of my father, for my father

I turn another year older on Thursday. Birthdays tend to fill me with nostalgia and this nostalgia is amplified by my birthday falling in the middle of autumn. I kick up maple leaves as I walk home from the library and even the air seems to whisper of the unrelenting passing of time.

Today for whatever reason, the memories beating through my head all relate to time spent with my dad, so I will write about him. Three memories in particular come to mind when I think of the past 24 years and my father. The first one is more a series of memories than a particular occurrence, the second one is a day I can’t think of without smiling, and the third is a moment that completely transformed my attitude about life.

Throughout my childhood, my dad spent one Tuesday each month driving to the state capitol to meet with a state board representing home education. My parents cared so much about giving my siblings and me an ample and enjoyable education, and it made me proud that my dad cared about the other kids too. I don’t remember when it began, but at some point Dad decided to bring me along with him to sit in on the meeting, and I remember feeling so important and special and I pitied my brothers who had to stay home. Simply attending the council was not the full extent of these adventures. Dad would also bring me to Borders. THE BIGGEST BOOK STORE IN THE WHOLE WORLD (in my eyes, at least). I would run to the kids section in the back of the store, and look for the latest Saddle Club book or pull out my list of Newberry Award winners that I was working my way through. Dad would always let me get a book, or maybe two, and then we’d go to the meeting and I’d read my books and listen to the important people talk and then Dad and I would get dinner before we went home.  If someone told me to conjure up a happy image from my childhood, I would picture myself sitting in the back of the Concord Borders surrounded by books with my dad a few aisles over. I reveled in that time together, just me and him.

The second memory is from when I was 15 years old and my family took a road trip through the southwest. My brother and I were teenagers and thought sleeping in the back of the car with our Walkmans was the only acceptable way to travel through one of the most geologically rich areas of our country. (Yes, all teenagers are stupid.)  It was a week into our trip and my dad excitedly shook my brother and me awake at Bryce Canyon National Park. He begged us to get out of the car and “Just loooook at this place, guys! You won’t see this every day! This is reaaally something incredible!” My indifference directly opposed my dad’s excitement as I sulked out of the car and walked over to the trail head. But whoa, he was right, it really was pretty cool. The rocks towered up like the dribble towers we would make at the beach and glowed a near fluorescent orange in the late afternoon sun. I showed just enough enthusiasm as I deemed acceptable, but when Dad tried to convince me to hike down into the canyon, I asked myself if I too would be so crazy when I was old. He besought and beseeched and before I knew it we were at the bottom of the canyon looking up at scenery like something straight out of an HG Wells novel. I was tired, the sun was setting, and we still had to hike up a pretty hairy looking switchback. By now, I knew my father was regretting taking on such an ambitious hike so late in the day, and I exploited his uncertainty for all it was worth. I told him Mom was going to be pissed at him when we got to the top. I told him she probably thought we were dead and he was going to be in big trouble.  I told him I was feeling weak and probably wouldn’t make it. I demanded multiple apologies. And so we trucked along, one foot in front of another. The sky grew darker and the path cleared of hikers. I cursed myself for being so easily convinced, “Why do I ever listen to you, Dad? Seriously, do you ever think before you make us do these things?!” I stopped to catch my breath on the trail and Dad put his arm around me, and smiled. He pointed at the moon that took up half the sky and said, “I might not always think through these things, Bird, but you know what? You’ll never forget this moment as long as you live. Just look around you. You’ll never ever forget this.” And you know what? I don’t think I ever will. I guess Dad is right about some things.

The last of the memories is harder for me to write about. It was my 20^th birthday and I was falling apart in my parents’ living room. After a few years of feeling happy and in control of things and believing myself to be a “real adult”, I was depressed. It had been months since I felt like myself. My head had started to replay anxious thoughts from years ago. I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing. I would have a day where I thought maybe the shadows were beginning to lift and then they’d come again, darker than before. I cried a lot for no reason, but never in front of my family. I didn’t want them to know I was weak enough to have reverted back to the helpless little girl I had been before. I would take my anger and my moods out on my little sister because I knew she couldn’t abandon me.

                  And then it was my 20^th birthday, and my mom gave me a new coat. And the coat was too big, and I fell apart in my parents’ living room. I don’t remember everything they said that day. I’m sure they were all the right things you should say when your daughter sits helpless in the living room on a day meant for celebrating. They told me I needed to talk to someone when I felt like this, and not keep it bottled in. They apologized for not being more aware and my mom cried and I cried and my Dad looked so sad. That day was a turning point for my depression, and I did feel better again and there were many people that I’m grateful to for helping me out of the hole I was in. But above all, I thank my dad. He sat in that living room and told me that I was not alone- in fact, I was just like him, and he didn’t sugarcoat anything. By no means was this the first time Dad helped me through a rough patch, but it was the first time we spoke so candidly together as adults, and something really clicked. Dad told me that people like him and I were as strong as the rest, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t ask for help sometimes. He told me about times he had felt just like I was feeling (periods I was blissfully unaware of because I was just a little girl going on adventures with her daddy). He told me that my moods were something that would always be there, and would follow me through life and into whatever relationships I end up in, and that was something I needed to accept or I would be their slave. And you know what? Those words changed everything because they helped me to acknowledge myself and my mind for what it is and to begin the steps towards managing it. And really, this story isn’t about my experiences with depression or my father’s, but more about that first conversation where I saw my father as someone more than just my dad. He was a compadre, a like-mind, someone who understood… And he helped me to understand the importance of speaking up and relying on one other. We weren’t meant to do this alone.

                  So I turn 24 on Thursday. And I’m not really sure what the next year will bring but I know it will be OK. (How couldn’t it be, with a dad like that?) Every time someone tells me I look and act just like my father, I roll my eyes, but in reality I couldn’t be more proud of the comparison. Isn’t it funny how your relationship with your parents evolves along like everything else in life? In many ways, it grows richer as the years goes by. The memories build one on top of another, and I see my father change, and I see myself change, but yet in some ways I am still the little girl in the bookstore. I sit here wide-eyed and grateful for the time I get to spend with such a humble and loving man, and I smile when I catch myself doing something so much like him.  

So thanks, Dad. Your Bird loves you even more each year.  

 More Than One Home

Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if they had stayed in one spot. If my grandfather hadn’t moved to Vermont for Famolare Shoes, and my parents hadn't followed him there. If my great-grandparents hadn’t boarded a ship to raise their children in New York City. If nobody had ever left Madunice.
               When my brother and I stepped off the train in Bratislava, the first time I visited Slovakia, he turned to me and said, "Callie, these people look like us." And he was right, they did. I saw chins that looked like my chin, and cheekbones that looked like my cheekbones, and there was dusty brown hair and eyes set back enough to make them look a little sad. 
               When I stepped off the train in Bratislava for the second time, I had my grandparents with me. I had my parents with me and my sister too and we had planned this trip because Poppi wanted to see where his parents came from. He wanted to walk on the dusty, rust-colored earth that his brothers and sisters had worked with. In the months leading up to the trip Poppi would speak more than four sentences in a row, and this is how I knew he was excited- normally Poppi is very quiet. In the months leading up to our depature, Poppi began to remember words. One Tuesday I went in to say good morning, and Poppi and Dad were talking about the night before.  The night before Poppi had lay in bed thinking about our trip and he was thinking about living in that small apartment in Manhattan and he was thinking of his mother and he started to remember her words. The first words he remembered were something about toast. Every morning leading up to our trip Poppi remembered more Slovak and Mom bought him a little dictionary and I could see how happy he was because in those pages were his parents. His parents were born in Slovakia, in a little town named Madunice, but Poppi was American and in America not everyone speaks Slovak so these words had been pushed away. Words pushed away in the back of his mind like the note I received from my parents on my high school graduation. Stuck in the back of a drawer but not completely forgotten.

               When I stepped off the train in Bratislava for the second time, there was a plan. Dad rented a minivan and we all loaded in and we drove to Madunice to find Josef. Poppi knew his cousin Josef had stayed there, and Poppi remembered the letters that Josef used to write Aunt Agnes before she died.  Madunice was dusty and small and there was a lot of construction going on in the street that lay between the store and the post office. There was a pub next to the post office and we sat down. We pointed at what we wanted as we meekly tried our best to say please and thank you. But not Poppi. Poppi was proud of what he remembered and he ordered in Slovak with confidence and a smirk. We ate Rezeň and drank RC cola and Dad showed the waitress his license and he pointed at “Benik” and I looked at my sister and she looked at me. We thought Dad was crazy but the waitress laughed and smiled and ran to get her niece. Her niece drew a map and in her broken English she told us we should go to see Josef Benik and then I wondered how we could call such a beautiful woman's English broken.
               We found Josef in his garden. He grew grapes on a trellis and the trellis looked over a big field that looked over another big field. The fields and the sky are layered like trifle in Slovakia, and the fields are sprinkled yellow with rapeseed. At first, Josef wrinkled his forehead at the van full of Americans, but we waved our hands and we smiled a lot and with Poppi's help and the dictionary, Josef understood. He smiled back and he brought us inside and he sat us at his little table in the room that had pastel-papered walls and a pretty tablecloth and lace curtains. It was crowded and cozy and reminded me of my family. Josef’s home reminded all of us of our family and of each other. Josef poured cognac and gave us three different types of crackers and we sat there and sometimes we tried to talk but mostly we just smiled and ate crackers and clanged our glasses of cognac together. And in that moment I knew I was home.
               Afterwards we went to the cemetery and we found the stones that marked where my great-great grandparents were buried, and where Josef's brothers were buried. One of his brothers was named Michal Benik and that is my name. I saw my name on the headstone and it was eerie at first, but as I kneeled down in front of it, the wind murmured and the soft grass tapped at my bare knees and again I knew I was home. It was an old home- this land that created my ancestors. 
               Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if they had stayed in one spot, in that town with the pub and the post office and the people who have the same eyes as me.
But then I look in the mirror and stop. The girl looking back through the glass is tied to the mountains of New Hampshire and the softened granite of the Ashuelot River and the wildflowers that grow by the barn at the end of County Road in Walpole.  She has the sidewalks of the Upper East Side and the dust of Madunice inside of her. This woman is made up of many stories, and many people, and she is made up of earth that's on two sides of one ocean. I smile back at her and start breathing again- I breathe deep, even breathes. I know who I am and I am proud of the land that’s inside me. Proud of the land that lets me be two places at once.

Just Nearly Asleep

Autumn Landscape, Vincent Van Gogh, November 1885

              I feigned sleep in the booth in the back of the restaurant on top of a pile of coats. My parents bantered with my aunts and uncles and their laughter filtered through a blanket of cigarette smoke and came to rest on my nose and ears and eyelids. When it was time to go home I fell into the warmth of Dad’s arms as he lifted me out into the sweet brisk November air that graces New England at the same time the frost paints landscapes on the windowpanes. On the ride home my brothers and I snuggled like puppies in the backseat of the minivan and by the time the tires rolled onto the gravel driveway my sleep was no longer artificial. We were thankful for each other that night and many nights after that.
              Now we are older, and many things have changed. Cigarettes aren’t allowed in the restaurant anymore and the booth was replaced a few years ago. We don’t all go home to the same place each evening and my little sister who was too young for this memory is old enough to live on her own with an ocean between us. Not everyone will be together for the holiday and I will miss them, but through change the important things remain constant. My parents’ arms are still warm and my family’s laughter is still comforting and the November air is still sweet and brisk, and today we are blessed and tonight we will fall asleep thankful for each other. I sit here and write, and write each word with thanksgiving, and my smiles remain as I remember a little girl just nearly asleep on a pile of coats.

rooftop

I sit on the roof with my brother Jordan, and my cousins, Justin and Jeremiah.  Jeremiah is wearing his new yellow sneakers, and dangling from my ears are the elephant earrings I bought at the Melrose Trading Post earlier that day.  I have that warm contented feeling that comes from spending time with people you have known your entire existence, and I take the last sip of my beer as the California sun lazily disappears.

back from LA

I was in Los Angeles for a few days to visit my brother and sister-in-law.  We ate too much food, and then talked about eating more food until it was time to eat more food.  They complained about the heat wave and I laughed at them and reveled in the near-perfect weather.  My brother and I spent the mornings watching music documentaries, and the afternoons driving around the city listening to Black Sabbath.  I ate the best burrito I have ever had.

snapshots of a wonderful Christmastime

Christmas Eve at Aunt Sue's and Christmas at my grandmother's.  That's my oldest brother Jordan on the right!

My brother Dillon enjoying a Newcastle in his new Christmas sweater.

A Very Benik Christmas was a blur (literally a blur, according to these less-than-focused photos).  It was days on end of food and laughter and enjoying each other.  December 25th, 2011 seems so long ago already, but like every Christmas I can ever remember, it was magnificent.  

the near and the dear ones

The Beniks really know how to pull of a beautiful, festive (and delicious!) celebration.  This year my parents held Thanksgiving at their new house and everything looked straight out of a magazine.  More important than the decorations or even the food (!!!), being surrounded by a family that truly enjoys each other is what makes Thanksgiving my favorite day of the year.  We ate all afternoon and evening, danced until midnight, and talked about music until the last guests left at around 3 in the morning.   Sometimes it takes a chilly Thursday in November to remind me how lucky I am to have such a huge, tight-knit and supportive family.  

To my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and cousins:  many of my greatest memories are made when we are together.  Thank you so much for all your love!   I love you always.