Life On Snob Hill: A Messy Slate

I will forget these things, but I’d like to forget them more slowly, more surely.

—Joe Wenderoth, Letters to Wendy’s

There is a piece of slate now hanging by the front door here on Snob Hill. Upon the slate is a statement of love, written and decorated with hearts by Father, who carved a frame to hold the slate. The slate is a piece of a rescued blackboard from the Cape Girardeau High School where two grandmothers, on paternal, one maternal, attended — both must surely have sat at attention and viewed this very same blackboard — this black board.

The blackboard came to us this weekend, complete with the message of love, now somewhat degraded. Years ago, when Father gave this framed piece of slate to Mother, he decorated it with his message of love. They hung it over a fireplace in the kitchen and never erased the message, as it were a painting. So we have inherited both a physical object and something far less tangible and more precarious. We wanted this to hang by the front door, with a piece of chalk tethered by a thin cotton braid, so visitors, if so inspired, could leave us a message. But with the handmade message of love to a departed Mother, isn’t something we can bear to replace.

Sometimes what we remember and what we feel is painful, and it’s difficult to express, and so we have to find ways to put language on impossible feelings that we never anticipated we’d go through.

— Venita Blackburn

“According to Wikipedia, “Marshak, Stephen in his Essentials of Geology, slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic rock. The etymology of slate also tells us that it was traditionally a small, smooth piece of the rock, often framed in wood, used with chalk as a notepad or notice board, and especially for recording charges in pubs and inns. The phrases "clean slate" and "blank slate" come from this usage.

So, one of us writes: Yet our slate — as well as our own, more metaphorical slates — are neither clean nor blank. I hung the framed slate by the front door, but now I cannot bear to wipe it in preparation for another message. Just as chalk has touched the slate, I see — I know — that my parents touched. They marked each other. That touching created me and I still feel the contours of their marking upon me. I’ve lately become a bit obsessed with collecting examples of actual writing by my grand- and great-grandparents, and especially from my Mother.

Dad recently gave me thick folder of recipes that included a precious few written by her hand. I may never make the old casserole (she was not an inspired cook, much less a foody), but I could stare at her handwriting for a long time, trying to imagine her concentrating on transferring the directions onto a notecard. She wanted so desperately to be a good wife, mother, housekeeper and hostess.

There are many ways to divide, to demarcate one’s life. I’ve lately realized that I went for a long time wrestling with my daddy issues. Then transitioned to my mommy issues. I see now that really, all along, these have been merely me issues.

I’m obsessed with that part of life — these confined spaces where there’s no acceptance, there’s no big healing. You’re just right there in the crack of a catastrophe.

— Venita Blackburn

I grew up in the days of schoolroom chalkboards. Sometimes I was tasked by a teacher to wipe the board. There was a long tray beneath each large slate for holding chalk — white and pale green, blue and yellow. I don’t recall red, pale or otherwise. I remember the boxes of chalk, usually at the far ends of tray, with the word “dustless.” There’s really no such thing as dustless chalk because chalk is dust laid upon slate, just waiting to wiped away to make black space for another message.

So what to do? Should I allow Dad’s chalk dust to remain, still proclaiming the mark he and Mom made, but knowing the message will slowly fall from the slate. Do I shellac it in a sad attempt at preserving it, if just for a bit longer? I worry that would be like looking at the same sentiment carved into the trunk of tree, wondering who the hell the people behind the initials were. Or do I, let others do the dirty work for me, waiting for some visitors to drop by, wipe it clean and leaving the message: Sorry we missed you!

To which, I would be compelled to add: You have no idea.

Quoting Wenderoth again:

Yes, our homes are dust. Don’t pretend you are surprised.

Salmon Fishing On Snob Hill

Somewhere between Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing In America and Paul Torday’s Salmon Fishing In the Yemen lies our Snob Hill. And these thoughts…

Just as there are changes in the seasons and changes in current fashion and even changes in attitudes/changes in latitudes, to borrow a phrase from Buffet, there are changes – evolutions – constantly in motion on Snob Hill. We will celebrate our 25th anniversary as stewards of our piece of Snob Hill this coming August.

How time flies.

We are watching with interest the transition of a few properties here on the Hill. One house has stood empty but well maintained for approximately 10 years. The owners, part of the old-old guard, moved nearby to the inherited home of a mother, and use, as best we can fathom, their Snob Hill location as one of the nicest storage lockers ever. To be clear, the house is not abandoned, per-se, because the owners visit often and their yard man appears regularly to cut grass, trim bushes, and collect leaves.

We also have two elderly widowers on the Hill, and their two fates – though ultimately the same for all of us – are as individual as they are. One, Frank, is a cancer-battler who has kept his wild white hair, tousled up like Heat Miser in The Year Without Santa Claus, and who has been pursuing in his later years a modest career in stand-up comedy. But that is another story. We have nothing else to say about him now other than we refer to his slow strolls up the lane with a vocal, protective schnauzer named Aggy as “Franks Wild Years” in deference to Mr. Tom Waits.

How time ain’t nothin’ when you’re young at heart.

The other widower, Grant, hung onto his independence with a tenacity that was not sustainable, yet was also somehow admirable. His wife passed several years ago, and his own infirmities corroded his mobility, his moods and his ability to care for himself. Yet he insisted in both driving one of two vehicles – a PT Cruiser and a Ford Expedition – living out his remaining years at home. He gave it the ole college try, which required a couple of years’ worth of home healthcare providers who provided inconsistent quality to his care and wellbeing. When this arrangement because obviously untenable, the family moved him to a nearby assisted living facility just before the COVID-19 pandemic.  

How time runs like a freight train.

But it is his wife, Angela, to which we return. She was a master gardener associated for many years with our city’s botanical garden. She was known locally in the70s and 80s as the “Herb Lady” and people would clog the lane each spring to purchase plants she raised in her small greenhouse. We recently conversed with a woman at a nearby farm who, when she found out where we lived, described exactly this occurrence.

As might be expected, a master gardener saved some of the best plants and garden design for her own purposes. Yet, as cancer slowed her down and her passing, her once-admirable garden rooms with their English cottage influence and secret pockets, have gone to seed, to use an old phrase. They are now lush with poison ivy and oak, Virginia creeper and the invasive bugaboo honeysuckle. Still, many of the established plants still exert themselves through the weeds.

Such was the case this past week with a planting of a unique, salmon-colored iris. Among the world’s irises (and we claim to be no experts in the botanical sense), these are off the beaten path. Yes, we began to covet these irises. We desired the irises. They became an item of recurring conversations along the lines of “Wouldn’t those look lovely in certain parts of our own gardens? We know just where to tuck them.” Yet, as co-presidents of the Snob Hill Neighborhood Association, being caught as poachers would be both unseemly and just plain wrong. So we did the right thing. We called one of the siblings. We were not piggish. We asked to be allowed to dig up just a few rhizomes. To our delight, the sibling not only said “please do,” and added something about her mother’s legacy.

Like naughty children, we entered our neighbor’s overgrown gardens. We brought along our cell phone with the text from the sibling, just in case we were questioned about our activities. We carried a small shovel known as a “poacher’s spade,” which seemed only appropriate. We were careful where we removed the rhizomes, choosing to remove only those whose absence would be most unnoticeable. We also found another delicate blue iris, which we also chose to add to our garden.

As we planted the new flowers, we also realized how many of the plants on our property came from neighbors – clumps of ornamental grasses grabbed from a nearby yard with a handwritten Free! sign, clumps of hostas that a Snob Hill neighbor gave us after their son didn’t want them, and a new yucca that our next-door gave us after yanking it unceremoniously from her hill. We were also surprised this year when a neighbor from across the street had a “bumper crop” of tomato seedlings and offered “as many as you want. “ They weren’t our preferred heirloom varieties, but for free, we gladly accepted some.

We have come to prefer such botanical hand-me-downs in part to save money, but also because we know the plants are from our terroir, our local environment. They have histories. They also connect us with their owners. Sometimes, the “owners” are just the latest in a long line of plant hand-me-downers, like the plants from our parents’ gardens we shared in The Family Sedums.

We are surrounded by so ways of marking time – wall clocks and watches, holidays and birthdays, calendars and cadences, seasons and solstices, apps and emojis. We observe Snob Hill time, which is marked by the way of our sons visit (partners in tow) and park where they once played in piles of leaves. By the way neighbors move on, pass on, or relinquish their independence. By weather events, like the ice storm that disarmed trees whose branches broke like gunfire, like the tornadoes that spared Snob Hill but left us without electricity for a week, like the unnatural, eerily quiet skies during the days after 911, by the cautious, distanced chats in the lane as we sheltered in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. This kind of time almost always begins with “Do you remember when…?”

 Taking a bit of someone else’s garden is like trying to carefully scrape a bit of color from someone else’s painting. It could be a type of theft. It can also be a gift. A share. Like asking for Grandma Myrtle’s chicken and dumpling recipe and having her transcribe the faded, crumpled, stained 3x5 card in her recipe box, then hand it to you. It’s a loving act of assimilation. An opportunity to take someone else’s approach, or practice, or creation and   make it your own.

 In our desire, we thought of ourselves as iris thieves, which led us to recall something from Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief:  "Collecting can be a sort of love sickness. If you collect living things, you are pursuing something imperfectible, because even if you manage to find and possess the living thing you want, there is no guarantee they won't die or change."

Which in turn led us to recall some lines from the Goo Goo Dolls’ Iris:

“…And all I can taste is this moment

And all I can breathe is your life

And sooner or later it's over

I just don't wanna miss you tonight…”