Graffiti Walk, Knoxville, Tennessee

 

I Discovered Myself in Mt. Tremper

Sad to say I was already past the half century mark. 
Why does it take so long?
It took me awhile, and yes, it continues.
It broadens, goes deeper, changes course,
erupts in moral zits from time to time
But it gets a little clearer.
Like the windex of age is starting to do its job
On the life experience windshield.

Life, kids, work, hard-scrapple times propelled me in unplanned and indeterminate directions

Learning, loving, always learning, learning from children, from the love for them
That hidden capacity that lies unbidden until the tiny fist, the fist that you brought into the world,
curls tightly around your finger
Till that first gummy smile indelibly assures that you will fight for them
Work to assure their place in life; struggle to implant the values necessary
for their growth and emotional safety.
And I caused pain along the way to those little souls
By wrong choices, naïveté, an ignorance about people and capabilities, or lack thereof
And, at times, an unrealized need for flattery
Unrealistic promises of unrealistic dreams.

I learned that there are people who will walk through your life, your house, your body, your soul,

with intentions of their own that have nothing to do
with what you want, what you need, what you agreed upon.
and you won’t recognize them right away for what they are, who they are, what they’re after
where they’ve been in their mental meanderings. 

And you’ll take detours, ride with the bumps, sometimes crash and burn
Sometimes hang on for your life and take the thrill of the ride
Sometimes hang on till the weather clears for take-off
But you’ll figure it out, read between the lines
Look inward
Get back on your path
Then you’ll rise up and carry on

"Pasted Pages" Series

Here are some random "Pasted Pages".  I don't tend to think of them as collages; rather a spontaneous cutting and pasting session where I get to use lots of scraps of papers that I just can't seem to throw out.  They are all the same size:  7.5 x 9.5 approx.

Mountain Man

This is  Home #7 in the Neighbors Essays series.  The series chronicles a memorable neighbor from each home that I've lived in) 

I rented a small log cabin, and began life on my own.  My children remained temporarily with their father until the courts and lawyers could figure out our snaggled mess. I missed them desperately and wrestled daily with the scary newness of living by myself. The cabin was small and dark, shaded by towering pine trees, and one of only three houses (one boarded up for the winter) on a dead end street that went downhill and ended at a pond. It was termed a “winter” rental, as the owners lived there in the summer, moved out on Labor Day.  I would be there until Memorial Day when the owner would return and I’d need a place to live again.  My life felt ruled by holidays. My belongings stayed in storage; I had my clothes.

It came fully furnished; I felt like I’d just dropped into a stranger’s house and elected to live there, which is what I did.  The two bedroom walls did not go all the way to the ceilings, allowing for circulation of air in the summer.  The living room was large, and carpeted in ugly gold shag; the couch was brown plaid. There was a fireplace which I was not to use, and a large deer head mounted high on the wall.  I named him Walter and hung a wreath on him at Christmas.  The bathroom was delightful, wood paneled and cozy with a big footed tub.  A tiny kitchen, and an even tinier added on room in the back both had slanted floors so that it felt like you were falling into the rooms. It was either enchantingly unique or the eeriest place ever. I had both reactions from friends.

It was a long, lean winter.  I was awakened one night by a noise right outside my window. 

The spotlight had gone on and shone brightly in the window as well.  A raccoon, pure white in color, was sitting on a tree stump, enjoying the remains of my spaghetti dinner from the overturned garbage can.  He was gracefully eating the strands with human like fingers, and completely ignored my frantic banging on the window.  My neighbor’s lights were all on.  He seemed to never go to sleep. I went back to bed, pulling the covers over my head.

In the cabin on my right lived a man named Greg. I called him Mountain Man. He was a smallish man, not as tall as I, with a trim build and longish brown curly hair. He told me he was a Vietnam vet, and didn’t work anymore. He heated his log cabin with a wood stove, which he often asked me in to see, but I never took him up on the invitation. He said the temperature inside his house was seventy five to eighty degrees in the wintertime.  With no curtains on his windows, and the sweltering temperatures he had to endure (while I layered on more and more sweaters and sox) he habitually walked around his house in his jockey shorts. In the brutal months of January and February, he could be seen shirtless chopping wood in the backyard. I was unable to start a measly fire and had to conserve oil, in order to pay the bill, so I could be found wrapping myself in blankets to survive the winter. On several occasions, in between laying out boxes of poison, and replacing them when they were empty, I called to ask Greg to come over and empty my mouse traps, which he did, each time resetting them, saying he didn’t mind at all.  One time, as he was leaving, he handed me something wrapped in a tissue. It was fragrant. “Do you smoke” he asked?  (I’d been smoking for years I thought to myself, but I’d never wrapped my Virginia Slims in tissues)

One particularly frigid winter morning, a “friend” of mine was attempting to make a quiet exit, but soon discovered his Camaro couldn’t make it up the hill to the main road. It was a sheet of ice.  Greg saw him struggling and came out to help, then called to the garbage men to help, seeing them about to turn down from the main road. My friend came in to get me; I was needed to sit in the trunk and provide some weight to keep from skidding, while they pushed the car backwards up the hill. Jumping out of the warm bed, I quickly threw on a long parka and scarf and boots, but was wearing nothing underneath the coat.  I sat in the trunk feeling naked and trashy with three men pushing the car up the hill and my friend chuckling at my discomfort.  After we got his car back on the main road and he took off, I picked my way back down to the cabin, keeping to the snowy sides, instead of the ice.  I stopped to thank Mountain Man as he stood in the middle of the icy road, grateful for the woolen scarf that I had wrapped around my face, so he couldn’t read my embarrassment.

 

 

The Two Dark Blue Plastic Shallow Bowls from Boonton

(Note:  BoontonWare/Melmac...plastic dishes, popular in the 60’s and 70’s)

The bowls have been with me since 1973.  I know the date because they belonged to Aunt Marion, and that was the year she died.  Now, plastic would never be indicative of the fancy, and somewhat glamorous life she’d led. 

Aunt Marion worked on Madison Avenue in the media department of an advertising agency and that was plenty fancy to us.

Aunt Marion was the kind of woman who had a dressing table, with a mirror above, and an upholstered oval bench to sit upon, where an enraptured seven year old could lift the delicate bottles and sniff slowly, pick up powder puffs and make believe she was a stylish woman, who went “to business” and dressed up every day in fine dresses and gloves, stockings and heels. Aunt Marion wore a black Persian Lamb coat in the winter.  It had a brown mink collar and a silken lining of turquoise and pink stripes.   It appeared to weigh her down, it was so heavy; when she shrugged out of its warm cocoon, you caught a whiff of her expensive perfume seeping out, ever so lightly.  My sister and I fought over who got to carry it into the bedroom to place on the bed when she visited.  It was very heavy, but there would be the silk scarf, pushed gently into the sleeve, the striped silk lining smooth and scented with her perfume.  

Later on, she remained glamourous but slightly bent. She would laugh and say that her Persian lamb coat was too heavy.  But her arthritis got very bad.  Dishes were harder to pick up, and more likely to be dropped and broken.  Uncle Harry, fifteen years older than she, tried to help out in the kitchen, but that never went well. 

One Christmas, I gave her a small set of Boonton Ware: two each of dinner plates, lunch plates, cereal bowls and soup bowls.  Maybe there were cups as well. They were colorful and fun (red, school bus yellow, dark blue, white); meant to amuse, rather than serve as a reminder of the difficulty they were both adjusting to, in their lives. 

Six months later my sisters and I traveled to Queens, meeting at the small attached house of Marion and Harry. They had lived in the upstairs apartment for many years, having converted the living space downstairs for rental income.  The house was sold.  There wasn’t much to empty out.  Harry had been moved to a nursing home, where he seemed to thrive, unaware of where his sweet Marion was or had been, entertaining the other residents with tap dances and old vaudeville routines.

We ended up in the kitchen, not wanting to spend time in the small living room, where our glamorous Aunt had succumbed to pneumonia while lying on her French provincial pink sofa.  We divvied up assorted items, mostly boxing it to give away. It was decided I should take the bright plastic ware.  The plastic ware traveled back to New Jersey with me; my kids used the bowls regularly.  When the “great divide” happened in the mid 80’s, I left most everything behind.  But some things had been packed, and two dark blue shallow bowls were all that remained of the plastic ware.

Many times I moved, maybe six times since then, and still those bowls rest in each cabinet in each kitchen.  They match nothing, but I have ritual uses for them.  Like morning oatmeal when I need to rush for work; the plastic cools it down fast, making it easier to eat; yogurt with strawberries on the deck. 

The Aunt Marion memories are not always strongly present, but a hint of her lovely smile flits across my thoughts when I reach for them.  I don’t need to look at the photo of her standing on the boardwalk dressed in a clinging white dress and an outrageous hat.  Or see her tenderly holding one of us as babies, in her bold print dress and large brimmed straw hat with a massive flower on one side, her eyes tender.  She was beauty and grace and she softened our lives.