My Three Peggies
I have a plethora of women named Margaret in my life, who are each called by other names just as sweet: Peggy, Pegi or Maggie. It wasn’t until after college that I became aware “Peggy” is commonly a shortened form of “Margaret,” a rather puzzling discovery if I’m honest. Nicknames for Margaret with a clear connection are Maggie, Mags, Meg or Meggie; my best friend’s daughter is a Margaret who goes by Maggie, and I lovingly call her Mags. In the tradition of rhyming nicknames — think “Bill” being short for “William” — “Meggie” became “Peggy” over the years. Makes perfect sense, right? My three Peggies are Peggy Olson, my mother’s best friend from the time she was a young mom until the end of her life; Pegi (Taylor) Christiansen, one of my teachers at art school who grew to be a great friend after I graduated college; and Peggy Coats, who hired me as a graphic designer at her and her husband’s company and became much like foreign exchange host parents to Michael and me in Seattle as we acclimated to the west coast, far from our families back in Wisconsin.
The impact these three Peggies have had on my life is unique to my experience with each of them. If any of their daughters — each of them have a daughter — were to write an essay about her mother, it would of course read very differently from my words here. If any of these women had been my actual mother, the magic they’ve brought into my life would not be the same. A true mother/daughter relationship carries inherent fraughtness: you can’t really see the other person as a self-contained individual. There’s too much of each one in the other; you’re looking into an infinity mirror, endlessly reflecting what you both love and loathe about yourself. It’s easy to get lost or hurt in that space if both women aren’t fully healthy (physically and emotionally). But with an arm’s distance, the degree of separation that a “mother-like” and “daughter-like” relationship affords is mostly just the good stuff. You’ve chosen each other.
While my Uncle Bob was hovering between realms in what were to be his last days, I wrote and wrote and wrote about him, hoping that he’d get to read the words for himself and really know how much he meant to me. After all the people I’ve loved and lost, I know better not to put off telling people how much I love them, and specifically WHY I love them. I’ve come to believe the only thing that truly matters in life is how you’ve been cared for and how you put that care back into the world. This is the story of how three women, coincidentally all with a shared name, filled the gaps my mother wasn’t able to fill. To be clear, this doesn’t diminish what my mom was able to give — she was a great mom to me in my childhood years. As an adult woman, there were more and more instances when she couldn’t be the mother I wished for, but thanks to my three Peggies I had the support I needed. I’m forever grateful to each of them.
PEGGY OLSON
It should be noted that my mom’s best friend, Peggy, is not a blood relation. My parents met her and her husband Carl when they moved to northern Wisconsin in the early 70’s through the Jaycees and Jaycettes, a civic organization that develops leadership skills through community service. Their life-long friendship began as many do: bonding over the joys and challenges of the early years of marriage and parenthood while settling into a new community. Like my parents, Peggy and Carl were born and raised in Michigan, but their hometown of Escanaba was much closer to where they found themselves on the border of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula, only an hour’s drive away. They were looking for their people, and found them in each other. And as it goes with the friends who become like family, I grew up calling them Aunt Peggy and Uncle Carl without thinking twice.
My parents and the Olson’s were part of a big circle of friends who met through the Jaycees and raised families together, worked hard and enjoyed the simple pleasures of life in a small town: camping weekends, cookouts, boisterous holiday and birthday parties, and pool parties. Traditional ‘nuclear family’ gender roles were mostly the norm — the husband was the breadwinner, the wife a homemaker, and the kids were free to roam. There were a few divorces in the group that punctured the idyllic veneer, but both my parents and Peggy and Carl made good on the “‘til death do us part” portion of their wedding vows. Even as a kid, I knew Peggy’s marriage was built on a stubbornly devoted foundation from the start: when she and Carl fell in love as high school sweethearts, her parents didn’t approve of the relationship so she dated him in secret for years. I found that detail fascinating and looked at them as a real-life Romeo and Juliet, but they were thankfully smart enough to figure out a happy ending together.
When I look back on those years, I have memories of jovial gatherings, a group of people who cared about each other and supported each other, but above all enjoyed each others’ friendship and loved having fun together. And the sun around which all our social lives orbited was found at Peggy and Carl’s house. They were the first to install a pool in their backyard (our family followed a year or two later), so the gravitational pull only got stronger in the summertime. Their doors were never locked, and it was routine for friends and neighbors to pop in. On occasion we would rap a cursory knock on the door as we walked in, but more often just announce ourselves with a “Knock knock!” from inside the house on our way to the kitchen or the backyard, where it was most likely to find folks gathered. It always felt like a party at the Olson’s house, whether there were a handful of people or a houseful. There might be card game happening at the dining room table, a movie playing in the den, someone taking a snooze on the couch in the quiet living room (the house got noisier the further back you went, so the formal living room at the front of the house was the best place to escape if you needed a rest), and any manner of meals being prepared in the small kitchen along with the snack options that were ever-present in my 80’s childhood: Chex Mix, pub cheese spread, spinach dip, Ritz crackers and potato chips. Spilling outside to the patio, there was often a cribbage game in progress, table tennis in the shed, sunbathers on the deck and of course plenty of splishing and splashing in the pool. They had all the best pool toys: floaties with drink holders, goggles, diving toys. It was like belonging to a private pool club before I even knew such a thing existed. But even with all these incredible amenities, the Olson’s had one other perk that set their house apart from any other of my childhood: they had an old fashioned gumball machine, always stocked full with colorful spheres. There was a can of pennies next to the machine, so anyone could help themselves to as many gumballs as they wanted. To an 80’s kid like me, there was nothing cooler. Except maybe having an ice and water dispenser in the door of your fridge, a true novelty back then, but those (and fully underground pools) were reserved for “rich” people’s houses; my family and our circle were squarely middle class.
Aunt Peggy’s gleeful cackle is a constant punctuation throughout the soundtrack of my life, which made it all the more striking when she wasn’t laughing. I’ll never forget calling her to ask if I could come over for a haircut one evening; back then she did a lot of her friends’ hair as a hobby. It was the height of the first Gulf War, and the national news coverage was omnipresent and grim. Her son, having followed his father’s footsteps into the Marines, was deployed in Iraq. I was 14 years old, and appropriately self-absorbed for that age (meaning, very) so I beseeched her to let me come over. She was fighting back tears as she told me, “No, it’s not a good time,” and brusquely hung up, which was so out of character for her. It was a good reminder that the world didn’t revolve around my desires, and that Aunt Peggy had an emotional world outside the range of “funny” and “happy.” Stunned out of my selfishness, I told my Mom what had just transpired. We hugged each other, our hearts aching over Peggy’s fears and worries. We were both so wrapped up in what was going on in our lives — at that time, my father was lying in a hospital three hours away where he would ultimately die after eight months of hanging on tenuously to life — that we’d completely lost sight of what our friends were going through. It was an important, formative lesson for me to learn.
My mom and Peggy experienced caregiving for their husbands through long illnesses, and both became widows well before they imagined they would. For my mom, losing her husband was the start of a glacial turning away from life and a descent into dementia; for Peggy, even losing the love of her life couldn’t dampen her strong spirit. Her curiosity and enthusiasm has always inspired me. She never stops learning new things and embracing technology (computers, chat rooms, iPhones, apps, social media platforms). As long as I’ve known her and still to this day, she loves to laugh and have fun. She is a kid at heart and connects so beautifully with my son Kieran. My mom’s true self was lost in the fog of her dementia by the time Kieran was old enough to “know” his Grandma Edie, so she wasn’t really engaged with him. One of my mom’s go-to ways of expressing love was through monetary gifts; Aunt Peggy shows her love through time and attention. Kieran and Peggy watch goofy videos together featuring totally juvenile (but funny) humor about farts and burps. They make each other laugh and laugh! Once, Kieran and I were at home in Seattle and were laughing so hard we were crying (I can’t even remember what had brought us to this state) and Kieran said as he gasped to catch his breath, “I feel like we’re at Aunt Peggy’s house right now.” That he associates the feeling of laughing so hard you might pee yourself with Aunt Peggy is the most accurate way to think about her.
There’s no way they could’ve known at the time how influential and important Peggy and Carl would be to our family, but my parents were wise to choose these two people as friends upon their arrival in Marinette. Uncle Carl filled in some of the gaps created after my dad died, such as teaching me how to parallel park in preparation for my driver’s test. Aunt Peggy remained one of my mom’s closest friends throughout her life right up until the day she died. Peggy didn’t let the dementia symptoms keep her away, no matter how many times my mom turned down invitations or didn’t pick up the phone. My mom wasn’t herself anymore, but Peggy is loyal and doesn’t give up on her friends. They had both downsized and moved into the same manufactured home community, which made it easier for Peggy to keep an eye on her. Without Peggy’s urging, I would not have understood how badly Mom was doing living on her own. I took it seriously when she said, “Carole, you have to do something about your mother.” I could hear her concern and exasperation, so I went to work finding an assisted living home to move mom into.
Initially, Mom still had her car available after moving to Luther Manor. This quickly turned into another problem to manage remotely when Mom would disappear for hours and I’d get calls from the staff that she’d missed her insulin dose. As the in-town emergency contact, Peggy was my “boots on the ground” during those crises, driving all over town looking for her. After the third wild goose chase on a dark February evening, I told my mom that I had to take her car away. I’m grateful that Mom’s form of dementia made her quite agreeable with all my decisions. She handed over control of her life to me just as easily as she handed the car keys over to Peggy; we shared a huge sigh of relief once that happened. I arranged for the car to be sold, and Peggy (again, my angel) took on the task of cleaning it out. Among all the empty food wrappers and miscellaneous receipts, she discovered a plastic grocery bag with an unopened gallon of milk and a raw steak that Mom had purchased and promptly forgot about. Goodness knows how long it had been in there. Relaying this tidbit over the phone to me, Peggy said with a good-natured chuckle, “Good thing for freezing cold Wisconsin winters, eh?”
Peggy carried more of a burden than I ever had a right to ask or expect of her over the years when my mom was in the nursing home and my brother Al was also living in our hometown, disabled following his two strokes. No other day was this more evident than the morning I got a random Facebook ping from one of my brother’s friends who I had known in high school but lost touch with. My brother hadn’t been seen or heard from since two nights prior, and he was rightly concerned; Al had been struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts for the past few months. I was at work when I got the message, and I spent the next couple hours wandering inside and outside of my giant Seattle corporate office building seeking privacy as I made phone calls enlisting help from two time zones away. One of my first calls was to Aunt Peggy. Also on my call log that morning was to a local locksmith — no one had a spare key to my brother’s house — and 911 to request a wellness check (the 911 operator turned out to be my childhood best friend and neighbor; this is how emergencies play out in small towns — everyone knows everyone). Eventually the police arrived at my brother’s mobile home where Peggy was waiting outside. I was on the phone with her as they looked around for a hidden key, which the police officer found. Peggy was relaying what was happening in real time and I heard the officer instruct her to stay outside. Muffled in the distance, I heard him open the door and say loudly, “Marinette Police, this is a wellness check. Anyone home?” I was sitting outside on a concrete bench, staring down at a small pile of sand swarming with ants while Peggy and I held our breaths on the line. She broke the silence with the words, “He’s gone, Carole.” I had a thought right then that I would remember this ant hill for the rest of my life, and I was right.
A year later, my Mom was nearing the end of her life and I dropped everything to be in Marinette for at least ten days. I stayed with Peggy during this time, and during one visit to check on Mom in the hospital Peggy said to me, “I remember coming here to see you right after you were born.” Learning that detail of their friendship touched me so much. It had never occurred to me before that Peggy visited my Mom in the hospital right after she had a baby, but of course — that’s what girlfriends do for each other. Once we were in Mom’s hospital room, Peggy asked her if she wanted anything special, to which Mom replied with a hopeful smile and a small twinkle in her eyes, “A Blizzard sounds good.” My initial worry-wart, stern schoolmarm reaction was, “Oh, I don’t know if that’s a good idea with your diabetes, Mom. The nurses might not be happy about that.” Peggy, forever the fun one, cajoled me as she gave me a look that would rival any three-year-old’s sincere plea for ice cream. “Oh, come on! Let your mother have a little ice cream,” she said in her baby-talk voice. I relented, and when we brought Mom her Dairy Queen treat later that night, I was so glad Aunt Peggy had talked some much-needed sense into me. The smile on my mom’s face as she enjoyed that Blizzard was totally worth it, high blood sugar be damned.
I wouldn’t have been able to bear those turbulent years of losing Al and my Mom without Peggy’s support. Not just because of everything she did for my mom, but also for the motherly love she gave me. Anyone who loves someone with declining brain function knows that there are two losses: you lose them first to confusion, disappearing memories and personality changes and then a second time when they actually die. When my mom was “here but not here,” Peggy provided me with a comfortable, homey space. We watched Dancing with the Stars and Ellen together when I’d stay with her, which is exactly what I would’ve done with my mom when she was healthier. It’s a dichotomy I’ve never realized until distilling my history with Aunt Peggy into a series of bullet points that this woman who, if asked to describe her essence, the first thing I’d think of is laughter, fun and having a great time, yet she’s also the person who has been by my side in some of my darkest moments.
I’m so grateful that Peggy’s house was always a second home to me growing up, and thanks to her I still have a home base to go to even though my parents and only sibling are gone. Once you don’t have a home to visit that connects you to your past anymore, you realize how easy it was to take such a place for granted. At Peggy’s house, I can walk in without knocking and be greeted with a big hug and my favorite foods stocked in the fridge. And of course, that old sentimental sentinel is still there: the gumball machine.
PEGI (TAYLOR) CHRISTIANSEN
I first met Pegi when I was attending the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design; she was my Child Psych teacher. I still have my binder from that class, which is crammed with essays and homework prompts. In response to my musings, Pegi’s hand-written comments are peppered throughout the margins, her enthusiasm and insightfulness bursting forth via colorful ink and her brazen use of exclamation points. From the very start of our relationship, I understood clearly that Pegi is someone who really SEES you. She’s also the most unique individual I’ve ever met. Throughout her industrious life, she’s been a bookstore owner, art model, performance artist, teacher, writer and public art organizer. I don’t know anyone that matches her enthusiasm for being alive. I’m guessing the person who coined the phrase “dance like no one’s watching” had, at some point, witnessed Pegi joyfully frolicking. The advent of cell phone video and social media led her to a heartbreaking decision: she never dances in public anymore due to the invasion of her privacy. She would’ve gone viral many times by now, I’m sure, if it hadn’t been for that rule. Pegi takes even the most mundane parts of life and turns them into an opportunity for artistic expression: at her old Cream City brick Victorian duplex in Milwaukee’s East Side, she hired an artist friend to transform the dining room into a permanent art installation. At a surface level, it remained functional, yet eating in that room felt like I was engaging with interesting (non-pretentious) performance art. Definitely not a typical experience at any of my other friends’ homes in Wisconsin.
Pegi is such a positive force to be around, I was happy that she was as eager to continue cultivating our friendship as I was after my graduation from MIAD. I’m closer in age to her daughter Cait than I am to Pegi, so I serve as a sounding board to help Pegi gain perspective from a generational point of view (I’m a “young” Gen X’er, Cait is an “old” Millenial), but with the neutrality that comes from not being wrapped up in their mother/daughter dynamic. I learned a different way to mother than what I had experienced by watching Pegi. The summer before Cait’s senior year of high school, Pegi set her up in a small apartment & gave her a checkbook so she could practice being a responsible adult — paying bills on time, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning — in a supported, low-stakes way. I had just started my first job out of college and was jumping into adulthood ready or not (thankfully, somehow I was ready), and this effort on Pegi’s part to set her daughter up for success floored me. She has always taken on her role as a mother and now as a grandmother with gusto. Pegi feels it’s her responsibility to foster her relationship with Cait and her grandkids, and she makes extraordinary efforts to spend time with them. In my adulthood, the onus was on me to travel home to see my mom, even after Kieran was born (if I hadn’t flown back to Wisconsin from Seattle regularly, I never would have seen her and she wouldn’t have met her grandson). I don’t know what it would be like having Pegi as my actual mother, but her righteous indignation was validating when I would share disappointment over the ways my mom hadn’t been there for me in the ways I needed her. Pegi’s mothering of her adult daughter is so different from what I experienced as an adult from my Mom. Over the years, Pegi and Cait’s relationship has often made my heart ache a little. It’s not exactly envy I feel, but more like phantom limb pain. I don’t resent the two of them for what they have, but I certainly wonder if they’re aware of how great it seems to someone looking in from the outside.
I say I’m on the outside, but truthfully I’m so often at the center of Pegi’s love, I actually do know how it feels: it’s wonderful! My brother had his second stroke early in my first trimester with Kieran, so when we flew to Milwaukee to see him, Michael and I decided it was too early to let our families know. Besides, it wasn’t the appropriate time while Al was in the hospital. However, I met up with Pegi for a brief catch up in the Santiago Calatrava-designed wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Sitting with her in that hushed, peaceful space, I couldn’t hold it in. Desperate to share our happy news after being immersed in sadness and worry over my brother’s future prognosis, I let Pegi know I was pregnant. Her unabashed response was instantaneous: she let out several loud, ecstatic squawks as she grabbed me in a frenetic, swaying hug. Every head in the space turned our way as I laughed and tried to calm us both down. Her raw happiness was delightful if slightly embarrassing. Pegi is a lot like Buddy the Elf when he twirls into his father’s conference room singing, “I’m in love, I’m in love, and I don’t care who knows it!”
Pegi channeled her enthusiastic support for Michael and I becoming new parents by hosting a baby shower for our Wisconsin family and friends. I could tell how happy my mom was for me to become a mother, and I think she was relieved to just be able to enjoy the party without any hosting duties. Pegi and my best friend Sarah worked so hard to create an emotional celebration with many thoughtful touches in my honor. I was surrounded by many of the most important women in my life, and that day is one of my most cherished memories.
I love Pegi’s quirks. Every email I’ve ever received from her has the subject line “Pegi and [whatever the email is about].” She never simply replies within an email thread, but starts a new email with a different, response-specific subject line, i.e. “Pegi and card coming your way.” I don’t know if it’s true, but I enjoy imagining that she does this for some organizational reason that only makes sense to her brain, like in the book I loved as a kid From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg. I hope she never changes this habit. Another of her quirks I adore is how she always carries 3 x 5 index cards everywhere she goes. Whenever I say something she finds interesting, she whips out an index card and makes a note, usually halting the conversation mid-flow by declaring, “Wow! I have to write that down…say it again, please, so I get it right.” Suffice it to say, I feel like if I had a fan club, Pegi would be president. She always ends our conversations with “I love you, I love you, I love you. You are such an incredible woman!” The feeling is mutual.
Pegi’s drive, enthusiasm and creative productivity are mind-boggling. Despite coming from a privileged background, she’s got one of the strongest work ethics of anyone I know. As an organizer, she spearheaded a years-long, multi-site, large scale public art initiative throughout the city of Milwaukee. As a writer, her quest to find a publisher for a memoir about her art modeling career kept hitting dead ends, so she decided to shift her goal to getting each chapter published one way or another, which she did. To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the start of her art modeling career, she curated a gallery show of works featuring her as the model created by the many artists she’d worked with over the years. To coincide with the show, she commissioned me to create an edition of 120 letterpressed, hand-bound chapbooks compiling all the chapters of her art modeling memoir together in one spot. What a privilege that was to help make The Crest of the Iliac a reality, at long last. At the exhibit’s opening night party, Pegi was in the middle of giving a welcome speech when her dear friend, the author Jane Hamilton, attempted to sneak in quietly. Pegi whooped, “Jane Hamilton is here! Hurray! Jane, I have a copy of your latest book for you to sign for my friend Carole, one of the biggest readers in my life!” Both Jane’s and my cheeks flushed pink at unexpectedly being put in the spotlight on Pegi’s big night. The fact she had planned ahead to get me a copy of Jane’s book and brought it to the opening, knowing Jane would be there to sign it for me, is indicative of how deeply thoughtful she is.
In 2015, Pegi took on a year-long residency at the Lynden Sculpture Garden focused around “Distance,” which culminated in a site-specific performance developed by her and three fellow artists based on their year of long-distance art making. I attended with my friend Kortney, and I was grateful to have her hand to hold as we took in the powerful, moving piece. After the performance, Kortney and I took our time composing ourselves. I slowly started perusing the work displayed on the gallery walls and was caught up short by one of Pegi’s collages. Overcome yet again, I took in the composition which contained part of a mint green scarf knitted by my mother.
Four months earlier, on the day of my mother’s funeral, Pegi helped me clear out my Mom’s things from the nursing home, most of which we planned to take straight to Goodwill. She suggested we go through the bags quickly to make sure there wasn’t anything in them I might want to keep. “Oh, wow!” breathed Pegi as she pulled out a work-in-progress knitting project. I held it in my hands, thinking about my mother’s hands manipulating this very yarn. Alas, I don’t knit so I wasn’t planning to keep it. Pegi gently asked, “May I take this? I have an idea for something that I might do with it.” I said of course she could have it. And now here I was, face to face with Mom’s unfinished scarf, remembering back to Pegi’s unexplained plans for it. It took me a moment to believe that what I was looking at was indeed what I thought it was. The power of art to make connections and draw an emotional response was taken to another level for me at that moment. I loved this collage for so many reasons, but unfortunately the visual artwork in the show wasn’t for sale. I was desperate to have something to remember this piece by, so I settled for taking some pictures of it with my phone. I shouldn’t have worried; Pegi sent me the original as a birthday gift the following year. (Have I mentioned Pegi is also one of the most generous people I know?) I’m honored to have it.
Back on the morning of my Mom’s funeral, Pegi did me yet another favor. I asked if I could rehearse the eulogy I’d written and would be delivering later that day. I knew I’d be forgiven any nerves, but I wanted to do my best and I’m a firm believer in practicing before public speaking. I also wanted her to hear my words because she wasn’t able to attend the service; she drove five hours round-trip just to spend the few hours she had available to support me. Pegi was an attentive, focused listener. She gave me a couple helpful edits but said this wasn’t the time to workshop my writing. She assured me it was a heartfelt tribute to Mom and that she was proud of me for taking such great care with a difficult task. It’s a rare gift to be with people who are comfortable talking about death and can sit with you in grief, and that’s exactly what Pegi gave me that day.
Unsurprisingly, Pegi is always planning ahead for when she will leave her earthly shell. Researching all the possibilities of what she might do with her body once she’s done with it has been a focus since I first met her. I’ve learned so many interesting tidbits from her about skeleton donation for medical science use, eco-burial options around the country and just recently the trend of having a tree sculpture created to mark one’s grave. This latest iteration is the route Pegi has settled on, and she’s shared with me the artist she picked to create the piece and some in-progress photos of the sculpture. While I dread a world that has her tree sculpture but no actual Pegi in it, I consider myself beyond fortunate that she burst into my life at the exact right time and has been there for me in ways I didn’t realize I needed ever since.
PEGGY COATS
My second day in Seattle, having just moved from Wisconsin, I dropped my portfolio off at Hornall Anderson, one of the most well-known design firms in the early ‘00’s. Someone called me back within the week and said they thought my work showed great promise, but unfortunately they didn’t have any design positions open. Six months later (and still looking for a permanent gig), I got a call from one of the founders of Bucky, Inc., a local natural-filling pillow company. Hornall Anderson had done a major rebrand for Bucky and created a delightful, yet complicated, identity system. The Bucky owners were looking for a more cost-effective way to maintain and update their packaging and sales materials, and my name was passed along thanks to that person at Hornall who added my name to their list of potential freelance designers. It was May 2001, and I’d just returned to Seattle from Wisconsin after being with my mom following her first massive heart attack, emergency quintuple bypass surgery and, as “luck” would have it, my brother’s wedding two weeks later.
My initial meeting with Peggy & David set the stage for my future work life with them, as well as our friendship, which thankfully outlasted my time as their employee. Bucky World Headquarters — as Peggy fondly called it — at that time was in a converted house next to their manufacturing building in a mostly-residential part of Wallingford, the next neighborhood over from where I lived in Fremont. They were in the process of moving to a bigger, legit warehouse with offices upstairs (think “The Office” but instead of paper, we made buckwheat hull U-shaped travel pillows). The interview was held in what had been the kitchen but was converted into an office with two desks in it. I took a seat amid the chaos of moving boxes, piles of papers, fabric swatches, samples, and packaging mockups. People bustled in and out, and the other co-founder’s dog, a giant poodle, slept unperturbed on a cushion in the corner. Two married couples had founded the company and it had experienced terrific growth during the 90’s. It was a time of big changes then, with the move to a bigger space and the dissolution of one marriage in progress. Every person had either big energy themselves, or was just used to navigating the chaos.
I liked David and Peggy’s warmth and friendliness immediately. Peggy was scattered and frantic about the move, and David’s even-keeled Britishness gave her a counter-balance. My 25-year-old self was overwhelmed but also quite amused by this pair. I’d never met anyone quite like them, and haven’t since; they are two-of-a-kind, indeed. They hired me on the spot as a freelance designer. I saw a glimpse of Peggy’s compassion and empathy in that very first meeting when I told them about my Mom’s recent heart attack. Peggy responds to inputs from the world with her whole body: she closed her eyes, put her hands on her heart and said, “Oh, you poor thing. It is so scary and horrible when someone you love has a heart attack!” They went on to share the story of David’s own unexpected heart attack and gave me advice regarding the recovery process. I appreciated Peggy’s willingness to be right there with me, a practical stranger, discussing hard things.
I had been working at Bucky a little over three months when 9/11 happened. That morning, Michael left for 10 days of field work in a remote area of the Olympic National Park. He caught the last ferry before the state shut them down in the aftermath of the attacks; back then we didn’t have cell phones, so he and his crew mates went into the woods mostly unaware of the magnitude of how much the world was changing while they were away. I was alone in a big city that I was still uncertain about, but I had a handful of friends and a job which gave those days some structure and pulled me away from constantly watching the nonstop news coverage. As with most Americans, I was distraught, confused and emotional about what was happening on the east coast. I felt so hopeless and scared about the future, and thankfully David and Peggy were there with comforting, wise guidance. They were my bosses, but they cared about me as a person first and foremost. In my shock and grief, I asked them, “How can we possibly go on from here?” Peggy then told me a story I carry in my heart to this day. “Twenty years ago, our car was rear-ended and destroyed by a drunk driver, and I knew my 4-year-old daughter had died in the backseat. I was suffering so much physical pain and mental anguish. I remember being in the ambulance and the EMT’s kept asking me, ‘What’s your name? Can you tell us your name?’ And I just shook my head no.” As she said these words, she had her eyes closed and was slowly shaking her head from side to side. “I didn’t understand why I was still alive, and I didn’t want to be if Eva was gone. But they kept asking me, over and over. And then something clicked in my mind. I realized I was indeed still alive, for some unknown reason. I finally said, ‘I’m Peggy.’ In saying those words, I was reclaiming my life, however it was going to be from that moment forward.” She explained that when the most horrible things happen, and you can give up or you can keep going, one step at a time. I was speechless by how much she’d been through, yet here she was, standing in front of me with her full, indomitable spirit. She’d kept going, and so could I. This was one of the many lessons I learned from Peggy about how to move forward in grief.
When I was 38, my 44-year-old brother died by suicide. Of all the phone calls I made that day to tell my family members the news — my mother, her two siblings, my niece’s mother, my cousins, my best friend — I also called Peggy. Not because she knew my brother or my family, but because I was doing my best to care for everyone who was hurting that day, and I’d reached a point where I needed someone to care for me. And she did, of course. Peggy’s mother died when she was a young girl, and early in our friendship she told me how, after her mother died and the funeral happened, no one in Peggy’s life ever mentioned her mother again. It was never even explained to her how her mother died. As an adult, Peggy worked hard to make sense of that loss and gave herself the things she was not allowed as a lost, sad, confused child: to remember, honor and grieve for her mother. She studied loss and grief through spiritual texts, including what the Buddhists teach about death. In relaying her journey to me, with my grief path in its infancy (though my father had died ten years earlier, my mom and brother were still alive at the time) she taught me the importance and the absolute necessity of doing the work. If you don’t, you’re living your life on the quicksand of unprocessed grief, which is as unstable — and unsustainable — as it sounds.
She had begun this search for answers before Eva died. She told me it almost felt as if she knew she would need to have a deep understanding of grief and a full toolbox to process another unimaginable yet unknown loss. On David’s 60th birthday, they hosted a large party at their house. Peggy had set up a small shrine for Eva: a framed photograph of her, a delicate nosegay of white winter flowers, a votive candle in a pretty glass holder and a poem. It was understated but noticeable in its place of honor on the kitchen counter where everyone would be sure to see it, as revelers always converge in the kitchen. I asked Peggy about it, and she said “We always do this when we have a celebration. We want Eva to be at the party with us and our guests.” It moved me, how matter-of-fact yet sentimental this act was. David and Peggy think of Eva every single day of their lives, and they weren’t ashamed or worried how it would make their guests feel to honor her at this happy occasion. Again, they showed me how, by normalizing the grief they carry, talking about and including Eva, it wasn’t something to be sad about all the time. On the contrary, it was beautiful and made the party complete: all of their loved ones were together, those physically here on earth and those on the other side.
There were many, many light-hearted moments with Peggy, too. She and David are lifelong vegetarians, have lived and traveled all over the world, and are captivating storytellers. It was really incredible for Michael and I to have found friends who were old enough to be our parents, but so much more closely aligned to our spirit of adventure, care for the environment and political leanings than those of our actual parents. Peggy is a consummate hostess–theirs is a “no shoes” home, but Peggy always has a big basket of slippers in the entryway so her guests’ feet stay warm and comfortable — and we’ve shared many wonderful meals around her table and met so many interesting people at their parties over the years. I also have Peggy to thank for helping turn me into a cat person. In her role as creative director, she decided we would feature sleeping kittens alongside our comfort products in the Bucky catalog, so the photoshoot was held at a local no-kill cat shelter. When Michael floated the idea of adopting kittens a month after our wedding, I knew exactly which organization to submit our application to and we were soon proud cat parents of Fleur and Fig Jam, tuxedo cat litter mates. I didn’t feel the need to hide my true feelings from Peggy that week at work when I told her, “All I can think about are the kitties! I just want to be home with them all the time. Is this what it’s like when you have a baby?” Peggy laughed and said, “Babies are a bit more work, but pretty much, yes.” She let me leave work early that day so I could have extra cuddle time with my fur babies.
Peggy’s art and her aesthetic as an artist touch every part of their home. They have heaps of trinkets and tchotkes from their countless adventures. During an 8-month stint when Michael and I lived in their attached mother-in-law apartment, I discovered how frequent a pastime it is for Peggy to rearrange the treasure displays for fun and visual interest. It’s one of my favorite things, looking at all of those bits and bobs. I’ve learned, however, not to ask about any of them if we’re aiming to leave in less than 30 minutes. Every trinket has a story, and Peggy’s stories are captivatingly circuitous and delightfully discursive. Similarly, her fine art paintings are painstakingly detailed, and she will tell you with her eyes twinkling that her favorite brush is one that has a single bristle. A true artist, she exudes the agony and the ecstasy that comes with a creative soul, though the suffering she experiences for her art is mostly physical. In the home which David built and they raised their family in, the dining room had a dramatically high pitched roof, the ceiling covered in wood paneling. Peggy took it upon herself to paint the wood with a beautiful light bluewash stain, an immensely tedious process. “David rigged up scaffolding for me, and I spent HOURS up there painting that ceiling. It was TORTURE on my back! I can really relate to what it took to create the Sistine Chapel thanks to that project,” she said without an ounce of irony in telling me the story of their home building process. Then she pointed to the ceiling as she exclaimed, “And I didn’t even finish it, can you believe it?!” Sure enough, a four-foot square patch of bare wood paneling remained, forlorn in the corner, which I’d never noticed before. (For the record, I could believe she was nearly finished and then stopped; that’s classic Ha’penny Peggy.) I told her she shouldn’t point it out to people because it had only become obvious once I knew it was there, but she just laughed and said, “Oh, it’s too good of a story to keep to myself, the time I worked like Michaelangelo!”
At 78 years young, Peggy is currently working on a graphic memoir with her friend Jane that visually tells the life-changing story of them going to study art abroad at Oxford University in 1963. The collaboration is happening half a world apart (Jane never left England) with the help of email, FaceTime and shared cloud drives. I helped them create sample spreads of the book this past summer, and it was a pleasure to be working creatively with Peggy again two decades after our first meeting in that funny kitchen/office space. It’s been so inspiring to see her tackle this enormous project with the vigor of a college art student. Her willingness to grasp new ways of working and her prolific output are evident by the frequent notifications I receive from the shared iPhoto album. I’m not involved in the day-to-day work like I was this summer, but I love seeing the progress appear in that album. Her paintings recreating scenes from that formative time in her life are endearing and energetic, colorful and charming. Just like Peggy herself.
I will always grieve the many ways I lost my mother over the course of our time together on earth, but I also recognize the gifts she gave me: her friendship with Peggy Olson; sending me to art school where Pegi Christiansen came into my life; and supporting me moving 3,000 miles away, which led me to a lifelong friend in Peggy Coats. My pull towards each of them grew strongest when I became a mother myself. These women, who are my mother figures and are mothering role models, have helped shape me into the mom I always wanted to be. Aunt Peggy reminds me to laugh and have fun with Kieran. Ping Pong Pegi reminds me that I have the opportunity to experience what I wished for between me and my mom by creating that relationship for myself and Kieran. And Ha’Penny Peggy reminds me that even if my worst fear comes true, I can survive. But more importantly, I need to focus on what I’ve got in this moment, which is an extraordinary, talented artistic soul who I am uniquely suited to nurture and support. I always tell Kieran he’s very fortunate to have so many fairy godmothers in his life. I certainly am.
