MAMAPHONIC

Cracking Truth From Stone
Maia Kelly Rossini

Each night, my parents tucked me and my sister into bed. They kissed us and turned out the light and pulled the door shut behind them. Just a small yellow ray from the hall lamp fell onto the bedroom floor. I would lie in bed and feel the warmth of my sister's body and smell the thick, sweet scent of marijuana drifting in from the living room and listen to the sound of jazz and laughter and the rhythmic arc of my father’s deep voice as he read his newest poem to my mother. Every night, I fell asleep to words, to poetry, to the mundane made spectacular.

Words can be so beautiful, my father one told me, that they can crack truth from stone.

These days, twenty years later, when I see my father, I find myself throwing words at him. Talking and telling stories and jumping from one subject to the next with such alacrity that it makes my throat sore. He sits, leaning back in his chair, his arms folded, attentive, patient, nodding and laughing in all the right places, occasionally giving a brief response when the conversation demands it. He's tall and broad. He has a head of thick, black, curly hair that, at fifty- two, still shows no gray. He wears a full beard and moustache. In bright light, his glasses automatically adjust themselves and turn dark. They also correct extreme near-sightedness and a tendency for his right eye to wander.

I talk and talk, never letting silence come between us, knowing that I repeat myself, knowing that I sound almost hysterical, drunk on my own voice. I am doing exactly what he has taught me not to do; I am throwing away the language. I am taking the sacred and making it profane with my mindless chatter. I can't seem to make my words weigh anything. They fall and fall and are swept away easily. They make no imprint. I might as well be barking like the dog, howling at the sound of a passing siren.

My father, he waits and considers his words, letting each syllable sound out distinctly, putting the full force of his choice to break his silence behind what he has to say. You trust his thoughtfulness because he gives himself time to think. He is a quiet man. "Introverted," he once called himself, but then paused and added, "but who the hell decided there's something inherently wrong with being introverted anyway?"

He is a poet. And being a writer myself, I imagine that his words were passed down directly into my blood. That the power of our language was taught to me from the womb, listening to my father sing his poems to my mother, hearing how, in a good poem, each word is selected carefully, thoughtfully, how the word can twist and turn and shimmer. How it can mean two, three, four things at once. How a word can ache and stab, shoot directly into your gut, how a word can melt and smooth, ease things along. And how when you string these words together, making sentences and rhythm, creating a brilliant cadenza, if you're lucky, you can catch one, adamantine moment in life - a taste, a sound, a feeling - and you can make it resound like a shot, you can make it reflect your world over and over. What a gift that the first words I really heard and absorbed were poems.

II.
The fact that talking with my father has always been difficult for me and for my siblings, has led me to make creative use of his writing. My parents divorced when I was seven. It was an ugly and sometimes agonizingly vicious process. There was infidelity and betrayal. There were horrible accusations. As a child it completely bewildered me that two people who had loved each other so much could suddenly hate each other with such vehemence. And as much as my parents tried to be honest and comforting for us, there was no keeping the bitterness out of their voices.

My father also writes song lyrics. The year my parent's divorce was made final my father's best friend and songwriting partner, Tom Intondi, released an album entitled House of Water. It was full of both love songs and heartbreak. My father wrote every word, and for me, it was the explanation my parents could never give me. It was the guide to my father's heart. It was tangible proof that my parents had loved each other, that there was regret and tenderness as well as anger.

Even now, I can't accurately judge its quality, the music and lyrics became so important to me, so entwined with my emotions, they still hurl me back into my childhood. I listened to the album again the other day and was amazed by how, as a kid, I misinterpreted so many of the lyrics. There was a line from the chorus of a song titled, "Who Comes Marching to Save You?" The song is furious, condemning some poor, confused screw-up, who I can now see was very obviously meant to be the singer (or my father) himself. The particular repeated line that struck me was: And, who comes marching to save you? And, who comes marching to save you? Wave goodbye, so long! And goodbye, so long! As an eight year old what I heard was: Ann, who comes marching to save you? Ann, who comes marching to save you? Wave goodbye, so long! Ann, goodbye, so long!

Ann, of course, was my mother's name.

Because I write, because I'm an artist, I know the deception of taking someone else's art literally; of twisting someone else's words with my own emotions. I know that what an artist creates is so highly personal, such a combination of fact and imagination, that it's impossible to really understand the inspiration behind the work. That you necessarily throw your own experience behind your interpretation. My father could have been writing about anyone. He could've merely been working to make a catchy hook, something you could really dance to. But there was no explaining that to my eight or nine year old self who just sat, biting her nails, wondering if a line like: But now you're here. Life can never be too long. Lying next to you, Baby, calls me home, was about my mother or my soon-to-be stepmother. Feeling the heartbreak in the lines: Sometimes I just want to sing a love song, but the words just don't come. I try to turn my voice to roses, fill my eyes up with the sun... How many times did I cut love loose, 'cause there was always enough to go around? How many times did I leave my warm bed, hoping never to be found? They were sad lyrics anyway, but superimposing my father and my parent's failed marriage over his words, made them almost unbearable for me.

Still, the album soothed and healed me. It was a written record of the love between my now estranged parents. It was like my brothers and sisters and myself, proof that my mother and father had united, at least for a relatively brief time, to make something worthwhile.

As a writer, as an adult, I still love to listen to these songs. They have special poignancy now because Tom died of cancer four years ago. Sometimes I catch myself thinking that when he died, we not only lost his light alto and tender guitar, we lost a part of my father's voice as well.

When I write, even though I'm still fairly young, I often write with my own children, the child I have now, and the ones I expect to have, in mind. I look at the words in my journals and wonder what my children will make of them someday, after I'm gone; what my children's children will get out them. I write stories and letters and poems and like to think of my kids discovering these hidden parts of me. The sexual passion, the selfishness, the rants of philosophy, my thoughts about my own marriage. I know that having some sort of written documentation of my father's life, no matter how artful it may be, has helped get through the confusion of childhood, the pain and exhilaration of adolescence, still helps me understand what kind of adult I want to be. Even if when I couldn't talk to him, when awkwardness or misery or ignorance tied my tongue, I could always listen to him.