Tuesday in Texas

Christmas, 1985.

Christmas lends elegance to parties – the lights, the trees, the sparkling ladies in evening gowns. The neighborhood progressive dinner promised to be full of goodwill and champagne. The entire group of 40 couples gathered for cocktails at the clubhouse, redolent with pine garlands and glossy magnolia leaves. For the sit-down portion of the progress, we would dine in private homes in groups of five couples, and my husband and I were pleased to see we knew some of the couples in our group, but not others. Perfect. Old friends and new. A toast, a blessing, and we dispersed. The holiday season of 1985 in Atlanta, Georgia, was off to an auspicious start.

By the time we re-assembled at the clubhouse for dessert my reputation as a trouble-maker, which I had managed to out-run several times, would be solidified forever, and all because of Texas City, my home town.

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Carolyn Ann Williams, 10th grade.

Carolyn gave me a wind chime, a delicate thing, bought at Rock’s Variety Store down on Sixth Street, held together with nearly invisible strands of wire. When I lifted it out of the box, it made a sweet sound, ephemeral and gone again the minute I closed my palm around the hollow tubes.

The light from the Christmas tree in my living room made her face glow pink. She was 14 years old, with freckles across her nose, and soft, curly hair. I envied her curls, but she disliked them – hated them, she said. Carolyn at that age hated or loved everything.

“It’s not a Christmas present,” she said. “This is to say I’m sorry.  For hating you before I even knew you.”

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Seventh and eighth grades run together in my memory, all messy and disorganized. Next to an insane asylum, I can’t think of anything crazier than a congregation of 13- to 15-year-olds, thrashing about in brand new waters, self-conscious, happy and unhappy, terrified. Memories are like fingerprints – no two are the same, but I remember Blocker Junior High, seventh and eighth grades, as one big minefield, a new catastrophe around every corner, coming right at me.

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Third Avenue Villas, 1960, after a rare snowfall (from “Images of America – Texas City,” by Albert L. Mitchell).

Twelve-year-old girls in 1958 lingered at the end of childhood, suspended where summers were magic, not so eager to don the feathers and straps of womanhood as they are these days. I pushed back at the changes in my body, ignored the wild emotions I never had before. I felt safe with Danise, and safe in our habitat, the wondrous Third Avenue Villas.

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This is my clan, the Benskins, the kin of Ben, some forgotten Scotsman whose wandering descendants wound up a hundred years later in Texas. It’s Christmas, 1956, at my grandparents’ house, a year after my parents’ split. I’m down front with my sister, high-water bangs and dolls. Everyone’s there, frozen in time against an explosion of floral wallpaper.

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What’s past is prologue. The Tempest, Act 2, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare

There’s something captivating about a school choir, beyond the simple appeal of children together, singing. In a town the size of Texas City, a choir delivers a kind of prologue. The prologue of a play sets the scene and introduces the time, place, characters, and so on. In this picture of the Danforth choir, I see the future in the past. The little singers were a group, a graduating class, and part of a whole generation who still know the same lyrics, sing the same songs.

All choir photos courtesy of Al Mitchell, Class of ’65.

The bows are green satin, though memory is as fickle as spring. If Alice told me the bows were red or Dennis insisted they were blue, I’d believe them both. After all, they’re in the picture. The photo can’t tell the truth; it’s black and white, something memory never is.

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Probably from The Texas City Sun.

Wonder passes through each season, even on the Gulf coast of Texas, where the changes are subtle, a gradual dimming of the heat, birds in V-formation going home, sometimes the brighter leaves on the tips of ligustrum bushes. A year vanished like that, subtle and slow. My parents were divorced, and Pennsylvania was in the past. A year is long to a child. I loved Danforth Elementary School, I loved the immense sky overhead, and my first and best friend Danise was with me every day. I was getting happy.

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“Ah. The Bruskins. See you on Sunday, Sweetie.” Aunt Venita flicked her gold-bangled wrist, rolled up the car window and sped away.

Tish with Aunt Venita, 1956.

I was walking home from Danise’s when she happened to drive by, in a hurry as always, but it would have been rude not to stop. I wished I could see the stylish high-heeled shoes she wore to show off her fabulous legs. In a few years we would wear the same shoe size, and if they pinched her toes, she would pass them on to me. They fit me better, and I loved them because they once belonged to her. I still like to sit in my sun-room in the morning, wearing a robe that belonged to my mother. It’s more than the sun making me feel warm.

Her Bruskin remark was in response to my bit of small talk, which was about my grandparents coming for Easter. See you on Sunday meant she would be at Aunt Jackie’s for Easter dinner.

Bluebonnets, April 2012.

Easter was a big deal, beyond the religious significance. Around that time the weather is pleasant for up to 30 minutes at a time, and the bluebonnets are out, which makes everyone joyful. I feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t looked upon the glory of rolling Texas hills turned blue as far as you can see. It is a singular pleasure.

But Bruskins? My grandparents’ last name was Benskin. Did I hear wrong?

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What lasts? Friendships and summers, memories, and the mashed potato spoon.

Danise and me in Galveston.

The mashed potato spoon, large and sturdy, perfect for lifting globs of buttery mashed potatoes onto your plate, back when carbs didn’t matter. That spoon is the only thing I have that also lived in the Fourth Avenue garage apartment, and I treasure it. In case of fire, my house could be ablaze, and I’d be standing in the street clutching the mashed potato spoon.

Memories last, and as for summers, I never revisit the last summers of my childhood without thinking of Danise.

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April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

No child ever made a more spectacular first impression than I did. My presentation to my extended family late in 1945 was so remarkable no one ever forgot it. I only learned the story in April of 2012. April, when Texas is covered in bluebonnets, and my cousin Beverly and I spent a week touring the landscape of our youth.

I live in northern Virginia; she lives in Fort Worth, but after a good deal of planning, I flew to Fort Worth, she picked me up, and we headed south to visit her daughter in Spring, Texas, just outside Houston. After a reunion in Dickenson with the remaining offspring of the Sisters Benskin (at the home of Scary Cousin Ray and his gracious wife Susan), we drove to Texas City.

Bev and me on the TC Dike, April 2012.

We spent two euphoric days driving around TC, eating at the Terraza Mexican Bar and Grill, formerly known as the Terrace Drive-in. We took pictures of places we lived and schools we attended, and we met the man who now lives in the Fourth Avenue garage apartment across the alley from St. Mary’s, where Bev was once a bride.

San Saba County

Then we headed into the heart of Texas, to San Saba, Cherokee, and Llano, where our grandparents came from and moved back to when they left Texas City. We visited the graves of our grandparents and great grandparents, and not only did we see the home where our grandparents lived when we were children, we were spotted by the present owner, and she invited us in to look around.

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