Shirley

Posts

July 01, 2026

To Grandgirl Going Out Into the World I wonder if you know this brilliant thing you did. I guess so. You always have reasons. Over on the wall, I mean—your sewn petals, and behind, the bold duns and greens, rose peach, that spotty purple, on up into cobalt firmament. Blues like that? For real? Here the sky beyond my drawn-up legs, past the glass, shows only palest white, unglorious. And down below, my own coneflowers, Echinacea, spreading now in patches, bloom more a pink, not that beet shade. I think you made yours off on purpose. (My legs drawn up , I said. D rawn . I wasn’t even thinking. Not penciled painted. Just pulled up, bent, the way I’m wont to sit.) My outside flowers, were I to pull some? Take them to that hijab girl, remember, who brought me jewels? Hard as she is on learning, I would press on her the wording, make her twist her tongue enough behind her thin bright line of lipstick. Echinacea p urpur e a . Eh ki NAY sha. Say the same s-h as in su...

June 28, 2026

Framed-Art Tour, Exhibit 18 Youngest Grandgirl still loves dressing up, loves flouncing around in my poor scarves and drop ping them everywhere . Recently, though, when she was here again, I switched tactics and simply got her to stuff them into a bag. I was done harping and harping at her to put them back where they belonged. Much easier. Just stuff stuff. But unlike any ragtag scarf in my possession, the robe she has on in this photo from last fall, my junk-store steal, is more hers than mine by rights. S he’s the one with markings like those high-coiffed ladies’ on the sleeves, not I . I’m more at home in my battered old red-flannel thing with handy pockets. Th e gold-painted lettering running down the front, she says, is kanji— Japanese . Or, s ome is kanji. Those are Japanese ladies, she says, not Chinese. Even so, I’m mystified. I can’t tell what is what. I perceive the fine points in the pictures only vaguely, as other hemispheric, blinded as I am by my paro...

June 14, 2026

I’m telling you—these Instagrammers, the way they catch me up. First Economikat , and now Iléna. I t must be the glasses. All the puff pastry recipes , though, not just her puff hair , Iléna has me worried. A person can’t subsist on puff pastry. Also I don’t get her egg salad . There’s no reason to be using a blender! In effect, e gg salad is just deviled eggs without the deviling—no having to scoop the y ellows from the whites, m ush with a fork, mix in the mayo, and fit the tedious tiny mound s back into the hole s . If you want egg salad, all’s to do is chop the whole, boiled eggs and add the mayo. Except y ou might want to say stuffed eggs, if devil isn’t a word you want coming out of your mouth and attracting the demons. I used to think along those lines, myself. S o I can sympathize. The d emons and devils, drifting in their netherworld, always shadowed us. We just couldn’t see them. We couldn’t read about them in the news. Evil somewhat hid its face. ...

June 08, 2026

When the Marbles Go My husband tells me somebody just died. He saw it in the newspaper. No, I say, that man died way back. I know this—we skipped the funeral. Whoever was supposed to send in the obituary just procrastinated. Another day, home from town, my husband tells me he locked himself out of the car. He had to borrow a screwdriver from someone to get into the spare key’s secret compartment he installed a long time ago, at some vague spot on the car’s undercarriage. “Uh-huh,” I say. I never liked that hiding place. I can never remember where it is. “It’s time you found somewhere better, not so complicated,” I say. He says, “Oh, I can just keep a screwdriver in the car.” I say, “No, then you’ll lock the screwdriver in, too.” Ho-ney . And then out in the garden, when he’s pointing out all the wonderful new life—the strung-out, brave lettuces, the ridges for the sweet potatoes he’ll plant, the raspberry canes’ new-fledged leaves—I see a strange, small plot by the garden’s edge...

May 18, 2026

Not Chill Enough About done browsing, Thursday at Gift & Thrift, I spied Towering Grandboy —oh, and Mom, too. Grandboy’s summer job ahead, he had to get clothes. While he tried on shirts in a fitting room, the clipboard lady keeping track, Mom and I stood by the women’s racks and yapped. Other shoppers wandered past, no doubt overhearing but politely keeping any thoughts to themselves (C an’t those two just shut up? ). At one point, Grandboy’s head peering over the fitting-room door gave me quite the start. Usually a person must talk through the wood to get someone else’s attention, or if they want to see what’s going on in the world, push the door open. His sky height , Grandboy had only to put his head in the transom-like gap above the door. The shirts needed to at least reach his waist. Across the chest they couldn’t squeeze his pectorals. Each selection, he’d step forth, Mom’d give him the once-over and make her snap judgment, and he’d again retreat behind the door. She was...

May 13, 2026

Grandboy Age 12, or In the Time of Peonies He was calling on his mother’s phone. He wanted to come over. “You know it’s just me,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll have to get you in the truck,” I said. My husband had taken the car to Pennsylvania. “Yes,” he said. “I know.” He didn’t say what he planned to do. Just play, I guess. Maybe eat my food. Plus he always likes to talk. So down the lane I chugged to fetch him, Buster along, even though it’s shedding season and his fur has been coming off in clumps. We used to worry about him throwing up if we drove him places, but now my husband hauls him along when he goes over to hoe in Boy’s garden. Buster just runs around on the seat and pants like mad and goes on high alert whenever he sees cows. I kept the windows rolled pretty high. I didn’t want him bailing. Now, I hate the truck. I hate it, hate it, hate it. I can hardly get in and out, for one thing. The floorboard is so distant from the ground, I always have to strain for...