of traveling, we moved as if swimming through molasses, through a sticky gel that distorted sight and sound. A monotony of days led to harrowing nights – my nerves tonight, headache, always my nerves.
At night the woods outside our sliding glass door were black, but I sensed him pacing silently like Hamlet’s father’s ghost, flickering and then disappearing again. In the day, the woods were still, except for the ceaseless throb and hum of the cicadas. I felt the constant pull of the answering machine.
In Kansas, there was nowhere to escape except inward. QT burrowed in, playing Bejeweled for hours, her eyes glossed over like blank discs. As the weather changed, I read late into the night, dusted off the copy on my nightstand of Anna Karenina.
After work every day, I listened to the answering machine. Was it in his voice?
We grieved alone, separated from Mady in Virginia, who grew angrier with each phone call, and from my family on the West Coast, my parents physically weakened by my brother’s death. Where was the greater purpose?
Jody called as the weather changed. Jody was unable to rest and properly grieve while also being Mary’s sole caregiver. Would we take Mary for a few months?
We were jolted out of our etherized existence.
Of course, Jody. Lynn would’ve wanted that. We can’t erase the tragedy, but we can do that.
Thank you for reading. If you are familiar with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, you will no doubt recognize bits and pieces, echoes of Eliot throughout this chapter. Some of the poetic phrasings are taken from other works by Eliot, especially “Ash-Wednesday."
If you enjoyed this, please share it with others. As always thank you for your support. Enjoy the fall weather, whether your weather where you weather is weathering you or whether you are waiting for cooler weather. Today’s alliteration is brought to you by the letter: W.
For me, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!