I have offered Gwen Goodyear my counseling services for both kindergarten classes. We are still weighing whether to have an all-school assembly, a kindergarten-only gathering, or a parent forum to collectively process this traumatic event. I’d like to hear your feedback.
Sincerely,
Helen Derwood, PhD
So you understand fully, here’s how freakish the weather was that morning: it was the first time since 9/11 that ferry service was suspended.
Mom and I had breakfast at Macrina, then hit Pike Place Market for our usual Saturday rounds. Mom waited in the car while I ran to the flying fish guy for salmon, Beecher’s for cheese, and the butcher for dog bones.
I was going through an Abbey Road phase because I had just read a book about the last days of the Beatles, and I spent most of breakfast telling Mom about it. For instance, that medley on the second side, it was originally conceived as individual songs. It was Paul’s idea to string them together in the studio. Also, Paul knew exactly what was going on when he wrote, “Boy, you’re going to carry that weight.” It’s about how John wanted the Beatles to break up, but Paul didn’t. Paul wrote, “Boy, you’re going to carry that weight” right at John. He was saying, “We’ve got a good thing going. If this band breaks up, it’s all on you, John. You sure you want to live with that?” And the final instrumental at the end, where the Beatles trade off leads on guitar, and which has Ringo’s only drum solo? You know how it always seems like this tragic, intentional farewell to the fans and you picture the Beatles dressed like hippies playing that last part of Abbey Road all looking at one another, and you think, Oh, man, they must have been crying so hard? Well, that whole instrumental was also constructed by Paul in the studio after the fact, so it’s just a bunch of fake sentimentality.
Anyway, when we got to the ferry dock, the line was all the way out the loading lot, under the viaduct, and across First Avenue. We had never seen it that long. Mom parked in line, turned off the engine, and walked through the pelting-down rain to the booth. She returned and said a storm drain on the Bainbridge side had flooded the ferry terminal. Three boats were backed up, full of cars waiting to unload. It sounded totally chaotic. But all you can do when it comes to ferries is get in line and hope.
“When’s that flute performance?” Mom said. “I want to come see you.”
“I don’t want you to come.” I was hoping she’d forgotten about it.
She dropped her jaw all the way down.
“The words to it are too cute,” I explained. “You might die of cuteness.”
“But I want to die of cuteness! It’s my favorite thing, to die of cuteness.”
“I’m not telling you when it is.”
“You are such a rotter,” she said.
I popped in a CD of Abbey Road, which I’d burned that morning, and cranked it. I made sure only the front speakers were on because Ice Cream was asleep in the back.
Of course, the first song is “Come Together.” It starts with that great weird “shoomp” and the bass part. And when John started singing “Here come old flattop…,” what happened, but Mom knew every single word of the song! Not just every word, but every cadence. She knew every “all right!” and “aww!” and “yeaaaah.” And it kept going, song after song. When “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” started, Mom said, “Yuck, I always thought this was totally sophomoric.” Still, what did she do? She sang every single word of that, too.
I hit the pause button. “How do you even know this?” I demanded.
“Abbey Road?” Mom shrugged. “I don’t know, you just know it.” She unpaused the CD.
When “Here Comes the Sun” started, what happened? No, the sun didn’t come out, but Mom opened up like the sun breaking through the clouds. You know how in the first few notes of that song, there’s something about George’s guitar that’s just so hopeful? It was like when Mom sang, she was full of hope, too. She even got the irregular clapping right during the guitar solo. When the song was over, she paused it.
“Oh, Bee,” she said. “This song reminds me of you.” She had tears in her eyes.
“Mom!” This is why I didn’t want her to come to the first-grade elephant dance. Because the most random things get her way too full of love.
“I need you to know how hard it is for me sometimes.” Mom had her hand on mine.
“What’s hard?”
“The banality of life,” she said. “But it won’t keep me from taking you to the South Pole.”
“We’re not going to the South Pole!”
“I know. It’s a hundred below zero at the South Pole. Only scientists go to the South Pole. I started reading one of the books.”
I wiggled out my hand and hit play. Here’s the funny part. When I burned the CD, I didn’t uncheck the thing iTunes defaults to when it asks if you want two seconds between songs. So when it came to the awesome medley, Mom and I sang along to “You Never Give Me Your Money,” then “Sun King,” which Mom knew, even the Spanish part, and she doesn’t even speak Spanish, she speaks French.
And then the two-second gaps started.
If you don’t understand how tragic and annoying this is, seriously, start singing along to “Sun King.” Toward the end, you’re singing all sleepy in Spanish, gearing up to start grooving to “Mean Mr. Mustard,” because what makes the end of “Sun King” so great is you’re drifting along, but at the same time you’re anticipating Ringo’s drums, which kick in on “Mean Mr. Mustard,” and it turns funky. But if you don’t uncheck the box on iTunes, you get to the end of “Sun King” and then—
HARSH DIGITAL TWO-SECOND SILENCE.
And during “Polythene Pam,” right after the “look out,” it — GAPS OUT — before “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.” Seriously, it’s torture. During all this, Mom and I were howling. Finally, the CD ended.
“I love you, Bee,” Mom said. “I’m trying. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
The ferry line hadn’t moved. “I guess we should just go home,” I said. It was a bummer because Kennedy never wanted to spend the night in Seattle because our house scares her. Once, she swore she saw a lump in one of the rugs move. “It’s alive, it’s alive!” she screamed. I told her it was just a blackberry vine growing through the floorboards, but she was convinced it was the ghost of one of the Straight Gate girls.
Mom and I headed up Queen Anne Hill. Mom once said the ganglia of electric bus wires overhead were like a Jacob’s ladder. Every time we drove up, I imagined reaching my fanned fingers up into the web and pulling them through the roof in a cat’s cradle.
We turned into our driveway. We were halfway through the gate. And there was Audrey Griffin walking up to our car.
“Oh, boy,” Mom said. “Déjà vu all over again. What is it now?”
“Watch out for her foot,” I said, totally joking.
“Oh, no!” Mom’s voice kind of barfed out the words. She covered her face with her hands.
“What?” I said. “What?”
Audrey Griffin wasn’t wearing a jacket. Her pants were covered in mud from the knee down, and she was barefoot. There was mud in her hair, too. Mom opened her door without turning off the car. By the time I got out, Audrey Griffin was screaming.
“Your hillside just slid into my home!”
I was like, what? Our yard was so big, and the end of our lawn was so far down, I couldn’t see what she was talking about.
“During a party,” Audrey continued, “for prospective Galer Street parents.”
“I had no idea—” Mom’s voice was all shaky.