B is for . . . .

bride
Barrie Levine
 
We were married on a steamy afternoon in late August 1972. My husband-to-be was a hairdresser with a beauty salon in town. We finished yard clean-up and table set-up by mid-morning for the backyard ceremony, and as a final touch, threw cut marigolds into the swimming pool. We had an hour to refresh and dress before the guests arrived. Paul opened the salon and motioned me to the hydraulic chair. He lifted handfuls of my dark hair over and under, combing, configuring, fastening. Picking up a spray of daisies from the garden, he misted them with a shot of hairspray and arranged them in a garland. Circling the chair, pleased with the symmetry, he held up a mirror for me to see a braid entwined with stems and petals. Back home in time for the noon ceremony, we clasped hands and walked out the kitchen door, the opening steps of our procession over the grass to the willow tree ringed with ribbons and celebrants. So many years ago — my white piqué wedding dress, the late summer sun, the canopy of green boughs gracing us. And now, the memory of fingers gently spreading flowers through my hair, making me his bride.


brownies
Blue Waters

In the mid 1950s my mother decided I should join the Brownies. She was worried about me liking to be alone all the time. I said okay, just to make her happy. One big thing mom failed to mention was the uniform. It was required. A dorky brown dress. And a stupid beanie that never fit right. When I found out our first troop activity involved making cupcakes for the local Cub Scout troop I didn’t know if I would be able to survive this at all. I wanted to learn how to tie different kinds of knots. And learn more about weather so I could read the dark clouds in the Kansas sky and know what to expect. I wanted to learn how to carve wood with my beautiful pocket knife, and how to make useful things to take on a camping trip. Stuff that was way more important than cupcakes. I didn’t last long in the Brownies. I’m sure you’re not surprised to hear that.


blueluminous
Carole Johnston

I still love the poems of E. E. Cummings. In high school, I was fascinated by his invented words like mudluscious and puddlewonderful. So, I’ve invented a word,” blueluminous,” because it fills me with delight. It carries me through time and space to a place where I can bathe in blue. I can spin in cerulean. I can float in infinite god-ness. “Blueluminous” happens rarely in real life, but sometimes just before dark, the sky becomes deep glowing indigo and shines in silence, impossible to describe except by making up a new word. I use this word, without shame, in poetry and prose, whenever I need a burst of joy. I write it. I imagine it, like I’m alone on a plane watching the sky flow, a river of “blueluminous” light. Is Cummings out of style now, among the elite of postmodern and haiku poets? His style of breaking lines is still popular, but the way he played with words like a child in a surreal toy store, no. I don’t see it in contemporary poetry. I stand alone, toying with words for my own amusement, out of line from my peers.


birder
Deborah Burke Henderson
 
My mother’s love for nature, especially birds, became her greatest legacy gift to me. On quiet mornings, we would watch a quail family dart through our backyard and scurry into the underbrush in the woods behind our home. Mumsy and I often traipsed through the greenish-brown shadows emanating from the rhubarb patch, white pines, and sturdy oaks. “Listen,” she’d whisper as she held my pudgy hand. Following her lead, I’d stop short and lean into the shallow breeze. “There,” she said, stretching her tanned arm and pointing skyward. “Do you see Mr. Downy? He’s gathering insects for his woodpecker family.” Then a Black-capped Chickadee hopped onto a nearby blueberry bush, its tiny black eyes peering right into me. “Hello, my friend,” I’d say. Perched up high in a bramble nest atop a dead pine, an owl fed her three young owlets. There were so many surprises to be found in our wonder-filled woodsy walks. These day-time adventures created the foundation for my nature-loving ways, introduced me to hundreds of avian species as well as deer, chipmunks, toads, and snakes, and filled my soul with love and compassion for all things wild.


babies
Edna Brown

Babies. I have baby radar. I really do. I can sense them a mile away. Is it their smell, their joy, their true essence that signals my soul they are near? My ideal retirement gig would be to hold babies, for hours at a time. Babies teach us to be present. They aren’t worrying about yesterday or anxious about tomorrow; they are here, now. I joke that my goal in life is to be a
grandmother, but it’s really not a joke. I hope one to day to hold sweet babies from my own babies, for hours at a time. I sometimes imagine a world where everyone gets to hold a baby, for 5 minutes, everyday, where everyone gets to smell that baby smell, feel that trust as a baby sinks into your arms, see that sweet smile in return to one’s own. What if every member of Congress had to hold a baby when they voted? What changes for the better would baby holding bring to our world?


butterfly
Emily Johnson

It was a beautiful June day when my family and a few close friends gathered in my parents’ backyard for my sister’s memorial service. She had died of cancer just a week before at the age of fifty. Music from a single violin floated like a soft breeze through the trees that surrounded us. At the same moment that my father stood up to say a few words about Hester’s life, his legs barely able to support him, a Monarch butterfly came to rest on my knee and stayed there, perfectly still, until my father stopped speaking. Hester had spent much of her life roaming the fields and woods around her house. She knew the name of every wildflower — every tree and bird and bush and beetle. It was her joy to take children on nature walks through the woods, to make cornhusk dolls, to make watercolor paintings of the flowers. How could I not believe that her spirit was still with us, in that butterfly on my knee, her fragile wings waving gently, until at last she flew away.


beauty
Frank Muller

Memories of beauty are scattered, like fireflies in the summer sky. I am twelve years old, fishing for trout with my dad and other hopeful anglers on a chill April morning. I decide to practice my fly fishing, whipping the long green line back and forth wildly, snagging the wool cap off a man's head behind me. I glimpse a glistening pool behind bushes at the far side of the stream and imagine it filled with trout. I spend an hour fighting my way through dense woods. I slip into a hole and sink to my thighs, my boots filling with muddy water, but continue on until I reach the hidden pool! Peering between the weeds I see a dozen rainbow trout floating silently in the crystal clear water, their sides flashing like fireworks in the morning sunlight. I put aside my fishing rod and stand transfixed, for what seems like hours. Finally, I notice my dad across the stream looking around anxiously. I retrace my steps back to his side.


balloon
Jim Mazza

We sat, crossed legged and knee-to-knee, on the wooden floor of our elementary school gymnasium. The youngest were lined up at the front; the older kids gathered behind us in uneven, gangly rows. With the lights out and wide-slatted Venetian blinds closed, a film began to flicker on the portable screen just above our heads. Le Ballon Rouge tells the story of a young boy who, walking to school among the decaying buildings of his Parisian neighborhood, is befriended by a large, floating red balloon — which becomes an immediate and constant companion. How I wished for a friend like that, someone who might follow me no matter where, creating a bit of mischief and protection along the way. Perhaps, I imagined, my red balloon would meet a blue balloon, as happens in the movie, and become my friend too. When the mean kids slay the red balloon, stomping on it with worn leather shoes, I sobbed. I cried again, moments later, when the boy is enwrapped by all the colorful balloons of Paris. As the embodiment of true friendship and adventure, they lift him, as I still dream to be carried, above the city’s rooftops and beyond.


bird
Kath Abela Wilson

seen and not heard it was a bird I think it was a sparrow said nothing no chirps to give itself away it's what happens if you leave the balcony doors open all day all night three floors up you have to expect the bird but we were not prepared surprised stunned didn't even serve lunch just tried to reason with him about occupying Rick's chair I need to sit there bird he said but bird was busy being bird on a chair took his own good time and place until becoming bird riding a palm leaf ceiling fan flutter whoosh bird heard and not seen


bathtub
Kathleen Kramer

Oh, the luxury! Oh, the extravagant bliss of a bathtub — a long, blue bathtub — where, as a 12-year-old girl, I could stretch out, feel my hair float like seaweed on a gentle, tropical tide, close my eyes and sigh one of those long sighs that nearly make you forget to breathe in again. This sumptuous interlude almost washed away the cramped memory of the square, galvanized tin tub parked on the kitchen linoleum on Saturday nights. There, knees to my chin in a modest attempt to hide my new breasts, I lathered quickly, rinsed as best I could, and dashed dripping to the bedroom I shared with my sister, Suellen. And although I was always grateful for the gallons of  warm water heated on the stove and poured carefully into the tub by my grandmother, the reality of the long, blue bathtub when it finally materialized was a miracle. There, in a portion of the attic carved out for this new wonder, the grownup blessing of privacy was assured.


baby
Katrina Morse
 
It’s July. My two younger brothers and I stand in knee-high grass dotted with big white discs of Queen Anne’s Lace on long stems. It’s hot and insects are buzzing. I look way up to the 3rd  floor of the old hospital and wave to my mother who is peeking through a narrow leaded glass window. Since I’m only seven I can’t go inside. I can only imagine my newborn baby sister, Belinda. Now we are home and my mother sits cradling the baby, my brother Rob snuggles in mom's lap, my brother Doug stands next to mom and holds onto her dress hem. I can’t reach my mother. In early November I have a stomachache so bad I double over and can’t stand up. It wasn’t too much Halloween candy like they thought. I have appendicitis. I have to go to the hospital and my mother has to leave baby Binny, Binda, beloved Belinda at home so she can visit me. Then my mother leaves me and I am alone with another girl who is having her appendix out and teaches me how to play Parcheesi. I am the oldest of four kids now. Suddenly a big girl.


boattale
Laurinda Lind
 
When I was a teenager our family was impoverished, but thanks to an insurance settlement, my father got the car he always wanted (Chrysler Imperial) and the boat he always wanted, double-hull fiberglass, which was like flying on a magic carpet after a lifetime of bouncing around our twenty-mile lake in an old aluminum fishing boat. When my older cousin came into a dock too fast and chipped off some fiberglass, I lied and said I did it, just like I falsely said I was the one who got the Imperial stuck in a muddy driveway, though I had been letting my unlicensed boyfriend drive it on our rural road. But I was behind the wheel the day I took my freshman-aged friend Reva out on the lake when I was a senior. She jauntily sat up astride the boat’s prow, and I didn’t make her move to a safer spot; in fact, clowning around, I jerked back on the throttle. She almost fell off: to this day I can’t stand to think of the alternate reality where I ran over her, maiming her for life. I turned around and eased the boat home, and have rarely run one since.


bestow
Lou Robinson
 
It’s a prayer, even though I don’t pray. Please, you, (anonymous, any entity, any accident) bestow protection on my horse Gabriel. Bestow on him a circle of white light, watermelon, apple or whatever you think works. Stem my flow of hatred and bitterness toward those I blame for this world mess, long enough to help him. I can’t help anyone. I try to visualize harmony blah blah blah and out comes a tornado of rage against whoever I can find to blame in the moment for the state of things. Heal his lameness, his anxiety at being locked up, alone. His hunger for friends, freedom, unlimited grass …. Until now I believed a native American saying: “Pray to Horse. Horse has a god” but I don’t know if Gabe prays. And if he does, does he pray to be free to run looking for his imaginary herd? Does he want to live? Does he want to die from overeating? If Horse has a god, can Gabe share it with me? Did you ever pray? At about age four I had an imaginary black panther that lived under my bed and protected me. He was all powerful and I swear kept me alive for many years. He was a spirit though, dead, had to be to be powerful enough. Little Gabe goes charging out the gate in his white face mask and fly-sheet flapping, like a medieval charger, into the pasture. I thought I would write about the current thing this second, this lifetime, that makes me most sad. So, here it is.


booze
Margaret Dennis

Booze. It’s an ugly word, but for years I loved it. I craved it. Starting when I was very young, I felt like an outsider, uncomfortable in my own skin. I copied “normal people” to see how they behaved. That all changed, however, when I discovered alcohol. I was seventeen and I was with my friends after a prom. We decided to go to a place that tried to pass as a nightclub in our small town. I ordered a Seven and Seven (Seagrams 7 and 7 Up). I was in heaven! I became another “me.” She was prettier, funnier and a total risk-taker. I wanted more of this wonderful feeling.
I drank heavily in college, but it seemed everyone did. When I married and had children, I was much more moderate, but, oh, how I longed for that feeling again. In my mid-forties, finding myself alone, I turned to my old friend again: booze. My drinking became out of control. But strangely, it didn’t give me the rush of good feeling that I wanted. It only gave me problems: terrible hangovers, evenings I couldn’t remember, and worst of all, a total loss of self respect. Fortunately, a dear friend directed me to a local 12-step program. There I worked on getting myself back: a new self, one that was confident in the life she was learning to lead.


bluefish
Miriam Sagan

First you burned, and then everything else went up in flames. I unhooked you from the respirator, and then you died. Do you remember that evening when we caught the bluefish in Menemsha Bay? We were ill-prepared, had neither a bucket nor a knife. We didn’t expect to catch anything, but a large vicious bluefish took the hook. We pulled it gasping to the sand, and had no way to kill it as its teeth went for our bare feet. You took a large rock and brained it. At that exact moment the moon rose full and orange over the eastern shore of the island, behind us. We put our hands in gassho and bowed to the fish. Took it home, cooked, and ate it. Only I remember, as both you and the fish are dead. You were cremated in your gray under kimono, along with your lineage papers, certifying that you were an ordained Buddhist priest.


before
Pat Davis
 
He grinds beans for a bowl of coffee with torn bread for dipping. I think he's planning his day, but it's hard to tell because he rarely speaks. When it's time, I follow him to the gardens behind our tenement. On the days I listen long enough, I can hear him hum in his world of living things.


birds
Stacey Murphy

Birds and their babies are all around this summer. Outside my window, in a planter box high above a driveway, a junco family nested and carefully tended three eggs. Two hatched. Last week, I was sad to find one of the chicks had fallen to the driveway below. That left one remaining, and it seems she made her way under the container holding the geraniums, into a space between the plants and the larger window box, judging by the parents who kept coming with bugs and disappearing into the cranny. It has been two days, though, and the adult juncos now seem focused on a nearby smoke bush. I am wondering how long I should wait before lifting the plant container to verify: did the last junco chick fledge? Or will I make another sad discovery? Unlike juncos who place nests up high, I am not very brave.


birds
Sue Norvell

More than 20 years ago, when she was about two, our granddaughter called them Baw Egos. She stood wide-eyed as we three watched two great chocolate birds with glistening white heads soar above us. Rare, and wonderful. Many years before that, my husband and I had huddled with other birders around powerful spotting ‘scopes in a cold, unwelcoming parking lot at Montezuma Wildlife Refuge. Buffeted by stinging late winter winds, we wiped our drippy noses as we peered through the ‘scopes at tiny blobs on a frumpy nest on a far away snag. We said “Oooh!” and “Ahhh!” — excited to know that we were seeing one of the first pairs of Bald Eagles nesting in the Northeast in many, many years. DDT had decimated the population. Blurry and distant though the sighting was, we were cheered and felt a glimmer of hope for the species. Forward another 20 years. Two weeks ago my husband was removing invasive water chestnut from the Six Mile Reservoir. As he sat in his kayak uprooting the weeds, he heard a splash. Close by, a Bald Eagle powered up from the water, carrying a fish. Baw Egos are back!


bali
Theresa A. Cancro
 
An enchanted island in southeast Asia, a tiny place considered a vacation paradise by many. In my young adulthood, I never imaged I'd be involved in pursuing the arts of this corner of the world. Due to several serendipitous events, the Indonesian Embassy's Assistant Cultural Attaché — a Balinese music and dance master — invited me to join the American gamelan group that practiced weekly on authentic instruments. It was a crash course, mostly by rote, but soon I was involved in performances far and wide within the US. I pursued Balinese dance in the master's basement studio for a number of years. I can't say that I ever became terribly good at the dance — it is so difficult to get just right: the curve of the body and tilt of the head, the posture of the arms, and the quivering of fingers to match the intricate music. Elaborate costumes and headpieces took time to put on, every detail was important, but I felt like I'd entered a magical world. I can still recall the shimmering sounds of interlocking rhythms and the gleam of colorful brocades.


bessie
Tom Clausen

One day, five years ago, I realized there was a deer watching me from the bushes in our back lot. Incredibly, she and I developed a relationship that has evolved to include her fawns and extended deer family. I named that deer Bessie and from that fateful day my deer family has grown to include Darling, Pasha, Leah, Lee, Doris, Phoebe, Ivan, Abe, Ring Eyes, Dezi, Dooley, Bella, and some whose appearances were just once or twice and not enough to get to know them and name them. It was just Bessie way back when, in the beginning, bless her.    


berlin
Yvette Rubio

I lived in Berlin — West Berlin, to be precise — in 1976,  the world’s symbol for Separation, a walled-in and walled-off capital, a landlocked island at the epicenter of the Cold War. I flew away, Fulbright scholarship in one hand, empty notebook in the other waiting to be filled with my brilliant Masters Thesis. I fled to this separated city, separating from my husband; I was far too young to be confined by marriage. I escaped the ancestral swamps of New Orleans for an imprisoned icy marshland. No matter the irony of my decision. Tomorrow belonged to me. After a year, I left Berlin unchanged. Its wall was still there. I left unchanged, too. I completed my thesis. I had a few exciting love affairs. My German was improved. I nevertheless remained the same walled-in and walled-off woman, separated, engaged in obsessive planning of the next escape. It would take many more years, a year in fact after the Berlin Wall came down, before I’d begin to slowly take down my own walls.


basement
Zee Zahava

There were so many rules to follow back in those days, when we lived in that huge apartment building in the Bronx. Most of them started with the word “don’t.” Don’t talk back. Don’t speak to strangers. Don’t be late for school. Don’t lie (not even a fib). Don’t lose your library books. Don’t forget to brush your teeth. Don’t fight with your sister. Don’t be fresh. Don’t eat anything in someone else’s house. Don’t get up from the table until you’ve finished all your vegetables. And more. But the most important rule of all was: Don’t go down into the basement. That’s where the washing machines and dryers were, for all the tenants in the building. Only mothers could go there. My mother went every Friday, carrying the dirty laundry down a long, dark staircase and carrying the clean laundry back home. When she was in the basement I held my breath until she returned safely. Mom never told me “don’t worry” and that was smart. Because I didn’t know how to not worry.