To The New Radio in the Kitchen

How many years did I live with the little blue bubble of a radio? Since we moved here, since before. It has a cassette player on top. This could be from the ‘80’s.

The old radio with cassette player

 I kept it on the window sill and every morning, I turned on Morning Edition while I made my lunch for work, poured cereal, toasted bread. My second and third cup of coffee. I prefer my news from the radio. Despite my love of reading, newspapers overwhelm me, the tiny text, the columns and columns, flipping through pages to finish a story, trying not to get distracted. Really, newspapers are too much work. I want to just listen. I never move the dial off public radio.

Over the years, though, I had to go through an elaborate series of fine tuning to get the signal to come in: a gentle push left then right of the “AM/FM button,” rolling the dial ever-so-slightly across 89.7, 89.65, 89.75. Somewhere in there was the sweet spot where the voice went from cloudy to clean. Some mornings I had to move the whole thing to face a little more west, a little more north; I could almost see the radio waves touching the antenna.

Finally one morning, when the sound would only come in clearly if I stood in one spot with my hand on the dial, as I was trying to eat my cereal off the counter with the other hand, already in my black dress for work, I decide, finally, enough is enough.

I make a deal with my son for the clock radio he has in his room and never ever uses. I swap a bag of gummy bears for it. He thinks he’s getting the better deal.

Downstairs, I plug it in. The time blinks big enough for me to see it from the doorway. I tune it to NPR and without hesitation or finesse, there she is: Terri Gross. Clear as I have ever heard her. I make a tea and no matter where I wander in the kitchen, no matter what cupboard I open or appliance I touch, her voice, that laugh right before she asks that question that no one else would dare to ask, it’s all as clear as if she was right beside me.

I traded gummy bears for this upgrade. Crystal clear sound

And then I wonder why it took me so long.

Honestly, sometimes I just forget that I don’t have to live the way I’m living. I think, this is what my life is. It’s this radio on this window sill and I need to make it work. And it can take years for me to tell myself it can change. I’ve gotten used to myself telling myself, “You’re such a fool.”

To My Front Porch

You cover the whole front of the house, and from the end of April to the first real bite of cold in September, you are the most popular room. I go out in the mornings, coffee, computer and both the dogs. When I was a teenager, I was horrified at my parents sitting in the backyard in their robes. I had no idea the pleasure in this. I have to remember to tell them I’m sorry about that. I realize now, though, they could not explain it to me.

Keith works from home and once he has a grasp on the day ahead, he sets up his office on the porch table. He keeps on eye on Chuck across the street. Chuck was laid off years ago and forced into retirement. He’s made peace with it now and takes care of the house. He pulls out the extension ladder and gets up on the roof. It may be raining. He’s indifferent. Keith listens, tries to work.

Later, in the afternoon, after my run, I bring a large cup of ice water out, go from sitting to lying down on the wicker sofa. I think no one can see and I’m shocked when Wendy, walking her dog, waves. I close my eyes, not napping, but certainly not awake.

Napping on the porch

Dinner. Whit joins us. We haven’t seen him all day. He carries out his plate. He won’t admit to liking summer, but dinner on the porch tastes better. I wonder what, if anything, he will apologize for when he’s older, when he understands finally what we simply can’t explain.

Like why we want him to sit with us, the way we love coffee. I can’t explain why I love the sound of crickets and the smell of the fresh cut grass. Why the end of the day feels so good and why music doesn’t need to be so loud anymore. We can’t explain why or how we have stayed married 20 years, except to say we have. Keith gets up to get something from the kitchen and before he goes inside, he turns to me, “Do you need anything?”

Which, I suppose, explains it.

To The West Point Market

Akron, Ohio doesn’t even sound good. So many vowels and all the ugly ones. But a job was there and so we went. For the first time in my life, I felt I had no choice and the strong hand of fate was pushing me here. I saw no out.

This is not a pretty town, not a fun town, not a bright and shiny town. The university here is known for polymer science. This town is famous for rubber, for tires. Goodyear, Firestone, Bridgestone are all Akron. This is not Detroit, building Cadillacs and Ford pick-ups. This is, quite literally, where the rubber meets the road--the cold, hardscrabble, rust-belt, snowbelt, midwest-borders-east coast-road.

It’s July. The tiny neighborhood park buzzes with children. A woman strikes up a conversation. Yes, I’m new. No, no family here. No, no friends. A job. Bought a house around the corner. Learning.

I ask where the best grocery stores are and have to laugh when she says “Acme.” Like the packages Wylie E. Coyote had shipped to him, full of rocket skates and anvils? Acme? “Well,” she says, “there’s West Point Market, but that’s very fancy.”

Yes, please show me the fancy. Let me have options other than Hellavagood Cheddar and Kraft Velveeta. An olive bar? A bakery with a sourdough country loaf? Locally roasted coffee beans in bulk? Italian olive oil and English tea? Is it too much to ask?

Our lovely, unassuming but essential local grocery store

Even in Akron. Walking through the store, I realize I can live here. I won’t shop here often. But I know there’s enough demand for a small amount of the good life to keep this store in business.

Akron isn’t upscale and it’s not refined. It’s rubber and potholes and rough edges. But we have a small reserve on Market Street. Just ours, not a chain. Just enough to feel at home, the balance between what’s given and what’s possible.

To All the People Who Followed Their Dreams and Got F'ing Nowhere

Year after year, they show up in my class, the kids who want to be a professional athlete and think college is the way to do it. They aren’t here on scholarship and were not recruited for the team. But still, it’s all they talk about. One day, they will hit the big time.

These are the easy ones to spot because I know their chances. The NCAA tries to warn them, explains that just over 1% of college athletes go pro. The point of college is an education, not a road to a major league stadium, but even still, they believe. They have to. How else will they get there?

The other failed dreams are harder to see. Maybe the kid who wants to be an wealthy entrepreneur, taking her boat on Lake Erie on a Tuesday because she’s the boss and can do whatever she wants, maybe she’ll make it. The one who says he’s just here to get his grades up and then he’s going to OSU like both his parents and his sister. He shakes his head when I turn back his paper. “This is bullshit.” Maybe in next fall, he’ll be there.

Last year, Steve Harvey came to our school. He told the students they should not have a plan B. Plan B means you think plan A won’t work. And that means you’re setting yourself up to fail. He never had a plan B and look where it got him. He assures them it’s not easy; they will work harder than they ever imagined, but it’s possible.

I don’t know what to say about hopes and dreams, about lofty goals and outliers. But what about the rest of us? Can we be happy when we realize, finally at 27, 34, 48, that this is, in fact, it? This house with the creaky floors is as good as it gets. This job with the boss who takes all the credit is as good as it gets. Singing softly in the grocery store aisle is only chance for a public performance.

We didn’t have a plan B. Plan B’s are created, they find us. They whisper in our ear, “Take a break. Follow me…” Plan B takes our hand, sits us down in a folding lawn chair. “This is better, yes?” passing us a plate of ribs with hot potato salad on the side. The tea is cold and sweet.

All our life we have been told not to give up, to follow our dreams. We can be whatever we want to be. Have I given up? Gotten nowhere? This is a life I did not imagine. No one I know is living their childhood dreams. We get together on the weekends, showing up with bottles of wine and plates of stuffed mushrooms. Bowls of olives. Everything led right up to this moment.

To Campfires, Fire Pits and Fireplaces

I’m not a pyromaniac and certainly not an arsonist, but I do love a good fire, contained. The crackle, the slow dissolve of the wood as it burns, the blue flames, the sparks that burst up when the fire is stirred.

All our vacations growing up were camping, 47 minutes out of town, but I thought we drove to Missouri. All seven of us in the VW bus, pulling a boat filled with Sears sleeping bags. My sister drew imaginary lines around herself, “This is my space!” I had no choice, it seemed; I had to put my fingers right up close to her cheek and say, “I’m not touching you.” I always thought we went to Texoma because it had the best camping; we went because that was the farthest they could stand to drive.

Every night, we built a fire. Marshmallows on sticks. But mostly we just watched it burn. Little talking. If my face got too hot, I would turn my back to the fire, the cool night air a shock. I would go to bed with the smell of smoke lingering in my dreams.

I still love to build a fire, layering tiny twigs under larger and larger pieces, coaxing it from underneath, until it has taken hold and really burns. We considered a gas fireplace, but I want to burn the wood, how it cracks and falls. The scent drifting upstairs.

Next door, in the summer, the boys and their parents build a fire in the backyard. I’m cleaning dishes from dinner when the I smell it. It’s the smell of quiet, of childhood, of summer. I could walk all the way down the block and it would follow me.

To Tang

The drink of astronauts so why not the drink of campers? In the 1970’s, every family who camped, camped with Tang. We packed the glass jar in a box, the bright orange lid sticking out of top, a beacon for the thirsty.

At home, it was always frozen juice concentrate and I hated orange juice. Too thick, not sweet enough. But camping, the powered breakfast drink was perfect, thin like water and tasting nothing like oranges and everything like halloween candy in a glass.

We would make up pitcher after pitcher, getting water from the spigot. We were roughing it, having to haul the pitcher all the way back to the picnic table. Mom is making pancakes on the Coleman cookstove, the smell of bacon drifting up over the tent. We pull out copper plates and plastic coffee cups, eat everything as fast as she can cook it. We easily finish the pitcher of Tang. We race to put on swimsuits, grab our towels and inner tubes and head to the lake.

For lunch, we make our own sandwiches. Someone makes another pitcher of Tang and sets it on the table. My younger sister sits down to a cup full, and soon, the bees arrive. They are drawn to her and she finds, as she is drinking, three bees clustered around her mouth. Don’t move, we say. She is still as they land on the rim of her cup. They are too close to her to shoo away. We watch her and wait for them to leave.  I can hear their hum echo in the cup.

To the Conversation in the Women's Room in Which It Is Revealed All That is Wrong With My Face

Walking into the women’s restroom, together my colleague and I chat about the meeting at 4. As I’m saying how I’m not looking forward to it, feeling the late night tug on me, she asks, “What’s wrong with your eye?”

I’ve never gotten used it, this twitch. Not actually a twitch. A spasm. I am always self-conscious of the way the left side of my face, from my eye to my lip, will pull together. It’s a nerve problem and there’s really nothing they can do. Botox, which makes me look like I’ve had a stroke, or brain surgery. This I can live with.

She asks me a lot of questions about it and then says, “Wow. That’s interesting, but that’s not what I was talking about. I meant your eye, it looked like it was turning in.”

Strabismus. Since I was two. The surgeries fixed it but years later it’s back. But not all the time. It’s been a long day. I’m not wearing my glasses. I can’t fake it.

This seems to capture all the crazy in my face. The cutie pie here is my niece.

Another woman comes out of a stall and says, looking a bit concerned, “I couldn’t help but overhear. Are you talking about your rosacea?”

No, but there’s that, too, I admit.  And this, the coldest February on record, is making it worse. My cheeks are big red beacons. I don’t bother with make up. Trying to cover it up never helps.

Most days I tell myself no one notices these things but me, that other people have little regard for the color of my cheeks or the direction my eyes are pointing. They think the spasm is just a smirk.

I feel relieved in a way, as if a secret’s been revealed. And the worry that precedes all revelations dissolves. We all leave, finish our day, knowing none of this, none of this matters.

To My Kindle

I resisted at first. We all do. The experience of a book, with pages I can flip, is sacred. Books are the only church I worship in. To read without a book would be like praying in my car. Maybe I’d get to say I need to say, but it’s a hollow, distracted experience.

Cost of books did not drive my decision because I believe in libraries. Though I adore books, owning is a commitment of money and space I don’t take lightly. On the nights when mortality presses a warm palm on my heart, I wonder if I am leaving those I love with a book-mess to clean up. Is it worth it?

I had no intentions ever but then one day in Staples, while Whit spoke in the foreign language that is computer-ese to the sales kid, I opened you up and was stunned. Your type looked like paper, and the screen had no glare. And down at the bottom, I found a toggle button that allowed me to change the font size.

That was all I needed to know. Years of glasses, then no glasses, then glasses again, accompanied by reading for fun and for a living have ruined my eyes. The surgery I had when I was 12 was a near-perfect fix. So close to perfect, the ophthalmologist tells me, that though my eyes aren’t straight now, the misalignment is so minor, he cannot fix it. And there’s no prescription he can write.

Every day, I race the clock to get my reading done. In the morning, my eyes are rested and aligned and I can read without much effort. But as the hours tick by, I spend more and more time trying to focus, moving my whole head to different angles, waiting for the page to come into focus. By the end of the day, I am a useless reader. The words swim together like anchovies.

But not anymore. I can make the words as large as I need them to be. I can relax with a book. A book becomes a refuge again, not a battle.

Do I miss the feel of the the pages? The smell of the ink? Yes. And I miss the beach in Spain where I first had real olives. I miss sleeping until 10. I miss talking to my grandmother. But I missed reading more than I missed the books. Growing old is a gift and missing is the box it comes in.

To the Hammock on New York Street With a Nod to James Wright

We never could figure out what the cement structure was in the backyard, but we knew it would be the perfect place to hang a hammock. A tree overhead with just enough shade to read and just enough sun to feel warm. Though I’m living off a student loan for the summer, I splurge, planning to spend every afternoon writing there, so really, it was a professional expense.

I was taking French I, which was really “French for Grad Students Who Need a Second Language But Don’t Want to Speak It.” Dr. Max Rennaud. Seven other students in the class. We had to select a text from our disciplines to translate. “Except poetry,” he said, looking at me as if I had committed a crime. “Poetry is impossible to translate. You’ll have to go with a story.”

In the library, I pull book after book off the shelf. I want to be home, in the hammock. Keith will have cleaned the kitchen. He has probably cut up a cantaloupe and it’s chilling in the fridge. The French love melon, don’t they? He’s reading Rexroth or Haines or Hamill.

I grab a collection of French stories, take it over to Rennaud’s office and, with a huff, he approves one. Back home, I settle into the hammock to translate. A nest of baby bluebirds above me; their squawking a faint accent to the page. Lori’s gladioli’s outrageous bloom. I can smell the irises. I have a glass of sun tea. I forget I am living on loans.

The story begins with a man, distraught in Paris. So French already I think. His lover has left him and he moves closer and closer to the window (la fenetre). And he jumps. I am only on the second page and this is a first-person narrative.

Dictionary by my side, I keep translating, knowing I must have this wrong. The falling man pauses, it seems, at the 27th floor and invites himself in for a drink. I keep translating. Maybe I have the verb tense wrong? He falls again, this time laughing.

Three hours later, I quit. How could poetry have been worse? Tomorrow I will take it into Rennaud and he will nod, Oui, oui. Tres bien. He is not from France. He’s from Muncie. “French surrealism!” he says, surprised I didn’t know.

I thought I was reading everything wrong.

My surrealism: a hammock. A train passes. Gladiolus taking over the yard. A pile of books and a notebook beside me. A French teacher from the heartland. Inside, Keith is cutting melon into a bowl. I lay here, wasting my life.

To the Rabbit Out This Morning in -14 Wind Chill

Rabbit prints on the driveway

My back can feel the weather before I get out of bed, so I knew when the alarm when off, it was crazy cold. It’s Monday and the week ahead is filled already. I imagine my back feels that, too. I throw the electric blanket off. I hate winter.

I have to wake Indy and let her out. She’s deaf so she never hears me coming. She’s burrowed into her bed, the tip of her nose tucked into the blanket. I don’t want to do this, but I do and she’s shocked. But she follows me into the kitchen. I open the door and we both stop breathing for a second in the cold.

From the front of the yard, a rabbit runs into view. Indy sees it and wants to run, but I hold her back. The neighbors are sleeping.

Granted, you are a big rabbit, but still, all I can feel as I watch you race across the snow is the painful cold and I wonder what the hell you are doing out here. There is nothing growing for you to eat; we’ve left nothing out for you to find. Shouldn’t you be far underground?

Is this a Watership Down situation? Have you been alarmed by some vision? Do you need to warn the others? Are you looking for a safe place to take them? Some place warmer?

Or did you suddenly get brave? You’ve been thinking for weeks how there must be more and this morning, you could no longer merely think it. Like all adolescents, you’ve been confined long enough. “I can do this,” you think as you bust across the cold.

Though Indy is old and would not have caught you, had I let her go, she would have chased you. You would have felt her breath on your tail. “Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror…” What winter angels will hear you if you cry?

To All the Airports

No matter what time I am there, in the airport, it’s always 2:30 in the afternoon. Someone else is more late than I am and someone else is waiting longer. It’s always a good time for a Cinnabon. Or a coffee. I don’t worry if I will stay up all night. Night never comes.

I find my flight among all the flights and realize all the places I could go. Places I have never been: Minneapolis, Nashville, Tucson, Savannah, Montreal, any city in Maine. Cities I would rather be going to: New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Dallas. My flight leaves from B7.

If, outside the airport, destinations were as easy to find as in the airport, people would be much happier. A sign pointing out the way to terminal B appears every few minutes, and I am reassured I’m headed in the right direction. Travelers don’t have the time or the psychological fortitude to endure getting lost. I find B7, 20 minutes to boarding time. Always there’s a newsstand with overpriced gum and the most recent edition of The New Yorker.

But nowhere else do we reveal our stories more clearly than while we wait for the plane. A father follows his toddler back and forth, trying to tire her out. He’s worried about something, but not his daughter, keeps checking his phone. Always there’s a couple who still dress up just to fly. She’s got on a smart, neat dress and he’s wearing a sport jacket, but daringly, no tie. They are going on one of those vacations-but-not-a-vacation: a wedding, a graduation. A wrapped present sits at the top of her carry on. Co-workers, when traveling together, become the ideal friend. “Sarah, I’m going for a bagel. Want something?” he asks. Back in the office, he’s never brought her a bagel. He didn’t know her name until a week ago. “Sure. Onion. No, blueberry.” He’s walking backwards as she talks to him, smiles.

The college students are my favorite. Backpacks and blue jeans and shirts for jackets. Papers of all kinds falling out of back pockets because they are young and haven’t really figured out what they need to keep and what is garbage. They count change in their palms, touching each coin as they add it up. They have to know to know how much they have before they can decide what to buy. They don’t think about a bagel until they know they have at least $3. Maybe just peanut butter crackers.

Boarding call. We line up, file in, greet the flight attendant and find our seats. We are either coming or going. Leaving or arriving. Starting or ending. For the duration of the flight, we will live in the in-between, resolve ourselves for whatever awaits us when we land.

To Our Stunning Miscalculation in 1987 That CD’s Would Never Catch On

By Feelthelie (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Home computers? Obviously. Who wouldn’t need a computer in their house? The games seemed reason enough. But compact discs? For music? That’s crazy talk.

I’m sitting with Mike and Steve and Ben in our living room. We are listening to REM’s Reckoning. Listening to an album meant we all sat together and did nothing but listen to the music. Sure, we talked a bit, mostly about the music: what the lyrics meant, what Stipe was singing, what we thought thought he was singing when we first heard it. Listening to the whole collection at once, the progression from one song to the next, was like reading a book together or watching a movie. An experience of the whole.

Mike, holding the cardboard album cover in his hands, talks about CD’s. He’s read about them. Steve says they talk about it at the radio station. They will last longer; they are indestructible. And the sound quality is much better, cleaner. Clear.

Steve on drums

But we don’t believe it. For one, everyone will have to buy a cd player and obviously that’s not going to happen. Really, this is like Betamax: maybe the technology is good, but it won’t catch on. Second, better sound quality doesn’t mean better music. Don’t you want it a bit gritty? Doesn’t it sound more real? It will be fake, hyper-clean. Unnatural.

Mike on guitar

The little house on Parson’s street we live in is next door to a family. We can hear the boys playing in the backyard. In 10 years, they will consider their parents’ vinyl quaint but useless.

Mike looks at the cover in his hands. The real reason, he says, it will never catch on is because cd’s are so small. What will people look at and read when they are listening to an album? Will it all just become background music?

To Denial

They way people talk, they make it sound like you’re bad. “She is in SUCH denial about her job” or “He is in denial about his kid” as if we shouldn’t shouldn’t be in denial about anything.

They don’t see the profound psychic elegance in denial. The brain just removing whatever it is we cannot deal with, brushing it aside like a stray hair, blowing it away like a bit of fluff. Such little effort. Such a huge improvement. Denial is Audrey Hepburn of emotions. “Here, dear, let me get that for you.”

But more than elegant, you are functional. Indispensable really. How else do we get up in the morning when we know our marriages are shredded? How else do we go to work when we know our kids are in trouble? How do we drive across four states for a Thanksgiving weekend, knowing when we when return on Monday, the results will be in. They will be conclusive. We won’t be able to look away anymore.

I’m all in. I’m too old now to waste my time with all this reality-facing that gets me nowhere. Being in denial doesn’t actually change anything, just my perspective. Surely I have earned that much.

My son is in the hospital. They make us leave overnight because they need us to be strong during the day. Doctors use a wholly unfamiliar language and we see machines and numbers connecting to events we can’t begin to understand. Parenting is infinitely harder than I ever thought. We collapse without shame or thought.

One morning, my mom calls. Her voice cracks. She tells me my nephew Nicolas, 6 months old, died. My sister found him in his bassinet. I think Mom has had a bad dream, gotten confused about which grandson is sick. “Mom!” I want to say, “You can’t do this!” And it takes her repeating it over and over and until I realize this is real.

But I have to leave for the hospital. I have to go hold my son, tubes and wires falling around us. I have to go deal with bad nurse. I pour a cup of coffee and think, “I cannot deal” and like that, I push it all away. Get dressed, drive across town as the sun rises over Kalamazoo.

In a few weeks, I will grieve both the babies, and unlike the babies, the grief never dies. Denial isn’t always possible: reality has a way of pounding it to dust. I begrudge no one their need to deny whatever they must get through today. It won’t last.

To Einstein’s Cat

Unlike Schrodinger’s, living in all the possibilities, you live in one, and today, it is rain. You lay curled on the floor near the radiator in the study. He comes in, sits in the reading chair. Without opening your eyes, you think about climbing up on his lap. You don’t.

You hear the latest talk: one theory that will explain it all. Light is both energy and matter and the Unified Field Theory will give the explanation for both at the same time. You remember the early days, when he was just thinking of Relativity. The way, during a thought experiment, he would pet you more and more slowly as the experiment continued, until he would stop and just hold his hand on your back. Time slows down and speeds up, he thinks; it’s not an absolute. You are shocked it took him this long to figure it out.

How long will it take for him to realize the Unified Field? On rainy days, you can hardly bear your frustration with it. Dust motes fall in the lamplight and you poke them one by one, the very movement of the air suggests its weight. Here, you want to say, this is what you’re looking for.

He doesn’t ignore you. In fact, he worries about you. He tries to get you to purr, though you refuse. He looks out the window and thinks it’s about the rain. “I know what’s wrong, dear fellow, but I don’t know how to turn it off,” he says.

Off/on. Rain/sun. Light/dark. Energy/matter. The binaries drive you crazy. The problem with the Unified Field is the attention to “unified”--implying the split--instead of a focus on “field.” It’s not the rain he needs to turn off, you think, it is the desire to name it in the first place that causes all the trouble.

To Schrodinger’s Cat, From Which He Got the Idea.

I have never seen you, so for this moment, you both do and don’t exist. You are both small and not small. You are winding around the table leg as he writes to Einstein. You are not bothering him. Yes, you are.

Brian Robert Marshall [CC BY-SA 2.0
 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
 via Wikimedia Commons

You were left in his flat one Thursday afternoon when she had enough. Or he, when he had enough. Whoever Schrodinger's lover was left you there. Enough is enough. I can’t wait forever, the lover thinks.

Schrodinger is at the desk, bent low over the letter. He is trying to fathom all the implications of the theory, the power of the observer to influence, to determine even, that which is observed. He looks up: a portrait of his great grandfather on the wall. A photograph of his sister in Italy last year. Tea cooling on the table. The cake beside it.  No one else is here.

Could he go back two days, sit at his desk, look up again and see his lover turning the corner down the hall, hear a sigh? He could get up and follow. He could offer a cup of tea. He could reach through all the matter that connects them until his hand touches a shoulder.

But he lives forever in the moment before any decision. He is asking about the math of it, how the numbers add up to all options, how the math impacts the outcome. He doesn’t know yet that Einstein doesn’t know the math, though he knows it’s there and knows he’s right. It’s like asking the architect a question for the carpenter. But Schrodinger hasn’t opened that letter yet.

Erwin Schrodinger

You jump up on the table. On his lap. On the chair beside him. You swat at his pen or a flash of light and he is annoyed. Not just with you but with all the doing. Cars outside the window. The children returning from school.

He tries not to see or hear any of it. He closes his eyes. He can feel his own heartbeat. Beat, then silence. Beat. Silence.

To Vicki's Anger

Vicki stood so close I could feel her breath.Her anger electrified her: eyes bright, cheeks flush, and her arms trembling beside her. She’s taller than I, but she’s only 15. She’s my favorite.

I graduated from college 4 months ago, spent the summer waiting tables at the Olive Garden, managing to lose money some nights because I was so bad at it. I needed another job, one that didn’t require having to be nice while trying to remember which is the diet Coke and which is the regular. I could not multi-task. So I got a job as a houseparent at a group home for teenage girls who had been taken away from abusive parents. I was 22.

It’s Friday and Vicki was invited by girls at school to go to a movie. It’s against the rules. And she doesn’t have a dime to her name. None of the girls do. I tell her no as if it’s obvious, and I see it start. Vicki’s anger is legendary: focused, sharp, controlled but just barely. She is speechless and I all I want is for her to say something.

Brenda walks in. She is younger than Vicki and even younger than her age. She will always be just behind. Brenda’s mom is an addict and always chooses drugs and the man they come with over Brenda. Brenda still loves her mom, though. They all do.

Nothing surprises me more about working here than this. One girl was abused by both her parents, repeatedly. One girl has scars. One has known mostly foster parents, the last one out in the country, and by the time the social worker made it back out, she was starving. They have been slapped and beaten. And still they dream of going home, that mom is sober or dad is working. It was all a mistake and everything is really fine.

Loren, the co-parent tonight, touches Vicki’s shoulders. He takes her for a walk and ignores her when she grabs one of his cigarettes, lets her smoke. She comes back smoother, calmer, but only just. She agrees to join us instead for the regular Friday night trip to KMart and the video store. Every girl will get $3 to spend as she wants.

Steven Tyler
Mick man34 at English Wikipedia [G
FDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

After dinner, we cram into the station wagon: 6 girls, me and Loren. Loren flips through the radio station until they yell at him to stop. It’s Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun.” They all sing along, looking out the window, each singing to herself. They would never hurt their dads. They would never hurt their moms. But they can understand it. They can sing it.

To The Brooklyn Dodgers

Nine years before I was born, you moved to LA, but in our house, the move was always yesterday. When we talk to others about the Dodgers, we say, “Which Dodgers? LA or Brooklyn?” Brooklyn is the real one.

The Dodgers Uniform, Framed

A wool Dodgers uniform hangs in my dad’s office, the one memento from his time in the minors. If the Major League team was “Dem Bums,” how scrappy were the guys in the minors? Dad has a BA in mechanical engineering, an MBA and a PhD in economics. I think of him as anything but scrappy. I picture him in the dugout, lifting the catcher’s mask to the top of his head, laughing with the other players. It’s a blurry movie at best.

The uniform was buried in an antique steamer truck in the den. Every now and then, Mom and I would dig something out of the trunk and the uniform was on top of everything. Heavy grey wool. I can still feel the weight of it, lifting it out. On Halloween, one of the five of us would wear it as a costume, Dad watching us fade down the street.

My dad, my grandmother Marion and my Aunt Sue: 1952

At some point, he knew he needed a plan other than baseball, another way out of the Brooklyn projects. He stumbled his way into college at King’s Point, picked a major because his friend suggested it. Later, stationed in New Orleans, he chose Tulane for grad school because it was the first school on the trolley stop and chose the MBA program because it was the first air conditioned building he came to. His life wasn’t so much planned, but rather just a continued willingness to give it a shot. “Why the hell not?”  Why not move to Switzerland? Why not move to Dallas? Why not have 3 kids? Why not have two more?

I wonder if he missed it, if he would have preferred a chance in the majors, playing in Ebbet’s Field, his dad watching him from the stands the way he and his dad watched year after year. I knew if he had, I wouldn’t be here.

He would say no, no regrets. He knew deep down he knew the odds. He knew it’s a short-lived career. He could see the writing on the locker room wall.

Besides, they moved to LA. What? Are ya kiddin me?

To the Furniture That Arrived in the Snowstorm and Barely Fit Through the Door

Today you look as if you have always been here, as if, in 1929, when they built this house, they built it for you. Your chocolate brown warms the room.

Music sounds better and pizza tastes better on the new sofa

But yesterday, the struggle, the battle, the war that was getting you home and through the door was, as the kids say, epic. The snowstorm was so bad, Keith could not back the U-Haul 5 yards up to the warehouse to have you loaded. He had to wait until it settled down, the clocking ticking off the rental time. Finally loaded, on the drive home, he watched drivers slide off the road like baby ducks following whatever guides them.

Still, he makes it home. And you are wrapped in heavy plastic to protect from the elements.  We measured the door at the smallest width and we measured you before we bought you, so we thought we would just carry you through the door, piece by piece. The first two pieces made it seem easy.

But you are a sectional, which means you have a funky corner piece with odd angles for a couch. That’s where the trouble starts. If there is a world record for swearing, it was broken. If there is a world record for ratio of swear words to non-swear words in a sentence, it was broken. If there is a record for dragging out one swear word into one long resounding call to the universe, it was broken.

I have already put the old furniture on the curb. It’s covered in snow. If the new couch doesn’t come in, we'll be sitting on the floor.

We have to take the door off the hinges. We have to push and smush and beg and plead and formulate and calculate, but finally, the whole corner piece is in the door. The last two pieces aren’t easy, but are not as hard. The snow never relents. 

Our rental truck stuck in the road. Took 4 men to dig it out.

The last task is to take the truck back. The snow is several feet deep and the road has ice grooves that make tracks in the road, tracks you have no choice but to follow. And he gets stuck. Three neighbors, a lot more swearing, and some ice smashing and finally the truck is free.

By the evening, the room was put together. Old chairs rearranged around you. We turn on Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” and light candles. We order a pizza. We talk about writing and and all the things we love about words. We feel the space we are in as new again. This year we will be married 20 years.