"Holding Hands with Angels" by Mary Alice Dixon
– the ghosts of lives I never knew
Childhood promises can take a lifetime to understand.
Mary Alice Dixon lives in Charlotte, NC, where she is a hospice volunteer, former professor, and happy member of Charlotte Writers Club and Charlotte Lit. She is a Pushcart nominee, Pinesong Poetry Award winner, and finalist for the Broad River Review Rash Award in Poetry. Her work appears in the PSPP anthologies Trouble and That Southern Thing and the journals Kakalak, Main Street Rag, moonShine review, Gyroscope Review, Northern Appalachia Review, and North Dakota Quarterly. She loves family stories and the good ghosts she calls angels.
Author’s Talk
When Randell Jones proposed the topic of Curious Stuff, I thought of the many white elephants I’ve handled – from the multi-volume encyclopedias I briefly peddled door-to-door, to the remnants of used popcorn boxes saved from a concession stand where I once worked, to the goofy reindeer my youngest brother gives me every single blessed Christmas. These objects, odd but unthreatening, brought to mind experiences I had enjoyed — or at least, endured — without fear.
But what of white elephants that scared me?
What of the fancy-dress doll my grandma gave me and the silver pin my mother left me? They frightened me. When I looked at them I saw not only pink tulle and tarnished metal but also histories fraught with ghosts.
No, thank you, I did not want to engage with ghosts.
However, I am the daughter of a man who measured angel wings with his hand-held mechanical compass and a woman who received letters in Morse Code from a lover long after his death.
Holy ghosts are in my Irish DNA. Randell must have known.
With trepidation, I picked up my pen, hoping to exorcise the restless spirits of the doll I did not ask for and the pin I did not want.
By the time I finished the second draft of my Curious Stuff story, I realized I was completely wrong. Wrong about the objects, wrong about what they meant, wrong to be afraid. Writing about these two unsought gifts, both of which I’d kept hidden for decades, allowed me to discover that they really were gifts. My curios are actually my treasures. Their histories are mine. Had Randell not proposed the topic of Curious Stuff, I would have remained incurious about “stuff” I needed to understand. I am glad I picked up my pen.
Once again, I am grateful for the rich worlds a PSPP topic invites me to enter, both as a writer and as an reader. Thank you, Randell, for the many doors you open — for me and all who read your collections. My good angels thank you, too. - Mary Alice Dixon