rotary phone
conversation drifting
into the wind
Untangling the beginning of this is a bit like chasing the origin of the wind. I guess the core of the story is, I’ve been missing my mom a lot lately …
This may drift a bit as well.
A friend (Is it too soon to call her a friend? Maybe? Maybe not.) has a wind phone on her property. It’s adjacent to a cemetery, both her property and the wind phone. If it weren’t for one friend, who introduced me to this friend, I’d never have heard of a wind phone.
A wind phone is a rotary phone attached to exactly nothing, in a place. The place not as important as the existence. Maybe. I’m not sure. Well, yes, in my mind, that they exist is what’s most important.
A few months ago, I went to one, set up phone-booth style, outside of a library in a neighboring town. I stepped into a tiny and sturdy structure smelling of fresh tongue-and-groove pine boards with three windows, plus another in the door. The rotary phone stately avocado green (of course), a wall-mount version. The center of the rotary housed a piece of paper with a red heart Sharpied on it.
I stepped into the booth wondering what to dial … L-O-V-E?
The center of the rotary housed a piece of paper with a red heart Sharpied on it.
No. My parents’ phone number, of course. The first phone number I ever memorized. The one I know by heart.
At the first sound of the long stretch from nine back around to completion I stepped into a different space all together. The remaining six digits clattered by, their familiarity of sound and texture both grounding and transporting.
(Did you keep your finger in the space and trace it back around on its return? Or were you like me, letting it go, listening to the pale plastic clackityclack that is not really how it sounds but somewhat—a softer analog echo—a thing hard to describe.)
This time, I park the car across the road from the cemetery and find my way through the wire fence, white paint pockmarked by time, weather, wind. I make my way to the stone wall abutting my friend’s property, eyes seeking the opening she assured me was there.
AH! There it is. I step across the inviting verdant threshold. Tucked away from view in the hug of a tree’s indentation is the wind phone. The concept was created by landscape gardener, Itaru Sasaki, in 2010, as a way of being able to converse with his deceased cousin. The concept has since traveled the world.
Seated in a wooden box under a sweetly painted plexi roof is a red desk phone, I pick up the handset and dial. The action is not as smooth as the wall-hung version at the other wind phone. Instead, it reminds me of the stupendously heavy black phone I inherited from my sister, Beth, several years after she’d left home for college. The action on that one was as heavy as the phone itself, like a 20-pound truck clutch, which if you’ve never encountered one, be glad. They’re beastly in traffic. Not that I would know from a certain U2 tour in 1985 where they mistakenly had exactly one exit from the concert venue. Three hours inching that 1962 Rambler American 2-door station wagon, with its three-on-the-tree shift through streams of other concert goers all trying to get home, preferably before dawn, my right leg like barely set Jell-O.
... I pick up the handset and dial.
A breeze animates the tree leaves around me and I begin.
“Hi Mommy,” I pause out of reflex and hear her reply.
“Hi Sug,” her shorthand for ‘sugar’—a familiar greeting to us females in the family, myself, my sister, and my nieces.
“I wanted to tell you Bella’s gone. She got really sick.” I think of how much Mom loved all of her grandkitties, as she called them.
“You’ll love this, though, the last thing she willingly ate, a few days before she went, was Maria’s!” These were Mom’s favorite. She called them cookies, though the package is labeled cracker. A thin round, they’re vaguely vanilla wafery in flavor, but not nearly as sweet. Mom always had them in a cookie jar on the counter and ate them throughout the day.
“I know! Can you believe it? She was never interested in people food. But when I started eating them at home, she became intensely interested.” Just before Mom passed, Beth had bought Mom a new box. After Mom died, I packed the box in my luggage. My husband, Seth, orders new boxes for me now. The first bite brings instant transportation to Mom’s side.
At home, Bella crawled on my lap to get her nose closer to them. I told her what I told my big sweet black cat, Bashad (another lifetime ago), when he seemed interested in refried beans, “You’re not gonna like this, but here ya go!”
They both proved me wrong.
“Well, she’d been sick for a month. A few weeks of not eating much of anything and she climbed in my lap after dinner one night nosing around the Maria’s I was eating for dessert!” I laugh.
“So I fed her crumbs until she wouldn’t eat anymore.” My laughter switches to a sob.
“It’s crazy.”
“Thanks Mommy. I miss her.”
“Oh! I wanted to tell you something else, remember how I would bring rugs over to work on when I would visit you and Dad? I’ve started making baskets now, like the one I made you.” That was the first one I made, “I’m sorry that one isn’t that great.” I switch back to laughter.
“Well I sold one! I meant it to be beachy, like a sand and water feel, but instead, the teal ended up looking more like your favorite blue. When I finished, it made me think of you, so I titled it ‘I Think You’d Like This One’.”
I close out my call and head to the gate. I meant to tell her about the weather, we always talk about the weather. I swing back around to make a second call.
“Hi again! It’s me.” I laugh.
“I know, but I forgot to tell you, it’s really beautiful here today. Clear blue skies and puffy clouds and the perfect temperature.” I think about her perfect temperature being anything upward of 85 and add, “Well, perfect for me.” It’s in the 60s here today.
“It’s … it’s really beautiful here Mom. I’m in a really beautiful place.”
I look out at the hills and sky. I think about the double meaning of what I’ve just said.
I look out at the hills and sky. I think about the double meaning of what I’ve just said.
“I’m in a really beautiful place, Mom. I’m good. Things are good.” I let the tears flow, “I love you and I miss you. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?” I release my words to the ever-attentive wind.
*
Thank you for reading—always. I’m so grateful to every one of you who takes the time to read these essays.
Death is an important rite of passage in our journey and yet, we rarely talk about it. I’m so grateful to have learned about wind phones. You can find the one closest to you at the website https://www.mywindphone.com/ A special thank you to Liz for putting one up on her place.
And if you’ve not heard of or attended one, I recommend finding a Death Café. They’re held in different places, we host one at the library where I work and there are two others in nearby communities, one at another library, the other above the bar at a pizza place. The topic is to talk all things death: mortality, grieving, burial, paperwork, everything. No topic is off limits, there is no agenda, the only rules are that there be tea and something to eat.
Curious about the cracker/cookies that my mom liked? Here’s a link. LOL
Love & gratitude to you all,
Lalee
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