A SPOT FOR HOPE
Hope is a little present you can give yourself and I hope you do.
Thanks for being here.
People from Michigan, when asked by another familiar with their state where it is that they live or work or were born or married or went to school, point to their palm and say there there there there there. In our before life we had a cottage, we were those privileged kids with two sets of everything from toothbrushes to a hierarchy of lesser friends, it was on Round Lake and people told where they lived according to the twelve o’clock rock, pick me up at 8, I live at 4:30. All this to say we talked with our hands me and my sister Kate, our mother was oblivious to it until she wasn’t, she caught on all at once like Helen Keller, and she knew exactly what we were saying, that we were measuring her mental stability in a language we had created, on a scale we had devised. We communicated through a series of touch points on our hands, a concoction of Round Lake and the Michigan-shaped palm – our own secret language, our gauge, our strategy – until the moment she understood. She seemed to know things, our mother, you should have seen her at Jeopardy! her voice would come from the kitchen, what is Madagascar what is the First Triumvirate what is Pythagorean. So that day in a quiet bloom of understanding she knew she needed help, and when Aunty Caroline came a half hour later for dinner like always, my mother was seated in the chair by the door wearing all blue, her suitcase beside her, the little tri-knock came at the door and Aunty Caroline pushed it open with one finger in jabs of suspense, I wonder what she thought she might find, she didn’t know the massacres were always invisible, me and Kate at the perfectly set table, trembling hands sending trembling messages, there was never any blood or bruise it wasn’t that kind of thing, we were flexible, we learned to bend into whatever shape was necessary. I followed Kate’s lead, we always managed, but were mangled in the process. That day our mother said calmly to her sister as she stood tall in her blue heels and picked up her blue suitcase, take me to the funny farm, Caroline. I don’t know how one moment can be both the best and the worst of your life but that’s how it was for us, there’s a spot on our palms that means manic and there’s a spot for the other way, and a middle finger scale for each – Auntie Caroline said girls you watch TV until I get back – Kate and me we just looked at each other, we didn’t have a spot for hope.