Mother's Day

It’s mother’s day. In the kitchen, Daddy watches an egg sizzle. Don’t break the yolk. Libby butters a fork-cut everything bagel. Down the chain of command, Sarah and I fill the painted metal tray with a precariously full glass of orange juice (with pulp), bowl of rice krispies, mini pitcher of milk, and tiny sugar bowl. With Libby’s carefully crafted card (signed by us all) displayed, we tiptoe to the bedroom. Don’t drop the tray. Mommy shifts sleepy-eyed in bed, coos as she eats some of everything, and offers strips of bacon to her three smiling daughters...such a mother.

Bunk Beds

Assorted snores and hacks emanate from the lower bunks, masking the family's midnight footsteps as they climb the ladders to Squaw One’s upper bunks. After successfully avoiding the domino line of pill bottles, they sleep away their travels, while empty tummies and dry throats bemoan Mother's choice to bypass Safeway. Awakened by thirst, Sarah (traditionally a bottom bunk occupant) throws her legs over the bed’s edge, and drops five feet onto the creaking wooden floor. A congregation of nightgown-clad old women promptly gather around her to fret. Quelling concerns of broken bones, Sarah rejoins her still-warm blankets, thirsty as ever.

(Happy Birthday Sarah!)

Rescue Remedy

It was a natural stress reliever, meant to discreetly calm a middle-aged woman’s anxiety. Just two spritzes on the tongue, and all would be right with the world. Mother toted this “Rescue Remedy” about with her for a few days on the recommendation of one of her teacher-friends. Daddy thought it a silly trick of advertising, not something his wife ought to own. So, he read the label and let my mother, who has only ever drank as a courtesy to pushy hosts, know that her little spray bottle was not just flower petals and stardust, but also 27% alcohol.

Be my Light

Fresh cut grasses tease my thighs

as I kneel in darkness to pray

below the 10:20, cloud-thickened sky.

Casting off deliberate thought,

truer words thank Him

and ask Him to “be my light.”

Here, our starless night

betrays herself, allowing a lone star

to glimmer for me.

One mississippi two mississippi

And it hides anew.

Failed Neighborliness

It was a crumby van in handicapped parking, branded with “Need a Ride?” and a telephone number. Its driver’s finger fished for the latch, blindly trying to pop the hood to add coolant. As I passed with my canvas grocery bags, I offered help while silently trying to decide if I’d ever successfully opened my own car’s hood. After the woman engaged in some argumentative banter with her teenaged daughter, the latch was pronounced unopenable (her “redneck husband” had wired it shut). As she released me from my failed neighborliness, she thanked me.

“Oh, I didn’t do anything...”

“You cared.”

Poem of a Patriot

I am a Patriot

Not the red-white-blue-fourth-of-july kind,

But a believer

In country

and

In community

I don’t have a loud voice

But (like Sarah said) I’ve got life force

So I start small, filling my home

With babies and dogs,

With security, happiness, and beauty

Then, I’ll blend that recipe in you, my town

Starting with the young people

and asking them to care.

Doubt

Mud Pies

"Keep making mud pies when your contemporaries are all fat and grey and middle-aged"

Lost

Magic

Christmas Tree

Santa Claus brings our tree, fully decorated, sometime during the night on Christmas Eve. The next morning, the five of us descend the stairs together, making sure we all witness the tree’s glory at the same moment. But at four years old, I didn’t feel like respecting this tradition. I burst from Daddy’s arms, raced down the stairs, through the dining room and the kitchen until I hit the back glass door. The excitement had distracted me from turning into the living room where the tree shined bright. Instead of rerouting to the living room, I slinked back upstairs, guilty.

CVS

The Chester CVS is our go-to place for Rutter’s dark chocolate bars, batteries and peanut butter crackers. Tonight, Libby needs shampoo for her biweekly bathings. Usually I go in with her, our arms locked like good sissybelles, but tonight she goes alone. From the car, we watch her half trotting, half skipping to the automatic doors. As she draws closer, her strides get shorter and, in a less-than-graceful movement, she throws her body at the glass doors with a flying kick. They open. She repeats the attack on her way out, this time while greedily clutching at her new possessions.

L.L. Bean Classic

It’s a faded red sweater, with discreet white snowflakes. Not too showy, just subtly Christmassy. An L.L Bean classic. In essence, perfect for a middle-aged school-teaching woman. Yet something about it grates on most everyone. It’s not the person inside of it. It’s not the knowledge that it has mucked out one too many cow stalls. It’s not the quality, brand, or color. This sweater is offensive purely for its persistence; it’s worn beyond the Christmas season. Beyond winter and into spring. It’s tied around her waist as the early summer sun beats down. And no one knows why.

Albuquerque Turkey

Elementary school teachers don’t celebrate holidays right. At Thanksgiving, we sang Albuquerque Turkey, a song which told us a pet turkey was better than a dog. During that lyric, I’d close my mouth up tight. No one was about to convince me some turkey was better than my basset hound. Christmas was even worse. Mr. A dared to read The Night Before Christmas. Didn’t he understand that this story is only read on Christmas Eve? I closed my ears and pushed his words out of my brain - anything to stop the sound of Mr. A’s voice reading those sacred words.

Ruination

In the dark of night, a fat little groundhog emerges in the feed stall from his underground tunnels. Eyeing the wooden bins which contain an endless supply of sweet feed, he flips open the heavy lid, and, in an explicable feat of athleticism, climbs inside. Without any means of escape, he settles into the dark and gorges himself. In the morning, when unsuspecting little girls come to fetch their ponies’ feed, the fattened groundhog is discovered. But these unwanted rodent invasions ended as Roxy the Patterdale Terrier moved in and brought ruination to the groundhog population at the Essex stables.

Grilled Cheese

Pre-basseting lunch time menus often consisted of grilled cheese and Campbell’s tomato soup - Daddy’s favorite. He made it in bulk for all of us. In the frying pan, slices of cheese were laid against the edge of each sandwich’s long edge. We called them “wings,” and we wouldn’t eat grilled cheese without them. After everything became perfectly browned, Daddy stacked the sandwiches in a towering pile. I remember it being at least two feet tall. It likely wasn’t. Either way, we’d all gather around to watch the glorious moment when Daddy sliced the whole stack diagonally in one great chop.

Lunch Ladies

Elementary schoolers settle into the lunchroom at assigned tables. Above their chatter, lunch ladies rhythmically chant their spells “...eat your lunch before you eat you snack…” Mrs. Moose is the most popular of these mechanical chanters because she holds the power to core and slice assorted fruits. But when she isn’t wielding her apple-corer, she paces the tiled floors in her white moose-embroidered apron, reciting “...eat your lunch before you eat your snack…” At random moments, she and the others silence us by clapping two slows, then three fast claps. An announcement is made before the chatter and chanting resume.

Show and Tell

Paved by the shattered beer bottles of wayward teenagers, the shortcut to town is well traversed. My eyes are cast downward, in search of treasures. A penny will do. For the record, they’re all lucky, not just the Lincoln-face-up ones like some pessimists will tell you. I don’t find any coins, but amongst the infinite shards, I see a beautiful chunk of bluish glass, crudely shaped like a heart. Back at the high school lunchroom, I play show and tell. My fellow twelfth-graders aren’t impressed. They’re the type that’ll argue only Lincoln-face-up pennies are lucky. I’m not one of them.  

Mudpuddle

In the battle of winter and spring, things are not what they seem. A rainy day walk with the foxhounds proved this to us all. We’d gotten as far as the Tillney’s back driveway when there appeared an irresistible mud puddle. Libby got a glimmer in her eye. She leapt high in the air, but upon landing she discovered winter had not gone from this here puddle: beneath the muddy inch of rainwater, a plate of ice lay waiting. Her bottom hit the ground with a resounding splash. And so there she sat, bathing in the mud puddle: absurd, careless.

Centerpiece

The class discussion is moved out into the hallway for better feng shui. We migrate out of the classroom, pushing our orange rollie chairs ahead of us. We circle up, and sit. Today’s topic: achievement gaps. We try to focus on socio-economic status, etc, but what silently holds each of our attentions is the grape. A perfectly oval green grape, sitting perfectly centered in our perfect circle. Our centerpiece. At the discussion’s conclusion, we stand and prepare for our return trip. Unable to take it anymore, we all unravel. The grape dominates conversation for a half-minute. All new learnings disappear.