I did not think this was following a pattern, that it was like something else, something that was known to other people and that now I, like them, knew it too. That’s not the way I was thinking now or on any of the many times I went south from our yard, across the final part of the driveway loop, past the stream of clear water that came down from a hill and went into a pipe that took it under the road to whatever was on the other side, which was a Chinese-style garden full of pathways that ended at the river. Heading south after the stream of clear water what came next was the yard of a small house next door and then through an opening of one of the many stone walls that were everywhere around here, and from the stone wall into a field with no house in it.
I knew how it would smell before I got there and laid down on my stomach and with my eyes open, breathing air that had dried grass and leaves and new grass and earth in it, looking right into the grass, and seeing what was there, as if looking at it this way was to see it magnified many times, an ant was walking by, a grass hopper skedaddling, and there was a lazy caterpillar, and some more ants, and sometimes a beetle. And around me the sounds of the field, soft sounds, birds mostly who would make their bird noises, and then there would be silence, and then the birds would be back. I did not see any snakes or squirrels or chipmunks but I knew they were close at hand.
I did not wonder if anyone else had ever laid down in a summer field this way to enjoy what was in the grass. Grass and some pine needles that had made their way there from the hill, and also a leaf or two. I breathed deep. This situation where I knew and it did not occur to me to ask if anyone else knew. Though wondering about what other people saw and felt, wondering how you were supposed to experience the world, which came up over and over in my head. I would hear sentimental talk on the radio about what a boy’s life was supposed to be like. And I heard the same thing later in the Cub Scouts. But in this field there was nothing about what was supposed to be. And I did not think I would ever tell anyone about my going into the field.
I remembered it from one summer to the next. When we went away for the summer, I would check on it quickly when we got back -- over there north of our yard and the stream, and the stone wall. My grandfather Gaga, who was a writer, talked about how things were supposed to be. So did my twin Peter, from the time we were 2 or 3 years old. And it was said he would be a writer too. But in good times -- like being belly down in the field and joining in the life that I saw there, it seemed either unimportant or liberating that I did not know what Gaga and Peter knew.
Friday, May 22, 2015
Friday, May 8, 2015
PROBABLY. MOSTLY. by Rica Rock
The stories I was told were probably lies:
My mother committed suicide.
I was a paskudnyak (a parasite, like a tick or a lice) or I was a choleryeh (which is cholera, a basically incurable, fatal case of diarrhea).
My mother was turning over in her grave to see my behavior.
If I didn’t behave I’d be sent to live in an orphanage or a home for bad girls. There I’d see what it was like to have not enough to eat, and no shoes, and I’d be cold, with not enough blankets at night, and I couldn’t get out of there: there’d be bars on the windows and the doors would be locked.
Then I’d appreciate all I had.
I would have to scrub floors and wash clothes and hang them outside, even in the freezing cold, and there would be no school, and no sleighriding in winter, and no swimming in summer.
And then I’d realize how fortunate I was now.
And my mother committed suicide because she was so unhappy.
And it was all lies.
Mostly.
My mother committed suicide.
I was a paskudnyak (a parasite, like a tick or a lice) or I was a choleryeh (which is cholera, a basically incurable, fatal case of diarrhea).
My mother was turning over in her grave to see my behavior.
If I didn’t behave I’d be sent to live in an orphanage or a home for bad girls. There I’d see what it was like to have not enough to eat, and no shoes, and I’d be cold, with not enough blankets at night, and I couldn’t get out of there: there’d be bars on the windows and the doors would be locked.
Then I’d appreciate all I had.
I would have to scrub floors and wash clothes and hang them outside, even in the freezing cold, and there would be no school, and no sleighriding in winter, and no swimming in summer.
And then I’d realize how fortunate I was now.
And my mother committed suicide because she was so unhappy.
And it was all lies.
Mostly.
Monday, April 20, 2015
I DID AND I DIDN'T by Mel Rosenthal
The summer between my
sophomore and junior years in college, which was also the summer after my mother died of cancer, I worked for Good Humor. Exactly
how this happened, I can’t be sure now. Someone must have suggested the idea,
since I doubt that I would have thought of it on my own. In any case, I applied
for and got a job as a tricycle salesman. Most of Good Humor’s business was
(and presumably still is) conducted from the familiar white trucks, but I
didn’t drive, and had to settle for a three-wheeled vehicle with the ice cream,
popsicles, and ices in a case behind me as I pedaled along. If I recall
correctly, drivers and tricyclists alike worked on commission -- your earnings
were a certain percentage of your sales.
So it was that every weekday that summer I took the short bus trip from my home in suburban Orange, New Jersey, to the company’s plant/distribution center in Newark. After replenishing my supplies as necessary, I would set off in the early afternoon on my route through the city’s sticky-hot streets. I often had to traverse its hillier areas, which, what with the physical strain of constantly moving upward, could seem endless.
No matter the problems, my sense is that overall I enjoyed my summer with Good Humor. Even so it would be my only summer in their employ, I never went back. And what particularly lingers now in memory is a small incident from my very first day on the job: I was standing by in the distribution center when someone abruptly approached and said that my mother was there to see me—my mother, then already more than two months gone. I was at once disturbed and comforted; for a moment, just a moment, I was willing to believe that it could be true. But I did not move, did not ask where. The logical explanation, of course, was mistaken identity: someone else’s mother was there to see her son. But I did and I didn’t wish to confirm this.
So it was that every weekday that summer I took the short bus trip from my home in suburban Orange, New Jersey, to the company’s plant/distribution center in Newark. After replenishing my supplies as necessary, I would set off in the early afternoon on my route through the city’s sticky-hot streets. I often had to traverse its hillier areas, which, what with the physical strain of constantly moving upward, could seem endless.
No matter the problems, my sense is that overall I enjoyed my summer with Good Humor. Even so it would be my only summer in their employ, I never went back. And what particularly lingers now in memory is a small incident from my very first day on the job: I was standing by in the distribution center when someone abruptly approached and said that my mother was there to see me—my mother, then already more than two months gone. I was at once disturbed and comforted; for a moment, just a moment, I was willing to believe that it could be true. But I did not move, did not ask where. The logical explanation, of course, was mistaken identity: someone else’s mother was there to see her son. But I did and I didn’t wish to confirm this.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
DISCOURAGED by Debbie Smith
It's 1:30 pm, 9th period on a Friday in May when dismissal time is at 2:13 pm. My classroom is filled with adolescent angst and sweat from gym class the period before. Terence and Melvin always sit next to each other, even though I've separated them about thirty times so far. Terence is whispering something to Melvin and looking at me at the same time while Melvin tries desperately to hold in his laughter. Actually they're both looking at me, trying to gauge the exact moment that I will snap and send one of them out of the room so the class can at least finish the chapter of the book we are reading where we are at least twenty pages behind all the other classes simply because it's 1:30 pm on a hot Friday in May and dismissal is at 2:13 pm. They will both pull back right before my breaking point. They both know me better than my husband ever will. Neither of them wants to be kicked out, Terence because he plays on the school basketball team and can't afford any more disciplinary actions on his record. Our principal, Mike, really DOES have it in for this kid because he's a small-time drug-dealer who probably won't graduate high school but who WILL probably graduate to be a big-time drug dealer, so right now, 8th grade, thirteen years old, king of the basketball court, right now is the absolute peak of success in Terence's existence and while he may not be the smartest kid in the room, even Terence is smart enough to know that fact.
Melvin doesn't want to be kicked out because he's secretly in love with Terence and Melvin is the only person in the room who is unaware of that fact. Also, Melvin hates feeling like he's missing out on anything. Plus they both really do like me for some reason, even though all I ever do for 42 minutes every 9th period is yell which, of course, does no good but I'm at a loss every day as to what else to do.
As I glare at them while Sasha is reading aloud from the book, Terence makes an attempt to move his seat a few inches farther away from Melvin as a peace offering to me. I've given the entire class a package of sticky notes because that's the latest educational trend we are enforcing this year. The students will mark the sticky note when they "connect" with the text in some way and stick it on the page so we can revisit the thought later as a class. I will just be glad to get the chapter finished.
As I gently correct, Sasha's oral reading, I notice that Terence's sticky notes are nowhere to be seen and his hands are conspicuously absent from view. I'm suspicious but my attention is distracted by Jackie, my favorite tiny Puerto Rican, who is throwing his copy of the book we are reading at the window. I interrupt Sasha.
"Jackie!"
"Sorry, Miss. There was a bee in the room."
All the girls scream simultaneously and try to run out of the room.
When I've finally quieted the bedlam, I notice Terence and Melvin's desks are right back where they were. I ignore them and ask Malaysia to continue reading. Only the girls volunteer to read aloud and it's May and I've given up on asking anyone else. Plus they read better and faster and now we are only ten pages behind. I'm still wondering exactly what Terence is up to since I still can't see his hands but since it's now 2:03, I'm praying it's nothing major.
We are interrupted a few more times with the office calling for students who have to leave early to make it to their track meet on time, announcements about baseball practice and numerous requests for bathroom passes. Finally, we are almost done, it's almost dismissal bell time and as we are finally on the last page, I realize what Terence has been doing this whole time. He throws about two million tiny pieces of sticky note paper over Melvin's head that he has been methodically ripping up under his desk for the last twenty-five minutes. Such attention to detail must be what makes him such a successful drug dealer.
But I can't hold back my own smile to see Melvin covered head to toe in neon pink sticky notes. They both stay behind after the bell to help me clean it up and we end our day once again.
Monday, November 10, 2014
WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED by Kathy Robinson
On the way to the writing session this morning, I listened to a double mix CD I made recently. It’s a compilation of songs that had deep emotional resonance for me throughout the years. Hearing them play one after the other was like listening to the soundtrack of my life, while zigzagging up the Thruway soaked in rain and autumn colors.
Certain lyrics evoked flashes of what once was – the twelve-year-old kid arranging pillows and ashtrays on the couch, a makeshift drum kit, banging drumsticks along to Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” repeatedly before her mom got home from work. The twenty-something finding her way surfaced from a line from Michelle Shocked’s “Memories of East Texas” about those left behind not being able to make a place for a girl who’d seen the ocean. And a song from my 30s by Incubus that I listened to on my endless commutes into the city in the 1990s where the song’s character calls out a warning to never let life pass her by.
What’s striking is the first CD is filled with images of chains and silencing and what it feels like to be stuffed in a pre-defined box so others can feel safe and orderly, so you make sense to them. Everything that was stifled while staying in those sterile boxes just burned. I’m thanksful the ember wasn’t extinguished.
That’s due to the theme of the second CD, all about the searching, the journey, the knowledge that despite how everyone I knew lived their lives, there just might be another way. I read something recently that is the full-grown tree that pulls itself from the seed, birthing itself. Somewhere I was encouraging and nurturing those tender shoots into existence.
Years ago when I moved into my home, I set up a music studio in the basement. As I daydreamed my corporate hours away during the workweek, I would imagine myself lying on my back on the floor of that little studio, late at night, in the dark except for a sole candle and the LED lights on the recording equipment. I would envision myself holding a microphone to my mouth, creating reel after feel of spoken word prose – eloquent, prolific, effortless. Endless stories and images captured on tape. But when I did go downstairs, I couldn’t even flip that machine on. And I never knew why. Something always stopped me from actually trying.
But it occurred to me today that what I really needed at that time was the dream itself. I needed the hope that someday I’d find a way to rip the self-affixed duct tape off my own mouth.
So when did everything change? When I picked up a pen and began writing the truth.
Certain lyrics evoked flashes of what once was – the twelve-year-old kid arranging pillows and ashtrays on the couch, a makeshift drum kit, banging drumsticks along to Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” repeatedly before her mom got home from work. The twenty-something finding her way surfaced from a line from Michelle Shocked’s “Memories of East Texas” about those left behind not being able to make a place for a girl who’d seen the ocean. And a song from my 30s by Incubus that I listened to on my endless commutes into the city in the 1990s where the song’s character calls out a warning to never let life pass her by.
What’s striking is the first CD is filled with images of chains and silencing and what it feels like to be stuffed in a pre-defined box so others can feel safe and orderly, so you make sense to them. Everything that was stifled while staying in those sterile boxes just burned. I’m thanksful the ember wasn’t extinguished.
That’s due to the theme of the second CD, all about the searching, the journey, the knowledge that despite how everyone I knew lived their lives, there just might be another way. I read something recently that is the full-grown tree that pulls itself from the seed, birthing itself. Somewhere I was encouraging and nurturing those tender shoots into existence.
Years ago when I moved into my home, I set up a music studio in the basement. As I daydreamed my corporate hours away during the workweek, I would imagine myself lying on my back on the floor of that little studio, late at night, in the dark except for a sole candle and the LED lights on the recording equipment. I would envision myself holding a microphone to my mouth, creating reel after feel of spoken word prose – eloquent, prolific, effortless. Endless stories and images captured on tape. But when I did go downstairs, I couldn’t even flip that machine on. And I never knew why. Something always stopped me from actually trying.
But it occurred to me today that what I really needed at that time was the dream itself. I needed the hope that someday I’d find a way to rip the self-affixed duct tape off my own mouth.
So when did everything change? When I picked up a pen and began writing the truth.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
LOST ALL PATIENCE by Wendi Beck
I snapped. There is nothing else to call it. Thirty minutes into running Mom on some errands. A record for me as one of our longest visits before we broke into an argument. I was tired of her snipes about her mother being "taken from her" and how Brianna and I have no idea what she is going through since we both still have our mothers with us. Nana had only been gone about 10 months at this point give or take a few days and I had done my best to be understanding and calm with Mom, but on that day... I simply purely and completely snapped. As I started talking it was like everything slowed.
"Mom, I would seriously advise you to cut the bullshit. Just come out and tell me that you hate me for siding with your little sister that she is better capable of taking care of Nana that I am since I have Dad, Brianna, and you and a new marriage to deal with for starters. Next, you have no clue about my sense of loss over Nana. Nana took us in and helped raise me. Actually, she primarily raised me after your divorce from Dad. Had she and Papa not done that who knows where you and I would have ended up. So, yes. I have you here still, but yes, I lost a mother too in this. Lastly, it would be in your best interest not to assume how, when, why or if Brianna should feel loss over Nana moving to Florida. And by the way you ever tell Brianna that if we don't get to Florida she will never get to see Nana alive again and you will never see any of us again. I am done with this topic with you, period!"
I had lost all patience, calm and sanity in that moment and luckily we were at a red light so that I could try to take a cleansing breath till I saw my Mom's face and her mouth opening to keep the fight going. Before she could get the words out I stared at her.
"Think carefully, very carefully, before you respond, Mom. Got it?"
She fell silent for a moment before choosing to keep it going.
"Well, I am not talking about ancient history or the divorce. Dr. Rick said no one understands me and that just proves it. Take me home now."
And yet she never did say that she did not hate me.
"Mom, I would seriously advise you to cut the bullshit. Just come out and tell me that you hate me for siding with your little sister that she is better capable of taking care of Nana that I am since I have Dad, Brianna, and you and a new marriage to deal with for starters. Next, you have no clue about my sense of loss over Nana. Nana took us in and helped raise me. Actually, she primarily raised me after your divorce from Dad. Had she and Papa not done that who knows where you and I would have ended up. So, yes. I have you here still, but yes, I lost a mother too in this. Lastly, it would be in your best interest not to assume how, when, why or if Brianna should feel loss over Nana moving to Florida. And by the way you ever tell Brianna that if we don't get to Florida she will never get to see Nana alive again and you will never see any of us again. I am done with this topic with you, period!"
I had lost all patience, calm and sanity in that moment and luckily we were at a red light so that I could try to take a cleansing breath till I saw my Mom's face and her mouth opening to keep the fight going. Before she could get the words out I stared at her.
"Think carefully, very carefully, before you respond, Mom. Got it?"
She fell silent for a moment before choosing to keep it going.
"Well, I am not talking about ancient history or the divorce. Dr. Rick said no one understands me and that just proves it. Take me home now."
And yet she never did say that she did not hate me.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
A MOTHER'S VOICE by Jessica Rosenthal
As the cold scissors slide up my blouse to cut it open I can hear my mother’s voice, “Always wear clean underwear, just in case.” My clean panties were in the trunk of my now mangled Honda Civic because I had picked up my laundry from the wash & fold the night before and didn’t bring it in the house. Today, it was a cold California morning in October and I was too comfortable to go outside in my pajamas to get the bag of clean laundry. So here I was, in the back of the ambulance, the EMTs trying to keep me conscious – and I was NOT wearing clean underwear. My mother would be so disappointed.
My mom Lois, or Lotus Blossom as my father affectionately calls her, has a very definite idea of right & wrong and structure. This discipline contributed to her and my dad’s thriving even though they had very little money. They first lived in a small one bedroom on Colby Court in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I don’t remember the first few years of my life there, although I can see certain images from the home movies we watched on holidays. I could imagine our time there from the narration that went along with the silent films. Nowadays, we rarely break out the projector but when we do, my parents play “dead – not dead” and my dad always winds up crying.
I spent a lot of time with my dad in the early years of my life. By 1976, my parents had been married 4 years (though they began dating each other 9 years earlier) and they had moved to a two bedroom apartment in the Warbasse neighborhood of Brooklyn. They lived in the same building as my mom’s parents, and one of my grandmother’s brothers and his family. My dad, an electrician, was furloughed from work at this time, so my mother went to work at Coney Island hospital in the billing department while my dad stayed home and cared for me. I loved those times. For breakfast, he would add uBet® syrup to my Rice Krispies® so I would be sure to drink the milk at the bottom of the bowl. Our days were filled with fun excursions, like going to the park, or walking over to his mother’s house on Brighton 7th Street, where her sisters all had houses too. I would sit on the red stoop and listen to the grownups talk, or roller skate on the uneven payment, or perform for my great aunts and grandmother. I was the first of all the grandchildren, #1, and I garnered a lot of attention.
Occasionally, my dad and I would spend the afternoon in the apartment. I would stand on the wood galley table and dance to Bob Dylan as my dad held my hands and sung along to the record, “Everybody must get stoned…” Some afternoons, his friends would come over and they would smoke cigarettes that they rolled themselves from a wooden cigar box. In high school, before I knew what getting stoned meant, I pictured people throwing rocks at other people like they did in the Salem witch trials. I didn’t understand why my Dad liked that song so much. In my twenties I told my dad that I remembered these times, and he assured me that he NEVER rolled his own tobacco.
Music has been an extremely powerful influence in my life. At first, after my accident I couldn’t listen to music at all. Knowing my love of music, my dad would suggest turning on the radio from the remote control attached to the bed, but I was too afraid. What if something played that made me sad? I didn’t want to cry anymore. After many little surgeries, it was time for the big one. Using shards of bone, pieces of my shattered pelvis, titanium plates and bolts, the doctor planned to put my hip back together. I was sedated to the point of being out of my mind and body, but I was scared. While my dad stayed with me until they rolled me into surgery, my mom had gone back to the hotel to shower and get some rest after several days of sleeping in hospital chairs next to my bed. He kept me conscious by reciting the lyrics of as many Dylan songs as he could remember. And there were a lot. I sang along, “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet…We sit stranded but we’re doing our best to deny it.” It kept me from thinking about the possibility that I wouldn’t make it out of surgery alive, or never be able to walk again. One after the other, we sang together until the attendant came to wheel me away. My dad followed close behind to make sure the orderly took great care in transporting me. Any abrupt movement was painful as my leg hung from a gurney and a pin temporarily kept it in place. As the nurses greeted me, my dad wished me luck and told me, “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
And he was. The surgery was a success and I was relieved to move to the next phase of recovery. I was still afraid to watch TV for fear of the Allstate commercial where they show a collision and you can hear and see it happening. I still didn’t want to listen to music. Slowly though, as the days turned into weeks, I was less and less afraid. I began with the doo wop station, upbeat and light hearted. A couple of songs here and there were enough to remind me of the healing power of music.
I learned to lift myself out of the bed, onto a plank and into the wheelchair. Then from the wheelchair to the walker; Standing, shuffling a few feet while my dad pushed the wheelchair behind me in case I had to sit down midway down the hall. When I was able to get to the end of the hallway and back to my room using only the walker, I was ready for the music. I found myself singing the Grateful Dead, “…gotta get back to where you belong, little bit harder, just a little bit more, little bit further than you’ve gone before.” I emailed my friend Dave and asked him to send me some CDs. When they arrived, I listened to that song, The Wheel, over and over again.
Eventually two months from the fated day, I was able to climb a flight of stairs, albeit slowly and sometimes by using the rump bump tactic. I was released from the hospital rehab and allowed to go home. My mom had already flown back to New Jersey two weeks earlier, barely arriving in time for my sister to give birth to my twin nieces. I can’t believe I missed that special morning when my nieces were born. Regretful, but out of my hands, I was in California. My dad stayed with me for several weeks, until I could live again independently. On our way home, we went to Home Depot so my dad could buy materials to build a sturdy bannister that would help me up the 12 steps to the front porch. I wasn’t used to wheeling myself around. My arms were so sore the entire next day that all I did was sit and watch old concert footage, barely moving from my favorite armchair. By the third day, I was feeling better and the bannister was complete, wooden stain and all.
It was an eye opening experience using a wheelchair. I knew I was lucky that this was only temporary. After months of physical therapy, I would be able to walk again and not be wheelchair bound. But I noticed things that had been unimportant before. The cuts in the curb on the sidewalk were often too bumpy for me to wheel over alone. Without my dad, I had to ask a stranger for a push. So many places in my small little town didn’t have a ramp or a handicap bathroom. It was a simple injustice, but it felt like a personal “You are not welcome here.” The most enlightening and sad thing I noticed was that people wouldn’t make eye contact with me. They would talk right over my head to my dad, as if I wasn’t there; Or that somehow the wheelchair left me unable to think or speak for myself. I think people were afraid to look, in fear of what they might see – what they imagined could be wrong with me. I wanted to tell them that I was okay, and that in a few months they wouldn’t even know that I had not been able to walk. But before I had a chance there eyes would dart away and they’d be gone. Now, I always make it a point to make eye contact with and smile at people in wheelchairs. Immobility does not define a person. Nobody likes or deserves to feel ignored. Everyone wants to be asked to dance.
My mom Lois, or Lotus Blossom as my father affectionately calls her, has a very definite idea of right & wrong and structure. This discipline contributed to her and my dad’s thriving even though they had very little money. They first lived in a small one bedroom on Colby Court in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I don’t remember the first few years of my life there, although I can see certain images from the home movies we watched on holidays. I could imagine our time there from the narration that went along with the silent films. Nowadays, we rarely break out the projector but when we do, my parents play “dead – not dead” and my dad always winds up crying.
I spent a lot of time with my dad in the early years of my life. By 1976, my parents had been married 4 years (though they began dating each other 9 years earlier) and they had moved to a two bedroom apartment in the Warbasse neighborhood of Brooklyn. They lived in the same building as my mom’s parents, and one of my grandmother’s brothers and his family. My dad, an electrician, was furloughed from work at this time, so my mother went to work at Coney Island hospital in the billing department while my dad stayed home and cared for me. I loved those times. For breakfast, he would add uBet® syrup to my Rice Krispies® so I would be sure to drink the milk at the bottom of the bowl. Our days were filled with fun excursions, like going to the park, or walking over to his mother’s house on Brighton 7th Street, where her sisters all had houses too. I would sit on the red stoop and listen to the grownups talk, or roller skate on the uneven payment, or perform for my great aunts and grandmother. I was the first of all the grandchildren, #1, and I garnered a lot of attention.
Occasionally, my dad and I would spend the afternoon in the apartment. I would stand on the wood galley table and dance to Bob Dylan as my dad held my hands and sung along to the record, “Everybody must get stoned…” Some afternoons, his friends would come over and they would smoke cigarettes that they rolled themselves from a wooden cigar box. In high school, before I knew what getting stoned meant, I pictured people throwing rocks at other people like they did in the Salem witch trials. I didn’t understand why my Dad liked that song so much. In my twenties I told my dad that I remembered these times, and he assured me that he NEVER rolled his own tobacco.
Music has been an extremely powerful influence in my life. At first, after my accident I couldn’t listen to music at all. Knowing my love of music, my dad would suggest turning on the radio from the remote control attached to the bed, but I was too afraid. What if something played that made me sad? I didn’t want to cry anymore. After many little surgeries, it was time for the big one. Using shards of bone, pieces of my shattered pelvis, titanium plates and bolts, the doctor planned to put my hip back together. I was sedated to the point of being out of my mind and body, but I was scared. While my dad stayed with me until they rolled me into surgery, my mom had gone back to the hotel to shower and get some rest after several days of sleeping in hospital chairs next to my bed. He kept me conscious by reciting the lyrics of as many Dylan songs as he could remember. And there were a lot. I sang along, “Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet…We sit stranded but we’re doing our best to deny it.” It kept me from thinking about the possibility that I wouldn’t make it out of surgery alive, or never be able to walk again. One after the other, we sang together until the attendant came to wheel me away. My dad followed close behind to make sure the orderly took great care in transporting me. Any abrupt movement was painful as my leg hung from a gurney and a pin temporarily kept it in place. As the nurses greeted me, my dad wished me luck and told me, “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
And he was. The surgery was a success and I was relieved to move to the next phase of recovery. I was still afraid to watch TV for fear of the Allstate commercial where they show a collision and you can hear and see it happening. I still didn’t want to listen to music. Slowly though, as the days turned into weeks, I was less and less afraid. I began with the doo wop station, upbeat and light hearted. A couple of songs here and there were enough to remind me of the healing power of music.
I learned to lift myself out of the bed, onto a plank and into the wheelchair. Then from the wheelchair to the walker; Standing, shuffling a few feet while my dad pushed the wheelchair behind me in case I had to sit down midway down the hall. When I was able to get to the end of the hallway and back to my room using only the walker, I was ready for the music. I found myself singing the Grateful Dead, “…gotta get back to where you belong, little bit harder, just a little bit more, little bit further than you’ve gone before.” I emailed my friend Dave and asked him to send me some CDs. When they arrived, I listened to that song, The Wheel, over and over again.
Eventually two months from the fated day, I was able to climb a flight of stairs, albeit slowly and sometimes by using the rump bump tactic. I was released from the hospital rehab and allowed to go home. My mom had already flown back to New Jersey two weeks earlier, barely arriving in time for my sister to give birth to my twin nieces. I can’t believe I missed that special morning when my nieces were born. Regretful, but out of my hands, I was in California. My dad stayed with me for several weeks, until I could live again independently. On our way home, we went to Home Depot so my dad could buy materials to build a sturdy bannister that would help me up the 12 steps to the front porch. I wasn’t used to wheeling myself around. My arms were so sore the entire next day that all I did was sit and watch old concert footage, barely moving from my favorite armchair. By the third day, I was feeling better and the bannister was complete, wooden stain and all.
It was an eye opening experience using a wheelchair. I knew I was lucky that this was only temporary. After months of physical therapy, I would be able to walk again and not be wheelchair bound. But I noticed things that had been unimportant before. The cuts in the curb on the sidewalk were often too bumpy for me to wheel over alone. Without my dad, I had to ask a stranger for a push. So many places in my small little town didn’t have a ramp or a handicap bathroom. It was a simple injustice, but it felt like a personal “You are not welcome here.” The most enlightening and sad thing I noticed was that people wouldn’t make eye contact with me. They would talk right over my head to my dad, as if I wasn’t there; Or that somehow the wheelchair left me unable to think or speak for myself. I think people were afraid to look, in fear of what they might see – what they imagined could be wrong with me. I wanted to tell them that I was okay, and that in a few months they wouldn’t even know that I had not been able to walk. But before I had a chance there eyes would dart away and they’d be gone. Now, I always make it a point to make eye contact with and smile at people in wheelchairs. Immobility does not define a person. Nobody likes or deserves to feel ignored. Everyone wants to be asked to dance.
Monday, June 2, 2014
FOG by Sonja Leobold
When Jacques and I were together, so many years ago, we hitched from Paris across Europe, ending up one night in Bavaria. We had no idea where we had been dropped off, only that we found ourselves in a dense fog.
We walked blindly, not even knowing if we were still on a road. No cars passed us, and every once in a while, we could see through the mist, fields, and, once, at a distance, a barn, which gave us hope that we might be able to sleep somewhere for a while. Jacques crossed the field to see if we could get into it, but a dog began to bark ferociously and Jacques backed off.
We walked most of the night, hardly able to see a foot in front of us. The fog enveloped us, but sometimes retreated, trees appearing from nowhere, sometimes a house or two, then disappearing. We kept losing sight of each other, too, only to rediscover one another just a few steps away. But we never saw another human being. It was as if we were between worlds—unknown places. Nothing seemed real.
As the fog lifted and light drifted down from the sky, things around us began to stir. A farmer left his house and headed across a field towards his barn, a dog at his side. Once in a while, we saw a cow or two standing as if in a trance, slowly blinking. Morning was breaking.
At some point, we heard a truck coming our way. It was a milk truck and the driver was kind enough to pick us up. He said he would take us into town. We had started out to try to find an old friend of mine who lived in Oberbayen, a small town in Bavaria, south of Munich. Amazingly, the driver told us we were practically there. Once he dropped us off in town, we were able to find the small inn where Robert, my friend, was staying.
It was good to see Robert. Robert. Solid, kind, wise. He was 65 and I was 21. He had lived a complicated life. He was German and as a young man, had served in World War I, only to emerge from it, shell-shocked and with a horror of war. During World War II, he had worked in the underground, helping Jews escape. After the war, he had come to America, living there for many years, and doing many things, some of them simultaneously. He started an old-time one-room schoolhouse, worked as a therapist, treating people who were “lost causes,” was a water-color painter, and was in the midst of translating the verses of the I Ching.
The quality in Robert I found most impressive was his ability to focus. When you were with him, he was totally attentive and fully present, so that even five minutes with him was completely satisfying and felt like five hours. And, perhaps because of that focus, he was acutely perceptive and sensitive. He learned so much about you without you having said a word. I think that’s why I had wanted to come to see him with Jacques. I felt so conflicted in my feelings for Jacques, and thought that perhaps things would clarify in Robert’s wise presence.
We walked blindly, not even knowing if we were still on a road. No cars passed us, and every once in a while, we could see through the mist, fields, and, once, at a distance, a barn, which gave us hope that we might be able to sleep somewhere for a while. Jacques crossed the field to see if we could get into it, but a dog began to bark ferociously and Jacques backed off.
We walked most of the night, hardly able to see a foot in front of us. The fog enveloped us, but sometimes retreated, trees appearing from nowhere, sometimes a house or two, then disappearing. We kept losing sight of each other, too, only to rediscover one another just a few steps away. But we never saw another human being. It was as if we were between worlds—unknown places. Nothing seemed real.
As the fog lifted and light drifted down from the sky, things around us began to stir. A farmer left his house and headed across a field towards his barn, a dog at his side. Once in a while, we saw a cow or two standing as if in a trance, slowly blinking. Morning was breaking.
At some point, we heard a truck coming our way. It was a milk truck and the driver was kind enough to pick us up. He said he would take us into town. We had started out to try to find an old friend of mine who lived in Oberbayen, a small town in Bavaria, south of Munich. Amazingly, the driver told us we were practically there. Once he dropped us off in town, we were able to find the small inn where Robert, my friend, was staying.
It was good to see Robert. Robert. Solid, kind, wise. He was 65 and I was 21. He had lived a complicated life. He was German and as a young man, had served in World War I, only to emerge from it, shell-shocked and with a horror of war. During World War II, he had worked in the underground, helping Jews escape. After the war, he had come to America, living there for many years, and doing many things, some of them simultaneously. He started an old-time one-room schoolhouse, worked as a therapist, treating people who were “lost causes,” was a water-color painter, and was in the midst of translating the verses of the I Ching.
The quality in Robert I found most impressive was his ability to focus. When you were with him, he was totally attentive and fully present, so that even five minutes with him was completely satisfying and felt like five hours. And, perhaps because of that focus, he was acutely perceptive and sensitive. He learned so much about you without you having said a word. I think that’s why I had wanted to come to see him with Jacques. I felt so conflicted in my feelings for Jacques, and thought that perhaps things would clarify in Robert’s wise presence.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW by Daniel Marshall
I felt comfortable sitting on a padded stool, the counter hard underneath my forearms when I leaned on it. With my eyes, I followed the marbled pattern on the stone, veins of white running through black, this way and that, webbed. The seat revolved, though not the yoke-shaped steel footrest. I twisted to left and right, stopping my swings with my feet, waiting for service.
“What will you have?”
“A vanilla malted.”
My eyes swept over the store—the mirror facing me that I turned from, not wanting to see myself, the shiny painted and chromed paraphernalia on the sideboard, the wooden telephone booth with the glass windows at the end of the walkway, and a few empty booths. The store was empty, except for me.
It was a choice of either a malted, a milkshake, or an egg cream, but I was hungry and wanted something thick and soothing, not runny with seltzer and lumpy with ice cream scoops. A memory flickered across my mind of an apple-cheeked young man and woman, she in a checked dress, sharing an ice cream soda with two straws in the Norman Rockwell painting. But I had no young woman soft on me to share a soda with, though I could have asked one if I’d had time.
I thought of Beverly, how pretty and demure she was, with long blond hair, and of the day that I passed her house and heard her screaming at her younger brother. An image of Joanne Lanzarone came to me, but I hadn’t seen her since eighth grade and didn’t know where she lived. I thought that I’d intercepted some glances from her, and there was an engaging sweetness about her but Carol del Casino was more sultry and got higher marks, though not quite as high as mine. Why was I thinking of them; they were moving in a different direction from me, and I never saw them anymore, except once or twice a year when I went to the same Mass as Carol, and she was wearing attention-getting fashionable grown-up clothes now.
The truth was that Regis kept me away from the neighborhood. I hardly even saw the pretty Wotman girls next door, though I still saw Marge in the kitchen when she visited my mom and they sat talking around the table. My mom liked to give advice and listen to people’s problems or just chat. I wondered what my classmates were doing. Tommy Keller liked to visit my mom, so once in a while I heard something about him. I liked to visit Ethel McDonald, Brigid’s mom, but Brigid still looked a lot like a girl and wasn’t sultry like Carol. Besides, the girls whom I went to school with seemed ordinary, and I wondered what sort of people were beyond Brooklyn.
I thought of Joanne in a one-piece elastic bathing suit, like the one that Joanne Galuski used to wear when I met her in Oswego on the shores of Lake Ontario, behind the university buildings where my dad did research for a summer job, and the summer before that Mary Morrow at Lake Champlain, where Harry Holmes lent us a big summer house on an acre of land by the only main road. I couldn’t remember when I’d seen Joanne in such a bathing suit, but I could easily imagine her looking attractive in one. I must have seen her somewhere.
Beverly was taller, and she could have had such a suit, too, but I couldn’t imagine her in one. Or Ginny Holst. I thought of Bev in crinoline and satin like the dress that she wore when I took her to the junior prom. My mom wanted me to date Mary Flaherty, but she was plain and chatty. My mom knew her mom. I thought of Ginny as very modest, in a plain flowered dress. She got the next highest marks after me and didn’t start school with us.
Making a malted was liturgy and performance. I couldn’t often afford one, but I wanted one to cheer me up. I remembered being disappointed when Carol showed a liking for Dennis Card. The counter guy dropped a measured spoonful of a white powder with an expert toss and, pulling a handle or two downward toward the metal canister that served as mixer, he dispensed a couple of fluids into it, thick and white. He locked the canister into the mixer and flicked a switch. The machine turned with a soft, business-like little roar. It was pea-soup green and enameled; they always were. Maybe it was in my imagination that I imagined seeing the liquid swirling. Then with a flourish he set a tall glass in front of me, poured the contents of the canister into it, and plopped a straw and spoon in. It was thick enough that a little indentation formed around the straw. I sipped, thinking of Joanne Lanzarone, Mary Morrow, and Joanne Galuski in bathing suits and wishing that I had a girlfriend like one of them.
“What will you have?”
“A vanilla malted.”
My eyes swept over the store—the mirror facing me that I turned from, not wanting to see myself, the shiny painted and chromed paraphernalia on the sideboard, the wooden telephone booth with the glass windows at the end of the walkway, and a few empty booths. The store was empty, except for me.
It was a choice of either a malted, a milkshake, or an egg cream, but I was hungry and wanted something thick and soothing, not runny with seltzer and lumpy with ice cream scoops. A memory flickered across my mind of an apple-cheeked young man and woman, she in a checked dress, sharing an ice cream soda with two straws in the Norman Rockwell painting. But I had no young woman soft on me to share a soda with, though I could have asked one if I’d had time.
I thought of Beverly, how pretty and demure she was, with long blond hair, and of the day that I passed her house and heard her screaming at her younger brother. An image of Joanne Lanzarone came to me, but I hadn’t seen her since eighth grade and didn’t know where she lived. I thought that I’d intercepted some glances from her, and there was an engaging sweetness about her but Carol del Casino was more sultry and got higher marks, though not quite as high as mine. Why was I thinking of them; they were moving in a different direction from me, and I never saw them anymore, except once or twice a year when I went to the same Mass as Carol, and she was wearing attention-getting fashionable grown-up clothes now.
The truth was that Regis kept me away from the neighborhood. I hardly even saw the pretty Wotman girls next door, though I still saw Marge in the kitchen when she visited my mom and they sat talking around the table. My mom liked to give advice and listen to people’s problems or just chat. I wondered what my classmates were doing. Tommy Keller liked to visit my mom, so once in a while I heard something about him. I liked to visit Ethel McDonald, Brigid’s mom, but Brigid still looked a lot like a girl and wasn’t sultry like Carol. Besides, the girls whom I went to school with seemed ordinary, and I wondered what sort of people were beyond Brooklyn.
I thought of Joanne in a one-piece elastic bathing suit, like the one that Joanne Galuski used to wear when I met her in Oswego on the shores of Lake Ontario, behind the university buildings where my dad did research for a summer job, and the summer before that Mary Morrow at Lake Champlain, where Harry Holmes lent us a big summer house on an acre of land by the only main road. I couldn’t remember when I’d seen Joanne in such a bathing suit, but I could easily imagine her looking attractive in one. I must have seen her somewhere.
Beverly was taller, and she could have had such a suit, too, but I couldn’t imagine her in one. Or Ginny Holst. I thought of Bev in crinoline and satin like the dress that she wore when I took her to the junior prom. My mom wanted me to date Mary Flaherty, but she was plain and chatty. My mom knew her mom. I thought of Ginny as very modest, in a plain flowered dress. She got the next highest marks after me and didn’t start school with us.
Making a malted was liturgy and performance. I couldn’t often afford one, but I wanted one to cheer me up. I remembered being disappointed when Carol showed a liking for Dennis Card. The counter guy dropped a measured spoonful of a white powder with an expert toss and, pulling a handle or two downward toward the metal canister that served as mixer, he dispensed a couple of fluids into it, thick and white. He locked the canister into the mixer and flicked a switch. The machine turned with a soft, business-like little roar. It was pea-soup green and enameled; they always were. Maybe it was in my imagination that I imagined seeing the liquid swirling. Then with a flourish he set a tall glass in front of me, poured the contents of the canister into it, and plopped a straw and spoon in. It was thick enough that a little indentation formed around the straw. I sipped, thinking of Joanne Lanzarone, Mary Morrow, and Joanne Galuski in bathing suits and wishing that I had a girlfriend like one of them.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
IT'S NOT OVER by DeAnn Louise Daigle
My art history class transported
me to Rome, the Netherlands,
Greece, France, Holland, Germany –
But more than cities and countries
with boundaries and languages
were the paintings and sculptures themselves.
Like music, they transcended all borders and
destinations except what led to the human heart.
Art and the human heart.
These few hours every week were precious and
inexplicably freeing for me.
When I was there in the evenings at the
university, I left behind W. T. Grant Company.
I was nineteen years old and totally in love with
the study of art and the worlds it opened for me.
I soared, I wept, I stayed awake nights writing
and reading about my experience of art
and the world of impeccable beauty and how it
nourished and sustained me
by feeding my imagination with an opening to
endless possibilities.
It was this experience that gave me the wings of
courage to go outside, to work, to speak, to have
conversation, to try to live my life as if there were
someone I could speak with about all I felt
and dreamed and hoped for.
I wrote about the whistler of the night
who walked in foggy footsteps I could hear
outside my window
in the middle of a summer’s quiet evening.
And I wrote, after seeing Edward Hopper’s
Nighthawks, about the same sky,
the same sun, the same moon, the same stars
from above my room to other rooms on the
other side of the globe, and how we shared these
together – human beings unknowing, quiet,
apart and yet together.
me to Rome, the Netherlands,
Greece, France, Holland, Germany –
But more than cities and countries
with boundaries and languages
were the paintings and sculptures themselves.
Like music, they transcended all borders and
destinations except what led to the human heart.
Art and the human heart.
These few hours every week were precious and
inexplicably freeing for me.
When I was there in the evenings at the
university, I left behind W. T. Grant Company.
I was nineteen years old and totally in love with
the study of art and the worlds it opened for me.
I soared, I wept, I stayed awake nights writing
and reading about my experience of art
and the world of impeccable beauty and how it
nourished and sustained me
by feeding my imagination with an opening to
endless possibilities.
It was this experience that gave me the wings of
courage to go outside, to work, to speak, to have
conversation, to try to live my life as if there were
someone I could speak with about all I felt
and dreamed and hoped for.
I wrote about the whistler of the night
who walked in foggy footsteps I could hear
outside my window
in the middle of a summer’s quiet evening.
And I wrote, after seeing Edward Hopper’s
Nighthawks, about the same sky,
the same sun, the same moon, the same stars
from above my room to other rooms on the
other side of the globe, and how we shared these
together – human beings unknowing, quiet,
apart and yet together.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
THE SEASON OF FEAR by Ruth Berg
This past winter has been a bitch. I have vegetated in my house....scared of icy roads and sidewalks...terrified of falling...broken arm...leg...back. I carry the hiking stick which I can barely manage when walking the dog. Yes...Yes what I have experienced is fear...real fear..and I hate it. Long ago I swore that as I aged I’d be bold, take the risks, not let the years strap me in an unmovable chair, be who I was.
I was in my twenties. I was in New York City taking an acting class that met on a Sunday night at twelve midnight on Sixth Avenue and 24th Street. You climbed up three flights of rickety stairs to the studio. The class met at this witching hour because everyone in the class, except me, was in a Broadway show and they could make it down after their performances.
The class ran from midnight to 2:30 or 3:00 am. After class we’d trudge down the rickety stairs...some turned north on Sixth Ave....four of us turned south headed toward The Village. We didn’t wait for a bus but walked the blocks south to 8th Street, talking about the scenes that had been presented in class; the working actors gossiping about the evening performance. At 8th Street, two turned west and two of us turned east. At Cooper Union, I lost my companion. I continued on, alone, to St. Marks Place, past the darkened Jazz club, on to First Ave., south one block to 7th Street and home at last. Unlocked the apartment door and my dog, Hambone, greeted me. I’d put on his leash, back down the stairs to the street with Hambone desperately searching for the nearest pole to lift his leg. Then a quick run around the block, back up the stairs to the apartment, feed Hambone and the cat, General Beauregard, then into the shower and getting ready to make the trip uptown to get to work on time.
.
What I remember of that time? The silence of the streets, hearing my shoe heel strike the pavement, the wild conversations as the four of us walked south, the lack of fear... Being alive in the moment. Being young. I want it back. I reach out.
Monday, November 11, 2013
CANYONLANDS by Pauline Tamari
The white water rafting trip down the Colorado River from Moab was exhilarating. I couldn’t believe I was able to once more feel the thrill of being on the edge; taking a bite out of life, once again.
It seemed at some point fate dictated a decree of disease that would imprison me in a static state of health debilitation. Prematurely old, sick, alone; an invalid, one who is not valid; whose life is not validated, who has no validity. I could not continue my life work, the work that fed my soul, my passions unattended. I could hardly care for myself; not for others, in and out of the hospitals where the lack of care and compassion was firmly correlated with the overwhelming humiliation from which there was no escape. Each time in the last quarter of a century the ferocious dragon who I had thought I had slain would raise its immortal head I was sure it would be the end. I was sure this last time I was on the only road left, a lonely and painful trek to the grave.
But here I was back in life again, in the rage of this rushing water as we flow over rocks and ripples sprayed with a canopy of life-giving water, we wind our way down this magnificent alley sheltered on either side by the sand colored mountains. I feel my soul settle in serenity. When the whitewater hits we steady ourselves, crouch on our fear and scream and yell as unencumbered teenagers on a rollercoaster. When taunted if anyone would want to venture a solo run in the kayak that is trailing the raft there are only two of us who take the bait, a young teen age boy on the trip and myself, the two polar ends of a life course each having an appetite for the taste.
We would stop in late afternoon our raft pushed up on the side of the sandy, secluded river beach where we would camp for the night. There were no other beings, no other boats, and no other intrusive noises, nothing that grated the ears or distracted the eye, and caused sensory agony, nothing that did not belong there, except perhaps us.
I would often float in the warm, soft, red muddy waters and let it wash over me at the end of the day. Stretched out, I would float with my face to the sun and just be. For me to just be in this force of this fearsome beauty that surrounded me, my body at peace, at one with me and the world around me, was heaven. I would set up my small tent quickly so I could take a solitary walk, a short hike in search for my soul and my being to become one, one with this awesome mystery that encased me.
In actuality I was “one,” the other five on this rafting trip were a young couple and a father with two teenagers. When we met in Moab, Utah to begin this adventure, the others were a bit surprised that I, somewhat strange in age and even stranger to be a woman of my age who was doing this type of trip alone. I was quite used to both being strange and doing strange things alone. On this trip even our two river guides came as a pair. But for the most part I felt a comfortable ease with and a part of this rag tag group of river rafters. We had quickly learned to delight in each of our strangeness and our appetite and exuberance in this adventure.
After an unusually superb dinner accomplished in some magical way over a fire by our river guides, with provisions so expertly concealed on our raft that the first day I began to think they forgot about bringing food, we would all sit around the fire, its light dancing shadows on the red rocks of the surrounding mountains. We talked, sang songs, heard old river stories and drank wine. I was surely back in life.
Later I would lie on the sand outside my tent. I would think of the starched, scratchy sheets and the needles plunged in my arm, with oxygen in my nose to face one more night of sleepless agony in an antiseptic unfeeling sterile world. I shiver. I then look up at the stars above me, twinkling me messages of delight, the soft glow of the moon and the warm sand beneath me and I feel at peace and alive in that very same moment as the silent song of serenity sings me to sleep.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
BRINGING IT TOGETHER by DeAnn Louise Daigle
It
feels like nothing is ever resolved.
Just
when I thought that in knowing
My
past more clearly, as in Bud
Actually
being my biological father,
Something
would be completed.
Rumors
seem to have basis in fact –
At
least in some fact, if not all. That
Hearsay,
that rumor, that gossip
Repeated
to me by my cousin when
We
were ten or eleven or nine years old
Had
its basis in something, and something
In
me knew this, even if what he told me
Was
not true. Yet, why would he have
Bothered
to tell me? He wanted me to
Know. He felt compelled, on some level
Of
his youthful humanity, for whatever
Unfathomable
reason, that I should be
Aware
of this information. He believed
It. And so I lived with his knowledge
Unable
to do anything about it or with
It
for some four decades when – just
Maybe
– I was ready to find out for sure –
And
for true –
Bud
and I wept on the phone. It was true.
What
Carl had told me that day in the old
Boarding
House, which held so many
Memories,
so many stories of our roots and
Acadian
history – so much of that big story
Of
our ancestors – it was there on a warm
Summer’s
day in one of the spare bedrooms,
Where
who knows who had slept. On that
Day
he told me the rumor he had heard, so
Convincingly,
and his cousin James was there
To
confirm it. Yes, it was true, it was
very
True. I have
loved you all these years. Sonorous
Regret
in his voice echoes still in my mind.
Bud
was my father – but he was not – nor
Would he ever be – my Dad.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
I PETER 3:15? by Carol Welch
Fall, 1978.
I sat in the leadership meeting in Wisconsin. Rev. Alan Ell was running the meeting. Alan was 6th Way Corps, probably in his mid-to-late 20s.
I was 19 years old, apprentice Way Corps, and serving as a WOW Ambassador. I would be entering in-residence into the 10th Way Corps at the end of my one year of service as a WOW. WOW was an acronym that stood for Word Over the World. Word Over the World meant that our goal was to move the rightly-divided Word of God so that it would be made available to every community on earth where a person was hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
As an Ambassador for Christ I was to speak the Word in season and out of season; that is, whether I felt like it or not. I was a shining light for God, God's messenger. I had Christ in me and could perform the works of Jesus Christ and greater works. Christ's works were that of healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out devil spirits, manifesting God's power, speaking the truth in love. The greater works included getting the natural man born again of God's spirit and receiving eternal life. Jesus Christ could not do that greater work when he was on earth because he had not yet died and arisen and ascended; being born again, or more accurately "born from above," was only made available to mankind beginning at the Day of Pentecost.
As a Word Over the World Ambassador I would spiritually grow ten years in one. That's what Doctor said, "If we really want to grow, then go." That is, go WOW now.
I faithfully reviewed and recited my retemory cards, business-size cards with a King James scripture verse printed on each card. Over the decades, The Way had different packs of retemory cards: Foundational, Intermediate, Advanced, Dealing with the Adversary, Abundant Life, Word in Business, Way Corps, L.E.A.D., and more. Each pack focused on a certain Ministry class or aspect of the Word. Some cards were printed not with scripture verses, but rather with certain Ministry definitions or principles, such as the definition of "word of knowledge" or a Way Corps principle.
I sat in the leadership meeting in a believer's home in a basement in Wisconsin. It seems there were about 20 to 30 believers at the gathering, all Way lay leadership. Rev. Ell was calling on different indiviuals at random to recite whatever retemory card he wanted us to recite. Each retemory card in a pack was numbered.
Rev. Ell would say, "Number 10." We leaders were to know the card right away and state the scripture reference, recite the scripture word perfect, and give the scripture reference again. My Way Branch leader at the time, David Dubew, had admonished me to know those retemory cards in my sleep. This was eternal life and the accuracy of the Word at stake. The devil was always after the accuracy of the Word.
Rev. Ell called on one of us to recite a card. The man he called on responded with silence; he could not bring to memory the retemory.
Alan then asked the group, "Does anyone in here know the retemory?"
A momentary hush fell on the room.
I immediately jumped to my feet and bolted forth what I thought was the retemory that Rev. Ell sought.
"I Peter 3:15. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. I Peter 3:15." *??*
As I ended my retemory recitation, the pitch of my voice rose slightly like I was asking a question indicating my own self-doubt regarding my answer.
Alan responded in military tone but with a hint of smile on his lips, "Is that a question or an answer Hamby?"
I responded with a hint of a smile, "It's an answer."
He nodded his approval, his smile a bit broader.
I was Way Corps in training, an Ambassador for Christ.
"It is Written" - that was the Way Corps motto.
I sat in the leadership meeting in Wisconsin. Rev. Alan Ell was running the meeting. Alan was 6th Way Corps, probably in his mid-to-late 20s.
I was 19 years old, apprentice Way Corps, and serving as a WOW Ambassador. I would be entering in-residence into the 10th Way Corps at the end of my one year of service as a WOW. WOW was an acronym that stood for Word Over the World. Word Over the World meant that our goal was to move the rightly-divided Word of God so that it would be made available to every community on earth where a person was hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
As an Ambassador for Christ I was to speak the Word in season and out of season; that is, whether I felt like it or not. I was a shining light for God, God's messenger. I had Christ in me and could perform the works of Jesus Christ and greater works. Christ's works were that of healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out devil spirits, manifesting God's power, speaking the truth in love. The greater works included getting the natural man born again of God's spirit and receiving eternal life. Jesus Christ could not do that greater work when he was on earth because he had not yet died and arisen and ascended; being born again, or more accurately "born from above," was only made available to mankind beginning at the Day of Pentecost.
As a Word Over the World Ambassador I would spiritually grow ten years in one. That's what Doctor said, "If we really want to grow, then go." That is, go WOW now.
I faithfully reviewed and recited my retemory cards, business-size cards with a King James scripture verse printed on each card. Over the decades, The Way had different packs of retemory cards: Foundational, Intermediate, Advanced, Dealing with the Adversary, Abundant Life, Word in Business, Way Corps, L.E.A.D., and more. Each pack focused on a certain Ministry class or aspect of the Word. Some cards were printed not with scripture verses, but rather with certain Ministry definitions or principles, such as the definition of "word of knowledge" or a Way Corps principle.
I sat in the leadership meeting in a believer's home in a basement in Wisconsin. It seems there were about 20 to 30 believers at the gathering, all Way lay leadership. Rev. Ell was calling on different indiviuals at random to recite whatever retemory card he wanted us to recite. Each retemory card in a pack was numbered.
Rev. Ell would say, "Number 10." We leaders were to know the card right away and state the scripture reference, recite the scripture word perfect, and give the scripture reference again. My Way Branch leader at the time, David Dubew, had admonished me to know those retemory cards in my sleep. This was eternal life and the accuracy of the Word at stake. The devil was always after the accuracy of the Word.
Rev. Ell called on one of us to recite a card. The man he called on responded with silence; he could not bring to memory the retemory.
Alan then asked the group, "Does anyone in here know the retemory?"
A momentary hush fell on the room.
I immediately jumped to my feet and bolted forth what I thought was the retemory that Rev. Ell sought.
"I Peter 3:15. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. I Peter 3:15." *??*
As I ended my retemory recitation, the pitch of my voice rose slightly like I was asking a question indicating my own self-doubt regarding my answer.
Alan responded in military tone but with a hint of smile on his lips, "Is that a question or an answer Hamby?"
I responded with a hint of a smile, "It's an answer."
He nodded his approval, his smile a bit broader.
I was Way Corps in training, an Ambassador for Christ.
"It is Written" - that was the Way Corps motto.
Friday, September 6, 2013
THE RECLINER by Maurine Netchin
Oh my God! I bought a recliner.
Really.
Something I vowed would never see the light of day in my home.
I am officially old. And straight.
And I’m old and straight enough to really need a recliner. Yes, need.
I’ve toyed with this for a long time – years really. But recliners are not for one-bedroom Manhattan apartments. Recliners are not for people like me who fancy themselves as hip. To my 40-something niece who lives in Chicago – with the rest of my family -- I am the “cool” aunt from New York City -- cool aunts do not have recliners. Recliners are for people who watch TV, who sleep sitting up, or, as they say, reclining. They don’t ride the subway. They ride the bus, if need be.
I’ve had a bad back since I was in my thirties – or even twenties, perhaps. My thousand-section, sectional couch, which I’ve owned for about 30 years, has no really comfortable section. That’s how I’ve managed to keep it in good shape and own it for so long – I never sit on it. Only guests sit on it. If they are uncomfortable, they are polite and don’t mention it.
For years, I’ve watched TV sitting in a straight-backed dining chair with various forms of back rests inserted, or in bed, with lots of pillows propped behind me. And all the time, I did quite well without a recliner.
The only people I knew who had recliners were my relatives who would all be octogenarians, or older, or dead, by now. Those big, clunky, La-Z-Boy things that took up half the room. Always covered with some horrible fabric or fake leather that looked very uninviting. Oh yes, and my folks had a recliner too. Not the La-Z-Boy type. Some supposedly ergonomic, vinyl, sliding lounge chair that was almost like a bed. It slid back and forth on a central axis – and vibrated. If you reclined it all the way back you were looking straight up at the ceiling. It was useless for doing anything but sleeping or mulling. It was a putty color vinyl material that didn’t give at all. Ugh. My pubescent friends always sat in it because it had a vibrator. They’d lie back, stare at the ceiling, vibrate, and stab at the fruit in the fruit bowl that my mother always put out on the table next to the chair. She’d stick a nice fruit knife in the bowl so you could cut the fruit and was always perplexed that my teenage friends – especially the boys – stabbed the fruit instead of eating it. Eventually, she begged my father to get rid of the chair. It was an eyesore and it isolated you from everyone in the room, not to mention Mom’s role as the “fruit policewoman.”
Years later, when I visited my folks, they had replaced that thing with a gigantic, rocking, swiveling, white, faux fur covered easy chair. Not a recliner. But with a good, sturdy back for my dad. He planted it right in front of their huge console TV. A selection my Dad bought when he was getting on in years and wanted to watch football while drowning out everything else – and everybody else. It was like a cocoon: high backed, with curving wing chair sides, all covered in that same fluffy, white, synthetic fur; something even a place like Raymore and Flanagan would probably eschew. Belonged in Las Vegas. I was actually shocked when I saw it because it was the first really tacky-looking, Archie Bunker type furniture that I ever saw in my parents’ home. I chalked it up to my Dad’s waning years when his sense of color and taste left him. Once, he showed up at a family gathering wearing rust-colored, plaid slacks, a striped shirt, a powder blue sports jacket, and white patent leather loafers, and I knew that his Brooks Brothers and Florsheim shoe days were over.
I never suspected that I might one day traverse a similar slope. I admit only to similar, not the same. Let’s call it Manhattan shabby chic, not Midwestern tacky. A recliner for a former hippie, left wing, baby boomer. A sort of pseudo-hippie. Not a weatherman type who blew things up; just a march-on-Washington, end-the-Vietnam war type. Mainstream for a 60’s pseudo-radical.
So what happened? Flash forward. Here I am in Macy’s. With a tape measure in hand. Testing recliners. Why? Because my physical therapist says I still have time to reverse a burgeoning dowager’s hump if I get my act together. Straighten the back; pull back the shoulders; get my head properly positioned over my spine. And, of all things, sit up in a good, comfortable, supportive chair that reclines for reading, resting.
Alas, to help ward off a true sign of old age—dowager’s hump, mind you. I can tolerate a lot of stuff associated with aging. Wrinkles, jiggly thighs, saggy skin, impatience – although plastic surgery is not my thing. It’s just a slippery slope. Everything falls. And falls again. And, then again. Gravity will always get you. And surgery is not something I would ever do electively, anyhow. Spent too many years defending personal injury and medical malpractice cases.
But a recliner to keep my spine straight and neutral: for this I can relent.
Three times, I went to Macy’s. And God knows where else. I did this last year, too, but wasn’t ready yet. Like wearing your hair naturally grey. This time, I sat in every “easy” chair they had there; rockers, gliders, swivelers, recliners, loungers, chaises. At least they had no faux fur fabric. Vinyl, yes. Burnt orange, avocado green -- yes. And who was in that department with me after 8:00 p.m. during the late holiday hours that kept the store open for us nut-jobs until midnight? A lot of over-fifty types. Who else?
I started small, got bigger, went back; knew that I had to limit my sights to something that could fit in my apartment. Finally, I gave in – bought an ivory/beige, leather – yes leather – “ergonomic,” recliner; demure and tasteful; but of course. And I went home to start rearranging all my living room furniture. What will I discard? Change? Shove in my storage space – you know, the one that everything goes into and nothing ever leaves. I spent hours rearranging; planning, mulling. Started on that journey to make room for the goddam recliner – or shall we say – I’m not ready to be called a dowager chair.
Next up, your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps an ottoman?
Alas, I have finally become my father, sans football, console, and faux fur.
Epilogue
The Macy’s recliner didn’t work. Gave me back and neck strain. Returned it, minus a restocking fee and the shipping fee. Certainly cheaper than medical treatment. Undaunted, I kept looking. After many hours of sitting in chairs, tilting, sprawling, lounging, lolling, and taking countless recommendations, I ended up with something called a “stressless” recliner. Cost a small fortune. Imported from Norway. Who would believe that? When did Norwegians get into the recliner act? But it’s comfy, cushy, and wonderful. And it has an ottoman. Need I say more?
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