Snapshots of Suzannah

Suzannah in her flannel nightgown with lace trimming. Freckled face, prominent teeth, hopeful blue eyes.

            Suzannah kneeling on the floor at our father’s house, her ear pressed against the speaker, listening ever so carefully to Olivia Newton-John’s “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”

            As children, I remember her watching endless episodes of “Little House on the Prairie.” As a teenager, she favored the soap opera “Santa Barbara” and the sitcom “Three’s Company.” She loved John Ritter, Michael Landon and Marcy Walker’s long, glossy hair. It must have been around then that she started repeatedly asking, “Why don’t you grow your hair out?” or boasting, “Oh, my hair has always been the blondest in the family.”

            I recall long car drives – likely between parental homes – when she would ask, “How big is New York, Dad?” or “Mummy, how big is Los Angeles?” Dad or Mum would always reply with population numbers, and invariably Suzannah would sigh in irritation. “No, no. I mean, how tall are the buildings?” She wanted to know about the night skyline and sky scrapers. She wanted to see the tallest buildings on earth - long corridors of them stretching down avenues of sparkling chrome, glass and steel.

            Suzannah was to be avoided at all costs during a family game of Spoons. If our father has any bent spoons remaining in his cutlery collection, they are undoubtedly a product of Suzannah’s maddened grab, lest she be the last, spoon-less player. I can’t imagine the torture she must have endured in pre-school or kindergarten, when the games Musical Chairs and Duck, Duck Goose were common sport.

            She loved palm trees and sandy beaches. She used to ask for virgin Pina Coladas in New England restaurants, in the dead of winter.

            At our mother’s house, I remember Suzannah going into her bedroom, closing the door, and practicing scales on her flute. Up and down, up and down. I remember watching her dismember the flute into its bits and pieces and tucking them into the case with the blue, velvet liner.

            Suzannah was always loath to miss a beat:What did he say? Where are you going? What is she doing? She had finely sharpened ears that seemed to hear every single word, even if she couldn’t understand the significance of what had been said. 

            The first time I brought Russell home to meet the family, she pulled me aside and asked – very politely – if she could date him instead of me. She used to study his every move, hang on his every word, and smile indulgently whenever he turned his gaze in her direction.

Suzannah’s particular gait: fast-paced, her left arm pinning her purse to her side, her right arm swinging madly.

           Suzannah’s unusual laugh: part feline hiss – a quick, sucking in of air.

           After family dinners, she would retire to the couch, stretch out her legs and doze. She seemed to take comfort in keeping with the action, even if she was snoring softly in the corner. 

            Above all else, Suzannah loved her mother. Margot was her east and her west, her sun and her moon, her rock, her paper and her scissors. I take comfort in imagining the two of them together, meandering down softly-trodden paths that crisscross island meadows. Perhaps it’s Lanes Island Preserve that I see in my minds-eye, or the tall grasses that race across the bluffs of Matinicus Island. But that’s how I see it, and in my understanding such quiet, gentle moments in her mother’s company is precisely how Suzannah would perceive her slice of heaven.