At a ceremony for my late mother, Jean Lindgren, a couple of weeks ago on Long Beach — tents, giant subs from Cove Deli, alcohol — numerous well-wishers took turns at a microphone to say what she’d meant to them.
But not me. This was strategic, as I wanted my kids to speak for the family. Or rather, I liked that the focus would be on them and what they had to say.
Griffin, my son, remembered when he was a middle schooler and invited a friend, Lucy, who lived within walking distance in the north of Sagaponack along the railroad tracks, to come jump on the trampoline at his grandmother’s house.
“I don’t give a shit about the trampoline,” Lucy said, “I wanna talk to Fafa,” a nod to her facility with storytelling.
Penelope, my elder daughter, recalled giving her that nickname, her little-kid adaptation of Farmor, Swedish for father’s mother. Both spoke of her humor, the way she could light up a room.
As the tributes wound down, I glanced over to see Penelope’s big, doe eyes directed my way, blinking in expectation. My shoulders slumped in self-disgust.
“Well, I’m going to miss her rhubarb pies,” I thought of saying. “Never a strawberry in there, mind you,” I’d add before the mic drop.
But this was no time for being flip. And anyway, I’d never swing it without preparation.
It wasn’t until later, as the tents came down and the leftover bottles of wine and lengths of uneaten sandwich mysteriously disappeared, that I noted the words of Myrna Davis, a veteran Sag Harbor hand who knew Jean from way back. Moments earlier she’d taken a turn to relay how she once planned to rid herself of a problem cat by giving it to a shelter.
“I’ll take her,” Jean had said. And thus the possibly evil Maggie took up residence atop our refrigerator, an endless source of entertainment, as she’d rip down any magnet-attached item within reach and swipe at any visitor or family member who strayed too close to her perch.
“Following up on the animal theme,” I subsequently pictured myself saying to the assembled, “when I was little I asked for a dog for Christmas, and when that day came I was shocked to see a Great Pyrenees puppy in a cage in the living room.”
“The thing is,” I would have said after a beat, “I didn’t really mean it.”
The joke there is that that puppy grew into a minor celebrity, Marley, the giant white beast who for a decade from the mid-1970s into the ’80s sat watching over Montauk Highway from a lawn across from our rented farmhouse in Bridgehampton just east of McCoy Fuel.
Marley was of such renown that someone once sent a fan letter addressed only to “The Big White Dog on Montauk Highway.” A local newspaper other than this one ran his obituary.
“One time,” my imaginary speech continued, “I overheard my stepfather say to my mother, ‘You love that dog more than any of the rest of us!’ ”
“Never mind the statement’s accuracy, decades later I found myself shouting those exact words to my wife about our rescue dog, Duster.”
“A full-circle moment. All in mock anger. I think.”
“Thanks for coming.”