Winter Berries

A small flash of color catches my eye as I close the front door and start down the steps - a cluster or bright red winter berries on the other side of the railing - just barely visible in the early morning sun.  A good sign, I think to myself, a promise of spring and warmth and better days.  It's time I got back to my life.

First there was shingles - with me since the first week in December and with me still - then the on-again, off-again intestinal bug.  Then the cold that settled under and in and all through this old house and the new ductwork that didn't warm things up.  It's been, as Nana might say, a long case of the miseries.  And for the first time, I couldn't find the strength to fight through it.  Didn't see the point.  I shut down my writing and let my camera gather dust.  Everything I had went into trying to sleep and keep warm while I let myself worry about the taxes, the bank loan, the need for the kitten to see a vet, my less than set in cement job, the bills, the much needed repairs to the fence, the overdue oil change.  I gathered these things to me like a squirrel collects nuts - greedily, tightly, selfishly - as if without them, total despair might triumph. I spent the better part of two and a half months shut down and shut up, feeling the inequity of age and life bearing down on me and not noticing that the berries were there the whole time.  Survivors, these little berries, not giving an inch to the nights of freezing cold, the sleet, the rain that washed away so much topsoil, the icy winds that bent and battered the shrubs.  They gave up their own only to feed the mockingbirds and the cedar waxwings.  

Nature is full of sacrifice and hardship, each season bringing its own special rewards but also its own demands.

I remember many a New England blizzard where the snow was endless and we listened for the heavy tree limbs to suddenly snap like gunfire and crash down upon the roof or the power lines or an innocently parked car.

I remember southern summers so hot and humid that every breath had to be fought for.

And I remember the autumns and springs in between, full of gentle warmth and sweet breezes, coming and going so quickly there was barely time to appreciate them.  They were made of dreams.

And the winter berries bloom through it all, undeterred by time or temperature or season.  A reminder not to give up or nature's stubborn streak, you never can tell.

The Weight of Family

The old pump organ was sitting primly in the thrift store window, surrounded by second hand clothes and silverware and shelves of colored glass bottles and vases.  It gave me a start and then unleashed a flood of memories.

My grandmother Ruby slept in a small, narrow cot in the front room of the farm.  The cot and the pump organ that sat by the window overlooking the apple trees and the vegetable garden were the only two things I could remember about the room.  My daddy played it often, letting me sit on his lap and showing me the basics of the old Baptist hymns while he adjusted the knobs and pumped the pedals steadily.  I remember the breathless wheezing of the old thing, the smooth, dark wood, the yellowed old keys.  It took concentration and effort to play and I never got the hang of it but my daddy had never seemed to mind.  I learned my chords and that was enough.  A soft breeze would sometimes stir the sheer curtains on the windows as Ruby puttered around in her nightclothes with her hair unbraided and though she never said so, I thought she might've liked the music.

Mostly I remember her in a house dress and apron with her hair braided and wound around her head.  She was a small woman, a sensible, ungenerous and disapproving woman - truth to tell - always spare in her speech and slow to smile.  She disliked idleness or decoration and her work was never done.  Everything I remember about her is hazy, dreamlike almost, but she was always in motion.  She believed in consequences and precious little sympathy.  Her life was not easy or certain and I suppose she expected her reward to come in heaven.  I can't remember hearing her laugh - there was too much sin in the word to rejoice - and for the life of me, I can't think of a single time she hugged or kissed one of her children or grandchildren.  She worked and when she was finished, she worked some more.  All I can remember her ever teaching me was how to shell peas.

The cold weight of family can crush you.

News of her death came with a telephone call and over my mother's protests - loud, mocking and unkind - he packed a bag and jumped on a plane.  He never talked about it.

We are what we come from, I suppose, what we are shown and taught.  We carry on as if there's no other way.

I wish I'd known Ruby and that side of my family better.  

And I still think about that old pump organ.

Too Much Trouble

The grayed out skies and cold rain seemed to fit me like a glove.  I could feel a black mood settle over and around me, gnawing at  my edges.  It was cold and not just cold but cold like sweat.  The pile of blankets did no good - the back of my neck was unpleasantly damp and chilly - and even the room seemed to be cave-like. Time passed in uncomfortable segments of just-below-the-surface sleep with nasty dreams.  I felt pointless. I pulled on more clothes, rammed the thermostat to 75 then 80, moved to the living room with the portable heater and dug out more blankets.  All it got me was damp hair and a headache.  The little dachshund lay by my side, restless and concerned and watching me closely.

The rain stopped sometime during the night.  I smoked, took a long, hot shower, smoked some more, let the dogs out and in, watched for the sky to lighten, slept and woke, slept and woke.  By seven, it was almost light and finally warm enough to move around but everything was too much trouble.

My cigarettes are within easy reach but it's too much trouble.

The kitten asleep on my chest is movable but it's too much trouble.

The thought of showering and dressing is far too much trouble.

It's all, I realize dully, too much trouble.  I feel weighted down, gray, lost.  Gradually I begin to understand that I've somehow slipped into a dark place.  I haven't heard a human voice in three days and am feeling faintly sick.  The aloneness is crushing but I haven't the energy or inclination to move.  The whole house has a sick room feel to it and it's worked its way into my soul.
  
I think of depression as a small place, airless, dark and suffocatingly quiet.  It sucks the life out of you, steals the need for people and conversation away, and it's always disagreeably cold.  Nothing seems worth the effort.
You're dimly aware of being hungry, dimly aware that a shampoo and shower and change of clothes might make a difference, dimly aware that aspirin might ease the headache.  But everything you reach for is too far away - easier and quicker to close your eyes and burrow into darkness - you suspect that all the good is gone. Troubled thoughts swirl behind your eyes, a lifetime of shelved and put off worry, fear and despair join forces and when you open your eyes you're surrounded.  Even if you wanted to, there's no place to break through.

There might be a moment when you think about asking for help.  But in the time it takes to think about it, it's gone.  No one wants to admit to these feelings.


And then the sun breaks through and as it does, my spirits rise and I find my voice again.

The Old Caldwell Place

My first thought was that an alien had dropped by for breakfast.

My grandmother was in a fuzzy pink housecoat and matching slippers with her silver hair in tight pink spoolies under a glittery hair net and no make up.  She was drinking coffee and scanning the tiny island paper that arrived monthly, grumbling to herself as she dug into her pocket for her cigarettes and saccharine.  The kitchen was sunny and warm and smelled slightly of Airwick.  Nana smelled of cold cream and smoke. I took my seat across from her and she pushed a new package of pull-apart cinnamon rolls toward me along with a plate of softened butter.  My mother would not be happy to see me spread butter over the already sweetly iced rolls but for Nana it was an old habit and she loved the combination of melting icing and butter - like potato skins with butter and sugar only better - and she'd passed it on to me years ago.

Hmmph, she muttered and gave the little newspaper a stern, two handed rattle as if it had spoken out of turn,
The old Caldwell Place burned again.

She peered over the top of the paper and gave me a narrow-eyed glance as if she thought I might argue.

When?  I asked neutrally and after a quick pause, she shrugged but didn't answer.

Nana had never thought much of the old Caldwell Place - or any of the Caldwells, for that matter - Ethan and Emily's uncared for old homestead had not been on the island but rather just a few miles past the ferry slip on the way to the mainland.  It was a sorry looking old place, a little on the spooky side, some said, neglected and in need of every kind of repair with a perpetual brood of unruly and ragtag children running loose day and night.  A pair of rusted out old cars bordered what once might have been a driveway but what was now barely a path.  A pile of discarded tires sat under a tree.  There were random piles of hubcabs, rain rotted stacks of ruined lumber, coffee cans, abandonded machine parts.  The whole thing looked like a badly drawn and crookedly hung picture.  We'd passed it with every trip to and from the mainland.

I declare I don't know why the province just doesn't just condemn it and carry it all away, my grandmother said nastily, I shudder to think what the inside must be like.

Ruthie flashed me a wicked grin at that - we both could've told Nana exactly what it was like on the inside - and I jabbed her smartly in the ribs.

Something to add, girls? my eagle-eyed grandmother inquired sweetly with a glance in the Lincoln's rearview mirror.

Oh, no, ma'am, Ruthie said quickly.

Nothing at all, I added, probably too loud and Ruthie pinched me.  We both had to work hard to stifle the giggles and then my mother half turned in her seat and gave us a warning glare.  We immediately straightened up and began flying right.

It had been on a dare, of course.  One of the Sullivan boys had called us chickens, said we were "good girls" and "scaredy cats" and would never have the nerve to break the rules.  Ruthie said we'd be skinned alive if we were caught but it was my own brothers who turned us.

Ain't takin' no sissy girls, they'd announced and Ruthie and I were all in.

We pedaled the length of the island, crossed the ferry on the pretense of buying Jersey Milk bars at East Ferry, then pedaled round the hairpin turn and straight up the mainland.  It was a glorious summer day, windy and warm and smelling of salt.  Gulls shrieked behind us and the hayfields were hazy bright.  Even in the early afternoon sun, the old Caldwell place looked abandoned and forgotten - slightly treacherous, I thought - but we walked our bikes in bravely, past the scrap heaps of second hand bricks and several wheelbarrows full of pop bottles.  An avalanche of children spilled out the front door, a pack of dogs descended on us from the shadows.  Ethan, harnessing up an old and decrepit looking mule, barely glanced at us but Emily, one baby on her hip and another strapped to her back, swung the precariously hung screen door open wide, smiling at us despite the missing and broken teeth.  Her hair, widely streaked with gray, hung in a long coiled braid well past the middle of her back.  She was pale and hunched over, barefoot and wearing a ragged shift dress.  I thought I'd never seen a more tired looking woman, exhaustion came off her in waves and still she managed something that was a little like a welcoming look.

It was dark inside and there wasn't much furniture.  You could see daylight through some of the floorboards and in patches on the roof.  There were no interior doors, only blankets hung over the openings and kept in place with nails.  Some swayed lightly in a breeze we didn't feel.  Two oil lamps burned a sickly yellowish from the rack and ruin mantle.  The windows were covered in plastic sheeting, ash buckets sat unemptied by the fireplace, one side wall was almost completely exposed down to the beams with baby clothes hung randomly on the protruding nails.  It was impossible to take in, impossible to understand that people lived here, ate and slept and found the strength to face another day here.  Emily laid out slices of bread with butter and sugar and I thought of Nana's bright red and white kitchen, the linoleum she was always planning to replace, the little wooden gadget Uncle Len had designed for the hot water faucet that always ran scalding, the steady hum of the refrigerator and the lights that needed only the touch of a finger on a wall switch, the pantry with its overflowing stock of canned goods and cookie jars.  Each spring, Aunt Vi and Aunt Pearl came to clean and air and make the house ready for our summer visit - the woodshed was filled, the grass cut, the linens changed - and when we arrived, the dining room table would be set with a bubbling pot of fish chowder waiting on the stove and fresh flowers on the counters.  One of the village boys would have washed the windows until they shone and there'd be a fresh coat of paint on the flagpole.  Water would've been run through the pipes and the well tested.  Every glass and plate in every cabinet would have sparkled.

Here in the dull and disturbing poverty of the Old Caldwell Place, I began to feel ashamed.  I thought Ruthie might have felt it too and we didn't wait on the boys, just eased out, mounted our bikes, and rode for East Ferry as fast as we could.  We didn't talk about what we'd seen - or how it had made us feel - and by the time we passed it again and Nana had mentioned about the province coming and condemning it ......well, a considerable amount of summer had passed.  We let ourselves think we'd exaggerated or made it all up. It was easier than remembering, we thought, the bad stuff always is.

Ethan and Emily had long since moved on for a warmer climate when the first fire broke out that November, Ruthie wrote me.  She sent me a tiny photo from the paper, a grainy black and white of the the remains of the foundation and the chimney, three quarters buried in snow and looking unbearably sad.

The second fire, some ten years later, claimed what little was left.

They let it burn, my grandmother mused, Guess sometimes that's all you can do.
















 

Chicken Soup & Saltines

A glance at the calendar by my desk reminds me I'm in the 7th week of shingles.  I feel like a survivor.  That's when the intestinal bug arrives and lays me low for three very long days and nights - first there are chills and then sweats - I can tell I'm running fever and sleep is impossible.  I spend three miserable, wretched nights listening to a hard and steady rain and knowing I'd have to feel better to die.  I can't get the house warm enough, I can't sleep and don't dare try to eat or drink, every room looks like a small cyclone has come through and I don't care.  I begin to wonder how much more of what's left of my battered, old immune system can take.

On the fourth day when the weather finally clears - and warms considerably - I start to think I might live. Although my hands are shaking badly, my insides are trembling and I feel as fragile as spun glass, I leave my little sunroom nest and make a bowl of chicken soup, saltines, and room temperature ginger ale.  The dogs, both of whom have been constant companions and my only source of comfort, trail after me protectively.  They haven't left my side in three days and when I fill the bathtub and sink in, both sit quietly at attention beside the tub, watching and waiting patiently.

On the fifth day, I feel well enough to go back to work but my mid afternoon I'm regretting it.  My head is pounding, I ache from head to toe and once again I'm freezing even though it's over 60 degrees.  I tend the work dogs one last time and then come home to crawl shivering and shaking beneath several layers of blankets and listen to my teeth chatter.  I resolve not to come out til spring.

Most of the wretchedness passes by the following morning but I still feel far more delicate than I'd like.  A hot shower and a couple of aspirin help and I pull on as many layers as I can and reluctantly leave for work.  

I hate being sick.  Not just because it means being sick, but because it means being alone and in misery and feeling whiny and dreadfully sorry for myself. I dislike envying my friends who have husbands or partners or children to pick up some of the slack - it makes me feel petty - and I've never been able to reach out for help and inconvenience others - it makes me feel helpless and obligated - but there are times when I do look back and wonder exactly how awful it would've been to stay married.

Take a breath, I tell myself.  Let's not get carried away,

Second Hand Skates

“You can do this, “ my daddy told me as he laced up my second hand skates,  wound the muffler around my neck and pulled up my mittens,  “I’m going to show you how.”

It had snowed fiercely the day before and he and my uncles had been up with the sun to clear the frozen pond so we could ice skate.   Nana had tramped through the snowdrifts a half dozen times to bring hot coffee and sweet rolls but still it was bitterly cold and the wind made the trees tremble and shake  their snow-laden limbs.   By the time my daddy had half dragged and half carried me out onto the skittery ice, I was convinced I would never be warm again.

“I can’t!” I wailed miserably.

 “You haven’t tried yet!” he laughed, “How do you know?”

I knew because, despite the double thermal socks, my ankles had suddenly turned to mush, my balance was gone and  I had a new and profound understanding of gravity.  I knew because for the first time I could remember, I was doubting him.   Skate! I thought dismally, why, I couldn’t even stand!

My uncles circled around me - a wayward flock of useless, chattering crows - and my daddy propped me up with his hands tucked under my arms.  Uncle Bill took one mittened hand, Uncle Ernie took the other, and they slowly began to pull me.   Uncle Dave, surprisingly graceful for such a clunky, clumsy and nearsighted old farmer, spun like a dancer.

“Jist try her with one foot!” he called encouragingly, “One foot then the other!  Ya gotta slide!”

“Don’t let go!” I hollered, panicked at the thought of trying to navigate even a single step on those narrow blades, terrified that one or both of my uncles would desert me.  But they did let go.  I stood for a second, alone on the ice, pinwheeling my arms madly and then as I lost my footing and began falling backwards, a pair of arms caught me and I heard my daddy’s voice.

“Whoa!” I heard him say, “I’ve got you!”

He patiently set me on my feet again, allowing me to clutch at his shoulders while he re-wound my muffler and hitched up my mittens.   The uncles, except for Dave - still pirouetting and showing off in the center of the pond -  gathered around us.  

“Well, I dunno,” Uncle Ernie said doubtfully, “Maybe she ain’t old enough.”

“Maybe you’d just rather watch?” Uncle Bill said kindly, “You could stay with the aunts.”

“Reckon we could try again next year,” Uncle Byron - by far my favorite and best known - shrugged, “She tried and that’s good enough.”

My daddy rocked back on the heels of his skates,  his blue eyes meeting mine steadily but with a gentle smile.  The wind kicked up a little, stirring the surrounding drifts and sending small flurries through the frigid air.  I could see his breath and the snowflakes on his eye lashes.

“It’s up to you, darlin’,” he winked at me. “Either way is fine with me.”

 Maybe it was my stubborn streak - no doubt inherited from my mother’s side of the family - or maybe it was that I’d have rather taken a beating than disappoint my daddy but something made push my fear and shame aside and struggle back up.  

“It’s all about balance,” my daddy told me reassuringly, “Just get used to the way it feels.”

“Don’t let go!”  I cried as I wavered and swayed on the blades.

“Never!” he promised and gave me the gentlest of pushes.

The first time I almost didn’t fall. 

The second time I stayed on my skates for several  precious seconds before I almost didn’t fall.

The third time I managed almost a minute before my ankles gave out and I went down in a heap.

The fourth time I stayed up halfway round the frozen pond.

The fifth time I was skating  and crash landing into a snowdrift.

“Time to teach you how to stop!”  my Uncle Dave shouted and everyone laughed.   Uncle Byron brought me a mug of hot chocolate and a hug, Uncle Ernie and Uncle Bill cheered from the sidelines, and my daddy gave me that prideful, pleased  Told you so  look that I’d been trying so hard for.  It was a look that chased away the cold and the chilblains and made me forget about not being able to feel my fingers or toes.

 When it started to snow again, big, fluffy flakes that obscured the sky and swirled around us like Nana’s see-through curtains, we took off our skates and trudged back to the old farmhouse.  I walked in the footsteps my uncles made, my scuffed, white skates hanging over one shoulder.   In the mud room, we shed our winter coats and boots  and scarves and carefully hung everything up on the wooden pegs.  My daddy took particular care with my skates, drying the blades with an old towel and gently wiping off the white leather before hanging them on a peg away from all the others even though there were empty hooks all around.

 

“Your Aunt Ivy could skate like the wind,” he told me with a familiar sad smile, “As light on her feet as a leaf in the wind….graceful like….oh, I don’t know, a swan maybe…..or something in flight. Something very free.”   The sad smile turned very serious and I knew he was remembering his sister, the last born girl and the first of the ten children to die.  I had a clear memory  of a late night phone call and his dropping everything to pack and jump on a plane the following morning  -  there had been an accident and the other driver had been drunk  -  and my Aunt Ivy, at just 44, had been killed.  It had been one of the only times I could remember seeing  my gentle natured,  peace loving daddy angry.

Among the winter wear and baskets of new potatoes and corn, hanging in the midst of farm tools and seed sacks and the scarred old machine Uncle Byron still used to separate the milk and cream, high above the rows of muddy work boots, the milking pails and the empty old wooden crate where so many barn cats had raised so many kittens,  here hung my second hand skates.  The blades glinted and the white leather shone in the shadowy light and I found myself hoping that my Aunt Ivy approved.

A Little Royalty

Nana came downstairs, resplendent in a gold evening gown and matching slippers and carrying a tiny gold and completely impractical evening bag.  She looked all the world like Glinda, the Good Witch of the South and it wouldn't have surprised me if a flock of singing munchins had suddenly materialized on the stairs.

My daddy, equally elegant in white tie and tails and looking - well, there was no other word for it except dashing - made an extravagant bow and offered her his arm.  She smiled, pulled on her immaculate elbow length white gloves and slipped her arm through his.

Your carriage awaits, madam, he said.

And indeed it did.  I had seen it for myself, a long and sleek black limousine sitting imperiously in the driveway, complete with a uniformed chauffeur standing at attention.

Oh, Good Lord,Guy, my grandmother protested, The Lincoln would've done just fine!

For a Worthy Grand Matron? my daddy exclaimed as he draped her mink stole over her shoulders, Oh, I think not.

I didn't know much about the Eastern Star or the Masons except that my parents and grandparents were heavily involved and that Worthy Grand Matron was a Big Deal.  I'd once stumbled across a small ritual book - and gotten a serious slap for it - but it was written in hieroglyphics and odd symbols and didn't interest me.

Not for your eyes! my mother had snapped before snatching it from me and delivering a healthy backhand which had nearly rocked me off my feet, Learn to mind your own business!

I remembered about that forbidden little book as I watched my daddy escort my grandmother to the waiting limousine - it was a little like watching royalty - and wondered if there might not be a copy of it tucked inside that silly little gold evening bag along with her Kent 100's.  Having learned a little more about fraternal societies since finding the little book, I'd come to accept that secrecy was simply a fundamental part of their being and I'd had to give up the romantic notion that I lived in and was being raised by a nest of spies.

The limousine eased out of the driveway and drove away smoothly and I went back to making grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup in the Worthy Grand Matron's immaculate kitchen.

Stirring the Pot

In my dreams, I imagine a laid back, quiet Sunday morning with all the cats and dogs behaving well, no muss, no fuss.

In reality, everything is quiet except for the kitten who is racing around from room to room, trilling as she goes, looking to stir up trouble.

She's no longer a kitten, of course, but she's undersized and the smallest of the bunch with, apparently, the most to prove.  While the others are sedate and content to sleep, eat and sleep some more, she is a mini whirlwind of activity, a pot-stirrer on the prowl.  I watch as the tabby comes cautiously into the kitchen, moving slowly and looking for any sign of an ambush.  The kitten, perched on the edge of the countertop,
silently launches herself but the tabby senses danger and is off and running just as the kitten hits the floor. 
The attack fails.  Next I watch her slink and creep her way toward the long haired black cat curled up and sleeping at the end of the couch.  Just as she hunches down and prepares to pounce, he opens his eyes and hisses a warning.  The second attack fails.  The tuxedo cat then strolls lazily into the kitchen, stretches her full length and falls down on her back, a habit she's had since her own kitten days.  She rolls around, twisting and turning her body like a pretzel and pretending not to see the kitten covertly approaching.   There's a trill and a full fledged answering meow and the game is on in a tangle of black and white and gray.  The tuxedo cat breaks free first and darts out of the room with the kitten in hot pursuit but in a few seconds the kitten has reversed her course and comes flying past me with the tuxedo cat close on her heels.  When the dogs decide to join in the chase - they separate the cats and then double team the kitten in an enthusiastic game of tug of war - the whole thing begins to feel like an old vaudeville routine.

I break up the unlikely menage a trois and shoo the kitten away before they can snatch her again.  She gives me a resentful look - I think she actually likes these attempted threesomes -  and then strolls indifferently off.

The house settles down and I go back to my dreams.

When I wake again, the small brown dog is asleep on a pillow above my head.  The little dachshund and the kitten are are curled up together at my side.  One black cat is asleep in the cat bed, the other is snoozing at my feet.  The tabby is sleeping amid all the baskets atop the refrigerator and the tuxedo cat is curled up in the little dachshund's kennel.  

You can't mold reality to suit you.  But sometimes you can bend it just a little.

No Cause for Alarm

It's like an explosion - one minute the shepherd mix is curled quietly and calmly in a chair by the window, peacefully watching the world go by.  In the next, he goes off like a rocket being launched - there's an ear splitting howl, then he bolts for the front hall, hits the unlocked front like a storm trooper and is outside and in a frenzy before we can even react.  By the time we reach him, he's worked his head and shoulders through the bars of the side fence and is desperately trying to force his body to follow, all the while barking frantically and shaking like a leaf in a windstorm.  He is, in a word, unhinged,

On the other side of the fence, I see what has set him off - a shambling old man, bent and bundled up against the cold, walking an unremarkable three legged cur dog.  It's not the devil himself, not even a lesser demon or an unfrocked angel.  It's not even the apocalypse.  It's just a ragged old man and his dog, minding their own business and walking innocently down a public street. 

There's a certain lack of consistency to the shepherd so what set him off this time is a mystery.  The house sits on a corner lot with a bus stop in front and a rehab hospital across the street so foot traffic is plentiful.  The dog hates anything with wheels - motorcycles, bicycles, wheelchairs - but with pedestrians he's totally arbitrary and unpredictable, charging the same person one day and ignoring him the next.  Dog walkers, however, cause an instant and shockingly violent melt down each and every time and we dare not think about what might happen if he were to actually get though the fence.

It takes several minutes to distract him and we do have to play a brief game of keep away to block him from charging the fence again but eventually we manage to get him back in the house and calmed down.  We then discover a window pane he has knocked out - it's the second one in as many weeks - the pane itself is intact this time so a little duct tape puts things to rights and the dog watches the process with interest.  If you didn't know him, you'd see a curious but innocent onlooker.

It makes for an interesting workplace.

Push Pins

You'd have thought I was looking for hens teeth.

Push pins, I told the first cashier patiently despite her blank look, They're kind of like thumb tacks.

Push pins, I told the second cashier who looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language, They're kind of like thumb tacks.

Push pins, I told the third cashier tiredly, They're kind of like.....

Thumb tacks?  she asked and I felt a small thrill.

Yes! I very nearly shouted.

We don't carry them, she said cheerfully, Sorry.

I controlled an urge to reach across the counter and shake her senseless.

Leaving the parking lot, I pass the hardware store and decide to try one last time.  It's a locally-owned store, very upscale and fancy and selling way more than hardware and it tends to be pricey so I rarely make it my first stop.

Push pins?  I ask hopefully.

Right this way, a young man in a carpenter's apron smiles at me.  Seconds later I'm at the checkout with a pack of a dozen metal push pins.

I don't know why I just don't come here first..... I tell the cashier as she rings up the sale and slips the push pins into a small paper bag.

$13.82, she tells me brightly but almost immediately the smile turns to a frown as she realizes the unlikelyhood of the charge.

......but that might be the reason, I say equally brightly, Are you sure?  Thirteen dollars for a dozen push pins?

Mercy! she exclaims with a suspicious look at the cash register, That can't be right!

She fiddles impatiently with the keyboard, wipes out the sale and starts again.

$1.77, she tells with an apologetic smile as I hand over two dollar bills.  I drop the change into the little plastic St. Jude's container and slip the push pins into my pocket.  She wishes me a Happy New Year and I return the favor but as I leave, I notice that she gives the cash register a sharp head slap and mutters something about technology. 

This makes me smile.

Down and Out

The pre-dawn stillness is shattered by the sounds of a catfight on the front lawn and for several minutes it sounds like the end of the world.  It's an ungodly sound, cutting through the darkness like a knife, worse than fingernails on a blackboard.  It unnerves the dogs and sets my teeth on edge til I'm fully awake and trudging to the front door.  The door opening is enough to send them scampering off - I catch a quick glimpse of the Siamese from next door and the tail end of a tabby - a few final spiteful words are exchanged and then the quiet takes over.

It's too late and I'm too awake to go back to bed but more unfortunately, the shingles are also awake and screaming.  Four weeks after the onset, with people regularly asking me how I feel - my instincts are telling me to lie - no one wants to hear that the pain is just as bad as it was three weeks ago, no one wants to hear that I'm not over it, that I'm worried about nerve damage because while I can feel my skin with my fingers, I can't feel my fingers with my skin, no one wants to hear that I wake up each morning feeling that my whole right side is on fire.  No one wants to hear how exhausted I am from the pain, how depressing it is not to be able to see an end to it.  Easier to smile and lie, say Better every day, thanks!  One of these mornings, I tell myself, it's bound to be true.  One of these mornings, it has to be.

An hour or so after taking the morning meds and a supplement of ibuprofen, the pain backs off to where it's bearable.  I shower and dress and get ready to take on the day.  

It strikes me that a fair amount of the time, it's easier to lie.  People may ask how you are but a lot of them don't stick around to hear, especially if you're not getting better.  I have a suspicion that part of it is simple courtesy but that another part is knowing they can't fix it.  I'm convinced that we're all fixers at heart and we don't like being reminded that we're really helpless.

I paint my side with the betadine andI ease into sweats and a loose, light sweatshirt - wince as the fabric touches my skin and sends a quick dagger of pain into my side - I've been in the same clothes for the last week and only got to wash them this past weekend.  Dressing well has not been my first concern lately although to tell the truth, fashion has never been very high on my priority list.  When it doesn't hurt, it itches and I can't scratch because that sets the rash on fire.  Nerve pain, I've discovered, is very different from a headache or a broken ankle or a pulled muscle - it's inaccessible, unpredictable, too deep to reach and too shallow to be relieved.  It's as if a colony of gremlins with hot pokers have taken up residence beneath my skin - they're sleeping more these days but when they wake up, they wake up hungry and bad tempered and mean, chewing on my nerves with nasty little teeth, pulling at them with sharp claws.   The pain only travels so far before it reaches a dead zone, that space between my insides and my outsides, where the nerves are (we hope not permanently ) damaged.  It's that space that makes me want to take a hatchet to my right side and live the rest of my life crooked.

But again, these are not things anyone wants to hear so I put on a happy face, take a deep breath, smile.

Better each day, thanks!  I say brightly.

'Cause nobody loves ya when you're down and out ~ John Lennon

Mean Old World

It's rainy and dark and I almost don't see the old man pushing the overloaded shopping cart when he steps into the street directly in front of me.  I slam on my brakes and he glares at me, shaking one gloved fist in the air and shouting something unintelligible into the wind.  It wasn't close enough to be a near miss but still my heart hammers a little faster until he reaches the other side, navigates the curb and gets swallowed up by the darkness.  

I thank my lucky stars that I wasn't going faster, that the brakes didn't take a sudden notion to  hydroplane, that he didn't step out a second or two later.  It's the what might've beens that give me the most trouble. There are times they seem to be everywhere, chattering like a flock of seagulls, deafening me with their cries.
Their cousins, the what if's are never far behind.  As Marl Young and T Bone Walker wrote, This is a mean, old world to live in all by yourself.

My eyes aren't what they used to be - but then again, what is - so I check both sides of the streets before I drive on.  The State House building is empty but lit up like a Christmas tree, the now defunct hospital is closed and dark, the single three quarters enclosed bus stop is vacant and littered with debris.  There's not much here beyond the local bar, an abandoned corner lot with a shabby For Sale sign, a recording studio that has seen better days and a solitary block of small buildings with vandalized walls and smashed windows facing the ever present and somehow lonely convenience store with its blaring neon lights and self service gas pumps.  The interstate is just a block or two ahead and then you're on the outskirts of downtown, block after block of sad, decaying structures, pot holed streets, dark alleys and fenced off sections of forgotten landscapes.  It feels forlorn and miserable, like a terminal illness.  The homeless and those who prey on and condemn them prowl the filthy streets along with the feral cat colonies, the hookers, the drug dealers and the rats.  At times it feels like the whole city is dying and dying badly, without dignity, without putting up a fight.

Determined to derail this particular train of thought, I pull up to the stop light and crank the Hugh Laurie cd a little louder.  Police Dog Blues by Blind Blake, The King of Ragtime Guitar, fills the car and makes me smile.

It may be that nothing brings on the might've beens and the what if's like sitting at an empty intersection in the rain and the dark, waiting for the light to change and thinking about a homeless old man with a shopping cart, worrying that one day I might become him.

It may be that nothing chases them away so fast as an elegant, well educated Englishman singing an old blues tune by a ragtime guitarist dead since 1934.

It may be that all the might've beens and what if's the world conjures up don't make a damn bit of difference in the what is.

Move along, I tell myself, nothing to see here.

Late at night, when I can't sleep and end up replaying old tapes and old choices and listening to the old voices in my head, I backslide.  I think of opportunities I gave away with both hands, of choices I made on impulse, of roads I took out of restlessness or boredom or mild misery.  I think about the uncertain future.  When you're thirty something, you don't think about being sixty something.  You think you have time, that something better will come along.  You can't imagine being old, sick, miserable, or poor.  And then one day - just like that - you are.

The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls ~ Edgar Allen Poe

A Disturbance in the Force

She is sitting on the external half of the window unit, demurely grooming her white-tipped paws and unaware of - or unconcerned with - the chaos unleashing itself within.  All five inside cats have gathered around the window in a tight little circle of hostility.  Backs are arched, tails are switching, and the language is shocking.
Drawn by the low hissing and growling, the dogs pace back and forth anxiously - they can't see this newest intruder - but they sense a serious disturbance in the force.  The kitten, a pretty little thing, I have to admit with a heart shaped face and tufted ears - startlingly lynx-like - exhibits no interest whatsoever in the domestic drama unfolding on the opposite side of the window.  She finishes her grooming, yawns delicately,
stretches out and prepares to take a nap.

This arrogant complacency is too much for my own little ones.  They can't reach the trespassing kitten so they turn on each other and the result is anarchy - undiluted and nerve-wrackingly loud - a ceramic bowl skids off the table, the blinds come down in a crumpled heap, a chair is overturned.  Scattering and scrambling, the cats fly off in all directions and the dogs, alarmed at the sudden escalation of the situation, turn tail and race for the safety of the bedroom.  It's finally enough of a racket to attract the outside kitten's attention - she rouses slowly, glares at me as if it's my fault - then gracefully and sure-footedly jumps to the wooden fence and strolls away and out of sight.  Of course I can't know for sure, but I have the distinct impression that the whole thing was as carefully planned and executed as a military coup.

I pick up the pieces, separate and scold the cats, find and reassure the dogs, deliver my usual lecture about peaceful coexistence and tolerance.  Because it's November and due to turn bitterly cold, I'm compelled to bring up gratitude and the fact that but for the grace of God, it might be them on the outside looking in.  The cats - entitled creatures and casually immune to my empty threats - listen politely then wander off.  The dogs crawl into my lap and take notes.

With the possible exception of the little dachshund - I know he was rescued from an animal hoarder but don't know details - none of my little ones have ever known real hardship.  They've never gone hungry, never suffered from the shelter-less November wind, never been endangered.  They take their home and its comforts for granted.  They're realists and don't waste their worry on the less fortunate until the less fortunate wind up on the window unit.

Funny, how they remind me of humans. 

Poof!

It's not under the bed or behind the door or stuffed between the cushions of the loveseat.  It's not discreetly hidden beneath the computer desk or the nightstand.  It's not behind the shower curtain or under the bookcase
or tucked away in a crowded corner.  It's not underneath the pillows or secured behind a plant stand.

It must be somewhere, I tell myself reasonably.  Shoes don't simply get up and walk away on their own.

And yet, it hasn't been dragged behind the litter boxes or beneath the furniture.  It's not under the refrigerator or behind the curtains.  It's not waiting behind the tv or buried in the dirty clothes.  It's not in the chiffarobe and it's not behind any of the doors.

 Poof!  A single mesh tennis shoe vanishes without a trace.

 It's like life, I decide, sometimes the search isn't worth the reward.

Shingles

The pain comes from everywhere - jabbing into my hip, my belly, spiraling up my side and between my shoulder blades and under one breast.  My entire right side seems to be in melt down.

Booked up, the ill named patient care coordinator tells me indifferently, Next opening is a week from today.

I protest and plead but I might as well be talking to a wall.

Booked up, she says, unmoved and unmovable.

I go back to the massive doses of ibuprofen, not caring in the least whether they produce stress ulcers or internal bleeding - by the third day, they're all that's keeping me sane.  Just to be safe, I look up the symptoms of appendicitis.  That leads nowhere and as unlikely as it seems, I'm back to gas pains.  I hunt around and find a cache of laxatives, contraindicated if you're in pain but I'm willing to take the risk.  The laxative works as predicted but the pain doesn't ease.  At my wits end, I take more ibuprofen and crawl miserably into bed, managing to sleep an hour or two at a time, getting up only to take more.  By Sunday, things have leveled out and as long as I take the ibuprofen every couple of hours, the pain is close to manageable.

Monday morning, having woken to a rash on my side and back and on my way to work or the ER - I haven't quite decided - I pass a family clinic.

Accepting New Patients, a billboard sign proclaims, Sick Today, Seen Today.

Feeling like I have nothing to lose, I pull in.

Amazingly, I've seen within a half hour.  The nurse practitioner takes one look at the rash and reaches for his prescription pad.

Shingles, he says sympathetically.

That's what I thought, I say with a wince, But the rest of the pain?  My back, my hip, my shoulder, my belly?

All shingles, he assures me, It's a bitch.

I explain how I can't quite comprehend that a rash on my side - a rash I didn't even know was there until a few hours before and that isn't particularly bothersome - could be causing such pain in so many unrelated areas.  He explains that shingles is about nerves going a little wild, warns me that it's likely to be worse before it's better, prescribes pain meds and antivirals, tells me to take it one day at a time.  Two days later, I'm still miserable but feeling lucky - the rash, prickly, uncomfortable and painful if I move wrong, doesn't progress to the weeping stage and while the pain is relentless and exhausting, it never gets to excruciating - all in all, it could've been much, much worse.

After the first week, the internal pain recedes but the rash flares and at times seems to set itself on fire.  I dutifully take the regimen of medications, adding ibuprofen when it becomes unbearable.  It takes everything I have just to lie still on the loveseat and try to sleep, anything requiring any more effort is out of the question.
Shingles or not, however, there are cats to be fed, litter boxes to be changed, and dogs to be tended.  I spend a lot of time wishing I had the energy to die.

On the eighth morning, I wake up and make my way to the kitchen to tend the animals and swallow the morning meds.  For the first time in over a week, the pain is manageable.  I can stand straight, think clearly and walk as if I'm not going to break.  For the first time in a week, I don't think about giving up because it's too hard.  I can see the possibility of tomorrow.

Adversity, Albert Einstein wrote, introduces a man to himself.

Maybe so, but having met myself, I don't think I care to know me just now.

Whine & Twine & Eggnog

I wake just before 4am, stumble to the back door to let the dogs out - it's dark and moonless, freezing cold - and they trot bravely out while the cats begin the breakfast dance, twining around my ankles, always hungry, always in a hurry.  They don't care that it's 4am, surely an uncivilized time if ever there was one, or that it's winter.  The dogs are pawing at the back door and whining to come in before I've gotten the first package of Friskies poured.  I think about going back to bed but once morning has broken, even if it's in the the dead of night, there's no retreat.  I turn up the heat, light a cigarette, and pour a glass of eggnog from the glass bottle I bought on a whim last week.  Coffee would make more sense but I don't drink coffee and there's no hot chocolate and even if there was, I'm not functioning well enough to make it.  Eggnog will have to do.

Nana kept a carton of Hood's Eggnog in the fridge every week from Thanksgiving to New Year's.  Uncle Eddie liked to make his own, adding liberal doses of whiskey and paprika and serving it warm in small silver cups, but I liked store bought, ice cold and thick like syrup, so sweet it made my teeth ache.  There were dozens of brands to choose from but for Nana and I, only Hood's would do.  They were (and still are) a Massachusetts company that had doing business since the mid 1800's.  I doubt my grandmother much cared about the shop local trend - Hood's simply made the best dairy products and she was a fan - we drank Hood milk, used Hood cream and butter, and in the summer the freezer was packed with Hood ice cream and Hoodsie cups.  Nana would probably be distressed to know that I'm drinking non-Hood eggnog but probably pleased that it isn't up to her standards or mine.  She liked being right.

Being partial to Elsie the Cow, my mother was a Borden loyalist.  On more than one occasion, she would surreptitiously remove the Hood milk  (or cream or butter or eggnog or ice cream) and replace it with Borden's. Nana would fairly light up with rage at this dairy travesty - it was a sacrilege to move anything in the neatly organized refrigerator and not replace it exactly as you'd found it - and the ensuing feud could last for days.

You're fighting over dairy products?  my daddy had once asked incredulously,  The world is going to hell and you're fighting over milk?  Have you both lost your minds?

My house, Nana had snapped defiantly, My refrigerator!

Borden's is better! my mother had snarled back sullenly, and I paid for it!

THAT'S ENOUGH! my daddy had roared and both women had taken a startled step backwards, IT'S CHRISTMAS, GODDAM IT AND THAT'S ENOUGH!

 I don't care who bought it, he said tightly, and I don't care whose refrigerator it is!  It's Christmas and we're going to have some peace on earth around here if I have to drag it out of each of you so I recommend you get over it and get over it right now!

The women, sulking and glaring with indignation, got gone.

Milk, my daddy - a man who prized peace and quiet and diplomacy above everything - sighed and sank tiredly into a kitchen chair, I lost my temper over milk.

Sitting at my own kitchen table a lifetime later, the memory still makes me smile.  It doesn't warm me but it does make me smile.

The cats twine, the dogs whine and the eggnog is just another dairy product.

Needful & Needed

The reason we get so little done, my friend Michael tells me as he snatches at his disaster of a desk, sending papers and discarded boxes and unpaid bills and cologne bottles awry, is that we spend half the time looking for things I've lost!

Clutter borders on chaos in his small office and I can't find it in my heart to contradict him.

What is it now? I ask with a sigh.

My wallet! he snaps impatiently, I've looked everywhere!

I doubt this - he has what I can only describe as a violent flair for the dramatic - but I also know that until the missing wallet is found, he will rant and rave himself into hysterics.  I step over the dogs, clear one of the leather chairs of magazines and unread mail, a cashmere sweater, an empty cigarette carton, several plastic covered binders, a retractable leash and several yards of credit card tape.

When, I ask him, dodging a flurry of flying bank statements and nearly tripping over the smallest dog as she runs for cover, is the last time you remember having it?

Out in the yard, he says and throws up his hands in frustration, It was trying to come out of my pocket.

There's no sense in telling him to calm down or take a breath.  It's best to let him storm it out.

Tell me, I persist firmly, exactly what you did when you came in from the yard.

He sinks into a chair and jams his hands into his sweatshirt pouch.  Sulking, I've learned, is the first step on the road from flying objects rage to simple exasperation.

I don't remember, he mutters.  Sharp. Stubborn. Petulant. Defiant.

Yes, you do, I tell him patiently, just tell me what you did after you came in.

He's sullen, angry at himself, disgusted with his own carelessness and it's like pulling teeth but he lets me lead him through it.  He remembers coming in, going upstairs to change and watch tv.

Where did you change?  I ask, What did you do with your yard clothes?  What were you watching?

It takes another twenty minutes and he snaps and snarls like a wounded cur dog, curses colorfully, hating every minute of it and being ashamed that he brought it on himself.  He's irritable with the dogs, flailing at me and trying to change the subject with every other breath.  Luckily, I can be as equally obstinate.

When you empty your pockets, where do you normally leave things?  Did you do laundry?  Did you go back out? Did anyone come by?  

The answers aren't all that helpful - his habit is to leave clothes wherever he happens to shed them, the contents of his pockets on whatever's handy - the wallet could be sunk in the mud of the flower beds or buried under a half ton of leaves, in the trash or under the bed and half eaten by dogs.  He is the most thoroughly disorganized, most easily distracted person I've ever known.  There's not an iota of neatness in him, not the first hint of a predictable routine or pattern or need for order.  Scatterbrained, my grandmother would've said, but I know better - he's overwhelmed by his own flaws, his tendency to hoard, his lack of focus.

Drink your coffee, I suggest, and take your meds.  I'm going to look upstairs.

On the second floor, the first thing I see is the faded red hooded sweatshirt.  It's out of place somehow, tossed thoughtlessly onto the stair railing and hanging there, mud stained and disreputable.  Not a single other item of clothing is within ten feet of it and I have an immediate sense that the crisis is about to be over.  When I pick it up, it jingles and when I slip my hand into the front pocket, I discover a wad of crumpled bills, a front door key, a handful of coins, and of course, the missing wallet.  Everything is thrown together but intact.

Looked everywhere, I mutter to myself, Yeah, sure you did.

But, to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, I didn't come to talk to you about a lost wallet.  I came to talk about the dynamics of relationships.

We could hardly be more different, Michael and I, or more alike.  We have many of the same flaws, many of the same virtues, a few of the same vices.  We clash as often as we agree but in the end, he needs someone to look after him just as I need someone to look after.  It seems to work more often than it doesn't and maybe that's how life is designed, like a grand, ambitious jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces.  With a little skill, a little more luck, and the patience of a couple of dozen saints, everything eventually fits.