I bought a new deck of cards to replace my old ones, which were crinkled, torn and limp from living most of their lives beside a lake in Maine. Solitaire had become problematic since their individual wounds lent themselves to shame-faced cheating. I knew the King of Hearts had lost two corners and the Jack of Spade’s side was torn. Victories were hollow!
The new pack, though the same edition as the original, unsurprisingly, was not absolutely identical. The faces were slightly different and did not look as pleasant or interesting to me. I found it hard to play with them and kept returning to my flabby old friends. Eventually, I did what humans have done for untold millennia — I made up a story to ease my disquiet:
Jack of Spades, with his striking profile and large dark eye, looks confidently toward adventures, while Jack of Hearts, with only slightly less aplomb, may soon charm a princess from far away. Jack of Clubs is timid, too young to sport a proper mustache like the others, but Jack of Diamonds looks sly and may remain a fop, distrustful and alone.
Queen of Clubs is serene and dignified. Queen of Diamonds, wide-eyed, swore her loyalty to something she does not comprehend. Queen of Hearts dreams of an escape from her royal enclosure, but the one near tears, the Queen of Spades, cannot forget the sound of doors slamming on her joyous maidenhood.
Only King of Diamonds turns aside, looks afar and, though clear-eyed, does he ever comfort his anxious queen or fret about the future of his callow son? King of Hearts is shadowed by regret; perhaps he and his queen find reality too harsh, but they rejoice — their strong son will survive. King of Clubs is just. His conscience bears the pains of innocents and his queen’s serenity speaks of his love. They will wait patiently for their shiftless son to grow up. King of Spades is strong but harbors qualms about the rituals of righteousness. His eyes reflect the same determination as his son’s but do either discern the loneliness of their queen?
My sympathies were awakened and I realized how we all protect and are protected by the family narratives we create. We wear our costumes and our habitual expressions outside the house and, though inside the house we often change our behavior considerably, our perceptions of each other, parents and children alike, remain clouded and incomplete.
I perceived my mother as an unsmiling disciplinarian. Angrily, I fought for my identity. In retrospect I realize she may have been as depressed by where marriage had led her as was the Queen of Spades. Most women in her era followed the societal standards and, a brilliant scholar, she nonetheless became a migraine-ridden lonely housewife. It took years for her to recover herself and for us to reconcile. I held her hand when she was dying, vulnerable but unafraid, and somehow suddenly knew that under different circumstances we would have been true friends. Days later, I discovered her long thick braids wrapped in tissue paper in her bottom dresser drawer among her private relics. She had cut them off when I was very young. Now, lusterless, her chestnut hair threatened to crumble at my touch as might an abandoned bird’s nest that had wintered over for many years in the secluded thicket of a darkened wood.
Our family stories are all different and all the same. Emotions are always mixed; sometimes volatile, often hidden away in places where we keep them private to survive the family cauldron of intense loves, fears and misunderstandings. As we age, our parents diminish into the deeper recesses of our minds. The metaphoric swords they brandished become miniaturized, though sometimes we hear their muddled whispers in our dreams. We can still visualize them as we did when we were young and their sounds reached us upstairs: an ice cube pinging the old-fashioned glass, the hissing over a stolen cigarette, the slam of a refrigerator door. Later, unexpectedly, we might witness their shared kiss. As children we were experts at recognizing their moods, but blithely unaware of the vicissitudes eliciting them.
As adults, hopefully, we understand them better. We may even endure hard times by recalling some words of loving advice they gave us and come to respect how bravely they lived their lives within the chance enclosures of their own difficult circumstances. Fortunately, we can revise our narratives.
Margot Fleck lives in Northfield.
