When I was old enough, but still not old enough to comb all the tangles out of my own hair, my parents would let me go stay at Ginger's house in the Seattle area. There was so much I didn't know about her then, and so much that I didn't think to ask. She was simply, and wonderfully, Ginger. Her black hair with threads of gray framing her dimpled face. Her purple smock-like dresses over her stout figure. Her buttermilk and lavender scent. Her ready chuckle. Ginger was a genuine gem of a kindhearted person.
During my long visits, I always slept in the tiny room off the kitchen. I was enchanted with the petite steps leading up to the hobbit-sized door, and I loved that there was just enough space for a little-person sized bed on the floor of the Harry-Potter-cupboard room. Greg (Ginger's longtime partner) would always clear the space of stored, yellowed magazines and ubiquitous spiders before my visit. Ginger would tuck me inside the layers of slightly-musty blankets when bedtime surreptitiously arrived.
Apparently I talked and sang incessantly during those visits. Often times I didn't understand why Ginger would chortle for minutes on end after something I'd said, but I didn't mind because I adored her. We would sit on the edge of the damp picnic table in the treed courtyard and feed the squirrels peanuts, and I marveled at the sheer number of peanut shells that carpeted the ground beneath our feet.
Greg spent years collecting and recording Shirley Temple flicks for me (I was convinced I would be a charming actress and talented tap-dancer myself). Ginger and I would pop new videos into the VCR like thick slices of toast into the toaster, and we would cuddle up to enjoy the old films. Ginger would tell me how my golden curls were just like Shirley's.
Ginger and I donned aprons in the kitchen to make bagels from scratch. I fondly remember how she would spin the dough around her finger, how I exclaimed "Hole-y bagel!" and made her face animate into laughter, how she taught me to dunk the bagels into hot water and sprinkle them with a dusting of sea salt.
Then I grew up, like Peter Pan's Wendy or C.S. Lewis' Lucy, like all little girls are bound to do sooner or later. I rarely saw Ginger. "She has an important job at the University," my mom would say. "Ginger is extremely bright. And you don't need to be babysat any more."
But Ginger would sometimes drive to Canada to see us perform in our annual Christmas concerts. On rare occasions we would go out to dinner together. She always smelled the same, looked the same -- albeit with more gray strands in her hair. I didn't make her laugh as much anymore, but she would keep me and mom in stitches with her old stories. I loved the way her face reddened and shone with mirth during her storytelling.
She was still my beloved Ginger, and still the Ginger that I knew loved me.
Ginger never divulged many personal details. I still remember the afternoon when as a little girl I asked, "Ginger, why aren't you and Greg married?" She looked taken aback by the question, but I stood before her blinking with unflinching naiveté. When she spoke, it was softly. "It's been so long...I think that we are, Emilie. Greg and I know that we love each other."
Over the years I picked up bits and pieces of Ginger's story from my mother. Ginger had once been a great beauty. But some experiences with men in her past damaged and haunted her. She deliberately overate, tried to make herself unattractive in acts of self-neglect. Age did the rest.
But the Ginger I knew seemed so far removed from these experiences, and she never even breathed of them to me. Maybe she thought I was too young to know. I probably was.
When I graduated from high school, I wrote her a note and tucked a senior picture into an envelope that we never sent. We couldn't find her address, or phone number, or email. I went to college. It had been years since we'd exchanged our last postcards. But I wasn't worried. Ginger would always be there, always loving. I imagined how she would be at my future wedding, regaling the guests during the toasts with heartwarming stories. Of course she would be there at every stage of my life, because she had watched me grow up, and because I wanted to make her proud of me.
And I wanted her to know that I was old enough to be her confidante, too. That I wished to understand more about her, her pains and her joys.
I assumed I would get a shot at this, because Ginger, a living, breathing, factual Ginger, was like a foundational pillar in my memories of life and relationships.
I was at college, States away from home, when I got the call from Mom. We had been invited to Ginger's funeral. Greg had left several months before. Ginger had been found at home. If she'd taken care of herself, the doctors had said, she would have lived nearly twice as long.
It was midway through the semester, and I would miss the funeral. Mom called me afterwards. "Ginger was such an amazing person, Emilie," she said. "She poured herself into other people's lives. She was incredibly intelligent and incredibly loving." I nodded even though I knew Mom couldn't see me. I tried to dam up my reeling mind against the floodwaters of guilt and regret. If only I'd made the effort to reach her, tell her how much I cared about her, before she'd gone.
Mom knew. "There was a display of the photographs that Ginger had framed on a table in her house at the time she passed away," she said. "There was a picture of you. You brought her so much joy. She always loved you so much." Over the phone I could hear the tears stretching Mom's voice taut.
"I wish I had the chance to tell her that." My own tears, my own strained voice.
"She knew, Emilie. I think she always knew that."
During my long visits, I always slept in the tiny room off the kitchen. I was enchanted with the petite steps leading up to the hobbit-sized door, and I loved that there was just enough space for a little-person sized bed on the floor of the Harry-Potter-cupboard room. Greg (Ginger's longtime partner) would always clear the space of stored, yellowed magazines and ubiquitous spiders before my visit. Ginger would tuck me inside the layers of slightly-musty blankets when bedtime surreptitiously arrived.
Apparently I talked and sang incessantly during those visits. Often times I didn't understand why Ginger would chortle for minutes on end after something I'd said, but I didn't mind because I adored her. We would sit on the edge of the damp picnic table in the treed courtyard and feed the squirrels peanuts, and I marveled at the sheer number of peanut shells that carpeted the ground beneath our feet.
Greg spent years collecting and recording Shirley Temple flicks for me (I was convinced I would be a charming actress and talented tap-dancer myself). Ginger and I would pop new videos into the VCR like thick slices of toast into the toaster, and we would cuddle up to enjoy the old films. Ginger would tell me how my golden curls were just like Shirley's.
Ginger and I donned aprons in the kitchen to make bagels from scratch. I fondly remember how she would spin the dough around her finger, how I exclaimed "Hole-y bagel!" and made her face animate into laughter, how she taught me to dunk the bagels into hot water and sprinkle them with a dusting of sea salt.
Then I grew up, like Peter Pan's Wendy or C.S. Lewis' Lucy, like all little girls are bound to do sooner or later. I rarely saw Ginger. "She has an important job at the University," my mom would say. "Ginger is extremely bright. And you don't need to be babysat any more."
But Ginger would sometimes drive to Canada to see us perform in our annual Christmas concerts. On rare occasions we would go out to dinner together. She always smelled the same, looked the same -- albeit with more gray strands in her hair. I didn't make her laugh as much anymore, but she would keep me and mom in stitches with her old stories. I loved the way her face reddened and shone with mirth during her storytelling.
She was still my beloved Ginger, and still the Ginger that I knew loved me.
Ginger never divulged many personal details. I still remember the afternoon when as a little girl I asked, "Ginger, why aren't you and Greg married?" She looked taken aback by the question, but I stood before her blinking with unflinching naiveté. When she spoke, it was softly. "It's been so long...I think that we are, Emilie. Greg and I know that we love each other."
Over the years I picked up bits and pieces of Ginger's story from my mother. Ginger had once been a great beauty. But some experiences with men in her past damaged and haunted her. She deliberately overate, tried to make herself unattractive in acts of self-neglect. Age did the rest.
But the Ginger I knew seemed so far removed from these experiences, and she never even breathed of them to me. Maybe she thought I was too young to know. I probably was.
When I graduated from high school, I wrote her a note and tucked a senior picture into an envelope that we never sent. We couldn't find her address, or phone number, or email. I went to college. It had been years since we'd exchanged our last postcards. But I wasn't worried. Ginger would always be there, always loving. I imagined how she would be at my future wedding, regaling the guests during the toasts with heartwarming stories. Of course she would be there at every stage of my life, because she had watched me grow up, and because I wanted to make her proud of me.
And I wanted her to know that I was old enough to be her confidante, too. That I wished to understand more about her, her pains and her joys.
I assumed I would get a shot at this, because Ginger, a living, breathing, factual Ginger, was like a foundational pillar in my memories of life and relationships.
I was at college, States away from home, when I got the call from Mom. We had been invited to Ginger's funeral. Greg had left several months before. Ginger had been found at home. If she'd taken care of herself, the doctors had said, she would have lived nearly twice as long.
It was midway through the semester, and I would miss the funeral. Mom called me afterwards. "Ginger was such an amazing person, Emilie," she said. "She poured herself into other people's lives. She was incredibly intelligent and incredibly loving." I nodded even though I knew Mom couldn't see me. I tried to dam up my reeling mind against the floodwaters of guilt and regret. If only I'd made the effort to reach her, tell her how much I cared about her, before she'd gone.
Mom knew. "There was a display of the photographs that Ginger had framed on a table in her house at the time she passed away," she said. "There was a picture of you. You brought her so much joy. She always loved you so much." Over the phone I could hear the tears stretching Mom's voice taut.
"I wish I had the chance to tell her that." My own tears, my own strained voice.
"She knew, Emilie. I think she always knew that."
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