10.26.09

Waiting for the train.
Warm, fall afternoon.
Car windows
cracked open,
gentle breeze
brushes my cheek.
Train's late.
Locked the doors,
closed my eyes
to rest,
darkness came,
sleep.
I see the
twilight sky.
Out the corner
of my eye,
next to my cheek,
I see His profile.
Dark, soft skin,
long forehead,
straight nose,
cheek lingering on my cheek.
Train whistles.
I wake slowly.
A gentle breeze
brushes my cheek.
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Bhagavad Gita 10.32: "Of purifiers, I am the wind. . . "
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Some of last year's poetry ©

Cleaning my desk and I found my journal. Time for a new one to start the new year. We walk around unwritten, here's some of what's in there.

I'm sure you've seen it--
the astronaut on a space walk,
tethered to the spacecraft by a cord,
moving around slowly,
above the earth, in space.
My dad died.
We were invisibly tethered my whole life.
Moving from place to place over time
we were always silently connected,
whether we wanted to be or not.
In the last ten years
he was alternately
terrible to me
and good to me.
He was abusive,
brilliant,
engaging,
and alcoholic.
Finally the dementia took hold
and he was a horrible monster.
The ravages of an unreflective life
came to roost.
Now that he's gone
I see
the astronaut's cord
tethered to the spacecraft,
slowly floating in space,
with no one
at the other end.

..
Some poetry while camping

I'm camping at Berry Pond,
the highest body of water in Massachusetts.
It's raining, hard, relentlessly,
There's thunder and lightning lighting up the sky.
I think my tent
is now the highest body of water in Massachusetts.

..
My eyes are closed.
I don't remember what
color my pants are.
..
It was a beautiful
day, just like today, sweets,
the day you were born.
..
I swear there's a rock
under my hip. Is the ground
really that hard?
..

I love graveyards. I found this on the headstone of Mary Clossey Bowen 1914 1965. It's part of William Butler Yeats' poem, Before the world was made.

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
..

Just to make it clear, this one's mine.

Too much, too many,
shaking my fist at the sky,
at God, again.
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Charlie Manson

It's been 40 years since the Tate LaBianca murders in California. I was 15 years old and it was 1969. I had recently moved to California to live with my Dad, his wife, and their collective five children and it was all very disorienting. I understood the girls who lived with Manson. They had difficult families, were looking for love, rejected the norm, but still wanted to belong. I could have been one of them.

I didn't know Sharon Tate, but I went to school with her sister. The trial was a point in time where everything seemed to implode. Our community and parents changed, everything in our lives changed. I really had to question what I was doing. I had never really thought about what would happen to me if I kept doing something for a long time. I became a vegetarian and started to explore a more spiritual life. I realized that I was the only one who was really going to take care of myself and that I was, ultimately, the only one responsible for myself.

Today I remember the innocence, the innocent, and the crazed--the people and the rejected parts of our selves. I pray for them all.

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Sunday Suppers

It was the middle of a very hot Sunday, the shades were drawn, and the library was dark—old books, musty smell, old furniture, and me, a little nine-year old girl sitting on Granddad’s bed.

The soft, deep voice of my uncle found me out. “What you doing here in the dark, little girl? Afraid of all those folks out there? They’re all your relatives, you know.”

“I don’t know who they are.” I answered shyly. They’re just too many of them, I thought.

“Well, I’m your Uncle John, your daddy’s little brother.” He took my hand and led me out into the dining room. “This here is my little girl, Diana. She’s your cousin.”

And so the introductions began. Always with a name and then the relationship—Aunt Ruth: your dad’s sister; Alan: your dad’s brother’s son; Jack: your grandfather’s brother’s son, and on it went. Was I related to everyone? It sure seemed like it. And if we weren’t related, then it was someone who had stayed at Grammaw’s house as a boarder many years ago. It was a smorgasbord of family and friends.

As the years went by living with my grandparents, I came to like Sunday suppers. I could recite the lineage of everyone I knew, along with my own. I would often introduce myself as Gail, daughter of Harry, the son of Helen and James Fuller Hayes. The people were friendly, the food was good, and I had my girl cousins.

Now, let me explain. Every family had a lot of kids. It was the 50's after all. I think there may even have been some competition between the siblings--my aunts and uncles--for the number and gender of children. Four of us, of the girls cousins, were about the same age. So the adults tried to make sure that we were together as much as possible. In fact, for me, the girl cousins were my only friends. I wasn’t allowed to stay at anyone else’s house over night, except girl cousins’ houses; birthday parties, girl cousins; play on weekends, girl cousins.

There was a lot that happened before Sunday supper. In the morning I would get up early, get dressed, have some buckwheat pancakes with liver pudding and syrup for breakfast, and then walk over to the First Presbyterian Church down the street. The children’s choir sang at the 8 am service, so I was there by 7:45 am. We would sing a couple of songs and amen’s, but mostly, as we sat in the choir pews, we would write notes to each other on the bulletin. When the service was over and we put away our robes, we’d all run down the stairs to Sunday school in the basement. More singing, more Bible, more giggling. Here’s where it started to get fun. My girl cousins were there. Even though they were older and we weren’t in the same class, I looked forward to seeing them each week.

After Sunday school, there was another service in the sanctuary and everyone would be there. I would go with my cousins and we would sit in the balcony so we could see what was going on. We would point out the hats that we liked the most, point out the boys we liked the most, and giggle some more. I endured the service because afterwards was the church social. Oh, I loved that!

As soon as the benediction and last amen was said we ran down two flights of stairs to the basement where tea, coffee, and donuts were awaiting the faithful. Of course we had to be gracious girls and hostesses. We offered donuts to the elders, got sugar when it ran out, and cleaned up little spills. But we really liked to goad each other into talking to the boys. The boy cousins were sometimes helpful with that. They’d be talking to someone we wanted to talk to and we just walked over and joined in.

When it was time to clean up, I’d go in to the kitchen with my aunts and wash dishes and put things away. There was a place for everything in the stainless steel cupboards and drawers—all the little communion glasses had their place, the coffee cups had theirs, the silverware, too. It was amazing to me that there were so many things in that kitchen for so many people. There was enough so that every person and their cousin had their own plate, cup, silverware, and communion glass. It seemed as if God had taken care of every single person’s dining and communion needs.

After the social and all the cleanup was finished, the race began. Decorum went out the door at this point. Who could make it to Grammaw’s the fastest—those who were running or those in the cars? Runners could go ‘round the back way and cut through the yard; cars had to get to the house by way of the streets, then up the steep gravel driveway. It really was a race, everybody running as fast as they could—arms flailing, Sunday shoes clacking, skirts blowing, ties flapping. Most of the boys were already there because they didn’t help clean up, but when we got there we would all plunk ourselves down on chairs until our breath came back.

After changing out of our Sunday clothes, we would get an aluminum cup from the cupboard and get some Kool-aid. The aluminum cup hurt our fillings, but the cold drink cooled us down. We’d grab a paper plate, fill it up, and find a place to sit to eat. We had hammocks, old Adirondack chairs, a tree swing, and picnic tables outside, and all the tables and chairs inside to choose from to replenish our reserves.

Aunt, uncles, relatives, and friends of all sorts descended on Grammaw’s house for Sunday supper. In addition to the regular family—Grammaw and Granddad, three aunts, three uncles, six boy cousins, my brother, and us four girl cousins—there might be Uncle Shorty (at 7 feet tall), cousin Jack from PA, Aunt Maggie (my mom’s high school friend), and Polly (who drove a taxi), along with our current boarders, Neil the zoology student, and Tom from England (rumored to be with the FBI). Grammaw had spent the morning cooking a huge amount of food—mashed potatoes, boiled chicken, green beans, coleslaw, jello, and cherry pie among others—for all these folks and she was there in the center of it all as queen bee. Granddad was there, too, and he nudged things around at the barbecue or disappeared to fix one thing or another. Everyone was happy to see each other, and talk, and eat, and play cards, and watch TV—good food, good conversation, good friends.

We cousins would spend the rest of the day playing together. We would chase each other around barefooted, ride bikes around the yard, and race lawn mower go-carts around the clay tennis court. Sometimes we would go into the library and watch old black-and-white movies with a box of Kleenex close by. Grammaw had a great collection of old clothes in the attic. We would sneak up there and try them on, prancing around like the Astors or Vanderbilts or girls from the roaring 20’s. From the attic window we could see the sunlight lessening and the yard lights were turned on. It was time for everyone to go.

After everyone left, I was always coated with a thin layer of dirt and was told to take a bath. Snuggled into the starchy sheets of my canopy bed, exhausted by the day, I read stories of the Brothers Grimm as I fell asleep.

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Extraordinary

Her bedroom was full of boxes filled with clothes she might wear sometime. There were two pathways—one from the door to the bed, the other to the closet. Her dressers were stacked with presents. I saw mine, a boxed set of hankies for special occasions, unopened and unused. When it was time to go to bed I would find some excuse to come talk to her—were my shoulders square, should I cut my bangs, did red look good on me—and then, somehow, I would stay. And there we were, two people—an eleven-year old girl and a seventy-year old woman—alone in the house, sleeping in a single bed. The dogs were outside in the pen and would bark through the night to let us know what was going on.

I knew everything about Grammaw. Getting ready for bed I saw her cotton underwear, her tied corset, and full slip. Her breasts were like deflated balloons and her stomach had small folds that told of her giving birth to four children. The bathroom was too far during the night and so she used a small, white enameled chamber pot next to the bed. The faint trickle stirred me awake, but then I would fall back to sleep. Early in the morning the bed was empty and she would be downstairs in the kitchen making buckwheat pancakes, sausage, and poached eggs. I would stare at the red plastic clock on the wall above me and hold my breath, watching the seconds to try and break a new record for myself, and eventually fall back to sleep.

We sometimes shared her bed, my grandmother and I, alone in the darkness. We were the only two people in a seven-bedroom house, politely not disturbing each other while we slept, but wanting some human contact. She was once young, had dreams, married, and had children. She had disappointments and she had friends. Widowed from an unhappy marriage, she lived her life alone amongst all this with her garden, her house, and her roses. As a child I thought this was all very ordinary. Now that I know how life can be, it was really quite extraordinary, and quite sad.

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