I Am Isabel the Storyteller

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Category: Going to Live with Grandparents

January 19, 2021

#15. I fill in the blanks: “Nothing cures_______ like________.

I’m not homesick, exactly. Homesick is more like that time I went to Nature’s Classroom and missed Dad’s grilled cheese.*

And, I don’t know if there ARE any good towers to explore around here.  The ancient wooden fire tower at West Lake is no Hogarts’ Astronomy Tower.  I would love to climb that steep spiral staircase, pull on the iron ring-handled door leading out onto the crenellated ramparts, the parapet and all that. But that’s in a book. This is life.

What if I treat “unexplored tower” as a metaphor—a message about something else?

My mind wanders to Harry Potter and how sad I was when I finished the series…

All of a sudden it seems like a big hand–a Dad-size hand–is on my back, nudging me. I straighten up and start to talk out loud.  

Or maybe it’s that I’m HEARTSICK.  Not HOMESICK. Hmmm.  HEARTSICK for Mom and Dad. 

The words “unexplored tower” still puzzle me, but I’ve always thought of puzzles as a kind of pump. Mimi has a pump in her little catfish pond. It’s got a photovoltaic panel that uses the energy from the sun to run its motor, so it can squirt the pond water up into a fountain. (Besides getting good air into the water, it makes rainbows too.)

So. I’m pumped.  And I’m catching the sunlight. Energized.

I find a t-shirt and jeans.  I pull on my socks.

An Unexplored Tower could be anything I explore, or find out about. Or do.

I tie my sneakers tight, so I won’t trip on the laces.  

It could be like a quest or a job. It doesn’t have to be a real tower. 

I go back to the first lace and double-knot it.

I know exactly what my quest will be.

Revenge. I will seek vengeance on the guy who killed Mom and Dad.

I double-knot the other lace and stamp my foot back to the floor. I do a mental inventory. Hey, this is good. I can’t feel determined AND heartsick at the same time. I’ve found a “tower” to explore!  I race downstairs, but stumble on the last step when I wonder if Dad would agree with my cure for heartsickness.

Well, he isn’t here now, and I do.  I do agree with myself, that is.

ISABEL

* See my comment in the comment-reply section for Dad’s recipe for grilled cheese. It was Pop’s originally, so he was able to pull it out of his recipe box when I asked about it today.

isabelinchair

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January 17, 2021

#14. I, Isabel Scheherazade find a bookmark on a special page of one of my favorite books and I THINK I’m getting a message from Dad. Can this be possible?

I’m still in bed gathering steam when my eyes land on one of my old storybooks–Beauty and the Beast.  I love all the versions of that story, this one especially. When Dad read it to me, he said, This is one plucky girl. Like you, Isabel.

I think about this and mutter, USED to be, Dad; I USED to be a plucky girl.

I’m not feeling plucky these days.

I spy a feather bookmark. Dad put feather markers on important pages in his books and mine.

I get out of bed, pull Beauty and the Beast off the shelf, and open it to the page with the feather.  I stroke it smooth. It’s brick red on its topside and pink below.

I remember when Dad stopped at this page and places the feather in the crease, a very serious look on his face.

Isabel, listen up; this is important. He taps the words. Keep track of it, okay? He was always advising me to keep track of this or that.

This is the sentence: “Nothing cures homesickness quicker than an Unexplored Tower.”

See what it’s saying? Dad asks me. Then he reads it again.

I trace the sentence with my fingertip like Dad did. I can even hear his voice. “Nothing cures homesickness quicker than an Unexplored Tower.”

To tell you the truth, back when Dad was rereading the quote I didn’t get what was So Big about this sentence. I was more interested in finishing the story before I fell asleep.

But, now, here in Mimi and Pop’s house, my eyes prickle and a warm feeling fills my head while I stare at the words, it’s like Dad is reaching out to me in a comforting way from the Way-Back Seat of my memory.

I lean into the magic of it all and whisper, Why’s this so important, Dad?

ISABEL

isabelwithlegupwriting.jpg

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January 16, 2021

#13. I have another thought about the daily treat at Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe

I’m piling up a small stack of things I never did with Mom and Dad.

The stack sits in sun and shade. When we do something new with Mimi or Pop, it reminds me that I never did this with Mom and Dad, and that reminds me that they’re gone. Sort of like a chain reaction.

I explain this to Mimi, while I stir my pumpkin latte. I watch her face.

She sips her hazelnut coffee. Isabel, she takes a breath, after a while? Well, after a while, I hope that when we do new things it won’t always come with the sad thought…She hesitates.

I finish her sentence, With the sad thought that Mom and Dad are dead, you mean?

Mimi nods.

I think, THAT will never happen. But I don’t say this to Mimi.  Instead, I gulp the top froth; it gives me a milk mustache that gets the twins laughing. I’m about to say, Mimi, we’re not there yet, but then I just can’t help it; I start laughing too when the twins give themselves chocolate mustaches. Then Belle, who was drinking a Blueberry Smoothie, comes over with a blue mustache.

Like I said: sun and shade.

ISABEL

cropped-isabelcrosslegsmaller1.jpg

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January 15, 2021

#12. A funny story that acts like that splash of cold water that primes the pump (metaphor alert)…

Every morning Pop says to the twins, Did you put on new underwear, boyos?  (He doesn’t call them dudes like Dad did.  That’s good. It would be confusing.)

The twins salute and say, Yes siree, Pop. Yes siree, Pop. (We think that because they’re twins they repeat their answers.)

But you know how little boys can be smelly? Well, Clyde and Sam REALLY smell on this one morning, so Pop brings them into the bathroom, thinking maybe that they didn’t wipe. Or something like that.

Mimi? he calls out. Come here a minute, would you, Dearie?  Mimi and I do question marks eyebrow wiggles at each other. I give her the I dunno shrug. (I am so not the expert on smelly 4-year olds. Geez.)

She goes down the hall to the bathroom. I hear lots of  Pop-Mimi-Murmur-Murmuring and Little-Boy-TalkTalkTalking. Mimi goes upstairs and comes down with two pairs of Elmo underpants.

After a while they march back to the kitchen.

Pop says, Now remember, Sam and Clyde. “New underpants” means that you take OFF the old ones. You don’t just add a new pair.

And we start to giggle.

Giggle! Gushing Giggles. Like that water that whooshed out of the well after we primed it. And we get active: The twins show me their new Elmos and drag me off to play Tonka Trucks and Matchbox cars with them. Mimi stuffs smelly underpants in the trash. (Guess she’s not going to try to recycle ’em which is very unusual for her.) Pop calls to her to come sit outside with him for a while.

It takes giant, big minutes for all the chuckles and activity to subside.

Neato. Or sort of neato anyway.

ISABEL

Isabelcurlyheadfrombackonchair-sketch by my friend Ryan

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January 15, 2021

#11a. A story from the Way-Back Seat of my memory about Dad that shows how pumped he was about Miss Mary’s pump.

Miss Mary’s water pump looks like the one in Little House on the Prairie. In fact, it looks JUST like that water pump LAMP next to my bed–the one Dad made in shop class.  I wish I could ask  Dad if he got the idea for the lamp from Miss Mary’s real pump.

BEFORE everything changed, my family would “come over” to Pop and Mimi’s for brunch or picnics, stuff like that. And every time we come, Dad brings us to the farm to see the animals and, quiz us on how the pump works.

Dad really wanted us to understand, and I’m finally getting it. Here’s what happens the very last time we visit BEFORE. (Which, BTW, is only two weeks ago. Seems more like a decade.)

After cranking the pump handle a few times while the twins and I watch, Dad raises his eyebrow and says, Who can tell me why there’s no water coming out of the pump today?

ME:  Air.

DAD: Right, air’s gotten in, so there’s no water pressure. No water pressure, no water.

(You might notice that the twins aren’t saying anything. That’s ’cause they’re four. They ARE looking back and forth between Dad and me like it’s a tennis match.) 

DAD: So what do we do?

TWINS: Knock on Miss Mary’s door! Knock on Miss Mary’s door! 

DAD: Looking a little perplexed, Er, why would we do that dudes?

TWINS: Miss Mary has water in her sink! Miss Mary has water in her sink!

DAD: He ruffles their heads and fist-bumps with them, and then he says, What ELSE could we do?

ME: Get rid of the air that’s wrecked the water pressure.

DAD: How do we do that?

ME: Like this. And I run back to Mimi and Pop’s, turn on their hose, pour water from the hose into a bucket, and run back up the hill to Miss Mary’s. (The twins watch me like I’ve never done this before and, trust me, if I’ve done it once, I’ve done it a zillion times. Or at least three times when they were around.)

DAD: Now what?

ME: I pour the water into the top here.  (I have to stand tippy-toed to lift the bucket and pour it into this pipe that’s right next to the pump.) Then I pump the handle. 

I pump the handle updownupdown a few times and then, with a great gurgle and splash, water spurts out and into the trough below. The trough’s for the animals to drink from. In fact, one of Miss Mary’s lambs (Pretty funny, huh? “Miss Mary’s Lambs,” like in the nursery rhyme?) scurries around the corner of the barn and starts lapping it up.

ISABEL

Isabelcurlyheadfrombackonchair-sketch by my friend Ryan Grimaldi Pickard

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January 13, 2021

#8. Why I Can’t Hop Out of Bed.

Every morning since coming to live with Pop and Mimi, after I wake up? After my eyes open? I.  Just. Lie Here. It’s like I don’t have a habit of what to do next in this place. I haven’t jumped out of bed once.

Yet.

One reason is I’m shocked to be at Pop and Mimi’s still. Of course the twins and I have stayed overnight lots of times. It was always a special treat. We loved it. Now it’s like a Big Mistake.  This place we loved to visit is now instead of the place we loved to live in. With the two people we loved most in the world. The universe. 

So I’m shocked, like I-stuck-a-finger-in-an-outlet-shocked.

I think it’s partly because I’m not in my regular-when-life-was-good bedroom: Rainbows on the walls–painted by Dad. Constellations on the ceiling–painted by Mom. In our second floor, crowded apartment. 

Where I am now is Dad’s old bedroom. The one he had when he was a kid like me.

Dormer window facing the morning sun. Bed with carved pineapple bedposts.

Tiny bedside table with one drawer. I found a basketball inflator needle in it, leftover from Dad’s b-ball days as a hotshot three-point champ.

Water pump lamp. Dad made it in woodworking class when he was in fourth grade. The handle of the pump has a chain on it. When you pump the handle the light goes on and off. There’s a pretend spout and a water trough for pretend water to flow into. Oh, and did I mention this? The lamp shade has horses on it, like hole-punched horse shapes, so when it’s dark and the light is on you see horses all over the walls.

Back to why I can’t budge out of bed in the mornings:

I feel like I have to check on my mind and muscle powers. You know, to see if I’ve got any.

It’s like I’m Mr. Frank, the grocery man at Frank’s Grocery and Food Mart. I help Mimi with our weekly shopping there. She holds onto the cart and her list, and I fetch stuff for her. (That’s a Mimi word–fetch.)  I always bump into Mr. Frank in his white apron.  He checks the shelves and makes notes. Just doing inventory, Isabel, he says to me and pats my head. Need to see what’s what. 

That’s how it is with me. I’m doing inventory, checking to see what I have left on my shelves.

It’s not that I don’t want to go downstairs and see Mimi and Pop, Clyde and Sam. I can hear them from here. They’re up and at ‘em, as Mom used to say.

Listen to this, Dearie, Pop says as he reads the sports page.

Do you want oatmeal or Cherrios, Clyde? Mimi doesn’t know exactly what the guys like for breakfast, and she’s trying to Get It Right.

And I hear VaroomVaroom noises that tell me the Tonkas are on the table next to the cereal bowls. Pop and Mimi don’t know that Dad didn’t allow toys at the table, because of all the spills.

Or maybe they do know and don’t want to say NO yet.

ISABEL

isabelcrossleg2

(sketches by Ryan Grimaldi Pickard, Isabel’s dear friend)

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May 19, 2014

#45 Can a kid break a rule even though the “caretaker” hasn’t laid down the rules? What’s next for me, Isabel Scheherazade? Hint: It requires going to Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe.

How’d you know I was at court?

The school called, says Pop.

The school called?

It’s a new procedure, Mimi says.  They call when anyone’s absent, just to make sure.

Make sure?

Mimi nods. Yes, to make sure the student is sick and not abducted, or some such.

Cray*,  I think. We all ponder kidnapping for a few seconds, I break the silence with, How did you know I’d be here? At court?

Remember the day you pulled the newspaper out of the bookshelves? Pop looks at me. Then he looks at Mim and they do that thing where they communicate for a few paragraphs without talking.

Mimi takes over, Isabel, we were going to take you back to school and talk later, but let’s do this. We have until the boys get out of Kindergarten.  In between now and then, we’ll…

I interrupt. We’ll go to the hearing?

No. Pop’s one raised eyebrow goes to a full frown. We’ll get some sandwiches and drinks  at Belle’s and explain things to you. We’ll talk, and you’ll listen. 

Mimi puts her hand on his arm and gives him a small frown.

Wow, I think to myself. “I’ll talk and you’ll listen” sounds just like Dad used to when I’d done something wrong and he was fed up with “All the Nonsense.”

I don’t know why, but suddenly I begin to feel safer or something like safe. Secure maybe. Secure the way a Native American baby in a papoose must feel when there’s no way to be anywhere but on its mother’s back. All cozy. I wish Oliver had stayed. He would have liked this part.

—Isabel Scheherazade, a sort of delinquent who is learning slang from Olivia. So cray* means crazy. I THINK it’s a rapper word, but Oliver’s on-line slang dictionary says it’s going mainstream.

isabelinchair

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