#26 In Which Someone Fails To Move Something Too Heavy

“Mom, it’s me. Can you hear me?” 

Her son kneels next to her, not sure if she is alive or dead with the detritus spread around her, buffering her fall and probably saved her life.

“Mom, it’s me.”

She was on the kitchen floor like a sick, helpless thing whom hadn’t anything to eat or drink for perhaps three days.

Her silvery white hair twisted and matted with blood.

Check her pulse, her breathing for consciousness.

Wipe the dirt off her and the mucus away from her lips.

She looks up at you with her bright blue eyes, and her bruised face and doesn’t say anything until EMS arrives and further untangles her.

You open many doors when cleaning out the old little house you grew up in (after she was put into a memory care facility). Finding things you never knew existed and not just because she was a hoarder and burrowed layer upon layer of newspaper, memorabilia: valuable and useless tucked away like a busy squirrel always on the verge of lifetime hibernation. You find out that this house was her dying tree, (the kind that you hire experts to chop off limbs to save the tree) or the brittle roots beneath the decaying Maple that tenuously held everything together for years. Flash card memories and connections stored in every shred of paper, photograph, article of clothing she could not part with, especially after dad died.  It was her existence wedged between herself and the outside world.  Her foundation and destruction all wrapped up into one dusty, dirty mice infested ball.

You saved her life. Did you?

All the jarring anguish which proceeded this, eons ago, was swept under the disorderly mess and steadily disintegrated under the floorboards. Tiny particles drifted out the crack in the stained glass window and grabbed hold of a robins' wing and you escaped and never looked back. Not even with her in a damp, sweaty heap in front of you on the floor. You are a bit like a bear and move into survival mode with your strong furry paws, gentle eyes, soft arms and grizzly-brained movement. Always forward, always. Never looking back.  You picked up the squirrel who saved so much debris infused with her fierce determination:

to be found by

her husband,

her mother or father, (both abandoned her) or just

someone to discover that she really existed inside all this stuff?

You pull her hair away from her face and, again, gently ask,

“Mom, can you hear me?”

I had a dream we were walking through the house and discovered closed doors. We open them, soft sunlight eeked in and there were toys everywhere. Disneyland castles, Peter Pan, Tinkerbelle, The Lost Boys, Wendy, The Seven Dwarves, plastic monuments piled up but with some semblance of order. Like when kids set up a dollhouse and it looks messy but it all has meaning, located purposefully. Each doll has a personal narrative and relationship to the others. They aren’t alone and have not been for at least 60 years.

They are smiling tucked in rows next to each other, snuggled under a colorful hand stitched cotton quilt in a baby’s wooden cradle. Never growing old, just existing in pink kodachrome Disney.

#25 With Broken Tooth, Haircut, and Abdominal Pain

Slowly, slowly going up the roller coaster hill. Seated, tilting backward with gravity holding you down. The earth is at an angle never seen before. It’s pretty wonderful and dramatic and everyone is clenching their teeth.

Rising above everything and it is all tiny, realizing that the only thing making secure contact is a rickety metal container and pole keeping you in place on wooden tracks. 

The sea is there. Out there, and it looks stable. Grey and calm and a few whitecaps appear and vanish like nothing new.

This is like the first 50 years, maybe. Expectation of moving onto a place above everything, experiencing something new and exhilarating  Clicking along the tracks and looking from side to side knowing that things will absolutely change.

Doing what everyone else wants- and what you want, too.  You thrive and survive and sit there and move up. Clicking forward.  Looking up ahead you can see the top. Wow, it’s high up here. I’ve never been this high off the ground before. Pretty exciting.

Going through the motions, etc. Clicking along like there is a future, for sure.

Then suddenly there is a drop. Zoom! Gravity plunges the cars downward and swoops around and everyone screams and some lift their arms in the air and laugh.

Everyone is scared to death and it is incredibly fun.

#24 Of Being Inappropriately Dressed For An Occasion

Adele had been struggling with body issues for quite some time.  Looking in the mirror and getting an accurate visual picture reflected back was equivalent to looking into a kaleidoscope that moved drastically with only the slightest motion.

It was not stable.

She was confused as to input and output of matter that entered and exited her body and how to measure such transactions. This sounds sexual in a way and it probably was, as she was 15-years-old, but sexual exploration and the bio-epic food atlas she was subconsciously subscribing to had no link that could help her navigate her well crafted neurosis. She was getting very good at it.

Her weight gain and loss paralleled her interest in long distance running which made it a chicken and egg diagnosis for anyone, including her mom or friends, who noticed the fluctuation. She was also getting to be quite a good distance runner in terms of pacing herself, and kept a runner’s journal that was edited by a famous long distance runner who later died of a massive heart attack. She loved using different colored markers to log her weight, distance and the visual poetry she encountered during her runs. Some runs were very beautiful as she lived in a suburb bordering great expanses of farmland and lonely back roads: great deep and high cornfields, stone houses set off in the distance and red barns, all peppered her route. Occasionally, a rabbit would scurry across the road and geese gently honking above making their way north or south. There was the occasional opossum roadkill which made her cringe but she expertly dodged several yards in advance.

She had a sense of independence, strength and omnipotence as she laced up her red, white and blue Etonic’s and hit the road.

Before the era of skinny jeans, Adele had discovered them and felt proud that they fit her. She also discovered overalls and a denim jumper: both hid her body. She wore colorful shirts underneath the overalls and jumper, but the jumper especially grew to be one of her favorite things to wear. It was a light shade of denim blue and had a soft touch. The shoulder buttons were brass and reminded her of the simpler days of kid's clothing.  As it was the late 70’s, baggy, denim loose fitting, hippy things were in fashion, so she fit right in.

When Adele snuck food she ate a lot of it.

One of her favorite things to gorge on was graham crackers. She liked dipping them in milk or sucking on them until they got soggy and the perfect consistency to devour. They were also great with peanut butter and jelly and the sugar cinnamon grahams were excellent on their own.  Her mom kept several boxes of them in the pantry and was stumped as to why they were always gone. Adele liked to screw around with her mom and never told her that she was eating them. This dynamic probably related a lot to her eating issue, but again, not as interesting to Adele at this time as it was to mess with her mother. It was more of a test and her mom was definitely failing. All this went on in the classical sense, passively. Missing graham crackers, long runs, weight gain and loss and an overall surly attitude from Adele.

When Adele’s parents informed her they were all invited to a family friend’s formal wedding Adele rolled her eyes so dramatically her mom could hear them move in her head.

“We’ve been invited to the Smith wedding and you’re coming.”

“Okay. When is it?”

“The beginning of June.”

Adele performed a quick season/weather calculation in her head: warm weather+lighter clothes = might reveal her body.

Panic.

“Um, what if I don’t want to go to the wedding?”

“Why would you not want to go? The Smith’s are our dear friends. We’ve known them forever and Carly Smith would be so sad if you didn’t show up. She’s always liked you so much, Adele.”

Adele picks up dominant force field emerging from Mother Ship and further panic emerges, setting up another line of defense: protective shield.

“Um, I’ll think about it.”

“Honey, there is nothing to think about. I told them we are going and it will be a classic Smith party” (code for: super extravagant, a memory maker, one for the books because Adele’s family cannot afford affairs like the Smith’s and live vicariously through these luxuries).

This, of course, gets under Adele’s 15-year-old skin even more than she thought was possible given what was already under her skin concerning mom.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

When the wedding day arrived her mom and dad were getting dolled up and the night before Adele had forgotten about the impending nuptials and ate quite a few graham crackers. There was no way she was wearing something appropriate for the wedding. She knew exactly what that would mean; something airy and pastel and revealing more of her body she wanted to ever expose.

She put on her jumper. It was clean.

“You aren’t wearing that.”

“Oh yes I am.”

“Oh no you are not.”

“Oh yes I am.”

“Then we are going without you.”

“Okay.”

Adele never went to the wedding and never heard another word about it.

#23 Entitled To Silence

Today I visited the Conservatory Garden, again.

The Magnolia tree blossoms are a mass of elevated chubby pink angels fluttering just within reach.

Narcissus daffodils are swarming minnows and goldfish in pure sunlight.

Shy green tulips are still hiding behind bushes, not quite ready to make their grand entrance.

Hidden in a messy corner, my favorite:

delicate lilac buds are tiny deep purple mouse fists. Clenched tightly until warm sunlight relaxes and unlocks their grip
unfolding into delicious paradise.

#22 With Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

Let us be lovers we’ll marry our fortunes together

I’ve got some real estate here in my bag

Every time I speed past Newark airport I love to see the planes lined up in the sky headed for landing. Their lights shimmer like wasps intent on a place to sting. Focus and land with precision. Making their mark as they move in closer and closer their headlights piercing the sky, they descend safely touching down with soft heel and toe movement. Naturally landing as if they really are birds and not machines.  With such beauty and precision 

touch down

From the New Jersey Turnpike I always think about making a quick detour so I can hop on El Al, Continental, KLM and find myself transported to another place. Exotic and desirable.

Far away

“Kathy, I’m lost” I said, though I knew she was sleeping

“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why”

It took me four days to hitch hike from Saginaw

I’ve gone to look for America

Arranged around terminals. Settling in before their next flight
Waiting to depart
looking nice and pretty with colorful tails

Toss me a cigarette I think there’s one in my raincoat

We smoked the last one an hour ago

So I looked at the scenery
She read her magazine

And the moon rose over an open field.

Right over my head I can reach up and touch its belly with my finger

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

They’ve all gone to look for

America