G is for . . .

gone
Alan Bern
 
I was counting back one day. The numbers disappeared. I stopped. Cold. Started again. They still left. John was showing me his dance moves. They left too. We knew we were hungry so we chose the left turn back into town. Walking. For sandwiches. Tuna. They’d disappear too. Soon enough. Uncle George was sure I’d remembered wrong where the little blind alleys lay in my wonderful walk years ago. “Across the pond, yes, and you took a right turn.” Now I remembered: no, it was a left. And the walk along was long. But so worth it. Though not at all retraceable. Really finished. We stuffed the sandwich wrappers in our jacket pockets. Wadded up.


gran
Alan Peat

Grandad is in the living room. He’s wearing his white shirt and a burgundy tie. I’m sitting in the kitchen with Gran, when, quite suddenly, she takes my hand and leads me through. He is lying in an open coffin. “It’s the last time we’ll be together and I want him to know,” she begins. I well up immediately. “I want him to know that we jumped the gun, but we proved them all wrong.”
She is shaking her head and now we’re both crying. I’ve worked out what she means and can’t believe it’s never crossed my mind before. I know gran is seventeen years older than my mother but it’s just a fact; like knowing she was born the year the Titanic sank. Nothing more or less than that…. Some time later, I learn that when her father discovered she was pregnant he beat her so hard that the neighbours heard it through the walls. But still she washed his clothes and cleaned his house and cooked for her stepbrothers. And after my grandfather’s death she laid his clothes out neatly on the bedside chair each evening, just as she’d done for sixty three years.


girl (scouts)
Ann Carter

It was when she went away to Camp Shirley Rogers that my sister learned to be away from Mama and Daddy and our brother and sisters. She didn’t like it really at all, and got very homesick. Probably the only thing worse than the homesickness was trying to pass her deep water swim test. She failed it, which only made her want to excel at cooking. And I can tell you she used to make the very best chocolate pound cake and buttermilk biscuits. Johnny Sue Sassenfield is the only girl my sister remembers from Camp Shirley Rogers. She was also from Winston-Salem, but didn’t go to the same school as my sister. After those few weeks my sister never saw Johnny Sue again. The other day we found a little cardboard box that contained my sister’s scout pins and membership cards, along with her flying up wings that were sewn on her badge sash. On the sleeve of her scout uniform, which is also in that little box, are the other badges she earned: camp crafts, plant kingdom (trees and shrubs), model citizen, traveler, let’s go cooking, pioneer, books, my country, and a few more that she can’t quite remember. In weekly Girl Scout meetings my sister solemnly pledged to do her duty to God and country, and to obey the Girl Scout laws, and she can still recite that pledge. But the part she remembers the most are the sour bubblegum balls that burst in her mouth in surprise and delight.


groceries
Antonia Matthew

Who could have ever imagined that getting groceries would become so fraught with danger and that the supermarket would become a place to be negotiated with fear and trembling. Regulations: Hours between 6 and 8 a.m. for high risk shoppers only. Masks  compulsory. Keep a social distance of 6 feet between yourself and other shoppers. Follow the directional arrows. Travel the aisles, looking straight ahead. Ignore the person breaking the rules. The security guard will strong-arm them out the door, as they spit and curse. Forgot an item? Travel the circuit again. Approach the cleaning aisle with care, hoping not to find anyone hiding bottles of hand sanitizer about their person while two others, nearby, wrestle over the last pack of toilet paper. Wait in the checkout line with feet firmly on the STAND HERE square.


girlfriends
Barrie Levine

We met a couple in birthing class 35 years ago, the start of a friendship that ended, so sadly, when they recently died within a year of each other. Our daughters, born ten days apart, claimed that they talked to each other by telephone from their mothers’ stomachs. When they were eight or nine, they re-named each other Frank and Charlee. They wrote scripts for plays with these characters who were themselves. They started a “company” to end pollution and mailed out newsletters in their handwriting. And probably more that we did not know about. They carried on with their self-made world every weekend into their early teens, and then just as suddenly as it appeared, it disappeared. Even now, both married and leading responsible lives with little girls of their own, they will occasionally call each other by those special names. I notice the recognition in their eyes of the young girls deep inside, a treasure of their friendship. At the first funeral, of the dad, they hugged and cried together — all four parents were really parents of them both. At the second funeral, I lent my shoulder for them to cry on, now mother to two daughters.


gibbous
Blue Waters

My father and I were driving along a dirt road on our way back home from our farm to the small town where we lived. He probably wanted to check on something and I jumped at the chance to ride with him in his pick-up truck. It was so much better than a car. We sat quietly and watched the moon rise above the flat Kansas horizon. It was huge and orange. I asked if the moon could still be called full even if one side of it was a bit fuzzy and didn’t form a perfect circle in the sky. He thought about that for a long time and then told me there’s a name that describes an almost full moon but he couldn’t remember what it was. This remained a mystery to me until, decades later, I heard someone describe “the gibbous moon” in a very dramatic way, in a conversation I overheard at a restaurant. Later, I started asking everyone I knew if they had any idea what a gibbous moon looked like. Some did, most didn’t. I looked “gibbous” up in a dictionary and it made sense that it was probably the word my daddy was trying to remember, all those many years ago.


grief
Carole Johnston

I heard a scream the night she died, just after midnight. It woke me from a dream. The phone rang. They told me she was gone and I was a thousand miles away. Years later, I visited her grave, all tangled and overwhelmed by weeds, as if her own children had forgotten her. I brought a trowel, and buried a silver angel charm beside the stone. No one knows. I’m sure it’s still there and will be there as the Earth spins through eons and millennia. The poems she read to childhood-me will last as long. Sometimes I smell tobacco smoke, when there is none, and I feel her presence. She smoked too much and died too young. Grief never leaves us, but we fill the empty space with creativity and poems.


guts
Ellen Orleans

Tug of the tail. Crack of the shell. The colander of raw shrimp sits between my mother and me. I shake my fingers, willing away sticky, dangling feet. We keep peeling. It is June. I am twelve. I remember the cool, clean pages of a hard-bound journal. Sharp knife over shrimp back. “De-veining,” my mother explains. “The vein is really the digestive tract.” She sees my body tighten. “I’ll do that part.” But it’s only fair I do my share. The first two I butcher, but then get better, flesh splitting evenly. I reach for another but it’s the journal I see. My mother’s Marriage Encounter journal. None of my business. I had opened it anyway. She and my father in Montreal.  It is early spring here. As we stepped out of the hotel this morning, I felt like a new bride. Fingers thick with viscera, I remember the journal’s blank pages. “Do you still go to Marriage Encounter?” “Your father didn’t like it.” “Can’t you go by yourself?”  “Marriage Encounter is for couples.” I add my half-peeled shrimp to the pile. My mother carries the bowl to the sink. Cold water, full force, she begins to rinse.


gefilte fish
Jack Goldman

The year my grandfather decided I was old enough to sit at the Passover table, I nodded off during his interminable recitation. When I woke up, I took a nibble of the gefilte fish on my plate. It was my good fortune that my Uncle Eddie, who was on a holiday leave from the Army Medical Corps, was at the table as I began to choke on a small bone that had eluded my grandmother’s radar. There was a general tumult as I gasped for breath. “Drink some water!” “Swallow some matzos!” Uncle Eddie fought his way through the crowd of my well-meaning executioners, some of whom were poking their fingers down my throat while others were slapping me on the back. Eddie picked me up and deftly performed the Heimlich maneuver. The fishbone popped out onto the table to cries of “Gott sei dank!” Then, like a Torah procession, a group of men in yarmulkes and prayer shawls carried me off to bed. Dai-dai-yenu,
Dai-dai-yenu, Dai-dai-yenu, Daiyenu daiyenu! I never got a chance to thank Uncle Eddie, who was killed trying to assist a wounded infantryman during the Battle of the Bulge.


garbage
Jim Mazza
 
The barrel-vaulted glass ceiling of the Milano Centrale train station was ablaze in the afternoon sun. Making ourselves comfortable at the window seats of our train, we soon would be bound for the Ligurian coast. Yet, we were surprised when the compartment door abruptly opened and we found ourselves staring at a well-dressed Italian businessman clutching a bag of McDonald’s takeout. Seeing us, he immediately stepped back into the passageway. We motioned for him to join us inside, but he refused, saying through the half-opened door that he could not eat such spazzatura — garbage — in front of others. “Non è un problema … we’re Americans,” we said smiling. He did not budge until hamburger and fries were consumed and the bag cast aside. Now more relaxed, he entered the cabin, sat down, and immediately launched into stories of his beloved Genova: the architecture, art, and culture. He was most enthusiastic, however, describing the food — the most elegant pasta, richest pesto, sweetest tomatoes. He was disappointed to learn we were not stopping overnight in his hometown. “How could you not stay for a meal or two…?”  We chuckled. For as we listened, we simply could not put those golden arches out of our minds.


giddy
Joan Leotta
 
Growing up, compliments were distributed often in our family. My mom often told me I was smart, loved, precious. But praise for looks, something I craved as a child, was always conditional. Mom would say, “You’d be pretty if you . . . . You could be prettier if you . . . .” However, when she talked about my younger cousin — no hedging. She was the pretty one. My reaction? After a brief flirtation with eye-shadow colors as a teen, I rejected all makeup. I came to terms with being okay looking but not the prettiest. Years later, when my now husband and I were dating, he often told me I was pretty, beautiful even. I’d reply, “You should see my cousin. She’s the really pretty one.” After he met my cousin, Joe told me, “I don’t know what you’re thinking. Your cousin is nice looking, but you are the prettiest.” I began to laugh. I felt a weight lift from my spirit. I was and am pretty — the prettiest, even — to the one whose opinion on that matters most. He still thinks I’m pretty and smart, and I still feel positively giddy when he tells me so.


grampian
Kathleen Kramer

Google the word “Grampian” and you’ll learn it is one of three major mountain ranges in the Scottish Highlands. If you search further, you might find that it is also a tiny town in Pennsylvania, population 321. It’s the tiny town where my parents met at the Grange Hall — a square dance, my dad said. And the band was the famous Bud Moore & the Hillsdale Hillbillies! Dad danced with my mother the whole evening long. Grampian is also where I was born, and my grandparents lived just 7 miles away on a little rented farm, the “Johnson place.” Grampian is where I had my first “permanent wave,” with huge electric curlers so heavy I couldn’t hold my head up. It’s also where, when 4 years old, I strolled up the front steps to our house, vigorously chewing gum. (In those days, a 4-year-old could walk, without fear, to and from a playmate’s house a few doors away.) When my mother asked where I got the chewing gum, I said, “Lia-tia gave it to me.” The next question: “Was it wrapped in paper?” “No, Lia took it out of her mouth.” I got a little spank for that. But it was worth it. Who can resist Wrigley’s Spearmint, even if it’s “ABC”? (ABC = Already Been Chewed!)
 

graveyard
Lou Robinson
 
I sat up in bed, thinking “lost paper bag!” and remembered what spooked him, Tyson, the big warmblood, leaping in the air at the far end of the pasture because a paper bag had blown into the fence and hung there, struggling to get loose. I lost my black leather jacket. The one where the arms hung down past my hands. When next I saw my father, I remembered it was his, the one he wore when riding his Harley. I apologized for losing it and he said, “I still have mine. You got that one at a garage sale.” She says, “I still wear the rubber boots I wore twenty years ago when we went to Scotland!” And there they are, on her feet in the wet grass of the graveyard up the road where all graves bear names of my relatives, but how can they when I’m from far away down south, and so were they. Wait, their relatives were from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales! And now thanks to Helen’s boots, we are all connected!


gab
Margaret Dennis

“Gab” is a word that is probably outdated. To my mind, it meant to talk a lot about frivolous things. My mother and her generation used it a lot as: “I was gabbing on the phone with Anna May Mitchell for an hour,” or “that Tess Burnside really likes to gab!” It seemed my mother and her friends spent a lot of time “gabbing.” This was a time in the 1950s when most women didn’t work outside of the home. My mother was a very social person. I’ve heard that she loved to tell stories and make people laugh. In fact, I’m told she liked to laugh a lot herself. This was not the mother I saw at home. No. That mother was tight-lipped and stern. In our house, the telephone was in the dining room on a little table in the corner. While on the phone, my mother would sit on a straight-backed chair, smoke her Winstons, and talk for hours. I sometimes crouched in the pantry and listened in. It wasn’t what they discussed that interested me. No. I longed to hear the voice of that other “mother.” The one I never saw or heard. When she laughed, I laughed.To myself, of course.


glimpse
Margaret Walker
 
Mama made her way along our quiet beach at least once every day. Litter bag in hand, she collected the debris left behind by tourists.This was no leisurely stroll. Mama strode rapidly with frequent bends to pick up a piece of garbage and numerous side trips to the trash bins to dump her full sack of litter. She kept her eyes peeled for treasures — sea turtle tracks, unusual shells, sand dollars and anyone she might know. One afternoon Mama suddenly headed toward a group of people some distance away. A woman about her age jumped up. She and Mama hugged and chattered and hugged again. Clearly, long-lost friends. I wandered in that direction and stood next to a man about my age. We just watched — waiting to be introduced. No introduction. Odd. Then the two women stopped, looked closely at each other — and said “Oh, I thought you were somebody else!” I was mortified. Not Mama. Not the other woman. They began to laugh. This quickly became a conversation of “Where are you from?” and “Do you know so-and-so…?” Connections were made. Introductions. Finding a new friend. Walks with Mama embracing her world.
 

goodness
Pris Campbell

……GRACIOUS, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE! Jerry Lee Lewis waves his curly hair, bangs on the piano with fingers, butt and feet, belting out his hit song in the joint fifties rock and roll concert at the Charlotte Coliseum in North Carolina. Backstage, Chuck Berry and other icons of the era await their turn to astonish. I’m 15, old enough to have my drivers license the year before but our mothers insisted — one of them must chaperone my two friends and me on this hour-long trek from our tiny town just over the South Carolina state line. My mother got the short straw. The music is wild. Teenagers are screaming. A couple is mouth to mouth on the steps next to us. Mother is fearless. She calmly tells two drunk boys sitting behind us that my name is Priscilla when someone sings the song by that title, humiliating me. They sing along with the song, poking at my shoulders and laughing hilariously. Mother says nothing, no lectures on how disgusting it was when we get home, despite her earlier lectures about Elvis and his swiveling hips. I think secretly she enjoyed that night of being a teen again, rediscovering a different sort of youth through the magic of rock and roll.


garter belt
Theresa A. Cancro

After I got my ears pierced on my twelfth birthday, I set my sights on other "adult" milestones. Persuading my mom to let me get my ears pierced had not been easy. When she was my age, few girls in her school had pierced ears; it was considered quite exotic. Some of my older friends were already wearing stockings with garter belts, which seemed very grown-up and sophisticated. I begged my mother for one, but she didn't think I was old enough. Yet. I waited another year and a half . . . . Christmas morning 1969, a slender box peeked out from my holiday stocking. I ripped into it to find a lacy garter belt along with fishnet stockings in hot pink and lime green. I was elated and felt so grown-up. But when I wore them to parties — not to school — the elastic bands shifted, the rubber clips pressed into my legs when I sat down, and the lace was scratchy. They were awful! Luckily, pantyhose had just become popular. My garter belt eventually made its way to the bottom of my underwear drawer and was forgotten.


glf
Tina Wright

The G.L.F. was our local farm supply cooperative, a big wooden store near the village railroad tracks in Moravia with a feed mill and grain storage bins and always sweet smelling of milled grain and molasses and harsh smelling of chemicals and fertilizers. I loved going there with my father, especially in August when we brought our just-harvested oats there in our big truck. We were part of the action! And best of all, I usually got a nickel (or dime?) to buy a Coke from the machine. The Coke was in a small heavy bottle, less than 12 ounces, and you pulled it from metal hands that let it go when the coin clicked through. G.L.F. stood for Grange League Federation, born of the farmers’ cooperative movement by three organizations, the Grange, the Dairyman’s League and the Farm Bureau Federation and part of my upbringing was to respect all of these like a UAW family would their union. Fiercely. There were G.L.F.s all over farm country in upstate New York then and now they are called Agway and no one thinks of them that way anymore.    


glasses
Zee Zahava

I complain to Mom that I can’t see what is written on the blackboard and she writes a letter to my teacher, asking if I could change seats and sit in the front row. The teacher suggests that I get my eyes checked. She doesn’t want me to change seats because she likes all of us to sit in alphabetical order. But anyway, it is a good thing that I have my eyes checked because it turns out I need glasses. My first pair have candy cane frames. Mom’s choice. She says they are adorable. I hate them. I wonder why my mother is so enthusiastic about eyeglass frames with a red and white striped pattern when I am not allowed to eat candy cane candy. It is a Christmas treat for most people but apparently it is not appropriate for Jewish children. At least that’s how it is in my family.