Quiet Mountain Essays
Copyright©, 2005
A Tapestry of Time and Terrain
by
Cynthia Deike-Sims
My fingertips trace the pieces of cloth—velvet, silk, and wool—the fabric of our lives, neatly
stitched together over time. The bumpy raised edges of polka dots, like new buds of not-yet
flowers on an early spring tree. White, they stand out from the smooth midnight blue; white, they
starred my winter nights. Kindergarten in blonde, smooth hair and that dress. If you ever read
my report card, ever visited my home—and no one did—you would know the difference between
me and any other kid. Strange, it never occurred to me that there were any similarities at all.
That dress lived on an island.
Woven tapestry’s purpose—illusions of reality. Here we place each battle, religious scene, myth
and legend, reminders of meadows and woods, fruits and flowers.
A baby’s eyelashes flutter in a thin shower of water. A Lutheran church gives her a gift—a
sprinkle of comfort and strength for the future. A symbol of what she is to believe. She—the
second child of a married, teenaged mother—wide-eyed, dressed for the occasion. The baby’s
announcement reads: “Another Deduction.” The first baby’s read “We couldn’t be happier.” The
grace wanes. My father tall, rigid, boardlike. My mother smiles. Their other child cries. My
father, Mormon, says nothing. A silent holy war.
What fabric or patchwork is appropriate to show what happened within the walls of our home?
The history of a family. A door, wooden grooves which we touched with our fingertips. A
doorknob, cool and watched. My sister and I hiding in our room, imprisoned there. The door our
shield; behind it we stared into darkness; behind it we listened.
***
Envision a glacier, its sharp edges the yelling; edges sharp like the candy in a bowl on the table by
the window—rock candy. Rock candy tickling the inside of a mouth as it falls apart into pieces,
glaciers sliding over bedrock, coming apart. Rainbow glaciers of all the subtle watercolor hues of
that candy—crystal shades of blue like Portage nearby. Pink like the mark left after a smack.
See the pussy willow branches in the vase by that bowl, all carefully positioned on an ivory doily—
neat. Picture-perfect. Breathtaking.
We would wait behind the door until it was over and quiet, and my mother’s soft, begging sobs
had ceased. We waited in the trenches, until the doorknob turned from the other side. Then, in
the morning, I would put on that polka dot dress and march to school like a good soldier. Almost.
Sometimes a teardrop would escape without warning, like a shot in the night or an unexpected
argument. A teardrop for all the moments I couldn’t quite hold it together. “Cries easily,” my
teacher wrote. Cries a river as long as the state of Alaska; never running dry, always welling,
always right there at the brim.
But I never brought home the melting glacier.
The river of tears, dripping down first in droplets on my head as a baby, then from my eyes, ran
through five states before my fifth birthday—South Dakota, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Alaska.
Behind us trailed the bodies of all those who had loved us before, relatives. Replaced by strangers’
faces , and beloved ones in strange dreams. Running, falling. Into the arms of our creator. Into
the waiting arms of my God.
On the family fabric is a posed figure, like the silhouette of a child but taller, a sideways snapshot.
My father stands poised, ready to take his next large step, never backwards. My tiny fingers
struggle to encircle his pinky. And, always in his pocket ready to catch sniffles, white hankies. A
knight unknighted, without armor, outside the castle. Trailed, by us.
Trouble followed him—the law and all its trappings. A badge on the fabric, it’s corners sharp and
its surface embossed. Sheriff. Fist. A car flying down the road; motorists performing a three-
point turn. Slammed, their bodies fly from the vehicle. An angry man behind the wheel; the
policeman hitting bodies. Manslaughter. At the side of a hospital bed, a nurse makes my father
better. For others, it is too late. Chalk outlines. My father’s sports car was lost to that 'battle', his
face forever changed, jaw wired shut.
From the policeman’s outstretched hand, my father accepts his next mission: a one-way ticket out
of his jurisdiction. A show of mercy to a young father. My mother stands at a trailer doorway,
looking up a little, standing by her man. Two clinging babies reach for her. Her red eyes smile a
crying smile. A river runs through it all.
My eyes trace other quilted squares, puffy like my mother’s eyes, and I wonder the battles unsaid,
the soldiers lost. The blanks—and there should be blanks—probably lots of them, show the
unplowed fields of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Utah, where our people once worked the land,
once stayed a lifetime in the same homes. The fields are riddled with the graves of those who gave
their lives so we might live. The blanks—tombstones. Doorways we would never visit again.
Relatives living and dead.
Classic. Easter bonnets on 3- and 4-year-old sisters, standing in front of a house. Smiling
strangely, one with mumps, mouths upturned slightly at the edges. Mona Lisa’s babies. The
groups of children in photographs dwindle from four to two—no more cousins now, far away,
never to be seen again. A country background in the distance—a farmhouse—still in the backs of
the parents’ minds. The children, no longer clinging.
Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Two people—man and wife—neither smiling. Gone are the
farmers, teachers, midwives, drive-in movies. Now there are only these two—unskilled and
landless. On their own. Floating. Sinking. Floating. A bobbing buoy on restless waters.
Shades of pink and blue and white in a dark brown pew. Eyes on the minister. Grey slacks and a
white button-up. A cross behind my mother’s head, outside, where her cigarettes trail each other.
My father, neither husband nor father. And she can’t teach him. She doesn’t know, either.
Parents, spouses by default. One patchwork square a circle of chains, holding us all together—us
four. For awhile. A four-card flush.
I longed to mend this tapestry. The persistent desire of a child to fix what’s wrong with a family;
mend the genetic tapestry. I lift a needle, more like a javelin, that grows heavier with my efforts.
Weighted, like Jesus up on that cross. Pierced, like Jesus up on that cross, my longings pierced me.
I hold my breath, thinking that when I finally breathe again, we would be OK. But there were still
so many tiny tears. The blood ran through.
In school, we glued pieces of paper together; cutouts from magazines of faces, smeared with white
and pressed, awkward, with trapped bubbles of air. At home, no amount of glue would do the
trick. I spread the runny, white paste on my fingers, over the palms of my hands, and blew on it,
then peeled it up—a blueprint of me. Holding it up to the light, I saw Flat Stanley. Nothing
Seriously Wrong. I learned to be polite in speech. Norman Rockwell. The single “O” on my
report card for courteousness. Other cards increasingly speckled with sideways “Z’s.” Needs
Improvement. I smile more. I lay the needle down, thread and all, but drag it behind me. Like a
broken pull toy.
I learned that it didn’t much matter what is good and what is bad, whether I was good enough or
not, loved or unloved, connected or isolated. I just kept adding the bits and pieces of the
happenings into the tapestry, trying to make sense of them. They whipped by—the happenings—
in a fog, a blur, a blender. A cyclone. A tornado. Dorothy. Kansas. There’s no place like home.
In a station wagon in a driveway, we said our goodbyes, like four sardines crammed in for the last
time. The chain broken. Drive-in movies. The station wagon. Grocery shopping. And now my
mother’s Tupperware, blue and frosted dessert dishes, sundae cups and banana split bowls,
packed away in newspaper. Cardboard boxes, lightweight but final, absorbed the words in the
air. Everything turned heavy, surreal. The words: “Your mother and I…”, to be the last binding
of the two people. The thread, irrevocably severed, disintegrated. The tapestry, old. The holes,
irreparable. Running through the trees, with images like Doolittle paintings whipping by. The
tree branches stinging my bare arms; their bark like the striations on that station wagon.
Spring breaks, like a bowl of Cream of Wheat with butter, barely warm but sunny, pebbles show
through the snow of milk. Grass peeks its green tips through the brown mush outside. A game of
jacks, a game of marbles. The days go by. My sister waving from a float in a fuzzy blue parka.
And me, tracing the dots on that dress, trying not to cry.
Contributor's Notes...
I received a B.A. in Journalism and Public Communication from the University of Alaska Anchorage; I also
hold a national certificate through the State of Alaska as a Chemical Dependency Counselor II. A freelance
writer, my work has appeared in the Anchorage Daily News, Fairbanks Daily News Minor, Tundra Times,
and True North. One of my articles for True North, "Language War", was chosen by The Institute for Social
and Economic Research to be used in educating Alaska’s teachers on Native issues. “Language War” can be
found online at: http://www.alaskool.org/native_ed/articles/truenorth/languagewar.html
