!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
In the ER, they shaved my temple before sewing up the two-inch long gash left by someone who must not have been wearing sneakers. The nurses were thoughtful enough to collect the hair after they cut if off, so I got to carry it back home in a paper bag.
“It doesn’t look that bad, with your head band over it,” Eddie observed when we stopped for lunch in Indianapolis. He was still dreading the return to Clifton, rehearsing possible cover stories. “Maybe we could say you fell down the stairs outside the convention or something?”
“Eddie, there’s no way around it. It’s really mostly my fault, I should have taken better care of myself, watched what was happening and gone with the crowd, instead of trying to fight my way out.” Eddie needn’t have worried. I’d already called, given them the news about my head, keeping quiet when they sounded angry, telling me to be careful, simply saying, “Yes. mom, yes. Uh huh, all right, I will.”
Mom and Dad had of course watched the news, seen the beatings by the police that night, and knew we had been outside when the riot erupted. Any anger or blame they might have felt was overwhelmed by their relief we were both basically all right. I got hugs, and all Eddie got was a soundless reprimand, a click of the tongue and shake of the head from Dad. Eddie went up stairs to wash up, call Arlene.
Mom was first to speak. “Janie, was it worth it? I know how deeply kids feel things, how it all seems so important. When I was your age, in Cleveland, the depression was just starting. We didn’t have any time, didn’t have the luxury of complaining, that wouldn’t put food on the table.”
I started to object. She held up her hand. “No, wait. Hear me out. I don’t want to see you lose the chance you’ve got. You are a special person, Sarah Jane. Linda’s still, probably always will be, a flighty self-centered play-girl. George, he doesn’t seem to have any real ambition. Eddie – Eddie’s very smart, and he’s got a beautiful family, he’s such a wonderful person. But I don’t see him changing, he is what he is. You…you, sweetie, have always had your eyes forward, always knew what you wanted in life. Even when you were five, we couldn’t tell you what to do. And you’ve made me – made us,” she added, glancing over at D, “so very proud, the choices you’ve made, the things you’ve done. I don’t want to see you throw that away, don’t want to lose you to people who just want to use you…to use you as, I don’t know, cannon fodder.”
“Well, what should I do? There’s so many things wrong with the world…”
“You can’t fix them all,” Dad interjected. “What was it you told me that French guy said, in the book you told me about last year. What was his name, Vult-something?”
“Voltaire.”
“Yeah, that guy. What did he say?”
“‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin.’ We’ve got to tend our own garden.”
“Well, maybe that’s what you should keep doing. A little more topsoil, don’t forget to water, and fertilize.”
That night, as I tried to avoid laying the left side of my head on the pillow, I couldn’t sleep. Part of it was the pain, the headache. But part wondering just what my garden was. My head was spinning, and not just from those pulsating stitches above my ear. Feeling like Dorothy, watching the tornado spin outside her window, I saw my mother, my friends at school, Professor Kagan and his lectures about child development. I saw laughing kids, angry marchers, dying leaders. I saw a boy with beautiful hands who seemed so sure of where he was going, who said he loved me, and whom I knew I loved. Over and over, I thought, “I just don’t know…I just don’t know…who’s going to tell me?”
I don’t know when I finally dozed off. I was still asleep at noon when Mom knocked on the door.
“Janie? Janie, you got a letter. From Mike.”
Janie – The most amazing thing just happened. Here’s the story…
My father grew up in Miles City, on the windy high plains of Eastern Montana. He told us of skating on the frozen Yellowstone River in the winters, riding horses through the draws, and watching his father work as a deputy sheriff, banker, and rancher. His career took him and my mother first to Boston, then to Cincinnati, neither of which is much like Montana, or G’s Iowa, for that matter. I’ve told you about the long car trips we’d take each summer, to Seattle or California, where their families had ended up after WWII. On the way, whenever we drove through the Rockies, my father would light up, and seem more alive.
After that trip to Sun Valley last Christmas, when we got hooked on skiing, he and G decided to go to Colorado this summer, to look for a retirement spot. They’d decided they wanted some place with land, where they could see and be in the mountains, where people would come and visit them, not the other way around. We looked outside of Boulder, in Vail, and along the continental divide near Dillon. We’d spent several summer vacations in Aspen, hiking the mountains, trying to fish, admiring the scenery. Jack thought he’d go back through there over Independence Pass on the way to Glenwood Springs. As we were driving down into town, we heard on the radio a real estate ad pitching Snowmass, a new ski resort going up at the base of a mountain eight miles outside of town. We drove up to the village (set on the side of the hill), still very much under construction.
We sort of parked in the middle of the beginner ski slope, amidst the debris and dirt, while Jack walked to the office, saying “Wait here, I’ll be right back. I just want to see what this is all about.”
Just like that first morning skiing in Sun Valley, he came back about an hour and a half later all excited, saying “I want to take you to this lot we’re going to buy.”
Our jaws dropped to the car floor. My father NEVER buys anything without thinking for two months, comparing a thousand prices, and making sure he isn’t being swayed by the emotion of the moment. What he’d done during those 90 minutes was take a jeep trip with the salesman to the last of 14 five acre lots. Now he wanted us to see what he was so excited about.
We got there after 15 bone-cracking minutes in the jeep, and stopped on a ridge looking over a mountain valley five miles wide and long. To the south we had an unimpeded view of all four Aspen ski mountains. Snowmass, the closest, spread out before us covering half the sky, rising from the valley floor of 8000′ to 13,400’ at the top. To the east were several Colorado Rockies of the granite sky-scraping variety, still with a little snow in clefts and shaded gullies. To the west, thirty miles away, was the continental divide, with Mts. Massive and Elbert, the highest points in the state, peaking over the ridge line. Red and Smuggler mountains, which rise 3000 feet out of Aspen, dominate the middle view. A ridge to the north fills the foreground, horses grazing in the ranch meadow below. We saw at once what had entranced him.
Imagine an English spring day, shimmering green after a shower; clouds building to thunderheads with fuzzy-bottomed anvils; blue so deep (less air up there to lighten the sun) you think you’re looking into a mountain lake; and scrubby little man-sized oaks everywhere,with leaves like hands. Quiet and rustling wind, through the little aspen grove down the gully to the south. A perfect place to rebuild a life.