Setting Fire

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, twenty miles south of the Windy City. The town was settled in the 1800s by Dutch immigrants and at the time of my youth was still referred to as “The Onion Capital of the World.” I’m not sure if that little town qualified for the title but I do know that every summer the smell of green onions permeated the air.

Back in those days the town was still predominately Dutch and they owned the furniture store, the bakery, the grocery store, and nearly all the banks. Every few miles was a Dutch church where attendance was required twice on Sundays which seemed excessive to me and my siblings who couldn’t hold our attention for an hour at the Catholic church. My mom mostly didn’t care for the Dutch. She said they were cheap and could clutch a dollar bill tighter than anyone. On Sundays when we would swim at the neighbor’s pool, my mom would sip an afternoon beer looking two doors down at the bored Dutch family drinking lemonade and say, “You kids should be grateful you’re not Dutch. Those poor kids can’t even bounce a ball on Sundays.”

In those days everyone knew the nationality of everybody else and sweeping generalizations were made in regards to that. It was also everyone’s business to know what church you went to and where your kids went to school. The Catholic kids were raised to believe that the kids who went to public school were pagans and would probably burn in hell at death. The public school kids thought the Catholic kids were part of a cult who dressed the same way for eight years in order to identify each other. In the neighborhood we would play together but it didn’t go smoothly, what with them being pagan devil spawns and all.

Years into living in our neighborhood, a new family moved in down the street. They were not Dutch but Polish and Catholic so that was good. I didn’t know much about the Polish but Mom said they were good housekeepers as evidenced by the Gra***inskis who washed their windows inside and out every few months. Shirley Gra***inski was a large women who wasn’t afraid to stand her ground against anyone and had a voice that could be heard for miles when she called her kids home for dinner. You really didn’t want to mess with Shirley and she seemed to live in a near constant state of friction. If her husband had an opinion on Shirley’s state of mind he didn’t say much. Even he seemed afraid of her.

Shirley didn’t like her next door neighbors who happened to be Dutch and one day there was a confrontation that sent her over the edge. She paid my mom a visit to tell her that she was so mad at them that she filled a paper sack full of dog shit, lit it on fire, and left it on their front porch. Mom told us the story at dinner and Dad was appalled. Mom, on the other hand, was a little harder to read. I think deep down she admired this solution because she thought the Dutch had it coming for all sorts of reasons.

That incident was the first of many dog shit fires in the neighborhood. Mom would roll her eyes and say, “Everybody knows it was Shirley. That’s her calling card.” When I reached adulthood and had neighbors of my own I often thought about these conflicts. Did Shirley get mad and say, “Kids, here’s a brown sack. I need you to find me some fresh dog turds and don’t come home until you do.” Did they come home with less than fresh ones where she would open the bag, examine them and say, “These won’t work. Try down the street where the bulldogs live.” Did she ever sit with her anger and think maybe this whole fire thing is over the top? Did she ever approach the neighbor to try to work it out? Was she in the throws of a raging menopause?

I think my mom thought Shirley went too far when one day she left a flaming sack of shit on Ed’s porch because he called her a fat, dumb Polack. I don’t know why he called her that especially since his own wife was Polish, but back in those days name calling was as normal as the smell of onions all summer long. “Everyone knows Ed would give you the shirt off his back,” Mom said which to her was reason enough for him not to deal with flaming dog crap.

All these years later I know now what it feels like to be Shirley. When people have looked at me and in a down low voice asked if I had reached the “anger” stage of grief, I looked at them in disbelief. Anger? Me? Why would I be angry? And I wasn’t in the first year because I was in shock, and when year #2 rolled around I still wasn’t angry. I was in a rage, a burn-it-down-to-the-ground rage. Small talk made me want to hurl dishes against a brick wall, the question of “So what are you doing this weekend” made me want to sarcastically say, “Crying then sobbing then back to crying. How about you?” I simmered at Facebook posts about my wonderful husband even though in the before I had done the same thing. Couples walking in the park made me want to chuck my shoes at them. I raged at people who had treated Mark badly, people who never apologized for the hurt they inflicted on him.

I wanted to go Shirley on the world and light it all on fire because anger feels productive. Sadness is another day sitting in the mud of grief unable to move, it is going nowhere again and again and again. Along the way I have learned that people are okay with grief making you sad so long as you stay in the right lane where the traffic moves really slow. Wanting to cross lanes where things moves faster with love, companionship, vacations, and sweet dinners on lighted patios is for couples and you’re not one of them any more.

Then the world got a crash course in grief when a pandemic hit and missing your people put everyone in a collective state of longing and sadness. No dinners with family or meeting friends for happy hour, no grandkids popping by for a visit, no hug for the friend going through heartache, no trip to assisted living to visit your elderly parent. Masks, social distancing, and connecting via Zoom became the new normal. I can’t even count the times since Mark died that I have been told that I will need to find a new normal. How do you explain that the old normal was lovely and uniquely yours? How do you set fire to a phrase you hate?

You don’t.

You mourn all the normal that got snatched from your hands and that you miss so terribly you physically ache. You set it on fire with white hot rage and the heat of it singes your eyebrows with an intensity that terrifies you. When it clears you hope it provides the light for a sign pointing somewhere. It’s not what you wanted but the charred remains around you are no place to plant anything. You take a deep breath and a step and tell yourself that you will be okay even though you don’t believe a word of it.

Or you keep setting brown paper bags of dog shit on fire and make sure everyone around you knows you’re angry. It’s either forward or madness.

• 

•