Category Archives: nostalgia

thinking of my mother on father’s day

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It’s Father’s Day tomorrow, and I’ll think about him then.

But today I’m thinking about my mother because we find ourselves in East Sandwich MA driving along roads that we drove with her a dozen or so years ago when I took her on the last vacation she had.

When I rented the house we are now in (for this week), I had forgotten that we all had been out this way before, before dementia took my mother away into her own world.

It was my son-in-law who recognized familiar sites — the place we had gone several times for ice cream; the miniature golf course where my mom actually did very well for a little old woman in her 80s. And then I remembered, too — taking her into Hyannis to shop, taking her on a nature walk through some strange grove of bamboo that also served as exhibit space for even stranger sculptures. She had time to sit and laugh with her granddaughter and grandson-in-law. It was a good time for all of us.

I think of her now after we walked on the beach this evening — my daughter, her husband, and the soon-to-be nine-year old.

Someday, after I’m gone, I hope that they will smile when they remember this vacation with me — despite my limping along with a bout of vacation-annoying sciatica.

I am thinking of my mom today and wishing that I had been able to giver her more chances to enjoy her family while she was still able to enjoy them.

I am looking forward to this week of relaxation and adventure with my family. (Even the drive out with several stops to ease my grandson’s car-ride queasiness was part of the adventure.) There are plans to go to Plymouth and make other day trips around the Cape. Chances are, however, unless my sacroiliac calms down, I might just sit on the deck and read.

After all, I’m on vacation, and Cape Cod Bay is just the perfect place to be.

Whaling Blues — a found poem

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Whaling Blues — a found poem
(take one of the blues, the largest…)

Lying at the ocean’s surface,
he is an island in the sea.
He does not fear others.
Others do not fear him.

His only victims
are two-inch crustaceans
(doubtlessly too primitive
for anxiety).

His body is used
for the satisfaction
of skillful motion,
not combat;
he is as harmless as flowers
and, in his silver swimming grace,
as beautiful.

Buoyant with blubber
and virtually weightless
in his glossy yielding element,
he is freer than the birds.

Monogamous —
mating in one year,
raising an infant in the next —
he strokes and glides along
his partner’s body
(although their specific interest in sex
is limited to the spring).

Good will, devotion:
he will stay
with his wounded mate
as long as life lasts,
even while knowing
death is certain.

The best of neighbors,
he will tirelessly
hold up to breathe
an ill or injured friend —

even that pygmie, man,
who hunts with harpoons
and his insatiable hunger
for car wax,
lipstick,
and shoe polish

bled
from the last
of the blues.

c elf 1960s

Two for the Road

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((For lack of anything else to say, I’m posting here a poem a day….)

Her Daughter’s Destiny

If she mirrored me
she refused to know it,
choosing, instead,
the finer lines
of her father’s reflection.

There were times
I wished her gone,
her and her herd
of fragile unicorns –
or cornered where
I couldn’t watch
their golden dances
filling the space in my mirror.

When she left that spring,
the corners grew shadows.
She set free the unicorns
and took all of my mirrors
with her.

……….

Her Son Leaving Home

Young Dionysus,
a faded blue bandana
circling his head like a halo,
layers himself with choices
forgotten by the gods.
He smells of earth, of dreams,
of rain that flows with ease
along acres of hilly woodland,
filing some final need
in the deep hollows of stones.

He releases himself to the magic of motley,
to the wind, alive in his unbound hair,
to sweet pickings, scattered
like ripening berries
along miles of roadside vines.

As he leaves, the hearthfire
crackles softly.
Blackbirds loose feathers
from the heights of sky-borne oaks,
and honey bees sing to the sun.

c elf (1970s and 1980s)

Ode to Opal

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(For lack of anything else to say, I’m posting here a poem a day….)

Ode to Opal

The opal, they say,
scatters the heat of the wearer,
turns her fickle, they say
(if she is not centered)
– like light in moving water,
like water on warm stone.

(Let her who wears it
beware.)

The opal, they say,
is partly water,
softer than crystal
(though not as clear),
smoother than pearl
(though not as soft),
as fragile as a heart
nearly mended.

Break it and it bleeds —
water scattering light
like dreams at dawn.

(Let him who holds it
beware.)

The opal, the say,
attracts joy, love,
creative spirits
that fire the heart,
sends from its center
the magic of all other stones,
– an irresistible call
to iridescence.

1992 c elf

rebirth is a struggle

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Spring. And rain. And in my deepest being a reflection of what’s happening in the deeper earth. I’m struggling.

And so I go back into my stacks of poetry, looking to remember who I’ve been as a way of beginning to find who I am becoming. Age 71. Still becoming. Spring, again.

For lack of anything else to say
I’m posting here a poem a day,
Most are old and conjure years
rife with hopes and dreams and fears.
Rippling through my flow of time,
they maybe sing, but never rhyme.
Perhaps someday they’ll fill a book.
If not, it’s just some chance I took.

A poem from my 30th year:

Riding the Heartland Current

When the sun finally slips
through the clouds
spilling into that lake
in high Wyoming,
it is only a matter of time before
the muddy waters reach Montana,
where the Missouri gorges itself
on the Jefferson, Calatin, and Madison,
binding its fate to the press
of a season’s passion.

Along the banks at Bismarck,
Spring becomes a time for waiting.
And even at bold St Louis,
bright fishing boats
hold to their moorings,
sheltered from the sudden currents
that rush Spring’s murky dreams
toward the hungry Mississippi.

It is never wise
to swim the dark Missouri;
As everyone in Nebraska knows
the mud must run its course
through each Missouri Spring.

1970 elf

stoop sitting

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A day like this in early Spring would be the beginning of our “stoop sitting” season.

There were no driveways in that old urban neighborhood, with no basketball hoops in them. But we all had stoops. The stoop was for the kids; the upstairs porches for the adults, from which they reigned over that blue-collar neighborhood with watchful eyes.

My cousins and I would sit on the bottom step of the 3-family-house stoop (where most of them lived) and play Jacks on the sidewalk or Stoop Ball (which we called Fly’s Up) from the first two steps using a super pinkie ball. The sidewalk itself would be chalked with games of Girls Are and Hopscotch. I couldn’t find anything online defining our game of “Girls Are,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s just the name we gave it. Maybe it’s even a game we made up.

There wasn’t much of a backyard, back then, and within what there was my grandparents had planted various greeneries that I thought were weeds until I saw my grandmother make concoctions for her arthritis out of them.

Now I live in a middle class neighborhood where people don’t seem to ever sit out on their stoops. Except for us.

The front of our house, with its minimal stone stoop, faces south, so it’s the best place to sit and have a cup of tea in the morning or relax after dinner. In a few weeks it will have plants on and around it, but it’s still too cold to get the plants in. But we all sat out there in the sun for a while today — the only family in the neighborhood who stoop sits.

We do have a back yard, where the vegetable garden will go again, bigger this year, and where perennials wait for a stronger sun while crocuses, daffodils, and a yucca plant that never dies off in the winter are pressing their way into Spring. And in the shady side yard, where the irises are are just sprouting, the heavy old cement Pan statue that I have hauled around through four moves, now sits, down and dirty, playing his silent pipes.

It’s almost Spring, and it’s stoop sitting time.

why I haven’t been blogging

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Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

While I believe that the above quote is true, that’s not the reason I haven’t been blogging here.

The main reason is that I’ve been setting up a WordPress.com blog for my 50th college reunion as a way of generating some nostalgic interest among my former classmates — in hopes of getting them to attend. The reunion isn’t until the Fall, and the site won’t go live until May, but I’ve been brushing up on html codes so that I can add a little pizzazz to the look of the site. I don’t have a great design eye, but, using a simple WordPress template as the basis, I’ve been able to figure out how to insert lines to break sections and how to format a table within a page, and how to do some other tweaking that I wanted to do. I actually like doing this stuff, and hours can go by before I notice that my butt’s numb from sitting so long.

The other reason is that I’m figuring how to knit a sweater on a bias. I have a pattern, but I’ve had to change the stitch count because I’m using a different yarn. I’m sure getting my math-phobic brain some exercise.

Then, of course, there’s my FaceBook games of Scrabble, Lexulous, and Wordscraper, which I also do for brain exercise. And lately I’ve been doing an online picture puzzles as well.

I’m reading mystery novels and listening to an unabridged audio version of The Help, recommended by a friend and downloaded from my library. The narrative is totally engrossing, pulling me into the lives of everyday people whose lives were affected by the Civil Rights turmoil of the early 60s.

I just finished reading (for a book club I hope to join later this month) Home Repair, which has a story line very close to my own life’s narrative.

It is definitely great to be retired so that I can have this fun playing.

I did notice, however, that the taxes on my Social Security went up. Now, that doesn’t make for much fun.

I have to remind myself that it could always be worse.

floating into February

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This is the kind of day for skiing or snowshoeing or snow-fort building. But I don’t do any of them. I can’t seem to even walk very far these days.

But today, with the sky a clear blue and a sun that has finally left the falling snow behind, I bundle up and get myself outside for the first time in weeks. I take a short walk around a few blocks — just about as much as my joints can take today.

When I come back to the house, I haul out a stool and sit on the small porch. I close my eyes. For a moment I am back in my babyhood carriage — the old kind from the 40s, with an oil cloth cover that rolls up to my chin, so that I am warm and snuggly inside, even though my nose is cold. The sun is warm and bright on my closed eyelids. I want to be a child again.

I think of my mother — how young and happy she was when she pushed me in that carriage — how disappointment and dementia drained from her spirit what was the best of her. I think of her because her 95th birthday would have been this month; she would have made it had she lived for three more months. But it’s just as well that she didn’t; those months would have only extended her hell on earth.

I could sit here all day, pretending. But I have a math challenge to confront — figuring out how to use a sweater pattern I like but using a different weight yarn and different size needles. It’s all algebra, but math-challenged that I am, I have to work myself up to grappling with setting up the equations. I can’t seem to keep my body in shape, but I try to do so with my brain.

I do have to deal with my body, though, despite the back problems. I’m hoping I can try the “chair yoga” this week at the senior center in town — that is if it’s not canceled again because of a another snow storm. And I’ve begun firing up my wii around 4 p.m. every day just to do some balance and aerobic exercises, which I seem to sorely need.

We are all waiting for spring. But for today, I’ll take the sun on snow.