Extra Bread

The Ryans lived around the Old Road, father and son, both called William, in a small but well kept house that they faithfully repainted every few years. They had both fishermen all their lives and while Young William didn't remember his mother, there was evidence of her everywhere - lace curtains at the windows and the soft touches she had brought with her the day she arrived from Prince Edward Island during the time when some marriages were still arranged. Marjorie had died shortly after Young William had been born and Old William had never remarried. He had given his name to a stranger, he told Nana, but he'd lost his heart to his wife.

The day my mother struck our old dog with her car, the Ryans were passing. It wasn't much of an impact but Fritz yelped then began to howl. Both the Ryans dropped lunchpails and slickers and raced up the front path, arriving as my grandmother came out the back door, apron flying, Lady at her heels. You know he's a chaser! my grandmother was yelling, Why didn't you check to see where he was? My mother stood, car keys dangling from one helpless hand and crying while the Ryans knelt over Fritz. Take Lady inside, Nana told me firmly, Go now! And she gave me a healthy push towards the backdoor. I did as I was told but came right back, terrified that my beloved dog was dead and needing to be with him. I didn't think of my mother's carelessness but Nana was tending to that, snatching the keys away from her and ordering her inside with a rough shove and a disgusted look. Fritz had become quiet, laying on the gravel on his side while Old William ran his rough hands over him and Young William held his head, talking softly and stroking him. Back leg's broke, Missus, Old Walter told my grandmother, Gonna need a splint. He looked at me and smiled, his kind eyes were reassuring, He's gonna be fine, little one, fetch me some tape and some pieces of wood. He shed his jacket and cap and rolled up his shirt sleeves, gave Fritz's leg a sharp snap. In no time, my old dog's back leg was immobilized in a hand made splint and carefully taped. In a day or two, he had learned to walk, nose to the ground, hindquarters in the air, putting his weight on his front feet and the tip of the splint, one small leg dangling in the air. By fall he had recovered and the Ryans came to remove his splint. He favored the leg for a few days and Nana decided to keep him housebound but by Labor Day he was, as Young Walter said, fit to dance a reel.

No mention was made of the accident after that but my mother became much more careful about checking on the dogs before she drove away and Nana baked extra bread and pies all that summer, delivering them quietly to the Ryan's house when they weren't home.

Fame and Fortune

My friend John is a musician who has had some fame and fortune in his life and lost it. Now he plays the clubs and casinos and half heartedly works in a local music store to help support his daughter who lives with her mother. His little girl is the light of his life, a beautiful child who worships him. He is much loved in this small community - he has a warmth and generosity of spirit, a colorful and slightly offbeat sense of humor, a sense of having found contentment in the music. News that he was to be married rocked us all - it seemed that he was giving up his road dreams once and for all and was going to settle down and live a routine, working musician's life.

The ceremony was held on the stage of the Municipal Auditorium, once home to the Louisiana Hayride, Elvis, Hank, and other larger than life country music stars. The minister - a local musician himself - wore bluejeans and the only guests were family. Though there was no live music, there were echoes. The stage was littered with equipment for the evening's performance - two saxaphones and a keyboard, a guitar on a stand, speakers and electrical equipment and miles of cords and wiring. Afternoon light mixed with stage lighting and spot lights and now and then a ray of sun flashed on the purple, green and gold decorations. In the balconies a worker or two paused to watch the ceremony. John stood with one arm around his daughter and one around his bride and in a matter of minutes it was all said and done. The empty old building had worked it's magic again and it felt so right. We walked out, past signed pictures of Patsy Kline, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and dozens more to the bright afternoon sunshine of a beautiful summer day. There was much hugging and kissing and handshaking as befits a wedding. It was a new day for all and there will be new music to be played and new songs to be written.

Reading Required

My daddy loved reading.

He read books, magazines, newspapers - short stories, histories, novels, biographies, ususally in hard back if available, a bias he passed to me because I've never liked reading paperbacks - and he remembered and could quote what he'd read. He said it was a process of self-education and he was open minded to most anything that would help him learn. He was interested in things and people, inventions and theories, how things worked and what the world was doing. He never stopped a book because he'd lost interest or suspected how it might end. His joy was in the journey between the covers, his love of language and dialogue lasted him his whole life. He especially loved satire, British humor and Shakespeare but could be almost equally taken by Zane Grey or Mark Twain.

My mother favored glossy romance novels and scandal. She kept a copy of "Peyton Place" hidden in a drawer with stockings and underwear and her closet was littered with movie magazines and out of date TV Guides that she couldn't bear to part with. From a literary point of view, this was a marriage of true opposing forces and conflict. How could two so completely different people possibly be happy together? Their reading habits became a metaphor for their entire marriage to me, a kind of summary for all that was wrong between them. If ever there were two people less suited to each other, I've never met them. I know nothing of their meeting, courting, marrying, no details at all and as I look back, I wonder how that can be. Perhaps I never asked, understanding with some child's instinct that looking back could do no good.

So as my daddy sat in his recliner with Joseph Conrad open on his lap, my mother put aside her Grace Metalious in favor of a re-run of Laugh In. Maybe some of us are textbooks and others are Cliff notes.

A Change in Geography

The man facing me across the desk was unhappy and angry and at a loss for words. He wanted to talk to me about my future husband's drinking, the matter of missing funds, my own welfare. I didn't want to hear it and he didn't know where to begin. So we sat, both locked up and defensive.

We had been living in a small town on the Florida coast for almost a year. David was manager of the animal shelter but still spent time on the road and was on call most nights and weekends. Heartsick, I listened to the list of accusations. Failure to respond to an emergency calls, poor management, drinking on the job, drinking and driving, misuse of shelter funds, theft. Slowly it was explained to me that they had no choice but to let him go. They hadn't decided whether or not to file charges. It was like being locked in an airless closet with a maniac - though I knew every word was true and there was no escape, I still fought back. When they suggested that I should get help for my own sake - leave him while I still could, don't marry him, he'll take you down with him - I exploded with a kind of righteous fury and bolted. The world, which had been closing in on me for months, had suddenly caved in. The deadly truth glared at me from every angle, bearing down with an awful accuracy, tearing my carefully constructed denial system to pieces. I felt shattered, furious, sick, trapped and broken. Halfway home I changed course and drove to a hotel on the beach, certain only that facing David right away would be a mistake and that my mind was too much in chaos to think clearly. I spent two days alone in a hotel room, trying to find a way out. What finally sent me home was pride, shame, fear, and a refusal to admit failure - foolish, foolish
feelings to give in to.

When he realized I knew, David immediately admitted everything, even the theft. I listened to his remorse and guilt, his promises and apologies, saw his tears and heard his pleas. He was ready to get help, he swore, one more chance, he begged, if we get away from here we can make everything right. He was frightened and desperate and I shut down that part of my mind that was screaming "Don't do this!" and gave in. I pawned my cameras and my jewelry to raise the cash and we left Florida. I buried the feeling that this was the first of many steps down a dead end street and allowed myself to be convinced that all we needed was a change in geography. It was to take twelve more years before I faced my fears as well as the truth - the solution was in neither love nor geography but in giving up the lie. Even on a a dead end street, you can always turn around.

Dead Calm

There was not a breath of breeze and not a single leaf stirring. Even the birds and squirrels had taken refuge and were nowhere to be seen. The heat was heavy, oppressive, so thick that it took your breath away and drained your energy like a giant suction machine. Tree limbs hung, still as stone, not the least flutter to be seen and not a single child's voice to be heard. The heat encased us like a heavy, wet, woolen blanket. It was dead calm with no relief or escape in sight.

The maple tree, centered squarely in the middle of the back yard, provided the only shade and we were gathered under it, sitting at the splintery, old wooden picnic table, celebrating my mother's birthday. She was suffering - wilted and drenched with sweat, she drank can after can of cold beer and pressed ice to her face, throat, and neck. It didn't help much and she looked ready to faint, the sweat made her appear to be melting in front of our eyes. My daddy tried to tempt her with cold potato salad and iced coffee but she waved him away. He dragged out an old box fan and set it directly in front of her, set it at the highest setting, and the steamy air began to blow at her. She leaned into it, eyes closed, hair plastered to her forehead. When she shook her head, a fine shower of sweat sprayed around her. She dug both hands into the barrel of ice to retrieve another can of beer, pressing it to her cheeks before opening it and gulping it down. My daddy kept his silence while he piled paper plates with potato salad, chilled fruit,

pickles and cold chicken. He had offered to grill and she had snapped at him sharply, suggesting that he had lost his mind if he thought a fire was a good idea in this kind of heat. He'd shrugged and opened another bag of ice, her words and tone melted harmlessly away before they struck him. This trick of deflection was something I would never learn - sharp words sting me to this day and my mother's voice still plays in my head when I least expect it. I used to wish for an invisible shield that I could hide behind and be protected by - her words would hit it and bounce off before they could harm me. On this afternoon though, there was nothing to fear. She was consumed with the hateful heat and paying no mind to anyone else. Finally, her food untouched and presents unopened, she staggered toward the house, saying she couldn't stand another second. No one protested and it took hardly any effort to persuade my daddy to turn on the sprinkler and join in a game of water tag

The rare late summer heat wave broke a few days later and the birds and squirrels returned to the yard. Labor Day passed and we returned to school. Summer was soon forgotten. Life, W.E. Timmons wrote, is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain

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The Old Lady Cat

Chloe watches me type with interest, making an occasional comment if I glance her way. Without my really noticing, she has become old - heavier, darker, slightly slower, but just as ill tempered as always. She has never accepted the presence of other animals in ths house and has never met a another human for who she any use whatsoever. When she was younger, she sought out the high places - top shelves, a basket atop the refrigerator -

but now she spends her days sleeping in an old Ethan Allen chair in the guest room. She opts for the room used the least and she sleeps with one territorial eye open, listening for intruders and growling out warnings when they enter. I pray she wil be spared the indigities of old age but realistically I know that she and I will too soon be forced to make that one way trip to the vet. There is precious little comfort in knowing that she has had a good life, a long time, that she has been sheltered and loved every step of the way and will be missed. She is a fine cat, independent and feisty, stubborn and tempermental, a loner and a survivor, all the things that cats strive to be and all the things that I admire about them. She will not go gently.

I am comforted by the sure and certain knowledge that Joshua waits for her and will be glad to see her again. That he will watch over her as he did from the moment that he dragged her out from under the house, kicking and screaming, orphaned and barely six weeks old. She wasn't much to look at - scrawny, dirty, hungry - but Josh wouldn't take no for an aswer so into our lives she came.

I spend a few minutes with her each morning. She purrs fiercely and nuzzles under my chin, licking my neck with her sandpaper tongue and kneading her front paws into my shoulder. If I stop stroking her, she will give me a small nip as if to tell me to pay attention, then settle back into my lap and look at me with her green eyes wide open. I can sense her contentment and feel her heartbeat and as I cradle her small, warm, furry body, I wonder if she knows how much I love her and how glad I am to have her. Her body tenses as I move to put her down and she reaches for my shoulders with both front paws and we rub noses and I give her a last minute hug. It seems that I turned away for an instant and ten years passed.

A Proper Summer Hat

Women in the south are fond of hats and the occasions that call for them. Weddings, funerals, gardening, debutante parties, parades. Most woman I know have at least one defining and uniquely their own hat. Mine - purchased at an estate sale - is of straw with brown stripes and tassels and a brim that can be worn up or down. It is an all purpose hat - for the days when I oversleep and miss the opportunity to wash my hair, for outside festivals when my hair wouldn't survive the humidity, for those times when I would rather not be recognized because I missed the opportunity to wash my hair or am at an outside festival. I have another for those regrettable times I spend among the shrubs - lime green with a multicolored wrap around band. And a floppy brimmed white one for the serious times though I confess I am still waiting for the proper occasion to wear it.

A proper summer hat can be many things - a diversion, a disguise, an attention getting device, a useful accessory for idle hands, an eccentricity. It can be subtle or outrageous, silly or fashionable, it all depends on the personality and mood of the wearer. I never cared for hats when I was younger and have even begun to formulate a theory that hats and maturity just may be connected somehow. A hat that says I know what it looks like and I don't care sends a message of strength and independence, of inner peace. A woman who can carry off a ridiculous hat is a woman with self confidence and dignity - she is a force to be reckoned with. Her hat says Stand aside and let me pass. There are few challenges a woman can't meet in the proper hat, particularly if the hat in question has had a previous owner. Second hand hats often retain something of their previous owner, a trace of their spirit, perhaps or a memory embedded in the fabric and reawakened by the new owner. It's as if an aura is passed along and in the passing, the hat and it's owners live on.

Sometimes it takes a brave woman to wear a hat. Sometimes the hat is what makes the woman brave.

It Begins With an Unmade Bed

It begins with an unmade bed. After that, neglect and procrastination are natural steps, taken with the greatest of ease. What few dishes there are can wait until tomorrow, the dust is hardly noticeable, the plants are holding their own and the random clothes dropped here and there aren't hurting anyone. What begins as the tiniest bit of laziness has reached full fledged sloth in a matter of hours. I marvel.
Sunday comes and with it, the hour of reckoning. But then again, I have all day so there's no harm in an extra hour or two of sleep. When I wake, it's just past noon and I imagine I hear not only my grandmother's footsteps but her voice, How can you live like this? Get up this instant! And I do. Tired and guilty, I begin housecleaning, shooing animals from everywhere I need to be, gathering laundry and putting things to right. It takes the remainder of the day and when done I'm more tired and headachy than when I started and too hot to eat more than a chocolate bar and a glass of apple juice. Speaking nutritionally, I am in the land of the walking wounded with neither the inclination nor the will to change. I despair.

Monday dawns bright and beautiful, the beginning of a new work week. With the animals fed and watered, I shower and dress, make the bed, put on makeup. My hair works on the first try, my keys are exactly where they should be,

I remember my bottle of chocolate milk, my car starts. I hope.

I once read that one of the prime causes of teenage suicide is a teenager's inability to see down the road, to recognize that change will come, that no bad feeling or depression will last forever. They see no way out.

When you have taken everything you can stand,

Stand your ground.
Hold the fort,
Withstand the pain.

And if you are running

And the wind is always is in your face,
Just keep on running,

The wind is bound to change.

Larry Gatlin

Just Friends

The men in my mother's life changed like the seasons.

I never understood what drew them to her - she wasn't pretty or thin or very bright but rather stocky, with a foul mouthed ability to curse like a sailor. She told dirty jokes with relish, chain smoked, could drink any of them under the table, and drove her pink Ford convertible like the devil was on her tail. Her flirting was suggestive and crude with a malicious edge and her temper, always close to the surface, could explode without warning. She was married with three young children, a chip on her shoulder and a nasty inclination to stir up trouble. Yet the men came. The three I remember most vividly were Jimmy, Freddie and John.

Jimmy was a tall, silver haired, rail thin pharmaceuticals rep. He smiled a lot and drank martinis, smoked long, thin cigarettes with a shiny black holder. He was a nervous sort, chattering on about nothing at all for hours at a time and always being meticulous about keeping his distance from her if the kids were home. After school, we would find them in the living room, drinking and playing cards. He was partial to pink gin and lived with his mother somewhere in Maine. John was wheelchair bound, enormously fat and very pink - his hands were swollen and his laughter often turned to a coughing fit which turned his pudgy, jowly face dark crimson. He had gone to high school with my mother, so she said, and then been in a car accident which left him paralyzed. He drank beer
in huge quantities then needed help to the bathroom. I didn't dare think what might be going on behind the closed door, he was a touchy-feely type with a loud voice and he made me want to wash. Freddie was a Cambridge homicide detective, a leathery faced, hook nosed and narrowed eyed man from the North End of Boston. His teeth were frightneningly white against his olive skin and his dark hair was always uncombed. He spoke in rough street language and his voice was coarse with a hint of an accent. He drank beer from a bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He wore a wedding ring and a diamond pink ring, dressed mostly in black and always carried a gun. He and his wife were working things out, my mother said and he was the only one that my daddy knew separately and who would sometimes linger until suppertime.

A therapist once asked what I thought my mother might have been looking for in these odd relationships - love, drinking buddies, approval, scandal. I never knew and by the time I left home had come not to care. In a way, I think we all summon our own demons and have to deal with them alone. Some of mine were not the men in my mother's life but the aftermath, the late night arguments between my parents and my mother's slurred denials and her repeated protests of We're just friends. My daddy, so slow to anger, would rage at her with questions she couldn't answer until he was defeated and then a deadly silence would come over the house. The demons were beaten back but would come again another night. They had a standing inivtation.

Beacon Hill

My grandmother had one sister, Zelma, who lived in New York, and one brother, Edgecomb, a steadfast and dedicated bachleor, who we called Uncle Eddie and rarely saw aside from holidays. He was a short, almost pudgy little man with bushy eyebrows, a grey mustache and kind eyes. He was in his late forties when he finally met and married Aunt Helen, the headmistress of a prestigious girls school in a wealthy Boston suburb. She was tall and trim, properly brought up, carefully coiffed and well dressed, the product of Beacon Hill roots and old money. Nana said it was a marriage of convenience but wouldn't explain what she meant.

Aunt Helen's debut with her new family was planned and rehearsed for carefully and at length. It was decided that Nana would serve sherry and use her good china, classical music would play in the background, the children were taken shopping for proper dress up clothes and lectured relentlessly on manners and etiquette. My daddy was to wear a suit and tie, my mother was to stay sober. Toys were put up, knick knacks dusted and adjusted, ashtrays washed to a shine. Any misbehavior would be dealt with instantly and severely, my grandmother warned us in dire tones, There will be swift and certain justice for any infraction of the rules, mark my words, she predicted grimly, broom in one hand, apron in the other, No shenanigans!

As my daddy tried to tell her later, it was simply an unreasonable expectation. We were introduced and immediately banished to the downstairs playroom until dinner but it only took minutes for a fight to break out and spill back upstairs. There was much yelling and crying, blame and accusation flew in all directions, my youngest brother's nose was even bloodied before it was over. We were all sent to separate rooms to cool down and consider our behavior while Nana did her best to comfort Aunt Helen who had had simply been stricken with shock at this outbreak of violence. When she suggested in a shaky voice that perhaps the children ( we knew she wanted to say heathens ) should dine at the kitchen table, apart from the adults, Uncle Eddie refused. And, he added sharply, if you're going to have one of your spells, Helen, then please do it upstairs. Nana blinked at this rebuke, her eyes widening in surprise and she dropped the facecloth she had been holding over Aunt Helen's forehead onto her lap. Aunt Helen jumped up

with a shriek that would've shattered glass and ran from the room. While my grandmother stood speechless, my
mother and daddy both began to laugh helplessly and Uncle Eddie soon joined in. Come, Alice, he said, taking my grandmother's arm, Let's have dinner.

They continued to visit for holiday dinners and sometimes dropped in for birthdays and Helen eventually forgave us our initial encounter. They had no children and traveled extensively, furnishing a renovated Brookline townhouse with pieces and mementos from all over the world. They were an interesting if mismatched couple, the haughty Beacon Hill headmistress and the affable, down to earth real estate developer, but the marriage was to last over 40 years until Helen died, well into her eighties, and Uncle Eddie followed soon after. Gotta go, Alice, he told my grandmother with a wink, I just can't seem to do without her.

Life in the Movies

The darkened theatre smelled of popcorn and candy bars. My friend Iris and I sat high in the balcony watching "Lawrence of Arabia", absolutely transfixed by Peter O'Toole's blazing blue eyes and remarkable good looks. It felt like magic. Some time later, I would flee that same theatre in sobs, my heart in pieces at the death of Old Yeller, utterly unable to comprehend that it was make believe. I was an adult by the time I happened on "The Yearling" but the reaction was the same and I cried for hours, unable to distinguish fiction from reality. I have never seen "The Lion King", or "The Horse Whisperer", still can't watch "Bambi" and fast forward over the scene where Atticus Finch shoots a rabid dog in "To Kill a Mockingbird". I've gotten through "Babe" though it took several attempts, and I've learned to watch certain movies by avoiding certain scenes - "Dances With Wolves" for example. Now and again I can get most of the way through some of the episodes of "All Creatures Great and Small" but I do it on full alert, ever ready to punch the mute button and look away.

It's been pointed out to me that disaster movies give me no such pause and that I can watch hour after hour of serial murdering without the first twinge yet can't bear to watch a dog or cat who simply looks sad or lonely. I have no explanation other than when people die, I know it's a movie and when animals die or are injured, I don't. Perhaps it's a glitch in my nature or a missing gene or just wanting to believe that if I don't watch, then they won't suffer. I have discovered that I'm not alone in this though - ask someone who saw "Old Yeller" when they were kid and most will tell you they were devestated if not affected for life.

Give me a crime drama any day.

Learning to Make Rice

In the kitchen with my mother one fall afternoon, I tentatively expressed an interest in learning to cook. She laughed out as if I'd suggested I might learn to fly and said no. You're too young, you'd just get in my way and I don't have time. Ask your grandmother. The subject was not raised again and I found myself with no call to learn. I had no aspirations to be Julia Child and there were simple cookbooks to be had. I made do.

Some years later, the vet suggested that adding cooked rice to our elderly cat's diet would help her intestinal problems and wiling to do anything to make her last years a little easier, I immediately bought a glass sauce pan,

a bag of Uncle Ben's and dusted off my basic Betty Crocker. In the box with the sauce pan was a metal triangle and a warning never to use the sauce pan without it. Curious, I thought, but I dimly remembered an experiment from 7th grade science about heat, water, glass and conductivity - I wasn't positive but it seemed that putting a metal spoon into a glass container of hot liquid would keep the glass from shattering. It seemed sensible to me so I filled the sauce pan with the specified amount of water, dropped the metal triangle in, measured out rice and added it to the boiling water. I did this once a day for several weeks and Tiffany's intestinal problems improved. I was worried about wear and tear on the triangle though - it was prone to rust - and I made a note to purchase another one.

One afternoon in my friend Tricia's kitchen, I noticed that on each burner on her stove there was a metal triangle.

None were rusted. A glass pot of rice was cooking, resting on it's own triangle and in what I can only describe as a moment of sudden and blinding domestic insight, I realized how the triangle was meant to be used. My hand flew to my mouth in horror, Oh my God! I shrieked, I've been poisoning Tiffany! Dear friend that she is, Tricia calmly coaxed an explantion from me then did her level best not to laugh but she was overcome and in seconds was laughing so hard she could barely stand and tears were running down her cheeks. The more I tried to explain, the worse it got.

The rusted rice diet was not fatal - Tiffany survived several more years and did quite well. I learned a valuable lesson about cooking and friendship - Tricia still tells this story with love each and every time - and I suspect that we all have some version of learning to make rice in out pasts. We do learn best by our mistakes.