Irish Treasure

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”  

-- W.B. Yeats

St. Patrick’s Day is a bittersweet day for me. I’m a Kelley, with roots in County Cork, and I’ve always enjoyed the wearin’ o’ the green. But since my sister passed away in the early morning hours of March 18^th twelve years ago, St. Patrick’s Day and the first weeks of spring which follow have always been something of a tough time for me. If you’ve followed this blog at all, you’ll know what that means: it’s writing time--less expensive than therapy! And, as Sigmund Freud said of the Irish, “This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.” Glad I found an alternative.

The Yeats quote I opened with makes me laugh, in part because I recognize myself in it, despite the fact that I strive to overcome my sense of tragedy with gratitude. I’ve always known that life is unfair—how else to explain the fact that I, as the middle child, was the only kid in the family who escaped the genetic mutation that limited my siblings’ physical and mental abilities and shortened their lives? But I’ve also always believed that life is what we make of it—that we can find the good that’s ours for the taking, if we just look hard enough. Another Irish saying expresses the dark optimism to which I ascribe when I’m feeling low: No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse.

So, today, I am trying to buoy my sense of tragedy with a bit of joy. I am sad as I remember how much I miss my little sister, my big brother, and my friend, Fal. But remembering how lucky I was to have them in my life—well, that’s a joy that I’ll always have. I can mine for happiness just as easily as I can mine for despair. So here’s a little gem from my childhood years with Jeannette.

Olive Oyl—A Slippery Tale

Jeannette’s shriek had me out of bed before I was even awake.

I was about twelve years old, and Jeannette (aged 9) and I shared a bedroom. Our twin beds were pushed together, which allowed me to soothe her and pull up her blankets if she needed help in the middle of the night. It also decreased her odds of falling out of bed by half. Had she fallen out the far side?

“Wha’s wrong? Jeannette, what’s wrong?” I fumbled for my glasses, then turned on the light. By that time, Mom and Dad had appeared in the doorway.

Jeannette was sitting up in her bed, tears streaming down her face. “Ah-ee oy! Ah-ee oy!” she wailed.  

“Jeannette, are you hurt? Does something hurt?” She shook her head and began pulling at the covers.

“Was it a bad dream, do you think?” Mom and Dad and I checked her over as she continued to sob. We pulled back the blankets to check her legs. A bendable plastic doll, the kind with an inner wire frame, fell from the covers, and Jeannette gasped.

“Ah-ee oy!” Jeannette grabbed the small doll and clutched it to her chest.

My parents and I groaned. “Olive Oyl!”

It was a dime-store present. We’d purchased a bendable Popeye doll for Bobby, and another doll, Olive Oyl (Popeye’s girlfriend), for Jeannette. For some reason, Jeannette was enthralled with the gawky doll with the painted red dress. She carried her everywhere, setting the doll next to her plate at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, engaging in conversations that no one could understand, giggling at something that we could only guess was a joke . . . made by Olive Oyl?

“She must have taken her to bed instead of letting Mrs. Beasley hold her,” I decided. The bespectacled Mrs. Beasley doll with the blue polka dot body and the yellow plastic hair was still in her place near the bed, grinning amiably. “Did you bring Olive Oyl to bed with you, Jeannette?”

She nodded yes. Her shoulders heaved as little gasps pulled them forward.

“No wonder you lost her. Now let’s give Olive Oyl to Mrs. Beasley so we can all go back to sleep.” Dad headed back to bed.

“No!” Jeannette looked up in alarm and pulled Olive Oyl away from Mom’s reach.

“Yes, Jeannette. You can have her in the morning.” Mom reached again for Olive Oyl.

Jeannette began to cry. Mom looked at me helplessly.

“Oh, let her keep Olive Oyl,” I said. “I’ll find her if she loses it again.” I helped Jeannette lie back down in the bed. “Look, Jay, put her here, under your pillow. That way she won’t move around when you sleep. And you can put your hand up to see if she’s still there when you wake up, okay?”  Jeannette nodded happily, her eyes already closing as she tucked one hand under her pillow.

Mom turned off the lights and we all went to sleep. Problem solved. Or so we thought. At least we knew what the screeches were about when Jeannette woke in the middle of the night after that. Good ol’ Olive Oyl. It wasn’t too hard to find her in the dark, now that we knew what to look for.

But Olive Oyl, like all things well-loved, would not stay the same forever.

One day her head fall off.

“Ahhhhh!!!!!!!” Jeannette’s wail brought us running to the living room, where she sat on the rug, looking in horror from one hand to the other, a red-dressed torso clutched in the left, a smiling round head the size of a large marble in the right. She held out both hands to us imploringly. “Fix Ah-ee Oy?”

Sometimes we could work miracles, but this time we couldn’t. A small part of me—the tired part, the part which had spent numerous nights since Olive Oyl’s first escape searching for the renegade doll among Jeannette’s blankets—breathed a little sigh of relief. Maybe now we could find a suitable replacement for the wire doll—something bigger. Much bigger, and harder to lose in the middle of the night.

“We can’t fix her, Jay. I’m sorry.” I braced myself for tears.

Jeannette regarded the contents of both her hands solemnly. “Okay,” she said, handing me Olive Oyl’s torso. “You frow away?”

I looked back at her. “Um . . . yeah. I can throw her away.” Really? She’s just gonna let me toss her in the garbage? I was surprised, but not about to question her equanimity. I reached for her other hand. “You want me to throw that away, too?”

Jeannette pulled away in horror. “No frow! No frow Ah-ee Oy away!” If she could have added “you monster!” I’m sure she would have. She pulled Olive Oyl’s head close to her face and whispered something as she turned her body away from me. A protective spell, perhaps.  

“Uh . . . Jay? We can’t fix her, you know.” Jeannette ignored me stonily.

“Maybe we can get her a new one,” Mom offered.

“Oh, Mom!” I started, shooting her daggers.

“What?” said Mom.

“That doll’s too small! Every night she loses it in the blankets, and I have to find it.”

“Yes, but she loves it,” said Mom, watching Jeannette examine the dismembered head. “Let’s get her a new one.”

“But, Mom—“

“No new Ah-ee Oy!” said Jeannette, interrupting us. “DIS Ah-ee Oy.”

“But—“ began Mom.

“DIS ONE!”

And that was that.

Olive Oyl’s head went everywhere Jeannette went. The macabre, grinning, pebble-eyed pate sat at the breakfast table, the lunch table, the dinner table. Jeannette clutched Olive Oyl’s head on trips to the grocery store. Olive Oyl’s head floated in the bathtub among the bubbles. And, of course, Olive Oyl’s head came to bed with Jeannette.

Thunk! Taptaptap thunk! tap tap . . .

The sound of Olive Oyl’s head slipping beneath our two beds and bouncing crookedly away between our shoes and toys would wake me moments before Jeannette’s wail of alarm. I’d swim beneath the bed like a pearl-diver seeking treasure, hoping I could surface before Jay was out of breath from her sobbing. The constant interruption to my sleep began to take its toll on me. At night, I’d yell at Jeannette. “Not again! Can’t you let Mrs. Beasley watch her, Jay?” and worse, “Why don’t you try looking for her sometime?” Then I’d feel guilty and dive back under the bed until I found the hated head. By day, I’d imagine all the strange misfortunes that could befall Olive Oyl. An unfortunate nose-dive into a pot of spaghetti sauce? She was about the right size for a small meatball. Or maybe a trip to a driving range could set her (and me) free. Fore!

Mom must have seen how the lack of sleep was affecting my sanity--or, at least, my mood. One day I came home from school, and she held up a pretty little drawstring sack that she had crocheted. It was purple, Jeannette’s favorite color. “I think this may work,” she said. At the time, I had no clue what she meant. Did she think the sack could replace Olive Oyl? "Sure," I mumbled. "Whatever you say."

That night, Mom hung the little purple bag from Jeannette’s bedpost. “I made a special bed for Olive Oyl,” she told Jeannette. “She can sleep right up here, between you and Frances. And she’ll be here in the morning when you wake up. What do you think?”

We watched for her reaction. “Bed? For Ah-ee Oy?”

“It’s purple. Like the bedspread.”

“Puh-pah bed for Ah-ee Oy?” Jeannette whispered something to Olive Oyl. She nodded. Then she put her in the sack. “N’nite, Ah-ee Oy,” she said, patting the bag. And Jeannette went to sleep with her hand clutching Olive Oyl’s head through the corner of the hanging purple ‘bed.’

She woke up several times that week in a panic, but she learned to reach up and find Olive Oyl sleeping in her ‘bed’, and I found myself looking much more kindly at the silly plastic head by day, since I was sleeping so much better each night. I grew to appreciate the comfort and companionship she seemed to offer my sister. And I learned not to underestimate my Mom's good ideas.

Olive Oyl’s features wore off in time, and she was gradually replaced by a much bigger and brighter companion—a Big Bird hand puppet, who, wisely, never roamed from his place on Jeannette’s pillow each night.

---

In her three decades of life, Jeannette never gave up her need for “lovies.” She learned not to carry them to school—they waited for her at the top of the stairs each school day, and, later, they waited for her to return home from work at Seabird Enterprises. She grew a small collection of favorites. In addition to Big Bird, Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog became part of her circle of friends. Even when they were not with her, she carried their voices in her head. Like our brother, Bobby, Jeannette had schizophrenia as part of her list of disabilities—a very benign form which generally served to keep her happy and laughing at the goings-on of her favorite friends.  She whispered to them, she doubled over with laughter at some funny joke one or another had played, and she occasionally scolded and yelled at them for misbehaving. But mostly she just enjoyed their company.

Now that she’s gone, when I think of her, I sometimes wish I had that silly Olive Oyl head to hold onto. I wonder where it went. And then I laugh at myself a little.

A “lovey” or a token won’t ever replace Jeannette for me. “Lovies” get lost. Tokens break. Although my sister’s passing left a hole in my heart that won’t ever be filled, time helps heal the jagged edges of loss. And if I listen hard enough, I realize that her voice is still with me. It doesn’t intrude on my thoughts the way the voices of schizophrenia intruded on hers and Bobby’s—but it is there, nevertheless. I hear her laugh; I hear my brother’s; I hear Fal's. On the twelfth anniversary of Jeannette’s passing, I still remember the feel of her small hand as I pressed Olive Oyl’s head into her palm, and the feel of her arms wrapped around my neck in a sleepy hug.

Memory is something to be grateful for.

And a memory that brings a smile—that’s a treasure, indeed. 

Rest in Peace, Jeannette Irene Kelley

July 15, 1966 – March 18, 2001

May the road rise up to meet you,

May the wind be always at your back,

May the sun shine on your face,

The rains fall soft upon your fields.

Until we meet again, may God hold you

In the palm of his hand.