R is for . . .

remembering
Alan Bern
 
Washing my hands, I recalled a rat visitor years back. Unwelcome. At night she must have bitten at our fruit and chewed our bar soap. Named it “Lou.” One night we heard Lou skittering around the kitchen. I thought I’d cornered her. She was way too fast. Lou could flatten, then squeeze under doors to escape. Fast, agile, smart. We didn’t want any rats inside so we tried peanut-buttered traps. Lou just ate the peanut butter off the traps, escaped when the traps snapped. Frustrated, we called Clint at Rat Patrol. Clint examined our basement level, showed us all the spaces rats could enter. Clint’s solution: close every space with wire mesh, then trap the rats remaining inside. Rats lived out in the brush and came in for warmth and food. “What would happen to the rats in the brush once they couldn’t get into our house,” we asked. “They’ll go to your neighbors,” said Clint. Very happy to see no more rats and sorry for our neighbors. No rats were ever trapped in Clint’s traps so Lou must have gone next door. Not sure Lou was a “she.” And we’ve seen no rats in our house for thirty years.


racloir                    
Alan Peat

A racloir is a Middle Paleolithic flint implement used, we presume, for scraping and cutting hides. We mainly found waste flakes, the debris of flint knapping. They’re everywhere, but a tool, now they come along less often so my heart was racing when I pulled it from the riverbank mud, sharp as the day it was made. I shouted the others over and, excitedly, we handed it around. And there I stood, dressed in my wellingtons and waterproofs; the first person to hold it since the Stone Age. Driving home, I wondered what he or she might have looked like; what their hopes and fears were; what their life was like? I’ve held arrowheads, axes, blades, flakes . . . and once a racloir. And each of them draws me back, over and over again, to the filth of the Thames foreshore. Some days the pickings are lean but when we are lucky, there among the plastic bags and face masks, we find some fragment of a long ago life. And for a moment we hold the past lightly in our hands and the forgotten dead breathe once again.


round
Ann Carter

R is for round, as in the Round Circle. I don’t know how it started, calling it the Round Circle. But we did, everybody in the neighborhood called it that. I remember clearly shouting out, “I’m going up to the Round Circle,” probably on my bicycle to meet one of the neighbor kids. But mostly it stands out as a place we gathered when it snowed. A section of the street encircled a bit of land and formed a woodsy island at the point where Graystone Drive and Don Avenue met. The hill flattened out there and formed a natural gathering spot on the days when snow caused school to be canceled. In skimpy rubber boots and mittens, the neighborhood kids met there, sleds in tow, ready to challenge each other’s courage and endurance. Sometimes there would be four of us stacked on top of each other, belly to back, all facing forward, our sled careening down Graystone Drive. There were deep ditches on either side and a concrete culvert at the bottom, putting us close enough to disaster if the person steering was less than skilled at tight maneuvers. More often than not we were propelled off the sled as we flew around the curve between the Orell’s and the Stoke’s houses. If we were lucky we made it around the curve and coasted to a slow stop as the road gently began to rise. Piling off, we’d start our trek back up to the Round Circle, ride after ride. Sometimes the parents joined us, usually at dusk, and they would build a bonfire and make hot chocolate. I’m sure by then our toes were numb and little cheeks brilliant red from the cold. Years later I made a painting, those words, “the round circle,” painted lightly on an oval-shaped surface.


running
Anne Killian Russo

When it all began I was by myself, and actually walking, not running. And it was taking more time than I wanted it to. So, I challenged myself to try running.  Before I knew it, I ran two miles without stopping. I ran from that day on with a group of girlfriends, through all kinds of weather, in the quiet early morning hours before our work days began. People shooshed us from above when our laughter and voices shook them out of deep sleep as we passed under their darkened windows.  We ran mostly in New York, but covered other states on raucous road trips where shopping, eating, and sightseeing made the running seem secondary. We ran through joys and sorrows, growing children, jobs, infidelities, divorces, and even cancer. Through town, around the lake, in 5, 10, and 15k races, half marathons and full marathons. For days, weeks, months, years, and decades. And almost suddenly, we didn't. In one of our races, cancer won. In another, geographical change disassembled our gaggle of girls. These days, I'm on my own again, but with a knee that resists steady running; it enjoys and allows long luxurious walks that take longer, like they did when this whole running thing started. I miss the running. I miss the girls. But, I don't seem to mind the time the walks take. Things are different now.


ride
Antonia Matthew 

The Fair is in town. I'm six, here with my mother and Mrs. Castle. We look for a ride and see one called “The Moon Rocket,” with brass rocket-shaped cars on a track that goes round a model of the top of the world. Mrs. Castle  says, “Let's take this one.” My mother says, “Mercia, Tonia's sick on a bus ride, she won't like this one.” Mrs. Castle asks me, “Would you like to go on this ride?” I nod my head. My mother shrugs, “I’m going to the Coconut Shy” and walks away. Mrs. Castle buys tickets and we climb into one of the rockets. A man shouts, “all aboard for the moon.” The ride begins to move. It starts slowly, then speeds up, faster and faster. The ride goes on and on until, at last, it begins to slow down and finally it stops. We get out carefully. I'm feeling sick. Mrs. Castle looks pale. She takes my hand. We go round to the back of the ride and throw up on the grass. Then Mrs. Castle wipes both of our mouths with a handkerchief. We look at each other and start laughing. “This is our secret,” she says and I nod my head. She takes my hand and we walk quickly towards the Coconut Shy.


relaxing
Barbara Brazill

This is the quiet hour except for the constant rumble of thunder rolling in from somewhere in some direction and the buzz of the refrigerator motor keeping my ice cubes chilled and the frenzied whoosh of wind holding hands with the abrupt crackle of thunder and the ping ping of leaves hitting the side of the house and the splat splat splat of the rain pelting the windows and the swish of a car’s wheels spinning on the hot wet pavement and the squiggly scratch of my pencil sliding across the paper and the ahhh of my breath exhaling . . . yes this has been the quiet hour and it has been so relaxing.


religion
Barrie Levine

My son Max took off for a summer youth program in Israel after his junior year in college. He returned with a passion for finding new meaning in Judaism. We always belonged to a temple and observed holiday traditions, but my son took on orthodox observances and began dressing in the manner of religious men in a white shirt, black slacks, and skullcap. Many families become estranged when a child turns religious, even if in the religion of birth. But my son’s committed life is rooted in the grandfather for whom he was named and my grandmother who sewed her Sabbath candlesticks into her voluminous skirt for safekeeping on the journey to America. Max moved to Israel three days after graduation. Friends and family expressed concern that he was immersed in a cult, as the many rules about kosher food, dress codes for men and women, and thrice daily prayer services seem repressive through a secular lens. But when I visit my son and his family in their religious neighborhood, no one ever tries to proselytize me into becoming orthodox. Simply being a mother and grandmother elevates me to honored status in the community. I couldn’t feel more accepted.


ridiculous
Blue Waters

One of my special friends in grade school, Vera Unruh, had a hard time pronouncing words. One day during recess we were talking about our school’s stupid dress code. Neither of us appreciated being forced to wear a dress instead of the jeans we preferred. “That’s so ridiculous!” I shouted. Vera picked up on that and shouted “Yeah, that’s ridikkelus!” We both had a good laugh. I decided I preferred the sound of ridikkelus over ridiculous and imitated her with great joy. We decided that we would shout the word out loud together whenever one of us gave the “sign,” which was to point a finger to the tip of the nose. We started giving each other the sign as soon as we got back to our classroom. “That’s ridikkelus!” It was nice, for a change, to have someone with me when we both got sent to the principal’s office for “insubordination.” Whatever that meant.


rucksack
Carole Johnston

Once I was a rucksack wanderer, hitchhiking, like my hero, Kerouac. I owned nothing but the rucksack, hiking shoes, jeans, and a blue work shirt. I was 27, escaped from teaching high school, still in love with Beat writers. John and I meandered up the east coast from New York to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto. In The Dharma Bums, Japhy Rider says “… I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution, thousands or even millions of rucksack wanderers …” I read the words and followed. Scent of pine trees and hot wind, hitching along sandy back roads to all the beaches of Maine, deep summer heat baking into us. Once, we stood in torrential rain under a bridge near Quebec City, got a ride with some drunk Quebecois teenagers who let us crash in their purple-lighted, aluminum, cave-like apartment in Montreal. We wandered for six months, the road stretching out before us like a mirage. Decades later, a therapist told me I must have had a death wish, putting myself in danger like that. Danger? Never thought about it. I was busy being a rucksack wanderer. Adventure was my middle name.


rainbow
Deborah Burke Henderson
 
Many years ago, perhaps inspired by the pet rock fad, my sister took to painting rocks a powdery blue hue. Paintbrush and acrylics in hand, she would depict a rainbow cropping out of and dipping back into twin puffy white clouds, centering the word “Smile!” underneath. She sent me one such memento maybe ten years ago, and it sits near Mr. Potato Head (one of my muses) on my writing desk. That rock has always been a cherished possession, but now even more so. My sister Robin passed away just a few months back, on June 24, the morning of the Strawberry Moon. I know that I will think of her every time I see a rainbow.


risk
Emily Johnson

Speaking those words out loud would be taking a big risk. She knew that. It could mean the end of everything. The end of their marriage. Of their family. Of the home she had known for twenty-three years. It could mean her children turning against her, blaming her, never wanting to see her again. And what about him? It would come as a shock, something he would never have expected. He might hit her — something he’d never done before. Maybe he’d cry. She’d never seen him do that either. And where would she go? With what she made as an adjunct at the college she could barely afford a motel room. And yet . . .  speaking the words could mean freedom. It could mean the beginning of a new life — a life in which she could make her own decisions. She knew some of them would be the wrong ones, but she’d learn from them. She’d grow! Not feel like the undernourished, stunted flower she’d become, dying day by day. She could do it. She would do it. She would look in his eyes and say the words: “I don’t love you anymore.”


reflections
Frank Muller

As a young child, I believed that reflections were doorways to parallel universes. I would stand in the bathroom staring into the mirror on the medicine cabinet for long stretches, hoping to catch my twin blinking when I had not, or glancing sidewards in reaction to my sister’s pleading to get in. I would tilt my head forward until our foreheads touched, imagining at that moment that we could hear each other’s thoughts. His were exactly the same as mine. As I grew older the rock-solid conviction in these beliefs waned somewhat, but never completely vanished. Sometimes today I still imagine that reflections are doorways allowing us to pass back and forth between our mirrored realms. Last winter while hiking in a snowy forest I came upon an ebony pool of standing water, stained inky black by decaying leaf litter. Not a single molecule of air seemed to move from its current position. The pool surface resembled polished obsidian, reflecting the moody clouds and bare treetops above. I leaned forward, and there below me was my twin, much older now, staring up into my soul. I quickly clutched a nearby tree trunk to refrain from jumping on top of him!


retirement
Jim Mazza
 
Be prepared, a friend advises, everyone will want to know what you are going to do in retirement. Sure enough, after the congratulations come the questions. What are your plans? What’s on your bucket list?  Much to their disappointment, my responses are vague and I have few specifics to offer. For the first time in my life, I happily have no plans! Will I write a little? Surely. Shoot photos? Most likely. Travel? My bags are packed! Finally learn Italian? It’s doubtful.  It’s about being rather than doing, I explain. Most just stare at me, flabbergasted. I have two simple notions in my mind for approaching the years ahead. The first is to nurture and care for those spaces and places where I find comfort, beauty, and connection — my home, garden, and community. The second is to live gently, yet with enthusiasm and curiosity. That is: walking instead of driving, lingering over good books and conversations with friends, and making space to learn, reflect and, whenever possible, celebrate. So, I tell the inquisitive: There’s no “bucket list,” it’s more of an “anything-is-possible list” . . . And that, absent the prix fixe menu of must-dos, is a thrilling view of the future.


reflection
Joan Leotta

Passing by a mirror or a shop window, I see an older woman who resembles me — then realize she is me, gray, drained of  brightness, diminished. Lately though, I remembered one of my favorite folk tales — about a young man whose task was to pull a golden vase from a pond. Others before him had tried and failed. He studied the area, noted a tree’s limbs spread across the pond. When his turn came, instead of leaping into the water, he climbed the tree. It was only the reflection of the vase that shone in the water. The solid gold vase was in the tree all along.
I realize this is true with my own reflection — in mirrors, store windows, the eyes of others. My reflection is only an imperfect imitation of the reality of who I am. My ability to love, to learn, to encourage others is burnished, not diminished by age. Now, when I pass a mirror, I am not fooled by the old woman who smiles back at me. My real self is deep within. I am not my reflection.


rob
Kath Abela Wilson

His closest friends called him that. His life was stolen suddenly, as if a large bird swooped down and took it like a sandwich or a fish. It was an elegant bird that was his downfall, though, his passion. Each day carrying heavy equipment, a camera with a large lens, to watch their mating dance by the river, their nest, their babies. “They're in love,” he told me. And so was he. After months, he started to feel more and more tired, falling asleep early before he could compile. Finally one night he fell in his studio. Next morning they found him and sent him for care. He called me and I said “What happened? I think those herons tired you out.” “Yes,” he said. A week later he was gone. His paintings and photos — a hundred herons line our walls. I still expect at any moment his cheerful return, his friendly slow gait and stories, if only, back to our home gallery, with new work . . . .


rattle-skull
Kathleen Kramer

If you’d heard him call her, my younger sister, “Rattle-skull,” you might have thought our dad an unkind man. He was not. But Suellen could try the patience of even the kindest of men with her misadventures and dramatics, such as threatening to throw herself down the stairs when she was denied some small request. And one of our mother’s occasional adjectives for Suellen was “slathery,” for my sister could scatter socks and training bras and mess up the neatest of rooms, especially the small bedroom we shared. Even her sweet, loving heart tended to be rattle-skulled as, one after another, she chose boys, then men, who were lost and, in spite of her earnest love, could not be saved. Then inside that very special brain, there was a rupture, and Suellen was left blind and paralyzed and often without speech. For four and a half years, she lived in a rehab home, where she would never be rehabbed. And our dad and mother came faithfully, though without much faith in a recovery, to that place, bringing treats and songs and love. Every holiday season, Dad would decorate Suellen’s room with posters — jack-o-lanterns, turkeys, Santa Claus. And he’d tell her about them, knowing she could see them in her imagination, inside that dear, damaged Rattle-skull.


regret
Laurinda Lind
 
R is for that, at least. Yesterday I picked up a stone from the shore of Lake Champlain and, due to the magic of years collapsing into one another, stood by Lake of the Woods, meaning to release it there. This also starts with R. But I couldn’t. Because as my thumb traveled the smooth gray grain, I stared into white calcite veins threading dark shale and somehow saw Renee, my now-dead friend, who was deposited with geologic force into my life in fifth grade. On both sides of the stone, ancient calcium carbonate sketches a veil across silt from an old ocean floor. That is Renee, another R word. Hidden front and back. For once in my life, as I looked into the waters of this much smaller lake gouged out by an ice sheet, Renee chose me and I knew that if I kept the stone in my pocket instead, she would finally explain those thirty years she kept herself inaccessible as a nun buried at sea. So far all she says is: she sees me now. As if a glacier finally lifted off and melted away north, it is a great relief. Which also starts with R.


roast
Margaret Dennis

My mother thought she was a good cook. When I mentioned this to my older sister recently, she scoffed and said “all she ever cooked were roasts!” That was partly true. My father owned a butcher shop and brought home fresh meat. Every Sunday we had a roast: pork, lamb, beef on a rotating basis. Never chicken; my mother looked down on chicken. Oh, we had side dishes:  potatoes, gravy, and a vegetable, usually canned (except on Easter when we had to have fresh asparagus). I actually liked Monday meals the best. Then we had leftovers and we also ate in the kitchen. Our Sunday meals took place in the dining room where we ate at a formal table draped in a white linen table cloth. There was a lot of silence then. Usually, all you could hear was our silverware clinking against our best china. The kitchen was a bit livelier, but not much. I don’t know how my mother decided to raise us in this formal, stiff way. She had grown up in a raucous family with eight siblings. She must have thought that her approach was better. It wasn’t! If she were here today I would never tell her that. I would never say she wasn’t a good cook. After all, her roasts were delicious!


roxanne
Pris Campbell

When I was a teaching assistant in grad school he was an undergrad in one of my study group classes and was sweet on me, always lingering after with some contrived question. Tall and attractive he was three years younger and seemed even younger in the cloak of his shyness. He had “Cyrano de Bergerac” on tape in French in his apartment, he told me one day, with a hesitant invitation. A borderline no no, for me to say yes, but I wanted to hear this magnificent play in French. “She creates grace in her own image, brings heaven to earth in one movement of her hand,” says Cyrano. The romance of it overtook us. By the end I was Roxanne. She realized he was the one she loved as he was dying. Too late for them, we made love in their place. The lovers had their time together, after all, through our bodies. Embarrassed, he never spoke to me after class again. Embarrassed, I ignored his averted eyes and was glad when the semester ended.


rain
Sue Norvell

Yes, I do feel uncomfortable grumbling, even just a little bit. So many parts of our country would be grateful for a tenth of our damp aggravation. Still, it has rained yet again: another persistent soaking that just won’t quit. It feels as if this has been the motif for the summer. Each week it seems we’ve again had to slosh our way through puddles to the Wednesday Farmers’ Market. In the backyard, grass has not dried to the usual late summer toasted-almond brown. Even now, the lush still-green lawn squooshes underfoot as I walk out to the bird bath. With rain so frequent, I haven’t had to refill that large terra cotta saucer often, but mosquitos are loving it, so it has to be emptied, cleaned, and refilled to rid it of the wrigglers. Today the hill trails were just dry enough for my husband and his friend to hike without too much muddy difficulty. An unexpected, glorious, generous patch of vivid yellow-orange chanterelle mushrooms bordered the trail! Each picked a share and left enough for some other lucky hiker. These beautiful mushrooms loved those warm, extensive rains! We have chanterelles for supper and they will be delicious, I’m sure. Perhaps I should stop my grumbling and start cooking.


roka
Theresa A. Cancro
 
Roka was an american kestrel — the smallest falcon — and my link to the wild, a glimpse into the soul of wildness itself. When Roka was a chick, he was knocked out of his nest and found by a teen. Roka imprinted on the boy who wasn't able to properly care for him. So he brought Roka to the local wild bird rehabilitation center. Later when I volunteered at the clinic, Roka was a “resident bird.” I was lucky to work with him on a biweekly basis. I took him out for walks on a falconer's glove among the tall grasses of nearby fields. I could sense that untamed part of him when his eyes focused on the distance, alert to all sounds and movement, crouching momentarily as if preparing to launch into the clear blue sky. In the evening as I left after my volunteer shift in the clinic, I'd call, “Good night, Roka,” towards his corn crib digs, and he'd respond with soft chirrups and trills. I looked forward to our walks and my peek into the heart of a wild bird. Roka later passed on to the realm of forever fields and skies where he now flies freely.


rockaway
Zee Zahava

My family leaves our sweltering Bronx apartment and moves into a tiny summer bungalow in Rockaway, just a short walk from the ocean. On Friday nights my sister and I go to the boardwalk and pitch nickels, hoping to win a goldfish or a stuffed animal. We spend a lot of nickels but we never win anything. I become friends with a slightly older girl named Shulamith. I tell her I’ll be learning French when school starts up again in the fall and she instructs me to practice rolling my r’s. You can’t speak French if you don’t roll your r’s, she proclaims, with all the authority of an 8th grader. Rrrrriver, I say, as we walk on the beach in our skimpy two-piece bathing suits. That makes her giggle. Rrrrradiator. Rrrrrailroad. Shulamith tells me I’m hilarious. Rrrrrotten. Rrrrringolevio.  She can’t stop laughing. Rrrrrazzmatazz. I don’t know where I get that from, it just pops into my brain. Rrrrrazzmatazz, Shulamith repeats, almost choking with delight. Rrrrrazzmatazz, she says again, practically screaming the word. She grabs my hand and gives my fingers a hard squeeze. We’re going to be best friends for life, she declares. But I never see her again after that summer at Rockaway Beach.

M is for . . . .

 
mia
Alan Bern

Every step unmentioned. The creek moved to the falls. The baby rattler slipped off from the water onto sand and into brush. Mia lay back over smooth rock naked in the sun with her arms open to the breeze. Waterfalling sounds increased as the sun began to go down. I climbed up. Then we lay together side-by-side, nothing between us. Our sounds were half-words, then questions. Our tongues touched. Answers. Dinner was small and uncooked. We slept under 1000 stars. Under light blankets.


mustard
Antonia Matthew

My aunt lived in a residential hotel. Some days when I visited, I played with the hotel manager’s daughter. In the morning, we helped set the tables for lunch. Each round table had a stiff white table cloth, napkins, a small vase, and a silver cruet set. We fetched the cruet sets, brought them to the workroom and set them on the table to be filled. The mustard pots were round and silver with three bent feet, a fancy handle and a tiny spike on the top of the lid, to lift it up. Inside was a small, deep blue glass bowl that reflected the light, and a tiny silver spoon shaped like a ladle. When the lid was shut, the thin handle fitted into an opening in the lid. Our job was to fill the blue bowls with mustard that was already mixed. We used tiny coffee spoons to spoon out the mustard and a cloth to wipe off any spills. Then we carefully put the bowls back inside the pots, slipped in the spoons and closed the lids. When all the cruets were filled, we put them inside their silver holders and carried them back to the tables.


marigolds
Barbara Brazill

Marigolds on the small table soft as silk.


marilyn
Barrie Levine

My cousin and I were fervent movie fans in the 1950s. We made up scrapbooks and traded photos of glamorous Hollywood stars. But Marilyn Monroe was our idol, and we followed her life story and career faithfully. I decided to write to Marilyn herself at Twentieth Century Fox to request an autographed picture. By return mail I received an 8×10 black and white glossy of Marilyn leaning against a draped satin background and wearing a sparkling diamond necklace, with an inscription in bright red ink addressed to me. My mom gave me permission to place a long-distance telephone call to my cousin to share the exciting news. Forty years later, a woman brought in the same photo of MM to Antiques Roadshow. The appraiser flipped out and said that Marilyn herself had used red ink, estimating the value at $5,000. It was later determined through archival research that studio secretaries customarily signed for Marilyn, regardless of the ink color. The potential to sell it to help pay my daughter’s tuition was no longer an issue. Instead, I got to keep the treasured photo of the sweet, sad, and beautiful movie star who I adored as a teen, and still do.


muddles
Blue Waters

When I was a kid I took great pride in the fine art of making mud pies. I called my favorite creations “muddles.” It was a simple and yet complicated procedure. I started by turning on the outside faucet and letting water collect in a dusty patch of the front lawn. Then I’d climb a nearby tree for a while to watch the water soak in deeply. Soon it was time to jump into the muddy pool and get to work. With my trusty shovel I dug up many clumps of mud and stacked them in my little red wagon. Then I’d find a special place to build a giant muddle. I’d grab up handfuls of gooey mud and mold them into sassy little shapes, giving each one some love and individual character. When I had a whole lot of mud pies I started piling them on top of each other to make a waist-high formation. A muddle was born and began its life. That could be a long time or last only until the neighbor’s St. Bernard toppled it. I didn’t care. The making of another muddle was just a day or two away. That was the fun part, after all.


music
Carole Johnston

Music can cause a soul to quake. Recently, I heard Abigail Washburn sing an old time Appalachian Mountain song, “Bright Morning Stars.” This song is usually sung as a round in traditional shape note style. Hearing this type of singing helps a person appreciate Appalachian culture. I had heard Abigail’s “warbly” voice before, but this song struck a chord in my heart. I don’t use words like soul and heart often, but what else can I say? I was stunned. I could not move. My skin began to vibrate, from legs and arms, to scalp. I quivered and quaked. This song came from England to Kentucky, with the Shakers, and it has enthralled audiences here for centuries. I was not born or raised in Kentucky but I am overwhelmed by the rich cultural heritage even though I do not share it. I do not quite fit in here. But the mountains call out to me. Traditional, Appalachian music strums in my bones. It echoes from a past life. “Day is a-breaking in my soul.”


marked
Christina Martin

“It's in the kitchen, it's in the kitchen!”  My little girl's screams are part wonder, part horror. I rush into the kitchen fully expecting to see a wild animal at the very least, ferociously lolling its tongue and baring its fangs, but no. The carrier pigeon (I notice a tag on its pink leathery leg) is sitting on the counter and then goes to hide behind the corn flakes box. Very ungainly it looks, with its prehistoric head and black bead eyes, but kind of pathetic. My daughter pushes her head forward excitedly, wanting to see. It's all a game of what to do to help the pigeon. When it finally leaves, I feel the slightest touch of feather-breath on my cheek. I smile, gently marked for peace.


monster
Deborah Burke Henderson

my monster has always been lying in wait, just below the surface, ready to pounce … but i’ve learned to lift my head, straighten my spine, and, once again, tell it to “back off.” why this intensity, this undercurrent, this trace of fear that pervades my being? of what am i afraid? failure, i suspect. not being good or worthy enough. i fall into the trap of comparing myself with others and often fall short. i subscribe to a higher power, yet still there are these doubts, these stirrings. when i surrender, though, and move within the ebb and flow of the universe, something beautiful happens. when i engage in creativity, strength and guidance find me, and contentment fills me. letting go and being mindful are key. looking at the naked truth head on, i push through it, again and again. my monster keeps me on tippy toe; i guess i wouldn’t have it any other way.


m
Emily Johnson

m sounds murmur and mumble and bumble and hum. They’re music and moonlight and mountains and mist. They’re Jiminy Cricket and pink bubblegum. They’re Mesopotamia, mummies in pits. Hummingbirds, memories, hominy grits.   

memory
Ian M. Shapiro

I just arrived home, it's later than I thought. I'm writing to you because I'm trying to understand it all. Seeing you across the street, and saying oh my god, is that you? And seeing you say, is that you? And seeing your eyes. And trying to understand time and distance and love and all. And asking if you have time for tea. And walking together, and talking together, and all we remember, and then, even more, all we simply don't. How is that possible? And you ask if I still tell stories. And you ask whether stories are just a means, a means to create a common memory, simply because we don't remember the same things? Is that all that stories are? If that's all stories are, then I'm done with stories, I just want my memory back. I want our memories back. But I don't accept it. I want our memories and our stories too. I'm just trying to understand, just trying to recall. It was so good to see you. It was so good to walk. It was so good to talk. It was so good to sit and have tea. With love.

message
Jack Goldman

Last year, before the Fall, I was awakened at sunrise by the tapping of a woodpecker pecking at a telephone pole outside my window. I grumbled a bit, but dismissed the incident until the stubborn bird returned, tapping on the pole like a telegraph operator sending an urgent message. This year the street is silent and I am kept awake by the woodpecker’s absence.

 
mortified
Jim Mazza
 
Stepping into the small shop, I am overcome by the smell. Cheeses, meats, garlic, olives engulf my senses. So saturated is the air that I consider turning my back or covering my nose. But this reaction quickly gives way to the pleasure of it, eliciting memories of holiday dinners with my sizable Italian-American family . . . of home. What is it about briny sardines, peppery salami, and roasted chestnuts that evoke such feelings of comfort? This is my first trip to Italy, and I’m eager to absorb every aroma, every flavor. Behind the counter stands a stout woman clad in a tightly wrapped apron. I croak a meek, “Buongiorno.” She smiles with encouragement, but I immediately regret my poor language skills. I stammer: “Mozzarella?”  She responds: “Si, signore, mortadella,” reaching for a cylinder of fat-flecked sausage. “No, no, signora. Mozzarella,” I say, a little louder. Her: “Mortadella?”  Me: “No, mozzarella.” Clearly, something is wrong. “Maaah-za-RAAAY-LA,” I say again, pointing towards the soft globes floating in milky water. “Ah, capisco,” she roars, “MOH-zah-rell-ah!” Using her bare hand she cradles the large, dripping cheese, holding it aloft for me to inspect. Mortified by my ugly mispronunciations, I can only nod. Relieved, she asks, “EEEt’s okay?”


mouse
Joan Leotta

At five-thirty, one morning, when I opened the door to my pantry to pull out the cereal for the children’s breakfast, a small gray mouse blinked out at me. I screamed. She ran. I shivered when I read about the diseases mice carry. I called an exterminator for more information. It seems roadwork destroyed nearby woods, and a cold spell combined to make Mama Mouse leave the woods for our home while we were vacationing a few weeks earlier. “They likely entered through the garage,” the exterminator told me, “from there into your basement, then up to your pantry.” I have to admit, I felt a certain sympathy with the mouse mother who had looked for food and safe housing for her family. But my children’s health came first. I bought traps. I bought containers for food. Steel wool for garage panels.As I scoured the pantry, boxed all food items into tin and plastic, I thought about my strategy. Mama mouse was hard to trap, but a have-a-heart trap found her. In the basement, I discovered a nest and hoped it was the only one. Carefully, I bagged both for removal. Sorry, Mouse. House is ours, woods are yours.


modesty
Judith Sornberger

When instructing her daughters to be modest, our mother meant “dressing or behaving so as to avoid impropriety or indecency” (OED). We girls wore dresses or skirts to school, so the first lesson in being ladylike was to keep your knees together while sitting so no one could see up your skirt. In our teens, Mom tried to convince us that it was more enticing to leave something to the imagination than to reveal too much of our bodies. This advice usually popped up when we shopped for bathing suits. A two-piece that looked innocent on the hanger often became too revealing, in her eyes, once on my developing figure. I’d pose before the fitting room mirror, delighted by the way it showed a bit of cleavage and my navel, knowing Mom would nix it when I stepped out. Leaving something to the imagination was a hard sell to a fifteen-year-old. But it showed she wasn’t only trying to keep me modest, that she thought being sexy, in a limited way, was a good thing, acknowledging me as a young woman with choices about the way she presented herself to the world. And, perhaps best of all, one a boy might imagine things about.


monday
Kathleen Kramer

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes. This is the way we wash our clothes so early Monday morning. I feel safe and happy when we sing this in Mrs. Errigo’s first grade class because I know that my mother and my grandma are doing what the song says. At our house, up on the hill, they’re trundling the big, wringer washer from the spare room onto the kitchen linoleum. They’re filling it with lots of hot water, heated on the stove. They’re putting the first load — the white clothes — into the wide mouth of the washer. And now the agitator is turning back and forth, back and forth — chugga-chug, chugga-chug. If I were home, I might try to dance to it, but doing the wash is important work and Mother and Grandma have to be careful not to get their fingers caught in the wringer rollers that squeeze the clothes through and plop them into the rinse tub on the other side. If I were home — sick with a cold, maybe — I’d be in my bed upstairs, under the quilt made by Aunt Helen, and the chugga-chug, chugga-chug of the washing machine would be like a daytime lullaby.


mmmm…
Katrina Morse
 
When most mothers in the 1960s were mixing up cakes from boxes iced with frosting from a can and heating up TV dinners in aluminum trays for their families, my mother only made food from “scratch.” There was a brief time when we ate squishy white Wonder Bread packaged in the plastic bag printed with colorful circles that always reminded me of a circus. But then she started making Anadama Bread, with its molasses and cornmeal making it a hearty toast and sandwich bread. Sugar was not something to cut back on then. We ate homemade macaroni and cheese (topped with ketchup), grape jelly omelets, Joy of Cooking recipe for hot fudge sauce on vanilla ice cream, and grandma’s recipe for chocolate cake with chocolate icing.  Granola, potato bread with a swirled cinnamon filling, snickerdoodle cookies. She did use some time-saving frozen vegetables. Sadly they were always overcooked and heavily salted. Lima beans, eww! Soggy spinach. Overcooked cauliflower, yuk! But oh the memories of freshly baked bread. I can still conjure up the heavenly smell on the warm blast of heat from the oven. Wait just a bit until it cools and then slather a slice with soft butter. Mmmm…


monster
Margaret Dennis

I am scared of monsters. When I was little, I was sure there was a monster in my bedroom closet. Even though I shared a room with my little brother, I was certain he was coming for me. At bedtime, my mother insisted that all lights be off and the door tightly shut. Every night I would pull the covers up and lie as still as I could, and as flat as I could, hoping that when the monster came out he wouldn’t know I was there. When that didn’t stop making me feel scared, I would quietly get up, open the bedroom door and tiptoe to the top of the stairs. I could usually hear the radio on as my mother and father listened to their favorite shows. I would eventually get up the courage to call down. “Mommie, can I open the door and have the hall light on?” She would come to the bottom of the stairs and say harshly “No! Get back to bed!” I would scurry back to bed, but this exchange would be repeated until she would threaten to “come up there!” I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I would return to bed. Monster or no monster, I didn’t want my mother’s wrath. Funny, these days I find I always sleep with a teeny tiny night light on.


moonflower
Marilyn Ashbaugh

It was love at first sight. I saw her in a neighbor’s garden at dusk on my summer walk. I mistook her for a morning glory, albeit one with poor timing. Before my eyes she began unfurling in her whirling-dervish way as she revealed her inner glow. I wanted her for my garden but I never saw her again.


medusa
Miriam Sagan

In our girls’ school uniforms we watch “Le Chien Andalu” in the auditorium. I’d rather be in the bathroom, hanging out and smoking Balkan Sobranies with my friend Juliet. She favors the black ones with the gold filters. They taste of elsewhere. A hole opens in the man’s palm and ants crawl in and out. I’m unimpressed. We have plenty of ants, in every sandy crack in the sidewalk. My father is at war with all nature, setting mouse and ant traps all over the house. And yelling at us if we leave the sugar bowl uncovered. But he is losing the battle. An old mop abandoned on the back porch is colonized by yellow jackets who build a nest in its snaky Medusa head. My father’s three daughters swell from flat-chested childhood into the busty rebellion of womanhood. We roll up our uniform skirts and show our legs, a shadow between the thighs. We believe, for the first time, that we are real, and begin to act accordingly.


maritime
Pris Campbell

Fourteen months of love letters from Vietnam and my fiancé’s ship is returning to Pearl Harbor for its four month break between tours. I’ve taken a job in Hawaii as a psychologist the last three months while I wait. Navy pay, even for an ensign, is poverty level so we’ll need my money to save for our future. The ship steams into the harbor channel finally, our crepe paper lei carried to meet it by a tug boat. Lei draped over the bow in the scented air, we wait, as sailors, all in dress white, stand in formation on deck. The navy band plays as the ship docks. My heart flutters. My stomach does the rumba. Two months later, my love and I rush out from the chapel under a vee of swords. Our reception is also the first big welcome home party, held at a friend’s navy apartment, food cooked by my matron of honor and me. I don’t yet know the toll being in Vietnam has taken but I will find out. I will lose the dream. But that’s all in my future. This night I dance.


married
Summer Killian

this is about a time when you rest your pretty head on someone else's sweatshirted chest and for a second, you don't know how old you are or what year it is — you don't need to know. you just know you love being right there, but — to be truthful, you forgot how it could feel — because it has been so long since it was just the two of you in a parking lot at dusk next to a field of dying sunflowers somebody planted by a deep, deep lake. cars are leaving, scattering pebbles as they pull out onto the highway, muffling the sounds of the crickets and the peepers only for a moment, and then you can hear it all again. there's a rhythm there, and some kind of message, too. so you stand there together, listening. are you smiling against each other's bowed heads now? maybe from a distance you look like those flowers, and you think to yourselves: we are married, we are married and it could be that you don't even know what that means, but now you are reminded of what it feels like.


maples
Theresa A. Cancro
 
I am six when I plant them, dozens of silver maple seeds in our garden out by the swing set. One by one, I create row upon row of plantings. I methodically insert my finger into the dirt. With gentle, circular motions, I widen the space and drop in a maple whirl-i-gig. I cover each seed with moist, pungent loam, a rich mixture of local soil and peat moss. Some of them grow, at first fragile and weak, but later they begin to sprout woody limbs. I water them daily after I get home from school. When we move to our new house, I make sure that Dad brings the saplings along. Mom and I have transferred them to small pots. We place them in boxes stacked against the back wall of the new porch. I ask Dad when we can plant them in the yard. He sets the pots out on the lawn, spacing them carefully, while I imagine shady spots. Miniature maples reach their branches to the sky. We plant one or two that day, the rest during long summer weekends.


mapquest
Tina Wright       
 
I like maps — for roads and highways, sure, but more maps of forests and parks. The Jenksville State Forest pamphlet map will never be in print again; some of my maps are scotch-taped. I once gave directions to hikers whose phones (with state forest trail maps) did not work in parts of Bear Swamp. Ah, but the Finger Lakes National Forest has brochure maps, lots, at many kiosks, so go Forest Rangers! I like maps. When people first used MapQuest to go places by car, it was pretty beta. Rural Moravia, where I grew up, has a tractor path called Church Road, a real road in the distant past, now a dirt track for tractors and jeeps, farmers’ pickups. MapQuest sent folks up and down that road, people heading to Moravia or Auburn. By tractor a zillion years ago, I had hauled hay down Church Road so it was funny to think of cars on that rocky steep tractor path (in winter? hahaha) but it is a good thing MapQuest finally rerouted the way. I’m not that mean.  


math
Tom Clausen

It started out so promising . . . I actually liked math at the outset. First there was addition. Simple adding numbers to other numbers. I was especially pleased with single digit numbers but became really impressed when I was able to do double and triple digits and carry over a number into the next column. Then came subtraction, again, a certain pride and confidence with the conquest of what was involved and I mostly could handle the taking away one number from another. I'll admit when division entered the picture there was concern, anxiety, and worry, but little by little with lots of error I began to sort of handle it. The same with multiplication. What came next, though, was way over my head which began to swim in the maze of numbers. There were bases, algebra, geometry, calculus and problem sets. It became clear I was out of my element with all the new-fangled math being presented. Taking math over in summer school didn't help but I got through it all somehow. To this day I cringe a bit at any hint of math beyond addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. I still am happiest with single digit numbers; double digits are ok and I can accept triple digits. But let's stop right there!    


money
Zee Zahava

I was probably 10 or 11 when I started to receive an allowance from my parents. In the beginning it was small: 25 cents a week. It soon went up to 50 cents. Eventually, one whole dollar. I spent my allowance immediately. On junk. Candy from the corner shop; trinkets from John’s Bargain Store. When I was in high school I earned money by babysitting. No more candy or cheap doodads for me. I saved all my babysitting money and on Saturday mornings I’d take the D train down to Greenwich Village. So many places to buy the things I wanted most: books and records; wide embroidered ribbons to sew onto the hems of my jeans to make them longer, more bell-bottom-y; cotton head scarves that Mom called shmattas (rags). One day the hippie who worked in my favorite record store gave me a kazoo as a present. He said I looked like the kind of person who should go around playing a kazoo. So that’s what I did. Wherever I went. Me and my kazoo. It became my most precious possession. And it didn’t cost me a penny.

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.

S is for . . . .

shrimp
Ann Carter
 
S is for shrimp. I can de-head two shrimp at one time, standing up. When I was twenty-five I worked on a small shrimp boat off the coast of North Carolina. We shrimped at night and dug clams during the day. Gliding through the salt-water creeks, the night sky stretched across my imagination and darkness wrapped itself around me. The weighted nets were dragged through the black water leaving gentle ripples behind us. When they were full, we hoisted the doors up, and emptied our catch into the boat. Then standing at the bow cap under lantern light, I de-headed pounds and pounds of shrimp, one in each hand.



s-shaped
Anne Killian-Russo

Our cabin-like home in the woods had its share of mice and spiders and ants and my husband always remarked calmly, “We live in the woods,” whenever I  would become unnerved enough about their presence and want to demand the landlords do something. It was a lovely home otherwise with just enough of what we needed and a wood-burning stove that kept me warmer than I’d ever been in the long northeastern winters. One warm August evening that turned into night while I worked, Cali, our cat, and I were upstairs creating a birthday memory project for my son, Sean, who was turning 30 in September. I worked and Cali dozed. Nobody else was in the house. Feeling quite pleased with how the 30 collages of photographs and words to represent cherished remembrances of his life were developing, I capped the glue stick, organized the materials for ease in picking up where I left off the next time, closed the light, and descended the stairs with Cali right ahead of me, as usual. At the moment my feet touched the ground floor, I noticed Cali frozen in full attention toward the living room. “What?” I asked her, as I turned toward what she was looking at, to see a black ring-necked snake slithering quickly across the floor, its body forming first a correctly formed capital S, and in one quick movement, a backwards one. We don’t live in that cabin “in the woods” anymore.



smoke
Bill Waters

I was out for a drive on a sunny November morning, and I was five cars behind a big dump truck. We were all moving down a narrow tree-lined road, and as the truck driver shifted up through the gears, clouds of exhaust came blasting out of his muffler. All that pollution! I set my ventilation system to internal as the bluish haze expanded — above the cars, above the truck, above the trees. And then I noticed the sunbeams: long, slanting shafts of light among the bare branches. Without the smoke, I couldn’t have seen those sunbeams; without the darkness, I wouldn’t have seen the light.



slinky
Blue Waters

I was five years old, in 1952. My three older siblings were all at school. Mom needed something from the Dime Store. We went together. I was too young to leave at home alone for a half hour, apparently. Not in my opinion, but definitely in Mom’s. While Mom went to find what she needed, I wandered around the store on my own. And then it happened. I saw something I absolutely had to have. A slinky! I fondled it’s wiry structure and imagined it walking down the basement stairs like I had seen on TV. I knew Mom wouldn’t think it an appropriate toy for me since it wasn’t a cutsie baby doll. So I just stuck that slinky in my pocket. We went back home. Helen, the owner of the Dime Store, was also my Sunday School teacher. When I saw her on Sunday, she winked at me. I knew she knew. I whispered my confession to her. “Just promise me, Martha, that this won’t become a habit. It’s not proper. So don’t ever do it again, okay?” “Okay. But can I keep my slinky anyway?” Helen gave me another wink. “As long as you be good.” My first big secret from my mom!



sex
Edna S. Brown

The questions my young children asked me about sex still make me giggle. How are babies made? (Sperm meets egg, they fall in love and a baby is made.) How does the sperm get to the egg? (Traditionally, penis goes in vagina.) Silence . . . . But only for a second, right? (Oh, I hope not!) Do you guys still have sex? (Much less than we used to before you were born.) Can we watch? (No! Oops, forgot to stress the privacy part.) You’re naked, aren’t you? (Yes, sexual partners may be partially clothed or naked.) Last comment, “naw, we don’t wanna watch that.”



streams
Frank Muller

All my life I have been soothed by streams in the woods. I often sit quietly on their banks and listen to their gurgling songs, becoming part of the scenery. I watch as deer, fox, and raccoon appear silently from the forest to drink. I float in kayaks or immerse myself in the cooling waters.
I sail leaves in the currents and watch the natural sailboats journey on the living, undulating, glistening pathways. Sometimes tiny water strider insects climb on board a leaf raft to rest. I watch as they spin and meander slowly downstream, then quicken in rapids until out of view, journeying towards unknown destinations; a metaphor for life.



stream
Ian M. Shapiro

By the high school there was a stream and when things got rowdy kids would get thrown in. One time the stream flooded and overflowed into the high school parking lot. The lot became a pond and this guy took a boat out in it. But what I loved was if you left the school and headed into the woods, following the stream, it all became mystery. Trees and light and shadows and water. And solitude. So I did that. I left the school and I headed down the stream.



stinky
Jim Mazza

Ours is a neighborhood of cats. Most are rescues and some have been plucked from cardboard boxes at farm stands posted with signs promoting: Zucchini, Tomatoes, Free Kittens. Others have arrived with the fall influx of students. Stinky was one of those. She accompanied a first-year veterinary student who moved in next door to us. A lovely, long-haired feline, with fluffy black and white fur, Stinky’s appearance (and sweet smell) belied her name. Often left alone, she spent most days curled up on our front porch. She was a great presence in our life, so we were saddened when Stinky and her student moved across town, although equally surprised to find her, just days later, once again on our porch, sleeping soundly in her usual chair. At first, we feared she had been abandoned but soon learned that Stinky’s daily visits to the old neighborhood were planned. As implausible as it seemed, Stinky arrived each morning — by car. In the evening, the car returned and blew its horn twice, the cue for Stinky to jump off our porch, run to the corner, and disappear into an opened passenger door. Unwittingly, although happily, we were providing Kitty Day Care.



sauce
Julie Lind

When I was growing up, my parents would pack my sisters, brother, and I into our gray minivan every Sunday and drive down the thruway to Niagara Falls. We could see my grandparents’ house from the 190: a small ranch on the corner of 70th street with yellow siding, a brick front, and two small plum trees in the backyard. As we pulled up to the side walkway, we took our seatbelts off, ready to slide open the car door and run towards the entrance. Before we set foot inside, we could smell the garlic, tomatoes, and meat that had been simmering on low all day, the flavors folding into each other. We could hear my aunts’ Italian voices talking about what happened that day at the hospital, the smoke of their Merit menthol cigarettes filling each pause. The basement was the only room large enough to hold everyone, so at dinnertime we all headed downstairs and sat at the two tables that my grandfather had made out of old doors. We passed around the Parmesan cheese and sprinkled it on platefuls of spaghetti covered in sauce. Before we ate, my grandfather led us in prayer: “Father, Son, Holy Ghost, who eats the fastest gets the most!”

 

swan
Kath Abela Wilson

I was in love with the letter S. I knew it meant more. It only counted for one, I knew that. But added to other things it was priceless. Doubled their value, even tripled, without trying. I could be like that. I knew it. And so I was always in love. I began to collect S's. I put them in artworks, and modeled my signature with swirls and curliques. Finally with natural grace, one night, one began to come to life, formed itself with clay in my fingers, into a swan, the most natural shape,  a beak on one side and fan on the other. I had met my match. That was the night we grew wings.



soaps
Kathleen Kramer

Every Monday through Friday, at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon, Mother and Grandma Hess settled themselves before the TV, sighing with contentment and anticipation. It was time for their favorite soap opera, As the World Turns. Balanced on their laps were their lunch plates, and placed carefully on the floor beside them, steaming cups of black coffee. Mother’s lunch was always a cheese and onion sandwich — sharp cheddar, topped with a thick slice of Spanish onion. Grandma’s was the same, sans onion, but slathered with mustard. The morning’s work — whether it had been scrubbing floors, changing sheets, or canning peaches — was done, and they could lose themselves in the dramatic world of Sheila and Tom, Old Judge Lowell, and Bob and Lisa Hughes, whose troubles were always worse than their own.



snap
Katrina Morse
 
Larry Mortimer was destined to sit behind me in homeroom from 7th grade to 12th, Mortimer being alphabetically closest to my last name of Morse. In 7th grade three elementary schools merged together and we started having homeroom and passing classes. Each homeroom was a chunk of students whose last names were close together in the alphabet, so Larry and I started each day for 6 years sitting in our row of desks with me in front of him and him looking at my back. Larry looking at my hair, at what I was wearing each day . . . and then one day in 7th grade homeroom he ran his finger down my spine. I could feel it through my top. “You aren’t wearing a bra,” says Larry. “There’s nothing to snap.” I don’t know what I said, if anything. I am sure I turned bright red, mortified that he had noticed that I was still a prepubescent girl with no breasts. After that I asked my mom for a “training bra” and then asked her how to shave my legs — and hated how my legs quickly became scratchy hair stubble.



skinny
Margaret Dennis

I was always skinny as a kid. My legs were so thin that I had to endure tons of insults growing up, like: “what are those strings hanging out of your shorts?” or “what are you standing on? Toothpicks?” It didn’t help that my mother  was especially proud of her legs. She wore sheer nylons with seams up the back and very high heels, all to show off her proudest attributes. When the mother of my best friend bought me my first garter belt and stockings at age twelve (my own mother would never have done this) I was thrilled and felt so sophisticated! It didn’t matter anyway, though, as the stockings just “puddled” at my ankles. I cried bitter tears. It wasn’t just my legs that were skinny, I was thin all over. In elementary school we would get little cartons of milk for a mid-morning snack. I hated mine. The milk was warm and unappetizing. The nun in charge of my class would inevitably decide that if there were any “extra” they should go to me since I looked undernourished! The thought of that time can still turn my stomach. As years went on I did get an appetite, gained weight, and looked somewhat more “normal.” My legs never changed though. They are still skinny, but at this point, I have decided to like them!



sunrise
MJ Richmond

It was still dark as I drove my rental car down into the canyon toward three rainbow-colored hot air balloons resting on their sides. At first it appeared that the canopies were being filled with fire, but they were actually capturing the heat that was urgently coaxing the balloons to repeatedly rise and fall back to the ground. The basket readied for its passengers by sitting upright as the nylon envelope expanded. The sky above the Arizona canyon walls was light peach as I climbed into the wicker basket quarters and we lifted off. First we floated gently, a few inches aloft along the ground, then moved smoothly up into the morning light. We rose quickly as the sky took on hues of deep pink and bright reds. Soon we were close to an altitude of 3000 feet, moving in a river of air being heated by the rising sun that greeted us near the top edge of the steep-walled valley.   



sudan grass
Tina Wright
 
For the hell of it, I am growing a garden plot of Sudan grass this season as a cover crop.  My first try, buckwheat, was decimated by birds, especially killdeer nesting nearby. So I replanted. A crazy thing to do anyway, sign up for a Cornell community garden space in late May after my brother Jay’s death, but I needed a project like this, a cover crop with garden tools. In his last days Jay was desperate to refurbish the Farmall M tractor in his yard to a bright new red and I was to be his helper. So, we’re doing this instead, Jay. I tell the June blue sky about calling the Ithaca Agway Farm/Garden line to ask about seeds and the woman there had never heard of Sudan grass. Only Jay would know what I mean. Jay, she never even heard of Sudan grass! I told her it’s a sorghum, dairy farmers grow it sometimes when you can’t get corn in on time. And she acted funny like I was asking about quinoa seeds or something weird, exotic. Only Jay would know what I mean. A farm store!



scurvy
Zee Zahava

Mom talks a lot about scurvy. That I will get it if I don’t eat half a grapefruit every day. She says it’s what sailors used to get and it is a bad thing. I say I’m not a sailor. Mom says that doesn’t matter. Half a grapefruit. Every day. She must have read an article about this in one of her magazines: Redbook or Family Circle. I hate grapefruit, so bitter, makes my mouth pucker. Mom doesn’t care. Every day. Half a grapefruit. Because of the sailors. And the scurvy.

Types of Silence: a collective list compiled between May 1 and May 3, 2020

The silence of a bad internet connection
The silence of waiting for a phone call
The silence of a finished book
The silence of a sleeping cat
The silence of a break in the rain
The silence of new buds blooming
The silence of an antique plate, lying smashed and scattered on the floor
The silence of elves when people pass by
The silence of waiting for bad news
The silence of the world holding its breath


The silence of ignored pain
The silence of a brilliant idea, lost
The silence of confusion
The silence of not saying anything because it would be rude to comment
The silence of predawn
The silence of a text, forgotten and left unread
The silence of two people on a video call, longing for each other
The silence of 174 miles, the distance between you and me
The silence of the coward
The silence of the ache nobody sees


The silence of emptied park
The silence of the house he won’t come back to
The silence of insensate stones
The silence of savoring that first cup of morning coffee
The silence of the just-filled bird feeder waiting for visitors
The silence of waving to others from 6 feet away
The silence of a baseball stadium waiting for the pitch
The silence of contemplating the empty canvas
The silence of writing the dreaded letter
The silence of a sulking child


The silence when a concert ends, just before the applause begins
The silence when your car hits a patch of black ice
The silence of shock — felt in the pit of your stomach
The silence of fear
The silence when you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake
The silence of the naughty child
The silence of disappointment
The silence after meditation
The silence when the phone stops ringing
The silence of snow falling on the ocean


The silence after tears
The silence during joyful memories
The silence of a back alley viewed from a hotel window
The silence of the room around my thoughts at night
The silence of a flat roof
The silence of a crawlspace
The silence of an attic
The silence of a prison cell after the door is closed
The silence on top of Mount Washington that I didn’t know existed
The silence that became my mother’s eyes toward the end


The silence that abides in all trees
The silence that arrives when deep friendship settles into itself
The silence of tears falling inside your heart
The silence of daffodils waving in the breeze
The silence in your car when you're all alone going nowhere in particular
The silence / rest between musical notes without which there would be no melody or rhythm
The silence before telling the truth
The silence of an earring that has lost its mate
The silence of of a loose ring, slipping off my finger
The silence of a tube of lipstick, unused for decades


The silence of a rainbow, fading
The silence after a raucous mental storm
The silence at the completion of my exhale
The silence of a still lake at dawn
The silence of my dull depression
The silence of my own sweet soul
The silence when the Jimi Hendrix song ends
The silence in your smile
The silence of touch
The silence of my deaf dad’s world


The silence of gum inside my pocket after washing my pants
The silence of his final breath
The silence of the platform after a fast moving train has left the station
The silence of morning when the garbage trucks depart
The silence of a searching eye
The silence of summer as I dip my head below the surface of the water
The silence of a deleted email
The silence of defeated desire
The silence of a jet stream drifting above my head
The silence of my 1968 Royal electric typewriter gathering dust in the attic


The silence of a restaurant cocktail shaker awaiting ice and a customer
The silence of the snowblower on a mid-July day
The silence of a raccoon in the tree above my car
The silence of an albino skunk as it scurries between my feet
The silence of the King Fisher just before spotting dinner in the creek below
The silence of a line of industrious leaf-eating ants
The silence of her inaudible voice beneath the protective cloth mask
The silence of a grasshopper cupped in my granddaughter’s hands
The silence of freshly-cut grass
The silence of a heron moving through the rushes

The silence of an echo on the moon
The silence of the last word in an argument
The silence of the printer when it stops
The silence of a sleeping baby
The silence of  a fog horn when the blast ends
The silence of your breath behind a mask
The silence of the clothes hanging in my closet
The silence of the orange glow of a Himalayan salt lamp
The silence of an unplayed piano
The silence of a full moon hiding behind a cloud


The silence of the sun resting on a turtle's back
The silence of the tulip before it opens
The silence of goldfish gleaming in a sunlit pond
The silence once the barking dog is let inside
The silence of pages in a new blank journal
The silence of my childhood doll
The silence of the orchid in a season of non-blooming
The silence of the dove spreading warmth over her babies
The silence of the Muse in a dry season
The silence of dandelions invading the garden


The  silence of a worm as the robin pulls it from wet earth
The silence of deep mud below the river's rushing
The silence after the death of your beloved
The silence before someone leaves
The silence after someone leaves
The silence right before the first glimmer of dawn
The silence of the stars on the coldest night of the year
The silence that tells you something you’ve cooked is delicious
The silence when snow stops falling, a reminder that falling snow makes a sound
The silence when the day is over and the house dark, but for two small reading lights


The silence that gives you goosebumps
The silence that soothes a headache
The silence that opens space for ideas
The silence of seeds as they breach the dark crust of potting soil
The silence of the yellow trout lilies, lightly waving in a low-flying breeze
The silence of the soft, white quilt after I’ve made my bed
The silence of the empty bird feeder
The silence of soggy Rice Krispies
The silence of moss on the roof of the old shed
The silence of the painting when I’ve straightened it on the wall


The silence of my bedroom ceiling at 3 a.m.
The silence when I email my teenage granddaughters
The silence between breathing out, breathing in
The silence of the last straw
The silence of moonlight through a white curtain
The silence of weeds around my mother’s gravestone
The silence of cornstalks on a windless afternoon
The silence of an ice cube melting
The silence of a rocking chair after the children are grown
The silence of thankfulness when there is too much to give thanks for


The silence of the teardrop as it rolls off of her cheek
The silence of the room during deep meditation
The silence of despair after surrender
The silence of the child after an intrusion
The silence of the heart after its last beat
The silence of the earth following a soaking rain
The silence of the fawn under the pine bough
The silence of the woman when all is lost
The silence of the sleeping village at 3 a.m.
The silence from unspoken words that could have made a difference


The silence of the ventilator just after it is turned off
The silence in the synagogue as the last candle is blown out
The silence of a book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time
The silence of a canoe gliding across still water
The silence of a broken pencil
The silence of my inner clown
The silence of an unsent letter
The silence after a terrible thought
The silence of “I can't believe I said that . . .”
The silence of not knowing what to say


The silence in the middle of an argument
The silence of kids playing — a sudden silence that means trouble
The silence of a memory that shuts out the present
The silence in those seconds as you pass from awake to asleep
The silence of midnight in the suburbs
The silence of an unopened pinecone
The silence of one pebble in my pocket
The silence of a spinach seed in the earth, not yet sprouted
The silence of birds as the spring storm descends
The silence of boys, when all goes quiet because they broke something


The silence of all the things we cannot say
The silence after I say too much
The silence of a prayer held deep inside my chest
The silence of houseplants, no judgment from them
The silence of my dog as the sun sets and sleep arrives
The silence inside of me, just before I begin something difficult
The silence of this car packed to the gills, the engine not yet started
The silence of a fawn beside the trail, hidden by its mama
The silence of a poem after it has been read aloud
The silence of a lazy cloud


The silence of trees standing, waiting
The silence of light introducing the dawn
The silence of a mourning heart
The silence of the road ahead
The silence of a woman saying goodbye to her dad
The silence of the past
The silence of a soft kiss
The silence of humility and forgiveness
The silence of true wisdom
The silence of aging


The silence of feeling alone
The silence of an internal prayer
The silence of a lullaby sung by a summer’s sun
The silence of regret
The silence of a lost friendship
The silence of drifting off to sleep while sitting in a cozy chair
The silence of a secret love
The silence of eternity
The silence of the unknown
The silence of seeing oneself in another

The silence at the center of a pause
The silence at the bottom of the swimming pool, near the drain
The silence after we leave
The silence before and the silence after and the silence during
The silence of the frozen sea
The silence between drips after the rain stops
The silence of doing something just a little bit sneaky and not wanting to be found out
The silence of the unreturned wave
The silence of a Sunday morning, very early
The silence after saying the words “I love you”


The silence of fog, filling the crevices between the spruce trees
The silence of no cat
The silence of Quaker meeting
The silence of the setting sun as it slips into the lake without a single splash
The silence of disapproval
The silence of my neighbor’s little boy — two panes of glass between us
The silence of unfurling ferns and purple violets opening
The silence of a hibernating rodent
The silence after the last leaf falls
The silence of the cabin in the dead of winter 


The silence of a cup of tea
The silence of outer space
The silence at the bottom of the ocean
The silence at the end of a song
The silence of fog settling on the hill at midnight
The silence of the dog circling on her bed
The silence of dough rising in my grandmother’s bowl
The silence of the star blazing across the dark horizon just before dawn
The silence of my heartbeat unheard by anyone but me
The silence of lit candles, hoar frost forming on windows, and leaves heavy with dew


The silence of the house as sleep becomes elusive
The silence of lying in bed before I start thinking
The silence before remembering we are in a pandemic
The silence of being alone in my house
The silence just before the coffee kettle whistles
The silence of the bird's nest cradled on my porch
The silence before I turn on the radio or the television
The silence of passing people 6 feet apart, wearing masks
The silence of smiling behind my mask
The silence all day long, just waiting, waiting


The silence before telling the truth
The silence of a strand of origami cranes
The silence before the start of a family Zoom session
The silence of a Little Free Library, empty of books
The silence of turning pages in a book I am reading with the Kindle app
The silence of Tibetan prayer flags on my neighbor’s porch
The silence of my rage, rarely expressed
The silence after the woodpecker flies away
The silence of a locked door
The silence before that last whispered “good-bye”

===

A great big NOISY “Thank You” to all these wonderful contributors:

Anne Killlian-Russo
Beth Evans
Betty L. Spero
Caroline Gates-Lupton
Ellen Shapiro Wiernicki
Fran Helmstadter
Gary Russo
Ian M. Shapiro
Jai Hari Meyerhoff
Jayne Demakos
Jim Mazza
Judith Sornberger
Kate Halliday
Kathy Kramer
Leslie Howe               
Margaret Dennis
Marty Blue Waters
Maryam Wilson
Peaches Gillette
Saskya van Nouhuys
Sheila Ann Dean
Sue Norvell
Susan Annah Currie
Victoria Jordan
Virginia Fenton
Yvonne Fisher
Zee Zahava

A Numbers Journal (a collective list)

2 children on scooters block my path across the pedestrian bridge; they giggle and say “password please”

15 minutes to walk to my office each morning and only 4 minutes to return home at night

40 years of friendship with my beloved and we still laugh together every day

12 spiders make their home on our entry porch

9 people pass our house and, happily to my ears, four different languages are spoken

5 egg-soaked slices of bread, topped with cinnamon-sugar, makes a lovely meal of French toast

8 men’s vests in my closet; she calls me “Vest Man”

7 pens  in my backpack but only 1 has ink

1 monarch butterfly has made a home in our garden

22 long-forgotten cherry tomatoes found in the back of the fridge; four are still edible

1500 calories ingested daily and I still can not lose weight

430 bridges make the many little islands of Venice into a single city

9 chopsticks in the drawer but only two matching pairs

3 locust trees slightly yellowing and glowing in the autumn sun

4 bright white moths fluttering among the lavender

5 bright beaded bracelets on my tired typing wrist

1 joyful granddaughter discovering her feet

1 castle ruin and countless Scottish hills etched calmly in my mind forever

2 hours I will never get back . . . damn stupid movie

1cat lying in the sun, she knows winter is coming

3 chrysanthemums on the porch this year, 2 last year, 1 the year before … maybe 4 next year?

7 newly planted daylilies already waiting for spring

3 wheels are best for 1 waterfront trail 

24 mandarin oranges to a 3 pound bag

7880 unread emails

8 emails read and answered

2 pieces of toast with mascarpone and jalapeño raspberry jam, plus one more

2 cups of coffee lingered over while reading about snails

4 books returned to the library; 6 books brought home

3 times my path crossed that of a possible friend, unexpectedly, in the same week

1 perfect hug

5 bowls, 3 spoons, 2 mugs, 1 plate, and 1 knife waiting to be washed

2 minutes less sunlight than yesterday, forgiven in light of the full moon

71 steps over 10,000 just before midnight

19 hours and 40 minutes past deadline

6 negotiations before the wedding invitations can be sent out

17 houses I’ve lived in so far in my lifetime

11:11, 1:11, 10:10 — numbers that come up all too frequently on my iPhone when I look to see the time, making me wonder what lies beyond the reality we live in — it must be something beyond a coincidence but I don't know exactly what it might mean

1 sister, sometimes not enough, sometimes way too many

 2 aunts I never knew as well as I wish I had

3 cousins who have always lived too far away

4 grandparents, all of whom I knew for so many years — I was so lucky

3 sisters-in-law; sadly 2 have died

56 sand dollars lined up on a rail along the dune

327 and its cousin 237 are numbers that frequently show up for me, and have done since childhood

12 pairs of shoes and sandal in my closet

1 new pair of striped Smart Wool socks that I love

2 jars of “peach pour-over” made by my neighbor, waiting to be used as a topping for vanilla ice cream

30 years I’ve been going to the beach in Maine

10 times last week I said to waiters and waitresses “no straw, please”

25 years I’ve been coming to the Thursday morning writing group in Zee’s studio

10 toes that press too tightly in my shoes

38 students to teach

57 pages that need editing

2 eyes that itch

1 nose that needs blowing

33 years a mother

51 years since my mother died

50 nights in 50 states — performances by George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers

320 one-night stands in a single year by the band Three Dog Night

3 keyboardists in The Grateful Dead who died too soon — it was like a curse

5 rings — 3 worn on my left hand, 2 on my right

2 watches —1 was my late father’s and 1 is mine — plus 5 bracelets, all worn on my left wrist

8 bracelets (and 1 scrunchie, if it’s not in my hair) worn on my right wrist

19th of January, my birthday, and I share it with Edgar Allan Poe who was my favorite poet when I was a child, long before I knew when he was born

9 children in a family, four were born in January, four were left-handed

2 sets of parents and children with the same birthdays within the same family

1 brother born with eleven fingers (1 was surgically removed)

1 rocket to be built by the 2 hands of 1 young child

1 Basset Hound, 1 corn snake, 3 salamanders, 1 guinea pig, and 30 gerbils; I had them all at the same time

20 years between me and my son, 20 years between him and his daughter

2 boys and 4 girls as grandchildren

13 windows in my last apartment in Brooklyn

3:47 a.m. is when I have woken up for the last 15 days

48 teaspoons in a measured cup

1 eagle circles two baby ospreys as they sit in their nest

2 pairs of used winter boots lying on the curb next to a “Free” sign

2 baby guppies named Tick and Tock

1 accidental click of the “send” button can change everything

28 raisins in my granola (I didn’t actually count but I’m an amazing guesser)

7 pieces of mail, 5 of them go right into the trash unopened

1 person ahead of me in line at Wegmans but the third person in line in the next aisle beats me

2 people waiting impatiently for the simmering chili and 1 person not really hungry

8 servers at Applebees who always want a hug when I come in

3 people who usually join our Sunday morning coffee chat at Ithaca Bakery

3 inconveniently timed stop lights entering town from Route 89

1 lonely jalapeño pepper hanging onto the stem after a stormy night of  September gusts

3 birds identified by a beginning birder roaming through the woods — a phoebe, a red-tailed hawk, and a vulture

4 digitized photographs (40+ years old) taken by my best friend in Taiwan — a group of friends from college days — so good to be reminded of the young men and women we once were

5 boy toys that used to belong to my son, sold in the garage sale: the Tonka truck, the toy dump truck, the super soaker, the hockey stick, and the soccer ball

6 purple and green lawn chairs, strewn forlornly in my neighbor's manicured yard, waiting for the grandchildren to stop by

7 ingredients are all I need to create a simple, satisfying Chinese stir-fry dish: 1 protein, 1 seasonal veggie, brown sauce (soy sauce, wine, vinegar, sugar, and chili)

5 North Carolina pines, beacons of light in the morning fog, their noble trunks silvery grey

256 silky strands, some sticky, some not — a gossamer web

1 word, a name, separating you from him

4:17 twice each day — once while I’m sleeping and once in the afternoon and if I see the time I whisper “Happy Birthday” to myself

2 refrigerators, 1 just for beer

4 days of solitude

5 folks in my family

55 trips up and down the stairs, carrying stuff into my new apartment 

65 packing cartons used in this move from one home to another

18 buds on my new African violet plant

1 full moon + 1 day at the Jersey shore = effective antidepressant

7 days to practice until Porchfest

6 screws stuck in an odd pocket at the yard sale, miraculously remembered when needed

5 milkweed pods piled on the porch railing — now where are they?

4 friends to visit and I only have to walk 1 mile

3 Bad Things happening in a row, just like my mother would say

2 books placed in the Little Free Library; 1 book taken from the Little Free Library

0 frogs singing at my pond this year

1 person successfully avoided on the street, only to have her turn up again 5 minutes later (and we bump right into one another)

7 grade school children clambering in the creek-bed, on the hunt for crawdads

6 layers of sheets, blankets, and mother-made quilts as autumn approaches

5 trips to the mechanic so far this month

4 times we sing the sacred medicine song

2 dogs dozing in primordial yin-yang formation on their yoga mat

2 beloved beings we are mourning whose birthdays are this month

4 fingers that haven’t touched the frets of a stringed musical instrument in many moons

5 windows and 1 door closed against the cold of night

6 dishes that haven’t been washed

7 directions beyond the visible to call upon for support and guidance on our healing paths

22 people ahead of me in the ticket line for the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra

5 times I went to my closet to get something, forgetting what it was each time

14 pennies, 2 nickels, 5 dimes, and 7 quarters rambling around in my pocket

2 really big worries keeping me awake at 5 a.m.

2 toothbrushes in a glass jar next to the bathroom sink

1 new word I learned this morning and forgot by evening

2 really good ideas before breakfast

3 pairs of eyeglasses on my desk

50 or more (maybe 100?) pens, over my lifetime, that have run out of ink when I didn’t have another pen handy

2 friends I wish I saw more often

15 cherry tomatoes in the blue bowl but only 5 are orange (my favorite)

11 books waiting to be read

1 week since I felt truly at ease

$259.98 — the cost of a new Royal 79120q Classical Manual Typewriter (red)

6 tiny turtle sculptures remaining from the time when I collected turtle sculptures

30 pairs of socks in a canvas basket on the floor of my bedroom; 12 pairs of socks in the sock drawer

54 colored pencils patiently waiting for me to use them; 36 marking pens, also patient; 64 crayons, not that patient

$6 and the Sunday New York Times is mine

0 regrets — I wish!

27 minutes to prepare my lunch; much less time to eat it

16 endless minutes of intermission

37 items of black clothing in my closet (shirts, pants, sweaters, jackets, coats, shoes)

16 times I greeted a stranger with “Good Morning” during my 30 minute walk; 6 responded; the rest didn’t seem to be aware that a person had passed them on the street

69 at my next birthday in a little over 6 months — I find it hard to believe this is true

1 woman I mistake for another woman, resulting in an inappropriate wave

5 equally excellent choices of what to eat for lunch — an embarrassment of culinary riches

1 peaceful day filled with countless moments of contentment and ease

==

Thank you to all these contributors:


Annie Wexler
Barbara Anger
Barbara Cartwright
Barbara Kane Lewis
Barbara Van Dyk
Denise Horvath
Fran Helmstadter
Gabrielle Vehar
Jenny Marshall
Jim Mazza
Jonathan Plotkin
Judith Andrew
Lyn Staack
Manuela Amzallag
Marty Blue Waters
Mary Louise Church
McCaddens of Honey Sweet Harmony
Peaches Gillette
Reba Dolch
Rob Sullivan
Saskya van Nouhuys
Stacey Murphy
Sue Norvell
Susie C Y Li
Timothy Weber
Yvonne Fisher
Zee Zahava