Tell Me A Story….a family tale, founded in truth but no doubt softened and changed through memory, loss, time and retelling.
***********
“Tell me a story…”
“Which one? Do you want me to read from the travel book?”
My older sister and I both dreamed of escaping life with our mother and the old travel book from a second hand book store was one of our favorites. At night we would snuggle in bed together as she read the stories again and again. We promised each other that one day we would sail away to Australia where we would grow rich digging for opals and then on to India where we would ride brightly painted elephants.
“Tell me about my father.”
“He left.”
“But why?”
“That’s a sad story, are you sure you want to hear it again?”
I nodded.
She was actually my half sister…the child of my mother’s first marriage. I had heard the tales of that disastrous union whispered about many times by my mothers siblings. He had passed…..whatever that meant I would not understand for years to come, but I knew it wasn’t good because adults only spoke of it in hushed voices with frequent head shaking and eye rolling. I was the product of my mother’s second or third attempt depending on which of my relatives was counting and whether or not they thought I was listening.
For the most part my mother considered her marriages a forbidden topic so I had to gather as much information as I could from bits and pieces. My sister and eavesdropping on adult conversations were my prime sources.
My sister remained silent and looked at me thoughtfully as she slowly shook her head.
“Mama says he left because he found another family with a little girl who’s nicer than me,” I blurted forth retelling the only reason my mother ever used.
“Do you believe that?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Then why did he leave?”
“Why do any of them leave?” she replied with an answering shrug.
“So,tell me about my grandpa.”
He had died when I was very young and I had only the faintest of memories. The smell of tobacco and bourbon and the lapel pin he always wore when I was cradled in his arms were stronger memories than his face or voice.
“He was crazy,” she pronounced.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m older, I remember.”
“How do you know he was crazy?”
“We almost didn’t get to bury him because he had to be buried with a sea shell. Your father had a hard time finding one. Mama said your grandpa was going to rot.”
“That doesn’t mean he was crazy.”
“Everyone knows God wants lilies, not seashells,” she insisted. “Everyone is supposed to be buried holding a lily, not some stupid shell. Read the Bible. God loves the lilies of the field. There’s no mention of sea shells.”
“Maybe Grandpa wanted God to know he loved the ocean.”
She shook her head.
“Maybe Grandpa wanted God to make him a ship’s captain in his next life,” I added hopefully.
“Maybe he was just crazy,” she said.
“Grandpa was Irish,” I said, twirling around and doing my best to do some sort of Irish jig.
Again she shook her head. “He only sounded Irish. He learned English from an Irishman. Your grandma was Irish. He was Basque,” she pronounced firmly.
“Basque? Who are Basques?”
“You remember the picture of Guernica in the travel book. Franco bombed them just to see if aerial bombing would work. They’re people no one wants.”
My face fell as my heart sank,”Like me?”
“Like us,” she said curling her arm out to her side inviting me to snuggle close as she pulled the travel book from the nightstand.
*****
When I was seven I briefly saw my father again. He said very little about his new family; only slightly acknowledging their existence and their absence on some trip. He spoke even less about his marriage to my mother. I sat silently on the bed looking through his cuff link box and matching up the pairs in a circle around me. At the bottom of the box was my grandfather’s lapel pin. I held it up.
“Why don’t you wear grandpa’s pin?” I asked.
“I can’t,” he said, “I never made the walk.”
I didn’t think to ask questions like “when?” or “where?” or “why?”
I was seven, still without the social graces of an adult and concerned only about the physical object I held in my hand. So I asked, “Can I have grandpa’s pin when you die?”
My father paused and looked solemnly at me. “You may have it but you must promise me that you will never wear it until you make the walk.”
I crossed my heart with a giant X.
Years would go by before I saw or even thought of the pin again.
Over forty five years later and almost twenty five years after my father’s death a woman called my home. “My name is Ann,” she said. “The man who was your father was my dad.”
I was struck by the words which reflected not only my years of seeming abandonment but her sense of entitlement so succinctly.
“He’s dead.”
“Yes, I know,” I replied.
“My mother died recently,” she continued. “She left several things for me to pass on to you. Let me know when you can come to Kansas City and I’ll have them ready for you. Don’t wait too long . I don’t want to hang onto this stuff forever.” She gave me her phone number and address and hung up without even a goodbye.
Two months later I called and arranged to meet with her. Her house was small and unkept and the glass in which she served me tepid lemonade looked like it hadn’t seen soap or hot water in months if not years. The floor was littered with small bits of colored thread left from quilting multiple projects as well as a generous scattering of cat hair. I think I counted seven, maybe eight as they darted around corners and snoozed silently on scattered cushions.
From another room she produced a tired cardboard box containing three old books, a rock hammer, a blue stool, a croquet mallet with a handle short enough for a leprechaun…..Had it once been mine? I wondered but I had no recollection.
The final item was an envelope which contained the negative of my father’s high school graduation picture and my grandfather’s lapel pin. I thanked her and attempted to try to converse, to find some common ground. After less than ten minutes of awkward conversation she said, “Well, that’s all of the stuff I have for you. Do you need help loading it?” She stood up and moved towards her front door. I got the message. I assured her that I could carry the box and thanked her again for the items as I left.
Two blocks away I pulled the truck over to the side of a small suburban street. I examined the items again. What a strange collection I had inherited. Why these things? I wondered. The stool made no sense whatsoever. The rock hammer I faintly remembered my father using as he looked for bugs….he had been an entomologist. Most of books were about someone named Topper and according to the covers they were risqué and bawdy….by 1940 standards I supposed. I turned over the croquet mallet in my hands once again. No tactile or visual memory rose to greet it so I tossed it back into the box.
I held the negative to the light. It looked surprisingly like my elder son. He might like the picture which could be made from it. I felt a moment’s sorrow that my father had not lived to meet his grandsons. But I was also overwhelmed by the sense of relief I felt at having met the woman who as a child had been “nicer ” than me. All those years I had envied her melted away to pity and sadness. Her life today was nothing I would have ever wanted. Had it ever been? I wondered. I was in reality the I lucky one. I only wished my half sister was alive so that I could have called and told her. She too would have laughed at the irony of it all.
Finally I picked up the small gold lapel pin whose image was more vivid than my grandfather’s face. Turning over the small scallop shell in my fingers I wondered what story it could tell. What did it mean to my grandfather? Other than a childish request almost fifty years ago, why did my father leave it to me? Back then I had promised him I would not wear it until I made the walk. What walk?
And in this way my Camino began.
********
After months, years, of talking with elderly relatives and family friends who were often so old that yesterday was an almost forgotten memory my grandfather’s story began to unfold.
My grandfather was Basque living in an area of France near the Bay of Biscay. As a young man he was very discontent with his life, often talking with an elderly local priest about his dreams. One day when he was in his mid twenties he announced to his parents that he would be neither a fisherman nor a shepherd. The priest had told him tales of an ancient pilgrim’s road across Spain to Santiago de Compestella. My grandfather insisted that he would walk this route to find God’s plan for his life.
Sometime in the mid 1890’s he left home walking west. He would never go home again. The journey would take him over a year, walking, sleeping in barns and monasteries, working as he could for meals and food.
Along the way he met an Irishman. Drunk one night in a Dublin bar, the Irishman claimed to have been shanghaied on a ship which sailed to Marseilles. From there he had walked to Paris and was now in the process of trying to walk back home to Ireland.
The Irishman spoke no Spanish and no Basque but he had learned a bit of French on his ship. My grandfather spoke Basque, Spanish and French so they were able to communicate in French. As they walked along together my grandfather slowly learned to speak Irish and English but with a strong Irish brogue. He also learned some funny and heartfelt Irish songs.
They eventually made it to Santiago but like so many pilgrims who walk together they were reluctant to say goodbye. The Irishman invited my grandfather to come home to Ireland with him and they sailed together. My grandfather lived with the Irishman’s family for a while, meeting a young girl whose family lived down the road.
The young girl and my grandfather married about 1901 and shortly thereafter immigrated to the United States. Upon arrival to help insure admission he gave the name of the long dead son of old family friends who had immigrated years before, and who like so many of the immigrants coming in that time had had their names changed…..losing forever the Basque name I would never know.
My grandfather was a pilgrim. Perhaps our family’s first but definitely not its last. In 2009 I walked the Camino de Santiago from St. Jean Pied a Porte to Santiago de Compestella for the first time. It took me six weeks. I walked through heat, cold, wind, rain and sunshine, meeting people from all over the world. Some nights I even walked by starlight under a Milky Way which snaked brightly across the night sky just as it had for my grandfather. I met strangers, people I would probably never even have spoken to in my everyday life. Those strangers became friends and the friends became family as we shared our miles, our meals, our stories….. our laughter and our tears. I walked for reasons I didn’t fully understand and along the way discovered parts of my soul I never knew we’re missing. My life is richer in ways I never could have imagined and I know I have been forever changed by “the walk”.
I now proudly wear my grandfather’s lapel pin and many years from now I hope that I too will be buried holding a scallop shell. Also one day I will pass on the small gold pin to a grandchild but first they must promise never to wear it until they have made the walk. And so it will go. May we always be a family of pilgrims.
Scallop Songs 