My life’s memories begin with a hanging.
My own.
It is a gentle but vivid memory of me swinging gently from the end of a rope.
I am gazing serenely at a beautiful view of the green pines, black rocks, and dark blue waters of Deadman’s Cove.
I am hanging from a rope trailing behind me over the top of a seawall marking the waterfront edge of my grandmother’s front lawn.
My mother was the hangman.
She was already at the end of her rope. She had had three children in as many years.
My mom had tied me in a dog’s harness and rope to the birch tree in front of the house so she could take a nap.
The birch tree was already known as the “hanging tree.”
It was the tree uncles and cousins used to hang their deer carcasses, the rewards of their hunting.
I was two, a toddler.
I had toddled off the seawall and was hanging by the rope, swinging lazily back and forth above the rising tide.
My uncle George found me. He told everyone later that I was happily gurgling and swinging side to side and kicking my feet in the rising waters.
He teased me later in life that he sat for a minute and contemplated whether to pull me up, that the hanging in Deadman’s cove was obviously a harbinger of my destiny and maybe it was better to send me on to judgement as an innocent.
He joked so often that the hanging was a “harbinger” of my future that I adopted harbinger as my favorite word.
In my two-year-old dialect, harbinger translated to something that sounded like “hair-bringer.”
If a relative asked me about my hanging I would respond, “It was a hair-bringer.”
When cousins asked about the adventure I would respond “hair-bringer.”
This soon morphed into a generational family custom of describing anything tense or foreboding as a “hair-bringer.”
Recently cousin John called. “Jeezuz, how about that election. It was hair-bringer.”
“The Hanging” provided a lifetime of fuel for George’s relentless wit.
He regularly expressed uncertainty as to whether he should have hauled me up.
Every time he saw me after any lengthy absence he would greet me with, “Well, they haven’t hanged you yet.”