Thanksgiving Jello

Mom would get up extra early, say five a.m., in order to get the turkey in the oven to be ready by one in the afternoon.  This was to allay whatever assbackwards nonsense my father decided to come up with, and get him full of food so that he would pass out, I now wonder if he looked forward to holidays as particularly spectacular opportunities to display to God and the hapless family his pantheon of righteous, vicious explosions.   A warrior against the wrongs of the world, of which he was king.

Today, here, it is now the beginning of the afternoon; by this time everyone would have been put through hell, the kids crying, Mom with tears while mashing potatoes.  Plates flying.  Food thrown against the wall.  "You people," he would call us, as if we just emerged from the fields and rang the bell.

My brother was three and wanted to help, the "special dessert" Mom would make was so simple but we kids would ask for it.  Orange Jello with chopped walnuts. That's all.  Mom was no baker and had trouble juggling turkey, potatoes, the frozen square of Bird's Eye squash, biscuits from a cardboard tube, and stuffing as it was.  She was the kind of person who would be assembling aircraft engines during WWII, and later tell me she had no idea what the hell she was doing. Planes by Dorothy, you can only hope things held together.

She had gotten the water boiling, found the yellow Tupperware bowl, measured it out and added the orange powder, the smell layering on top of the turkey and steam from the potatoes.  It meant we were coming into home stretch and dinner would be ready soon, for me to eat on the living room floor, while my little brother ate at the table, he was too small to be relegated to spread newspapers. Mom gave him the job of stirring the Jello, he stood on a stool to reach the counter, and in walked the Voice of the Lord.

"YOU'RE MAKING HIM A WOMAN!  THAT'S WOMAN'S WORK, NO SON OF MINE...etc., etc., etc.

"He's only stirring Jello," which was as much as my Mom ever answered him.  My brother became scared, the spoon clattered to the floor, the mix in the bowl still spun in circles, and my Mom was holding the pot of potatoes that needed mashing.  Yelling, yelling, frantic crisis yelling, he was enjoying the rush of adrenalin, the cowering, the uproar.  He grabbed my brother, who had tears but was too scared to cry, to take him into the living room; even then both us kids knew that placating Dad would get us through another day, playing along with the game.

I think Dad sat him in front of the television, a manly thing, apparently. Football.
Continued yelling ensued, "THAT'S HER JOB, SHE'S THE ONE THAT HELPS YOU, SHE'S A WOMAN."  Yup, an eight-year-old woman.  Mom and I tiptoed around the kitchen, trying to be silent.

"WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU, MAKE SOME NOISE, YOU'RE ACTING SCARED TO MAKE ME MAD."   Please, please, please pass out. Please get in a car accident.  Please leave and not come back.  Leave my mother alone, leave John alone, leave me alone alone alone.  Don't kiss me at night. Don't tell me it's how fathers love their daughters or that it's in the Bible.  Please let this day be over.

When ready, he angry-ate, gulping masses of food and yelling about us kids watching him.  How could we not?  It was as if a starving dog was presented with a plate of chicken, I was happy to get out to the living room floor and hunch over my dinner.  Mom still had to play-act, my brother did his three year old best to appease and soothe, and I, well, I kept to myself.  If I could have hired Hopalong Cassidy to come shoot him, I would have, and then figured out a way to keep us out of the poor house.  I would work as hard as I had to, in my child brain, to save her.

Storybooks had Aladdin, Cinderella, Swiss Family Robinson, Huck Finn, all heroes who landed in good circumstances despite adversity.  Hansel and Gretel came home with jewels to a father who had abandoned them at the urging of a horrid stepmother, at which I wondered, but hey.  Was the woodcutter a good man?  Was he just another victim of a leeching parasitical woman, the motive of all women?  Live off a man's sweat for a life of soap operas and living out in the sticks where there were no sewers, garbage pick ups, deliveries, and you could hear farm dogs howl at night?  I had hope that I was strong enough to pull us through, after finding at a ridiculously young age that I was pretty much on my own.

But that didn't happen.  I was told I wasn't smart enough to go to college, (You're a woman), in spite of a scholarship, or that I tested out of the 8th grade to attend college courses for the sum of $60 for books.  Marriage and having babies was foretold for me, and the lack of gumption or belief in myself kept that mindset. College money was saved for my brother who contracted serious mono, had a nervous breakdown after high school, and was given an allowance to keep him home till he was in his 30s.  I got out, but had no clue as to who, what, or where.

But I guess I'm all right, and am thankful for most of the events in this life; that my son has always found good people to be with and has a loving marriage; that I stayed on the Dean's List my years in college, that I recently have found I want to be loved and be loving, never wanted to bother with that for years; that I have discovered one of my places to be as a teacher, and that friends are there.

I think that art is freeing, and I need to get back to mine.  Visit foreign countries.  Go to a new restaurant.  Sit in a cemetery and get chased by wild turkeys.  Be involved with the city. You know, fun stuff that broadens one's outlook.

Today is the coldest day of this fall season this year, and folks are bundled as I see them from my window.  The cats are curled into various shapes of side dishes, mashed, squashed, and creamed.  I look forward to this Thanksgiving at my son Brian's in-laws, the wonderful family he married into.  After, perhaps the crescent moon will hang, as it did the other evening.

Razor-thin illumination, floating in the sky, a Hunter's Horn bright against pallid night.  Be warm, take care of yourself first, it's what leads to your being there for others, for protecting those you love.  Sleep well, drift with the moon as it sets by nine tonight, a waxing crescent in the western sky, visible just after sunset.  Oh heart, oh mind, be with my soul.  Good night.

Keep Going

Friday morning I was able to sleep in an extra hour and get up at six instead of five; because of jury duty, zipping over to the school to make sure classwork was in place before reporting to court was necessary.  When you have a long term sub, may God bless them.  My class had a series of different teachers over the week, and from the notes on my desk, several students partied to the video games in their heads consisting of no work and falling out of your chair, ...whee!

And I know what my kids were up to, especially since the large basket of pencils that was on my desk dwindled down to a few broken sticks in two days.  What was left in it were pencils with snapped off points, which any teacher can tell because the break is even, as if done by jamming the pencil between the edges of two desks and levering a quick, painless annihilation.  Oh ye six-year-olds, where have all the pencils gone?  Monday, Viola Swamp will be back, that sort of whee is over.

But this Friday morning there was time, and the banana I had purchased was getting browner and smooshier every five minutes, soon to be useless for its purpose.  You see, there was a video about hair treatments, and the Best of All was said to be concocted of a mashed banana, coconut oil, and honey.  Well, when I was young, all sorts of fruits and vegetables would be pureed and layered on cheeks, feet, cuticles, and teeth.  A beaten egg white would be painted on my face and allowed to dry, cucumbers sliced and placed over the eyes; honey, oatmeal, avocados and more slathered on for a quick complexion fix.  Grocery cosmetics are familiar in my lexicon, so what could go wrong with a banana?

Time.  The banana would be growing blue hair in another day or two if not used
immediately, so I got a bowl and mashed it to bits, which was mistake number one.  I should have pureed it through a sieve.  But heigh ho, I gotta get to court in three hours, shiny hair, here I come.  Coconut oil is somewhere, but I did find the avocado oil, a stalwart stand-in for the requested ingredient.  A good squeeze of honey, minutes of beating, and this stuff is still sort of lumpy, but the train is leaving the station.  I applied the glop through chunks of hair, and wondered if I would smell like a banana in court.  Top everything with a plastic bag to contain the enthusiastic mess, do up the dishes, feed the cats, throw stuff in the pile for AmVets, and fold some laundry.  Bango!  It's shower time, when the hair will be turned into glistening island magic, where you can shake your head like a pony and everything falls back into place.

First, a good long rinsing, more rinsing, and then lathering, scrubbing, rinsing, lathering, scrubbing, rinsing, conditioner, super lay-the-heck-down conditioner, and rinsing, rinsing, rinsing.  The water traveling to the drain looked clear.  Gotta go.  Wrapped head in a towel, brushed teeth and then began to comb out the strands with a wide toothed comb.  Except the comb wasn't exactly going through easily, but met with a few serious snarls that ended with me losing more hair than usual.  Ow, hey, but keep going, now I gotta kick into gear so that I get there in time.

I lean over the sink, and still using the wide toothed comb, begin to blow dry, noticing that the hair is indeed shinier and smoother as the halfway dry point is reached.  Warming the hair as it dries is creating an aroma which smells like Mom has banana bread in the oven.  Maybe that will dissipate when completely done, there are products like that, aren't there?  I stand up from leaning over the sink, and what the heck, it looks like a giant Hershey bar has sneezed into the basin.  What on earth is this brown stuff?

Bits of banana were being flung by the comb as I dried, brown from oxidation and lord knows what.  I looked in the mirror and saw bits of fruit salad in my hair, then looked at the clock; no time.  I am pretty good in staying calm during stupid situations, and live in such fashion that people aren't surprised by what happens.  It's decided to plow onward and get this crap out of my hair, which is definitely showing a healthy sheen most likely because of the avocado oil.  A sacrificial brush is used to remove small bits, which to me as a teacher, look like lice eggs running through the strands.

I get 99% of it out, still smell like a fruit stand, and pull everything back into a knot with a clip, as the illusion of floaty pony hair goes the way of the dodo. Agh.  A quick spritz with eau de foof will hopefully distract from the circus peanut fragrance, a hopeful slap of makeup to make it seem deliberate, and before getting dressed, a run towards the kitchen to make sure a bottle of water is by the door to take.

However, Roger has dug into the Supreme Supper enough to move the paper plate of cat food directly to the spot where my left foot lands.  The black sock is now sporting a healthy dollop of something that could wake the catatonic, and I hop on one foot so as not to spread the godawful fish paste onto the rug. Bananas! Cat food! Swearing does not fix anything.  Peel off the sock, wipe foot with a paper towel, and hop-run back to the bathroom to wash, and hey, look at the time.

I book out the door with everything necessary, and make it through check in before any one else on the jury arrives.  As Alternate #2, me and #1 are sequestered away from those who can deliberate, and my newspaper in which I had planned on doing the puzzles is taken away.  No reading materials.  Except the book of stencils seems to be allowable, and I am able to trace the entire book onto plastic film for later cutting.  I try not to smell like a banana for the sake of everyone around me, but how do you do that?  Scrunching into a tiny ball doesn't change any aromas, all I can do is wait it out; happily, within a couple hours, I no longer waft fruity.

We are given lunch, and cannot leave the room without an escort; we two are called into the courtroom whenever the twelve jurors are, in order to have a written question answered, or to be given instructions as to breaks in the process. But then, back to the room.  At the end, there was a hung jury and a mistrial declared, with 10 not guilty votes, and 2 guilty.  I would have been a not guilty, for the first witness had an axe to grind with the defendant, and lied under oath, for her stories were not consistent with the record or the actual events.  She was the complaining party, and sort of omitted that her boyfriend on probation was at the scene where marijuana and crack were being passed around.

Late in October, my favorite month, yet the trees in the city are just beginning to change colors.  A patch of Coprinus comatus mushrooms are growing by the bus stop next to the parking lot, and it is funny to see a wild bit of nature springing up from the controlled, manicured grass.  They are edible, but no alcohol within 24 hours of ingestion or a severe nausea can set in; these Shaggy Manes were once used as a cure for alcoholism in the late 1800s.  Colonists also would pick them and leave in a bowl as they are a mushroom that desquamates, or melts, into a dark liquid to be used as ink.  It's a pretty thing, and one of the last before winter.

Come, then, dressed for colder nights, longer nights when the constellation Orion come into the skies of the northern hemisphere.  At his feet is the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, the dog star; it absolutely shimmers with intensity, flashing blue and red at a distance of 2.6 parsecs.  It appears as one, yet is actually a binary system of Sirius A, the main star, and Sirius B, a collapsed star that is now a white dwarf.  From our vantage point, it appears as the largest star in the nighttime because of it's closeness; if you watch, the twinkling seems to be furious, almost like flames.

Let the stars flicker above while you drop into your pillow, ready to give in to sleep and what dreams and thoughts arrive.  Sirius the Dog Star hangs in the southwest sky, as part of the collar for Canis Major, an illumination of stories, mysteries, of age, and change.  Trilobites came from 400 million years ago; it has been theorized that Sirius B was once a red giant that shrank to a dwarf, 150 million years back.  What was that night sky like?  How have the stars moved, the grand arms of the galaxy spun?

Here we are, you and I; stone sleeps, the house quiets, the air spills.  Sleep well. Good night.








 

Guess What I Found

People go to Farmer's Markets, or out to orchards to pick apples where someone else did the tending and shaping of abundance.  Providing a sense of what life was at one time, dependent upon the produce brought to the city by wheezy trucks and wagons, this sort of gathering fills a nesting instinct underscored by shortened daylight.  We want to get ready for what we know is coming, at least here in the north.

Coming out of the stalls of the Market, you will see bushels of apples, squash, cabbages, and the last remnants of corn being carried to cars to be stored or processed into winter goods.  People groan with the heft of 8-quart baskets, filled from trees found at local farms; take the kids, they will love it and maybe pet a horse, which is a good thing.  Expose them to what sort of animal a horse is, and I don't mean one of those ponies outfitted in a harness attached to a rotating frame at the fair.  Find them a horse to see run, touch, learn from.  That is the earth, just as much as apples and more.

But if you weren't near a farm, or were strapped, or just wanted a peculiar, unique flavor, you went looking for it yourself.  When I was young, my Mom taught me how to gather the tiny wild strawberries and thread them on a stem of grass if there was no pail to put them in.  Wild strawberries spread by vining, and so fill prolific patches with the smallest of fruit;  yet it takes a lot of searching to get anywhere near a pint.  But crush them with sugar and spoon onto a slice of spongecake that Mom made, and it beguiled you to think of the redwing blackbirds that dived at you as you bent in the fields, gathering.  Of the funny rock which turned out to be a fossil coral.  Of the swish of a disappearing snake. Of the pheasant feather caught in the tall grass.

We kids would also be loaded into the car with baskets to gather maszlaki, Suillus luteus, a sponge-gilled mushroom with a slippery cap.  This bolete has a symbiotic relationship with larch trees, one of the few conifers whose needles turn yellow in the fall and drop, like deciduous leaves.  My father would peel the mushroom caps, string them, and hang the loops near the furnace in the basement to dry.  It was one of the few things which made him happy.  Ish.  The aroma of a fresh Suillus is filled with pine, of woods, of humus, of tannin, of finding the sticky caps pushing through larch needles, of having olive loaf sandwiches that Mom had packed, hot cocoa in a thermos.

I guess memory motivated me, plus finding books by Euell Gibbons, a fellow who explored nature in terms most city people thought eccentric.  His book, "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" became a credo for me; walk around and see what you can find.  Recently, I've realized that I like finding things, thus the sea shells, the fossils, the fungi, and a number of etceteras.  Japanese toothpick holders. Stuff I don't want to tell, and you don't wanna know.

And so, I began to include wild forays into woods, fields, and by the sidewalk; in Tonawanda at the corner of the street over, there grew a hickory nut tree that no one bothered with except yours truly.  I'd get a brown bag and fill it with mostly unhulled nuts, then let them set outside until the green shells peeled away. Hickory nuts are miniature mazes of inner walls and cubbies, very difficult to shell, but I developed a technique requiring a croquet mallet which did less destruction than a hammer.  Bits of autumn, taste from an older world. The tree was unfairly cut down for sidewalk repair, but what can you do?

I found another hickory way out in Wyoming County, a shagbark; I wonder what will become of the world without nut trees.  Fortunately, there are ample black walnut trees through the city, if you don't mind the mess of the black hulls or stubborn shells.  Chinese chestnuts grow in a local small grove on the side of a hill, the nuts are tucked in spiny husks, so wear gloves.  The prize inside is worth it, and is sweet as cake.

Near the chestnut trees is a stand of wild apples, purple grapes that have gone wild, and a patch that yields Agaricus arvensis, the horse mushroom that has an anise-like aroma.  Never take all of anything, you must leave most for the animals and for the living thing to proliferate.  I have dug the crowns of dandelion buds before they sprouted, steamed violet leaves, chopped wood lily leaves into salad, and every year with a friend go out to a woods that offers buckets of wild leeks.

None of this tastes like anything you can get in the supermarket, but what if you don't have a car to get to the lands where these grow?  Look around.  The urban forager can come up with results found on scraps of land along streets and bike paths.  It's a bit of fun, a side hobby of finding as long as you don't mind some folks staring (I don't), or getting permission if the yard belongs to a business (I do).  Foraging does not include helping yourself to what's growing on private property, that's stealing, even if you don't think the inhabitants would want it.

I've been on jury duty, and live a 12 minute walk away from Family Court, some of which goes alongside on and off ramps, a one-way street, and under a bridge. On the walk home, I found catnip, a weedy plant that likes poor soil and is so much nicer than that from the shops, which is usually ground up stems.  Free, compared with $4 a packet is lovely, but then, as said, the metro bus driver waiting at the stand watched what I was doing in the middle of a median running along an entrance ramp.  Well, my cats will be pleased.

Further along, growing packed into the hard ground as they are wont to do, were several Agaricus bitorquis, also known as the Sidewalk Mushroom for they prefer the compacted soil found between curb and cement.  Bus stops.  Related to the supermarket mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, it tastes pretty much the same. With mushrooms, though, I look around for observers, as they like to rescue you from eating toadstools and will grab and throw what you have gotten far away from your body before hoisting you off to the asylum.

I knew about gathering the Slippery Jacks from childhood, but then took courses at the science museum from their mycologist, and a formal study of fleshy fungi in college.  Identification of sixteen edible species keeps me happy, but believe, I very seriously check everything before tossing it into the fry pan.  The most poisonous will grow alongside the innocuous, and tastes just as good.  Amanita phalloides, A. virosa; both will kill you in the most sneaky manner.

First, only half a cap of A. phalloides can kill an adult human; it begins with violent stomach cramps, diarrhea, nausea, dehydration.  After three days, you feel better, however, this is where the other poisons kick in and you end up with kidney failure, cardiac arrest, intercranial bleeding, and pancreatic inflammation. Death occurs in approximately 21% of those who have eaten this monster; others will need a liver transplant.

Have I seen Amanitas growing locally?  Last one I saw was on my school grounds, and got it out of the way after donning latex gloves.  The mycelium is still underground, the mushroom itself is the fruiting body of the business end of fungi.  Just don't mess with anything, unless you are with a trained collector.  I think I'm the only first grade teacher that yammers at the kids about Never Touching a Wild Mushroom No Matter How Pretty.  And if you come over for dinner, I would never serve you anything gathered.

I picked the Agarics, trying to look nonchalant, got home and sauteed them in olive oil for lunch.   They were good, and I'm still alive although it's only been seven hours.  I'm happiest about the catnip, as the complex has taken to mowing down the patch that was on the other side of the fence.  Catnip grows just about everywhere in a city, and once you recognize it's skunky smell, you can't mistake it for anything else.   Come over, I'll show you, at least until the first frost.

Did you ever eat blackberries from the wild growing bushes?  Wasn't it worth the few scratches from the thorns?  Did you sleep better that night from being out in the fresh air, running around with the other kids?  The warm days of autumn become chilly nights as temperatures fluctuate, living leaves curl back and crumple, Mom gets out the water bath canner and puts up applesauce for later days.

Finding where you belong, what you can do for the world, that's even richer than learning the ways our ancestors survived on what they found.  Yet there is something to be said in awareness of seasons, of being congruent with time as we define it, of remembering when fruit trees open their blossoms.  We look forward to markers of the passing of the year, when the first crocus appears, when the first red leaf drops.

What would you plant, if you have a yard?  Lots where houses once were still have gardens run wild, overgrown but still there.  An apple tree can last a hundred years, raspberry bushes will stretch out and spread; birds, deer, and children can still visit them long after you have left, and gather fruit by the handful.

Dip your dream oars into the ocean of mind, let go of the day and ponder the night when you are alone, inside yourself.  I promise you there are gardens between the waves, built from your living kindly; a tree with a nest wherein resides your heart.  Sleep, dog.  Sleep, cat.  Sleep, child once mine.

Dream Fish

In the early morning, when the water hasn't awakened and lays still, if you are on a dock or in a small boat and see the flashing nova of a fish launching itself into a breathless world for a bug, or for joy, or just itchy fish-ness--the slap of its return to the water produces one of the emptiest, flat claps in nature.  No resonance or echo, no depth or timbre; a fish hitting the water on an irrelevant morning is a final sound, a punctuational plunk to an ending thought you had, an answer from the unknown realm found on the wavering line between wake and sleep.  (Waking fish, sleeping water. Sleepy human, wakey boat).

But it makes everything all right, evens out the cacophony found in the machinations of the city, the engines of plans, the grind of blade against soil and stone of furrowed acres.  It contains familiarity, for we can imagine human hunger compared to piscine hunger, which causes the gilled desire to eat a filamented, armored bug, while our own wishes concern fish on a plate, dressed in crumbs.

The water itself is thicker than air, so sound has a more difficult time traveling through it, dulling whatever result. Rhythmic heartbeats of oars, oars, oars; an anchor sliding into the watery world, a capering fish; all finish in the identical invitation to a mysterious kingdom, you wouldn't know that you were on the same planet. The stillness of the morning, having been broken by the slap of a fish, settles again into a hushed atmosphere, as if framed by heavy drapery.

Sound underwater can travel for thousands of miles depending on water temperature and density; this sort of science is used by whales to bounce a signal between the ocean floor and the thermocline from hemisphere to hemisphere, where fewer encumbrances exist to break up the energy.

The whole physics thing is skewered, and you better get smart about it if you want to interact, for even though we came from fish, there is little left that points to similarities beyond the hypothetical reason men get hernias easier than women. (By the by, yes, I am an evolutionist.  Don't mean to step on toes but if you aren't in sync with biological adaptation and change, they'll take you to the president's mansion, and by president's mansion, I mean nuthouse). Archimede's Principle, Boyle's Law, Gay-Lussac's second Law, Dalton's Law, Henry's Law, and Snell's Law are all part of watery curriculum, and essentially stand landlubber reasoning on it's head.

What does the clap of a fish mean?  What does this happy, simple event do to your life?  An arising to the atmosphere from below, a very different organism surfaces if only for a half-second, before going back under to continue it's living. Rather than an active response, I believe we humans go through more of a quiet recognition of disturbance, an acknowledgement that we are not alone, a gratitude. Perhaps it makes a search for one's own breakfast imminently necessary, a portion of toast, an egg, coffee or tea.  The morning paper, if you are lucky enough to get one or have time for it.

Say hey to the fish, and any other early waking denizen of the deep, then trot back to the house, the cottage, the tent, the forest where sound is absorbed by leaves and ravines, but then there is much more usable oxygen.  Some mornings will evoke an orchestra of claps if a swarm of mayflies has landed upon the surface or if the smaller minnows are caught in the high tide zone of the epipelagic layer.

Once or twice, I have been on a schooner and surrounded by a school of flying fish which elicited the impression of an audience clapping, a riffled deck of cards, a slappy tommygun.  Years later at breakfast on a deck, millions of pilchards threw themselves onto the beach to escape the pursuing mullets, also in a froth, for they were being eaten by dolphins.  The beached pilchards were grabbed by the screaming gulls as their fishy brethren were snagged by the mullets in a roiling, flappity mess of fin and feather.  The dolphins were thrilled at the all-you-can-eat buffet, and repeatedly crashed into each other as if someone threw handfuls of jelly beans into a room of six year olds.  

Because waves hit at a slant onto shore, the whole sea circus eventually traveled away, the brilliant silver of the unhappy sardines sparkling at the edge of the burbling, exploding tide.  My eggs and toast were just as good.

Silent night tonight; this October evening the city is encouraging households to shine a blue light in memory of the officer lost in a diving accident.  What went wrong has not been told or perhaps found, yet, except for that portion of the river is exceptionally dangerous, which is why it is used for training.  A very fast current pushed north by the waters of all the Great Lakes creates a most unusual circumstance of 3,160 tons of water going over the Falls every second.  Toss in debris such as stolen cars, shopping carts, boat motors, and the field of obstacles will then extend 100 feet out from the river banks.

It was a beautiful autumn day, the wildflowers and grasses have browned and are waiting for the first frost.  I need to shake out and launder the heavier blankets, as the cats pile on at night, sleeping closer to each other than the usual warfare allows.   The emptiness of the night draws me, the sequestering phase of this 24 hour division leads to the brain organizing the day's intake, repair, and regeneration.  Images flash on a mental screen, pictures that make no sense except for the perception of being an observer, of looking through my eyes.  My dreams rarely connect to anything.  They are often repetitive, I revisit the same settings many times.

There is an Easter candy shop on a woods path, the chocolates set out on folding wooden tables; there is a Chinese restaurant in the basement of a hotel, and we eat while a tornado is wreaking havoc outside; I often buy my grandmother's house, or my Aunt Dorie's, and get to clean out the basement.  My son is always 12 years old. Sometimes I lose my class of children in the school which is being renovated faster than I can remember, new hallways and rooms open and shut when I try to return from the office; my favorite is that of cars, I have cars.  Foreign ones, old ones, a DeSoto, a Hudson, and they all run, are fun to drive; I fill them with gas.

But you, what are your dreams?  Or do they elude you once you awaken, like a fish disappearing beneath the surface?  I guess it's more of a release of tension, or the blood pressure medicine turning the crank.  To have a small ritual before bed sets the stage for sleep, and so we have a glass of milk, brush teeth, hang clothing, turn out lights, unplug any scary things like the 1940's toaster, count children and animals, and tuck in.  Good night, dear heart.

Me Six, Seven, Eight

I know a girl that I went to school with in the seventh and eighth grades at St. Andrew's, who wore coats buttoned up to her neck, shy, quiet, gentle.  Her uniform was clean and pressed, a small gold cross hung under her buttoned collar.  Her father was using her to make pornographic films with himself and his friends, you never would have guessed.  I found out when she turned up in one of the therapy groups that I attended, except she was not much more emotionally older than that shy teenager she once was.  Her face was blank, she was working with the counselor to achieve being able to leave her apartment without a panic attack.  It never leaves you.

She remembered me, and was able to talk about what happened to her and her sister, that she had reconciled with her father, he had come over for a supervised lunch.  What good did that do her?  If mine had come for lunch and I had a gun, I would have cheerfully shot him.

My father had something horribly wrong with him, he hated women and would give Sunday night talks about how he beat a few up, they deserved it.  His Catholic fervor was amped up to a scream by his alcoholism, but then it was the same thing the priests lectured on at Mass, what did I have to compare anything with? Don't think impure thoughts, but examine your conscience several times a day to check for impure thoughts.  What an impure thought was eluded me, nor did I realize it wasn't meant for children, at least under the age of seven, the Age of Reason.

I was admonished by my father to keep my soul pure, but what on earth was that?  I was also told not to eat a chocolate bar too soon after an orange, that if I drank milk, it was to be before eating my orange, that too much chocolate would give you worms, and if I swallowed my gum, my appendix would explode.  At an early age, it came to be a given that my parents were not to be believed on things that had to do with reality.  Nothing was real.

Yet, bolstered by Sunday Mass sermons and all the rules and regs held dear by the Church, there were some things reinforced by majority rule.  The nuns who taught religious education suggested that we use Jesus as a playmate if we were alone.  Good luck with that; I tried making mud pies with Jesus as my invisible friend, and decided that I was on my way to the looney bin.  We were to pray to our guardian angel to keep us safe from sin, so I lay in bed many a night praying to the unseen force to please keep my father away, but no spear of righteous lightning ever saved the day.  I was convinced that I didn't believe hard enough.

My mother wasn't Catholic, my father complained that she wasn't Catholic so he couldn't really talk Scripture with her, as if he ever did anyways.  At least not in a studious way.  He'd rip out choice lines that pointed out how women are unclean whores, how Noah's daughters got him drunk in order to lay with him, how honoring your father meant he could do what he pleased.  Mom was sad all the time, wasn't allowed friends, and anything that she cared for would eventually get destroyed.  Living was crazy, a whirlpool of threats and unbalanced reasoning, a maelstrom of God and molestation.  

Thing was, and this reinforced the belief that women were expendable property, my adolescent cousin began his turn.  He was a mess who slept on rubber sheets wired with an alarm that would sound when he wet the bed.  My aunt and uncle lived next door to us, way out in the sticks, there were no other kids to play with except for my three cousins.  Half the time I was forbidden to play with them, if my father had a slam down argument with my mouthy uncle, my mother's brother.

My cousin would pin me down and spit in my face, or jump on me, naked, from his bedroom or in their garage.  When we moved away, it was glorious.  I didn't tell anyone because it was all part of God's Bible that men had the upper hand, so to speak.  Women were leeches, cesspools, harlots; be happy there's a roof over your head.

I still had my father to contend with, but since moving to the burbs, there was something different in the air; going over to friend's homes began an uncomfortable truth that the way we lived was not the way most other people did.  Fathers were nice, if somewhat removed from raising their children, but they didn't make remarks about their daughters showing/not showing signs of puberty.  No one said the words whore, or prostitute, or tramp.  My father earned the reputation as the crazy neighbor, which flowed over onto me and my brother. No one wanted us kids over, if we somehow got hurt, they would be dealing with him, which they did not want.

Even so, a relative climbed into our bed when I was staying over with a cousin at their house; he kissed us, introducing his tongue into our mouths, something I had not experienced before.  We were nine years old, it didn't seem like he was leaving anytime soon. His wife came looking, saw what was going on, and got the other company to haul him out of the bed. Everyone shushed us up when we complained about the taste in our mouths, that his tongue was used.  Don't tell. Protect him, protect the family, god knows what would happen. You're lying. Tell the feeling when you go to someone whom you love, ask for help, and be told that it's a lie you made up for attention.

Men lurked behind doors, pulled up in cars to ask what time it was then exposed themselves; a group in a car slowed down to ask me and my friend if we would like to get raped.  So many others, so much more.  Going to get pumpkins, the farmer slid next to me and groped my rear while saying that the big ones were 'over there'.  I was with a boyfriend who thought that was the funniest thing ever. He what?  Said the big ones were over there, then squeezed your ass?  Picking my son up from karate, the owner pushed me against the wall, I want you right there.  I couldn't get away, thank heavens another mother came in.  Chopping vegetables in a restaurant, what do you plan to do with that carrot, Susie?  Ho ho. Followed into the house from the pool.  Hired from the agency to "fill out" a party and show the guests a good time.  If you didn't agree with the "good time" part, you weren't considered a team member and had other modeling jobs cancelled; I quit.  

For the most part, men unsettle me.  I like the idea of them, but you never know what they are thinking but wait yes I do think I know what they are thinking.  It's not true, though; it can't be.  Yet you read of women in far away countries who are shot for going to school, murdered for watching a banned movie, burned with an iron to the face for leaving the house.  Living through the intensity of your mother being threatened with decapitation at least once a month, you believe it.

This is my story, not anyone else's, nor can it represent what anyone else has gone through, some more, some less.  The Church still runs lives with sexual guilt; do you know that if a divorced Catholic remarries another divorced Catholic in a government ceremony, they are not to consummate the marriage, but live as brother and sister?  Really?  I cannot resolve my common sense with the Church and no longer consider myself a part, my God and their God are two different ideas.

But I like to imagine that I'm okay, lived through it, and continue to contribute and function.  It takes patience to get to know me, I don't let many people in and am reasonably happy with cats.  I'm working on that.  Being more open, that is.  I have enough cats.

The body of a young officer lost in an accident four days ago was recovered today; the swift current of this river makes for a murky bottom and dangerous undertows.  A darling friend posted a photo of the moon hanging over Venus in morning display, a beautiful moment in time.  Good and bad exist within the same hour, I like to imagine that good supersedes the remainder, yet it does not erase the memory.  There is no medicine for that but to live.

Sleep then, safely, with or without angels.  Your talisman is your knowledge of what was and what can be, your wishes, your love.  No one can take that from you.  Flow into the tides of night, stir the sky with your broom that whisks away the webs and clears the stars for them to shine.  Brightly.  Oh ocean, oh trees, oh animals except for the bitey, sting-y ones, how I love you, love this life.  Let me live, if only in my dreams.  Good night.  You are safe.
 

Basket Raffle

Going out to a park alone can be tricky and nerve wracking; every twig snap signals sudden death by raccoon or bear or sasquatch.  But going to the woods is one of the most energizing and restorative activities, for who doesn't like picking up acorns, hickory nuts, leaves, or just breathing the oxygen given off by the trees?  Your head clears, filled with dreamscapes of green.

So I don't go, but was looking for an outdoor activity I could do by myself if no one else was around.  Walking was okay, trotting down to the lighthouse at the end of the berm and back was a short half hour; going for a walk around the downtown buildings was spooky on the weekend, for downtown no longer has shoppers for the disappeared stores, and the only place open besides a few restaurants is the central library.

Last time I went there, it was pandemonium; quiet doesn't exist.  C'MERE, YOU GOTTA SEE THE BABY DO BEYONCE, SING LIKE BEYONCE, WAFFLE. Waffle got out of her stroller, held her bottle like a microphone, and yelled "PUH HARRING ONNIT" over 'n over as if the needle was stuck in the groove.  Staff are completely cowed, and if they try to conduct order, are told to go eff themselves.

Two years ago, my son and his wife wanted to give out fossils as wedding favors, which was a memorable idea.  Buckets, shovels and a vague vision accompanied us to the nearby Penn Dixie Fossil Park and Nature Preserve, where we dug in the mounds of shale left from the days that it was a cement quarry, and found scads of brachiopods and horn corals.  I liked digging and banging rocks open a lot, became a member, and now have a go-to place for getting outside.

On weekends, the place is usually crawling with kids, which isn't a problem. Everything is a treasure, and you keep what you find.  They yell amazement and success, or if very small, cry when summer heat becomes a weight.  They don't bother me a bit, I can only hope their enthusiasm lasts into later decades.  This may not happen as easily as expected, for the elephant in the room is a certain brand of adult.

When in a big box store, and a kid is acting up in a tantrum, it takes every professional atom in my body not to go over and correct the miscreant, elementary teacher style.  But it's the same with adults.  If a parent is bullying, or threatening a consequence without enforcement, I am just itching to correct them as well.  

Parent:  "If you don't stop, you will have to sit in the cart."  No stopping.  "If you don't stop, you will have to sit in the cart, I mean it."  Behavior gleefully escalates.  "Please stop, that's not how you behave, you will have to sit in the cart if you don't make a good choice. Do you want a Slurpee?"  People stare at me because my head has turned inside out with the effort of non-involvement.

Or this, what I often hear at the fossil dig from a parent; Come here, let me show you, go in the water and you don't even have to dig anything, the fossils are right there.  See?  In the water.  (Kid goes to dig in loose rock). No no no, Pancake, in the water.  Come in the puddle, it's easy.  I'm telling you.  You have to look in the water.  AREN'T YOU LISTENING TO ME?  Get over here.  You aren't finding anything, stupid; look at what I have already.  You wanted to come here, why aren't you looking in the water??

Probably because the water is stale, smelly, dead, and the mountains of shale look like fun to climb.  Fossils are everywhere, you could fall down and find them.  Let the kid explore, just keep an eye on them.

Today, however, not the mother of the year made the visit a dramatic stage play, for which she should get an award.  "This isn't what I thought it would be."  Boy: "Look!  I found a fossil!  What is it?"  "YOU KNOW YOU AREN'T BRINGING ANY OF THIS INTO MY HOUSE!" Boy, wistful: "I know."  "THIS PLACE IS HIDEOUS. HIDEOUS!  I COULD BE AT A BASKET RAFFLE."

Wicked my brain: You want hideous, take a look at that blouse you're wearing. You should go to the basket raffle, maybe win a new one.  My serenity was being interrupted by this yowling.  The injustice of bringing a child to dig fossils when you could be at the finest basket raffle, getting more crap that you don't need!  What's in those baskets is dollar store hoo-ha, not a collection of china from Bergdorf's.  She wanted a medal for being at this forsaken, grey quarry, when dish sponges from Taiwan were disappearing under her nose because she wasn't there to claim her prize of prizes.

"We're GOING! There's a basket raffle going on, don't you want to be at the basket raffle?  This place is awful."  The term "basket raffle" was blasted ten times in two minutes, and I was ready to crawl into the subterranean muck and hide with the trilobites.  Or, ninja throw my rock hammer right center of her man bun.

The kid said nicely, "But I don't want to go, I want to find the one that looks like a shell.  Can we stay five more minutes?"  I will give her the credit of acquiescing for the five minutes, yet his plaintiveness broke a bit of my heart as it reminded me of myself when a kid, when my father would make me stay in the car as he took my brother out to toss a ball around at the park.  You don't deserve to go.

One last halloo of  "basket raffle" and they loaded up, I think the kiddo did find a few things from the chirps he made.  Then I had peace until the Cub Scout troop showed up, but they were excitedly great, their parents were happily great, and the spot I found to dig was Devonian awesomeness.  Accumulated was quite a pail full of various species of brachiopods, and the largest gastropod of one inch that the volunteer guides had ever seen.

I like finding things, it took me years to realize why I enjoy walking on beaches for shells, why digging for fossils is happiness, or why searching for wild mushroom species is exciting.  Becoming a research librarian would have suited me well, but the career outlook was poor; here I am, better a teacher.  But finding, it's discovery and recovery.

It puts things in place, familiar objects that have a noble stature in my mind.  My godmother gave me my first seashell, simple fossils lay about on the ground where I grew up, and the curiosity of mushrooms has enthralled me since being a child.  Talismans.  What are yours?  What gives you a place that is your own in this world?

Tonight there is a harvest moon hidden behind the remnants of clouds from the last hurricane.  We are due to have much rain.  It will run in rivulets through the loose gravel and stone, freshly dug this afternoon, releasing more fossils from the matrix of clay and shale.  The nights are cooler, deeper in darkness, which now comes sooner in October; tuck in the children, the cats, the dogs, and yourselves. Appropriate to shake out the winter blankets, our sails for bedtime dreams loosed from the anchors of time.  Dreams and wishes.

Good night, sleep well.  Everything will be fine, I promise.


 

Slow Motion Food

The fork, for it performs more of a textured separation and readying as compared to a spoon, is handled gingerly as if held by Leopold Stokowski leading an orchestra.  It stab-scoops up a bite of closely photographed food, pauses on the way up, and exits the frame, all of this happening in a slow motion trick designed to enhance the crumb, color, and composition of the featured recipe.

Social media is having a wonderful time creating these miniature food features which emphasize food ballet, causing salivary glands to explode in applause. But why?  You've seen them if you read Facebook; pork chops dance in air, noodles align in rows, salad fireworks dazzle the eye.  How is it that we are attracted to this new form of advertising like cats following a mouse, with enlarged pupils? Why does falling food enchant and hypnotize?

It is named Slow Motion Food Photography, and is usually combined with Macro Food Photography.  What it gives is a hyper-realism that grabs your sensory circuitry and amps up the idealized pleasures of taste, sensation, ownership, and satiation.  You want that gooey, melty, golden cheese luxuriously oscillating from between two slices of buttered bread, crusted from grilling.  It teases a survival instinct through those dramatic images showing an unctuous filling, and you imagine the glistening bite traversing down your throat after breaking through the resisting crunch of the crust with your teeth, salt on your tongue.  This magnification increases desire; it distracts, and having food makes pain temporarily disappear.

If a fork is used but disappears as it carries a morsel up to the off-screen mouth, we await the flavor and texture in our own, and are a bit miffed at the sleight-of-hand.  It feels empty, deprived, fooled by a dishonest fork.  So go get a bag of whatever is in the cupboard and substitute this for that, I wonder how often it happens.

The craziest ones are the desserts, as if layering Oreos over pudding then blending more Oreos with cream cheese in a food processor for another level won't have the family flying around the ceiling in a chemical stupor.  The fork slides through the crushed cookie layers as if they were diamonds, loads up the tines, and again pauses as if this goodness is too rich, a miracle, a mythology come to life.  It looks good even to me, and I don't care for Oreos; Lorna Doones are more my preference.

The genre has become funny, like watching a dog with it's head out a car window, yet I also miss some good recipes because I don't have patience enough to watch a lemon be juiced at so many frames per second. Just give me the facts, a straight link where I don't have to read how your little dumpling began to walk the week you were making the video so ha ha some parts had to be shot over again scroll down eighty feet for the actual recipe, and keep the redundancy down to none at all.  I don't have to read the title, the same title over again, nor the title announced again in the first sentence.  Do these people get paid by the word, or are we an audience of wombats?

Geez, I'm being nippy.

The city lights are on, the late train just pulled in at Exchange Street, sounding a horn that echoed off the buildings of downtown.  Fall is nearing, the farmer's markets are burgeoning with produce from an ending season.  Peaches are almost over, corn is going, tomatoes will follow; we will have Chippewa potatoes, peppers, pumpkins, cabbages, carrots, and cauliflower to stock our larders. Soup, always a good thing that can be made out of these.  Tuck in the kids, test the latches, pet the dog, call the cat, cover the bird.

Get yourself in and dream of time, for nothing stays the same, all you can do is grow and learn and be kind to each other.  And that is enough.  Good night, good hearts.

Endings and Beginnings

There is love, there is romance, there is flirtation, attraction, warmth, giving, collaboration, communication, desire, and any number of words which describe what happens between two people.  It's a tide of fluid emotion that comes and goes, rises and falls, and is full of little silver fish that flash in sunlight, if you are lucky.  Love can be stoic, recalcitrant, a steadying hand on a tiller that gets you both through the swells and troughs of life with a dogged determination.

There are no guarantees that it lasts, but it is the one thing in this existence that can and will reach beyond time, through all dimensions.  Love.  My Mom once told me that love is the only thing that can last forever.  I believe it.

Yet, have you ever loved someone to the point that it hurts?  Desire overrun with fantasies of being with the other; creating rushes of dopamine, ecstasy, and an attachment that becomes addictive is called limerence, and it can incapacitate your life.  Does it ever develop into a good relationship?  Sure, but more likely than not it becomes a psychological trap in which everyday functioning is focused on the obsession.

Not everyone is susceptible, but male or female, a good portion of us are.  You think about the person constantly, imagine conversations, become desperate in finding ways of pleasing them.  You replay and analyze every word for meaning, experience physical palpitations, trembling, or extreme shyness.  And your good old pal, your brain, is pumping out a chemical cocktail designed to foil rational thinking.

According to David Sack, M.D., "Much to the dismay of diehard romantics, research suggests that limerence is the result of biochemical processes in the brain. Responding to cues from the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland releases norepinephrine, dopamine, phenylethylamine (a natural amphetamine), estrogen and testosterone. This chemical cocktail produces the euphoria of new love and begins to normalize as the attachment hormones (vasopressin and oxytocin) kick in, typically six to 24 months into a relationship. In much the same way that changes in the brain cause drug addicts to feel an intense, all-consuming draw to get and use drugs, limerence can drive people to extremes in the pursuit of the object of their affection."

It will end, it can end, often in one of three ways: elimination of contact, creating a reality of hopelessness that forms an endpoint; surprisingly, consummation at the peak of passion, providing attainment of the goal--there is nothing more to strive for and the limerence either winds down or develops into something more stable; lastly, diverting to another object of interest transfers emotion into a new relationship, whether with another person or situation.  You do what you must.

Ah, the tangles of romance...not all end in despair or with regret.  Each ending is an opportunity for change, sweet memories are held dear, it is all a journey and the best we can do is to be kind to each other.  Sometimes that bolt out of the blue wakes you up, invoking new ways, reviving thoughts that say yes, you are lovable.

Sleep tonight, it is nearing mid-August and dreams hold a year's worth of both happinesses and fears.  You are innocent in your wishes, your arms hold the world for many, and those you protect need your constancy and devotion.  Divine your way with the guidance of angels, may they watch over you always.  Good bye, dear one.  Good night.

Hailstorms

At eleven in the morning, the wind blew in a wall of clouds and it began to hail. Outside, people scuttled, surprised that the expected rain had shifted in nature to stinging pellets, dropped from meters above.  Perhaps if it hailed more often, the fashion of hats would reappear, for the humans clapped their hands over their crowns; perhaps if it hailed more often, the reading of newspapers would become common again, for today's social electronics can take a photo of what was happening, but no one was doing that.  No selfies during immediate hailstones. A newspaper held as a roof over a head would have deflected the pummeling riot.

From my high-up window, exactly where the cloud wall stopped was clearly visible, it presented a dullish grey-green barrier which halted on tip toe at the County Hall building.  Weather like that appears in this area, coming right off one of the Great Lakes as definitive lines of snow, storms, or cold fronts.  The north will be dark, unbeckoning, tumultuously roiling in bulbous tantrums; yet as one looks to the south, brighter skies hold sundipped fluffs of clouds sweet as lambs sliding through the angelic atmosphere, with harmonies murmured by seraphim.  We've been featured on the evening news because of it.

It was a false showing, for the heaving clouds whipped balls of ice at us quite briefly, then lifted their skirts and ran, pushed onward by the spiraling wind.  Rains fell from more stable clouds, all in a hurry to go further east towards open fields, where only railroad tracks run through empty yards or over valleys.  The city trees thankfully raised their branches again, letting the rain wash down leaves and limbs, melting the uninvited ice.  Thin white miasmas rose as the warmer rain hit the melting hail, creating short-lived, seething ghosts of a colder breath.

Hail is formed when ice pellets within a thunderstorm are caught by the updraft, and given another coating of ice when lifted back into the freezing, higher atmosphere.  Once heavy enough, and depending upon the strength of the rising air, they fall.  Same mechanism can make a tornado.  Here, it is rare to get stones of any great size; I have heard from a Texas cowgirl, however, that they may get large enough to break windows, tear up a garden, and put dents in cars.

The weather remained twitchy, the dull green of the hailstorm clouds hastened east, the rains came, a band of darkening cumulonimbus hovered over Lake Erie and in the developing moisture of these new clouds, a waterspout sprang up.  For the most part, they are harmless, weak, and just elongated sprays of water.  Still, anything of tornado shape and just as unpredictable gives me the willies.  I will watch my waterspouts from a restaurant porch with wine, thank you.

Today: the television in the oil change place where I have taken my car is broken, the image is pixilated as if reassembled by macaques and frozen into a nonmoving, nonliving chockablock of pink human.  The sound works, and the sports channel is playing super hip city lingo fast speech interviews, hitting the listener bam bam bam with immense metaphors packed into a space the size of a Chiclet.  The same information is stretched out like a rubber band, repeated over 'n over in these Chiclets as fast as hail, and just as unmerciful.  Oh, for a set of earbuds.  Or a mallet, for my head.

The commentary based on banter pauses to interview a wee child, whose voice has the Minnie Mouse capacity to bore through Vermont granite.  The motherly interviewer pulllls out answers from this mite in encouraging tones by making her own voice go up at the end of each sentence.  The mite squeaks back in longer and longer explanations, causing the windows of three sedans to shatter from the aural detonation.  Phil Spector cried out from his jail cell, for his Wall of Sound was as soul-shaking as a glass of Fizzies in comparison.

Public service announcement: it has been noted by linguists that young women have begun making their voices go up at the end of sentences, even if it isn't a question.  Noted reporters on NPR have been guilty?  That wasn't a question?  My foot is stuck in the grate?  He was shot in the parking lot of the convenience store?  Check yourself, because if you do it within my reach, I will punch you.

Now, if sound could be concentrated like a laser, it would be this ambitious child's voice.  It cannot be shut out, and a new appreciation for the sports banter emerges from the sharp edges of dental drill lunacy.  I wish deeply for the space-filling goofballs to come back.  Please.  The other adults in the waiting room have dropped into the subconscious plane of their phones and laptops.  Some have brought friends and family to pass time with, and the families have a commonality, being that each would like the other members of their party to shut up.  Shup!  SHUP!!

They are large, dressed for an enclosed backyard with high hedges, and banging on the vending machine.  Arguments about whose dollar was put in last for payment blast off the walls, in the same way the television is yammering.  "Only talk to the money," spews the sportscaster; "My dollar, MY DOLLAR," roars Mom.  I am temporarily fascinated by the similarity, and wonder if we have become an undercurrent propelled by media or the weather.  Well, sure.

Ideas turn over as fast as colloquialisms; for example, last week's fidget spinners are already in the past tense.  "I thought the school allowed them," said one parent with a straight, wondering face.  Why on earth wouldn't they, aren't they educational toys?  Remove the term 'educational' and bingo.  You can mimic the academic descriptor "educational" because you heard it advertised as such, and you hope against hope that spinning one will cause Pookie to absorb phonetic skills rather than you actually reading to the Pookster.  Let this enlightenment brighten your family policies: NO, IT DOES NO SUCH THING.  All the spinner does is create theft, dissection, distraction of the rest of the students, high blood pressure in the teacher, argument, and unholy, tearful oaths sworn on a Gideon's that My Grandmother Bought It For Me with angel choir theme music, when in reality, the wet-faced six year old has magically shoved Ignatz Jr's. toy down the front of their pants. I am not shaking children upside down by the ankles in spite of the pleasant imagery, so if your kid brought one to school because you thought increased learning would happen but it was stolen, broken, or given to a friend just to hold for the day, oh well.   Hailstorms, life is full of.  Ask the Beanie Baby collectors.

The air has cooled, the thick humidity dissipated.  A large box was kindly delivered today, and has been given a door to make a new cat house for Snowbelle.  She was so happy to see it, she did a silly, crooked dance and told me thank you.  She will sleep in it tonight, and dream catnip dreams.  Soon the downtown buildings will blush in sunset, subdue to purple before the lamps light, and our own dreams will play at deeper levels we have no waking knowledge of.  Wishes.  I wish.  Sleep well.  Good night, Mama.

Unfather's

This isn't pleasant to read, and may create unease or cause you to dislike me even further than before.  Let it, for discomfort causes reflection, and perhaps invokes greater compassion, or kindness, or if you need to protect yourself, greater indifference.  That dirty little neighbor's kid who's always hanging around your own family may need a sense of normalcy, even if it's just for an hour.  It's okay to send her home, too.  She's still learning.

I don't even think of the day anymore until reading statements that others have scripted in praise of their fathers, then, the memory clenches as if I swallowed a peach pit.  Tell me I'm ungrateful, that after all, he is my faaaather, that I didn't appreciate what I had, that the knot will go away once I forgive him; let me tell you, this is not a story of forgiveness but of survival.  Realize the number of me that there are. Please understand that I am so amazed, almost confused, by those of you who miss your dads.

He killed our pets, threatened to kill us, smashed my mother into floors, walls; broke our dishes, scared neighbors, beat up my grandfather for giving me and my brother quarters, said it was his right to use me don't tell your mother, was mean whether drunk or sober, took his diabetic brother who was in the hospital a two pound box of chocolates resulting in my uncle's death, and when he tried to kill himself and was revived in the ambulance, I asked the invisible air why, why did you bring him back.

I was six and it was Christmas, the kind with lead tinsel and sumptuous lightbulbs on the tree that made it smell like it would burst into a fireball within ten minutes.  My brother and I had to kneel in front of the manger and pray to baby Jesus, a poorly painted plaster bit that spent the rest of the year rolled up in newspaper in the hot, dusty attic.  My mother had wrapped up a toiletry set for me, consisting of four rectangular glass bottles.  Pink body lotion, rosy bubble bath, green shampoo, and a clear cologne that smelled like pale flowers.  I was enchanted, left it under the tree to make Christmas last a bit longer, before the explosion.  Didn't take long.

Mom and Dad in the kitchen, Dad yelling.  YOU'RE MAKING HER A WHORE, SHE'LL BE ON FRANKLIN STREET WITH THE PROSTITUTES.  What the heck is a whore?  My mother tried; she won't be a prostitute, she's a little girl, little girls use bubble bath.  More yelling, I could see my Mom's face crumple, she was collapsing like a dying star.

His sisters never used any of that, she doesn't need it, men will be chasing her just like the red-headed women on the street you don't know nothing, no daughter of mine.  Looking back and considering circumstances, I believe he was more concerned with his own reaction to any prettifying of a vulnerable little girl.  As a result of the bubble bath debacle, the set remained unused under my bed, and I was relegated to using Spic and Span or Oxydol in my once a week bath.  My father would expect us to greet him at the door when he got home from work, happy to see the breadwinner, the king of the house; I was told to wait until he smelled me, to see if I had any forbidden fragrances.

Do you know what it's like to have your neck smelled by your angry father every night when he arrived home?  And still he would come to me at night, to help me say my prayers.  I was allowed boy's things, cap guns, tool sets, a Zorro outfit, catcher's mitts, a chemistry set, no lace, no frills, those things were far away from me, and I regarded the ribboned girls at school as sissies who would squeak if a frog jumped at them.  But deep inside I longed to be washed in bubbles, given embroidered handkerchiefs, allowed lotions and bows.  Best that I wasn't.

Yet I now read the "best dad ever", "I miss you every day", and the "wonderful man who brought me up, stood by me" and wonder what that is like.  The day mine died, I felt a wash of relief, the abuse had become verbal as I grew, married, and I would plot escape routes when visiting.  Don't let him get between you and the door.  He still yelled, hateful, don't bring us no food, shove your pans up your ass.  After my Mom died, I eventually stopped going over altogether, it was better for me even though the guilt wagged it's finger.      

I don't miss standing in front of the card display, searching for one that would satisfy him without sentiment to mock, or encourage the slurping noises when he kissed my neck or cheek.  Something that wouldn't be an out and out lie.  I don't miss worrying about bringing him the right thing, to be told take it back, or have it thrown against the wall.  Come here and give me a kiss instead.

We all have our demons, and I try not to visit mine on anyone; but it happens and I apologize.  It causes me to step back and evaluate how clingy I can be when something seems right, balanced, or well, normal.  Dinner at a table--I wasn't allowed to eat with the family, had to take my plate to the living room on newspapers on the floor.  People having people over without the main course being launched or furniture broken.  I will always be on guard, but that's no one's problem but mine.  

With my class of first graders, I made sure to pull together a Father's Day gift, except I got the date wrong, it's this week, not last week.  We made plaster casts of seashells and half the students opted to wrap theirs in Christmas paper because they love Santa.  There are more fathers in this group, and the cards we made assured me that these children are loved properly, and that they are safe with their dads.  I like to think that there is more good than bad, there has to be.

Night comes, shading the micro scrutiny of day; sleep restores and creates growth.  Growth means hope.  Thundering clouds have washed the men who are building a garden down along the apartment sidewalks.  They are planting impatiens of a delicate lavender, making it look like home, like hanging stars in a night sky.   Paint your stars, illuminate space with nebulae or the flowing curtains of the borealis, planets with swirling rings, moons somber and silver.  You can.  I did.  You are loved.

What Would Sparrows Pay?

Oh to fly above like a bird, have you ever wondered?  To look down, have a bird's eye view without vertigo setting in, without a fear of heights and able to perch upon the tallest spire.  How they get through winter, mild or not, is a mystery, for their metabolisms are so very high and food is scarce.  Were they able to stay before humans doled out seeds and suet, and if so, what did they live on?

Coming in by car, or walking out through the parking lot, I am usually spotted by sentries of the air, the scrappy little sparrows.  One or two will sit atop the chain link fence near where I park, and wait for the car to pull in; if I am walking out to the lot, there is a rocketing brown escort who then heralds me expectantly with beeps and chirps, hurry, where were you, come on already.

I carry a bag of seed inside my car to toss around wherever I go; subsequently, there is seed on the car floor, which in the case of my leaky Chevy one year, sprouted into a lawn in the back.  It was amazing, I would show my friends my indoor car lawn, and they would tiptoe away.  Chia pet car.

Now I have a lovely, older Scion XB that stays dry and keeps scattered seed from developing roots and leaves.  Yesterday afternoon, after I arrived home and was chucking a handful of millet onto the grass edge of the parking lot, I used my foot to push about some of the paper cup trash which lines the area.  I just don't understand people.  One year, I picked up three garbage bags full in an afternoon, mostly cups, food trays, wrappers, a couple of syringes (I know, I am), and bottles.  This year, I have gotten smaller portions neatened up, only to have them refilled with fast food trash before I could blink.

Looking at the discards, I noticed familiar print lying on the ground, a small piece about as big as a square inch.  It was a fragment of a dollar.  At first, I imagined that it was one of those sham dollars that get you to pick it up to read the advertisement on the back, but no.  It was the real thing, in an odd presentation; well, now it's art and was pocketed to be used in some sort of societal statement later on.  Very handy, as it would give me the shivers to tear up a dollar.

Today, the car was parked a bit further down; as I tossed seed out to the peanut gallery, there was another bit of dollar, and what on earth?  Did someone tear up money and toss it into the air?  Maybe.  Or, more likely, did the sparrers find a dollar, and in Passer domesticus style, begin to pay in portion for the small amount of seed tossed out?  I certainly don't give them a whole dollar's worth, for if you are caught feeding the birds, you can eventually be evicted.  There be rats down here, yet in my opinion, it's the openly careless garbage corrals which build Ratticus City, not a handful of bird seed.

I like to imagine that payment is being doled out as the commodity is dispensed, and the sparrows, who have a harder time with pennies, are offering pieces of dollar in fair trade.  I now have two parts and sizewise, have six bits left to go.  If enough is able to be puzzled together, I can get a whole new dollar from the bank, but that would be unappreciative and possibly hurt feathered feelings.  I will keep it in a box, and when I die and my son has to clean out the apartment, it will be one of a myriad of treasures he will find.  I guess a ledger's note should be provided, a 'payments received' for birdseed.

Work is in a rougher part, but as I drove the city blocks this morning, it seemed that my eye was drawn to the green which flourished in yards, empty lots, or through cracked sidewalks.  It is still a fresh green, no leaves are browned or left ragged by insects or spores, everything is full, lush, pristine.  Grass by curbs or crooked trees, burdock in lots or dandelions taking hold in the minuscule amounts of dirt held in a fissure, they make it normal, they even out the broken, the hard corners, the lost.  As long as there is verdant growth, our hearts will be gladdened, and I believe that holds for animals as well, for they happily roll in grass just for the joy of it.

A cooler evening is coming, after an on and off rainy day; the catnip growing under the raised highway is lush, and I have gathered a bagful already.  There has been so much rain, that the wild mushrooms which grow under the nearby pines lining the roadway have sprung, Agaricus rodmanii.  I will pick them as I do the years they appear but do not recommend it for anyone else, you must be trained carefully to know what you are doing.  They are known as a city mushroom, for they favor compacted soil around bus stops or pathways; this gives them a compact sturdiness and more of a layer of dirt than other mushrooms. Another patch grows over by Buffalo General Hospital, and one that I suspect is Agaricus campestris grows in fairy rings at the museum.  I think I have a reputation with the neighbors.

Feed someone, feed something, it is a satisfying thing to do, a way of sharing, a way of saying that you would like that being to progress or be successful, which is a continuation of creation, that proliferation of evolving growth.  Then you will have done a great thing.  Sleep comes easily to a giving heart, which I know you have; it shows in your actions, your song that has no lyrics.

Let night slip over your window sill, sleep in dream-laden darkness; time will come, everything will be fine.  Let night.

Dermscam

My rent check bounced.  After living here for 18 years, a check bounced.  What on earth, I am not good with money and have a tendency to buy surprises for people which is part of the Sagittarian code of Whee.  I don't understand budgeting, or want to; but I do keep track of expenditures and check in on my bank account every two weeks or so.  Payments are timed to pay stubs, and everyone gets paid.

Yesterday, a letter arrived stating that a $25 fee was slapped on to this embarrassed check, and that for the next six months, my rent would have to be paid via money order.  Not a life-changing event, but an inconvenience and was my credit sullied?  The credit union had not fined me, no additional charge was added to my account so far.  But what the heck happened?

Dermlove and Dermbright, that's what happened.  For the prices of $98.31 and $92.23 charged to my debit card, two jars of miracle foo-foo creme that will turn an aging face into velvet dewiness kissed by kitten fairies were sent to someone who used my card number.  In April and May, so this happy crook was enjoying $400 of my paycheck.  Oh ho ho.  And that is why my check bounced like a fat baby with a Fudgcicle.

Never ordered the stuff, never read anything about either product, and would rather stick my finger into a pencil sharpener than buy anything with a stupid name like Dermlove.  My face is not that bad that it needs a $100 jar of radiant idiocy, and for what they've snagged from me, a couple hundred dollars more would get one--or two with a Groupon, vials of Juvederm.  For all anybody knows, Mrs. Flopsybottom is filling jars in her garage with dollar store lotion, that's if any creme du walrus fat was sent anywhere at all.  It's ethereal and mysterious, the 800 numbers for each don't answer or will click off, and the only sign is the gentle ebbing of my bank account.

The credit union was wonderful, and gave me the payback phone number for reimbursement; I closed the old card and will wait out the ten days before the new one arrives, any transactions will take place with a check or ye olde paper and coin currency.  It was sad to see my debit card be cut up with scissors, it was like losing a small pet, like maybe a goldfish or a plant.

That whole day was a minor hell, starting out with me learning that a smoke detector will go off if your shower is steamy, and that stumbling out of the bathroom to see if anything is on fire should be done calmly.  I knocked over the clothing steamer, managed to crash and dislodge the toilet seat, had to pull the alarm off the wall because the silencer button was not working, and dislodge the battery before the thing shut up.  No cats were seen until later in the day, in spite of the morning aroma of Sea Captain's Choice cracking open.

Then, that afternoon while I was in a meeting, one of my kids had a melt down.  Let's call him Frangipani.  He is not nice, his mother has spoiled him to the point that his brain is a syrupy, odious sludge; pencils, crayons, papers were thrown, and his delight in performance was punctuated by his yelling guttural sounds every few minutes while stomping in circles.  After I appeared in the door and heard the news, he sat and watched me, to make sure I wasn't going to peel my skin off and emerge as Gorgonzola the Clouded One.  Okay, Frangipani, I will think of a consequence.  We organized, got information straightened out, (YOU DID WHAT???), and the kids got their backpacks and coats.  Put your chairs up, walkers line up.

"Ms. Coburn, there's a puddle under Frangipani!  He peed himself!" Frangipani, who was looking right at me.  Aw, come on.  I just came from a meeting where we were instructed to get technologically ready for iPads and teaching kids in circles next year.  I'm tired, you're tired, for heaven's sake, no more drama.  I know, I know, there is a tangle inside of the child, but for all the blather about teacher responsibility, is there an adequate team of counselors at the school?  Do children receive state mandated treatment or support?  Har de har har, Alice.  I spoke to his mother when she picked him up, and revisited old Frangipani this morning.  And we keep going. And then my check bounced and Dermbright ran to the car, pulled out of the driveway, and went to the casino with my four hundred bucks.

The air remains spring fresh, it's now dark but there are birds still calling, I'm here, I'm here!  A breeze pushes into the kitchen window, knocking the wind chimes about and filling the apartment with the cool night.  It's time for bed, take yourself in, gather children, dogs, cats, each other and latch the door, turn out the lights.  Let visions enter your sight, entertain angels.  Sleep well, sleep safe.  Good night.

Blood You, and Turkeys

My alarm goes off at 4:30, which seemed appropriate to accommodate this day's scheduled blood test at 7 a.m.  Driving in the early morning gives you a look at a different world, at the risers, the gleaners, the last of the nocturnal critters, feathered, hoofed, or wobbling on the sidewalk with a steak sub in hand.  Morning light is unique in illumination, as if the buildings and trees themselves blink awake as much as we do; as if the cat were punching out at the clock, mouse in tow.  No one else is on the road in most instances, except for people who have to be somewhere.  Not a shopper, Sunday driver, or a carload of kids going for ice cream are out and about; you and anyone else have direct purpose.

I wore sleeves able to be pushed up, found a list of to-do things in my purse from last year while in the waiting room, and was musing 'what on earth was I thinking's while going down the roster.  Wooden rug?  Really?  I was called and followed the lady into Room 1, which had photos of pets dressed up as Universal movie monsters, and a plastic goldfish bowl with a plastic goldfish in it.

"Oh, how cute!" I said, thinking that not only would my class of first graders enjoy a fake goldfish, but it would be one they couldn't kill.  The phlebotomist did not respond, tending to her work, and I then surmised that this was not her room.  How could she be responsible for pictures of a daschund dressed as Frankenstein's monster, or a corny plastic goldfish?  This gal was cold business, no fun or conversation was overlapping her borders.  Okay, no problem, everyone has their worries for the day, I can sit still for a minute, here's my lab order.   I signed a paper, verified my phone number and made a fist.

"Keep your arm straight," she said while tightening the band above my elbow.  'Kay.  She tapped where my vein was supposed to be and slammed that needle in like she was saving my life.  What?  Ow ow ow!  Jeezus H.  I thought she hit an artery. There was no name tag on her paper lab coat, so I began memorizing her physical features in case identification was necessary for filing a police report regarding the size of the bruise I was going to develop.  Older, short, glasses, balding with two headbands pushing back her hair to a starting point above her ears.  Pale turquoise nail polish.  At-ti-tude.  Ow.  It was over quickly.

She pulled the needle out, and fumbled with the cotton while my arm spouted dark blood.  Blood is not bright red like in the movies, but dark, like oxblood cherries.  It doesn't turn the familiar Crayola red until it oxidizes--cut open a package of fresh ground beef, give the newly exposed meat a few minutes, and it will become scarlet.  She used three cotton balls to stop the blood, put the tape on lopsided, added more tape and said You're. Done.  Have. A. Good. Day.

I pressed down on the spot to staunch the flow and get the coagulation going, it was 7:20 and I was back in the car; wanted to head out to Trader Joe's as it wasn't much further, yet they didn't open until 8...by this time, I was headed past the cemetery where my grandparents are buried, and hadn't checked in on them since last year.  The gates were open, so here was somewhere to be for fifteen minutes; morning light still made everything ethereally pretty, and driving slowly allowed the headstones to be seen.  There was a Viking helmet on a slab, Father Time standing with a baby angel in front of him; most were simple rectangular chunks of granite with names engraved.  I swear there was a Ringenbel.

Well, that would be nice, a stone marker, I'd like that, when--turkeys!  There was a pair of handsome, giant turkeys, their feathers shining bronze in the sun emerging from the brush, as my car nosed towards the area where my grandparents are buried.  I stopped to let them pass, except they didn't.  The Turkey King started bobbing his head, his red-skinny neck undulating up and down, gobbling.  Another not happy with me.

Come on, move it, you two.  Nope, no moving o metal square beast, you have entered our kingdom and must answer questions three to pass.  I nudged forward to more irate gobbling and the Turkey King started pecking the car bumper indignantly, the other hung back a bit, letting the boss do the work of telling this intruder off.  The more I came forward, the more aggressive the animal became; is the winter broom still in the car?  These things were huge, large enough that they could really do damage with their spurs unless I grabbed one by the neck and made him into dinner.  That would happen only if I'm attacked, and I won't be attacked if I don't get out of the car.  That however, was not happening, as no turkeys are keeping me away from my grandma and grandpa.  What the hell is in this car that will help?

Bird seed.  I have a bag of birdseed in the car at all times to feed sparrows who have learned to wait  at the parking lot fence in the morning.  I rolled down the passenger window, and launched a fistful of songbird mix at the two avian knuckleheads who knew what it was and left the bumper as quickly as if they were Trick or Treaters, and I had thrown full-size Baby Ruths onto the lawn.  I wondered if someone fed them regularly so that they've learned to carjack visitors for a shakedown.

I was able to pull up the last thirty feet to where I needed to be, and eyed the birds, forming a strategy if these bastards came after me while checking the grave.  I grabbed a handful of seed to take, and went to my first visit, Mr. Kontos, who is just a few feet before my grandparents.  George Kontos was my high school art teacher, who died supposedly from lead then used in pottery glazes.  He was a kind, gentle man, and I make sure to say hello and pull the overgrowth away from his plaque.  Here, Mr. Kontos, have some birdseed just in case the turkeys come by.  There were now three of the hoodlums pecking the grass in search of millet and sunflower seed who weren't interested in my presence at all, perhaps they didn't associate me with the seed exploding from the car, perhaps the car itself was considered to be an obedient serf. 

My Grandma Ida Ruth and Grandpa Stephen Potter are just under the purple martin house that has been repaired, their plaque is in good shape, and I need to get some flowers for them, with an American flag.  They were both born in 1896; Grandma would have loved watching the turkeys, so I sprinkled some bird seed about, telling her that she might get visitors.  Her maiden name was Rechenberger; her mother's maiden name was Coburn, and that's the name I selected for myself and legally paid for.  I said goodbyes, went to where my Aunt Dorie is buried, then turned towards the Boulevard.  I made it to Trader Joe's and bought a consolation bouquet for myself.  Now, I am done.

The day is on the other side of afternoon, soon to be evening, then midnight dark; my sore arm is still achey from the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, yet it has been a good day overall.  Good to see a friend.  Mackerel clouds tell of rain within 24 hours, their scalloped ridges ordered in rows as they swing through the prehistoric sky.  This is the atmosphere that hovered over the dinosaurs, with a tad more oxygen then than now; there float particles that existed when megaturkeys lurched through forests, when Rome was contrived and diminished, when bread came in cellophane wrappers with a Jiminy Cricket sticker on the end.  When thylacines and quaggas cantered over ground, before starlings were introduced to Central Park, before the first gong sounded, before the last ankylosaurus laid down.

Float into the world of the subconscious, where sandman dreams collect and sort themselves out, where wishes and cakes soaked in rum syrup sit in jars, waiting to be opened.  Be the sky, and watch the earth unfold.  Sleep well, dear heart.

Green Woods

The annual leek gathering has been occurring for twelve years, give or take an annum.  If there was a human who ever reminded me of a fairy, my friend is one; many of my friends could be fey, thus explaining a certain tilt of head and scrutinizing look.  I am surrounded by myth in endomorphic ectomorphic mesomorphic disguise.  Yes, I mean you.  Here is Karima, another.

We connect in May, when dormant earth warms, and rotting logs sprout with mushrooms, seedlings, roly-poly bugs, and moss.  Like a dog who has caught a scent,the floor of the earth has a solitary purpose; alert, respond, produce.  Millions of green living beings push through layers of last year's leaves, between braided tree roots, crowding aside shale and limestone, blanketing the brown alluvium with shoots vibrating like a plucked string.  An orchestra of trout lilies, trillium, ferns, solemn jack in the pulpit, wild geranium, pincushion moss, the umbrellas of mayapples, all are crowned with new, tender leaves of the rising trees.  You almost hear the sounds created by shoving, expanding, unfolding.  Amid this visual cacophony stand wide blades of the leeks, our purpose.  

It was a chill day, both women had bundled their own gathering equipment, and we headed southeast, to where bluebirds still lived.  On the way, my friend spied a lovely cement urn, something you could easily put atop grandma when she goes, it was ornate and sitting at the end of a driveway.  Large garbage day in the country brings many good things; the fairy hauled in two plastic lanterns, a substantial door mat, buckets, and lots of other plant pots.  She stuffed the car with the loot, merely desiring the urn for her enchanted backyard garden back in the city.  I benefited from just being there.

Traveling on, us yipping merrily over the finds, she did it again.  Look.  Alpaca.  Llamas?  Do they have yarn?  We turned about again and visited Flamingo Art Studios, who have a small herd of alpaca not llamas in the back.  They had just been sheared, and a mill was turning their shorn coats into yarn, coming soon.  The owners were delightful, and had not only their own art, but that of many local artists besides.  We each bought a treasure, I a small syrup pitcher, and she a stitch ripper and honey, maybe feeling we owed the local economy something after snagging free treasure from unsuspecting driveways.

We arrived at the familiar place, and followed the road to where the leeks grow; they are bound by a ridge, a dried creekbed, and the road.  Violets and trillium tumbled over the ground, pale green jacks stood in their pulpits before inattentive congregations.  It was so good to breathe in the air; cleared and refreshed by burgeoning plant life.

Karima had her traditional garden shovel, I had my mother's old hand held garden fork; we separated, each looking for ready-to-dig specimens, or patches of larger leaves, indicating older growth.  Some of the growing leeks are yellowing already, signaling their season's end, some lives are so fleeting.  Snowdrops have come and gone, daffodils are waning, yet tulips are at their apex.  If the weather stays cool, the leeks will be there another two weeks.  The rains have softened the ground, making the digging easier--the garden fork only has to loosen clumps, which allows a short pull to release the bulb.  Shake off the dark soil  and dead leaves from last year, and put it in the bucket.

Just minutes of digging, and our containers are full, the garlicky onion green aroma ascending through the woods; she trotted off to the car, while I snapped a few photos of trillium and immense tree trunks.  Tripping lightly over briars, I spied a rubbery appearing lump about the size of a baseball growing above the forest carpet.  Examining the lump revealed it to be a false morel, Gyromitra esculenta, which on a bad day can kill you; the thing contains gyromitrin, which becomes monomethylhydrazine upon ingestion.  It was wonderfully huge, as if Rumplestilskin was escaping from his earthly trap, his bulbous, wrinkled brown nose breaking ground first.  I had never seen this variety of Gyromitra before.  Didn't touch it, I know better than to mess with strange mushrooms in the woods.

The car now was leekful, planterful, stuffed, and thankful; birdseed was tossed into the grass as a small offering for what the woods gave us once again.  Arriving back in the city, people were out walking dogs, tending yards, smiling as green spring cut loose after prying away the cold grip of a northern winter.  At home, I put the leeks into the bathtub for a rinse, then tended to dislodging dead dead dead curly spiders from the plastic lanterns.  The lamps don't look bad at all, and will be put in the building's hallway by the window.  If they get stolen, so what--they were free; one is sitting next to a philodendron.

I had put plants out in the common area of our floor, it looks institutional otherwise; six fabric tulips have overnight become five.  One of the red ones was taken, and it temporarily vexed me but then I vexed myself for crabbing about it.  Stealing is wrong, I had huffed, why should I bother decorating the hall if the denizens are helping themselves?  Pain!  Time!  Expense!  But think, Susan.  Why would someone take a fake flower?  Maybe a child for this Sunday, Mother's Day.  Maybe a grown being for themselves.  Looking at them lifts me up, perhaps someone else needed lifting up too, and will smile when they see the flower.  Who knows, but I hope whoever is enjoying it doesn't take more.  I will set the cats on them.

Swallows are darting on hairpin turns midair, catching bugs.  A brown ragdoll cat is on my lap, a white Volkswagen is washing it's paws next to me; Lulu is up in the cat tree, and the orange cat is god knows where.  The day is ebbing towards night, a cloud cover obscures clear sky; I still ache from digging and hauling, and a pot is full of chopped leeks sauteing in butter for potato soup tomorrow.  Change in seasons, changes in lives, never an easy metamorphosis, but it happens all the time; it's supposed to.  Tuck under the covers, there's a spring chill to take you into the furthest depths of sleep, where wild leeks grow and mushrooms wrinkled as an ancient face live.  Let Nod sort you out; fall, fall, sweet stranger.

Small Change

The shopping cart had one of those wheels that thunked with every rotation; at a moderate speed, it gave the impression of a tower of soup cans toppling, but of course I was stubborn.  I can live with this, no need to exchange carts, thunk thunk thunk, here I come.  Of course one would rather have the stealth cart, whereas you can sneak up on food in hunting mode as if you had to kill your own wildebeest for dinner, rather than merely sorting through styrofoam trays of prepared meat.  Not me.  Thunk.

I rounded corners on two wheels, zipped down aisles, I was on a mission and had to be in Canada in an hour; customs these days takes longer and I hadn't cleaned out the back seat of my car.  Clattered into the cashier's lane, loaded the conveyor, pushed up to the chip reader and hey.  There's a bill on the floor, a greeny, folded piece of cash, someone dropped a dollar.  Picked it up, unfolded, and was looking at the fuzz-faced 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant.  Fifty dollar bill, folks.

"I just found this on the floor," I said, while handing it to the cashier; both our faces reflected what finding fifty bucks means, and what it probably meant to the person from whom it slipped.  She called the manager, explaining that she thought she knew who dropped it, the lady two people ahead of me who was fumbling with wads of paper money from her wallet.  If they can trace back the number on the plastic card used for "bonus prices" that most customers have, she might be found; nonetheless, the fifty would be put in the vault.

Did I hesitate to turn it in, think of nonchalantly tucking in my purse?  You betcha, for maybe three seconds, but one of my jobs in this life is not to creep myself out, and that would have.  Truth, only three seconds of morality dancing, the time it took to rise from picking it up before I knew it was Unconditional Surrender Grant's denomination.  Even if it was only a buck, a fin, a sawbuck, a double sawbuck, I would have turned it in--coins, however, are fair game.

Was there a glimmer of angelic halo over my head as I put the bags in the car?  You know the feeling, at least I hope you do, after you've done a good deed without fanfare; it's okay to pat yourself on the back.  I thought Mom would be proud of me.  This illuminative glow above my head was completely lost on the customs guard, who grilled me as if I had my tires stuffed with body parts to sell at market.

My car is part of my storage room, besides the fact that carrying stuff through the parking lot and into the building is a part time job.  This is not appreciated by government on either side of the Niagara River, which led to my arranging objects the next day to make it look like there was less.  Like when you were a kid and pushed your vegetables around the plate, so wide swaths of ceramic real estate would separate the green beans boiled until they were grey further apart.  It would give the air that you did something, that you worked those green beans over, ingested the select, and were too full to complete the deed.  But, look at the space where there were vegetables!  Alakazam!

The winter shovel was still there, the IKEA footstool upside down for stability, the cardboard sheets to be hauled into school, the two bottles of on sale windshield washer fluid, cowboy boots that need to be reheeled, and two good sized boxes addressed to Tunisia all sat on the back seat.  What's in those boxes?  I told the officer.  She frowned a frown not so much that she didn't know what the object was, but that she disapproved of the kind of person who would send this frivolity.   I misread her expression, and proceeded to explain what the thing was, what you do with it, and she stopped me with an "I know" and then said, "I see a chair."

A chair?  Oh, the footstool that I bought from the thrift store, I haven't lugged it upstairs yet.

"Who drives around with a chair in their car?"  She was testy.  I just looked at her, patiently waiting for more; didn't she see my halo?  How quickly one falls from grace.  What are you bringing in with you?  Cat treats.  Cat treats?  Yes, the kind my friend's cat likes aren't sold here in Canada, so I'm bringing her two packs.  Who is this friend?  What's her name?  Where does she live?  Do you have any alcohol, firearms, or drugs?  Are you leaving anything in Canada?  Yes, cat treats.  By then, she just wanted me to be gone.

Have a good day, she mumbled, giving me my passport.  Because the same thing happened on the way back into the States, it was time to enforce organization to save future customs officers from apoplexy, so today I cleaned out my car with the push-your-vegetables-around-your-plate method, as I don't have  room in the apartment for most of the stuff.  I surprised myself by discovering that I'm driving around with three chairs, not just one.  There is the aforementioned IKEA footstool, which will make it home someday; a folding chair for sitting at beaches and parks, and a very portable folding camp stool for when I am in the quarry bashing open rocks, looking for trilobites.  Thank goodness no one was that irritated to have me pull over for a car inspection.  Three chairs, yikes.

The wind is in a tizzy, a tumbling gallop through branches and 'round corners, blustering and buffeting in a thousand voices.  I wonder how the birds hang on, where do they hunker down in a storm; yesterday I saw the tiniest fluff of a chickadee gathering material to construct a marvel, a nest.  In this newly green, vivid tulip world, you get distracted by the flowers and birdsong; only when storms roll in do you imagine hardship amid the fresh daffodils.

Sleep well as the earth changes from day to night, as shoots push further even in the dark, as seeds prestidigitate into searching roots and lifting heads.  Yes, you can use the word magic, for it is; a conjuring by the universe, the same one that created you with complexities and compassion, designed to be intelligent, to use our wisdom in safeguarding the smallest finch whose heartbeat matches our own.  To sleep, then, my dear, human friend.  Good night.