Teacakes and Shakespeare (Spring 2010)

This is an older piece I wrote and try to look at every now and again. I haven't gone back to it recently, so it should be interesting to compare the progress of my writing.

-----------------

I stood there, watching them eat their fried chicken and gulp down glass after glass of Kool-Aid, and I just couldn’t understand. Why are there no tissue boxes? Shouldn’t someone be crying? Shouldn’t we all be weeping? Where are the eyes sagging from exhaustion and sorrow? Where are the heads, bowed solemnly and reverently in respect? Why are there no hushed tones, no shuffling feet to break the sound of quiet mourning? There was talking, laughter, cheer and smiling, and I couldn’t stand it.

I didn’t know these people, though, one after another they came up and told me how long it had been since they had last seen me or how they were related to me. With hands held at knee or hip height they exclaimed, “oh baby, I haven’t seen you since you were this big!” Every last one of them had claimed to know my great grandmother, though not one seemed too broken up about the fact that we had buried her only an hour earlier. Such is the way of those “a little more than kin, and less than kind” or so I had labeled them all. It made me sick. It didn’t make me sick enough to turn down the chicken, cornbread and Kool-Aid when it was offered to me, but I was careful not to enjoy the feast too much. I sipped slower, trying to remember the taste as if it could somehow assure that I would never forget the day. Though the chicken was the best I had had in a while, I limited my pleasure to a polite “thank you” and a few comments about how good it tasted. All I had to do was remind myself of my Great Grandmother’s classic teacakes, and the delicacies before me would turn to soggy ash on my tongue. I left my brothers alone, not in the mood to fight and play as we usually did. I was nice, sweet, well behaved and all the other things the great granddaughter of such an amazing woman was supposed to be. All the while, the laughter and joy continued. It had taken Hamlet’s mother longer to marry after her first husband’s death than it had taken for them to forget their mourning.

An hour ago, maybe two, we had been standing on grass, all dressed in black and in sad little rows, though I could not seem to recall anything more specific. The final comments as they lowered her, reduced to static humming in my memory. I could not remember if the grass was wet, if it was raining, who was there or what people said to me as we left. All I remember is the feeling. The feeling that it should be raining, that there should have been lightning and thunder, that all the world should be crying its grief at the loss of such a one. Even as I write this, I can do little more than clutch at fragmented memories. I was unhappy I had to wear a skirt and sit in the front row. I was confused because they were singing songs I did not know. I was miserable because the sorrow seemed so thick I could hardly breathe, and as much as I tried to fight it, my eyes wanted to cry with them. I remember my aunt spoke. I remember my mother sitting next to me, reminding me to cross my legs. I remember red carpet and a white podium, but not much else. I suppose I figured that I could save her memory if I focused on what I was feeling, and not what I was seeing. If I could trap the feelings born from listening to my aunt struggle to speak as the words curled up in her throat and choked her to tears. If I could recall the shaky warmth of my mother’s hand as she squeezed my own, or the steady rhythm in which she rubbed my back, though I believed it more a comfort to her than to myself.  If I could remember the weight of the air on my lungs, the gravity of the moment on my shoulders, then I could also preserve the memories of my great grandmother.

I tried to talk less, thinking instead about everything I could remember about her: the velvety green chair, a white knit blanket draped over the top, placed directly across from her doorway so that she could see every part of her home. The glass candy jar, a grandmotherly staple, filled with orange slices and Werther’s Original Caramel Candies. Her teacakes, a Dee Dee special that no one else would ever be able to match, were ever present on a special plate on the table, waiting to be shoveled into little mouths by eager hands. They were the best cookies in the world- thick like cake, buttery and sweet, filled with sunshine and hugs.

 Anyone can mix baking powder, flour, baking soda and sugar in a bowl. Anybody can add eggs, buttermilk, sugar and melted butter, but no one can bake teacakes like DeeDee. My great grandmother never used fancy recipes or exact measurements. She always used “enough.”A dash of this, a few cups of that, lots of sugar and enough of that. That was how she worked, and every batch was heavenly perfection. She always claimed to “just know” how much she needed to add. DeeDee had a way of just knowing a lot of things. She knew that the best way to kill a snake in a vegetable garden, is to pick it up and snap its neck. She knows that the best way to send us home with a smile is to pack up a container full of cookies for the ride home. She definitely knew that three children were not always willing to sit still and listen to elderly wisdom after several hours of vehicular travel in a cramped car, but she loved on us, taught us, and fed us anyway.

Reading Shakespeare in eighth grade English, I found the story of my great grandmother’s death strewn across every page. Bittersweet memories filled my moments of silent contemplation, but the rest of the world did not feel inclined to join me in my solemnity, instead it carried on as it had every day before. Few bothered to ask why I was quiet, and if I told them I scarcely received a worthwhile response. All this made me even angrier. Hamlet’s rage rang in my ears like thunder and all I could see was the atrocity of an ignorant existence when one so great had passed away. No one paused, no one stopped, and no one cared, as if death carried no more weight than a hiccup, an inconvenience that lasted only a second.

Hamlet, again and again came to mind, though my great-grandmother had not been murdered, I could not help but feel they scorned and mocked her memory with their apathy. He stood as my reflection, a brother by suffering, though our backdrops differed. We stood together, watching the remnants of merrymaking and celebration soil the places that housed the sacred memories left from a loved one’s death. Our heartbreak was mutual, our anger justified, our silence shared. With Shakespeare as the bridge between us, I found a way to step back and see myself. My thoughts stained the pages of the play in the form of honest lines and soliloquies, and in it, I found my heart and my feelings.

“ I have of late- but wherefore I know not- lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the 
air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire- why, it appeareth no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me”

Nothing made sense to me and day after day I went home as dramatic and emotional an adolescent as ever. I could not find comfort in people, so I sought solace in my books.  I lost myself in them. He gave my jumbled and indecisive feelings an eloquent voice, and put my darker thoughts into action. Hamlet, so consumed by the pain, anger and betrayal he felt, was able to see nothing beyond his revenge. I didn’t want to go that route. I didn’t want to see myself become what Shakespeare predicted to be the fate of those obsessed with retribution. Just as Hamlet had, I watched people I once thought to be my friends turn traitor. I lost interest in the things that might steal my thoughts from my grandmother’s memory.  That which once brought me happiness became little more than a perfunctory task. In the midst of my descent into apathy, I found myself burrowing deeper into the worlds Shakespeare created. I stumbled on one that I had not yet read, Twelfth Night, one that would soon become my favorite. Between the characters marching across those pages, I found not only a commonality, but an epiphany.

“Feste: Good madonna, why mournest thou?

Olivia: Good fool, for my brother's death.

Feste: I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

Olivia: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

Feste: The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's
soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.”

These words, simple enough and humorously delivered, were what I needed to realize my won truth. What sense does it make to mourn over the ascension of a loved one to a better place? The wheels of my mind, once clumsily slipping past one another in fruitless toil, finally interlocked to settle upon this thought. To spend weeks mourning her passing is an affront to both her memory, and what I claimed to believe. What I saw at the reception after her burial was not a gross display of disrespect, but a collection of people remembering one they loved. Laughter filled the room because my great grandmother’s joy had once done the same. DeeDee had never been one for endless weeping or shuffling feet, but she loved dancing and singing, jokes and stories. I did not change overnight, but with time I came to really internalize my little epiphany. My family still makes teacakes to remember my great grandmother, but every bite is a joy and not a burden.  We spend the time enjoying each other, not wallowing in the past. We make memories that thick with butter and sugar, but I have to admit, they’ll never be as good as DeeDee’s teacakes.