Alphonse the Tree

We lived in a house made of stone, the secret being the walls were double thick; a layer of rectangular-cut blocks layered over what only could be called boulders. The house came at a cheap price, as some of the iron rods holding the two layers together had let go, allowing the south side of the house to develop a bulge, the stone blocks heaving away from the inner wall. It was scary, who knows how long it had taken to develop, but architectural consensus gave the outcome of an exploding stone bomb waiting for a heavy truck to go by to jostle things along. 

Years passed, it was repaired by a stonemason who knew his business well; this is how I was able to see the amount and size of the immense rocks taken out of the opened wall and numbered. The house was stabilized, and became a loved place to live. Not that it wasn't prior to repair, it was one of those circumstances of walking in to view the place and feeling a tide, a current pulling you to home. 

I scraped windows that had been painted shut and learned how to tie the cast iron weights with rope around pulleys, allowing them to open and stay up without being propped. The original part of the building had been constructed in 1860, and the story goes that it was a central location for farmers to bring produce, hence the double stone to keep things cooler. In 1904, it was purchased and made into a residential house, with a kitchen, dining area, and pantry added onto the back. Echoes of past life permeated its bones; I still have a slug that I dug out of a door, and some of the square-headed nails used for the first roof.

Brian, our boy, loved the house, and one day brought home a tree seedling, growing in a cut-off milk carton from school.  He was ten, in fifth grade, and took care of his little tree which took hold and was transplanted into a regular pot at first, and then to an honored place in the front yard. He named it Alphonse.  

Life changed and the house was sold, but the tree, a honey locust, grew tall; it was a part of my son still attached to a home he had loved. He visited the tree whenever he came back into town with a slow drive down the street, introducing his wife and daughter to the memory. This year, this time, it was different.

"They cut the tree down, must have just happened; there are still wood chips in the front yard". It wasn't our property or our tree any more, things are transient and learning to accept them is a part of growing up. But here I am, even at my grown age, feeling a small pang of loss.  What my son feels is considerably more, a further good bye to a small mark that he put on the earth. 

Who knows what happened; there was a whipping wind storm a couple of weeks ago, the tree may have snapped or been too damaged.  I can't imagine any other reason for a tree that the newer people lived with for years to be taken down mid-winter. Did the roots damage underground pipes, were the tiny leaves clogging gutters? All conjecture, none of that matters, truly. All in all, Alphonse the tree lived for almost 32 seasons of leafing out in spring, sleeping in winter.  

Letting go is one of the best things that one can do; not to forget, but to release tethers that keep you in one spot. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, be kind, don't hurt others. Guess that's my best unasked for advice. Other things to care for will come and go, to exist in memory as a blanket against the tirade of stress and pressure. Yes, they will. I promise, and I never make promises.

Sleep; the dark nights of frost create a yearning to huddle and hibernate. Finnegan the Orange One is meowing for the bedtime snack to be revealed, city lights from my window travel in rows, outlining streets and spires. Make good things happen, fling open windows and breathe the clear, cold January air. Sleep well and deeply, the boat of dreams calls, sail among the stars. Good night.

Something Simple

Here it is, right off the bat; put the words "The Amazing" in front of your name and see how it feels. It throws waves of embarrassment over me badly enough that I want to cry and hide, that there is a falsehood, a bold lie that no one in their proper mind would connect with me.  So, where did this fountain of unease come from?

Since attending college in my later years, I was expected to and thereby taught myself to read introductions in books; the early 18th century authors would write one as an apology, an explanation to their audience that the ideas and stories presented were worthy, however, the writer expressed his, (at the time women were considered hysterical ninnies; but in truth I have found that hysterical ninnies still and will always exist in any gender), concern that the intention of the book was for safe amusement, and hopefully not a path to jackanapery and gin by hoodwinking gentle folk away from embroidery or shoeing the horse.

When I was younger (pre-40), introductions seemed to be paragraphs strung together as so much farfel that wasted reading time before getting to the solid part of the book, and that by reading, I could divine what anyone would pre-say about it, especially if the intro was written by a supposedly notable being who I imagined was a paid shill. Reading an introduction was like going for the thinner shell of a hollow chocolate rabbit before the solid ears; why bother? Just snap the head off before your brother found your bunny and claimed it for himself. We were the House of Headless Rabbits, sort of a French Revolution variant of Easter warfare. 

My skepticism of verity or that a writer could be friends with anyone tamped down the idea that these beginning pages were anything more than a snare--"introduction by Truman Capote", "by Hippocrates", "by the sentient culture growing in the refrigerator that used to be a casserole"--which also padded the book with a number of pages. Writer friendships are difficult, as there is a disposition of the job which needs the concocter to sit alone for weeks, living off of the occasional pet that has the misfortune to wander by. Erudition may not be enlightenment, but more related to indigestion combined with a misdirected pledge to set things right. Opinions. What makes you think that yours is the right one and that you are no more than a member of a gaggle? Well, that's another story to fume over.

More recent, in the past few years, we have been dragged across the cheese grater of introduction blended with saccharine, sappy blathering by authors touting how the family barks for Mom's Special Corn Pie, just like from the olde days when grandpa brought in wood for the fire and Aunt Melda wore her favorite slippers. "I had to fight my husband for the last piece." (See bunny ears, par.2, above). Thank the heavens that there usually is a small button at the top of the article saying "Jump to Recipe", which helps you avoid being hit directly with a cannonball of smarmy, unctuous discharge. No getting completely away, you may yet be sprayed with emotional oozings but you can armor yourself with any newspaper headline ahead of time. 

My goodness, I just wrote an introduction. Yikes.

This morning I picked up a book, and in a flurry of thoroughness taught by my British Lit of the 1700s professor, read the intro. The minor epistle was no more than a rah-rah section of How My Life Turned Around Because of This Book by an invited entity, who is now an instructor for the method. This developed into a hoity-toity suspicious attitude on my part, but I continued on to more meowings and thank yous to this or that, one or the other. Then a phrase caught my eye.

"And thank you to the amazing Carol Waggowitz, who blah blah blah and blah." Amazing? Carol is amazing? Amazing is when you trip while carrying a cup of tea without disaster, or maybe a green lightshow in the sky called the Borealis. Can Carol catch a ball on the back of her neck? I can.  Maybe I am amazing also. Let's try it. "The Amazing..."

Holy molasses. What have I done that would be in that category? Yes, I have caught numerous bowls and cups that were then restored to stability. Maybe amazing, but fleeting and without note in the local paper. Yes, I had a baby, once bench-pressed 90 pounds, have had paranormal experiences, and came out of a horror of childhood, but to me, "Amazing" is a once every three hundred years flash in time. Not Carol, who may be a whiz at delegating jobs, meeting deadlines, or scamming hundreds of followers out of their simoleons, but she is just burning the candle at both ends either with caffeine or a Type A drive to plow her way to success. 

You want to see amazing humans, go watch silent film, especially comedian Buster Keaton. No CGI, few safety nets, mostly genius. 

But can you? Put those words in front of your name and face the feelings that erupt? Loss, failure, gender denial (yes, Dad, I'm a girl; sorry now stop buying me footballs and let me do science) (this is another can of worms), missed opportunity, depression, oppression, fear, mistakes and more mistakes. What makes us fabulous, besides a fairy godmother? Certainly not our own brains, which seem to be hellbent on killing whatever ember still glows under the ash.

Well, you try it and let me know. Am I making too much of a trite turn of phrase? I just know that I am not even close to being so, unless you go into the "we are stardust" area of life, when perhaps we were once charged particles blown by the solar wind through the magnetosphere.  Now that would be amazing.

We are headed towards the winter solstice, when the tilt again will accommodate returning sunlight ever so slowly; we gain a half hour of illumination by the end of January. But now, right now, sleep is one of the most lovely of domains, a pile of blankets a blessing.  Prepare yourself for sleep, starting soon after 7 o'clock, and the fractious cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla will cooperate with the hypothalamus and pineal gland to waft you softly, softly off to slumberland where the little silver minnows of dreams slide through currents and tides. Sleep well, I will watch for you.

Missing Peace

The epic stolen wallet story has been meowed to the tree tops, the store windows as I walk by, and the little worms in last year's apples.  In other words, it's over, with the gracious St. Anthony providing closure.  I was so happy.  Other people came forward with stories of this man coming up with lost rings and lost loves; I shall light a candle for him, which I did.

But how can this get better?  A STATUE!  You know Catholics, even a few of the lapsed ones, are big on representations of dead people who supposedly died in exceptional grace, and it's sort of like collecting Star Wars figures in my mind, no smirking intended because, boy, St. Anthony has come through enough to grant him some respect at this address.  A statue.  Someone to talk to besides cats.

From eBay, selection was easy, nothing too frou-frou, just a simple fella with the painted eyes looking in the same direction.  Representations have St. Tony holding a stem of lilies for his purity, and often a baby Jesus who was found in his arms while having a vision.  Don't forget that the man was ill most of his life, and was treated by medieval medicine based on the Greek idea of your humors out of whack.  Blood letting, rubbing a lump of lard on the patient then feeding it to a dog.  Well, you see.  The deck was stacked against living very long, for those remedies are as effective as butter on a burn.  Like Mom did when the iron left a red streak on my hand. Big fat double spoonful of nope.  But maybe they give you visions.

I waited for the box.  I waited for the cat food and cat toys which were to be delivered by the carrier that isn't the postal service.  The seller's feedback button fussed and harrumphed, let's get on with it, already.  Then came the notice!  Delivered!  Yay!  But to whom and where are a mystery.  Tweren't me.

A case of cat food, a cat playhouse, and two cat toys were missing from my door in the apartment building besides the 3 pounds of St. Anthony statue.  In my mind, and it has happened, the delivery was put at the right number door in one of the six other buildings.  I truly don't believe it was stolen by my neighbors, most everybody knows everyone else, yet, yes, there is the chance.

I let the pet company know, and their response was to send another duplicate order out to me, free of charge.  That's $70 worth of cat stuff.  This is the company known as Chewy, and brother, they are a part of what is right with the world.  I'm still embarrassed that they did that, but maybe their losses create a substantial tax write-off.  The gesture gave me warm fuzzies, and the cats, well, they are busy playing cat boss with their new fort.

But the other seller, who mailed St. Anthony out on his pilgrimage to my home; they are investigating through the carrier whose name begins with F, and hopefully the GPS or satellite eyeball in the sky will figure out where the package was left.  Not every neighbor in every building has golden wings of honor, and maybe this was a delightful gift of manna from heaven for someone and their own cat.

Maybe it was their poor little scruff of purr who's fed leftover noodles, and the owner saw this as an opportunity to better the feline menu, also with a catnip stuffed raccoon, and a cat fort.  Maybe they recently turned a corner and could use a saintly resin reminder that this ain't all about their own miseries.  Maybe they lost the last written note from a love who went to Greece to teach belly dance and would like to find it to put under a pillow.  I don't know, but maybe that load of stuff was needed elsewhere.

Yet to me, this speaks of irony.  My St. Anthony statue, who is accorded as the finder of lost things, is itself gone with the wind.  Lost.  It's a shame that the small business on eBay is going through a search and rescue, as am I, EXCEPT from this end, Fedex does not want to know anything about me.  Because a signature was not required, they claim no responsibility for where the package was left, which to me is a bunch of hooey.  I know the seller mailed Tony out, I know it wasn't received at my end of the transaction, and can only hope he shows up somewhere.

The conundrum is, who to ask for help finding St. Anthony when he took a left turn at Albuquerque? It's the essence of self-help, asking Anthony to find Anthony, similar to myself at the end of high school, when no clue of who, where, what, or why appeared to magically take my hand.  Now that would be an interesting course of study for teens; what the hell are you supposed to do after taking that last step off the terrazzo floor outside the guidance counselor's office and into the real world if you weren't going to college?  How do you get to your goals?  St. Joseph, patron saint of jobs; St. Matthew, a tax collector for the Romans, the patron saint of finances.  The Archangel Chamuel is a patron of love.  That's enough to get you started; at least, started thinking about things and how to really get there.

I was up at 5 a.m. today to be ready for a doctor's appointment at a preposterous time with a bit of testing tossed in.  Makes for a long day, and the night now pulls at my coattails, whispering of jammies and a bit of a read before.  It's an odd winter, full of fog with smallish puddles of snow every so often, which means more mosquitoes next year if the weather doesn't get cold enough to freeze them off.  But, now it's time to gather the cats.

Sleep well and long, it is still winter, when the outside world bundles up while we watch through glass windows.  Cozy and dark, woolen afghans old as grandmothers and grandfathers, pillows and clocks, cars heading home, far-off channel markers sounding plaintively in the harbor, sleepy children, tired animals, both grateful for a place inside.  Let go the day, have saints and wishes paint your dreams. Good night.

Food Stories

I rarely clip coupons, as the expiration dates, remembering that I have one, or having to buy 2 or 3 items to get a dollar off are reasons uninspiring.  Not that much of anything is used in the household, and certainly not brand name products; thrift stores, Aldi's, and Amazon are the triumvirate powers, the Bermuda Triangle which suck in my debit number and spit products back out.  Cash?  Hardly, and that is why the fast fingered thief who recently took my wallet for a holiday just got away with six dollars.

The counter clerk at the post office was handed the slip, asked me for identification, then trundled over to a small table where about 8 plastic envelopes, golden with a jolly Santa illustration, sat lined up.  It was still a minor miracle sponsored by St. Anthony as I sat in the car and opened the packet, spying that first corner of familiar red, indeed, my wallet.  Everything, every little nuance, cat stickers, friend's house key, wadded tissue, debit card, license, tool kit, Triple A, Blue Cross Blue Shield; all  still there.

Plus more; a Groupon coupon for fast food delivery from a local Thai restaurant that I never would have clipped or used.  Food delivery is not in my history; growing up in the fifties, only the milkman brought food to the door where we lived out in the sticks of Clarence, New York.  Cottage cheese in plastic cups called raffiaware, Squeezies of lemon or orange sherbet, margarine that had a colored tablet to be mooshed into the grayish slab, butter, ice cream in cardboard cartons; that was about it.  When we moved to Tonawanda, a bread man would roll his truck down the street, throwing candy at the kids and ringing a handbell.  But regular food?  There wasn't even a pizzeria to order from, much less have it brought to the house.

There was a Hobart's slaughterhouse, however, where you could get really fresh ground beef; my Mom would go with my Auntie Ann, who knew how to drive and had a car.  It put both me and her off from eating hamburger for months.  Aunt Ann and my Uncle Bob would also rent a chicken plucker, then get 100 chickens to process and keep in one of their giganto chest freezers; I would be invited to help, which I did, gladly.  Innards fascinated me, and learning the colors of what each organ was matched the transparent overlays of the human body in my science book.  By the time the chickens got to me and my cousin Michelle, they looked like the supermarket sort, except the guts needed scooping out with rubber gloved hands.  They smelled burnt, for my aunt would singe the pinfeathers over her gas stove after my uncle had defeathered them, after killing.

Sometimes an egg would be there, the shell not quite formed; these went into a plastic sandpail.  You saved out the dark red chicken livers, hearts, and gizzards, were very careful with the green gallbladder, the crop was just above the stomach fascinatingly filled with grit, the lungs were pink, and there was something yellowish, a pear shaped thing.  The guts would go into a metal bucket, which my uncle sold to a farmer down the road, Mr. Wuhlers, for his pigs.  Wuhlers was an old German fellow who had seven springs on his property and stories of bobcats and fishers disturbing his animals, and my father would haul buckets of the spring water for my mother to drink when she was pregnant with my brother.

Even if we went to a drive-in movie, Mom would pop our own corn and take it in the large yellow bowl.  When little, I only remember two places that we ever went to; one was Ted's Hot Dogs under the Peace Bridge when we would visit my Grandma and Grandpa in the city, the other was the Turkey Roost, which was just down the way on Main Street near Gunville Road.  They raised their own white turkeys in a coop around the back.  Noisy things.  A Henry's Hamburgers later opened up on Sheridan Drive with fifteen cent hamburgers that made my father's eyes pop open and his pupils spin like cherries from a one-armed bandit in the cartoons.  Fifteen cents!  A working man's dream.

In the city, there were more offerings such as a popcorn cart, the rag and bottle man, a wagon pulled by a horse with produce, and a fish market that had the live fish swimming against the front window. I don't remember a restaurant down on Grant Street, at least one that we went to except for the counter at Woolworth's, which would sometimes be a stop during a shopping trip, but just for tea.

So when the Groupon coupon appeared in the returned wallet, I knew that it wasn't there prior.  Was it meant as a consolation prize?  Was the man saving it for later and just slid it into one of the card pockets?  Did whoever put the wallet into the mailbox add it?  I don't know, nor  is there any temptation to use it.  $12 dollars off a delivery means that the sum of the product is close to an amount I wouldn't pay for real food from a real grocery.  Plus tip.

Maybe I need to get with the times, friends (younger ones, to be sure) order online and have it brought to the door.  Food trucks ride the streets in battalions, gathering in Larkinville during summer months.  There is an Ice Creamcycle Dude who pedals his wagon all over the city, offering deals if you can answer a geography question.  Food is a way of exploring, of being in sync with your fellow creatures, including the dog and cat.  Funny how it's turning into delivery of pre-measured ingredients for a dinner or as a menu choice from a virtual ghost restaurant.

The wind is coming from the east, with a drop in temperature causing the rain and fog to crystallize into snow.  It's cold in here, since the windows are all on the east, and the hot weather air-conditioner is in one of those windows with drafts abounding.  It is New Year's Eve, a night to watch the old year dwindle and creak quietly away into squalling new resolutions at midnight.  Perhaps later in the week, an unfamiliar venture into online food is in order; after all, paper towels and cat food arrive at my door these days, why not Thai?  My Grandma's recipe for Cabbage and Boiled Wieners in white sauce is shaking its ancient head in dismay, while murmurs of Pho suggest gastronomic ethernet escapades.

Good night, good night all and Happy New Year.  At midnight, my Mom would wake me to hear the factory whistles and church bells sounding at the strike of twelve.  In the lonely darkness, peering out the back screen door at low stars hanging in the pitch black sky, the far off sounds would carry through the cold air, alive, connected, haunted.  I knew that somewhere, a person had toggled a switch, pulled a lever or rope that created a call of celebration acknowledging another revolution around the sun.  It was all that we did, she would hustle me back to bed as if it were a secret, and I would lie under the wool blankets with my cat Smokey, talking to God about wishes.

Sleep well.

St. Anthony

I was brought up strict Roman Catholic, the kind that sat through the Tridentine Mass, lived through meatless Fridays, and pinned Kleenex to the top of my head if I forgot my chapel veil.  As far as those Fridays, my Protestant mother cooked me a hot dog for lunch one time, and made me swear not to tell my father.  Her imagination for Fridays included fishsticks, and whatever else could not be meat but was a cooked meal.  She had the law as laid down by my father that dinner was to be hot, not breakfast food, and included me not eating with them at the table.

Her go-to Friday night supper was usually mashed potatoes (hot), Birds-eye bright orange squash (hot), and fried eggs (hot).  We weren't a fish eating family unless it came from the frozen food section in rectangular sticks and was breaded.  Even those were consider fancy, exotic, and desperate.  Picky food for blue collar families.  But then, the Church said no meat, and if you were over the Age of Reason and ate it even if your own mother put it on your plate, it was a venial sin; if you actively planned to go to your Protestant friend's birthday barbecue and ate a hamburger on purpose, now that was a mortal sin, an offense against your relationship with God.  Two hamburgers and here come the pitchforks.  However, if Mom threatened to clop you one in the head if you didn't eat what was put in front of you, that was understood and accepted as an act of self-preservation

Sort of like you can kill a dude if you are in danger of losing your life from his actions.  The rules and regulations of the Church, well, I'm not familiar with the latest interpretations and revisions for I stopped going once I found out that after annulment, dotting all the i's necessary, and paying $350 for the process, that attending Mass was allowed, but not communion.  I was supposed to go to "Divorce Class" for another fee.  These days, 25 years later, it seems to have let up a bit, and an annulment gives you a pass to belong fully to whatever the Church is dishing out. Still, if you remarry without an annulment, you are not considered as being married by the Church. You are to live together as brother and sister, and unable to participate in sacraments.

But, there are perks to being Catholic, and the biggest one besides the elaborate pageantry with candles, incense, mysterious rituals, visions, miracles, resurrections, and intercessions are the saints.  I can't begin to tell you the exact number of saints there are, and many were declared so simply by the Church upon their death until the year 1234, when it was decided that the process needed tightening up.  Criteria were established, so that just anyone killed in a brawl could not be found as deserving of reverence as a genuine, living on bread-and-meat-brought-by-a-raven holy person.

Each saint has the ability to intercede with God, to speak to God on human behalf; each one of them, and there are over ten thousand, have a connection to their life on earth.  This means that you can pray to the saint who has the most expertise in the area addressed.  For instance, St. Columbanus is the patron saint of motorcyclists because he traveled, wandering through Europe.  St. Ambrose is the patron saint of beekeepers and candlemakers, St Theresa of Avila favors lacemakers and chess players.  You got a problem, the Church has a pavilion full of saints.  This also underscores the life after death thing, if you have a whole, working, categorized community in another dimension.

So, this is the story: On December 9, twenty days ago, my wallet was stolen out of my purse which was in a drawer in my classroom.  There was only $6 in it, and I will only say that it was not a student.  Today, twenty days later, I found a notice in yesterday's mail that the post office is holding a lost wallet for me, $3.60 postage, please.  My wallet?

A friend had suggested that a prayer to St. Anthony might get it back, and I think I snorted; now, I have begged St. Tony for car keys a hundred times, but a wallet stolen by a perp?  Naw. No. Har de har har.  But I talk to the unknown regularly, so why not?  Presumptuous of me, why should anyone listen about a wallet when so many serious problems trouble the world?  Yet I did; I apologized for bothering him, but if he had connections, and if it wouldn't hurt anything or anyone, it would be nice to have it back, thank you, and here in the mail is a notice saying come and get it, after you pay the postage.

Don't forget, that if you ever do find a wallet, a driver's license, or government I.D. card, you can drop it into a mailbox and the USPS will put it in an envelope and get it to the owner.  I want to find out the particulars, such as which mailbox, when was it dropped in, and then ask if I should call the police as I had filed a report regarding the incident.  Probably.

But then, there is still this business with St. Anthony, or was it merely the wheels of time?

The corner to 2020 is sliding into place, a leap year, a Chinese year associated with the rat, indicating prosperity.  Light is gaining a toehold, and cats and saints are keeping score in the matter of lost things.  Roscoe stole the bath tub plug and plopped it into the cat food, still has my twenty dollar bill, and returned the lost Apple Watch.  St. Anthony has revealed places hiding car keys, cell phones, Finnegan the kitten, my mother's engagement ring, and simple calmness.  Calm.  Calm down, girl, it will reappear; and if not, you just live without it.

Within the curved hulls of sailboats, there are bunks with high wooden rails to keep you from rolling out if the weather is rough.  Mattresses are thin, made to be shaken and aired above decks; a decent blanket is cotton in summer, wool for colder nights.  When you are on a boat, this is what you see before retiring: the black evening sky full of stars and planets, the luminous Milky Way spilling across the vault of heaven and you wonder, what am I supposed to be doing here?  When you fold under the blankets, and lay on the flattest of pillows, you will feel the heartbeat of the earth contained in water's waves, pulsing and rocking your bed in rhythm with current and tide.

Sleep then, and pass through the door of forgetfulness.  Night will cover you.