Big Joe

Big Joe used to hoard office supplies.  He was a retired cop and had never worked in an office, but he had an affinity for office supplies; mostly paper, but pens and markers too, though to a lesser degree.  He hoarded in secret, putting the supplies, still in their Staples bags with the receipts, down in the basement of his three bedroom ranch.  There could be found several bags bulging with: reams of copy paper, packages of loose leaf paper, steno pads, legal pads, yellow lined and white lined; packages of Sharpies, Bic pens and highlighters.  These items seemed to be the repeat purchases; he wasn’t too big on binder clips, staples or tape. 

I know because my sister, his wife, started referring to the basement as the office supply store.  When I visited she would ask if I needed ‘anything’, with a sideways motion of her head and her mouth stretched in that direction, towards the basement door.  Never one to pass up some paper, I’d say sure and we’d go down after Big Joe had gone to bed, and I’d “shop”.  Her grown kids did the same, always surreptitiously, occasionally calling ahead to ask her to check the inventory. The goods were always removed when Big Joe wasn’t around or they were hidden in other bags upon leaving.  Diaper bags were roomy receptacles for office supplies. 

Big Joe never commented on the decreasing piles.  In fact he never once concurred that he had even put the bags down there.  Prior to the basement stash, he had been putting the bags in the small spare room that had belonged to his older son.  That was when my sister, his wife, seeing that a buildup wash happening, began to give the stuff away.  He never asked where the bags of supplies were going, but had changed course and started depositing them in the basement.  It was never discussed, never pointed out.  It was all very secret and covert.  

There were other bags that he left here and there – the plastic type of grocery bags.  They would have receipts or some other odds and ends of paper – just stuff he never went through to throw out, but would accumulate.  My sister, the opposite of an accumulator, has the reputation of throwing the current day’s newspaper out before the end of the day if she knows she won’t have time to read it.  So she had taken to throwing the plastic bags of paper scraps out when Big Joe wasn’t around to see. Sometimes brown paper bags too. 

It was that one time that she noticed him in and out of Young Joe’s old bedroom, up and down the basement stairs; each several times. It was not his personality to wander.  Mostly, he drifted from bed to table to car, completing his errands, then back to couch, table, bed.  My sister finally asked him what he was looking for?  “Oh, just a bag” Big Joe said.  Humph, she thought, just a bag?  Days passed and the hunt continued.  Big Joe seemed to be getting pretty worked up.  My sister began to worry about the bags she’d been throwing out (which of course she would never, could never, tell him, or admit to doing).  Some days later Big Joe asked her if she’d thrown out a certain brown bag in recent weeks.  Of course not was her answer.  It was then that he sheepishly admitted that he’d been saving some money in a paper bag, just throwing bills in with the intention of counting it up and banking it when he had the time.  “How much was in there?” my sister asked tentatively.  About two thousand, Big Joe replied. 

In later years, Big Joe began hoarding Vodka, in addition to the office supplies.  This was a true mystery, as Big Joe was a Bourbon drinker all the way, though in fact he drank less and less as the years went on.  My sister started showing up with a bottle of Vodka when she visited, or slipping a bottle of Vodka in with the paper supplies when I was in the basement choosing my papers.  No one asked Big Joe why. 

When he died, he wasn’t remembered for his office supply hoarding; that remained his secret.   I remember him for his sudden outbursts of laughter, which brightened and illuminated his face.  He wasn’t known for being a talker, but he sure loved a good laugh.

Until Next Year

Mid October sees windows snap their mouths shut

against the chill air
Bird chatter is hushed in a churchlike whisper
Wind chimes, like an admonished child,
are seen but not heard
Socks urgently rush, duty bound, from drawers,
plates clatter with cold from the cabinets
the oatmeal box marches confidently to the forefront

Without struggle
the house adapts this quietude
then quickly switches to the clatter of logs
dropping to the basement floor
furnace rock and rumble
The dehumidifier nods to duty well done
Until next year

Woodstock Relaxation

Ah – if even part of every day could be as peaceful and relaxed as this morning.  Who would believe that a visit to the dentist could start out my mellow experience?  But, yes, even the smileScan or whatever the three dimensional rotating x-ray thingee is called that orbits around your head. One needs to remove all metal; off go the studs, the small hoops, the thin chain, the hair clippie.  Then one steps forward and is instructed to bite the stick, get positioned, swallow, put tongue to roof of mouth and then the gizmo pans around your head, whilst one is lucky enough to be staring out at a small pond at the edge of the wooded lot.  Very Woody Allen in Sleeper; I feel a taste of what it might be like to cavort through the woods in a space suit.

Dr Fred is the calmest man ever. He inspires meditation or whatever it is that gets him to that place.  He is slow, methodical, so, so patient.  He advises, explains, shows, helps to make decisions.   So, no crown work done today, but he elected to do two, not four crowns, and there was talk of pin-drop of my gums and one implant and drilling of the bone, (he says the bone structure looks pretty good, which is the only time in recent years that those two words could possibly have been applied to me in the dentist chair) and even the mention of drilling a titanium rod through my gum did not un-do me. 

Following that, I took a trip to the natural foods market where one is surrounded by glorious smells, including natural candles, fresh coffee, scones.  I purchased a New York Times to ground me, some yogurt and granola, bulk style, like the old days, a tiny tin of perfume crème – gardenia vanilla.  I drove to a parking lot, sat in the sunny car with coffee and scone and paper, then took my camera and walked, looking for photos. 

My foot felt good, the right hip protested sharply a few times then seemed to begrudgingly settle into the walk.  As I turned at the end of the winding road to walk back, a man with longish, thick white hair called over from a porch where he sat “where’s your dog?”  I knew him, but it took a few minutes for me  to realize he didn’t know or remember me, or maybe he did remember my dog who died ten years ago.  He did say short, and Jessie certainly was that.  

Something was not right and though we chatted across the grass for a short while, he was not the same dashing flirt I knew him as ten or fifteen years ago.  Something missing; our conversation had a slight electrical short or outage.  We’d become two elders of our town, seeing each other rarely, one perhaps remembering more than the other.  There is no catching up with what has transpired in those years.  We used to cross paths every day in the retail world.  He’d once introduced his mother to me when she was visiting.  He’d always called me “Hey Beautiful”.  None of this was part of his desultory conversation today.  His movements are slower, as are we all.  We said good-byes.  He said “call me when you get rich” as he turned to walk into this house.   

I walked on, a bit sad but grateful that I can still walk down such a lane and have that chat. As I crossed over to the main road, a car pulled up, seemed to be in a hurry.  The electric window whizzed halfway down, the man asked “Hey, can you tell us where the music concert was?”  “It was in Bethel, about an hour and a half southeast of here”, I replied, proud that I did not give in to a nasty habit that some of us locals, tired of the endless question in the summertime, were prone to do – make something up and send them driving around town.  “No, the woman next to him said – the rock concert.”  “The one forty years ago” the man almost snarled, as though my brain  were malfunctioning.  I didn’t correct him to say it was almost fifty years ago, but said “Yes, it took place in Bethel, and hour and a half from here.”  “Then why did they called it the Woodstock festival” he asked, completely cynical about my response.  “Well, it got that name because that’s how the promotion started...”  I didn’t get to finish.  He yelled “yeah thanks”, zipped up the window and sped off, apparently in search of more reliable information.  I should have made something up –it would have been much more rewarding.

Driving up over the mountain, Van Morrison came on the radio to sing “Going down to ole Woodstock”. 

Woodstock calms me.  Not on a weekend.  And especially not on a summer weekend.  But yes, on a Thursday morning in the afterglow of most August visitors.

August Light

Wave Hill, the Palisades, NJ

 

Pink evening pond

Monet Summer Pond

Monday Morning Shadows

Slipping Away

August slips away

Not slowly like a gentle morning mist

But rapidly

Too rapidly

Like a flock of birds startled by a car door slamming

 

I grasp for it

A desperate clinging spider

in panic

To protect its web

 

Mourning is just scant weeks away

I recoil at the sight of

Errant orange and red leaves

Displayed brilliantly on lush summer green grass

 

I listen attentively to crickets in the blackening night

Is their song getting fainter

Are their numbers dwindling?

 

The bull frogs wane in number

As the strategizing heron grows plump

Their deep throated honking

No longer cacophonic

Sporadic instead

 

Soon the nights will be stilled again

 

Mourning is just scant weeks away

August slips from my grasp

 

I Cane Stand It

I was rude to the young woman in CVS.  Besides being in CVS, which always creeps me out because it used to be a the supermarket in the small hamlet when I first moved up here, where town folks met and chatted, and went late at night for ice cream and cookies when they got the “munchies” and would wear their dark glasses which I thought to be hilarious, but so cool and mysterious in a way, and some old folks used to hang out on the bench up near the checkout counters in the summertime to escape the heat and feel loved and not lonely and part of the community, while keeping a close eye on the cashiers, especially the one with the steel grey hair pulled painfully into a bun, who wore the thirteen or eighteen or twenty five slim silver bangles on her arm, and then it closed and the stalwart folks picketed the imminent arrival of CVS into their small franchise-free town but it wasn’t enough, and then tons of us vowed to never, ever enter through the CVS portal, and for quite a while the parking lot was conspicuously and satisfyingly sparse to empty, though of course we couldn’t stop the unknowing tourists from going there, but after a year or two, more cars, even familiar cars, ones we knew, and then seeing people we knew dashing across the street, a bit sheepish because they’d heard this or that was on sale, and oh well, we can’t boycott it forever, can we?
But I’d not succumbed and still feel traitorous when I’m there, except my pharmacy across the street had no canes and I had to get one, doctor’s orders, but the idea of it was so repugnant to me, so old and doddering and yes, demeaning, that I yanked the bronze leopard printed one from the rack and held it gingerly away from me, all the while thinking, pretending that I was buying it for a friend, and then I could deal with it somehow. 

And then at the checkout, the smiling young woman in the purple shirt said “Let me cut that tag off for you”, making the assumption that I needed to use it immediately, like how could I be standing up at the counter on  my own?  And I snarled at her “No! Leave it on.” I wanted to add something about having to make sure the person I was buying it for liked it, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell the lie.

So, she just pleasantly said “Ok, you can take it off when you get home.” I took my receipt, curling my lip as I walked out.

 

David Bowie Sat Here

Rosa is like a small bird, flitting with purpose from painting to poetry, gardening to Qi Gong. Though flitting might be misleading, implying an inherent non-stick-to-it-tiveness.  And Rosa is nothing if not tenacious.  Bird-like she is, but she may well be considered to be a hummingbird, the cheetah of the bird kingdom.

I was happy to visit her last weekend in her new cottage created for her by her granddaughter’s husband, and attached to their house. It has the same warm charm that her last place had, and in fact seems quite similar, having a lot to do with the wicker couch and chair, the small paintings leaning everywhere against the walls, the back of the couch, even on the stove, where the ever present kettle awaits, ready for tea.  The plan had been for me to pick her up and bring her back to  my house, but she seemed not to want to do that (had she forgotten the plan?) when I got there, saying she had tea ready and had made cookies for the occasion.  If you knew her, you would understand that I proceeded to settle in for tea. 

I met Rosa twenty three years ago.  She arrived in the doorway of my little shoppe not long after I’d moved to this little corner of the world.  She’d seen my small ad in the newspaper about the poetry group I was forming:  Women Only Poetry Group, 3^rd Thursday of each month.  8pm. $2.00 Tea served. “I never wrote poetry, but I have journals I keep.  Maybe I could read from them?  I like what you’re doing here.”  And so it began.  Rosa began to read from her journals; they were well received by our small group and we enjoyed hearing about her early life, her escapades, her organic farm, her goats that she was so fond of.  

Encouraged, she began to write poetry. We published a chapbook the following year as Evening Circle Poets.  Our circle usually numbered five women and all looked forward to that night of poetry, tea, crumpets and a growing friendship.  Over the years, the circle had indeed been broken, but we all continued to write.  Rosa, for her part, would publish three of her own books, poetry, then essays. We didn’t see each other as often, my job taking me out of the very town I had been drawn to by some strange but real force.  But whenever Rosa called me I knew it was to extend a personal invitation to a reading of her new book or an art show that she was in. “Hi Fern, I finished a new book and I’m having a reading, can you come?"  Inevitably, when the intimate audience was seated and she was introduced, she would begin her reading by acknowledging me saying “Fern is the reason I am here today.  If it hadn’t been for her poetry group, I never would have started writing.” How gracious. Of course, my providing the platform for her was inconsequential. Her tireless determination propelled her to continue on her own.  Along the way, Rosa participated in a weekly drumming class for ten years, worked in an art gallery, planted her own garden each year and took up Qi Gong, which she continues to do.  She told me on Sunday that if I took up Qi Gong, I’d be good for another twenty years.  “Look at me.  I only started when I was seventy.”   Rosa is ninety two. 

We had a typical girl chat, catching up on families, friends and what (or whom) aggravates us most.  She brought up politics and her concern for Obama “I’ve been watching his hair, it’s going all grey!”  “Who do you think will run?”  What do you think of Hillary?”  There is always a blend of the good memories as well; her raising her granddaughter when she was in her fifties, going to England, having a lover.  Further back, how she raised goats and chickens on her organic farm with her then husband.  Studying at the Arts Students League in her heyday, working as a nude model for extra money.  Dating whomever she wanted.  “I never thought about religion or race, I wasn’t raised that way.  I didn’t care if the  guy was black or red, if he was sweet, I went out with him.” Spunk, yes, she embodies spunk.  And I can get her to giggle like a girl.

She is so pleased with her new place (except for the free range chickens that strut around the yard and plop in her pansies), and so grateful for the hard work that her grandson in-law has done. “He recycles everything you know” she told me.  We walked in to see her bedroom, and then the bathroom. 

“Wow!” I said “that’s quite a sink!”  A modern white cabinet base, with drawers that open out and a fantastic, mermaid turquoise slab top, with a square sink perched on top of it.  Rosa started to laugh, saying “you know Bill’s been doing some work at David Bowie’s house, and they were throwing this sink out, so he brought it home. “Wow!”  I repeat “I have David Bowie’s sink” she says giggling, then turns to point at the commode and says “and the toilet is from David Bowie’s house too.  I keep thinking I need to put a sign up over it, like how could I say it?  David Bowie sat here!”