In my dreams,

I gave birth to your child

and nursed mine, naturally.

Your shell rose in front of me,

while I mourned it:

the shell of what we were.

Now we are older,

We can no longer be girls.

We are continents apart.

Videos struggle to convey

the delicacy of the moment,

but fail miserably.

Instead they draw long-distance closeness,

second-best, disheartening.

They transport an image,

you as time-traveler,

but they cannot give

furiously clutching baby hands,

soft mewling cries,

the warmth of your skin.

At dawn I watch you fly beyond my grasp,

airy, artful ghost dancer,

happily wafting,

astronaut in space, baby in tow.

But at night, all three of us

are light as clouds.

We skim the globe endlessly.

At morning, I drop to earth,

sadly reminiscent.

“This is bus route 151-Sheridan and Belmont!” The bus driver barked at the commuters impatient to board: “let the passengers depart!” The bus driver’s violent braking nearly propelled Saul directly into an attractive brunette who looked up at him and smiled. Thus, he prepared to exit at his stop with real style. He pushed back his thick, white hair-so what if it was white? Hell, at least he HAD hair! Saul listened for the beeps of the ‘kneeling’ bus, but they never came. He stretched his short legs to accommodate the distance between bus and street, but the gap was just too great. In the end, he hopped down, looking less like the debonair older man and more like a black frog. He projectile landed in mushy grey snow.

He looked at his formerly immaculate black leather boots and sighed. “That’s what I get for trying to impress the ladies”. As if any woman would be impressed at an older man trying to look smooth on his way to a doctor’s appointment. Hurry! Saul knew if he didn’t book it, he would wait longer than two hours from start to finish because Dr. Garcia’s office always overscheduled and one needed a cushion of at least an hour.

He hungered for a steak and eggs breakfast, the sort so appealing presented in the picture at the corner diner…but damn it, this was a fasting appointment! And all because of some random presence in the last blood test called “little protein A”. For something like that he couldn’t even ease the little grumbling miseries in his stomach? What had possessed him to make an appointment at 8:00 A.M. downtown? Oh yeah-it was because he was having chest pain and feared a stroke-or worse. He’d barely made it out the door in time to get the bus.

Irritable, hungry and breathless, Saul settled into a corner chair in the waiting room and grabbed a current (miraculous!) New Yorker another doomed patient left behind. If he didn’t sit in this corner he would never hear the nurse when she called his name. By some munificence of the gods, the nurse actually appeared in under an hour. “Sole Meeneendez? ” Really! A Chicago nurse couldn’t even pronounce his name correctly? Before he could protest, he found himself scurrying to keep up with her six-foot-tall stride, anxious not to get lost in the maze of examination rooms.

Once in the cold, small room, Nurse Malaprop painfully but swiftly drew three vials of his blood, weighed him (tsking his extra five pounds) and cut her eyes disdainfully at his ruined boots. She snapped, “Dr. Garcia will be here soon” and slammed the door. She left him there, shivering in his paper gown of one-size-definitely-does-not-fit-all-or-anybody. He swore he could see his breath in front of him. While he waited, he composed a sequel to War and Peace, and was about ready to begin his own feeble protest movement (replete with mass-produced protest signs: We Patients Are Not Taking It!) when Dr. Garcia finally dashed in, as usual, late. She scanned her chart and successfully avoided all eye contact.

“Now why are you here today-Mr.-Mr. Menendez?” She looked confused. “Damn…should I beat her about the ears, scream, or cry? Just 10 hours ago I called the answering service to leave a message for you to call me back! I told you about the knife pain in my right arm and shoulder. Even after that, you said ‘Don’t panic, take two aspirin, and rest, and to come into the clinic at 8:00 A.M., but be sure to fast beforehand.’ Remember? You can’t be older than 40-is your memory worse than mine? Screw this!”

He thought (but was sure he actually said), “I’m not going to sit here pissing and moaning to you. I’d rather die first!” He grabbed his clothes off the door hook, hurriedly covered his rear end with them, and crab-scuttled out of the room as fast as he could, to change in the adjacent bathroom. Maybe then he could exit the examination room with a hint of dignity, but he doubted it.

Mornings your unwashed breath

lingers over milky skin

daubed with rose madder,

and musky, cowlicked hair.

Petal-shaped lips open slightly.

Translucent abalone,

laced through with blue veins,

onionskin lids hide huge orbs,

gyrating with frightening images.

A sliver of eye shows through slits,

seeing blindly.

Suddenly, they startle open.

Falsely fragile hands

can create Klee-like portraits

but cannot hold fresh flowers.

They form firsts, release.

Your legs twitch awake,

just as they reflex jerk

as you fall into five-year-old fantasies:

dragons, Care Bears and Hexen.

At last you wake,

wiping crusts of sleep from distant dreams.

You plod heavily to me,

foggy and clumsy,

ask hoarsely,

“where’s Daddy?”

This time,

on the anniversary of birth,

the sun rose not once, but twice.

The first appearance

came white hot, steel in transit

from solid to molten,

iron-grey foreboding.

But not an hour after,

a womb-read fireball

sheathed in indigo wisp

delivered itself

fresh and bloody

as the chick bursting from the egg.

I’d not noticed it before:

Signs of your coming demise

Loaded into your very hand,

The one waving at the camera

As you beamed, standing in front of the museum

That showcased your life’s work.

Your hand a digital trainwreck;

Inexplicable folds of skin, non-belonging, deep imprints

In the tips of your fingers, when had it all

Become so misshapen?

89 years young, the top of your head framed By the letters “CDC MUSEUM”.

Yet you just smiled, natty in glasses and navy sweater,

Unaware of what your hand told the lens, told us all:

I am leaving, I am leaving soon. Don’t forget

to ask me to tell you all that I have done,

everything these hands have wrought.

Did you ask me? I tried to write it for you,

with these hands, even this very withered one, until

I could no longer write, and then had to

record my voice. But then,

I could not remember.

Your hand mutely asks: will you reconstruct me?

Yes, I answer now, I am writing in the history you omitted,

researching, searching so much for the person you were

independent of my father. But even before I do that (my life work)

You are already reconstructed (so finely)

in manifestations you never dreamt.

Your descendant’s hands (two generations on)

beckon the future:

Spread wide as yours, but flawless- smooth, diminuitive palms

everything yours were when you were her age,

just a poor boy living in Oxford, Georgia,

reading, writing and working, stealing ice, carrying groceries,

excavating your way out of the Depression and into World War II

This is my first domain name blog entry for the New Year.

The glorious sunrise beginning of the day shimmered with hope and promise.   Indeed the rest of the day offered positive incidents: a call from a new friend with an invitation,  a solution to a transportation problem and new educational resources.

Oh, but in retrospect the sun  cast
shadows (“red sky in morning, sailor’s warning”).  First I comically locked myself out of my sister’s house in my haste to photograph the above mentioned sunrise.  Then a dear friend called to warn me that my cat wasn’t doing well.

I never dreamt the day would end in writing a farewell  for my best friend of over ten years. I was waiting on a commuter bus at a MARTA station when my dear friend called a second time: “Your cat is dead.” I could only respond with choking noises . Nothing else would come out of my throat. He then began to apologize abjectly, as only someone who has been through a loss with you can.

Salem is the only cat I’ve had the pleasure of living with for over ten years. My daughter found him for me as a rescue from an owner too ill to continue caring for him. He was only two years old when I got him: regal of bearing, sleek and black with green eyes and at least 18 pounds.

He hid under the bed in my condo for about two weeks but once he came out, he was by my chair or in my lap every chance he got, purr-motor thrumming full throttle. He begged at table more shamelessly than a dog (unsuccessfully), and would not even eat unless a human was in the room, so uber-social was he.

Faithfully he whirred in my ear every morning, gnawed my knuckles, and head butted me endlessly. He ate my popcorn and stole my covers. Whenever I’d had a particularly challenging day, he would trot alongside and leap up into my lap and settle in comma fashion. When it was vet time, he obediently walked into his carrier. Through all of my moves, he licked away my tears when I wept. No matter if I’d been away in Egypt for two weeks, New York for two days or if I just had worked late-always…he would miaow staccato, demanding I let him put his face up to mine to sniff and then to head butt.

In his last two years he developed hypothyroidism and kidney disease and was often ill. Still the constant snuggling, the even temperament, remained, even through invasive blood tests, endless diet rotations and my angst.

Today I picked up his body, awkwardly and wrapped him in a towel and placed him in a box. The weather was windy, there was driving rain…and it was cold. The thing of it was there in the car with Jon and me. Why does no one ever tell you about that aspect? Dear Jon carried the box in the rain and into the Deceased Pet Care chapel where we rather unceremoniously deposited him into a plastic bin atop a table. The tray suggested the vet’s weight table..for the last time. There is a process, and Juliann Brace, a Certified Registered Pet Funeral Director, explained it patiently, but the words blurred along with my vision through the tears. I thank God Jon and Juliann were there. I’m not sure what I would have done without either of them.

I’ll attend Salem’s service in a couple of days. I need the grieving opportunities. Ten years is a long time, and I always promised Salem we would grow old together and I would be with him to the end. We didn’t and I wasn’t. I asked Jon to leave us alone while I stroked Salem’s head and his glossy black fur one last time and gave him a reverse head butt.

I’ll see you on the other side, Bug. I said. Wait for me.”http://SalemBerry2001-2015

During your last season,

I would see falling leaves,

and (briefly) become hopeful.

“It won’t be long now when:

she must no longer be confined to bed;

he must not fight to take a breath”.

(Falling leaves in Atlanta mean

Winter is coming.

Full stop; there is no Autumn).

Winters and COVID came and went

Now, you are both gone.

It’s Chicago-not Atlanta-now, where

in mid-September, leaves are falling;

some say, early for this year.

Tired yellow leaves swirled past

as I tripped up a concrete stair

procured a recognizable wound,

and limped upstairs to smooth my pride.

Now, when the doctor asks,:

“Have you fallen this year?”

I answer in the affirmative.

Winter is coming,

but no one saw it.

You are not here and yet you’re not quite there yet.

Your voice intones the Christmas story we learned as children.

Why does the voice speaking not sound like you? My brain struggles to

interpret the foreign cadence, yet my heart hears the voice I remember:

dulcet, smooth, pure comfort, but the sounds here

are startling; more stage voice, Not You.

Yet, you are reading YOUR story, delivered with love and import

The children present sit quietly through it.

They absorb every syllable. It’s a story of love writ large-theirs. 

Why are you not here, reading to us? You WERE and ARE

The Story. Us. We lost the thread, the continuity.

I never could sew, I can’t use that damned machine.

My stitches are amateur and sloppy. Your words in this video,

like your stitches; tight, laid with care, laid with a plan.

You were our plan and the beginning and end and

I did not see that until now. I hope you forgive me.

To my daughter also watching: this is our Model, our Ur-Maman.

The cruel elapse of time will not grant us any favors. 

Do you see how late it is, how early it gets dark now? 

Her words, this storytelling, were captured; a snapshot in

time of my Mother, your Grandmother. 

A life, but not ours now.

Can I make you understand:

Mother always waited on the porch until our car was out of sight;

as we departed, she would continue to wave goodbye.

We just left the house; the door stays shut. No one waves goodbye.

I am race to board the train; before I reach the door, it bolts away in heartless precision.

The elusive second, that diamond increment, radiating its glorious reflection in the sun

just out of reach, always:

Tiptoeing/dancing into Her hospital room after she fell from the mountain,

that Easter Sunday, she bristled with tubes: we were all late, no celebration.

At a National Conference, I grab five minutes for a phone call:

“We don’t want her to go to the hospital”

The nurse says, “She is already going in for electroshock, it is too late”

Racing in a rented car at 11pm, pouring rain after a call: “You’d better come, her time is near”;

10 seconds from hospice, the ping of the message: “Mom has walked on”.

Child! It is getting late-for God’s sake, open the door, let me in.

Daily writing prompt

What is one word that describes you?

View all responses

ah the beauty of a well turned phrase, one that soothes, perhaps one that captivates. Not so much one that convinces you or motivates you, but one that steals your attention. We need this sort of beauty in our lives, desperately. This is why so many turn to scripture, poetry or music (or any combination of all of these! )to begin their day. Sound is everything, and it can rescue you. Sometimes a series of sounds can take you out of your deepest depression. Indeed, when words fail to soothe, that is when I despair. This is why I stake almost my entire identity on the creation of words that paint images, comfort, excite, cast a spell, and more importantly, stay in one’s memory long after they are read. At least, this is always my intent. When I am not producing any words is when I am my most miserable, unfulfilled, self.

This urge towards crafting a harmonious appeal out of words began when I was very young. I somehow began to write AFTER I began to draw, and I remember drawing when as young as four or five years old, certainly kindergarten age (though neither my twin nor myself ever attended it; we were just too much to put in a place that didn’t even keep us as long as a school day!) and definitely by first grade, where I remember entering (and winning) a drawing contest to promote a play ‘The Three Little Horses”. Somewhere (and I have no idea where) is a piece of paper with that very poorly executed design on it. And I remember even then that I wasn’t satisfied with it, that was NOT what a horse looked like; somehow I was trying to portray a horse when it was truly a person wearing a horse costume. No wonder I was frustrated!

AND-maybe in reality a writer is nothing more than a frustrated artist-unable to get the correct image on the paper or canvas, unable to make the dream spring into reality, she begins to paint with words with only nominally more success.

AH how I love this glorious sort of rambling, where one thought meanders down a parkway and becomes another, entirely unrelated thought.

But the urge tow rite persisted through the decades. I used to be a person who actually wrote letters and wish that I still were. I am considering reverting to this practice. I really miss getting them and emails are a very poor substitute. The population at large is not even writing THOSE anymore, fixated instead on TikTok or some other idiotic video variety. So ant-like are our brainwaves now that anything which requires more than five minutes of thinking fills us with despair, so we scroll away on the phone to something more maddeningly transient. And, in this shameful manner, entire hours and days slip from our fingers.

So, these attempts at rich portraiture remain with us still and urge us onward, even the memories of letters received. I used to have lots of packets of airmail letters, tied with ribbon. What a treasure-now crammed int he bottom of some plastic box in my closet and disrespectfully labeled ‘epherma’ so I can figure out where, when and how I can consigni them to the trash heap or the shredder without feeling guilty about it. My twin, true to her own writer nature, faithfully retains and hoards all manner of mysteries, childhood memories, and documentation, is the Keeper of History and Secrets for our family writ large. Every once in awhile she will send me a text or a photo with a plaintive ‘remember’? written underneath. Thank God for her squirreling tendencies. They will save us all some day with an important document-an idea-an attestation as to who one of us really was as a person, a witness in some court, perhaps?

My, I have distanced myself greatly from the beginning title, haven’t I! But the wandering is ok, because what is not mellifluous if a stroll in the woods, a sun-kissed Spring walk, the sibilance of rushing creeks or rivers, the roar and wash of the tide? The entire beautiful world is just waiting patiently for us to capture it and most of the time, we do not bother.

Here’s to being deliberately observant of small things, meandering walks, rattling on (to yourself or anyone who will listen), and the creation of lyrical interludes, melodious poetry, pleasant phrases, whimsical people sketches.

All this-the only antidote to the endless bullets of our lives.