Alfred Road

The rain washed away the chalk hopscotch game and drove us all indoors where we improvised a game of dodge ball in the gym. Teachers didn't like idle minds or bodies and it was either that or study hall. I would've been content to sit in the bleachers and read "The Bobbsey Twins" but they were having none of that. Most of us were picked up after school let out but my brothers and I walked home in the rain, a respectable difference apart so that no one would know we were together.

Alfred Road was just one of many side streets that dead ended at Spy Pond - the houses were two and three story walk up apartments, a solidly working class neighborhood, lower middle class, I suppose - not quite affluent enough to own a single family home but heads and shoulders above the nearby Cambridge border where broken down cars lined the curbs, laundry hung from second story windows and you could always smell something cooking. I had friends on Alfred Road though my mother looked down on them and liked to lecture me about what she called the other side of the track people, blue collar families with two working parents and no backyards. Immigrants and Catholics, she reminded me frequently, Not our sort of people. I wasn't exactly sure who our kind of people were, certainly not the kind who lived in the sprawling homes across Route Two with the manicured lawns and three car garages, not the wealthy families in Belmont or rich and historic Lexington, certainly not those who lived across the Cambridge line by the Dow Chemical Plant with it's smoky stench and barbed wire fences. We were somewhere in the middle, hovering uneasily between wealth and foodstamps, never quite sure where we belonged. From our block to Route Two was a community of single family dwellings, not pretentious or well off, but single family all the same with trees and sidewalks and paved driveways - a mile in any direction took you into unfamiliar terrain and radically different landscapes and lifestyles. My daddy seemed to cross these invisible lines effortlessly while my mother honored them with a passion - as if in one world she was at the head of the line and in the other, she feared being found out.

I learned and carried some of those feelings with me when I left home - a free floating kind of anxiety about not quite knowing where I belonged and not sure I deserved to stay once I got there. Sometimes I could beat it back but now and again it would rear its head with a nasty snipe or a subtle reminder that I was in over my head in a world I wasn't used to. I couldn't make the easy, name dropping small talk that was so popular, I'd never made a quickie trip to Dallas just to shop or sat at a place setting with more than three utensils. The only wine I knew was Lancer's Rose, I did my own house cleaning, and I preferred jeans and sweats from the second hand store to a designer scarf from Neiman's. It had never even occurred to me to match my shoes to my purse and I didn't own a single pair of white gloves, elbow length or otherwise.

On the other hand, I had very little in common with the girls I worked with - I was childless and intended to stay that way, I didn't cook or bake or follow sports, I made myself scarce whenever the conversation turned to killing animals for food or trophies, I admitted preferring cats to dogs. I winced at their grammar and lack of education and had no idea what life in a trailer park was like. Worst of all, I discovered I hated catfish and ditch bugs. All in all, I transitioned from one world to the other feeling out of place and a little lost in both - against my will, I began to comprehend pieces of my mother's life and how she must have felt at times - it wasn't reassuring and I disliked the thought of forgiveness in any form.

It could be that we all have a little Alfred Road in us. It could be it's what holds us back and makes us hesitate or what propels us toward the better and the finer things - it could be both. Or it could be that a little uncertainty and a touch of insecurity helps us measure our progress without losing our balance. Or maybe, Alfred Road is just one more two sided street. Some days you're on the even side, and some days you're on the odd.

A Hope of Heaven

I recently saw an ad for the latest Planet of the Apes movie and it made me think about the odd things that we don't think of as odd.

I was taught creationism and evolution in the same breath and never gave a second thought to the fact that the theories contradicted themselves. Heaven at the right hand of God and the prospect of nothingness except maybe becoming fish food, never posed a problem for me and now I find myself wondering why. One is faith and one is science, surely both can't be right, yet I never questioned either.

I stopped going to church as soon as I was in college and free of my raising, convinced then as I am now, that it takes more than hallelujahs and holy water to make a believer, more than walls and altars to make a church. There's too much organization and too little religion in organized religion - God may be busier than usual on Sundays but He isn't one to take the rest of the week off - His eye is on the sparrow and everywhere else as well and I suspect He never really sleeps despite the most demanding of schedules and a shortage of good help. Hell may be no more than an eternity - a concept in and of itself that I've never managed to fully latch onto - of sleepless nights and unanswered questions or a true pit of fire and brimstone and endless regret, I really have no idea. And that being said, at the very same moment I say a small prayer for strength or of gratitude, I can think of evolution, wondering if we came to be according to Darwin, then where did the primordial ooze come from. I hate these moments and loose ends and would much rather go back to the child who saw no conflict in a dual belief system. Philosophical conflict is far too complicated to contemplate for much beyond a few seconds - I am a woman who has trouble choosing what cookies to buy.

Now and again, usually at idle moments at stop lights, I look up and see the sky and have the dimmest kind of realization that it isn't really a ceiling but more than that I cannot do. Cosmic thoughts are like seeing shadows in the rain, for just a hundredth of an instant I can almost make them out, then they evaporate. There are things in the world - the world itself, for instance - that are too immense to comprehend. A tiny part of me can watch pictures taken from space and know that the earth is round but most of me can't make the connection.

In the end, God wins - I need a balance to the impossibility of life and the cruelty. I need a hope of heaven.

Burial At Sea

No one had the first idea where Willie Foot had found the mannequin.

One fine summer morning, he came limping down the driveway with a panama hat perched on his wild hair, two shades of blue that particular day, and the thing tucked under his arm. Oh, dear, I heard my grandmother say with an audible sigh, This isn't going to be a good news day. Willie stopped at the back door, tipped his hat to each of the dogs, then peered through the screen with a manic grin and with his free hand, offered Nana a handful of rocks. She accepted them and managed a small smile, then handed him a paper plate of biscuits with strawberry jam. He gently propped the mannequin against the woodbox - she was an unlikely combination of movable plastic parts with one arm chopped off at the elbow and what looked like a mop head of blondish dirty curls fastened on with a shoelace - and did a quick dance, his signature thank you. Go on with you now, my grandmother said, not unkindly, and he carefully folded the paper plate, put it into one torn jacket pocket and began two stepping away, leaving the mannequin behind. Willie! she called sharply, Take your friend! For a moment he looked surprised then he backtracked and bent down, snatched the mannequin by one ankle and disappeared around the corner and down the front path. Oh, dear, Nana said again.

Predictably, this was only the first of many appearances of the mannequin, who Sparrow was to nickname Marilyn

Monroe. Trudging out to bring in the wash later than very morning, Miss Mary was bewildered to find a pair of flannel long johns missing, she was sure she'd hung three sets - simultaneously, John Sullivan and his brother, drinking their morning coffee, noticed what they thought was an underwear clad body washed up against the breakwater. They rushed into the tide like madmen only to discover the mannequin and were heard cussing up a storm all the way to the canteen. Marilyn was undamaged and tossed disgustedly back into the water, where she was later hooked by an unsuspecting Uncle Shad who shrieked bloody murder before realizing what he'd snagged and sliced his line with an enviably colorful stream of profanity. The end came on a late night when Old Hat and Aunt Glad were finishing up a jug and Hattie, shotgun across her lap, saw a shadow moving along the fence line - Why, Sparrow was overheard to tell Cap the following day, She liked to take Willie's head clean off with one shot and that mannequin thing was blown to kingdom come! Willie had given a wail of terror then jumped into the ditch and run for his life, eluding Hattie with a unexpected detour down the wharf and a less than wise leap into the cold ocean - Cap and Sparrow had fished him out with a grappling hook, blue-ish and muttering, one hand gripping the remains of a panama hat, the other clutching a mop head of seaweed covered dirty blonde curls.

A few days later, when Old Hat made her weekly trip to the post office, Marilyn's pieces were discreetly collected, placed in one of Aunt Flo's picnic baskets, and left - hurriedly and under cover of darkness - at Willie's front door.

That fall, Uncle Shad wrote my grandmother about a slightly bizarre burial at sea where several island children and Willie had rowed into the outgoing tide and solemnly thrown the mannequin's remains into the waves while John Sullivan waited on shore with his accordion around his neck, playing a country-ish version of "I'll Fly Away".

Oh, dear, Nana said and laughed until she cried.

True Crime

The stone for the three story rock house had been quarried all the way from New England, it was said, and the stain glass windows had been custom made in North Carolina. The gardens which enclosed the the estate were tended daily. It was a house that didn't belong on the two lane dusty road any more than the sisters who lived in it, Miss Francine and Miss Genievive had traveled all the way from Quebec in search of a quiet countryside where they could live out their days and go unnoticed. The most repeated explanation was that they were running from some unspeakable family scandal although no one seemed able to support this in the slightest. They brought a full staff, two small terrier dogs, and a shiny black Mercedes with a convertible top that rarely left the grounds except on Sundays. Their only contact with the locals was when the chapel was erected, a small and minimalistic building of plain wood and white paint that seemed out of place next to the enormous three story house. After its completion, a bell was imported from Sweden and hung in the tower but it was never rung and the workmen who had built the chapel and installed the bell were equally as quiet about the goings on of the household. They had been given plans and blueprints and detailed instructions by way of an overseer of sorts and had never actually seen the sisters except as shadows passing by the misty gardens. Each day a hot lunch had been delivered on individual silver serving trays and they were paid cash wages at the end of every week - other than that, they knew nothing of the sisters but their names.

One late June morning, a Saturday, the shiny Mercedes rolled out of the gated drive and headed for the ferry dock in town where the Princess was due to arrive. Among her passengers was a young woman in a strapless, ankle length red dress, slit to the knee at each side, and a cream colored silk scarf wrapped around her dark hair - she descended the ramp as lightly as music, an armful of roses clasped against one bare shoulder, a straw bag dangling from the other. The morning sun caught and reflected off her jewelry sending crystal prisms around her. Once she reached the breakwater, she took the chauffeur's extended arm and allowed herself to be led to the Mercedes, entering with just a slight flash of nylon stocking'd calf and a brilliant smile before the car smoothly turned and rumbled away. Nana and I and Miss Clara, there to meet my cousin Elaine and her family, watched it drive off in silence - I remember thinking that I had just seen a movie star so close I might have touched her. Who was that? I asked my grandmother in a whisper, It's not polite to stare, child, she said shortly, And I have no idea.

But she did have an idea, in fact, pretty much everyone at the pier that morning had an idea, speculation about the so called "third sister" had been rampant for over a month. Young, beautiful, and recently discharged from a women's prison after a ten year incarceration, this perfect looking creature had tried to stab her only brother to death in what was called a homicidal rage - he was nineteen at the time and she just seventeen - after a four day binge of drugs and alcohol and no sleep, he had assaulted her with her a fire iron and in the following seconds, she had gone from writing unpublished poetry and boarding school to would be killer. Everyone meeting the boat that particular summer morning was there to catch a glimpse of this almost murderess and to see how she would be received by her family. The much talked about alleged scandal had been confirmed with the arrival of our only Quebec summer regulars, the Girards, an unpopular but wealthy family who moved into an entire wing of The Pines each June, bringing their own private domestic staff and generally making everyone who came into contact with them thoroughly miserable. The Girards themselves were above such tawdry matters as criminal trials but their servants were as happy to share - if not exaggerate, make up, and generously gossip - about the incident as they were about their employers' private lives. True crime made for a captive audience - Nothin' like a good scandal on the right side of the tracks to get people talkin' to each other, Miss Clara observed to my grandmother on the ride home, Folks just naturally like takin' sides.

Aside from her memorable entrance, the third sister melted into the landscape of the rock house like rain into dry earth. The curiosity and excitement died down by July and everyone picked up the ordinary threads of their ordinary lives and went about their business, once again proving the point that you can get used to anything, even the presence of an almost murderer in your midst.

Negative Space

On those days when I feel lost and adrift in negative space, I remind myself that there is still much to do. If you look around, you can always find someone with worse troubles than your own and often doing a better job of coping.

Sitting in an aftercare session one evening several years ago, contemplating divorce and worse, I listened to a woman tell of her daughter, her only child, living in an abandoned car in the dead of a a New England winter. From her kitchen window, she said, she could see the car, on the edge of her property, rusty, wrecked and half buried in snow drifts. Its passenger trudged through the snow each morning and night, a walking bundle of dirty rags, barely upright enough to go in search of her next fix but still refusing any offer of help. She's my child, the woman wept, how can I do this to her? One of the group suggested taking her food, another suggested blankets and warm clothes - But I'm killing her! the woman wailed helplessly. No! the counselor said in a sharp tone he rarely used, The cocaine is killing her!

These were not easy hours. We were all lost and adrift in negative space, searching for answers and forgiveness and understanding, trying to cope with incomprehensible guilt, pain and uncertainty. Most nights it seemed as if all we had to offer one another was bad coffee, bitter experience and kleenex - hope was in short supply and it was easy to lose sight of the fact that we were there to help and heal ourselves, not the suffering of the ones we were trying to love. There's a purpose to negative space, I've learned, to give your eyes a rest and help you focus on what's important, but then it was just blackness and emptiness, a cruel absence of light.

Members of our group came and went, some helped, some not. Some of the ones we loved found their way back, most did not. The girl who had lived in the abandoned car froze to death in a January blizzard and her mother, thin, pale and finally out of tears, sat silently with her loss and grief, unable to speak of it for months. There was nothing we could do except encourage her to keep coming and forgive herself - she did the first for an entire year and then began missing sessions and finally stopped coming altogether. Whether she found forgiveness or just gave up, we were never to know but we kept her in our thoughts.

In some situations, an absence of light can be a kindness and negative space a force for good. The trick is figuring out which is which.

To Be A Cat

Oh, to be a cat.

To spend a life sitting in windows and watching the squirrels at play. To sleep in a circle of sunlight, climb the Christmas tree once it's fully decorated, to have meals catered and a clean sandbox each morning. To be coaxed and sweet talked and spoiled, to be forgiven no matter how much mischief I might cause. To have a small dog to chase and torment and siblings to conspire against. To be admired, adored, and yet still fully armed. These are the thoughts I see in the eyes of my cats and hear when I imagine what their voices might sound like, these independent and elegant creatures, each one such an integral part of my life. The dogs beg for attention, strive to please, protect and serve. The cats simply take their lives and comforts for granted. Oh, to be a cat.

I began with just one in the early 70's, a tiny grey and white tiger called Tiffany, who soon grew to a substantial, placid, and sweet natured animal. One evening, sitting in the one chair we had at the time and working a cross stitch Christmas ornament, I got up and left for just a moment - hardly gone for a breath, it seemed - but it was time enough for my beautiful cat to swallow the needle and the attached thread. Out of our minds with guilt and panic, we rushed her to Angell Memorial where an xray confirmed our worst fears - improbable as it was, she had indeed swallowed needle and thread, both rested securely inside her while she appeared her usual serene self, if a bit puzzled by all the attention. There was more bad news to come - the needle, the young vet assured us, was not the problem since digestive acids would break it down in no time at all. The thread, however, might not dissipate, could in fact, tangle her insides and basically strangle something essential. We were to watch her closely at all times and bring her back at the first sign of distress - the surgery might not be needed, he took pains to tell us, but if it was, it was imperative that it be done at once.

It was a rocky and stressed out week. We watched her every move, sleeping and awake, stalked her to and from the litter box and hovered over every meal. If she coughed or sneezed, we jumped for the car keys and the night she made rabbit chasing noises in her sleep, we were halfway out the door before we realized she'd been dreaming.

After several days of nearly suffocating her with attention, we returned to Angell Memorial and a second exam and xray, after which the vet pronounced her thread free and healthy as a proverbial horse. He was not able to say the same for either of us and strongly recommended less worry and a good night's sleep.

I had never imagined this kind of attachment to a cat, didn't suspect it was the first step on the feline road of no return. I didn't know it then, but my life had subtly changed direction, slightly away from people and slightly toward animals. And I've never taken a single backward step.

Oh, to be a cat.

No Need to Whisper

Feeling like a wilted lettuce leaf, tired, tasteless and discolored around the edges, I tumbled into bed while it was still light. Summer in the south can be a grim season and there's no relief in sight. The heat is like an ocean wave, overpowering and relentless and for the 100th time I think of Nova Scotia in August - brilliant sun and blue ocean, green fields and salt water breezes along rocky coastlines - there's no place like a childhood home.

Uncle Len had added my playhouse onto the garage when I was about five. He had made a small table and two ladderback chairs, a cradle, and a tall, skinny bookcase for the inside. Nana had made curtains for the windows and helped me with furnishings - one scarred table lamp, a red checked oilskin tablecloth, several boxes of old magazines and paperbacks and an oddly put together collection of dishes and utensils. My daddy contributed a tinny, battery powered radio, a new spiral notebook and a glass jar of sharpened yellow pencils. Even my mother donated a set of blue plastic glasses she'd found on sale at McIntyre's and a small travel alarm clock with a broken ringer. On Ruthie's first visit, she brought a treasure - a dark blue, shiny satin pillow with red fringe and the words Home Sweet Home, Digby, N.S. emblazoned on the front - she had traded a scratchy old 45 of "A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation" for it, a considerable sacrifice for a little girl with a huge crush on Marty Robbins.

Here we held our afternoon teas, listened to the Red Sox games, entertained the Queen, cut and pasted magazine pictures into oversized scrapbooks. Nana would bring us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with cold milk and cookies, knocking politely on the door and announcing that lunch was being served. We drank pretend wine and imagined pretend cocktail parties with famous singing stars - Marty Robbins with Brenda Lee on his arm always the first to arrive and the last to leave - and we dressed the complacent dogs in Ruthie's doll clothes and then laughed ourselves silly. There was never any need to whisper or hide in the playhouse and there was nothing to fear there, it was a child's place, not much larger than a walk in closet, but secure. Uncle Len, who happened to be Ruthie's

grandfather, had worked to make it so.

Sadly, childhood doesn't last forever and one summer we outgrew the playhouse and the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Ruthie had developed a feverish crush on one of the Haynes boys and a new passion for playing Spin the Bottle replaced even Marty Robbins - my grandmother began keeping a closer eye on us both, not fully trusting the preteen years and the island boys, even the well mannered ones, to be a sensible combination. The playhouse was abandoned and turned dusty with disuse, finally becoming a refuge for mice and a nest of bees. One day, after a pack of cigarettes had gone mysteriously missing, Nana bought a shiny new padlock and locked it up.

It would, at the same time, please and upset me if after the house I had been raised in finally changed hands, a new little girl had discovered the playhouse and made it her own.

Cat Gathering

In advance of the arrival of the flooring installation crew, I had promised to gather the cats and safely secure them in what would be a workman free area of the house. The night before I had had a heart to heart to talk with each of the animals in turn, patiently explaining that the workmen might be noisy but would pose no threat, that cats at large and underfoot would slow the process and that temporary exile was the sanest solution for all involved. The plan was simple - well ahead of time I would close off the bedrooms then calmly capture each cat and deposit them on the other side of the door, countering any resistance with human skill, cunning and a strategically placed bowl of friskies. Being a life long cat lover and a realist, I gave the plan a one in ten chance of success - it went to hell in a handbasket with the first cat, who, overcome with curiosity and natural feline elusiveness, dodged my first capture attempt and alerted the other animals with a loud meow of protest. With their finely tuned radar on high, cats fled in all directions except toward the bedrooms - under couches, behind bookcases, into closets and cubby holes - you can't trust a cat to honor a promise, I realized too late and clearly my plan had serious flaws. The clock was ticking and a change of strategy was clearly indicated.

Nonchalantly, I began filling their usual food bowls with friskies. In one fell swoop, this snared me a tabby and the older tuxedo cat. I casually carried both to the bedroom, set them behind the door and closed it gently. So far, so good, I thought to myself. The short haired black one was regarding me with a look of suspicion from atop the refrigerator so I pretended to ignore him and began filling water dishes. This brought out the youngest, twining around my ankles and I reached down to pet him, then snatched him up. The cat on the refrigerator took several steps backward at this but again I ignored him. I strolled back into the kitchen, picked up a handful of mail and sorted through it, wiped down the counters, unplugged my cell and dropped it into my purse. He approached me cautiously, his yellow eyes wide and alert, his sleek body poised for flight - as soon as he turned his head toward the food bowl, I sprang into action. This left only the youngest tuxedo cat, the most social animal, the one who was most likely to feel the need to supervise the crew and inspect their work, the most risky to leave free. He was distracted by a knock on the door and took a flying leap off the arm of the couch where I miraculously caught him in mid air. Feeling well pleased with myself, I let the workers in, put the dogs in their kennels, and left for work. I refused to allow myself to think that the entire process might have to be repeated the following morning with smarter and more prepared animals. Cats do learn and adapt from experience and I wasn't so sure I would prevail a second time, as indeed I didn't, only managing to corral three out of five before running out of time. I gave the crew strict instructions, said a small prayer to keep away disaster, and unhappily left for work.

The gods of cats and flooring must have been watching - the new floor was in place by noon and both cats were peacefully sleeping in the den when I got home. The three who had been confined were no worse the wear for their time spent in lock up and all five actively explored the new floor thoroughly. As best I can tell, they seem to think it will do.

Short Timers

On a pure whim, I halfway signed onto a "singles over 50" website - the second half requires a relatively small financial investment which, although I can afford, I'm not inclined to make at this point - if a picture is worth a thousand words, the prospects are running in the dollar store category so far. Some would say it's a sad fact but the older and more set in my ways I become, the less I'm interested in coupling. I'm just not willing to do the work of navigating the perilous waters of blind dates and internet flirting and first face to face meetings.

Some lives are focused on goals and schedules and plans, carefully laid out checkpoints and timelines. Mine seems to have been focused on serendipity and accidental encounters - jobs and relationships and animals have presented themselves when I wasn't looking and I said yes or no on the spur of the moment. I pursued what intrigued me with little thought to the consequences and left the rest at the side of the road. One of the most valuable lessons I've learned is that there a hundred things worse, sadder, and more damaging than being alone. I don't feel cheated or left out or lost - if serendipity chooses to make an appearance, so be it, but I won't force her hand. We are all what Stephen King calls short timers in his novel, Insomnia (one of my favorites), and the clock is running too fast to waste time on what could, should, or might be. One of my favorite t shirts was given to me by my dear friend Tricia - it's philosophy is simple and direct - I don't wanna, I don't hafta, and I ain't gonna. Amen.

So, I say to myself, why in the world an "over 50 singles" site and the answer is a natural curiosity and the fact that sometimes serendipity knocks on the door so softly that it's hard to hear - I might not let her in but I wouldn't want her to think I wasn't home.

All things in their own time.

Weak Tea and Toast

Standard fare for anything that caused us to miss school but didn't require a doctor visit was weak tea and dry toast. Along with two aspirin and a day in bed, so my mother believed, would cure anything that ailed us. Doctors still made house calls in those days, arriving in three piece suits and carrying black satchel bags, stethoscopes carelessly hung around their necks like honor badges. There were times when the simple threat of of a visit was enough to initiate a rapid, almost miraculous recovery.

Of course it also meant a day of morning game shows and afternoon soap operas while waiting for my tipsy mother to cross the line into a full blown alcoholic haze - by supper time, when my daddy would take over, the tea was usually cold and the toast blackened - he would worriedly take our temperatures, fuss over the bed linens and then open a can of soup and brown an English muffin, maybe even soft boil and serve a mushed up egg. It was what my mother disapprovingly called "coddling" even when the culprit turned out to be a six week case of mononucleosis and I was briefly hospitalized, even when my youngest brother's belly ache and fever progressed to appendicitis and emergency surgery. Malingering was a favorite diagnosis in our house and caretaking a sick child interfered with her daily routine. Being sick is a past time with them, she complained to her friend Betty next door, You'd think I had nothing better to do than watch over them. Feeling particularly aggrieved at the callousness of this remark, the fact being that both my brothers were confined to bed with the mumps, an illness even the most creative child could scarcely manufacture plus ( and probably more relevant) ) the general feeling that I was next in line, I repeated it to my daddy. The results were predictable - a highly satisfying domestic explosion between my parents later that night - and more than that, I was given into the care of my grandmother the following day and spent my own miserable bout with the virus on a diet of ice cream and ginger ale and any television program I wanted. As outcomes went, I'd had worse.

In the long term, of course, nothing actually changed. By the following year when chicken pox struck all of us at the same time, the weak tea and toast therapy was invoked with a vengeance and television was outlawed for the duration - we were all too unhappy and too sick to complain at this outrage and spent a dismal week being slowly driven mad with itching, restless sleep and boredom - my mother was unaccountably cheerful, climbing the stairs and delivering our meals, fluffing pillows and predicting a return to health any day, all with a detached smile and a veiled satisfaction that made us wince. She likes this! I wailed to my daddy, She's happy we're sick! For a brief moment he looked stricken at this accusation then he recovered. Don't be silly, he said sternly but I had seen it in his eyes and I remember suspecting that just for a second he had almost believed me. Almost.

Color Blind

I sometimes wish that color blindness was a universal condition. It seems to me that in small and temporary doses it would do us a world of good.

Being green in a non-green world is scary. Other colors, the ones who can run and jump and play without fear of consequence, don't understand why you bruise so easily, why a fall or a twisted ankle could have drastic results or why the grown up colors are so protective of you. The hospital is not their second home and doctors are kindly old men who make house calls when your throat's sore, not expensive specialists in far away cities. Being green is different - you can't hide your color, can't change it, can't pretend it's not really green. It would help if there were someone else green to talk to, but you're a green girl, a one in a million genetic combination that mystifies the doctors, even the well meaning ones. At a young age, you already know that they would prefer to think that you're just dyed green and not a real color. Rather than listen and treat, they seem determined to wash out the dye and discover some other color, a blue or a lavender, some color they can understand and fix. Failing that, they issue dire warnings of future impairments and shortened life spans. They don't mean to be cruel or insensitive but they don't like feeling helpless anymore than you like being green. Check your tire pressure, fill up your tank and add a little oil to your defense mechanisms, green girl, it's going to be a long trip.

It's a little easier (and harder) when you go away to school - the university is filled with different colors and no one pays much attention to one more. You still have to be a little more careful than most but you begin to suspect that green may be a color of substance, a color that stands on its own and can make its own way. Green is tough and independent and defies the odds - much like crabgrass or an emerald - and there's a little of both in you. You find the strength you come from and draw on it, graduate, choose a career, and move on down the road. You spend too much time in hospitals and doctors offices but you're on the path to reconciliation with your color. Green you are and will always be, but there are worse and harsher colors.

You don't get to pick your color but you do choose how to wear it, whether wisely, with grace and determination or resentfully, with anger and self pity. The green girl I know - who has chosen grace and determination - still bruises from encounters with a hard edged world, is still more fragile than she would like and still spends too much time in hospitals and doctors offices. She's my cousin and her particular shade of green is congenital afibrinogenemia - hemophilia. To some, it's a color and a label, a lifestyle, a handicap. To me, it's what she overcomes in her search for self. She may be green but she wears the color well, reminding all that know and love her that she's a person first and green second.

We're not defined by our colors, only modified. We're defined by our willingness to see past them.

It's not easy being green

But green's the color of spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like a mountain
Or important like a river
Or tall like a tree.

Kermit the Frog

Another Handsome, Brown Eyed Man

He was taller than I expected with an absolute mane of silvery hair and a well defined, classically handsome face made up of creases and smile lines. This was a man with sparkle in his eyes and love of music clearly written all over his features - it couldn't help but show. He took my extended hand with a firm grip and a grin and asked that I make him look as good as possible in my pictures - as if, I thought but did not say, it would actually be difficult.

Despite the fact that such judgements are invariably subjective, I have known my share of good looking men and I admit - without reservation - that I'm an easy touch for shaggy haired, mustached, brown eyed men in gold rimmed glasses, men who might appear to less discerning eyes, as what some novels call "rough trade" and what most people I know, are pleased to call scruffy. For me, jeans and boots and an open throated shirt will defeat a clean cut three piece suit every time - expensive clothes and cologne may sell the product but a truly charismatic man needs neither - everything about him whispers seduction and moonlight. It's been that my experience that most such men are lengthily and happily married, usually with wives that they write songs for and wide open hearts. Or

oblivious of the effect they have on the opposite sex. Or gay. They are always, however, dedicated and rich in talent and it's a pure pleasure to do no more than look at them.

This particular night was a sell out with a hushed and attentive audience - he had been a local boy and had many fans and friends in the crowd as musicians often do. The music was infectious and everyone knew the words, they sang along on the choruses and yelled for more. I searched for clear angles to shoot from and as always, cursed the array of microphones and equipment - it's hard enough to find an unobstructed viewpoint for a guitar or harmonica player, almost impossible when your target plays a keyboard, but in the end I was pleased with my own work and left hot and tired but well satisfied.

I do love photographing handsome, brown eyed men.

A Classical Education

Nobody made sweet potato pie quite like Miss Velma, distant cousin to Pearl and Vi and daughter of lapsed royalty, her true father was rumored to have been the son of an English duke who had lost his land in a tax dispute and then gone on to forfeit his life in a gentlemen's duel. True or not, it made for a good story.

Miss Velma was a slender, delicately coiffed and well turned out woman of some sixty years, soft spoken, blue eyed and unmarried. She lived alone in a thatched roof, vine covered cottage with stone lions - imported by boat all the way from London, so it was said - guarding her door and a flourishing thicket of grape arbor bordering the flagstone path to the road. A harlequin Great Dane called Sherlock was always on hand to greet visitors and a thick bodied Russian Blue cat who answered to Dr. Watson could usually be found on the hearth. In addition, a puffy, yellow canary hung in a brass cage in the front window - Nigel chirped and twittered and sometimes sang his way through the summer days, as sunny and cheerful as the season itself. Here Miss Velma made her sweet potato pies, baked scones and brown bread, sweet sugar cookies and tiny iced cakes and served Twinings Camomile Tea from a gleaming and elegant silver tea service. Afterward she would "repair to the terrace" and smoke an English cigarette from a thin, satiny white, ivory holder, telling us tales of life in the English countryside, the gentleman farmer she had once been engaged to - Lost in the war, she would say softly and dab at her eyes with a white, lace edged handkerchief - A terrible tragedy but it was in service to England and one can hardly ask for more. Have another scone, dear, do finish them off, they won't keep. And do try that pot of raspberry jam, I've only just opened it.

Rumor had it that as a young girl, Miss Velma had been on the stage, had performed for royalty no less. She could and often would recite Shakespeare for us in a rich, velvety voice and while we didn't understand it, were in fact, mostly mystified by it, we loved listening. Some days she would read - Dick Whittington and His Cat, Tales of Robin Hood, Peter Pan - carrying us away to distant places and magic lands with her laughter and proper, upper class British accent and just as easily slipping into a course Cockney with a wicked gleam in her eyes and a slightly off color if not outright salacious wink. "Liver and onions", she called it, as opposed to "Sweetbreads and port", her natural accent. She spoke Italian passably well, French with animation and flair, and could play either Bach or Chopsticks with equal ease on her baby grand piano. I enjoy being the product of a classical education, she told us with a wistful smile, And of course, a substantial inheritance. It does so broaden one's view.

As a well off and still single woman, even with her silvery hair and education, she had her share of admirers and gentlemen callers but while she welcomed them, she never offered encouragement or false promises. There were, off and on, unusually quiet, discreet and now and then even envious rumors that she had run away from a convent life, still pined for the gentleman farmer, was a disowned and disgraced princess, even that for intimate company, she preferred her own sex. If she knew of the gossip, she ignored it. There are, she would say with a smile, certain matters of one's lifestyle that one keeps private. It would be indelicate to do otherwise. Then she would grin at us and laugh, Besides it's quite fun to be a lady of mystery!

Her death, at the age of nearly ninety, made the papers as far away as St. John and Halifax. She had lived in her little cottage until the day she died, I read, never willing to relinquish her independence, her past, her mystery or the recipe for her sweet potato pie.

The Long Haul Hero

Patsy was a waitress at the small diner my mother favored for Sunday morning breakfasts after she had given up her church going ways, a tired looking woman with dark circles under her eyes and a smile that took effort. She delivered ice water and coffee, then took a pencil from behind her ear and produced a ragged and well worn pad from her apron pocket. What'll it be, folks, she asked over the smoke and noise, not bothering to make eye contact and trying pretty much unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn.

Like many of my mother's friends, she was in her late fifties, I imagined, a solid and bulky woman, plain to the point of coarse, with traces of yesterday's makeup around her eyes and nicotine stained fingers. She wore white hose with a run up the back and scuffed white leather shoes, loosely tied to accommodate her swollen feet and abundant weight. I had never seen her without a wad of chewing gum stashed in her cheek and a Timex watch hanging off one thick wrist. She reminded me of a bad Norman Rockwell painting - earthy, overblown, careworn and a little out of touch. Late night, Pats? my mother asked as the food arrived and Patsy slapped heaping plates of runny eggs, greasy homefries and soggy underdone toast in front of us. Waitin' on Pete to get home from ... she began then recognized my mother.....Buxton. Oh, mornin', Jan, this with a half hearted attempt at a smile, Sorry, can't recollect where I left my glasses....These were jammed into her tangled hair, she wiped her hands and discovered them as she adjusted her hairnet. How'd it go last night? My mother shrugged, Win some, lose some,she replied, and I remembered that Saturday night was Bingo at the legion hall and my mother rarely missed an opportunity to play. Ayah, Patsy said with a genuine grin, Never give a sucker an even break, and with a smack of her gum, she began refilling our coffee cups. Pete running late? my daddy asked, joining the conversation for the first time. Some, Patsy admitted with a rueful smile, But I expect he'll be along directly.

Patsy and Pete, a downeast, chain smoking, long haul trucker had been married just after graduating from high school, my mother told us, going on forty years, a good ten of them spent apart so they figured. He hauled logs mainly but also carried machine parts, cars, furniture, even the occasional truckload of Canadian made whiskey.

He loved traveling the open road in the big rigs and had a perfect safety record, Patsy had been known to brag and he was not often late. There was, I thought, just the slightest hint of worry in her face as she worked her tables,

glancing at the old Timex every few minutes and seeming a bit jumpy when the telephone rang. Later she would say that she'd had a feeling that particular Sunday morning, a twitchy sense that something wasn't right - certainly she had no way of knowing that at that moment her husband was being pulled from a mangled, twisted wreck of steel and glass on the Maine Turnpike, that his cargo - a trailer filled with Oriental rugs - had spilled across three lanes and created a massive fourteen car pile up. Pete had swerved to avoid a convertible full of beach clad teenagers passing on the right and tailgating a rusted over pickup truck - the pick up had abruptly slowed, the convertible had not, and both vehicles lost control and slammed into the guardrail. Pete's trailer jackknifed and sprawled sideways then spun into the median and crumpled like tinfoil - there were multiple injuries, but only one death, the long haul driver himself.

Patsy got the news just as the last of lunch crowd was trailing out, in a reluctant telephone call from a Maine state trooper. She took the call, white faced and stoic, finished and took off her apron and hairnet, walked slowly to the door then seemed to forget where she was. My daddy recognized the look, shocky and dazed, and gently steered her into a booth where she buried her face in her hands and began to cry, silently and profoundly. There was precious little comfort he could provide, a fact he knew all too well, but he gave what he could.

A few days later there was a quiet, country funeral at the small church in Derry, well attended according to my mother, and Pete was laid to rest in the Derry cemetery. Patsy returned to the diner the following week, thinner and more tired looking than before, subdued but as intact as she could be. A hard core New Englander, she dug for and found the strength to pick up the pieces. Several months later, she received a letter from the State Police, saying that Pete's decision to swerve away from the convertible and the pickup truck had saved the lives of each of their occupants. Although it wasn't anywhere near enough - tokens hardly ever are - she carried the letter in her apron pocket every single day, a talisman of sorts and a remembrance. Some days it just made her more sad and lonelier than she was but some days, when she heard his name spoken and followed by "hero" it made her proud enough to smile.

The Truth About Antlers

The tides, reliable as the sun and moon themselves, swept in and washed away the debris and clutter each and every day. Ruthie and I went treasure hunting in their wake, scavenging along the coast for shells and bones and chunks of broken ledge rock. Once we built a fort made entirely of driftwood, smooth washed by the water and bleached white by the sun - it lasted for nearly the whole summer. We splashed in the randomly shaped tide pools, collected strands of kelp, spied on the colonies of tiny periwinkles and gathered every manner of shell and wildflower. One late August afternoon we saw a shadow just beyond the tree line - a six point buck, the most beautiful thing I thought I had ever seen, standing stone still and watching us with interest, showing no fear. We froze, hardly able to believe our eyes as the animal took one delicate step then another away from the shelter of the trees and onto open ground. His coat was the color of caramel with cream, his tail and belly white as the driftwood and his eyes a deep shade of brown. We watched him nuzzle his velvet covered antlers against a tree, lower his head to graze on a twig - then there was a sudden blast from the factory whistle and with one remarkably graceful and impossibly fast movement, he leaped back into the trees and was so completely gone that we almost doubted we'd seen him at all.

That was the day that I came to realize the truth about antlers. They were mounted pretty much everywhere, in the canteen and the barber shop, on Mr. McIntyre's wall above the ancient cash register, by the back door at my grandmother Ruby's where they were sometimes used as a hat rack. Watching the stag, I put it together for the first time - and was horrified. The concept of hunting suddenly and shockingly crossed the line from abstract to reality and the most beautiful, elegant, gentle eyed creature I'd ever seen could be at risk. It gave me nightmares for weeks, long after we'd left for the summer, and for a time I seemed to see to wall mounted antlers and killers everywhere. The dreams were bloody and terrifying and the suffering often woke me in tears.

When it comes to hunting, I haven't changed all that much since that late summer day. I've learned to block out the nightmare images and trick my mind with language - venison instead of deer, steak in place of cow - but if I let myself remember, allow myself to comprehend every day words like chicken, then the memory of the six point buck at the edge of the tree line returns with a clarity that breaks my heart.

Ruthie and I returned to the tide pools every day after that, approaching barefoot and low to the ground, but we were never to see the magnificent stag again. Instinctively, we told no one - if he'd been real, we agreed, it was better that the island men with their shotguns and traps didn't know. If he'd been a vision, as we sometimes told ourselves, then it was better that no one at all knew.

Balancing the Books

I hold the unconventional idea that a perfectly neutral, non-judgmental accounting is being kept. Few of us have any ideas how many positives are on the list because we tend to focus on our misdeeds, harsh words, selfish thoughts. Not so the keepers of the Life Books who record all.

If my artist/philosopher/cat lover and friend, Robin is right - and I absolutely believe she is - then most of us probably need to lighten up and take a second look. Things are likely not as dark as they may seem. We are, I think, hardest on ourselves when we balance the books. One of the things I recall from my years in retail is that if you were to wait on say twenty customers in a day and nineteen said nice things and left happy while only one was un-pleasable and bitchy, the single failure was what accompanied you home, nagging all the way like a back seat driver. Sometimes, my friend Scotty used to tell me, All you have to say is "Good morning, what can I help you with?" and you're toast. Why, I have to wonder, is it so much easier to dwell on the negatives, the failures, the second bests?

The keepers of the books are in the employ of a higher and wiser power, I imagine. They take the long term view, being recorders of events and not judges or juries. Sidebar! I imagine one might say should a notation on either side of the ledger be smudged or overlooked. Being earthlings, and self interested at that, we lack an objective view of our own personal histories.

Even bad men love their mamas.....

Russell Crowe, 3:10 To Yuma