Sunday on the way to church, headed south on 42, we passed somebody, the shiny morning sunbeams glancing off his head. Me: That man looked like a Mennonite. Husband: A granola Mennonite. Me: Why? Husband: He was driving a Prius. Me: Granolas aren’t rich. Husband: I think they are.
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In the early dawn, the bed still warm though the man just left it, I think about catching a few extra winks. I think about that little rascal who runs through the town in his nightgown, looking in the windows and calling through the locks. Wee Willie Winkle? Or is it Winkie? Wee Willie Winkie? Which? I can’t remember. Hours later I’m still not sure. Winkie, probably. Wink-ull knots up the tongue—the words don’t flow. Why, anyhow, do we use winks, not blinks, to mean sleep? The eyes when fatigued blink shut (or open, reluctantly), whereas “wink” signals conniving. Conniving requires special effort, guile. Who—at either end of a black night, actually—is up to conniving? Who’d not just want all the blinks they can get? True, all those wee willies scuttling around up in D.C. aren’t wasting their time snoozing. Hard at their nightmarish, eviscerating work, they’r e connivers at heart. But I know of some big willies looking in the windows, good at calling through the locks. One is Heathe...
On Gnawings and Scratches and Frays Shiny and new is maybe problematic. It’s too perfect. It smacks of acquisition and little else—just the money you threw away. No distinguishing your piece from all the other very same ones in the store. Whereas worn and old—that’s something else entirely. There’s mystery. I don’t know who chewed on the rung of one of our kitchen chairs. Hardly a child, I think—it’s the upper rung, about an exact dog’s-face height. Having held who-know’s-whose bottoms, surely multitudes’, as we got it from the ancestors, now the chair is even more a cause for wonderment. There’s history. Say, our bed. Marilyn—a neighbor from back when—knew I loved the oldies in her upstairs, and one day, up our road she came in her pickup, her mother along and the glorious black thing in back. “This is absurd,” muttered Paulson later that day, friends gone, when we tried to lower our old bedsprings down onto the sidebars and it fell through instead. “What was wrong with our old ...
And in the corner she calls hers , Paulson looking on, I showed her my video from the night before in Pittsburgh—the grandkids and everybody chiming in on Happy Birthday and then him snuffing the candles on the cupcakes. She studied it, perplexed. “You had your first baby 73 years ago,” I crowed. She maybe caught on. “That’s a long time,” she said. The time for remembering is past. The past’s grand, lived sweep is still there—the big-picture memories—but the tiny vital things like dates and names hide maddeningly in the fog. It happens every year—one’s birthday. For once, you’re special. I don’t mind birthdays, but I’ve long thought that, really, the mother is the person to be celebrated—the one who heaved and wailed and pushed. She won’t see this, but she’s who I bless.
As Alta— who knows— put it the other week, emailing, “ No matter the age or circumstances, saying goodbye to a parent’s earthly person is difficult and cause s great tremors of transiti on.” Paulson’s dad—94—had just died. Paulson ’s mom had turned 95 a few weeks before . Mom wants to tell Dad something now and can’t, she told us yesterday. She was feeling lonely one day, she said. So she went and sat by the table where the newly deceased persons ’ photos and obituaries are displayed. That helped a little. At lunch s he left a lot of food on her plate. S he can’t get much down anymore. H er esophagus might be getting crinkly, she said. It’s too hard for the food to get past. At church in the morning she’ d been able to hear barely a thing— her ears seemed all messed up. She and I strolled to the wing where Dad had stayed, near the end. Now an empty bed in that room, an empty chair. They’ll move her there, too, I guess, unless she surprises us all by passing unnoticed from...
Over the Weekend (3), or Our Time at the Art Gallery Between our nights at Geoff and Alyson’s in Brooklyn, we had only a day. They’d wondered what we wanted to see. Your life, we’d said, that’s all. Sometimes they come with their children to Harrisonburg, always stationing at Geoff’s parents’ house and from there, making rounds. Since they get to see with their eyes our woods, it seemed only right that we get to see theirs. We were able to tour Alyson’s woodworking shop out back, headily stocked. But Geoff’s CUNY office in Manhattan would’ve meant more bone-clattering subway rides. I can tell you however, skimmingly, about the art gallery and bookstore—their apartment walls loaded with literature (Alyson built the shelves) and hung pieces of history and invention (many many, including photos of the ancients and the sunshot little-kid years). The dog’s eyes in a small painting by Alyson, explained one of the children, were too far apart, in Alyson’s opinion, so she painted them over...
Over the Weekend (2), or Also on the Train Her blaring. Over and over, her shrill notifications. Not only NEXT STOP SUCH-AND-SUCH-CITY, but also RESTROOMS AT THE BACK, and KEEP YOUR FEET OFF THE SEATS, and PUT YOUR BAGS IN THE OVERHEAD COMPARTMENT, and NO SPEAKER PHONE, and on and on, in her New York(?) Boston(?) accent. She approached. She photographed the ticket stubs stuck above my aisle seat. “Somebody told me when they got off that you’ve been recording me,” she said. “Is something wrong?” “No,” I said. “I think you like your job.” “No,” she said, “I’m pleasing the boss so I can keep my job. If he says [I forget what], that’s what I do.” I touched her arm. “I think you should be a teacher,” I said. “No,” she said, “I don’t want any of that. I want to retire. I have eight years.” “Do you want any banana bread?” I asked. But off she went. I don’t guess I’d take anybody’s banana bread, myself.
Over the Weekend (1), or When I Wanted White Hair From my Amtrak seat, somewhere between Penn Station, NYC and Union Station, D.C., even without my glasses on I noticed her exiting our coach—her bouncy, flying-out mop, unearthly alabaster. Then later I found her on my phone, a random four seconds of footage. I’d happened to catch her boarding. Glory glory. What I wouldn’t give.
Driving down Mason Street not so long ago I passed a raggedy fellow on the sidewalk, maybe down on his haunches, ranting about something in a scratchy, fiery voice. Probably nothing that made any sense—I cou ldn’ t distinguish . I t took me back to our street meetings in Steelton PA, c. 1960. By the curb our car, loudsp eakers lashed to the roof. S naking through the debris in the empty lot—carnival tickets, Coca-Cola caps, popsicle papers, weeds—the electrical cord for the amplification system, like somebody’d let it out of the zoo, and leading to the microphone stand. The sermons. The songs, like “Whosoever Will,” Who-so-ev-er hear-eth, shout, shout the sound, s end the bless-ed ti- d ings all the world a-round , or “Jesus Saves,” We have heard a joy-ful sound, Je-sus saves, Je-sus saves . We all have our reasons. Insanity. Hellfire. Political heinousness. Are they any different? It’s a question. (Days later this , too, on Mason. I’m sorry I missed it.) (And this in Pittsburgh....
I found the bird in Grandgirl’s bedroom closet. The wire feet, the black-button eyes, but especially the flaked pages of old hymnbook—my word. Even the words. The hang-on-the-cross and washed-in-the-blood zeal. This is the Noemi grandgirl—she’s who chopped that wad of brittle, yellowed music into head and breast and wings and tail feathers. The hymnal came, I think, from the home of some very old relatives who love the Lord. She’d walked off with it. They’d said she could. They’re our relatives, too, and when I sent them a photo of the bird—of what had happened to their hymns—they weren’t so pleased. A thing I loved—and love—so much! The truth is, those blood songs needed chopped up.
Saturday’s Jesus-on-the-cross post, I was talking about my squeezed amaryllis bulb’s flowers, not the cacophonous cactus ones I spoke of meanly some time back. Both those plants’ blossoms, though, blood red, share the same fate. Their seeds, I mean, if the plants live out under the sky. The seeds drop on the ground and get pecked up straightaway, or no rain falls and they lose all hope, or if i t’s too rocky they can’t find a footing. Or else, hallelujah, they hit on good dirt and root and grow up to be mustard bushes where all manner of birds of the air can flit and chitter and poop. Now that’s salvation. That’s eternal life. Except I don’t mean good dirt always. It might be rich rich, extra loaded with rot, allowing the wickedest of weeds to take over. So that’s heaven versus hell. Good persists persists persists, or evil runs rampant . If only things were so tidy. (See my own personal indoors bird? Stuck forever up there, collecting our household dust? More on it later.) ...
It’s a tired truism, pain bringing forth beauty. But ooh, look: the sparkly crystalline drip. (Sweat? Blood? Tears?) You don’t water the plant, slake its thirst. It just stays suffocated in its lipstick wax until boom, blooms of utter succulence push up from the core (and then die), push up from the core (and then die). The children brought it at Christmas. I mooned over the thing—its riotousness. The pain part, though? No longer do I put stock in that torture-for-the-sake-of-torturing thing preachers still preach about. I’ll take less beauty. The idea that God, or god, needed placating so somebody had to get nailed to the beams? So the world could be saved? No. Just, those honchos had hammers.
Not My Turn Like me, Abigail Thomas has a Jennifer. But that’s not what this is about, except vaguely (just, our daughters aren’t old biddies). Thomas writes, “I have been trying to remember being young, which is hard because I don’t feel old until I try to get up from my chair. Or when I look at the photograph Jennifer took of me sitting on a stool next to her twins, and really, from the back, it looks as if I have an open umbrella concealed under my skirt. ‘How did that happen?’ I think, but, oh well, I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It’s somebody else’s turn now.” Which puts me in mind of something Jeanine sa id. Jeanine checks skin. I like when I get her at the dermatology office. “I f people grew more beautiful as they aged,” Jeanine remarked , “we’d be in a hot mess.” That’s how she put i t: “hot mess.” Oh oh oh, so true. Never mind the disappointment, the sad last gasps, the aversion that looks back at us olders in the mirror, because thi...
Reprieve, or A Hiatus from All Things Orange-y and Thuggish and Shameful This series on Hulu: Nada . And this at your library: What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas. Anytime I’m reading an especially delicious book I have to keep flipping to the end to study the flyleaf photo. Who is this person who’s writing? I stare and stare. Thomas’s book, the additional photo on the back cover has her more dolled up, but I promise you, she’s the real deal. She tells of an old pain—what felt like an egregious betrayal, by two people she loved. “Time has passed,” she writes. “I have metabolized this stuff, I think, but every once in a while it returns in its original form and towers over everything. Like grief.” She loves the two, they love her, and as she puts it, “Forgiveness was never an issue.” She adds, “What is forgiveness anyway? It seems to me the only person you can forgive is yourself.” She asks Chuck—you’ll enjoy her friend Chuck, or maybe you won’t—“Why does f...