Scraps

Today I found a fragment of the wallpaper that hung in our living room when we first moved into our house nine years ago.

The day we closed on our house our friends came over with a bottle of champagne and a gift card to the hardware store.  We drank and laughed and toasted, "to our new home!" as we all peeled at corners of the wallpaper that I said had to go.  The paper in the living room, to our surprise, came off in long, thin, easy-to-peel pieces. Soon everyone had a glass of bubbly in one hand and a strip of wallpaper in the other.  Our two-year old toddlers raced around ripping paper and weaving between our legs, and I felt so happy to be here in this place with those I loved so dearly.  I felt so secure in that love, those friendships.

To my surprise I found a working phone in the dark, dirty basement.  I snuck down and dialed my mother in California.

"Oh honey, your first home! Daddy would be so proud!"

I cried with her, a little drunk now, and wished my father was there, so I could have told  him about how I had saved and scrimped in order to buy this house.  I'd have told him how we ate lots of cheap macaroni and cheese and didn't buy new clothes for months and only had one car.  He would have applauded my thriftiness and, like my mom said, would have been so proud.

I look at the wallpaper shred now, and it makes me sad and nostalgic.  Why didn't I take pictures that day?  Why aren't there snapshots of us with our friends, arms around each other in goofy poses? Where are the pictures of us all standing in the empty kitchen or waving on the front porch?  Why didn't we have a camera to take shots of the kids  being crazy and enjoying themselves in the wide open rooms that smelled of cleanser and dust and other families?

I don't have those photos, but I do have this wallpaper scrap.  It's something.

Abundance

With spring beginnings come promise, hope, renewal and a thousand other cliches about what might be right around the bend.  We shake off the crust of winter snow and toss the boots in the attic and march forward into the sun wanting more.

Ever and always wanting more.

But now, in late summer, the basil plants are hanging weak and thirsty, and the tomatoes drag their vines so low you want to yell, "get up you lazy things!" The early September light is white and glaring and almost garish, and the squirrels are as fat as piglets.   The pepper plants are bursting, and you sigh deeply because what am I going to do with all those peppers?  The jam is made and the canning done.  The school supplies are purchased. The new clothes are laid out carefully for the first day of classes.  

Before you know it the harvest will be over and the fresh fruit gone.  The pumpkins will turn orange, and the new clothes will be stained.  All the tomatoes will be mealy and imported and utterly disappointing. Everyone will have to buy their basil in depressing little plastic clam shells that hide the brown leaves in the center.

All of these things--the riches of late summer and the barrenness of the coming fall and winter-- make me feel heart-achy in way that makes me grateful and honest and raw and tearful and ready all at once. I'm ready to say good-bye to summer. 

I'm ready to say good-bye to so many things.

summer cairn

Tiny Poem

Words leak from my ears at night.

In the morning,

I shake out the pillowcase to see if

Sentences

Fall out.

Fiction: Name Contest

 I had several people suggest names for a hard boiled Brockport detective.  I can't decide on just one winner, so I'm going to put it to a vote. Vote in a comment here or on the link on facebook or twitter by Monday August 20th.  The winner gets a little Brockport, NY memorabilia.

Here's the list:

Daniel John Walker
Captain
Nick Stone
Mitch Denson
Jud Harrison
Chet Marony
Dirk Wolcott
Silas James
Rodney (Rod) Beach
James Styles
Silas Dupree
Clarkson Manning

Fiction

I don't write fiction.

But if I did I would write a story about a hard boiled detective  living in my little Western New York town.

He would drink lukewarm coffee at the the diner and throw back Gennys with the local color at Barber's Tap Room. He would know, though, that if he needed info for a case that he could usually find it at C&S Saloon.

 He'd walk the banks of the Erie canal late at night thinking about a woman who hurt him in ways that words couldn't describe.  She would have left a sweater that smelled of Chantilly Lace in his coat closet.  He would refuse to get rid of it even when other women asked why he kept it.

He'd have a beat up old clunker of boat that he would take out on Lake Ontario to get away from it all.  The boat would be named Doll.

 He'd rent a loft apartment over a downtown gift shop and run his small time detective business out of his tiny kitchen.  He would be independently wealthy because of a family inheritance, but he wouldn't want anyone to know.  He would be proud, and since he always worked hard he would continue to work hard, money or not.

 Most people around the village would think of him as a decent but quiet sort of man.  He would chew on the end of a match when he talked on the phone because of his constant struggle to give up smoking. Most of his work would come from cuckolded spouses, but every now and then he'd get a case just a little bit more interesting, a little bit more mysterious.

He would stay out of village politics but find that politicians and police needed his services more often than they would care to admit.

He would know almost everyone but like almost no one.

He would have scars, lots of them, but he would rarely if ever talk about how he got them.  Even a few extra Gennys wouldn't squeeze it out of him.

But, alas, I don't write fiction.

--------------------------------------------------------

Care to give my detective a cool-as-a-cucumber-but-tough-as-nails-name?  Best entry wins a Brockport-themed prize.  

Girlfriends

They hold hands, snuggle on the couch, and spoon under the covers.  They hug with true affection and often lift the other off of the ground in joy during an embrace.  They press their cheeks together and giggle when a photo is taken.

This sweet, affectionate couple is not a pair of young lovers nor is it an old married couple.  

This pair I speak of are two small girls.  Many, but not all, young girls give their affection to their friends free of charge.  The touches, the caresses, and close-to-the-ear whispers come without reservation and without self conscious embarrassment.

But when women grow up the affection they once shared with girlfriends wanes. Hugs may linger, but not much else. Curling up on the couch to read a magazine together or holding hands at the mall? No, this rarely happens during the adult years.  The door shuts on that physicality sometime in our twenties.  If we're lucky we let it tarry into our early thirties, but, really, the women I know now hesitate to touch each other beyond a simple hug.  My one dear friend always greets her female friends with a kiss, which I love, but I sense that others are shy about such an intimate gesture and find it strange or too "European."

I watch my girl, eleven, still eagerly cuddling with her girlfriends even now as she prepares for middle school.   They play with one another's hair and take pleasure in mutual grooming. They snuggle and hold hands and share a bed without hesitation during sleepovers.  In short, they cherish each other's touch.

I've always been a "touchy-feely" and "huggy" kind of a person, and I readily admit to  missing this sort of physical yet utterly platonic relationship with my women friends.  But this sort of intimacy is not the sort of thing one pushes with those that are more reserved or shy.  It isn't OK to expect people to reach beyond their interpersonal comfort zones in such a way.  Frankly, it is wrong to force such a thing.

Would the kinship we have with our female friends be different if we allowed platonic, loving touches back into our lives?  Would we feel more comfortable telling our secrets if we whispered them while holding fast to another woman's hand?  Could we become closer, more like sisters, if we didn't hesitate to brush the hair out of each other's eyes, loop our arms together as we walk, or kiss on the cheek when we met?

I can't really know for sure, but I expect that, for me at least, hearts would open and more love would spill out around us cementing the bonds even tighter than before.

photo courtesy of Melanie Macdonald

News & Events

I have some readings coming up!  I do hope you can join me.  Info can be found HERE.  Chapbooks, Mother Muse, and Motherly Musings books will be available for purchase.