Summerfire

The old timers called it summerfire.

They gathered around the pot bellied stove in the general store, these retired, disabled, or widowed old men and re-told stories everyone already knew but still laughed at.   They put on their rubber boots and suspenders and red flannel shirts, packed their pipes and took their seats, whittling, spitting, smoking and rocking away, trying to fill the empty hours.   They spent their nights in ones and twos, playing fiercely contended games of cribbage and dominoes and drinking more than was good for them, then stumbled off to cold beds and old dreams.  They were a rough lot with their unshaven, leathery faces and gruff tobacco- ruined voices but they could tell stories.  Oh, could they tell stories.  Tales that would curl your hair and drop your jaw, as my grandmother used to say.  Mostly about the one that got away, be it a woman or a fish didn’t seem to matter, or the blow of ’38 off St. Georges Banks or the night ol’ Jimmy Sparks shot up the dance hall and kilt his wandering’ wife deader’n a mackerel.

 

“They’s memories powerful more sharp than they’s wits,”  Nana would tell me, “Don’t be thinking them things aren’t true.  Mostly anyways.”

The summer I was sixteen though, the summer I fell in love for the first time, was old enough to go to the dance hall on Saturday nights (provided I was bright eyed and repentant when called on to go to church the next morning) and be walked home in the dark and kissed at the backdoor just out of range of the moonlight, well, that lovely and perfect July and August, they were talking about summerfire.

My mind was so distracted  that summer, that  I didn’t give much thought to the fires.  Johnny was a tall, slim-built, chiseled- faced and well brought up young man with high cheekbones and a mass of intense dark red hair always at odds with the slicked down look he tried so hard to keep.   He charmed my grandmother with his manners and easy smile, utterly disarmed my mother with flattery, and swept me off my feet with his first glance.  The moment we’d boarded the scow at East Ferry, he’d leaned in to the passenger side window,  smelling of Old Spice (my daddy’s favorite aftershave) and ginger, and given me a grin.

“Reckon this is gon’ be our summer?” he’d asked and winked. “Figure I’d better be askin’ ‘fore anybody else gets the chance.”

I’d nodded, too stage struck to find my voice, almost too nervous to catch my breath.  My heart was suddenly beating so loudly I was sure he would hear it and make some sort of humiliating joke.  I thought if he did I would up and die right in the front seat of the road-weary  old Lincoln, never see seventeen much less the inside of the dance hall.

 “Pick you up Saturday night,” he’d said instead, “Long about seven.  If……” and here he paused and gave my grandmother a tip of his cap and a brilliant smile, “That’s okay with you, Miz Watson.”

Nana had nodded, trying not to smile and busying herself with counting out coins for the passage.

“I ‘spect you could do a lot worse than Doug and Marylyn’s boy, “ she’d said calmly, “Good stock. Good family.”

I could only shiver.  I’d known him all my summer life, always liked him, and all I could do was shiver.

“What was that all about?” my mother, who had been following  behind us in the old Mercury station wagon wanted to know.

“Doug and Marylyn’s boy wants to take her to the dance Saturday night,” Nana had said, so casually you’d think it happened every day of the week, “I said he could.”

My mother had blinked in surprise and I’d steeled myself for the familiar You’re too young lecture, hoping  that she wouldn’t feel the need to deliver it then and there and only dimly realizing that this would be the first one I’d actually fight for.   My heart was creeping steadily toward by throat again and I didn’t think it was the sun warming my face and neck.  I was stilling actively avoiding her eyes when she shrugged.

“Well…..,” she said slowly and I knew she was appraising me, considering me, “Well, that’s alright then. I don’t guess a dance will do anybody harm.  Not if it’s Doug and Marylyn’s boy.”  She stepped back,  pressed both hands to the small or her back and stretched like a coiled but chubby spring then shaded her eyes, looked toward the island and frowned.

 

“Look, Mother,” she’d said and nodded, “Smoke.  Wonder what’s burning.”

Sure enough, a patch of sky at the far end of the island was spreading dark like a spider web, curling and spiraling up over the tree line.  Nana had peered at it over her bifocals.

“Coming from The Point, you reckon?” she’d asked.  Her voice had been edged ever so slightly with concern, just enough to raise the hair on the back of my neck.  Our house was at The Point, it sat on the corner lot with a strawberry field between it and the road and the ocean a stone’s throw from the sloping front yard. 

“Central Grove more’n likely,” Johnny had said with something like an oddly superficial reassurance, “Most of the summerfire’s been mid-island.”   He’d given us a not-to-worry grin, pulled a Players from the black and blue pack in his shirt pocket and lit it despite the mild wind, cupping his hands around the match until it caught, flared and died.   For a second or two the salt air was tinged with sulphur.   Then seeing Nana’s face, he quickly smiled.

“Could be just a grass fire, Miz Watson,” he’d said quietly, “Don’t you worry ‘bout it none.  Likely be out ‘fore you get halfway down island.”

But it wasn’t out and it wasn’t a grass fire.  It was, in fact, one of the idle fishing shacks past the old  breakwater, a tumbledown old affair that hadn’t been used for years.  By the time we’d pulled into the long gravel driveway we could see the red and yellow flames and the air was dirty with smoke.   A fine spray of ash floated like dust - no, more like snowflakes, I thought, like the flurries we would get in New England on those bitter cold January days - brief and harmless.   Island volunteer firefighters were out in force and the blaze, bright but brief, was contained fairly quickly.  It wasn’t so much the fire that caught everyone’s attention, one more abandoned bait shack was no great loss, but the fact that it was the third fire in as many weeks made people sit up and take notice.  No one wanted to admit that there might be, living and working in our very midst, someone who would set fires.  It was far more comfortable to blame it on summerfire,  a random mix of heat and lightning and boredom, a careless  but surely unintentionally tossed match, a wayward spark, perhaps.   Suspicion, which had been, until the bait shack fire, a passive and slow moving beast wearing blinders and minding its own business, began to peer around at its surroundings.  It was growing up, feeling around and picking up speed.

“It can’t be one of us,” the schoolteacher told my grandmother, “It just can’t be.”

 Nana, bless her practical, no nonsense soul, looked unconvinced.

“Three weeks, three fires,” she reminded him cooly, ” Two of ‘em ‘fore the first summer family even got here.   Ain’t no coincidence in that, teacher, no coincidence at all, by God.”

The night before the dance while I was being sick with anticipation and begging my mother for permission to shave my legs for the first time,  the schoolhouse caught fire.  In the telephone office next door, Elsie heard an explosion and a WHOOSH! of air, tree limbs and flying schoolbooks slammed into the side of her small house, shaking the foundation and rattling the old woman’s teeth out of their accustomed place on the nightstand by her bed.

“Kee-rist!” Elsi had shrieked and like to have flown to her switchboard, denture-less and still in her nightclothes, to raise the alarm.   The island’s emergency alert system - the church bell in the steeple of the Baptist church - was ringing furiously only minutes later but Elsie, seeing a raging fire with flames shooting a hundred feet into the air, “A wall of fire!”  she screeched in a raspy, lisping kind of wail all across the party line, knew it was useless.  “All I could think was to snatch that ol’ tomcat and run for the hills,” she confessed to my grandmother, “Never been so petrified in my all born days!”

The telephone office was saved -  only by a whisker  the old timers said - but the one room schoolhouse which every island child had attended at one time or another and which had stood its ground against the metal and brick consolidated school on the mainland and every other form of progress, was a total loss.  All that was left, a charred and blackened foundation covered in ash and bits of burned up books, sat desolately under the old singed and now smoky trees.  It was a sight too sad to bear for the schoolteacher who walked through the debris with his shoulders hunched and his face buried in his hands.

“I don’t understand,” he kept repeating, “Great God Almighty, I don’t understand who would burn a school.”

The schoolhouse fire was all anyone could talk about the next morning.  At McIntyre’s, the old timers huddled in a tight circle, drinking their morning coffee and uncharacteristically snapping at each other about what ought to be done.   One side was for calling in the Mounties, the other for keeping it in the family and as Nana and I passed by, the argument escalated.

 “Eustice Haines,” ol’ Cap’n Judd yelled at one point as Nana and I navigated the cluttered shelves in search of bobbie pins, “You ain’t nothin’ but a durn fool and you ain’t got the sense to come in out of the rain if’n you think we can handle this ourselves!”

Not to be outdone, Cap’n Judd snatched his cane and whacked his brother just below the knee where Eustice’s wooden leg was attached.  The sound was like a shot and was immediately followed by a string of curses as Eustice got to his feet and lunged at his brother.  My grandmother was so startled, she dropped a tin of canned peaches.  It rolled all the way to the counter before encountering  Miz McIntyre advancing on the group of old men with her broom clutched in two white-knuckled fists.  She gave it a wicked kick and it went airborne, soaring through the dust motes and cigarette smoke like a hot knife through butter and landing with a wet thud, dented and scratched, on the old pot bellied stove.

“Out!” she hollered, waving the broom like a club, “Every one of you useless, good for nothin’, chatterin’ old gossips!  Out, I say!  Go warm your backsides somewheres else or I’ll be givin’ you somethin’ to talk about for a month of Sundays and then some!”

“Well, Elizabeth,” Nana said mildly, “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“It’s all this summerfire nonsense, Alice,” Miz McIntyre said with a profound sigh, “They don’t talk ‘bout nothin’ else and it ain’t good for business.”  She smoothed her apron, brushed back a dark strand of hair and gave us a weary smile.  “Now what was you lookin’ for?”

“Bobbie pins,” I told her shyly, “Aunt Vi’s gonna curl my hair for the dance tonight.”

“And I reckon we’ll take them canned peaches,” my grandmother added.

“Oh!” Miz McIntyre whirled toward the old stove, snatched the now-beginning-to-swell can of peaches with one apron-wrapped hand and hastily set it on a nearby flour barrel.

“Mercy me, wouldn’t that’ve been a fine mess,” she laughed, “Now, let me see about bobbie pins.”

There were, over the course of the next two and three quarters months, seven more fires.  A second abandoned bait shack, Sam Melanson’s ramshackle old barn, a dusty and unused fish factory office, a whiskey still high in the hills above St. Mary’s Bay (although the general opinion was that that one might’ve been natural causes, ol’ Micah Albright was known to drink heartily of his own profits and it didn’t take much imagination to see that he could’ve gotten careless), and two summer homes across the cove.  A crowd of us, Johnny and I included, were hanging out on the old Prescott steps the night of the second cove house fire and we watched the flames break out and travel in an unnerving straight line toward the fuel oil tank.  The explosion was staggering and immense, it lit up the night sky like some massive fireworks display.

“Jesus!” Johnny exclaimed and ran for the telephone at McIntyre’s while the rest of us headed for the barber shop where the volunteer fire fighting equipment was stored.

A week later, the final fire took the dance hall.  Sifting through the wreckage, the Mounties discovered a body - a young boy, they thought, in his early teens maybe, buried beneath a pile of charred latticework and collapsed walls, badly burned but still recognizable - a summer boy from a new family who had rented a cottage on the adjacent island.  An angry and troubled boy whose parents had thought would work things out away from the noise and heat of the city, a boy nobody had ever noticed, an arsonist whose body was taken home in a box by broken hearted parents.

Some of the good island folk were relieved and grateful to have someone to blame but the old timers, warming their hands, telling their stories, and minding their newly found manners, knew it was more complicated than a random city boy gone a little wild.  There wasn’t and never had been anything simple about summerfire - it woke, worked its dark magic for a time, and slept - no one knew where and no one went looking.

Just like summer love.

Cool Wave

It was pitch black when I woke from the dream - some faint, foggy thing about soldiers and warfare - and there was barely a wisp of it left.  Whatever small fragment of the day my memory had latched onto quickly mingled with all the others.  The little lighted alarm clock read 2:38 and the dream was gone by 2:39 if not by the time my feet hit the floor.  I roused the dogs while trying not to wake the cats and padded my barefoot way to the back door.

The night air - unrealistically cool for July, it couldn't have been more than 60 degrees - was still and full of waiting rain, the moon was low and shimmery.  The improbable cool wave was in its sixth day and everyone was talking about it, how wonderful it was to have their windows open and their air conditioners off, how freaky for July, how odd. The dogs moved slowly into the cool darkness and I wondered if maybe they'd been dreaming as well.  I was pretty sure they liked having this break from the heat as much as everyone else.  To not have to run central air in July in the south is next to unthinkable but here it was - six days of cool and damp - even three solid days of rain had not made anyone complain.  I couldn't find a soul, not even among folks who have lived here all their lives, who could remember such a run of weather.

I thought about going back to bed but suspected it would be a waste of time and energy so I sat on the deck to smoke, think, and listen to the quiet.  It was too early for the doves to start calling to each other but I heard the old familiar train whistle, the hum of the electric wires, the crickets.  I wondered who else might be up at this hour, what they were doing, what the voices in their heads might be saying.  It was several minutes before I heard the music and at first, it was so distant and so soft that I thought it was my imagination - an echo, I told myself, maybe a memory or a sleepy, half-formed wish - but then I realized that the dogs heard it as well,
all three were sitting placidly, heads cocked in the direction of the sound.  A guitar, I thought, no back up, no band, no vocal, just a single guitar in the middle of the night.  Playing Merle Haggard's Someday When Things Are Good, I'm Gonna Leave You. 

I was thinking that it was a waking dream when Haggard slipped easily into Ray Price's Night Life.

Not real, I told myself, not happening. 

But the dogs were still listening.

Feeling like a fool, I got up as quietly as I could, stood on my tiptoes, peered over the fence and saw what I was sure was a mirage - sitting in my neighbor's porch swing was a shirtless stranger in faded denim jeans and a stetson hat with a guitar across his lap and a Siamese cat sitting at his side.  

Losing it, I thought dismally, this is what delusional is like.  It's three in the morning and 60 degrees in July and this is a hallucination.

I feared taking a second look - he might still be there and what would that say about me - so I hurriedly led the dogs back inside and crawled back into bed with the covers pulled up to my chin, putting walls and windows and structures between me and the (imaginary) music.  My last thought was wondering if you're aware of it when you lose your mind or does someone have to point it out.

A few hours later, morning arrived in its ordinary way with birds singing and dogs barking.  I'd forgotten about the guitar player dream entirely until I glanced out the kitchen window and saw a Siamese cat asleep in my neighbor's porch swing, one paw under its chin, the other resting lightly on a stetson hat.

Time Lines

Sometimes life pushes us in directions we ought to have found for ourselves ~
Bob Hoskins, "Maid in Manhattan"

Even when you know it's the right thing to do, putting the crazy behind you is not always an easy thing to do. It will trail after you like a lost puppy, whining and pleading for you to take it back, promising whatever it takes to tempt you into a backward step.  Changing habits takes practice, determination, focus and an open mind. Learning to see the same old things in new and different ways - trusting in yourself to pull it off without the luxury of instant gratification - goes against the grain.  Time is a short, muddy, dead end road.  You learn to stay between the ditches or risk a wreck.  You learn to wait.  You don't learn to wait patiently.

At times, as I find myself rushing through life - more or less from one crisis to the next - I can't help but wonder at the silliness of it all.   A few seconds here and there can't possibly make a difference, I remind myself as I wait for the endless light to change, the pizza to arrive, the 'phone to ring, the file to upload, the dogs to come in, the clothes to dry, the band to start.  And yet I resent this empty, idle time.  It creates space I feel compelled to fill, usually with worry or impatience or simmering anger.  

I'm coming! I would yell to my mother.

So is Christmas! she would yell back, a tired old line but delivered with a certain menace that always made me cringe.  The more I tried to be quick, the more frantic and scattered I became, exhausting her patience and short circuiting my confidence.

If you were Paul Revere..... she would say with a long suffering sigh.

I know, I know, we'd still be British colonies, I would answer, a line I knew by heart and would grow up to use myself on more than one occasion.

I didn't think much about time then.  When you're twelve or thirteen (and going on twenty-one as my mother was fond of saying), it stretches out before you like an interstate highway.  My head was full of book reports and worry about running out of my allowance, whether or not I'd be asked to the junior prom and had I practiced enough for my next piano lesson. Time was a misty abstraction, a grown up worry I didn't have time for and couldn't make sense of.

At sixty-six, it's closing in, pressing in on me from all sides.  It's gotten too real.

Meanwhile life keeps pushing me, sometimes gently, sometimes with enough force to move a mountain.  I tell myself that it knows what it's doing but the truth is that I've come to believe that if a thing is meant to be, then it will find a way.  

Be nice to time.  It doesn't have much of a sense of humor and it doesn't need you the way you need it.

Let life give you the occasional shove.


   

Tis Wondrous Strange

Ain't all that great to be named after a cookie, you know, Shortbread grumbled to my daddy, his mournful face in a serious pout as he laid out fresh haddock in day old newspaper and efficiently tied it with a length of string. Some of them jokes get real old, real fast.

My daddy smiled.  

Nothing in a name, my friend, he replied kindly, handing Shortbread a quarter and and me the haddock, They wouldn't ride you if they didn't like you.

Mebbe so, Shortbread shrugged but he didn't look convinced.

He'd been, my daddy had told me, a premature baby, born barely alive and not expected to survive his first few days.  But survive he did, even without life saving treatment and all the best available medical help.  Ol' Doc McDaniel had been cautious with his parents, warning them not to expect a good outcome, to prepare themselves for the worst but Shortbread was a fighter - he made it through his first week, then his first month, then his first year - and though he was underweight and tiny and struggled harder than anyone could've predicted, he made it.

On his third birthday, he went missing for several hours and was discovered half underwater in the pond where we went eel fishing, waterlogged and nearly drowned.  

He was five when he fell through the rickety rungs of the loft ladder in the old hay barn and landed smack dab in a milking stall.  

Poor ol' Bessie went dry for three days, his mother confessed, Thought we'd lose'em both for awhile.

At six, he caught his arm clean up to the shoulder in a milking machine, at seven his daddy ran over him with a tractor, and at eight he contracted polio.  By then, beginning to believe that this small and adventurous child was invincible, his mother and daddy simply force fed him massive doses of vitamin C, wrapped his legs in hot packs and splints daily, gave him oatmeal baths and oxygen and re-taught him to walk with the aid of iron braces.  He was clumsy and awkward and would never run free again, but he survived, more or less intact and during the long days of that dreadful summer, the island women brought cakes and pies and homemade ice cream with shortbread cookies. 

Boy could eat his weight in them shortbread cookies, his daddy would say and smile, Reckon it could be worse.

After a rugged start, the years between eight and eighteen were relatively uneventful - two bouts of viral pneumonia, a broken upper limb here and there - the iron braces gave way to lighter weight and more flexible aluminum and with increased mobility, Shortbread was inclined to take more risks.  Snapped his elbow when he stumbled on the steps and tripped over the dog.  Dislocated a shoulder when he plowed straight into a ditch teaching himself to drive.  

Been through more broken bones than Carter's got pills, Rowena complained as she patched him up for the dozenth time, Boy, you ain't never gonna see twenty-one less'n you slow down some!

When a standard transmission turned out to be more than he could handle though, it was Rowena who suggested he learn to ride.  She had, as it turned out, a reasonably young mare who could still kick up her heels and knew tricks - how to count, and turn on a dime, and best of all, how to kneel to be mounted.  

Just a matter of balance, she told Shortbread patiently, She kneels, you get on.  She gets up and you go. You're lighter'n feather, boy, hug her sides with them braces and she'll carry you anywhere.

What's her name?  Shortbread asked doubtfully.

Rowena laughed.

That's the best part! she said and gave the mare a light pat on the rump, It's Lorna!  Like Lorna Doone! She might 'been named after a cookie just like you! She's got the same kinda stubborn streak you do!  You were made for each other!

It was, the entire island had to admit although not at the time, an inspired idea.  A lonely, young mare who could run like the wind and missed being ridden and a boy just slightly broken and in need of legs came together and became lifelong friends.  When my daddy and I left the factory and started across the road and up the path, Lorna was contentedly grazing in Aunt Lizzie's front yard.  Shortbread whistled and the now elder horse unhurriedly strolled toward him, knelt gracefully so he could climb on, and then rose up with a pleased whinny and a toss of her mane and carried him home.

Years and years later, Ruthie wrote me about Lorna's death.

Nigh onto 28 she was, the letter read, and she jist laid down in the pasture one evenin and didnt get up again. We cant imagin whats to become of Shortbread.

The second letter arrived a few months later.

Shortbread died yesterday mornin, Ruthie wrote, Rowena done found him down in the back forty by the hangin tree where he buried Lorna.  He werent never the same after losin that mare and Ro thinks he jist give up. 
Funny thing is that crooked ol man-tree be more n a half mile from the house and we looked all over creation but aint nobody found his braces. Somes sayin Lorna come back fer one last ride on account of Shad swearin he heard hoofbeats round dawn but I reckon he pitched em and they was carried out by the tide mebbe but even so I been thinkin bout that Shakespeare verse we learnt in Bible school, the one about there bein more things in heaven and earth, you remember, "Tis wondrous strange" or some such.  Reckon theres things in this life we aint meant to know.

I think so too.

Shades of Beige

If my life had depended on it, I couldn’t have told you what I expected from my first meeting.

Being chronically afraid of arriving late, I’d driven the route to the old church the night before to be sure I wouldn’t lose my way and on the actual meeting day, I invented a migraine and left work a half hour earlier than necessary.    It seemed foolish to care so much about punctuality - surely being late wouldn’t keep you out, I told myself - but we are what we are and I was determined to be on time.  I pulled into the church parking lot with thirty-five minutes to spare, more than enough time to change my mind, not quite enough to find the courage to actually do it.

It was early October, cool to the point of chilly, well dark by six-thirty and the church, sitting high on a hill overlooking the grimy city, was caught in a crossfire of wind.  It whistled around me, crooning it almost seemed, reminding me of the loons that used to call to each other after sundown when I was a child spending summers on my grandmother’s farm.   A school-sized milk carton skittered roughly across the pavement, a glossy newspaper page flew directly in front of the windshield.  Winter would be here any day, I thought, in a month it would be cold enough to snow.  I badly wanted to turn the ignition key and head the old Volvo wagon to the empty apartment on Dead Horse Hill.  Telling myself it wasn’t a fit night to be out - I was hungry and headachy, had forgotten my gloves and was wearing only a light jacket that offered next to no protection from the wind - I gave the key a hard twist and the engine roared to life.  Home and safety was twenty minutes away.  The door to the church was only a few steps across the parking lot.

“God, give me strength, “ I said outloud, turned off the engine and headed into the wind.

The meeting room, as plain vanilla as the church was gingerbread, was tucked away at the end of a long, fluorescent lit, maze-like collection of corridors in the church basement.   Hand lettered signs and arrows were tacked at each intersection and turn of the carefully, neutral, non-threatening walls.  The carpet (threadbare in places) was beige, the ceiling (in need of paint) was beige.   There were beige bulletin boards hung on beige walls, push bars instead of doorknobs, and no windows.   I followed the signs and arrows, faintly distracted by the possibility that I if I were to drown, I might disappear in a veritable sea of beige.  And then without warning, I was at the last set of beige double doors.

“Al Anon”, the hand printed sign read.  And underneath, “ AA” with a smudgy arrow pointing back the way I’d come.

I hated new things, unfamiliar places, first times.  I hated doing things I’d never done before or feared I couldn’t do well.  I had no gift for small talk with friends let alone strangers.  I’d forgotten what a genuine smile even felt like.  I was afraid of crowds.  All things considered, I thought, it was some mild form of insanity to think that some old, sorry, clichéd self- help group would be of any use.  I had my pride, my privacy, three cats depending on me and a husband locked up in a sterile and unfriendly alcoholism treatment center.  I wasn’t about to admit or advertise my troubles to a bunch of losers or religious do-gooders.   I was thinking I’d go home to the little apartment on Dead Horse Hill, forget all this nonsense and crawl into bed until tomorrow when the door suddenly swung inward and open. 

“Welcome to Al Anon,” a pretty, young, well dressed blonde carrying a tray full of coffee mugs said to me, ”I’m Alma.  You can sit anywhere.”

And for no good or comprehensible reason, standing there in that lonely, windowless hall with its harsh lights, the smell of coffee, and this sweet-faced stranger, I began to cry.

“Please,” she said gently, “You’ve come this far.  It’s only a few more steps.”  She balanced the tray with one hand - it trembled slightly and on sheer reflex I reached out a hand to help her steady it - she took a step back and leaned toward me with a confidential smile.  “Besides,” she stage whispered, “We have cookies.”

“Oh, well,”  I somehow managed a shaky smile, “If there are cookies…..”

The room was as colorlessly beige as the hall with a wide circle of what my grandmother would have called card table chairs lining the walls.  A table just inside the double doors offered an array of books, pamphlets, t shirts.  Another was neatly laid out with a Styrofoam cups, paper napkins and plastic spoons and a chirping coffee pot.  Two paper plates held an assortment of cookies, chocolate chip, oatmeal, raisin.  Hung above the tables were brightly colored if tattered posters held in place with scotch tape, the Serenity Prayer crookedly centered between The Twelve Steps and The Twelve Traditions.  Above them, a 20x30 sheet of poster board proudly proclaimed the name of the group, its meeting times and in heavy black script an invitation to Take what you need and leave the rest.

“Your first time?” a voice at my elbow asked quietly.

A woman, about my age, holding a chocolate chip cookie in one hand and a small blue book in the other, smiling at me.  She had kind eyes.

“I’m Denise,” she said matter-of-factly, “ I know the first time is the hardest.  You’re welcome to sit next to me.”  

I hesitated, not at all sure I could handle this much kindness.  She smiled again, nodded to the round clock on the wall.

“I’m sitting right under the clock,” she told me then added, “It gets better, hon, it really does.”

I don’t remember most of what was said or who said it.  I do remember that there were very few empty chairs, that it was mostly women in them, that there were horror stories I’d never imagined a person could live with, and that somewhere along the way, the knots in my belly untangled and I began to chip away at the walls I’d built for myself. 

Hope is a funny thing, sometimes elusive and hard to hold onto, sometimes hiding in plain sight, sometimes just around the next corner.  I’d hoped to learn how to make my husband stop drinking and instead was taught about detachment, patience, boundaries, self-esteem and faith.

Hope had blindsided me.

The Monday Wash

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t an actual competition  but everybody knew that any respectable island woman who didn’t have her Monday wash hung by ten in the morning was going to be talked about  by noon.  

Nana was up and dressed long before the factory whistle sounded at seven.  Provided it was a fine day, she put on her yellow Playtex gloves, tied her apron securely and prepared to do battle with the old wringer washing machine.  It took both of us to push, pull, shove and wrangle it to the kitchen sink.  We filled it to the brim and then dropped in a week’s worth of assorted laundry. 

“I declare,” she routinely remarked with a discreet glance at the old kitchen wall clock, “How so few people can manage to dirty so many clothes is beyond me.”

The old machine had served faithfully for years, a well-made and loyal old appliance it was, it made a comforting ruckus as it chugged and splashed  through  its cycles.  When it was done, we would carefully feed each piece of laundry through the wringers - “Mind your fingers!”  Nana always reminded me and always more than once - and into the frayed wicker basket.   Together we would carry the basket to the backyard clothesline where she would pull out one item at a time, holding out her free hand for wooden clothespins - I handed them to her two at a time and she put them between her teeth,  then one at a time secured them to the lines - it was slow work because she was meticulous that everything should hang even and straight with no wasted space but there was an edge of panic in the breezy morning air.  As she started each new line of clothes, I watched her check her watch and then look around and over her shoulder as if she were being spied upon.   Sheets and pillow cases and towels on the far end, delicates hidden in the in the middle, shorts and dungarees and t shirts on the near end all fluttered and swung in the sweet, salty air and with a final glance at her watch, Nana pronounced it good.

“Twenty after nine,” she said with a satisfied smile, “Five minutes ahead of last week.”

It was an adult thing, I decided, one of those mysteries that I was always being told I’d understand when I was older, like why you had to have light coming over your left shoulder when you were reading or how cleaning my plate would help the children starving in Europe.  Nana had a complete set of gold bound Encyclopedia Britannicas and had shown me Europe on one of the illustrated maps but it was on the other side of the world and as far as I could see, didn’t have much connection to scalloped potatoes. I’d begun to think that some of the adult things I’d understand when I was older were made up on the spot.

 “Waste not, want not.” Nana told me over a plate of liver and onions while I tried my best not to gag.

“It looks like it’s alive,” I protested sullenly, “It’s bleeding.  And it smells bad.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” my mother said wearily, “Just eat.”

But I was a stubborn child and if my only choice was liver and onions, I was perfectly willing to be sent to bed without supper.  It seemed a small price to pay, starving European children or not.

Monday was also the traditional once-a-week shopping day. 

The village featured not one but two general stores - Norman’s had been there the longest, a long, low and dimly lit building with a musty smell of tobacco, stale penny candy and old paint was favored by the locals - the old fishermen liked to congregate on the window seats and smoke, whittle, gossip and spit.   Nana still stopped in now and then, out of loyalty she often said, but she preferred McIntyre’s with its bright lights and big picture windows.  There was a touch of modern in the three story building with its  shiny new cash register and fancy overhead lighting, the Spiegel  catalogue was always current, and it was the only place in the village with a gas pump.  The only thing you couldn’t find (or order) at either store was meat - that came every other Wednesday in a rickety, refrigerated pick- up truck, all the way from Church Point - Bill Brown had been making rounds to island homes for as long as anyone could remember.  Steaks, chops, slabs of ribs and roasts that could feed a small army were all neatly crammed into the little truck, wrapped in slick white paper and neatly labeled, strictly cash and carry.  After a steady diet of haddock and halibut and the now and then special occasion lobster, it was like Christmas when the old truck pulled in the driveway.

 “Ready?” my grandmother asked as she hung up her apron, freshened her lipstick, and tucked her little pocket notebook into her purse.  She inspected me for a clean face and loose shoelaces, said I would do, and let me lead the way to the old Lincoln.  The Monday wash flapped and crackled as we passed, the sheets snapping sharply in the wind.

After McIntyre’s, we drove a little further up island for vegetables, filling two fruit baskets with sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers from Miss Lilly’s farm.

 

“Tsk, tsk,” Nana said under her breath but a tiny bit gleefully as we passed the rare house without a Monday wash blowing on the line, “Somebody’s sleepin’ in, I declare.” 

 By the time the back-to-work factory whistle blew at one, we were home, cruising down the steep gravel driveway and well pleased with ourselves.  The Monday wash was brought in, sorted, neatly folded and put away.  Nana stoked the fire in the cast iron stove and the kitchen shone with sunlight.  My mother had been busy and two apple pies were cooling on the windowsill while the dogs,who had gone slightly mad at the approach of the dusty Continental coming down the drive, were once again peacefully sleeping at the back door.

It was just another day passing in a long summer of contentment.

The Wharf Rat

A month in and still I sometimes feel the wharf rat feeding.

It’s like stage fright only much worse, that tied up in knots feeling in my belly, that just this side of wanting to puke until tears run down my face and I can’t breathe for gagging sensation.   I sleep badly and don’t dare to even think about eating anything.  My beloved Ghiradelli chocolates sit untouched on the kitchen counter and I rinse my mouth with last night’s now lukewarm Diet Coke but I’m scared to swallow.  What goes up must come down, but when you’re feeling the way I do, what goes down  will surely come up and it’s a prospect I can’t currently face. 

A diversion is required, I decide, something to evict, distract, and occupy my thoughts.  I pull on faded sweatpants and one of my at-home-only ragged t shirts, slip into my old Nikes and head for the door. A long walk, a healthy sweat, a cold shower when I get home, I think.   Exhaust the body and hope that the mind will follow, I think.   Whatever it takes to drive off this hovering feeling of sea sickness, I think.  It sits like lead in my gut, threatening, threatening, threatening, a small but powerful bad weather cloud of nervousness.   It would ease my mind to think I’m coming down with some brief but nasty intestinal thing but I’m not.  This is all a mind influencing body process and I’m doing it to myself.

I’ve mostly gotten over the anger and shame of being fired but facing the future is an entirely different matter.   A part of me wants to weep for it - for the retirement that will never come  - now replaced by a dreadful uncertainty, a fragile outlook at best.  I resolve (several times a day, now that you mention it) to “Stay in the Day” as the old AA slogan recommends and not look too far forward.  I remind myself (to the point of being dully repetitive and boring) that worry will solve nothing and only extend the life of the nasty little creature that’s gnawing and sawing in my belly.  I imagine it to be a sly little monster, the kind that might eventually grow up to become a wharf rat prowling  Boston’s harbor, the worst kind of emotional predator, with fang-y sharp teeth, yellow-ish eyes, a whipsaw tail and the patience of Job.  I even think about giving him a name so that when he rips into my insides, I can yell something like Whoa, Fred!  Back the hell off!  It’s a silly notion but for a moment or two it almost actually works and I conjure up an image of roadkill, stiff legged and decomposing by the curb of one Back Bay’s old cobblestone sidestreets.   Passersby cross the road to avoid it but some recognize it and a few avert their eyes while cheering on the inevitable but slow process of decay.  No one mourns the loss of a disease-carrying, nasty wharf rat, not even his own kind.

Things are not, of course, as bleak as the vicious and bad tempered little rodent would have me believe. My social security benefits arrive promptly every month and I’ve managed to find a part time job that will ease the burden.  If I’m careful and lucky, it will allow me to tread water for a time, keep the bill collectors from the door and the animals with me.   That’s the thought I try to hold onto.  It’s the  thought that keeps me from finding a high bridge over deep water.

There’s too much worry and weariness in the world, I think.  It makes us lose sight of and hope in the future, makes us forget that all trials and tribulations will end.  If it were just me, I might actually clear a little space  - no more than a lightless, unused corner, surely -  in my head for those dark thoughts that like to slither in and make themselves at home but the little ones are innocent and untouched by my state of mind or my fate.  I cannot, will not leave them anymore than I would entrust their care to someone else. More than anything else, they keep the wharf rat at bay.

Meanwhile, he must be exposed, must be driven out of the shadows  - first by admitting that he’s there, then by confronting him and daring him to come closer.  He will snap and snarl and seduce, flash those wicked little teeth and beckon with his claws.  And I will gather my little ones and hug them tightly, remind myself that tomorrow will be better, that life is too precious to live with worry and weariness, far too precious to give up without a fight.

Given sufficient time, I suspect I may see this as a good thing.  The steady income is gone but so is the anger and depression of being trapped in an environment that had turned toxic.   The future, uncertain as it may be, is better than the dark paralysis of being miserable and stuck.

So bring it on, wharf rat.  Because for right now, the kitchen’s closed.

The Cat's Meow

Sometimes I think life is a conspiracy of narrow escapes all clustered together and biding their time, waiting for the moment closest to perfect vulnerability to reach maturity, join hands, and all strike together.  In and of itself, no single one is enough to strong enough to deliver a fatal blow but there is great strength in numbers. 

My sweet tuxedo cat - normally so placid and serene that I sometimes forget she's here - expressed no interest in Sunday supper.  I discovered her lying in a corner of the dining room, unnaturally quiet and lethargic, and in the way that people who love cats have, sensed rather than knew something was wrong.  She began vomiting not long after that - nasty, mucousy puddles of bile - then bile with a reddish tinge - and then by morning, all blood.  Something cold happened to my heart at the last and for a second or three, I found I couldn't quite breathe.

She caterwauled all the way to the vet, a heartbreaking and supernatural sound that sounded like death to me.
Funny, I was thinking - as if I was thinking at all - how your mind races non-stop to the worst possible scenario at such times.  Why is it that I've never learned the art of optimism?

Just a few more minutes, I tell her and stroke her ears through the carrier, Hang on, baby, please hang on.

She answers with a chilling, searing wail then begins to dry heave.  A moment later a spray of blood explodes through the carrier's opening and mists over the metal bars, over the car seat, over the gear shift, over me.  I think it was at that precise moment that I began - probably desperately -  to talk to God.

Arriving at the vet's seems to steady my nerves somewhat, knowing there is help just the other side of the heavy glass doors calms me down.  There's another wildly painful moan from the carrier and a second explosion of blood.  It splatters over me from the knees down - I realize dimly that I'm in two day old (and slept in) clothes, green striped pajama pants and a barely decent tank top - worse, I've somehow forgotten my battered Nikes and am barefoot.  I spare a fraction of a second to grab my floppy straw hat (for those days when I skip the shower and shampoo but must appear in public) and run for the doors.  My last coherent thought is oddly comforting - at least I remembered my teeth.

There's no time to wonder what the girls at the front desk may have thought at the sight of a more than half crazed madwoman covered in blood and looking like an unmade bed stumbling and staggering through the glass doors. 

Blood! I manage to choke, She's vomiting blood!

Lisa, a long time vet tech and a veritable mountain of a woman in blue scrubs and a pony tail, is suddenly at my elbow.  She snags the carrier with one quick hand, lifting it effortlessly although the tuxedo cat alone is fourteen pounds, eases one arm around my shoulders and with a brisk, no-nonsense C'mon, guides me to an exam room.  

Deep breaths, she tells me calmly as she opens the carrier and eases the cat out onto the shiny metal table, speaking softly and handling her very gently.  She glances over her shoulder and in a less soft and gentle tone tells me, Head between your knees and deep breaths.  We've got this.

Doc comes in almost at once and with hardly a glance at me begins a series of questions.  When did it start, was there blood the first time, is she drinking, when did she last eat.  It's hard but it helps to focus on the answers - my beloved vet of the last 30 or so years isn't smiling but he isn't scowling either - I tell him all I know while Lisa keeps one eye on the cat and the other on me.

Better?  she asks after another minute and to my surprise, I am.  The initial panic has subsided and I can once again think and speak clearly.

No fever, Doc says, all his attention on the cat as he pokes and prods and feels her sides, No soreness, no indication of an obstruction or a tumor.  The vomiting likely ruptured a small blood vessel, and here he finally gives me a reassuring smile, Happens more often than you might think.  Technically it's called hemorrhagic gastroenteritus, more common in dogs as a rule but we see it in cats now and then.  I think she'll be fine in a day or two but if she's not, bring her right back in.   

Then for the first time he seems to notice my appearance and I see a twinkle in his dark eyes.

 Do you need anything?  he asks, Besides shoes and a shower?

The drive home is quiet with only the occasional protest from the carrier - far less fear and anguish, considerable more aggravation at being confined - a subtle difference if you don't love cats, I suppose, but clear as day to my ears.  It's not a happy sound, but it's a welcome one.  I put my own self to rights with a hot shower, a change of clothes, and a small prayer of gratitude to my vet and the hands that guide him.

The Tea Party

July 11^th, 1953, a Saturday and my fifth birthday, was exactly as my grandmother had promised.

“An absolutely glorious day for a tea party!” she’d proclaimed early that morning as she roused me , flinging the bedroom window wide open and watching me rub sleep seeds from my eyes.  “Happy Birthday!  Listen!  Even the dang gulls are singing!”

We’d arrived on the island barely a month before after the long road trip from Boston  to St. John, New Brunswick and after a short sea crossing to Nova Scotia were  happily and comfortably settled into the cheerful and sunny house overlooking the ocean.  There was me, my two younger brothers, my mother, my unflappable, practical grandmother and two dogs - my grandfather having long since passed away - and my daddy not due to arrive until later in the month.   As they did every summer, my Aunt Pearl and and Aunt Vi had descended on the house the week prior to our arrival and spent hours dusting and cleaning, airing it out, stocking the pantry and putting fresh linens on all the beds.  On the afternoon that my mother’s pink and white convertible and Nana’s old Lincoln Continental had finally pulled into the gravel driveway, the house welcomed us with open arms.   Its windows sparkled in the afternoon sun, the grass was freshly cut, the woodshed newly stocked, a massive pot of Aunt Pearl’s sweet cream fish chowder bubbled on the old cast iron stove and homemade biscuits were cooling on the counter.   Aunt Vi was putting the finishing touches on her made-from-scratch strawberry shortcake.  Nobody could make chowder like my Aunt Pearl or shortcake like my Aunt Vi, but I was so excited and happy to be home that it was all I could do to eat.

“Go, child,” Nana finally said in exasperation as she poured iced coffee and luxuriously lit a Kent 100, “You’ve had a long day and I’ll be wanting you in bed early tonight.  Be back by dark.”

But dark was a long way off on that perfect day.  Dark was always a long way off on those perfect summer days.   At precisely eight o’clock, the Peter’s Island lighthouse turned on its red warning beacon and it was not until then that I needed to be home - Nana would be standing on the side porch by that time, scanning the horizon and impatiently tapping one sensible shoe - but not worrying.  There wasn’t much need to worry in those sweet, summer days when every island child was not only watched quietly and discreetly by every adult but was safe with each of them.  On the rare evenings that I was not home on time, my grandmother would simply pick up the party line and ring Elsie at the telephone office up island.  In a matter of minutes, my location would’ve been pinpointed and I’d have been on my way home courtesy of some local fisherman.  We might’ve been surrounded by water  (and nobody ever discounted the hazards it presented) but we were also surrounded by a tightly knit community of family and friends.    Stranger Danger hadn’t been invented then and not a single island door or car was ever locked.

Nana slipped a chocolate chip cookie into my overalls pocket and the dogs and I went flying down the front path, headed for the rocky coast of the icy Atlantic and the first of many summer adventures. 
 

It was later in the month when my grandmother first mentioned my upcoming birthday.

“Pears to me that five is pretty grown up,“ she remarked one morning as she spread softened butter and blackberry jam on toast and tucked a napkin under my chin, “ Reckon you might like a tea party?”

I considered this for a moment, thinking of the  Alice in Wonderland picture book my daddy had ordered all the way from the big Barnes & Noble store in New York City the previous Christmas.   The illustrations were delicate but vividly drawn and the characters had come to life for me the moment  I’d unwrapped  the bright red paper with the Christmas green bow.   It was, I think, my first real treasure and I kept in under my pillow, falling asleep each night and impatiently dreaming of learning to read.

“Like The Hatter and The White Rabbit and The Dormouse?” I asked excitedly

Nana hesitated, sipped her coffee, then smiled cautiously.

“Well, not…..precisely,” she said, “ But……kind of.”

“A tea party?” my mother remarked with a sour, slightly put upon expression, “As if the girl doesn’t already have more imagination than she needs!”

“Ain’t no such thing as too much imagination in a five year old,” Nana replied tartly, “And I don’t recall anyone askin’ you, Jan. “  She paused, reached for her Kent 100’s, looked thoughtful.

“I ‘spect we could even use the company china.” she said mildly and more to herself than my mother.

“And if it rains?” my mother wanted to know with an exaggerated roll of her tired eyes.

But my grandmother dismissed her with an airy wave of one red fingernail’d hand.

“Ain’t gonna.” she said shortly.

“But…..” my mother persisted halfheartedly and Nana gave her a glare.

“I said it ain’t gonna rain and that’s that.”  Her tone, the one she used when she was at the end of her patience, had sharpened considerably.  You didn’t argue with that tone unless you were willing to risk a trip to the woodshed and upon hearing it, my mother gave an indifferent shrug and let it drop.  I had a sneaking suspicion that the part of her that bitterly resented having children might be hoping that it would rain - would come down in buckets, matter of fact, be a real gullywasher like the summer of ’83  that the old timers still liked to talk about- but Nana was having none of it.

 “Your mama got a spiteful streak, child, just like her daddy,” she told me cheerfully, “But you don’t pay her no mind.  She’ll git over it.  Now you go ‘long and let me git to washin’ clothes ‘fore it’s too late for ‘em to dry.”

Two weeks later, on a perfect blue and white summer afternoon, I turned five with Red Foley singing Chattanooga Shoeshine Boy and my mother serving ice cream and chocolate cake  (on Nana’s company china) to a crowd of laughing, singing children and adults.  We played croquet until the sun set behind the horizon and then toasted marshmallows over a makeshift bonfire until the red beacon warning came on in the lighthouse on Peter’s Island.   Nana pretended not to notice for another full hour.

Getting Fired

Getting fired is like being unexpectedly  gut punched and having the wind knocked out of you.   You’re out cold before you know what hit you.

With just a simple, neutral phrase, my whole world seemed to shimmer and then flatline.  I spent the next three days in a daze of desperation with my stomach in knots, too panicked and afraid to sleep, too sick-ish to eat, too shattered to think clearly.   Much as I wanted to and thought it would be therapeutic, I couldn’t cry although I stayed right on the edge.   I spent several hours curled up on the loveseat, clutching a pillow and burying my face in it,  replaying the brief termination scene in my head, as if I could re-write it with a happier ending or better yet, turn it into a nasty nightmare.  The television droned on night and day, the neighbors routinely came and went, the mailman came across the lawn whistling.  Life wasn’t even respectful  enough to slow down.

On the second day I had a long and quite stern talk with myself.

Nobody’s ever died from being fired, I reminded myself.

You’ll pull yourself together and find something else.  Something better.

You have to let this go and move on.

Stop brooding and worrying.  Get up. Get busy. Get over it.

And just as I dragged myself upright to make the bed, change the litter boxes, shower and dress and wash the breakfast (or lunch or dinner) dishes, my belly would clench and a rat-a-tat tightness would snatch at my chest and speed up my heartbeat.

Fear, I told myself, Just anxiety.  Uncalled for.

You’re working yourself up to a heart attack.

Quit. Quit this minute.

But other thoughts crowded past and pushed aside my advice. 

I’m sixty five years old, single, with three dogs and five cats to support and no good way to explain being fired.  There are bills due and no money.  Every hour is putting me closer to the grave or worse.

Oh, stop being melodramatic, a second voice in my head snapped impatiently.

Let me be! the first one snarled back as I crawled back to the loveseat and reached for the pillow again, hoping against hope to fall asleep and wake up with it all behind me but quite happily willing to settle for an hour or two of oblivion.

The instant I woke, the knots in my belly and the tightness in my chest returned.  On what was almost a whim, I knelt in front of the toilet and shoved my fingers down my throat repeatedly until I gagged but it produced very little except bile. 

Apparently, I said to the dogs who were hovering anxiously at the bathroom door, you can’t upchuck being afraid like it was a tuna sandwich.  I spit, rinsed my mouth, tried again and finally gave up.  It was time, I thought bitterly, to straighten up and fly right.

I took a seat in front of the computer and began.

Hating every keystroke, I started with the dismal and degrading process of filing for unemployment.  It made me feel like a deadbeat.

You’ve worked for fifty years - fifty years! - I told myself brutally, this is not welfare or charity or a handout!  But still it felt wrong and more than a little shameful.  Five cats and three dogs, I reminded myself as a sharp stab of fear traveled from my chest to my throat.  I kept on.  Panic and depression swirled in my gut like a hoard of malicious butterflies but I kept on.  I remembered a public speaking course I’d taken in high school and how I was so scared I’d nearly fainted.  I remembered what seasick felt like and how my grandmother had held me over the side of the boat.  Sick it up, child, she’d said encouragingly, You’ll feel better.  It felt like that only with nothing substantial to sick up.  Dramamine wasn’t going to help this particular kind of nausea.  When your back is up against a wall, all you can do is keep on keeping on.

I picked what looked like the best half dozen job sites and plowed my way through.

I checked the help wanted section of the newspaper.

I updated my resume and composed cover letters.

I quietly notified friends.

But mostly I tried to beat back the relentless, creeping fear that had taken up residence in my belly and spread to my chest.  And each time I couldn’t, I returned to the loveseat and the pillow.

You have social security, I told myself, it comes in every month.  And seven hundred in savings.  And you’re owed a week’s vacation.  The wolves may be gathering but they’re not on the doorstep yet so stop planning their meals.

Over two grand in credit card debt, the second voice chimed in with a nasty little whisper, and what if you get sick or the car breaks down or one of the animals……

ENOUGH!  I shriek back - outloud and loud enough startle all the dogs - Enough.  What the hell has happened to your faith?

Faith won’t pay the bills, the evil voice insists softly but I think I might detect just the slightest hint of uncertainty.

A friend who manages a convenience store suggests I come see him and I nervously pull on clean jeans and a freshly ironed t shirt and drive the short distance.  The store is huge by convenience store standards, brand new and still polished and shiny, not at all tired looking the way so many are.  We talk and I meet his boss and am asked to fill out an online application.  This turns out to be a  major undertaking and strains my memory in places (a lot of ground can be covered in 50 years) but I make my way through it as best I can.  At the end there’s an interesting and somewhat humorous 100 question survey where I’m asked to agree or disagree with seemingly random statements (“There are 40 days in a month” and “I’m not comfortable working around ignorant people”).    I think convenience store management must be far more of a challenge that I’d thought and while  I dread the thought of the learning this would require, I plug away, ever reminding myself that I have twenty some odd years of retail experience, and finally hit the submit button with a sigh. 

It’s a place to start, I tell the dogs wearily.  And it’s calmed my shaky nerves just a tiny bit to have done something .

Slowly and painfully, I begin to make my way back because when you come right down to it, neither Dramamine or self-pity is going to make much of a difference.  You can’t hide in a loveseat forever.

Whipped

Sometimes, Stephen King wrote in his novel "Dolores Claiborne", a wickedly good tale of child molestation, murder and bitterly dysfunctional relationships, Being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.

Amen, I remember thinking when I first read it.  The novel became and remains my favorite piece of his writing.  It crystallized a simple but easily missed fact of life - not all monsters come from the undead - some are born of reality and not pure imagination.

Underneath the initial panic and desperation of being fired - for the first time in my working life - I stumbled across an anger embedded so deeply I didn't even know it was there and discovered my inner bitch was alive, well, and thriving.  For the first couple of days, I was too fearful to see it, not able to sleep or eat or think clearly enough to make a coherent sentence.  Despite trying to blot it out, the termination scene kept playing and replaying in my head.  There were knots in my belly, an uncomfortable tightness in my chest, a  nauseated feeling like sea sickness that wouldn't give an inch stayed with me and grew more powerful with each passing hour.   The fact that it did not come as a surprise didn't help.  Knowing I'd contributed to my professional demise didn't help.  Kneeling in front of the toilet and repeatedly shoving my fingers down my throat didn't help.  The knots got thicker and the tightness more constricting until all I could hear was the sound of my heart beating too fast.  I couldn't walk it off, sleep it away or sick it up.

Age is no longer an ally when you reach your senior years.  It haunts you as does every poor choice and bad judgement, every failure to save or plan or prepare.  The reality is that one day you wake up out of work, with no insurance, no savings, no prospects, eight animals to support and very little hope.  I'd had plans to work for another four or five years, pay off the credit cards in another few months, and then seriously begin to put back all that social security money I wouldn't be spending.  It was a good plan - although it had some risks - but it might've worked.  It wouldn't have meant a life of luxury, perhaps not even a life of ease, but it might've been manageable.  At least I'd thought so.

Life, unfortunately, has a way of delivering ugly surprises.

It's not easy to face down your own faults.  I prefer to remember the undeserved reprimands, the vague threats, the temper tantrums, the dirty jokes and the questionable ethics.  It eases my mind.  It's time to face the facts that I'm mentally and emotionally whipped, no longer capable or even willing to give it the best I've got. 

A week later, I've decided some things and the sea sickness has - mostly - passed although it twinges every now and again, to remind me of its power, I suppose.  There doesn't seem much point to a new plan, easier to try to return to one day at a time and survive as gracefully as I can.  The bitch I'd thought was dead and gone is still alive and kicking.  She may very well be all that's left and she's holding on with a death grip.

You Can't Kill a Kenmore

You can't kill a Kenmore, I protest to the Sears repairman who is trying, against the odds, to get my ancient dryer up and running again.

No, he agrees, but after twenty years, they can die a natural death.

He gives me a what-did-you-expect kind of grin, shoulders his tools and dutifully heads back into the garage. It takes the better part of an hour but finally the old machine gasps and chokes and coughs itself back to life.

One small crisis is diverted, at least for the time being.

If it goes again, he warns me, just go get a new one.  Ain't no point in callin' for service.

Yeah, right, I think to myself with just a touch of temper even though I know he's being reasonable and most likely honest, Easy for you to say.

He trudges to his white repair van, climbs in and drives off and the dogs, who never react well to the presence of a stranger, finally relax and settle down.  The temptation to crawl back into the nest I've made in the loveseat is strong - the idea of sleeping another day away with the little dachshund curled next to me is almost irresistible - but instead, I shower and dress, change kitty litter, wash breakfast dishes, try to do a little writing.  I would much rather continue to hide/ brood/ worry/deny, but I've done that for a full week and accomplished precious little.  I don't like the direction my thinking has taken lately - it's crept into the shadows of self-doubt and worse, self-pity - dragging me along with very little resistance and flashing a slideshow of unattractive images.  Homelessness, insurmountable debt, elderly-ness and ill health.  Despair, resentment,
lack of faith and estrangement.

Truth to tell, I think I know how the dryer feels. 

The next day a musician friend arrives with her trusty shop vac in tow and as instructed by the Sears repairman, we commence to clean out the astonishing collection of lint behind the old dryer.  It's musty and moldy and as my mother liked to say, Hot as Hades but we are driven and we persist.  The dogs dance around in the yard, thrilled at this extra time outside and curious as to what all the commotion is about.  When we're done, we sit on the barely shaded back deck, drinking cold Orange Crush and Diet Coke and we begin to talk, really talk, about families, being fired, fear, depression, detachment and everything in between.  Program talk mostly, mutually supportive and painfully honest.  Her background is AA, mine is Al-Anon but we share the same kind of damaged childhood, we battle many of the same character flaws and are afraid of the same kinds of things.  It's like finding a well worn and dog eared old book with stories you already know, stories that might even be autobiographical - not all are pretty or have happy endings - but you read and re-read and re-read again, inspired by finding a kindred spirit, calmed by sharing with and listening to someone who has the same pain, encouraged by knowing you're not as alone as you feel.

It doesn't turn anything around, this long, sweaty conversation on the back deck, but it does lighten our burdens a little and rattle the teeth of a few of our common demons.

I'm not so sure about the dryer.  In appliance years it's probably on life support and may give up and give in at any moment, but it is a Kenmore, built for durability and long life, reliable as rain and just a day or two away from indestructible.

I'd like to think there's a little Kenmore in all of us.



  

God Save the Queen

I declare, Alice, Aunt Pearl casually remarked to my grandmother over toast and morning coffee, One of those tattoo places opened in Digby. 

No good will come of it, Nana replied with a disapproving frown, Mark my words.

Mother of Mercy, Aunt Vi cringed, All those needles, I can't imagine.

Miss Hilda, not a frequent morning guest but she had been in the neighborhood for what she called her morning constitutional, rapped her spoon sharply against her coffee cup.

God save the queen, ladies, she said tartly once she had all their attention, but I hardly think a tattoo parlor, though certainly a doubtful and ill conceived career choice, will mean the end of mainland civilization.  She added cream and sugar to her coffee, drank, and then smiled grimly.  Such as it is, of course, she added, Such as it is.

Nana lit a Kent 100 and exhaled smartly.

Just a step away from a pool hall, Hilda, she said with a self-righteous shrug.

A regular den of iniquity, Vi agreed, but with needles.

Do be reasonable, Viola, Hilda reprimanded her with a long suffering sigh, Have you the remotest personal experience with a den of iniquity?

She's thinking of opium dens, Aunt Pearl said mildly and patted her sister's arm encouragingly, She loves reading those Sir whats-his-name Sherlock Holmes stories.

Mr. Holmes, Hilda snapped, was a devotee of cocaine, my dear, and he rarely frequented opium dens.  If you must contribute, I must insist you make every attempt to be historically accurate.  And might I point out, that Mr. Holmes was a fictional protagonist, woven entirely from Sir Arthur's highly adventurous and eloquent imagination.

The point, Nana said darkly, ain't fiction, Hilda, and it don't matter who wrote the damn stories.  A tattoo parlor ain't got no business in Digby.  Halifax, maybe, as citified as those folks are, but not Digby.  She waved her cigarette as if to dismiss the entire matter and gave Pearl a truculent see-what-you-started glare.

Miss Hilda stood, adjusted the shoulder pads of her tweed jacket and snatched her riding crop.

What bloody rot, she said briskly, I'll be off then, shall I.  Pray continue without me.  

And so we shall, my grandmother announced tiredly as her boot steps echoed across the linoleum and out the back door, Kee-rist, but that woman can be a pain in the ass with her God Save the Queen manners and upper crust airs!

Needles, Aunt Vi said with a shiver, I can't imagine.  But a pool hall might be fun.

Viola!  the two women scolded in harmony, then all three laughed and Aunt Vi blushed all the way to her roots.