She was feeling good in May, and her mood had brightened significantly.  The dark clouds that had blown in and hovered over her before spring were still there, but she was able to push them away more times than not.  Sometimes, I’d look over to her desk at work and catch her staring off with her eyebrows knitted together, thinking, worrying.  One Sunday morning, we met in the upstairs hallway – me leaving the bathroom after a shower and her closing the door to the art room – and she was brushing away tears.  I reached for her but she put her hands on my arms and quickly said, “It’s okay…I’m okay, Jim” and she smiled a tight little smile as she moved past me to the stairs.  It was killing me not to hold her and help her and try to fix everything, but I held on tightly to my parents’ advice instead, and I just… I just loved her.  The way I always had.

She was waking up earlier, now.  She was getting bigger, the baby was getting bigger and was settled up high, and after lying down all night she said it felt good to get up, stretch, and take a full, deep breath, even if it was 5:30 in the morning.  It didn’t help that the baby seemed to be really active in that hour or so before the alarm went off and more than once, I was woken up by a tiny elbow or foot or some baby part poking me in the back as Pam lay close behind me.  Man, I loved that.  I’d lie really still and hold my breath and silently root the baby on – more, more, keep going – like he was running for the goalposts or she was rounding third and heading for home.  It was just the coolest thing, feeling that movement, and it never got old for me.  One morning, I felt a steady kick then poke then kick then poke and Pam (I didn’t even know she was awake) whispered, “there’s a dance competition going on in my uterus” and I told her, “thank God Francine has my sense of rhythm.” 

Ever since we’d planted the dogwood, she was itching to get her hands back in the dirt and start planting flowers and tomatoes and she wanted an herb garden and of course, there would be Gerbera daisies in the pots on the terrace outside the bedroom.  She’d borrowed my mother’s gardening books and studied them like textbooks, calling her to ask about soil acidity and other stuff that seemed to get her pretty worked up.  We were going to continue the tradition my folks started years ago:  putting in the garden on the Saturday before Mother’s Day.  They’d been doing it every year for as long as I could remember and this year, we were doing it, too.  My father always tilled up the ground and my mother would spend the day planting and watering while he set up the shade screen over the lettuce and buried stakes next to the tomatoes and cucumbers.  The next day, Mother’s Day, my dad would make a huge breakfast for the whole family, whistling in the kitchen, pouring batter into the waffle iron, refusing to let my mother help.  He’d banish her to the patio with a kiss (okay, one time, I caught a little more going on than just a kiss, but I’m trying to forget that) and a cup of coffee. 

Because my father wasn’t going to be able to handle the tilling this year, we’d struck a deal with my folks that involved a very complicated series of switching cars and drop-offs and follows.   I’d brought their tiller over to our house in the back of their truck (leaving my car there) so I could till up the ground at our place first.  My mom was going to bring my dad here (in her car) to help Pam with her planting.  She insisted he wasn’t going to get off easy just because he wasn’t going to be on the business end of the tiller.  Then, I was going to load my Mom and the tiller back into the truck and go over to their house to take care of their garden.  We were all going to meet back at my folks’ for dinner, Pam bringing my dad back home in my mom’s car, us leaving in mine.  I can’t tell you how many phone calls this required and there was a lot of eye-rolling involved.  I made, I admit, a really bad joke about “Trading Spouses” and Pam told me I was gross and not always funny and she rolled her eyes at me.

That Saturday morning, I woke up to find the French doors to the terrace open and Pam sitting in the wicker chair, bent over a sketchbook.  She’d pinned her wild morning hair up, but a few strands refused to stay put and her robe had slipped open, revealing one bare and lovely leg draped over the edge of the table.  She struggled to reach over her belly, her finger marking a spot in one of the books that lay open in front of her as she tapped her pencil against her teeth.  I knew she was only mapping out the placement and arrangement of annuals and perennials, but the sight of her…well, I watched her for a long time.  When I propped my head up in my hand, the movement caught her eye and she launched right in.

“How do you feel about…sunflowers?”

I told her I had nothing against sunflowers.  I was open to sunflowers. 

“What about peas?  You like peas, right?”

“I think we should…give peas a chance, Pam.”

“Oh…so lame!”

“There it is!  The honeymoon’s over.  You’re groaning at my jokes.”

“You need better jokes.”

“Maybe you should have married a gentleman farmer instead.  Like…”

“Dwight did have some good tips about keeping rabbits out of the garden, you know.  Hmmm…”

I got up out of bed, and walked out to the terrace.

I asked her if those tips included performing a mating ritual on planting day as I bent down and scooped her up out of the chair and she shrieked and yelled “No!  Jim!  I need to…” but I kissed her so she couldn’t tell me no and I kept my lips against hers as I told her it was a sacred Amish tradition, just so I could feel her laugh.

~~

I’d really like to take credit for the whole thing because it’s just so brilliantly awesome, but I can’t.  Well, I could, but my mother would kick my ass if she ever found out I was pawning her idea off as my own. 

Before taking my mom back to the house to work on their garden, I help Pam get set up with all her tools and seeds and stakes and twine, and she’s got all her plans out and I tell her not to let my dad boss her around.  He tells me I’m lucky he’s got a “condition” because I’m not too big to “take down.”  Okay, Dad…whatever.  Jon and I always agreed that my Dad talked a big game, but my mother was really the one we needed to watch out for.  He gives me a little shove and tells me to be careful with his truck.  I kiss Pam goodbye and she reminds me to grab the metric ton of potato salad she made to take for dinner so she doesn’t have to lug it over later.  I settle the bowl in my mother’s lap and we take off.

We haven’t done this since I was a kid, both of us kneeling in the same row, me digging the holes with the hand trowel and her following with her seed tray and watering can.  Soon, we settle into a familiar routine…her watching every move I make and yelling, “too close, Jim” or “not deep enough!” and I actually think (damn you, Michael) “that’s what she said” but she’d hit me if I said that out loud, so, instead, I ask her if she wants to do it herself and she tells me, “that smirk is not a good look for you.” 

“Pam seems to be doing better,” she says to me.  “She hasn’t said anything to me, but is she…?”

“No, but I think she’s doing okay with it right now.  She has her moments.”  I tell her about the tears in the hallway.

“I know it’s hard for you to see her upset.  But it’s good you’re not making a big deal out of it.”

“I’m taking her away for the weekend next month.”

“Oh, nice, Jim!  Where are you going?”

“Mom, it’s going to be so great!  I have it all planned and it’s a total surprise for her.”

“Tell me!”

“I found this really cool place – The Deerhill Inn - in Vermont.  West Dover.  It’s beautiful and…get this!  They have an art gallery!”

“Oh, that sounds wonderful!”

 “Yeah, I can’t wait.  She knows we’re going somewhere, but she doesn’t know where.”

“When are you going…what weekend?”

I hadn’t thought about it until I’d already made reservations and I felt like a complete heel.  I’d only been thinking about my Father’s Day and not that we’d be away from home that weekend.

“Oh…yeah, Mom.  We’re going over Father’s Day weekend.”

She drops her hands and looks at me with her mouth hanging open and her eyes all crazy and I almost flinch because for a second I think she’s going to slug me for being a thoughtless jerk.

“Father’s Day weekend?”

“Yeah, Mom…I’m really sorry…”

“No!  Jim, no, it’s okay.  Your father won’t mind, but you can’t go to Vermont.”

“Why not?  I know it’s kind of a long drive for her, but Dr….”

“No, Jim…I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before…well, I did, when she was telling me about her dreams turning into paintings, but then I forgot about it…”

She’s looking a little weird, like she’s going into a trance or something and she’s rambling and grabbing onto my arm.

“…and I can’t believe you didn’t think of it.  For the love of God!”

“Mom!  What?”

“Have you made reservations yet?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Call and cancel them today!  Jim, you’re not going to Vermont.  You’re going to Buffalo.  For Father’s Day.  You’re taking Pam to Allentown.”

~~

I don’t know if I can do justice to the Allentown Art Festival with words.  You have to see it, you have to experience it with all your senses, because it isn’t just about walking around and looking at art.  First, it’s the neighborhood…it’s where my mother lived while she was earning her teaching degree at Buffalo State College.  Allentown is a jumbled collection of brick and wood frame buildings, old Victorian homes, boutiques, antique stores, bars, and restaurants.  The streets are narrow and tree-lined, and some are still paved with cobblestones.  This area doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the city and it’s always attracted artists, poets, musicians and other bohemian, counterculture characters.  My mother…God, I love thinking of her living here as a college student…had a tiny studio apartment on Virginia Place, on the third floor of an old house, only half-refurbished.  Nearly the entire area of the apartment was housed in the huge turret that anchored the south corner of the house, facing the street, a series of long, narrow windows running floor to ceiling and spanning the entire semi-circle that looked out over downtown.  She’d always said it was the best light…morning, dusk, it didn’t matter.  The light through those windows was magical, she said.

Every year on Father’s Day weekend, the neighborhood is blocked off to car traffic for the art festival.  The weather in mid-June is perfect, blue skies, few clouds, and the festival has rarely been spoiled by rain.  Booths line Allen and Delaware and Virginia and artists come from all over the country to display everything from traditional paintings and sculptures to things that have you scratching your head and backing slowly away and moving on to the next booth.  There’s a ton of food and drinks and music and street performers and the festival attracts thousands and thousands of people over the course of the weekend – all kinds of people, so just sitting on the curb and watching the whole spectacle roll by is a big part of the fun.  It’s a weird and wonderful mix of 4th of July carnival, outdoor concert, freak show, and art museum. 

It’s a little over a 4-hour drive from Scranton to Buffalo and my folks used to go to Allentown every year before they had Jon and me.  The year Jon was born, my father celebrated his first Father’s Day by carrying Jon on his back in a baby carrier-thing, wandering the streets of Allentown while my mother got her fill of paintings and pottery, Sahlen’s hot dogs and lemonade.   My first trip to Allentown was in a stroller and I don’t remember anything about it, but my mother says I was pretty entertained with the whole thing until a mime made me scream bloody murder and that started Jon bawling and we didn’t return to Allentown until 1987.  Even then, I steered clear of those fucking mimes and Jon teased me the entire time about being scared of clowns and being a big baby, but I got a t-shirt that year (he didn’t) and I still have it, packed away somewhere.  We’d gone a couple other times over the years, but later on, Jon and I were busy with sports or summer jobs, so my folks had gone alone a few times, but it had been years since they’d made the trip. 

I’d been to Allentown a little more recently.  I told a few buddies from college about it, selling them on the idea with the lure of Buffalo’s 4:00 am drinking curfew.  We piled into my Dad’s Chrysler and drove up and it was the hottest weekend of the summer and we drank too much beer, did too many shots, and got thrown out of Mulligan’s Brick Bar.  I forgot to get a t-shirt that year and…I don’t think I ever told Pam about that.

~~

“Oh, Mom, that’s brilliant!”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Mom, why didn’t I think of that?”

“I don’t know!  My God, Pam is going to…”

“She’s going to go crazy!  She’s going to love it!”

“You think she’ll be okay to be on her feet all that time?”

“We’ll go slow!  We’ll break it up and go somewhere for lunch and go back!  We’ll go both days, if she wants.  Oh, Mom, I can’t wait for her to see it!”

“It’s sort of a family tradition and it’s…perfect, isn’t it?”

“It’s more than perfect.”

She tells me this makes her so happy and she kisses my cheek.

“It’s full circle, Jim.  It’s the circle of life.”

“Have you and Dad ever told her the story?”

“I haven’t.  I don’t think your father has, either.”

“I can’t believe it.  He loves to tell that story.”

“He gets a little further and further away from the truth every time he tells it.”

“Yeah, but it’s still a good story.”

No, it’s a great story, I think.  It’s the story of my mother, an art ed major, bursting with creative energy and light and beauty, open to all the possibilities that might come, tying her long, dark hair back in a simple ribbon and heading down the cobblestones of Virginia Place toward the sound of music and the smell of summer and hot dogs and fireworks.  It’s the story of my father, all shaggy-haired and anti-war, enrolled in a Masters program for education administration at the University of Buffalo, strolling from the Main Street campus toward the Allentown Art Festival in his “Students for George McGovern” t-shirt on Father’s Day, 1972, unaware that he was about to get struck by a thunderbolt in the middle of Allentown.