For the babies. For the scarred and wasted and buried. For those who would put down their guns, if only. For the others as weighted and torn. For the foolish young, for the fatuous old. For at least some glue.
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The Glory Days, or Actually, Not Apparently I’ve always had a problem. Always inflicted with opinions. Always judging something to death. Good bad better worser bestest worstest. Once, longer ago than you can remember, the rancor and peevishness came boomeranging back. In an article for a church magazine—I still have it—my beat-up copy—I likened the reproduced year-end reports we sometimes received to mass marketing. Of the dribble of Christmas mail we usually received, what counted most was the personal. No problem telling which from which. With junk mail, we were just names on the companies’ lists, relieved to remain faceless, hurried over, unaddressed. But bulk mail from friends, I felt neglected. Christmastime mail, I suggested, could be rated like this: 1. Small cards, homemade or with appreciable art, with notes inside or even whole letters just for us. 2. Cards as in #1, no notes. 3. Oversize or ugly cards. 4. Form letters. An enclosed family picture, I explained...
It’s an imperfect analogy. Still. Alice. Fernie. Tumnus. Lulu. Danny. Emma. Babs. Patty. Coco. Jessica. (I know them all, or did, once.) We name the dogs like people. Even when we don’t, they’re so very nearly persons—including the strayers. It’s the strayers we send packing. It’s a turf thing. Turf is just luck. Luck is fickle. In the back of my mind I’m kind of waiting for the world to run riot. For things to go upside down—for the poor lowly meek hated unfed to inherit the earth. But I don’t expect this—I don’t. The thought just sits there, niggling.
Paulson muttered something the other day about Orange Bully maybe sending back people’s whole families. (He didn’t say Orange Bully.) “Could he do that?” I asked. “Does he have the right?” “I don’t know,” said Paulson. “Might makes right.” “Oh,” I grunted. “That’s good.” A good line, I meant. I mean, nothing about this is good. In Bear’s case, though—our shaggy furred interloper. It’s not like he’s getting deported.
I told you, last week, we had mail to mail—Buster and I. Tuesday we made the trek. Not down the stony steep lane, pocked by rains, the ditches chocked with delicious, moldy leaves. Rather, we took the way less traveled, through the woods. No squirrels, but he found plenty else to get his panties in a twist. The funky rotted things are the most delectable. We didn’t see Bear. Sometimes the neighbor’s dog—we call him Bear—strays onto our property. Paulson always sends him running. We don’t want him up here. Bear’s lady had him stuck inside, I guess. Anyhow, we got Joe’s mail off, and Kamala’s.
Saga, cont’d Ordeal is wrong, though. Ordeal would’ve been us in the trunk. I don’t know whose. No papers, no nothing. Ordeal would’ve been cops, not kindly school employees tasked with children’s safety. Searchlights, pistols, billy clubs. Getting kicked dragged chased back to the ravaged place from which we ran. Not our home sweet home. Good God. A few consternating minutes, barely in the door. Hardly a tragedy.
Saga of the Slip-up, or In a Perfect World This Never Would’ve Happened We’ve just departed for the school when Son calls—we made the trip up yesterday, spent the night at his house. He’s gotten an email from Grandgirl’s teacher, reports Son. She didn’t think to get us cleared. Well, I say, we’ll see what happens. After her hours of travel and overnight seclusion, Henny is still in the car trunk, cluck-clucking softly. It’s good we got off early. Paulson drops me off—he must find a place to park. So up the grand steps I go, alone. I buzz. Through the glass, Office Lady descends the staircase. She blocks me just inside the door. She’s so sorry about the slip-up. Not even grandparents are allowed in? I ask. Aren’t parents? Oh my no, she says, not without clearance. We drove the whole way here for this, I say. I possess a teaching certificate from the state of West Virginia, I say. My husband taught for many years in West Virginia schools. (As if that might possibly make a diffe...
They’re saying, now , that after all the slowpoke years—the states dragging their feet on ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment—not enough voting in support, until Virginia opted in—all Biden has to do to get it into our Constitution is order the White House Archivist to publish it. That we’re supposed to send an avalanche of postcards on December 10. I thought I’d find a big shiny Christmas card, cut off the front, and write on the flip side. The glitz would catch somebody’s attention, besides the elephant size. But then they might pitch it onto the pile of holiday greetings by mistake, not add it to the irksome one mounding higher and higher, all the plain pleas. An appeal less appealing seemed better. So I’m doing what I can to make the pile worse. Come Tuesday I’ll get Buster to pad along down to the mailbox, even if his only concern will be the squirrels.
Something Else the Cat Drug In This time it was a pepper. (I’m talking about back in October.) He’s always doing this—my husband. He’ll deposit just inside the door, maybe on the bar stool, some wretched morsel from the garden—perhaps a knotted turnip, or bitter, scarred leaves of his Chinese cabbage, or a beet grown morbidly obese, clods of dirt falling off. So then there’s dirt on the stool, too. The pepper, when he scared it up, was beneath a plant on its last legs. When he dumped it on me he’d already taken out a chunk. The sweetness was what had him gloating. Hideous and withered as the thing was, collapsed in on itself, all the sugars concentrated, I could see he might be right. So I washed off the dirt and gnawed, purring just like him. For once we both liked his trophy.
Post End-of-November Invasion Everybody back home, now the mopping-up time. Monday morning, the raft of colors blowing on the line, recoiling, reeling. In last night’s bitter, still-as-still cold he ran the towels out, a few at a time, shook them till they cracked, stuck them with the pins. Would there be wind? I wondered. Would they come back in fluffed, enough drubbed, braced by the frigidity but also softened by the beating? So yes, they will. A small mercy.