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Posts Tagged ‘memories’

Remembering you, Dad

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Friday, December 16, 2023

“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.

     A blessed holiday season to all.

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Quatrain, a Long-ago Place

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2023| Leave a Comment » 






Any fool can know. The point is to understand. –Albert Einstein

Strawberry Pie Quatern
Your handwriting in purple ink
resurrects you ten years after
your death when a recipe card
falls from a forgotten cookbook.

Tart, sweet, secrets sneak through curves of
your handwriting. In purple ink, 
with bold color, you claim knowledge,
if only how to bake a pie.

Mom, you were taught to stay hidden
in the background of a man’s world.
Your handwriting in purple ink
trembles to be more than pie dough.

I apologize years later
for asking so little of you.
I long to see your soul shared through
your handwriting in purple ink.


					
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The Best Letter to Santa

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , ,  on December 11, 2022|
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bear ornament


A person’s a person, no matter how small. Dr. Seuss 


 


My son Greg is four years old in this memory. Not every word is accurate. The spirit of the tale remains true.


 


“Mommy, will you write a letter to Santa for me?”


 


“Why sure.” I grab a notepad. My young son begins his list before I can grab a pen from the drawer.


 


“Five hundred trucks, puzzles, books—the fun kind that make everybody laugh, and let’s see…”


 


“Wait a minute. Start again. Five hundred?”


 


“Right. This list is for the poor kids.” 




I complete the letter, see what I have in my pantry to give, and then pray that my son’s request becomes real someday.


 





















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What Is Pretty? A Long-Ago Question

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , ,  on May 5, 2022|
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When we listen, we hear someone into existence.
Laurie Buchanan, PhD

What is Pretty? A Long-Ago Question

I rewrite a scene from my own ancient history.
Not to alter its reality or change 
what has already happened. Because
I have learned a kinder way to pass on
a response to children, fresh adults.

In my past I stand before a mirror
and criticize not-styled hair on an insecure 
head until the pain erupts into panic.
My mother replies in a razor-sharp tone,
Pretty is as pretty does.

A comb. A brush. Mundane tools.
I catch what my mother is implying.
Inside I am not worthwhile either.
Ten commandments on stone.
How do I release them into real time?

Much later I learned the gift of listening.
Touch. One set of eyes aware of another
person’s experience. You see ugly? Let me
tell you what I see. Let’s discover the beautiful inside,
said with a smile. Same message. Improved delivery.

The difference between a stagnant pool and a lake.
A lake was given space to exist and move.
Perhaps I understand because
I have tried to swim in both places.
And have learned love along the way.


					
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Should, Should, and More Should

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , ,  on February 3, 2022|
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There is no way you should feel, there is only the way you feel. 
(Akiroq Brost)



How easy it would be if life
could be explained in a word
or two, if should transferred
into reality the way words fit
on a page. In blocks. At least

my mother believed it. She
made sure I recited rules in
perfect cadence. Know the
answer without studying any
questions. Feelings had no


place outside a prayer book.
Strange. Now, I wish I could
reverse roles. Hold her hand
and tell her that I understand
why her care arrived broken.

              Mom, years before you died, 
                                             I told you I loved you.
                                                             You didn’t know what to say.
                                                                                        But you heard my voice.

And I stepped outside the rigorous
                  lines set by 
                            impossible perfection.

I look into the sky now
                        and find more colors
                                         than blue, white, and black. 

And I wish that I had found
                             rainbow memories inside you.
                                         I know they are there. Even now.



					
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One Too Many Shoulds

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , ,  on December 3, 2021|
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(photo of me sometime in grade school)


There is no way you should feel, there is only the way you feel. (Akiroq Brost)




Good and bad,
bad and good, 

right and wrong
the way of the church and the way of the doomed

fit into safe defined boxes when I went to school.
Black and white garbed nuns, rosary beads the size 
of dried lima beads attached to their waists like holy chains,

explained life. All these symbols 
spoke of heaven and hell,
with absolute certainty and no smiles.

My teacher sold eternity at fifty cents 
a Gregorian chant book.
I lost at least three one year,
then found another book the same size and gray color,

and faked the intonations with soft whispers,
never turning my head and exposing the lie.
Me, this girl who couldn’t keep track of anything.

I did well enough when asked to reach for something in the clouds.
Yet tripped-over shadows on the ground,
a stranger on the practical path where everyone else lived.

The shy girl, the different girl,
who secretly played Mozart on old 78’s,
or hummed arias or show tunes

while the other kids screamed over Elvis.
I could never understand how hound dogs plus hips equaled ecstasy.
Already good and bad wouldn’t stay defined within the lines I’d learned.

One path for everything; who should decide?
One path for music or sexuality.
One path for heaven or hell or happiness.

I suspected that myopia led nowhere, 
made the course narrow, constrictive, dull, unthinking.
It bound the spirit.

Even now, any unsolicited advice after, you should,
slips away from me, garbled, unheard.
No. Look into my eyes and see who I am.

I promise to do the same for you.
Perhaps together we can find
 a new truth.




					
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The Year Before Dad Died, a Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , ,  on September 27, 2021|
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I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted, and behold, service was joy. (Rabindranath Tagore)


Fernald Nature Preserve, 2012  
The Year Before Dad Died

January opens a sliver of warmth
as my husband and I
traipse through fresh mud,
past wadded-leaf squirrel nests, and
over discarded acorn tops.
My boots collect clumps of
soil in their ridges. When the trail
widens I slide my grimy soles
over loose gravel,
 and beg it to remove the soil.

What I really want is to cover
my father with more than
a thin, white institutional blanket
as he lies a few miles away
in his narrow nursing home bed,
even though I know in minutes
he will thrash about, the blanket tossed aside,
as if it were tissue paper that could be 
blown across this lake with a single breath,
his thin arms and legs exposed.

They didn’t take off my stockings last night,
he told me. And yet his nurse claimed 
he’d been confused.
I responded that he may not recall detail,
but he recognizes pain.

I wanted to add,
Can’t you see beyond the stroke,
the tremors, the uncertainty,
and age? Can’t you see the man?

The words blew away, 
more quickly than bitter winds
scatter October’s leaves.

I speak now to the stark brown 
outline of trees 
until I discover the blue above them,
the same brightness that celebrated August
with strips of white spanning the sky
before the goldfinch dulled his feathers,
when the hummingbird’s wings rarely paused,
and tomorrow was only a word.      
 
I allow the spirit of the Preserve
to open the way
to beauty
present even now
in winter chill,
in touching pain,
in healing life.


					
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Are We There Yet? A Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , ,  on September 3, 2021|
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country road_LI




What you're missing is that the path itself changes you. (Julien Smith, The Flinch)

Are we there yet? 
my child voice calls from the past.
And I recall waves of heat
on the road ahead, illusions of invisible fire
as my dad drives toward them.

Are we there yet?
a younger brother repeats
as the road continues
past neat rows of corn.
And cows, a rare sight for a city child. 

Are we there yet?
my siblings and I wonder.
We’ve asked too many times.

And now I watch
a different road. My beyond grown
wrinkled hands grasp the steering wheel.
“You really are old,”
my honest granddaughter says.

And we pass the full summer
beauty of leaves soon to ripen red
and drop.

My granddaughter and I
laugh as the light turns green.

Are we there yet?
I answer a long-ago child.
You were already there.



(pic taken from public domain photo)




					
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LAST VISIT TO THE HOUSE I CALLED HOME, a Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , ,  on July 10, 2021|
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Our past offers us two choices … live IN it or live FROM it.  (Brittany Burgunder)


One of our upstairs room has been a storeroom. For things. Too many things. For years. Oh why was I born with a creative mind instead of one made of neat everything-has-a-place compartments? With loving help the space is now a playroom. For grandkids. As I go through old photo albums, the next chore, I see pictures of my parents. In a side closet I find my wedding dress again, fifty years after I slipped it into its protective bag, closed the zipper and lived the unexpected life that followed.


I find a poem, written after exploring my father’s house after he died. 


wedding dress




LAST VISIT TO THE HOUSE I CALLED HOME
           
Dust encases the old homestead.
Encyclopedias from 1963,
boxes of unused pencils,

skeins of yarn with faded fifty-cent
mark-down stickers,
a broken clock.

Most of the saved items are gone, 
Dumpster and shredder items wait.
Bags of cancelled checks

on Mom’s closed account.
She died years ago. 
Dad’s will to maintain dissolved, too.

In the back yard his loss leaked
into the naked, open space
leaving it flat, withered.

Before the property grew sullen, 
I planted seeds for annuals that sprouted into
a tiny-stemmed miniature garden.

They dwarfed next to tomato vines 
Dad tied to hand-cut posts.
Sunlight coaxed 

white blossoms into green and then red fruit.
Inside the house Mom made soups that 
took all day to blend the chicken 

with onions, carrots, celery
into a fragrance that filled every nook.
I try to recall an ancient, lingering scent

but it was taken for granted
too long ago. I find my wedding gown 
in an eaves closet,

zipped in plastic.
I had changed my name and moved on.
The yellowed department-store receipt

remains attached to the wire hanger.
I wipe off the grime and carry what-was-me 
into what-is-me now.

The door locks for the last time.
The sun leaves a sliver of itself 
on a pink horizon,

a visible color beyond reach,
like memories, both dark and light,
locked inside things left behind.


					
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The Seasons of Envy: A Poem

					

					Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , ,  on April 10, 2021|
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clean sheets


The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  (L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between)




THE SEASONS OF ENVY





When my kids were little
another young mother
ironed sheets, handkerchiefs,

boxer shorts, and the white T-shirts
her husband wore
to repair other folks’ plumbing.

A super-heroine mom.
I don’t recall her name.
We belonged to the same circle,

but I rarely spoke to her.
I thought we were too different.
Her kids appeared photo-shoot ready,

even in the sandbox.
Before noon my kids’ shirts needed pre-soak.
My boys called dress-up clothes corpse attire,

and a shirt buttoned to the neck, a noose.
Hours bonding with an iron didn’t suit my lifestyle.
Yet, I wondered how super-mom managed.

I honored her the way some people venerate saints,
the ones who accept martyrdom over burning coals
as if it were sunburn.

I meditate as I iron. Her explanation. Life’s wrinkles transformed.
Mine remained. I recall those days 
as I change bed sheets on an ordinary Thursday afternoon.

I notice holes in fabric
that has lasted through bleach, hot water,
myriad spins, more than one washer and dryer.

I consider the decades,
the blood clot in my lung, my parents’ funerals,
and nights when I couldn’t sleep.

I rub my hand over creases
and feel the texture of old cotton,
as if I could gather the years,

hold and thank them
for loss and imperfections
that have added character to my imperfections.

























					
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