Marvelous Peggy

My dreamscape shifts, images fading in and out of consciousness. The flickering movie speeds up, then slows, finally resolving into something recognizable: My kitchen.

The room is filled with a flat light that casts few shadows, the middle world. A dark-haired woman sits at my cherry wood dining table, examining bone china teacups neatly arranged on a silver tray as if I'd been expecting company.

"Your mother loved these," the woman says, holding a translucent white cup with pink roses at eye height to study the delicate brush strokes.

"She did." I smile, pouring coffee into a carafe. I place sugar and cream on the tray the way my mother always did, then sit in the opposite chair, perplexed as to how I ended up in a dream with an aunt I'd not seen in a decades.  An aunt who’d passed away mere months earlier.

Aunt Peggy turns to me, smiling face alight, eyes brimming with intensity. "Don't look so surprised, Jessica!  You were always SO serious." She laughs, a full unapologetic sound. Her laugh is what I recall most about her, an expression of unfettered joy.

An unforgettable laugh for an unforgettable woman.

Born in the World War II generation, Peggy had always seemed a woman out of her time.  Perhaps a better fit in a different generation.  Younger.  More progressive.  Sharp and cool.  Even in my youth, I’d seen how she didn’t act quite like my other aunts.  She didn’t accept the generational strictures or adhere to the roles expected.  Full of imagination, opinion, humor, and joy, she lit up any gathering with her unconventional views.  Any chance I got I glued myself to her side, her avid admirer.  Until my mother pried me away from the adults table and shooed me outside to go play. 

"How are you?" Peggy's mundane question triggers my conversational reply and we're soon discussing family matters as if we’re old friends catching up after a few years' absence. When I inform her I am in graduate school, she’s delighted.

"Oh that's wonderful!" Peggy sings the word wonderful with deep expression, her Boston accent changing the "er" to "ah".

"I used to write, you know. Poetry." She flaps her manicured hand in the air with a wide red smile. "You should ask them about it. See if they'll send you some." I don't need to query who she wants me to ask as she telegraphs the picture clearly: Peggy's sister, my aunt Anne, and my cousin. Elaine.

I wake, replaying the conversation—more accurately, the visitation—in my mind. Peggy was as animated, articulate, and unabashedly opinionated in my dream as she had been in life. But I hadn't consciously known she wrote poetry. It's not something I can say I know now—simply information gleaned from a dream conversation. Yet the entire experience feels authentic, albeit somewhat ethereal, something beyond a wishful niece fabricating an opportunity to talk with an aunt she admired as a child, tried to emulate as a teen, and regretted not knowing better as an adult.

My aunt's suggestion to ask Elaine about poetry feels important. I vow to email my cousin. But I have no idea how to explain how Peggy appeared in my dream instructing me to contact Elaine about poems that may or may not exist.  When I sit down to compose the note, I have second thoughts. I haven't seen Elaine in decades. What if she has no idea what I'm talking about? What if my cousin is offended or hurt by my question about our deceased aunt's personal effects? What if she thinks I'm a total loon?

As with many things I have the absolute best intentions of doing, the task falls to the bottom of my list, a list cluttered with work commitments, school deadlines, and errands. No rest for the weary when your thesis is due in a few months. I can't say I forgot about writing my cousin, because I didn't; I simply took no action.

Months later, on Christmas break I collect a thick padded envelope from my P.O. box. The return address is Massachusetts. Elaine.

My husband watches with interest as I tear open the packaging the moment I climb into the truck. Inside I find a perfect-bound book titled Marvelous Peggy: the poetry of Muriel Hembrough. The black and white photograph on the cover appears circa 1955, Peggy seated on a lawn, legs folded to the side, boldly engaging the camera with a smile on her lips and a twinkle in her eye as if to say "So?"

The inside cover inscription reads:  “Auntie Peggy left us a rich legacy of poetry and I’m grateful to have discovered it written down after her passing.  It was like finding hidden treasure.  In putting this book together, I’ve tried to stay true to her spelling and punctuation. …Thank you Marvelous Peggy.”  The signature was my cousin Elaine’s.

I open the book to find pages filled with verses my aunt penned over her lifetime, most of the poems untitled.  Interspersed with amateur photographs of everything and everyone she loved.  Elaine had compiled the book in memoriam, a work of art handled with deep love.

I pause on a page where I see the word dreams.

"My dreams are much a part of me A respite from reality A depot where a waiting train Transports my all from plain to plain A launching pad from which to soar To heights I never reached before A port, a pier, a ship to wheel To roam the realm of the unreal A cast of sorts - a cast uniqueHere's where I find the ones I seek..."

—Muriel (Auntie Peggy) Hembrough Marvelous Peggy: the Poetry of Muriel Hembrough

I wonder whether Peggy had been visiting Elaine in her dreams too. 

Two pages later, the word nomad catches my attention and I read a poem that makes me wonder where Peggy’s inspiration might have come from.  Whether the poem describes herself or her mother, my grandmother, or someone else she knew.

“She is that restless nomad following the sun

A wanderer in quest of rainbows when the storm is done

She looks and finds beauty in the scheme of things

She is herself the beauty rising up on unclipped wings

She has a hunger no feasting can erase

The joy of existence in her time and place

She is the earthling who left her easy chair

To seek the wonders of the world everywhere

Still the restless Bedouin straining against the bars

She’s high above the firmament in the company of stars”

—Muriel (Auntie Peggy) Hembrough

Marvelous Peggy: the Poetry of Muriel Hembrough

I slide the book back into the shredded packaging and wipe the tears from the corners of my eyes. Better to read it later when I’m alone and can ponder this gift, this legacy, this beautiful tribute, when I can imagine my aunt's lilting voice in each poem's cadence. I vow to email Elaine as soon as I get home to tell her I received her package, to express how grateful I am she thought to send me a copy.  

"Everything okay?" My husband’s voice coaxes me into the present as he guides our truck down the snowy highway.

"Yes." I hug the book to my chest. "It's from my cousin." My voice cracks and I fall silent.

He glances at me out of the corner of his eye, one of those spousal looks that encourage explanation.

I struggle to find words.  “It’s just…I’m surprised is all.” 

Someday I'll need to find the courage to tell Elaine my coffee-with-Peggy dream.  What are the chances she won’t think I’m too loony?

BIO

Jesse Devyn Crowe (www.jessedevyncrowe.com) shares a home with her fisherman husband and an adventurous Labrador Retriever at the edge of the grid where she can see the stars.  A Pushcart Prize nominee, Jesse's creative work has appeared in Minerva Rising, miniskirt magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic and The Weight of Motherhood anthology.