What About Marsha?

In her midlife, Marsha finds herself once again sitting with her father in a hospital. This time will be the last.

In the quiet of the evening, she gets to know one of the nurses. The open lesbian leads Marsha to examine her own life as the good daughter, dutiful wife, and attentive mother–and what might have been.

Their lives are worlds apart, but those worlds collide as Marsha stands nightly vigil of her father’s last days. As his lucidity ebbs and flows, stories of Marsha’s growing up come to light and Kit has questions as she tends to her patient, and learns about the man’s daughter.

Logging and the brutal life on the edge of nature’s beauty fascinates the nurse. In ways, Marsha would rather not visit those memories, but they are part and the basis of who she has become. For the nurse, the language and conditions of the logging community and work may as well be a foreign country or another planet–but she is fascinated by it all.

Marsha’s two daughters dutifully make their appearances. One out of social expectations, and the other to leech. The two children are the bookends of Marsha’s life–from expected duty to silent subjugation. Her son and her one brother are the parts of life she had never embraced. But, now she finds it is required.