Bridge of Clay

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I’m sure you’ve met certain people in this world and heard their stories of lucklessness, and you wonder what they did to deserve it.

Our mother, Penny Dunbar, was one of them.

The thing is, she would never have called herself unlucky; she’d have placed a blond bunch of hair behind her ear and claimed no regrets—that she’d gained a lot more than she ever lost, and a big part of me agrees. The other part realizes that bad luck always managed to find her, most typically at various milestones:

Her mother died giving birth to her.

She broke her nose the day before her wedding day.

And then, of course, the dying.

Her dying was something to see.

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When she was born, the problem was age and pressure; her parents were both quite old to be having children, and after hours of struggle and surgery, her mother’s shell was shattered and dead. Her father, Waldek Lesciuszko, was shattered and alive. He brought her up best he could. A tram driver, he had many traits and quirks, and people likened him not to Stalin himself, but a statue of him. Maybe it was the mustache. Maybe it was more. It could easily have been the stiffness of the man, or his silence, for it was a silence larger than life.

In private, though, there were other things, like he owned a grand total of thirty-nine books, and two of them he obsessed over. It’s possible it was because he’d grown up in Szczecin, near the Baltic, or that he loved the Greek mythologies. Whatever the reasons, he always came back to them—a pair of epics where the characters would plow into the sea. In the kitchen, they were stationed, midrange, on a warped but lengthy bookshelf, filed there under H:

The Iliad. The Odyssey.

While other children went to bed with stories of puppies, kittens, and ponies, Penelope grew up on the fast-running Achilles, the resourceful Odysseus, and all the other names and nicknames.

There was Zeus the cloud-compeller.

Laughter-loving Aphrodite.

Hector the panic maker.

Her namesake: the patient Penelope.

The son of Penelope and Odysseus: the thoughtful Telemachus.

And always one of her favorites:

Agamemnon, king of men.

On many nights, she’d lie in bed and float out on Homer’s images, and their many repetitions. Over and over, the Greek armies would launch their vessels onto the wine-dark sea, or enter its watery wilderness. They’d sail toward the rosy-fingered dawn, and the quiet young girl was captivated; her papery face was lit. Her father’s voice came in smaller and smaller waves, till finally, she was asleep.

The Trojans could return tomorrow.

The long-haired Achaeans could launch and relaunch their ships, to take her away the following night, again.

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Next to that, Waldek Lesciuszko gave his daughter one other life-affirming skill; he taught her to play the piano.

I know what you might be thinking:

Our mother was highly educated.