A House for the Soul

Lodge Living Room open to the Porch

The places Mary Jane lived are now doorways to her soul. These past several days since I've written, I've been catching glimpses of those places and the bits and pieces of soul I left there. This picture is precious to me. It takes only a slight turn of mind to see Mary Jane playing in this room. You can't see the Stark Player Piano on the far left side, but she's still learning to play it as I look at the scene. Stuffed ducks decorate its top along with a pelican whose wing-span reaches from one end of the piano to the other.  Evenings, after dinner, guests would stand around the piano and sing old songs like "Pack Up Your Troubles," and "My Old Kentucky Home."

Then a mere shift of memory and Grandpa Klimek is sitting in that intricately upholstered chair telling stories to a room full of people. It's the story about duck hunting with Mutt Onstad, the time Grandpa fell into the lake. I can hear his thick Polish/German accent as he says, laughing, "Down I went! Down and up!" He was old already then, just a few years this side of death. Pete and Grandma, on the other side of that open door, in the porch, were secretly recording his every word. It was a new contraption Pete bought in Minneapolis. Wire picked up people's voices through a large silver colored microphone, and then Pete could cut a record at 78 rpm. Suddenly Pete must have turned up the volume, and the microphone gave a loud honk.

 "That was a duck!" Grandma called out from the porch.

Grandpa looked startled, then laughed. "Oh, the duck don't want me to tell the story, eh?"

He was the soul of the place that collected slivers of me. My grandmother ran it, but he became its heart. This is how he looked back then. Can you see the softness, the humor?--even though he doesn't look like a man who wants his picture taken.

In the following years, between that time and the year I was seven, he would suffer eight strokes.

Why is it that memories of the place turn so quickly to memories of Grandpa Klimek? 

After the strokes started, he would look like this. That's Mary Jane with him, glad to be with him. See his left hand hanging. It was paralyzed. 

In his German accent he read to her, comic books from Curtis Drug Store.  He skipped pages, pretending he didn't understand that he was to read the left-hand page.  "Grandpa," she corrected him, exasperated with his stupidity, "you forgot this page again." 

"Tsk, tsk, your old grampa, you know, he don't know nothing."  He shook his head.  "Poor Schnickelfritz, to have such a grampa."  She sat on his knee.  He smelled of stale tobacco and hair oil, like clothes packed away for years.  He let her sit on the wing of the wing-back chair and play with his scant, soft, faded brown hair while he read the paper.  She imagined roads where the parts were.  She imagined that his dandruff was sand.

His first stroke paralyzed his left arm and hand.  His thumb and forefinger locked stiffly together and the other three fingers curled into his palm.  He worked it and worked it.  The effort drove Grandma mad.  They yelled at each other.  "Leave it alone, Anton," Grandma yelled, "it's useless."  And Grandpa exploded, "Hold your tongue, woman.  Without the hand I am no man.  I am needing the hand.  I am making this hand to work."  And he continued.  He used his right hand to pull the stiff thumb away from the forefinger.  They snapped right back together.  Over and over.  One day he could move them far enough apart simply by willing it that he picked up one of the dining room chairs.  "Aha!" he laughed, "AHA!!!  Lizzie, look!  Al, Look!"  The chair dangled from his stiff, misshapen fingers.

Grandpa and Grandma went to Mass every Sunday but Grandpa seldom went up to the Communion railing to receive the sacrament.  Grandma and Mama received every Sunday.  Mary Jane wanted to know why.  "He's too humble," explained her Mama.  "Grandpa really believes that God comes to him in Communion.  It is such an honor for him, he never feels worthy.  Only rarely does he permit himself to receive, despite how unworthy he feels.  Mostly he prays his rosary and the prayer the priest says:  'Oh Lord, I am not worthy that You should come into my house; only say the word and my soul shall be healed.' " Mama’s voice became soft, "I love my Daddy so much.  I am more grateful for the little bit of him in me than for all I received from my mother."

After the stroke when the priest and doctor came, and Mary Jane hid her head under the sofa pillows, Grandpa Klimek never again left his bed.  The family nursed him--Grandma, Mama, maybe Aunt Alice Lou helped, I'm not sure.  I don't know if my mother's older sister, Aunt Eva, came from Minneapolis to help.  Mary Jane visited him.  A large wooden chair that was a portable toilet was placed by the bed.  She avoided it.  She sat on the bed.  Grandpa played "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe" with her.  Later all he said was "Jesu, Maria, Joseph," over and over.

He died on December 5, 1948, and no one told her.  She was at school.  Miss Boeckers, her third grade teacher, said her mother had called and that she could go home with Bonnie Brink.  She lived in a big house on a corner where she had a room all to herself and so many dolls they couldn't be counted.  Her mother owned a gold satin comforter and didn't mind that the girls played with it.  Bonnie was Doctor Brink's daughter and Billy Brink's sister but Mary Jane forgave her for that.

Marge Brink, Bonnie's mother, came upstairs to Bonnie's room and told Mary Jane that Doctor Brink wanted to talk to her.  She went down the stairs into the living room and stood stiffly, eyes on her toes.  "Your Grandpa Klimek died today," he said.  "Your mother and your grandmother are very busy and that is why they want you to sleep overnight with Bonnie."

He was lying!  She knew it.  Her mother would have told her.  He was a monster, this Doctor Brink. "He did not!" She almost yelled.  "He did not die!"

She couldn't eat supper.  She and Bonnie went to bed.  She felt thirsty.  They called to Bonnie's mother for water.  She couldn't go to sleep.  She asked Bonnie what happened to people who were dead.  "Worms eat them," Bonnie informed.  "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms crawl up and down their snout," she sing-songed.  They giggled.  They sang together "The worms crawl in. . ."  They giggled some more and sang more loudly.  Doctor Brink called out "You girls, be quiet in there and go to sleep."  Mary Jane felt sick.  She wanted to cry.  She was lonesome for her mother.  Finally she went to sleep.

After school the next day she stopped, as usual, at Grandma's to visit Grandpa Klimek.  He wasn't there.  A woman she didn't know was cleaning.  The wooden toilet was gone.  The mattress was gone off the bed and only the empty, coiled springs remained on the bed frame. 

The next day the undertaker brought a gray velvety coffin into the living room and opened it.  Grandpa lay very still inside on satin pillows.  Grandma cried in her bedroom while she watched herself in the mirror above her dresser.  Mama cried while she knelt on the kneeler the undertaker had positioned in front of Grandpa.  "I wish we could have gotten a better coffin," she explained to all the people as they began to arrive at Grandma's apartment.  "It's the war.  They're so scarce, the better ones."

Relatives Mary Jane didn't know existed came and ate at Grandma's round dining room table.  Uncle Felix with the bushy mustache that dripped with coffee each time he took a drink was Grandpa's brother.  While they ate, her Uncle Paul stood looking down at Grandpa.  The curtain between the dining room and living room was open so she could see him.  He held his grey wool cap in his hands.  He shook a little bit.  He talked softly; she had never heard him talk softly before.  "Dad..." he said.  "Dad."

Anton John Klimek,
1876-1948

Do we slip into chinks between the bricks or boards of places we have lived? Do the trees absorb our spirits? Do lakes, rivers, and the ocean laugh our joy, and does rain weep as we have wept? If we let ourselves, if we take the time, could we touch our past with its people and places, unite it to the present, and carry it into future? And does it then transcend our individuality? And here's another question that intrigues me--Is it possible to bring the world to consciousness through our own souls? Does everything and everyone we have truly loved, consciously loved, become immortal through Love's immortality?