Nevermind

My throat hurts.

My nose is running.

I have my socks on.

I am too cold to think.

AUTUMN

The earth practices dying
the sap chills and slows
strangles the trees
into the colors of death
red and gold and orange
the leaves are choked
breathless

Purples and pinks and greens
gather their skirts in mourning
brown and shrivel and droop
in sad anticipation
of the end of life

Spiders seek shelter in structures
habited by unwitting humans
field mice and house mice
battle for basement
housing in shoes and boxes

Ponds and streams
slow to a walk
hiding perch and bass
burying turtles in thickening mud
silencing the frogs

There is a moratorium on birth
no kits, no fawns just
drowsy bears and squirrels
shivering with worry
over the lean months

who can love this
ominous prelude
to the dying of the earth


I hate it

Gloria Steinham's glasses

I am looking like Gloria Steinham. The hair is long and various shades of blonde and gray. I am constantly brushing it out of my aging face. My mother and my sister were rolling their eyes at it when they thought I wasn't watching. And my appalling tattoo. Same old, same old. Even when my sister is trying to be civil, she is hurtful.

There are worse people to look like than Gloria, even as she aged. I always admired her look, if not her agenda. She was obviously educated. Attractive, smart, expensively dressed. I am wearing her glasses, heavy framed, mine are blue. I don't dress like myself anymore. They don't make my fashions in extra large.

I threw my extra large tie-dyed tank dress in my bag and took myself to 40 Main Street for consolation tonight. (I know, hope springs eternal - I was lonely and sad and trying to divert my attention from the tears that were lurking.) I made a plan, which was useless, to keep myself busy this weekend, to be busy and happy and not sit around here with the animals, reading and playing that stupid word game and trying not to think about the elephant.

Yesterday was my father's birthday. His 89th. On the recommendation of his doctor and the nursing home staff, we have called hospice for him. It appears that he cannot swallow. His mouth was leaking baby food from the lunch they tried to feed him. The baby food. Just writing those words does not reflect the horror it was to watch. This is my dad, my dad.

They asked how we felt about a feeding tube and we both said no, Lauren Meacham and I. They don't know how long it will take him to die. They assure us it will not be painful. Starving isn't painful, I guess. Hospice will watch out for him and keep him comfortable. Whatever that means. I want it to be over. Let him have a heart attack and go. DNR. Don't make us all suffer through a prolonged dying, wondering what is happening inside him, what, if anything he is thinking and feeling. Where is my father anyway? He has been gone for so long.

We don't know if he can hear us. We talk to the empty air and the air doesn't move. I rub his papery hand and he wipes at the spot as if his hand got dirty. Does he know I touched him? Does he want me to? Doesn't he like it? Somewhere in his empty head does he know it's me? Or, after 60 years, have I become nothing?

What do we tell my mother when my father dies? He talks so much to her, she tells us, that she can't shut him up. He is her second skin. For all the life we've known, she has never been without him. If he is not there, will she know that he is gone? Will she say where is Arthur and we will say Arthur died. She will say oh, no, he didn't, stop kidding me. Really? You're full of it, she will say, and then again she will say, where is Arthur and we will tell her again Arthur is dead and then again and then again, and she will never believe us and keep asking and asking and we will have to say that Arthur is dead five million times until she dies, still asking.

I just got up to get another soda and I locked the door. Both doors. I have lived in their house for three years now and I have never locked the door. Arthur will not be home to chase the foxes fromt the bathtub.


Missing my dad again

Bloody Winter

It is five a.m. and winter is coming. The books are gathering on the shelves. The moon is a curl in the sky. A dog is snoring. The cat is watching for dawn. Conversation is bottlenecked. Windows are broken here and there letting the lies fly in and out. The mail is arriving. The furnace is not running but the lights are on. Cars are dead on the lawn. It is a slaughterhouse here. The blood is thin and pale and dries in familiar patterns when it hits the air. Everyone is sleeping in small beds. Something doesn't make sense. Legs and arms are piling up. People are without voices. Their silhouettes have no eyes. Snow is waiting for the leaves to fall. It is time to prune the raspberries. Bruises form like icebergs and never go away. It is no one's birthday. The cake is ready. Arthur's daughter

Labor Day Weekend

I am not having any party. The neighbors are having a party. Their lawn is set up with tents and awnings and nets for games. The sun and the sky are perfect, cooler than it has been. Just enough to mourn the summer.

I just want to stay in bed. Eli has been his cutest self, teasing me to get up, with his head cocked, offering me his paw. Even Chinny sits beside him, imploring me with her big yellow eyes. I have nothing to get up for. Except to have a cigarette.

I think of party days. When I would be in the kitchen squashing cooked potatoes through my fingers and stealing bites from the hard boiled egg yolks before I put them in the salad. The doors would be standing open, the kids running and asking what time we were leaving or the company was arriving, Max trying to be several places at once. Tony would be running to buy ice and stocking up the refrig with so much beer I had no room for the hamburgers and salads, and asking if I thought he should buy wine.

My sister would be on the phone with my mother, working out the details of the day. Who was bringing what and what time we would eat it. We would probably have cake for Arthur's birthday. He would love the day, the conversation, the family.

Tony's mother and father might be there, Eunice ceaselessly smoking her long brown cigarettes and Milt, in an orange sweatshirt, with his cigar. John and Linda would come and we would build a fire in the evening and swat mosquitos and keep the kids from falling in the blaze. Linda would entertain with her stories and her opinions and yell at John for being stupid and a man. When everyone else left, we might play Trivial Pursuit at the dining room table.

Long ago, it was Grandpa Baker and "Etta who could never be left out of anything" and sweet Aunt Ethel and maybe Maybelle with her two obnoxious children and whichever husband was in her wake at the time.

Grandpa and I and my sisters, Aunt Ethel, maybe my father, would play croquet on my parent's front lawn while my chubby mother sat in her lawn chair and critiqued. We had the best iver croquet set which my grandfather giver-of-great-gifts had brought from Albany Hardware and Iron where he worked. Gramp and I played croquet endlessly, long after the others had conceded defeat. We were the best, he and I.

I am the grandmother now. Alone with my dog and my cat and my books and computer. The children and grandchildren are scattered. Michael in Oregon, Zach in California, Laurie on a trip to NYC. Josh lives in the city, married now with Amy and Egan. Tony is living in his own house. My sisters don't like me. My parents are gone. Gramp and Aunt Ethel and Linda and Milt are all dead. Eunice in Florida, John in South Carolina.

There won't be any cake or potato salad. No Max. No children. No campfire or croquet.

And I have no reason to get out of bed. Except to have a cigarette. One of the long brown skinny ones like Eunice smokes.

Feeling sorry for myself

The Voyeur

They were lovers. Anyone could tell. stroking each other's limbs with oil careful on every curve more oil than was necessary more stroking than was essential hair shining blonde and dark breasts teasing colored strings whispered words against soft faces a furtive kiss on a pale shoulder umberellas hot pink, lime green popsicle orange, every blue in the sea or sky I brush the sand from my ankles and sip the rusty sweetness from a paper cup of warm Coca-Cola.

How Magnolias Smell

His feet were filthy dawn to dusk

from early spring until the snow fell

Shoeless he walked to school

chopped firewood

gathered eggs in the chicken coop

kicked at dirt clods walking

as his Uncle Dion plowed the acres

behind the mule, with the 3-legged dog

Etta cooked grits and eggs

baking powder biscuits with honey

all in the woodstove even on

the hottest Tennessee days

He raced with his brothers through the pine forest

way down the sandy lane to the tenant shacks

raked magnolia blossoms on the huge lawn

They waded in the milky

farm pond catching bullfrogs

watching for snakes

and played whatever boys play

barefoot

in their denim overalls

At night they washed up in the metal tub in the kitchen

cranking water in a bucket from the stone well

never having hooked up the plumbing

to the shiny bathroom on the landing

They slept in the huge room in the attic

with china chamber pots beside their beds

They cut down the cedar tree one summer

immersing the whole "plantation" with the scent

and the green lawn with red shredded wood bits

and strutted in their teenage splendor

back and forth on the fallen giant

Arthur and Byron and Lyle the baby

handsome grinning faces so brown

their teeth glowed white in the photos

Arthur's teeth are mostly gone now

the thick dark waves of hair are short and grey

and spiked in all directions from the pillow

His sturdy brown feet lie quiet

blue veined and soft

whiter than white on the white sheets

He doesn't know his brothers are dead

for my dad on his 89th birthday

September 6, 2007

The Second Best Cat

Chinny has always been my second best cat.
I'm not sure why. She is beautiful. Her hair is ebony, thick and soft and long. Her paws are dipped in milk with little tufts of hair sticking out between her toes. Her tail is thick and plumy and her chest a white bib. She is prettier than Ollie was. And smarter. Her eyes shine. Or glitter with evil when she is annoyed.

She was friends with laid-back Max, but couldn't abide bouncy Eli until Ollie died. I guess with the referee gone, they had to make their own peace. She doesn't run when he chases her anymore and calmly steps over him to claim her place on the bed. There are no more angry skirmishes in the night.

Chinny was born here in my house in the early morning hours twelve years ago in May. I sat with my glasses and the vet book observing as four black and white kittens slid out of their mother. Each kitten had a white mark somewhere on their head and I named them accordingly to tell them apart. I didn't plan on keeping any.

Michael took Chin away to Syracuse when he went to college. It only lasted until Christmas because of his roommate's huge dog. Michael had to build a ramp for Chin to get to the top shelf in his closet to escape Aslan. He asked me to baby sit the cat when he came home for the holiday. She is still with me.

Chin was here when Willie was born and killed. I almost didn't live through that and still never developed that special feeling for Chinny that I had for Will and Ols.

Do cats feel love? Do they love back? I think Chinny loves me. She seeks affection more than Oliver ever did. He was more the king and I his royal subject. She is on the back of the couch behind my head or on the arm when I am sitting there or trying to lay on the keyboard when I am online. She insists on her nightly love fest when I get in bed, although she is more patient about letting Eli have his turn and he usually moves aside obligingly. She lets me play with her toes and rolls over and presents her belly for rubbing. She likes being combed and lets me take the knots out of her long hair as if she knows I am helping her.

She has been going out on the deck this summer after having been inside for all these years. Getting braver, she wanders a little and is honing her hunting skills, which appalls me when she catches something. She is fast. She plays with toys if I tease her with them, but mostly just does the cat thing, lazing around. She doesn't do the tricks that Ollie did, hiding behind the shower curtain or under the sheets when I make the bed. She will never be Ollie, but she is getting closer to my heart.


chinnysmom

My Beach Hair

I am wearing my beach hair. I feel pretty, oh, so pretty. I am only partially sane. The house is empty again. The thunder is sneaking around. It thundered while I slept. Eli has become an extension of my body. Now at my feet, curled against my stomach on the bed. I showered him with iced tea, trying to pour it without watching the glass. It fills my lap as well. I don't want to stand up. We will be up late, having slept the evening away. My beverage refrigerator sits within reach of my computer for my constant infusions of diet Coke through bendy straws stuck in the secret hole. The bathroom refrigerator is for food - hot dogs, mayonnaise and soggy Stouffer's chicken and rice which doesn't stay frozen. No ice cream. I balance my food on the edge of the bathroom sink, juggling the tv dinners among the makeup and Pear's soap. A few china dishes are in the hutch in the living room. The rest are packed away in the basement. I eat off paper plates. Everything is nuke-able. I have no need of pots and pans. There is a cupboard for my groceries. Crackers, soup, vegetables in cans. And Skippy. I eat a lot of peanut butter. I ate Phyllis' tomato for dinner, dunked in dressing, and bread with Skippy that I shared with Eli. He shares everything I eat. My dinner companion. I hate to leave him tomorrow, but the "vacation" planning has been so complicated, he is better in the kennel. I thought I would be going to Maine alone. Tony and I have barely spoken all week. He is playing golf tomorrow and will be incoherent by the time I see him. I will do my laundry, take Eli to Carl's, pack and spend the night on Main Street. Tony wants to leave at 5 a.m. I am sure he just said that to annoy me, but I didn't rise to the bait. We'll see, we'll see. What a bizarre life. I need the beach. I want to walk the shore and take pictures and let the breeze blow in my crazy hair. Chinny is draped across the back of the couch. She and Eli seemed to have worked out a plan. There is no more arguing for a prime spot on the bed. They even touch noses once in a while. I had a pain for Ollie today, when I stepped out of the shower and he wasn't on the bathmat, paws crossed, soft-eyed, waiting for me. I haven't been thinking of him so much lately. Still, every time I do, my eyes fill up. Eli is watching the door as if expecting someone. I hope not. I took off my dress and am sitting here half-naked. I don't think Lauren will be coming home. T-rex is with his father and Zach, of course, is making his own life now. Monday is my first baby's birthday. She will be 41. I feel a poem in there, but seeing as I can't use my Word, it may not get written. I have become very dependent on using my computer to compose. It is midnight and the air is heavy. Josh and Amy are back in the city. It must have been awful there today. Tom was lugging Tara's junk up three floors, I think he said. I am so glad that Josh has Amy and Egan. All of our lives are changing and changing. But I have Eli.

Ladies Lunch

We had lunch today, four grandmothers, that is what my friends are now. We relished our cheeseburgers with token slices of tomato and lettuce. We ate all our french fries, waists thickening perceptibly with each swallow. We told stories of the antics of the grandchildren, agreed that each of them occasionally would benefit from the application of a mother's hand on their darling little bums. How our hands itched to apply it.

We are varying shades of blonde. Neatly coifed and plumply dressed in summer colors. Pink nails, coral toes, myself the only one tattooed and pierced, wild hair. I didn't want to talk about children. I wanted to talk about thong panties and cops in garter belts and California. I wanted good gossip, hair raising tales of neighborhood sex, and drunken barbeques and who we knew had been snorting cocaine.

God, we are all ready for the Price Chopper bus. We parted with hugs and assurances that next time we would bring more photos of the grandchildren.

Save me