The Flowers of Jamaica

So where did I leave off? We were sitting in the dining room of our inn in the Adirondacks when I began to zone in on the conversation going on between a mother and her young son at the next table. I gather that they were taking a different approach to vacationing in the Adirondacks; one that was focused on sight-seeing and taking in the history of the area, rather than outdoor adventures.


The mother was reading to her son from a guide book about the history of the Champlain area. He was all of 5 years old, so she would read a couple of sentences and then stop to interpret what she had just read.  As I listened in, I couldn't help but wonder what the little guy was getting out of this exchange. At one point she was reading about the first settlers to the area, and she punctuated the discussion by exclaiming, "They came here in 1612! 1612! Can you imagine that?" I had to restrain myself from chipping in, "No, he can't imagine that. 1612, 1812, 1970 - they're all pretty much the same to him. For all he knows, 1612 was the year you were born!"


You'll be glad to know that I restrained myself from commenting for three very good reasons: first, my comment was judgmental and rude; second, my comment would give away that I was eavesdropping; and last but certainly not least, I was in no position to criticize because many years ago another vacationer was probably telling a very similar story about Emma and me.

We were on vacation in Jamaica. Emma was 3 1/2 at the time. We had a wonderful time, and I give Emma much of the credit.  The trip was somewhat ill-fated right from the beginning, but Emma remained an enthusiastic and flexible traveler through travel trials that would have broken down much older and more seasoned travelers - her parents, for example.

The first "surprise" came when we arrived in Jamaica and hailed a cab to go to our hotel. Somehow I hadn't picked up on the fact that the resort I had booked was almost two hours away from the airport. Our cab ride was hair-raising. We had no car seat for Emma and no seat belts for ourselves as we traveled at a wildly uneven pace over unpaved, windy roads that did not appear to be governed by any laws, rules, or even common courtesies. Fortunately, we arrived safely at our resort and it met all of our expectations.

Things were going swimmingly until about half way through the trip when I got a terrible virus, or food poisoning, or something really awful, that meant that all I saw of Jamaica for the next 2 days were the bed and the toilet in our room. The illness was additionally stressful because I was pregnant with Sarah. 

I got better in time to enjoy one final day at the resort with Emma and Peter before we had to head home. We thought the  ride back to the airport would be much better than our arrival ride because the resort provided a coach bus to the airport each morning. We made sure we were on that morning bus, even though it meant we would arrive at the airport much earlier than we needed to. There was no way we were getting in a cab again.  It was not long after the bus departed from the resort that we learned that the only thing scarier than riding in a taxi on those windy mountain roads was riding in a coach bus. Add to that a handful of bus-sick fellow travelers, and you have a bus ride you will never forget - unfortunately!


It doesn't end there, though. We got to the airport only to learn that our flight had been delayed because of snowfall in NYC. Mind you, we were already very early for our flight, so the delay meant we had several hours to kill. We immediately assessed the situation and made a plan. There was no way we were getting back in a taxi or on a bus, so we were going to have to stick it out at the airport. The first priority was finding something decent (and safe) to eat after our long bus ride. I was just barely back on solid food, and reasonably (I thought) cautious about what I put both in my stomach and in Emma's stomach. But,  we were also starving, so I had to be more flexible than I would have liked to have been. We found things we thought would be okay to eat and settled down for a snack. Emma had been completely unfazed by the harrowing bus ride and now seemed to find the airport picnic a fun distraction. 

When we finished eating, we needed to find a way to entertain Emma both in the airport and for the plane ride home. In the couple of hours we had already spent in the airport, we had completely exhausted all the books and games we had brought, so I told Emma I would buy her a book at the gift shop. I'm not sure why I thought there would be a child-appropriate book in a Jamaican airport gift shop, but, of course, there wasn't. Emma happily picked up prospective books and magazines and flipped through pictures. I vigilantly watched her, quickly teasing away the books and magazines with pictures I didn't want her to see. This seemed to be good entertainment even if we didn't find a book to buy. 


At some point during this exploration, Emma came across a book of Jamaican flowers. It was a horticulture book, with beautiful glossy color pictures and detailed descriptions of the plants, including their scientific names, their origins, the conditions they needed to grow, etc. She was immediately taken with the beautiful pictures and wanted the book. It was expensive and not the least bit age appropriate, but after everything she had put up with, I thought the least I could do was buy her the book, even if she only looked at the pictures.


Emma loved that book. She sat quietly flipping through the pages while we waited for our plane to board, and as soon as we got settled into our seats she asked me to pull it out and read it to her. And that is what I was reminded of when I overheard the conversation between the mother and son at our Adirondack inn. As I read that horticulture book to Emma on the plane, reciting page after page of scientific names and preferred climates, I admit that I was a bit self-conscious about who might be over-hearing and what they must think. It must have sounded utterly preposterous. What 3 year old wants to know the scientific name for a lily and whether it prefers a tropical or temperate climate?

But, hopefully, they also over-heard us when, time and time again, Emma would flip the page to a picture of a flower she really loved and say, "Now read to me about this one, mommy." 


I wonder where that book is. I'll have to find it.

Surrounded by Memories

The weekend before last, Peter and I headed up to the Adirondacks to do some hiking before picking Sarah up from camp. The places we hiked, ate and slept were not places we had been with Emma, yet she seemed to be everywhere. We sat down at a restaurant one evening and a song came over the PA system that I hadn't heard since Emma and Sarah were toddlers. 

It was a song from the 40's that we sang in the Music for Children class I did with each of the girls when they were toddlers. The instructors had re-worked the lyrics of the original song so that the words now took you through all different ways of exploring the song's rhythm as you sang it. It would start out, "Well, it's a good day for clapping a song, well it's a good day for clapping along." Then you would stomp along, march along, run along, hop along, dance along, until it would end with, "Well, it's a good day, what could go wrong? Well,  it's a good day from morning 'til night, rock the moon, rock the moon in your sweet little room." 

I loved doing that class with Emma and she loved it, too. We sang that song time and time again, both in class and at home. But I must admit, I thought it was a Music for Children original. I didn't know it was based on another song until I was sitting in that restaurant in the Adirondacks last weekend and the familiar tune spilled out from the restaurant's speakers.

Hearing that rather obscure song from our past was already kind of a strange coincidence, but it got stranger. The next song that came on was Jean Pierre Rampal playing a movement of the Bolling jazz suite. Emma had learned to play all the movements from this piece on her flute in her freshman year of high school when she got interested in jazz music. Emma and my nephew even performed one of the movements for my mom's 90th birthday - Stephen on piano and Emma on flute. So when that song followed the first we heard, I immediately looked at Peter and said, "Do you hear what they're playing now?!"


But it didn't end there. The next song that came on was a jazz anthem that Emma had performed with her school's jazz band at a dinner dance held just  a little more than a month before she died. For the typical restaurant goer I would expect that the song seemed to have nothing in common with the songs that came before it, but for us there was one unifying theme for the music we were hearing - Emma. 


The next morning at breakfast it continued. First, another Emma song played. Next, a teenager strolled into the inn's restaurant wearing Emma's signature fedora. And after that, I overheard a parent-child conversation at the next table that brought back a vivid memory of traveling home from Jamaica with Emma when she was 3 1/2 years old. But maybe that's another story...

In the meantime, I was inspired to find out a little more about the song that inspired so many happy times in our Music for Children classes. It was called "It's a Good Day" and it was written by Dave Barbour and Peggy Lee and recorded by Peggy Lee in July, 1946. Click here to see a clip of Peggy singing her hit tune. See Emma? You're still teaching me new things about music.

And here's a link of Rampal playing Bolling's Baroque and Blue Suite for Piano and Flute. Emma played this very difficult piece beautifully. Her music was one of the very tangible ways she enriched our lives.


 

Scaling Mountains

Last week Sarah became an official 46’er. That means she has hiked up all 46 high peaks (4,000+ feet) in New York’s Adirondack Park. It’s a big accomplishment for anyone, but I think it’s an especially big accomplishment for Sarah, who has been determined that Emma’s death would not derail her. She had an almost instant resolve about that. It seems like it was less than a week after Emma’s death that Sarah was telling us, “We can’t let this destroy us.”  And, of course, she is right. That wouldn’t be right for us, and it would not be the way to honor Emma’s memory. One thing Peter, Sarah and I have all felt certain of was that Emma did not want to hurt us. The only thing more tragic than losing Emma, would be losing ourselves, too.

But there’s a difference between thinking, even knowing, that something is the right thing to do and doing it.  And that’s why I am particularly proud of what Sarah has accomplished. I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t traveled this trail can completely appreciate the emotional energy it takes to negotiate just an ordinary day after a profound loss. And what’s particularly ironic is that people are most likely not to appreciate how hard you’re working when you are working the absolute hardest. When you’re putting on a brave face, so as not spoil a party; when you’re screwing up all the concentration you can muster so that you honor your responsibilities at work or at school; those are the times when friends and family are most likely to observe, “See, they’re doing better.” But the truth is it’s not a straight path to better. It’s a long, rocky trail with lots of ups and downs and more than its fair share of switchbacks. Looking back at this time many years from now, I suspect Sarah will feel that climbing the grief mountain was more difficult and exhausting than all 46 Adirondack high peaks put together.

And Sarah’s 46’er is a bit of an accomplishment for me, too. Letting Sarah head off to camp last July, just 2 weeks after Emma died, might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, next to speaking at Emma’s memorial service. The five weeks that she was gone last summer were excruciating, but we knew it was where she should be. She climbed 20 mountains last summer – many that were not high peaks, and several repeats, but that summer put her at a total of 37 high peaks – just 9 left to scale this summer. And  when she got home from camp she had traveled over some important healing territory, too – territory she needed to travel on her own. Unfortunately, grief is a solitary journey.  Each person has to find his or her own trail and the ascents and descents are different for every person.

And frankly, letting Sarah go back to camp this year wasn’t easy either – because letting go and trusting that everything will be all right just aren’t in my repertoire anymore. Now, letting go and trusting are acts of will - invisible to the casual observer, I’m sure, but acts of will nonetheless. But that’s what I did. I let go, and I tried really hard to trust.

So Sarah’s 46’er is an acknowledgment that life does go on – not without struggle, not without heartache, but on. And every now and again, we get to look out at a really spectacular view and appreciate the journey. 

Notes Home

This past Sunday, Peter and I decided to take a hike up Rooster Comb Mountain before heading home from the Adirondacks after visiting Sarah at camp. Hiking in the Adirondacks is an experience our family has shared, although many of our hikes were done with other companions through our years at camp, and not with each other.


Emma would choose a canoe paddle over hiking boots, any time. Her favorite places in the Adirondacks were its rivers and lakes, not the mountains. She was a strong paddler and even stronger at shouldering a canoe over a portage. Nonetheless, she did her fair share of hiking and we took some hikes together that I will never forget.

The one that particularly comes to mind is a hike we took in the fall of 2006. Peter and the girls had a long weekend off from school because of a Jewish holiday, so we decided to head to Lake Placid for a couple of days. We left home after school on a Friday afternoon and arrived at our hotel well after night fall. When we awoke in the morning and pulled back the drapes of our hotel  window, we were stunned by the picture before us. We had left a Connecticut that was barely touched by fall, but had arrived in an area of northern New York where the trees were already fully bathed in the beautiful oranges, reds and yellow of fall.


Our friends, Sarah K. and Marian, were also in Lake Placid and we had made a plan to meet them and hike Whiteface and Esther, two of the 46 high peaks(4,000+ feet) in the Adirondack Park. We got an early, but still civilized 9 am start from our hotel and were starting our ascent up the mountain by 9:30 am. It was a beautiful, sunny fall day. The sky was the blue that everyone there describes as Adirondack blue and the air was cool and crisp, but not yet cold.  I couldn't imagine a better day for a hike.


Emma loved being in nature, so in some ways, hiking was a natural activity for her, but she hated the feeling of getting out of breath. She could easily psych herself out when she started getting that feeling. She would focus on her breathing, working harder at it in an effort to make herself breathe more easily. Of course, just the opposite would happen.  As she focused on her breathing it would become even more labored and uncomfortable and she would become very unhappy.


At some point in her camp career, a wise trip leader had proposed a solution to her breathing problems that Emma had found effective. The counselor had suggested that if she gripped a stick between her teeth it would keep her mind off her breathing and keep her mouth open in a way that would help regulate her breathing. I was skeptical at first, but I had to admit, it seemed to work for her.


As a result,  as we started up the mountain Emma immediately began scouring the trail for the stick that would get her through the steep parts of the hike. Once she found it, she tucked it away until she needed it, chatting happily as we made our way up the beginning part of the trail that was not terribly steep or challenging.

At some point we picked up our pace a bit and parted from Sarah K. and Marian who wanted to take a more leisurely pace and climb just one of the two mountains. By the time our hike was getting more challenging it was, fortunately, also becoming quite rewarding. As the grade increased there were multiple time when you came out to clearings that featured incredible views. At one point we left behind the zone of deciduous trees and entered a zone of mostly evergreens. It was not long after that that we began to feel the temperature drop, and a short time later we emerged on a ridge where we were surrounded by sparkling snowcapped shrubs and trees and were treated to a perfect view of the beautiful paint splattered valley below us. It was truly breathtaking. At that point, I needed a stick in my mouth, not to mention gloves on my hands and a hat on my head.


We arrived at the peak of Whiteface in time to celebrate with lunch. We had packed some sandwiches and fruit in our backpacks that we pulled out and began eating. Whiteface is an unusual peak to climb because it is accessible by car. As we ate our lunch, we noted fellow hikers who had been met with grand spreads by friends who had traveled by car. That was for wimps, we decided. We all liked our way better, even if the sandwiches were a little bit smushed and the fruit a bit bruised from tumbling around in our backpacks.


We only spent about a half hour at the top because we still wanted to make it up Esther before the end of the day. As we descended to the junction of the trail to Esther, we came to a hill of large rocks that we had encountered on the way up. Peter carefully picked his way down the rocks first, showing the rest of us a reliable path. Sarah went next and had not gone far when she tripped and started to roll, head first, down the hill of rocks. There was not much I could do but catch my breath and head towards her. Peter and I got to her at about the same time. She was shaken, but otherwise fine. In fact, I think she composed herself and was ready to keep going before either Peter or I was. In a few minutes, we were back on our way and, despite the scare we had all just had,  Sarah and Emma were still fully committed to making it up Esther before the end of the day.

Shortly after we reached the junction of the trail to Esther, we decided to take a small break to re-fuel. Peter whipped out some power bars he had packed for us, which led to one of the day's most memorable pictures: Emma sitting eating her bar with a big smile and a thumbs up, Sarah making the goofiest face she could muster, and me with a complete look of disgust on my face after just biting into a power bar for the first time. I think its safe to say that I will never be hungry enough to eat one of those again.

By the time we made it back down to the parking lot, we were tired, hungry, and at least one of us (me) was already sore. But we were also very satisfied. It had been a memorable day: a great accomplishment - 2 high peaks, great company, and great views.


Emma had also amassed her own little collection of souvenirs from the trip, which I was reminded of as we hiked up Rooster Comb this past Sunday. There was the mouth stick, of course, which helped her through the hike, but she also had a couple of beautiful leaf specimens, and several samples of birch bark that she had found along the way. Emma could not resist those pieces of birch bark that litter the trails on Adirondack hikes. Even though she knew it was best to leave these natural remnants where they were, she always had to steal away with one or two of the best pieces she could find. She would take these home and then, weeks or months later, one of us would get a sweet card or note written on birch bark stationery. She seemed to know that the words and the extraordinary medium on which they were written made these notes not just special, but eternal.


Emma liked to communicate through notes. As articulate as she was, it was through notes that she was often able to express her deepest emotions. I suppose many of us are that way. When Sarah was at camp in the weeks following Emma's death, she would often write notes to Emma, and each Sunday at the weekly Council Fire gathering, she would toss her notes into the fire, letting the smoke carry her messages to Emma, wherever she was. She found this act of communion and communication healing and wrote us during that summer to tell us that we should give it a try. We did, sharing our tear-stained letters with each other before tossing them in the fire for Emma, and watching them go up in smoke - all our questions, all the things we wish we had had a chance to say, all the convictions about who we knew her to be, and who we knew ourselves to be - up in smoke. And, amazingly, with that came a tiny glimmer of acceptance and healing, the kind that comes from being heard and understood.


So maybe that's why on Sunday when I climbed Rooster Comb, I felt compelled to look for the most perfect specimen of birch bark I could find.  I will write a note to Emma on it and then I will toss it in the fire, letting the smoke carry my eternal message of love to her. And I know that she will hear me and understand.