Tea With Pocahontas and Other Amazing Things

I had tea in an Atlanta dining room with Pocahontas, Mr. Charbonneau, Molly, Zoe, and Rose. The first two were invisible, the second two are dolls, but Rose is my real six-year-old niece, and with her as facilitator, hostess, and explainer, there was never an awkward moment. We sipped our sweet invisible tea from pewter cups and chatted about important matters such as our favorite kinds of dogs, when to put up Christmas ornaments, and the boy in her class who actually got up from circle, went back to his desk, put his head down, and fell asleep. I learned about being Jewish or Catholic, snakes and explorers, and the sign language symbols for different letters of the alphabet. I haven’t had the pleasure in recent years of the company of a six-year-old, and I found it quite to my liking.

It was a long trip for a short visit, but it takes a little effort to stay current. If you don't check in now and then you become nothing but a memory, or maybe just a name. 

And little girls do grow up fast. I've certainly learned that. 

So I went through the tunnel of ticketing, time zones, and security checks, of wheeled suitcases, moving walkways, and whooshing trams, of rushing and waiting and magazines and gum and finally becoming as small and patient as is humanly possible while the miracle of flight occurs.

While waiting to board my connecting flight from Phoenix I noticed a young man sporting a fedora. Remember when people dressed up a bit to travel?Now most of them seemed to be shuffling along in sub-casual sweats, not so much dressed as covered. Clearly we have no need to look good for one another. There’s something oddly intimate about it, though; it's as if we are all in the same hospital wing walking through the corridor, pushing along our IVs.

Then, overheard in the airport book store, and I kid you not: “I liked Harry Potter until he got old. It was Harry Potter who got me through all those years in jail, ya know.”

What’s been getting me through these hours is Diary of A Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee, a book I chose with no irony, but I am also armed with the holiday issue of The New York Review of Books, my absolute favorite publication for airplane travel. On this trip I have folks like Joan Didion, Orhan Pamuk, and Charles Simic for company. (An excerpt of a poem in there by Ellen Bryant Voigt speaks of “an old compulsion to record,/…to salvage/something from my life, to fix/some truth beyond all change…” and I find I have this odd compulsion to jot that down.)

Once in Atlanta, I take the MARTA to get near my brother’s neighborhood. The passengers seem to represent a cross section of city life, from the polished and professional to the unwashed and questionable. Hanging on to keep my balance and listening nervously for my stop, I realize how tentative and non-urban I have become. “This here will be your Peachtree Center. Exit here for public library, Coca Cola Center… Next stop, Garnett. Exit here for Greyhound bus, pre-trial detention…” Finally, Brookhaven, and I go outside into a night that has a kind of chill I’m no longer used to, and my brother drives up, instantly as familiar as my heart.

It was a good visit because we didn’t undertake anything too elaborate. Rose and I made paper dolls, read books, and played games. I had the grand tour of a dollhouse inhabited by tiny plastic teenagers and dogs and even a baby Jesus. I met Groovy Girls and model horses and of course Otto and Luna, the real dogs. On Friday afternoon Rose took me for a walk to a little cemetery not far from her house, and I now have an enduring image of her skipping through the brown leaves, all brightness and play, somehow both incongruous and delightful amidst the headstones. At home we cut out stars for a little lilac-colored Christmas tree, and Lindy and I folded paper cranes, and Rose made an angel.

On Sunday we went to my brother’s usual coffee place where he sometimes works for hours at his laptop. I was by the counter pouring a refill into my cup when a woman turned to me and said, “This is the saddest Christmas ever.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said. “Look around. The economy.  Everything.”

Well, I knew what she meant. I just hadn’t been focusing on it. I’d been busy after all attending tea parties with Rose and Pocahontas and cutting out stars and listening to a little girl’s view of the world. This too is included under the heading of everything, is it not?  

Now I'm remembering those lines from Ellen Bryant Voigt, and though I can pin down no truth beyond all change, oh I surely do intend to salvage something from my life. Hell, I'll make something up if I have to. I'll record and rewrite and rework and revisit. No sense getting bogged down in sadness.

Early Monday morning Lindy drove me to the station. Rose went with us. She had to get up for school anyway, and there was one more item on her list of things to do with Aunt Cyn: we still had to sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. She'd even brought the lyrics to make sure we got it exactly right.  

So the two of us sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow as we rode to the station through the sleepy streets of morning, and it never seemed silly, not even for a moment.