Her socks and underwear

In the chaos of things left — things to go through and things to save, things to donate or throw away — in this absolute storm of things and things and cats and things…

We have an old, wooden chest of drawers.

It’s near the foot of her bed, and heavy, and leaning. It’s where her clothes are supposed to be, yet whenever I’d come back with laundry fresh and folded, she’d tell me to just leave it there in the basket, by the chest — she wanted to do the putting away. But usually she’d just leave it, and pick her clothes from the basket anyway.

So I’d only looked at the big leaning chest, leaning like Pisa. Looked at the labels on each of the drawers. Contemplated an apostrophe there. The labels: Shorts, Sock’s and Underwear (yes, with the apostrophe), Shirts, Pajamas, Pants.

Now I pull them open.

Inside of the top drawer — Shorts — I find no shorts, but socks and underwear.

Inside of the second drawer — Sock’s and Underwear — there are neither socks, nor underwear.

But there are dreams. Yes inside, a drawerfull of dreams.

Papers folders letters books. A notebook filled with watercolors. Copies of the Rocky book. Flyers and press releases about her old exhibits. Copies of query letters she wrote to literary agencies, plus notes to herself about what those agencies are looking for in their queries.

I find photos — batches of photos, both personal and of paintings. I find a copy of a letter she wrote to the actress Lily Tomlin. Also one to Ellen DeGeneres. In a spiral notebook full of to-dos and hopes and scattered thoughts, I find a note that she’d sent two sets of poems or lyrics to Jon Bon Jovi.

And the poems. The poems are simply overflowing. Mounds of them here in English, organized into their own collections, their own books (This Strange World of Now - Poetry by Gajewska; or The Spirit of California). And in a green folder, labeled Wiersze Dawne, which means Old Poems, here I find a solid stack of poems and lyrics in Polish, dated from the late 60s and into the 70s — before she ever married and came to America. These, all typewritten on communist paper, thin and translucent, like the wing of a butterfly.

Naturally the work — the cleanup, the chaos around here — then stops. Stops for me at least. Naturally I begin reading. Begin trying to translate. I take the folder of Polish verses away and out onto the patio, and Snowy follows for fresh air, and the second poem in, it’s called Marzenia, or Dreams. And it translates — as best as I can translate — into this:

Let it be with me

What it wants, will be

I no longer have strength

Let November blow me away

That storm which will break me

Let the mice cover me with sleep

A gray dream

I will cover my head in passing

And myself forget

And cuddled up, thinking

In a mouse's dream

Again I will forget

Of this, of what is

Because why should I remember

Some face

Which will turn back the changing colors of time

Who knows

Is there not more of me

In my dream?

I'm there, where golden apples grow

I’m there, where meadows are fluffy

Where green pheasants clean their feathers in the sun

I bathe in a merry spring

And the color of the water I can choose

And if you asked, if I am fine

Know that I am very well

I'm there, where the sun does not set

I’m picking painted nuts from trees

And for fun, for nothing more

Sometimes in some, I find a diamond

I’m there, where the roads converge

In serene comings and never in leavings

And in great gardens, blooming every day

Green hopes and white happiness.

When my dream

Turns white dawn

What is day

Hungry mice, standing cats

They want to eat

Somewhere there behind them, by sadness a smoky face

So I must forget

That I'm there...

I am there

Where is more of me

~~~

If a person sees this, comes to a drawer such as this, maybe he sees the things. The work. When a son sees this, leafs through these poems and letters and clippings and photos, he sees time, he sees memory. He sees a kaleidoscope of his own life mixing in and tumbling with hers. He sees colors and shapes twisting in and out of each other into arrangements he kind of remembers, and others he doesn’t. In some, there he is, there they both are; in others, he doesn’t exist.

Through this viewfinder… This is when she’s just 18, and she’s writing this? This is when she’s probably in love. This is when I’m 1. This is when Dad would leave for one of his trips, and I’d find Mom spreading those huge plastic sheets along the ground, and setting the easel, the canvas, her paints. This is when Bo is teaching me how to play baseball in the backyard. This is when she’s taking us to soccer practice, to tee ball. This is when I smell turpentine (and I love the smell of turpentine). This is when the bad thing happens, and the police come, and we go to that hotel. This is when she must really have some hope. This is when we lose the backyard, the home, she gets us out of there. This is when Rocky’s little black shape, his funny ears appear. This is when he breaks his leg, and she pays for the surgery with a painting. This is when she’s working at the frame shop. Or at the community college. Or at that office as some kind of strange, delicate security guard with the weird accent.

This is when I come to California, just to visit. This is when I move here, and we move in together — into here.

And this — these old Polish poems — this of course is when I don’t exist, when my shape doesn’t at all overlap. Yet why does it feel now as if she left this here for me, or for Babcia even — these dreams, this sign — for when she wouldn’t exist, and we would still be here, needing her to?

~~~

~

What else does a son see? He sees himself, his own psyche there, especially in the query letters. He sees a looking, a trying. He sees moments of inspiration, of belief. Sees disappointment, rejection also.

More than anything, though, he sees the trying. A person there, just trying to make a mark, some mark on this world, this life. A trying to leave something of the self — there.

~

A kind rejection.

A highlighter of hope.

~

And this? What the hell is this now?

Query letters for another book I had no clue about? Some kind of children’s book, titled In My Truck: For those who travel in time and space. It appears here she found inspiration, an idea, from hauling her paintings and belongings once in a rental truck from Houston to L.A.

*Initially, I wanted to write about the palm trees I saw from the freeway, but then I decided to explain a few things … and that’s how this book happened.*
The way I see it — it introduces the young reader to the awareness of time and space and things hidden or not noticed (unless you pay attention). It teaches to know the difference between cities, states and countries. The average middle-school student has a problem grasping those differences of comprehending. … let’s say *- the length of a couple hundred miles.*

Today’s children travel a lot, often making unpleasant long trips in moving trucks. I tell the story as I drive in my moving truck from Houston to Los Angeles noticing various things I see from my truck or paying attention to the news. I don’t explain the reason of my moving or any story behind it, because it’s not the journey that’s important but what we learn on the way.

*In New Mexico /*
*I talked to a truck driver /*
*- I need to be in Long Beach /*
*- he said, - tomorrow, at four /*
*- Don’t you ever sleep? - I asked /*
*- Only one and half hours? /*
*- In about a week I will be in Iowa /*
*- he said, where is my home. /*
*They loaded his truck in Minneapolis /*
*What’s inside of your truck? /*
*Eggs — he responded right away /*
*They will be shipped from Long Beach to China. /*
*To China???? - so far away???*

~~~

(And yes, yes I think she liked palm trees… )

~~~

Mark, my friend Mark, I remember him telling me that one day, when Mom was still doing well and I went off to see him, catch up with him — I remember Mark telling me to talk to her, no really talk to her, as much as I still could. “You just never really know your parents,” he said. He was thinking of when his own mother died, and how he and his brother found a locked box with diamonds inside, and a deed to a surprise apartment in Spain.

Well, this Mom of mine, she had no apartment in Spain (I asked), and not even this one really — a rental — to call her own. But she did leave these diamonds here, these other colors, these treasures buried in a chest.

I’m back in her room now, near the chest. I’m tired, exhausted really, from all this, from these finds and the emotions and this storm of everything. I’m overwhelmed, but happy. Mostly just happy. Or in awe. She was doing so much more than I ever knew. She was really trying. She was playing and creating, even in that period when she told me art had let her go, that she wasn’t really painting much anymore.

She was, is, magic — still I’m having trouble with which to use, is or was, but looking at all this, finding this, feeling this, I’m thinking: is. Mom is magic.

And I’m left with it now. All this. Left with this and much else. Left with more drawers still to go through, and clothes, and jewelry, and funny hats and figurines, and things like that tiny ornate shoe. I’m left also with a bevy of other notes she wrote to herself in other random spaces, most often in her calendars, I see. In one calendar, on the month of November 2022, I find her writing:

We are Dust so is Our Art

Maybe. Maybe one day. Maybe when I’m gone also and can no longer shout out to anyone who’ll listen, who’ll read — people, hey people, this is her. Maybe then it’ll become dust. All of this, all of us. But this art, these colors here, the kaleidoscope — it’s moving still, and still being moved. I just have to. Not even sure how or where I’ll move it next. But for the moment it’s going from wooden chest to that space over there, by the wall. Actually where the hospital bed used to be. Where she died. Yet in that space, certainly there is more of her now, in those stacks, those papers, those folders, those letters and poems there, than there was of her thirteen days ago.

Who knows

Is there not more of me

In my dream?

This — this is her now. Us. Together there, together here. Another form, another shape.