“Children learn more from what you are, than what you teach.” –W.E.B. Du Bois
The Night of Delirium
A high fever told me I needed to rearrange the drawers in my dresser because the outside colors were wrong. My dresser was ordinary beige. Then, I needed to bring the dresser to school. The fever also decided I had to take the number one million and make it tangible before second-period math the next day. My darkened room gave me no answers; I went downstairs to ask my dad what to do.
I churned my arms as I spoke. One, two, three. Seventy six, seventy seven…lost my place, start over…My mother’s footsteps magnified the rhythm of my count.
“The aspirin. It should be in this cabinet,” she said. “No, this closet. Found it.”
“What is it?” I asked. Enough times to prove planet Earth and I had little in common.
“Aspirin. You are burning up. Listen to me for once.”
“I have to take the numbers one to a million and bring them to school tomorrow,” I repeated. My behavior set Mom into a panic.
Dad saved the moment and spoke to my delirium. “I’m good at math and at fixing things. Tell you what. I will take care of your dresser and put that million together for you. All you need to do is take the aspirin.”
I descended from planet-dangerously-high-temperature madness long enough to swallow the tablets. Then my father carried me to bed. Strangely, I remembered the insanity of the night the next morning. My fever had gone down enough for me to enter the real world again. Even if school wasn’t a possibility until after a round of antibiotics.
The year was 1963. I was a junior in high school. I could never thank my dad enough for that moment. I still do.
Meet your child where they are. That’s what I learned. It may take some guts and imagination.
Thanks again, Dad. I’m waving upstairs. Beyond the ceiling and roof. “If you didn’t make it to the top of the clouds, no one else has a chance.”
When we are children we welcome thinking of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind. Patrick Rothfuss
Nope, No Wedding Yet
The rocky ground at the bottom of the street of my grade school home became my mini-mountain, perfect for climbing. It was hidden behind enough trees to be its own paradise, a place for a kid to climb and become king of the world. When I was nine years old I saw nothing peculiar about a strawberry-blond girl king.
The great play arena eventually disappeared as developers plowed through. But in the mid 1950’s Joe and I claimed the world. He was my self-proclaimed boyfriend. In fourth grade I hadn’t graduated from paper dolls and mud pies, so the notion of a white veil followed by a life in the kitchen sounded as appealing as living with a perpetual mop. I was allergic to homework, much less life responsibilities. Imagination was more appealing.
Joe wasn’t like the other guys in my class. We played as equals. I knew his family wasn’t tidy. I didn’t care. Joe didn’t need the meaner boys around him to be okay. He wasn’t the tallest and certainly not the most popular kid. Mom had never met him. That alone was good enough for me. Outside, Joe and I could always be free. From homework or chores. From real life. We challenged an open space where the air moved freely around our imaginations. And the blue sky was on our side.
“Hey,” he said one day. I saw a kind of shy smile in his brown eyes that didn’t match the same dirty blue jeans he wore all the time, and he planted a kiss right smack on my lips.
I thought, oh yuck, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Joe wore a kindness that transcended grime. You had to face foreign lands on a fun rock to see past the classroom to understand Joe. We never talked about school stuff. Only the next jaunt into places we created.
“I’ve got a special surprise for you since your birthday is coming up,” he said. “Come to my house.”
We cut through two yards and landed on his street in something like three eyeblinks.
“Hey, Mom!” he called. “Where’s the engagement ring I found? I am going to give it to Mary Therese.”
Mary Therese! My at-school name. I groaned. Oh no. Formal talk. Sounded like a nun. Not me. I’d never hit anyone with a ruler in my life. And I would be off balance with a rosary that big at my waist. A wedding would spoil that lifestyle but neither wife nor sisterhood sounded appealing. And call me Terry, my at-home name.
How could I say something about how I thought girls had to at least have boobs before marriage without sounding personal? Joe’s mom wasn’t mine. The question would need to wait.
“Oh Joe, I’m sorry,” his mother said, not sounding sorry at all. “That ring got accidentally flushed down the toilet.”
Joe groaned. Now that I didn’t need to worry about a commitment, gratitude filled every cell of my tiny being. Who needs a ten-year engagement? Or worse, a lost recess for a wedding ceremony? Yet somehow Joe quickly recovered.
Our relationship ended long before puberty. As time passed, I hoped Joe found someone. Later. Much later. Long after the septic system absorbed my first engagement ring. I always wondered whether it had been born in a box of Cracker Jacks or found on a west-side sidewalk.
At least now if someone asks if I ever broke someone’s heart I can say, “No. The ordinary toilet took care of that for me.”
Anne Frank’s words: “I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.” Her voice was forever silenced. Yet, her heart rings true in this oh-so-similar era.
Hope. Insight. Peace. They grow inside seeds that don’t recognize their worth when planted. Small, invisible in a world where power and greed rule. May buds of integrity bloom, then refuse to die.
ICED WINDOWS, FROSTED VISION, revisited To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold. Aristotle White sky and ground blend into a seamless horizon of gray where snow-encased branches rise as part of both threat and beauty. Darkness and slick roads threaten travelers. Glistening ponds and crystal trees tempt artists and treat the spirit.
I kick off my boots, let them dry inside a warm house, and allow my toes to find feeling again. Then I embrace bitter and sweet for as long as each experience lasts, in order to live inside the fullness of each moment.
“Hey! This-thing-that-tells-us-who-called, went blank,” I call to my husband. “I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it didn’t work.”
“Your dad put that up for us years ago. I’m surprised it lasted this long.”
“Then I guess it’s lived a good life.”
And I realize I’ve been thinking about my father a lot lately. When I was in high school I had a high fever and he carried me to bed. As an adult, I wrote a song for him and he avoided listening to it. And I never understood why. I remember him in the nursing home. I watched him say goodbye to this world and hello to my mother. She was his world. How could someone so primary to my existence be such an enigma?
The entry below I published in 2011. It fits again today in a peculiar way.
Peace to all–as you are now and as you are in your memories.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. ( E.E. Cummings)
Last year, during this season, the unheated hall upstairs was filled with painted glass and I was afraid it would freeze and crack. It didn’t. But some of the lovely, easy permanent paint-on-glass pens I bought were not so permanent. My paint didn’t make it through washing. I suspect that love isn’t that fragile; it doesn’t dissolve in the dishwasher.
This year I painted only a few items. One project may or may not get completed, late. It looked like I struggled through the job. My design went down the kitchen drain–too much on my mind this year. It showed. I would love to be the kind of person who can remain distant from the hurts of the people who are important in my life. I don’t succeed at that ploy. Perhaps if I did, I would become someone else.
I watched my father struggle.
“You don’t have to visit if you have a lot to do,” he said a day or so before he went to the hospital, and I was glad that I told him that I would always find time to see him. First things need to come first.
Now, buying becomes secondary, a lost opportunity. No credit cards. I am allergic to carrying a lot of cash. Gift-giving will be light this year. Maybe that baking I hoped to do really will happen. If not, it is all okay. Somehow. Perhaps, in this last week the final opportunities will appear. If not, Christmas lights don’t have to be strung in neat primary colors or brilliant white. They can appear when the right word or person appears at the right time. Right now, I attend to my father.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. (Mark Twain)
Joy to the World” rose dulcimer sweet and holiday warm from my car radio as I pulled into the church parking lot last December 23. The song’s bright spirit irritated me. It reminded me of the heat in my ‘85 Buick—hell-fire hot on high or dead cold on any other setting. Turning off the ignition eliminated the carol, but it didn’t solve my problem.
So why was I going to a Christmas program, advertised as experiential, in a grumpy mood? A place where joyous carols were inevitable? I could convince myself that I was here because some random sign recommended the evening: Be in St. Patrick’s lot at seven. A bus will take you to the program from there. Location will not be announced. This is a definite don’t-miss! But my reason was less noble. I had refused to go with Jack and Tara to the airport to pick up my mother. My mother’s plane arrived at seven—I wanted to be almost anywhere else. This sign was the first thing I saw on my escape route.
Tara had brought a white poinsettia for Grandma Paisley. With her own money. I don’t know where my fifth-grade daughter found such fondness for the old witch. It’s not like Grandma gave her any more than an obligatory birthday gift now and then, usually the wrong color and the wrong size—from the double-mark-down, non-returnable rack.
Tara hadn’t even seen her grandma in two years. Mother moved to Florida in November on a whim. She didn’t even say goodbye. She just packed a suitcase and moved into an old friend’s apartment in case she decided to move back. She stayed for six months but didn’t pay rent—the friend evicted her. So much for Mother’s friends. I’m not certain where she went after that.
I couldn’t understand Jack’s enthusiasm for Mother’s visit either. He had been so supportive of me when I went into counseling, so depressed I grew dehydrated by crying. Not literally, but it felt that way.
The counselor was only minimally helpful, too confrontational. She had the audacity to suggest that I intentionally put on weight to hide my obvious resemblance to my mother. Yes, we both have eyes the color of weak coffee, slender noses, and square chins.
However, I’ve never been drunk in my life. And you can be certain Tara didn’t learn profanity from me. Any resemblance is skin-deep. That monotone-professional-doc-distance that the therapist used made me even more angry.
“Anna,” Jack said sighing. “Paisley has been sober for five weeks now.”
“So, you say. She also told you she’s vegetarian,” I said, shuddering because Jack said my name with disdain, yet referred to his mother-in-law by her first name. “She’ll take one look at our Christmas turkey and call us a bunch of carnivores. Then she’ll spread wheat germ into my cookie dough as if she were disinfecting it.”
“But nothing like that has happened yet.”
“Right. The key word is yet. Have you ever heard Mother say one kind word to me? And has she asked to say one word to me?”
“Compliments aren’t her way,” he answered.
***
I locked my old Buick and zipped the keys in my purse, I felt betrayed. Tara was barely ten years old. She didn’t know any better. But where had Jack’s support gone? I knew—to the airport to bring home a woman destined to destroy the happiest season of the year.
I was the last person in line to get on the bus.
“Not much of a turn-out for a production that’s supposed to be so incredible,” I mumbled.
“Oh, people are busy and over-committed this time of year,” the young, pregnant girl in front of me said. She had thin, stringy hair, washed, yet hastily combed, so it dried in haphazard clumps. She wore a faded wool coat that was the same shade of sweet potato orange as her hair. Two oversized buttons connected with their buttonholes at her neck and across her chest. Successive buttons and buttonholes grew farther and farther apart, exposing bib overalls over a belly ripe for birth.
I decided she couldn’t possibly be married. “Too bad you couldn’t bring your husband with you tonight,” I said, with only the barest tinge of regret.
“Oh, but he is here,” she said revealing a mouthful of crooked teeth. “He’s driving the bus.”
Two green, bulging trash bags lay on the seat behind the driver. She dropped them next to her husband, in the space between the driver’s seat and the window. He turned around and grinned. I guessed him to be part Mexican, a good ten years older than the girl. He had long, straight, dark hair that looked even straighter jutting out from a tight, brown knit hat. I wasn’t impressed with him either.
The girl motioned for me to get into the seat first.
“My name’s Marilyn. What’s yours?” she asked.
“Anna Barnes,” I answered. I didn’t really want to tell her, but “none of your business” contains three more syllables. I looked out at the pale flurries swirling in the darkness as if I really cared about them.
“We have an Ann in our famil…,” she said.
“That’s nice,” I said as free of affect as I could.
“I’m sorry you need to be so angry,” she said.
“What makes you think I’m angry?” I turned to face her.
“It’s thick around you, dipped-in-concrete thick.”
“If I were angry, could it be any business of yours?”
“Oh, we’ve had to forgive lots of folks who don’t understand the birth of this child. Haven’t we, José?”
José nodded and I felt emotionally naked and stupid in front of these bizarre strangers, despite the fact that my views were probably identical to the views of the forgiven.
“Nice lofty thought,” I said. “But some people deserve to be kept at a distance.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But keeping them off saps my energy. Besides, this baby is due any day now! He’s my first and I have no idea how long my labor is going to be.”
By now we were thirty miles east of the city, cornfield country. José turned down a narrow, unpaved road. The loose rocks made it difficult to drive with any speed. About one-half mile down, he stopped the bus at a farmhouse. One light shone from what was probably the living room. Silently he got out of the bus, walked to the door, and knocked. No one answered, he knocked again. The light in the house went out. José climbed back on the bus.
“We’ll try farther up the road,” he said to Marilyn.
He started the bus again and drove ten more minutes until we came to another house. He got out again and knocked. A man came to the door. Gesturing and pointing, he said something to José we couldn’t hear. José smiled as he re-entered the bus.
“Maybe not what we’re looking for, but this is it,” he said to Marilyn. Then he took the green trash bags to the back of the bus. Most of the people in the bus looked puzzled as the men and women in the last three rows reached into the first bag. Inside were angel costumes, white robes with gossamer wings attached. The angels sang as they pulled the robes over flannel shirts and faded blue jeans, “Silent night, holy night. All is calm. All is bright…”
Their voices blended a Capella—bass, alto, and tenor—with simple, unpretentious strength. A man opened the second bag and brought out shepherd costumes. He passed them out to anyone who would take one, then stood carrying a lantern. Outside the bus he lit the lantern while the angels continued to sing, “Oh, holy night. The stars are brightly shining…”
José took Marilyn’s arm and led her behind the house to a barn.
The people inside the bus followed.
The man with the lantern opened the door of the barn as Marilyn and José went inside. “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus,” he began, loud and clear without help from a microphone.
There were no chairs, but I didn’t feel like sitting anyway.
The singers directed us to join them in “The First Noel.” I don’t have much of a voice, but even I couldn’t disobey angels.
Marilyn looked at me and smiled. Somehow, from center stage she didn’t look like an ignorant young girl to me anymore. She was smiling into my soul as if she could see all the concrete-angry ugliness I cherished. Yet she chose to care for me anyway. I wasn’t ready to accept or give that kind of love yet. But I was willing to learn—difficult visitor at my house this Christmas or not.
Merry Christmas
The illustration was made from a public domain image, color paper, and a piece of an old Christmas card.
"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it." –Frank A. Clark
My first attempt at writing a limerick (A rhyme with a rhythm AABBA) The critics who know everything are like birds who fly with one wing. As they drop from the sky without knowing why that’s when other folk hear what they sing.
"Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven." ~ Henry Ward Beecher
When Real Can Be Almost Anything
You tape scraps of multicolored paper
to white cardboard. With pink, blue, orange,
and violet squares you design hair.
A purple crayon creates a squat body.
Outstretched arms wear six fingers on
one hand and four on the other.
Your signature justifies to the right. You
draw off your canvas and onto paper below.
I smile, pleased by an image too powerfulfor a single square of paper,
created by chi too fresh to know its power.Imagination, the world under controland capable of change and fun, time made of this moment only and how it can be turned into play.
Until reality challenges its optimism.
“Our deepest human need is not material at all. Our deepest need is to be seen.” – Eckhart Tolle
TWO FIFTY-DOLLAR BILLS
Cora rubbed the back of her head as she stepped onto the curb. Ooh, that really hurts! Damn, the stress has got me. She turned around and watched the traffic move at least twenty miles over the speed limit. Stress, right. Now that’s something like calling the ocean a tad damp. I’m 67, look 80, and feel 105.
A colorful sign caught her eye on the lawn of a charming three-story red brick house: Housekeeper wanted, great pay, inquire within. She hadn’t recalled seeing it before. The house didn’t appear familiar either. But survival had taken all her focus when she got on and off the bus Monday through Friday—when she’d had a job. She’d gone back today to try to get it back.
“I’m sorry,” her old boss had told her. “The company now requires all employees to have a high school education. You should have chosen retirement last year. Why run around like a dog chasing his own tail?”
I washed stuff and took out the trash for a company that made parts for something, ain’t sure what. You don’t need no education for that. Besides, this old brain ain’t got the energy for homework and exams no more.
“Hey,” she said to the sign. “What the heck. If the homeowner tells me to go to hell at least I can just turn around and say howdy to Satan. Eviction’s tomorrow. Wonder what I should wear for my first day on the streets.”
She walked to the door with her back as straight as possible. A junior high gym teacher had told her that good posture is confidence. Not much else brought it.
“Wish I had a purse,” she murmured. “Could use an ibuprofen. Not sure what hit me, but it had an attitude.”
Uncertain, she knocked so softly only a hound dog could have heard her, but a short, round woman with hair the color of silver tinsel answered. “Come in. Come in.”
“Saw your sign…”
“Yes. Yes, of course. And do you mind cleaning a house of this size? I have twelve rooms, and none of them are small.”
“Huh? No.”
“Do you mind being paid in cash?”
“That’s, that’s fine.” Cora tried not to stare at the woman, at least half a foot shorter than she was. She would have pinched herself to see if she was dreaming if she thought the woman wouldn’t notice. However, this lady seemed to catch every breath and eye flutter.
The house looked fantastic! The polished oak floor gleamed. The blue leather furniture appeared to be new and easy to maintain. Sunshine streamed through the windows and found no dust. How much would she need to clean? And any question she asked in protest would show how inadequate she really was. She could think of only one.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t know your name.”
“Angela.”
“And yours?” Angela cocked her head to one side.
“Cora.”
“Now is $200 a day enough?”
Cora gasped. This woman hadn’t even asked for her last name.
“Then follow me. I will show you your room. Then I will remove the sign from the yard.”
“That’s it? I’m hired?”
“You will clean whatever you see that needs to be done.”
“There’s gotta be a hitch to this,” Cora said, sorry she’d opened her mouth.
“Not a hitch exactly,” Angela answered. “But it isn’t what you might expect. I will pay you half in advance.” She reached into the pocket of her old-fashioned flowered apron and pulled out two fifty-dollar bills. “Perhaps you can confront what is in your way as you work here. And by the way, I suspect your headache has lightened.”
“How did you know…?”
“Your forehead had bulldog wrinkles when you came in. And your eyes were scrunched together so tight you almost had one eyebrow. Easy-to-interpret signs. By the way, I read people extremely well.”
“Oh.” That made sense. Sort of. Cora scratched the back of her neck, a nervous gesture.
“When can you begin?”
Afraid the money could be taken from her as easily as she had received it, Cora stuffed the fifties into her pocket. She glanced around until she saw a broom propped in a corner.
Angela seemed to notice. “Now that is the kind of attitude I like. We will talk later.” She pointed out the door to the room where Cora needed to start, waved, and went outside.
Cora expected her to return with the sign tucked under her arm, but when she peeked outside she didn’t see the silver-haired lady or the help-wanted sign. And she didn’t see anything that needed sweeping either.
She sighed. Clean what needs cleaning? Yeah, sure. This place is sterile enough for open-heart surgery. Then she opened the door. And gasped. Dust filled the air. She opened a window and then ran to find bug spray in a hall closet. Spider webs filled the corners of the windows. Clothes lay on the floor.
When she picked up one of the T-shirts, she recognized it. Her husband’s favorite: tie-dyed with IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO HAVE A HAPPY CHILDHOOD printed across the front. The brash colors irritated her. He had worn it the day he left to pick up their daughter from kindergarten. He’d been home with a headache, like the one she had now, but she was gosh-darned sure he was faking it. He’d had an argument with his fix-it shop partner. Cora figured this was Jake’s way of getting even. The business hadn’t been doing well. So, she insisted he pick up Millie from kindergarten that afternoon. Then she could finish the laundry.
He’d had a heart attack on the way home and crashed into a tree. In those days children were allowed to sit in the front seat. Both Jake and Millie died.
And Cora thrived on bitterness. Friends ran away. So did the money.
She grabbed the shirt, uncertain whether she wanted to tear it apart or cry into it. She screamed, “How can there possibly be two shirts like this one?”
No one answered. Angela had not yet returned. Cora felt the fifties in her pocket. She remembered what the silver-haired woman had said. “We will talk later.” Cora considered running, but she had no place to go. “We will talk about what?”
The only thing she knew to do was clean, get rid of garbage, scrub. She held her breath as she opened the closet. She suspected the unpleasant surprises had not ended. Yet. She saw a cardboard box of toys and knew the next horror had arrived—on top of the stack lay a naked doll with over-combed blond hair. She remembered how she had lectured her daughter Millie about taking off her doll’s clothes and leaving them scattered all over the house—hours before she would never see her again. And this doll was an exact clone.
Cora dropped the doll. Maybe it was better to live on the streets than to face that day again. She sobbed until she didn’t think she had any energy left.
She had not heard Angela re-enter the house and come into the room. “You can let go now,” she said.
“Let go of what?”
“You are doing a spectacular cleaning job,” Angela said. “I trust you destroyed the cobwebs of your past and said goodbye to the guilt you created in here.”
“I didn’t clean nothing.”
“Well, actually I took your experience and gave it shape in here.”
“Who are you and what is going on?” Cora’s eyes widened. She wanted to run but stood frozen.
“You don’t remember how you got that headache, do you? But don’t worry. This memory lapse happens often after a ruptured brain aneurysm. It was fatal.”
“I may be dull as a rubber knife, but I know what fatal means,” Cora said.
“And you are absolutely right. This may not be as terrible as you think it is. Perhaps you need to know you are forgiven. With absolute certainty. Come. You have visitors. They want to take you home.”
The front door swung open, and a five-year-old girl ran inside. “Mommy, Mommy, I have been waiting and waiting for you. Daddy is outside. He said to hurry.”
Cora looked down at her arms and saw young, untroubled taut skin. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the two fifty-dollar bills, and handed them to Angela. “I don’t need these anymore.”
She ran out to meet her family as Angela placed the same sign in the front yard: housekeeper wanted, great pay, inquire within.
terrypetersen 