The Swing and the Mampoo Tree

Birthdays in my family were usually quietly celebrated at home. It was a day the celebrant didn’t have to do any of the usual household chores expected of them. Gifts were opened in the morning. At the end of the day a favorite dinner was prepared, there was a cake and, if we were lucky, there was ice cream too.

I’m sure all of that happened on my 10th birthday, but I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember any of the gifts I got either, except for one.

We were living up at Gift Hill on St. John. Probably after breakfast my father took us all outside. He had a surprise for me. We followed him out to the mampoo tree where he had things all set up, waiting for this moment. Then for the first and last time in my life, I saw him climb a tree. My mother was probably nervous watching him up there…would that branch hold his weight? Mampoos are softwood trees. There was a real danger the branch could break under him.

He shimmied out onto a limb and, with all of us directing him, carefully positioned two chains which were attached to a nice wide wooden board. My father’s present to me was a swing.

It wasn’t just a swing in a tree. One must close ones eyes and try to visualize where the swing was. The mampoo tree grew on a slight rise of ground with the hillside sloping away at its feet. The hill drops steeply down into the long, wide, deep valley of the Fish Bay ghutt. (Pronounced gut, it is a rocky wash, a gulley, where water flows when it rains.) The hills rise on the other side of the ghutt and continue east. The view is of the south side of the island. From the swing I could see the white cliffs of Reef Bay all the way to Ram’s Head Point. On clear days the conical hills of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands some 40 miles away, are visible. All of that is to the left. To the right, as far as the eye can see, unobstructed by islands, is the wide open expanse of the Caribbean Sea. I could watch the ocean change moods.

It was and still remains, a glorious and magnificent view.

Tree and swing were positioned in such a way that when I would swing it was like flying. I’d soar out into a great space, out over the valley, out over the hills swooping toward Reef Bay, and fly out over the vastness of the sea. Then, swinging back, I was embraced by the waiting, protective arms of the tree and brought safely back to earth. Out into space, back into arms – Out in space, back into arms.

I loved that swing and tree.

I thought of myself as a kind and benevolent queen who ruled over a fairy world inhabited by lizards, birds, insects and flowers. It was my job to keep everyone safe. It was my job to love that view, that tree, and all those creatures living within it. I knew no one would ever be able to love it as much as me. In my little girl mind, I thought without me to love that space, it would become lonely.

Two years later, when I was twelve, one of the greatest upheavals of my life took place. We had to move from Gift Hill. We had to move from St. John. We had to move to St. Thomas.

Oh, it was horrible! I didn’t want to move. Everything and everyone I loved was on St. John. And my kingdom…what would become of my kingdom? Who would love it? Who could love the tree, the view, the animals? Whose arms and legs would climb the tree and hug it? Whose ears would hear the rustle of lizards, the songs of birds, and understand their music? Who would protect it all and keep it safe? Who would keep it from being lonely? No one.

I agonized over it. I felt guilty for having to leave my kingdom. And I knew, deep in my heart, my kingdom would be just as lost and lonely without me and I would be without it.

What was I going to do? And then a solution came to me.

One day, not long before we left Gift Hill, never to return, I preformed a little ceremony and made a vow.

At the base of the mampoo tree there was a hollow space beneath the roots, a niche where I put special things like rocks and shells. It was also a place where I laid to rest dead lizards and birds I found. It was both a safe and a tomb, a shrine and an altar.

From somewhere I got a small round tin box with a lid, like a cookie or cracker tin. I went out to my tree and kingdom and this is what I did. I placed my hands on my chest, I cradled my heart in my hands and I carefully placed my heart in the tin. As I did that I told my tree and kingdom that I was leaving my heart with them. I told them they would never be lonely because I would always be with them. I vowed I would never take my heart away.

Then I put the lid on and took the tin and put it into the hollow place beneath the tree.

The consequences of making that vow, of leaving my heart at Gift Hill, made mysterious waves that washed up on the shores of my life, leaving behind odd bits of debris. I will only say that I was a kind of cripple because I was never able to be truly happy or content. There was always something wrong, I never quite fit anywhere I went later in life.

It was a long time before I realized how displaced and uprooted I was and why.

There came a day many years later that I stood in the place where once a tree had stood. It was gone by then, cut down, blown over in a storm….I stood there and knew I had to take back my heart else I would never be content no matter where I went or what I did.

I found my heart where I had left it, overlooking the view. I called it to me. I cradled it in my hands, I placed my hands on my chest and I put my heart back.

I told my kingdom I had to break my vow, because I could not live without my heart. With tears in my eyes I asked to be forgiven. Then I assured them a piece of me would always be with them, that I would never forget them, that I held the memory of my kingdom sacred and precious.

I felt a peace descend. The view, my kingdom, seemed to smile at me. I thought it would be sad, but it understood. We shared something between us that was ours and no one else’s. It is something that no one will ever be able to take away from us.

Today, right now, this instant, there is a little girl in her swing who is a benevolent queen of a mystical realm. She reigns eternally.

I am never far away from my kingdom nor is my kingdom ever alone. And somewhere in the soil are the chemical remains of tin box.

This picture was taken when I was about seven. To the right, in the back, is the mampoo tree. The brush around the tree had yet to be cleared, but the branch from which my swing was hung is visible. It arches away from the trunk, right to left, and seems to be bending down towards me. Note that I am wearing flip-flops. My mother is doing some weeding among the rocks. The two 55 gallon drums contain gasoline for the generator that gave us light at night and kerosene which was for our kerosene refrigerator. The dog is Happy, who deserves and will one day have, a book written about him.

A Random Thought

I was thinking about the full moon...and the eclipse last night (which we didn't get to see because of cloud cover) and that got me to trying to remember a poem I used to know as kid. I looked it up (the internet can be sooooo wonderful) and I found it. Not only that, I found the book it was in, a collection of poem edited by Blanche Jennings Thompson. It was the same book I had as a kid. Alas, it is one book from my childhood that did not survive. It was called Silver Pennies.

Here is the poem.

Yet Gentle Will the Griffin Be

by Vachel Lindsey

The moon? It is a griffin's egg,

Hatching to-morrow night.

And how the little boys will watch

With shouting and delight

To see him break the shell and stretch

And creep across the sky.

The boys will laugh. The little girls, I fear, may hide and cry.

Yet gentle will the griffin be,

Most decorours and fat,

And walk up the Milky Way

And lap it like a cat.

If Not Now...When?

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And, if not now…when?
Hillel the Elder

For some reason in the past few days, the last line of this quote has been...well, haunting me. It's been like a song or melody that gets stuck in your head and drives you nuts.

…if not now…when?

I knew I had the quote written down somewhere. I couldn't even remember who it was attributed to. Then, this morning I went right to it. It’s in an old spiral notebook of mine; a notebook from 1971. It is full of odd quotes, snatches of conversations I had with people, poems, snippets of memories, jokes. It’s not a diary, but when I read through it I am carried back to those times and remember the people, the places, the experiences that caused me to write down the words.

But why was I/am I being haunted by the words “…if not now…when?”

For the last several months I’ve been struggling with my latest novel. Past novels have come fairly easily. I’ve seen them in my head, like a movie, and I’ve written them down. One scene has followed another until…all of a sudden it’s finished.

But this one…this one is not cooperating. I can’t get a time-line together as it moves from past to present. Every approach I’ve taken to write the story has come up against a wall at the very same point. Because it isn’t coming “easily” for me, I haven’t wanted to deal with it. So, I’ve been procrastinating, putting off trying to figure it all out. My binder with all my notes has taunted me for weeks. I tried putting the binder away so I wouldn’t see it. But I so love the idea, the setting, the characters…it won’t let me go. The binder came back out of hiding.

Yesterday I thought, if not now, when? I sat down and struggled with it. A little tiny crack formed, a thin sliver of light was cast into the murky gloom.

“…if not now…when?”

There is no when, there is only now.

It's a new day. It's now.

A Random Thought

Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
A Zen adage

I don’t presume to know what exactly enlightenment is, but I think I have an idea about what it isn’t.

Enlightenment isn’t suddenly one day being different, as in, you no longer have to do the mundane chores of life. You still have to chop wood and carry water.

I think enlightenment has more to do with your attitude about doing the chore. If chopping wood and carrying water is a chore, something you have to do and don’t want to do, or don’t like doing, then I think enlightenment will be illusive. If, on the other hand, you are thankful be able to chop wood and carry water, or are thankful that you have wood to chop and water to carry, then I believe you are on the right track to enlightenment.

Granted it isn’t easy. Certainly I fail on a daily bases to be thankful that I have dishes to wash and a toilet to scrub. But I should be. And I do my best to daily remind myself to be thankful for the mundane.

The above adage applies to writing too.
Before publication: write, revise and submit.
After publication: write, revise and submit.

Published authors, even the famous ones, still have to write, revise and submit.

Prayer for the New Year

May all who live in fear be free from fear;
May all who live in bondage gain their independence;
May the oppressed be free from oppression, and
May beings everywhere seek the good of others.
Shantideva

Shantideva was an 8th century Buddhist scholar who wrote the Bodhicaryavatara, which is translated into English as A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama practices Bodhicitta teaching.

I can’t think of a better daily mantra, a better daily prayer than this one.

May all who live in fear be free from fear;
May all who live in bondage gain their independence;
May the oppressed be free from oppression, and
May beings everywhere seek the good of others.

A New Year Memory

Here we go again. Another “New Year” is about to descend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of your life.” That quote is suspiciously similar to this one; “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

New Year’s resolutions are fine, but I/we should be looking at each day as a new beginning. Each day is the beginning of a “New Week,” or a “New Month.” Time, anyway, is…illusory. It doesn’t really exist. It’s all in our minds. But I am, like everyone else, a victim of it.

Can you tell? I’ve never been a big New Years person. I think it all goes back to a New Years party my family went to when I was nine, in 1960. This picture shows my mother on the left and our good friend Nora. My sister is smiling big in the back-ground wearing the lei. She was 13 soon to be 14, as tall as any adult. The picture was taken right at mid-night. Everyone is happy and smiling and toasting and kissing and…where am I?

I remember being excited, wanting to help ring in the New Year. It was a big deal. 1960, turn of a decade. Everything, I thought, would be new and different once January 1st showed its face. I think it was the first time I became aware of the change of the year and what that “meant.”

I hung on as long as I could. Probably sometime between 9 and 10 pm I got sleepy. Certainly I was not used to staying up much past 8:30 or 9 o’clock. I was taken to a bed-room. I remember specifically telling my sister and my mother, “Wake me up at mid-night.”

Of course it didn’t happen. By the time mid-night rolled around the party was in full swing. The adults had been drinking and dancing, laughing and talking and Bish was forgotten. Her request was forgotten. I don’t remember getting home. But I do remember the next day I was terribly disappointed that I’d missed The Big Event.

It was supposed to be a new day, a new year. But the business of being a family and doing chores, of eating and washing dishes, making the beds, sweeping the floor, all the mundane things of life, were going on just like they had the day before and the day before that. Nothing had changed.

So what, I wondered, was “new” about it? I came to this resounding conclusion. Nothing. It’s just another day.

Because of that observation I’ve never gotten excited about New Years. Except for 2000. Just how often does a person get to ring in not only a new century but a new millennia? Well, not often. And I had a good time with my husband and friends. We fired off fire-works and scared the donkeys, but that’s a whole nuther story.

I didn’t stay upset with Mom or my sister for not waking me up. And I remember that dress Mom wore. It was white with gold-thread accents. It was probably silk, looked kind of like a sari. I thought she was beautiful. She was. She still is.

Happy New Year.

Charlotte...and Gus Too

Charlotte Dean Stark. She was my first best friend (after my sister that is.)

Charlotte was older than my grandmother by 5 or 6 years. She had been a Suffragette. She was a book reviewer for the New York Times. Between December 4th, 1932 and August 6th, 1944, Charlotte wrote a total of 192 columns.

She was married to Gus, a thin man who had no teeth. But that didn't stop him from eating whatever he wanted. He ate everything from popcorn to steak, gumming things to death. On New Years Eve he'd put in his teeth and look completely different. But he didn't like to wear them because they hurt.

I don't know how Gus and Charlotte first learned about St. John or when they first arrived. I do know they were already family friends when my mother was going to Pratt Institute between 1934-36 because Mom spent the holidays with them up in Connecticut.

They came to Trunk Bay on St. John early on, before 1934, before Grammy opened it as guest house. In fact, the only building left at Trunk Bay, the Lower House, was built by Charlotte and Gus between 1948-49.

Charlotte had short curly graying red-brown hair. In her youth it had been a deep auburn. Her eyes, if I remember rightly, were a watery blue-green. She wore long skirts and dresses, which she made, to cover her right knee which had been severely mangled when she was a girl.

The story she told is that while riding a bike the front wheel hit a trolley or train track. She was thrown, landing on her right knee. The knee cap was shattered and a large cut on the top of her thigh caused a piece of her stocking to go up inside her her leg. Doctors had to enlarge the cut and with a long pair of tweezers they pulled the piece of fabric out. Her knee remained gnarly and lumpy and it didn't bend very well.

Over the fireplace (the only one on St. John at the time) there was an oil painting of her that was done when she was about 18. She had been a pretty young woman; a small heart-shaped face was surrounded by an abundance of auburn hair. She was wearing a long yellow dress. She looked very much the Gibson Girl.

She still had the dress when I entered her life. She'd let me play dress-up in it. It was made of satin and had a drapery-like front, like a narrow shawl that acted as both yoke and straps. It had a small train. When I wore it I loved pretending I was in a grand ballroom strolling and dancing about. Made me feel very elegant.

Charlotte was slender and had long fingered hands that were bony. She filed her nails into small points. She played the piano and sang in a thin watery voice. My sister, Erva, Charlotte and I liked to sing Christmas carols all year long.

She liked to do acrostics. She also had a knitting project, making herself an outfit of fine off-white wool. But like Penelope, she never finished it.

She took a battery of pills, mostly vitamins. She had these little pill boxes, each one different. Every morning she'd sort out which pills went into which box; morning, noon, evening, bedtime. She hated taking pills. She'd chew up the ones she could, all together (YUK!) Then all the gel-cap types she'd pop in her mouth, take a big sip of water, throw her head back, shake and wiggle her head and stroke her throat to get the pills down.

She made her own yogurt.

If I was around when she made bread she always gave me a small lump to knead. Even if it fell on the floor she'd bake it in its own little pan and I would eat it. She taught me how to use their special pop-corn popper. It was a large electric machine. Just this much oil, this much corn. I got so good I became the official popper when ever I visited, which was often.

Charlotte wrote two books about St. John. I wish I had them.

She slept in the nude and walked from the bedroom to the bathroom butt naked. She was not the least bit modest about her aging, saggy body. She slept with dozens of very small pillows which she made special pillow cases for. She also wore a black satin mask over her eyes as she couldn't sleep when there was any kind of light. She made the masks too.

She wore Joy perfume. Gus kept her supplied with an extremely large bottle of it. One bottle would last a couple of years.

Charlotte introduced my sister, Erva and me, to the "Sea Sick Record," (as our cousin Frances called it.) It's real name is "The Pinafore" by Gilbert and Sullivan. We loved that album and would sing along with it. I particularly liked trying to imitate the contralto who sang the part of Buttercup.

"I'm called little Buttercup,

Poor little Buttercup,

Though I could never tell why...

...So buy off your Buttercup, buy." It must have been a hoot to hear an 8 or 10 year old singing that song.

Charlotte and I got along like two peas in a pod. I spent many week-ends with her.

Gus would take us down to Hawksnest in the afternoons around 3 p.m. to take a sea bath. He had an old tractor and he'd rigged up a seat on the back of it. I would sit in Charlotte's lap as we made our slow way down the steep rocky road to the beach. We always had stale bread on hand to feed the pompanos.

After the beach Charlotte and I took a shower together, something that by today's standards would be frowned upon and/or questioned. One time I asked her why one breast was smaller than the other. She told me she had had a tumor removed and lifted up her breast so I could see the thin white scar that went from one side to the other. Another time I asked her why she and Gus didn't have kids. She told me she had lost three. I can only assume, now as an adult, that she had had three miscarriages. I told her I was sorry. She told me it didn't bother her anymore, particularly since she had me to play with.

Sunday mornings were always fun. Charlotte and I would get all dressed up. I would wear one her long dresses, all pinned and gathered up to fit me. We'd dab on some Joy, then we'd climb onto the tractor and Gus would motor the three of us down to Caneel Bay to pick up the Sunday New York Times. We must have been quite a sight, an old owman and little girl walking through the lobby of the hotel as if we owned the placed; Charlotte looking elegant - she carried herself as one who had once been among the elite, which she had been - and me, trailing skirts that were too long acting like a princess.

Then there was Gus, who wore the same basic outfit every day, jeans and a white short-sleeved shirt, leading this odd female pair.

Every morning Charlotte took her flower basket and shears and went out into the yard to gather hibiscus blossoms. She had a multitude of different kinds. Inside the house Gus had mounted on the walls lovely pieces of drift wood into which he had drilled holes. Charlotte would take out yesterdays wilted blossoms and replace them with today's. And so, there were these wonderful splashes of color in the foyer and on the white walls of the living room. A praticularly beautiful piece of free-standing drift wood sat on the top of her white up-right piano.

Once Charlotte taped/attached all these differnt types of hibiscus to one of her large potted plants. She called her "Ho-ax Charlotta."

Sometimes we had screaming contests to see who could scream the loudest. She and my mother called me "one of God's screachers" because I could scream so loud.

She liked to eat pomegranates and had several trees in the yard, both the white and ruby red kind.

In the late 1960's after Gus's death, Charlotte moved back to the states. I was very sad about the move. I begged her to sell the house to my Mom and Dad, but it was not to be. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo took the roof and destroyed part of the house. What was left was eventually torn down...all of the beautiful stonework Gus had done, their large open porch overlooking Hawksnest. It's all gone now.

But I have some pictures. This one shows me on her lap. My sister stands tall in the back. Our friends, Melaine, Ed (left) and John (right) gluster around her like bees on a flower. I am, as I always was, barefoot.

I loved Charlotte dearly. She always answered my questions, even if it was to say, "I don't know." I have a pretty little three-shelved cherry wood piece that was hers. I also have her Harebell china. Between us, Erva and I have several pieces of her jewerly. I also have two of her painted fans and several books from her extensive library. I read the The Secret Garden at her house.

In 1968 I visited family in Connectcut for Christmas. I spent the night with Charlotte in New York City. She was living in a hotel-apartment. We had dinner together. The next morning, before light, she gave me instructions on how to get to Grand Central Station. We hugged and said good-bye.

It was the last time I saw her. Charlotte died in 1977.

I still miss her from time to time, which is why I'm writing about her today. It's one of those moments.