{"id":2709,"date":"2020-07-27T07:35:33","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T11:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2709"},"modified":"2020-07-27T16:17:56","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T20:17:56","slug":"duetting-memoir-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 26"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Duetting:<\/a><\/p>\n

For my holiday gift I\u2019d asked my son for a shooting lesson. So on the unseasonably warm afternoon of Christmas Eve 2011, Greg comes downstairs with two long guns. Trembling, I wrap up in scarves, earplugs, earmuffs and hooded jacket, and follow him out the door and across the lawn. He stops just short of the pond, props his shotgun against a tree, and hands me the rifle. Remington.22, he tells me. And then he shows me how to hold, load, and ready it for shooting.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t pull the trigger,\u201d he says, \u201cyou squeeze it. You hug it with your whole hand.\u201d Willing my eyes to stay open, I squeeze and shoot. It\u2019s not nearly as loud or as jarring as I\u2019d expected. Marika would have said, \u201cLikeBAM!\u201d Hardly drawing a breath, I shoot again. Bam! The sky echoes with each ferocious bark. Handling this loaded rifle, cradling it so close, and then blasting the air\u2014LikeBAM! \u2014I am spellbound, conscious only of being just on the cusp of control or calamity.<\/span><\/p>\n

We had placed two targets against a large willow tree across the pond. The targets were a gift I\u2019d painted for Greg. The one I\u2019m to use is a cartoon image of a rotund woodchuck with a bulls-eye bellybutton. We train the scope, first focusing far, and then zooming in so every breath and movement I make is exaggerated in the scope, and the woodchuck bounces in a dizzying scene. When it settles, I hug the trigger. LikeBAM! With no movement of my target, no trace of a hit, I aim and shoot again. BAM! I continue to load the magazine and shoot. My woodchuck hasn\u2019t budged. Greg fires his gun and with each shot creates small clouds of smoke before his target.<\/span><\/p>\n

When our bullets are spent, we walk together around the pond to inspect the targets. Surprisingly, the bullets sped through mine without moving it and I\u2019ve hit the woodchuck\u2019s belly twenty-six out of twenty-eight times. Pleased with myself, I\u2019m hooting and cheering. Until we remove the targets from the base of the willow.<\/span>
\n\u201cOh. No,\u201d I wail, \u201cI\u2019ve been shooting clear through to the tree. We\u2019re killing the tree.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cOh, well. \u2018Goes with the territory,\u201d he shrugs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some things, like the differences in our respect for life and living things, will never jive. I say a silent apology to the tree and then follow Greg into the kitchen. He takes the two rib-eye steaks I got for our supper, pierces them several times, plants them in plastic zip-lock bags, and marinates them in Johnny Walker whisky. He pours two glasses of the whisky over ice.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDid Marika ever shoot? What\u2019s the best prank you ever pulled on Marika?\u201d I ask, thinking I\u2019ve got him relaxed and ready to chat. \u201cWhat would you fight for or even die for?\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cMom. Just enjoy the Johnnie Walker. Okay?\u201d And then, \u201cDo you still have my extra passport photo somewhere? I need it back. I\u2019ve got a job in Afghanistan as soon as I get my papers cleared.\u201d He\u2019s leaving again. Whatever holiday I\u2019ve been avoiding is now totally shot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later that night, on the first Christmas Eve without my daughter, the single drawer of the small night table next to my bed is stuck open. I rarely use this drawer but I had rummaged through it for Greg\u2019s passport photo. Now the drawer is jammed and I can\u2019t get it to close shut. I slam it and it breaks. When I wrench it back out, a tiny green cloth packet falls to the floor, and I remember a Christmas long ago when Marika had no gift to give me. She had scurried upstairs, bounced back down, and handed me this small pouch of jeweled sequins. Now I empty the contents into my hand. Sparkling butterfly-light jewels catch the lamplight that blurs through tears. The remaining sparse contents of the broken drawer lay on the floor. And in the middle of the small mess, bound with shiny red holiday ribbon, sits a tiny book written and illustrated by Marika in 2001, when she was eleven years old.<\/span><\/p>\n

Book of Wonderful Memories. From: Marika. J.W. To: Robin Botie<\/span>
\n1.The costume parade. You were there for me every step of the way! I\u2019ll never forget your face when I got 4th<\/sup> place. You were so happy! 2.That one teddy bear that you would look at when we were fighting and tell me a story of you. Mom … 5.Even with the most boring books, it seems so exciting with your voice. … 6.When I\u2019m scared you are always there for me … 8.Always loveing even when I\u2019m a brat.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mareek! Are you here? I cry out. Are you helping me get through Christmas? What the heck am I doing in this drawer anyway? It\u2019s almost midnight and I\u2019m holding the most precious gift, now received twice over. Why does it feel like you\u2019re watching me? Sometimes it\u2019s hard not to believe in ghosts, in after-life. Here I am, holding this tiny book you made ten years ago, before all the road trips, before cancer. Before our mother\/daughter divide. Ten years ago when you adored me\u2014Maybe you never stopped adoring me\u2014Maybe you just stopped showing it.<\/span><\/p>\n

She\u2019d made me a book. And now I am making a book for her. She wrote. So I\u2019m writing. Words are my new medium and I\u2019m using them to paint our portrait, mixing words like I used to mix colors. All the sweet or savory, whispering or roaring, bland or bewitching words that dance in my mind. Like : meandering, infinitesimal, crimson, petechiae…. Reading my book aloud at the Feed and Reads, occasionally I glance up from the pages to peek at my audience, their jaws dropped and eyes begging me to continue. My gift to Marika, I tell myself. Really, though, she has gifted me, and is gifting me still.<\/span><\/p>\n

My first manuscript is a plot-less lament to my dead daughter. But that doesn\u2019t matter. Because, daily, I lose myself and find myself in what I write. Some new determination to live, lives on. And I feel hope. It\u2019s back. And hope implies future. So I continue to write, and look forward to the sharing. And I love my book like it\u2019s my daughter.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For my holiday gift I’d asked my son for a shooting lesson. So on the unseasonably warm afternoon of Christmas Eve 2011, Greg comes downstairs with two long guns. Trembling, I wrap up in scarves, earplugs, earmuffs and hooded jacket, and follow him out the door and across the lawn. He stops just short of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1998],"tags":[897,313,2109,2103,2104,247,388,2044,2102,73],"class_list":["post-2709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1998","tag-a-mothers-love","tag-bereavement","tag-duetting-memoir-26","tag-first-holiday-without-loved-one","tag-gifts-from-the-other-side","tag-grief","tag-loss","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-shooting-lesson","tag-writing-to-heal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}