swinger

Driving down Maplewood Avenue, off to the right, just missing the windshield's blind spot, she thought she saw a swing sweep upward, a swing suspended from an unseen branch, its sight muffled by branches and leaves, the apogee a flickered flash in the afternoon's blaze. A rider not discerned: male or female, young or old. A white dress? Impossible to say. Too quick. The light turned green. The insistent beeping horn of the car in back.

Route 175, 1972

I picked up the payments from Eddie Finnegan, $56 a month. My first car. A 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado. Lots of power, though I didn't know, or care, about that stuff. The kids I taught at the high school filled me in as to how many cc's or liters, or whatever it was. It was cooler than I first knew: a speedometer consisting of a rolling cylinder you viewed on the dashboard straight in front of the driver, headlights that lifted up so that they looked like mechanical, futuristic spaceship eyes. They stubbornly and frequently stuck open. Eventualy the one on the right stayed half-open, giving the appearance of a driver whose eyes were barely open or droopy. Which was true. I drove drunk countless times. Only fender benders. One night, my birthday, 90 miles per hour on Seneca Turnpike. Why? Death wish? The invincibilty of youth? Unconscionable and indefensible. How did I survive? Or those in collateral range. A big hump through the middle for the automatic transmission. No, not so much a cliche as to escape my virginity in the back seat but not for lack of trying (another cliche). Yes. Late bloomer. But it was the car I owned in the time when that rite of passage transpired. Why am I saying all this? Like some scene in a movie, her hand on my thigh, beer can between my legs, radio full blast, windows down, her honey hair sailing out the window and shrouding her face. Screaming and laughing. For a minute or two.  

sometimes I wonder

do you
ever
think of me
sometimes I wonder
what if
what if not
and everything in between
sometimes I wonder
that I wonder
which is wonder aplenty
sometimes I suppose
I wonder
which is just as good
sometimes I forget
to wonder about wonder
which is my loss
though wonder
still awaits
me there
fresh and fierce
patient and planted
mountain solid
and the trickling stream
the chickadee
and snow spilling off the branch

saving grace

you know, I saved a baby
what do you mean you saved a baby; from what?
it was choking
it was choking?
it was choking, a newborn
where?
I don't know where
what do you mean you don't know where, what?
even if I knew I wouldn't tell you
stop playing games
what games? 
so, tell me
tell you what?
what happened
I was working at 911, the mother called
and...
and I walked her through it, what to do
like what?
turn the baby over, pound the back
pound?
well, not exactly pound
so it worked?
it did
it did?
yes, thank God
or thanks to you
both
both?
both me and God
the three of you?
yeah, okay, then, sure, me, Mom, and God
the baby, too
true, why not, throw the baby in there, too
saving grace
if you say so
I do
fair enough
was that her name?
hunh?
Grace
I don't know, I never found out
good story
it's not a story
but it is
if you say so

where there's smoke, there's clementine

I tossed the peelings into the sink and turned the disposal on. I am not enamored of such devices. Is it because the one we had in The Projects broke? Didn't it break so often we gave up on having them repair it? Did its guttural grind scare me? As the disposal was gargling the skin of the clementine, I thought I saw a cloud of smoke puff up from the bottom of the sink hole to the right of the disposal. Smoke? Uh-oh. The next day, I kept an eye out for smoke. As I was uncurling my clementine at breakfast, I spotted -- and smelled -- a sudden burst of citrus spray escaping from the tender fruit.

Mystery solved. Mystery epiphanied.

Where there's smoke, there's not fire. Not necessarily.

And the day after that, steam uncurling heavenward from my hot tea with half and half no sugar. Swirling skyward. As if a genie were about to appear and offer to grant me wishes.

Wishes already granted.

Because in seventy years I had never seen my breakfast tea in quite that light.

scarf it up

A parade of scarves. Each on a sapling branch. Winter. Franklin Square. Solar and Plum. Fuzzy scarf. Skinny stringly one. Double-crocheted maroon orange olivered yellow lavender scarf. That one. Reserved. Proffered. Homeless. Plastic bag fastened with a safety pin. Inside it, a piece of notebook paper, roughly 3 x 5, lined in back, crayoned: "You're Blessed You will all ways Be" in cursive within three cumulus clouds. Shiny sun upper right. Blue sky. Green grass and trees, the bottom landscape.

Pick it up.

Wear it.

Keep it.

Why not.

For now.

Gleðilegt nýtt ár!

glomming onto the gloaming

not the small hours, not the wee small hours; no, the vespered sundown; sundowning; in the gloaming the time to call her or see her; they call it sundowning, the fantasies and mirages; her sun was going down; not especially gloomy the gloaming; roaming; the appointed hour; the scripted words; the replay; redux; reduction, reduced; trudging through the sliding doors; let it slide; unfinished food; asleep; this was our appointed hour; our daily bread; now in this unappointed hour a vacancy; a lost habit; missing link; a skipped beat of suspended crepuscular convention; twilight; twilight of the goddesses; sons and daughters; what comes after the gloaming

particulate matters

before the next step pavement sparkles a starry day constellation advancing with each footfall between tire tracks imprinting transit blaring snow islanded coal wet dry wet trumpeting clarion sun white melt Rorschachs but you roadway glitter diamonds pixels pinpricks flame pinnacles piercing into my eyes where have you been all my life

the kindness of stranger

Mall food court. Dinnertime, not loud or crowded. A weekday. The 1909 Carousel bearing silent and stilled witness. I ate a quarter chicken breast, mashed potatoes and gravy, and string beans from Boston Market. Root beer. I picked up the tray on my way to dump the unsustainable plate, utensils, and cup into the trash, saving the tray. "Thank you!" she exalted. I thought I misheard. I turned around. "Pardon me?" She worked for the mall. Would you call her a food court janitor? Her gratitude seemed disproportionate. Misplaced. Too excited for the banal and quotidian occasion. "Thank you," she repeated. "You're welcome. Thank you." But a voice inside, not far from the audible surface, murmured: "What's the thank you for? I'm just cleaning my place and dumping the trash. What's the big deal? Am I that much of an outlier? Is it so rare?" I faced her. Her smile was wide, her delight was deep. From all appearances, she was happy to be there, doing what she was doing. Grateful for whatever life was dishing out. It wasn't me. It was everything and everyone. It was her. "You have a blest day." "Thank you. I will. You too." 

Some people.

The First Last Christmas

The nurse practitioner had recently assured me: this would be Mom's last Christmas, not merely because she is 102. Her heart is failing, she's not eating or drinking much, the end is near. It is the fullness of time, her time. People say, "I'm so sorry," but I choose to look on the unsorrowfulness of her having lived a full life (her past participle hovering now between present and past), her current comfort, the relief, the letting go. But I understand they don't know what else to say. So, I knew it would be the last Christmas. This did not make me dour or gloomy. Instead, it magnified my visit and vision, and slowed me down. I looked at the sidewalk and the building entrance more acutely, marking it for gratitude now and for memory later. To my surprise, I learned she had already eaten lunch at Oasis, the dining hall. I was a tad disappointed not to lunch with her, as we did on Thanksgiving, but oh well. As I walked the several hallways to her area, I saw a woman slumped over, sitting in a wheelchair in front of the nurses' station. Could that be her? Kind of unusual for her to be sitting there, not lying down in her room. It looked like her. It was. She was nodding off. I tapped her right arm. "Mom, it's me." As suggested by her aide Nicole the day before, I brought her a comfortable pillow, one with a soft and plush texture, like the blanket one daughter had given her and the other daughter had given her as a sweater. "Who's this for?" "It's for you, Mom. How do you like it? It feels nice, right?" She felt it and enthused about its softness. "Who made it?" "I got it at the store. It's for you. I got it at Marshall's." "Thank you." "You're welcome. Merry Christmas." I drew up a chair next to her and sat in it. Then I popped up and got a tissue and tried to clean some eye gunk in her left eye, though it's the right one that gets closed from gunk because she sleeps on that side. The dry tissue didn't work. I talked to two nurses or aides in the hall; they said I should talk to the nurse in the office behind the desk. She used baby lotion or something with a moist cloth or paper towel; each eye; it worked. I felt she could've been more gentle, but then maybe it wouldn't have worked if she had been. I sat a little while and then popped up again to get her cold apple juice with a straw. She loved that. I gave her the straw three or four times for sips. "What are you doing after this?" "I'm going to go for dinner at Ethan's. We're going to have turkey. There'll be six of us." "When are you going there?" "At 5:30. Maybe I'll take a nap first." (Maybe?) "How are the roads?" "They're fine." "You're going to Ethan's. That's nice. What time?" "5:30." "You're having turkey?" "Yeah. Remember, I made it many years when Beth had to work. It's not so hard. People make a big deal over it. The gravy's the thing, the hard part. You had the best gravy of anyone, Mom. The best." Her eyes brightened. "Yes, oh yeah." "One time, was it in Stamford, we didn't have any Gravy Master and you were looking all over for it. All you need is a few drops." "That Gravy Master is the secret ingredient." 

A family down the hall had a golden retriever with them. I importuned upon them to stop by. I knew she'd love petting that dog. she did.

"Well, I'm going to go, Mom. Do you want me to take you to your room to lie down or do you want to stay out here?" "I'll stay here." I kissed her on the cheek and then again on the forehead. "I love you, Mom. Merry Christmas." "Merry Christmas. Thanks for coming, for always coming." "You're welcome. Why wouldn't I? Glad to do it." Our eyes locked. I walked down the hall, but not before waving to her and she to me, as if we were in the departure lounge at a bus station or airport. 

After the nap, I headed, solo, to Ethan's house, at 5:20. I felt but tried to ignore a low-grade hum of loneliness, sadness, and dreaded what-if-ness, not about Mom but about me and my journey thus far and today in particular. I feared a low-grade hum turning into a full-blast bass note. Approaching my son's house, I felt the evening darkness descend, the cold air blanket downward. This could be the last Christmas for any of us. Who are we to say? Who could be so cavalier or breezy to say otherwise? Sure, I'll be the oldest there, but we know what can happen in the blink of an eye, rudely disrespectful of age or station. And if a year later, we were absent, any one of us, or more, we would give the world to have this back again, pay any price, sell our souls and honor, anything, just this one time.

The shimmering snow crystals in the frozen, star-specked moonlight on the lawns to the left of the sidewalk. The town's bright holiday lights twinkling up ahead to the right. The patter of my footsteps. The strands of ice on the steps leading to the door. My hand on the railing. The barking dogs. The glass panes in the front door clouded over, frosty, from the condensation and warmth inside. 

crickets

How many times had you passed this way? How many nights, long past vespers and veering toward matins, did you slowly stride the sidewalk leading from the parking lot to the apartment entrance? The numerical answer is irrelevant. More to the point, did you listen? Yes, you listened. But it was background music. Not static, not a distraction; but not in the aural foreground. On this night, south of midnight (you once had a friendly debate with your beloved about whether that means before or after midnight; you postulated post-midnight, she pre-; you settled, cordially, on the notion that one can argue either case with conviction and persuasion), you were arrested. No -- wait -- not so; you did not halt; you did not pause. Your steps continued whatever the antonym of apace is. A barely discernible hitch. Or that was all in your head, because in your head, you mused: I know I have heard the chirping of the crickets many times this summer. Ah, just listen to those crickets on this sultry otherwise quiet night. Of course, you don't discourse or self-narrate in parsed, grammatically correct sentences. Nevertheless, on this one night, as you returned home, the nocturnal chorus of males caught the frayed edge of your attention-surplus interior self. You do not know why this night. The crickets were chirping at a good clip; it was still hot, hovering in the humid 80s (unlike a week later, when at the low of 54 degrees forecast, the chirps would slow to a slur). It's impossible to describe the sermonette you delivered to your self. Something along the lines of what a privilege to hear these creatures, a blessing not so much of hearing but of alertness, attention, the gift of observation, not the absurdity that they were performing their mating songs for anyone but their females and competing males, more the suchness of getting it, the gratitude of appreciating them, giving them their due, their natural homage. People like to say "crickets chirping" to denote human silence, when a question is returned with stony blankness. This moment of this night underscores the raucous hilarity and fecund frolic of their stridulated symphony. Seize on this in February. 

And after having written the foregoing, as August calender-paged into September and then October, on the nights (as well as the days; despite our being informed that crickets make their chirps nocturnally) I walked into my building, the crickets' songs steadied me, salved my soul, and mellowed my loneliness, hunger, restlessness, or any other malaise, for which I was and am grateful.

   

you turn

At the intersection of Lowel and Whittier (Syracuse streets named after authors), the driver in the SUV slowed, stopped, and began a U-turn. (A woman in her fifties, she was -- to recall more accurately -- driving a CRV, one of those so-called crossovers, and for all I know it was literally a Honda CRV.) She completed three-quarters of the U-turn. I was at the intersection's stop sign, getting ready to turn left. The only other traffic was a car to my left on Lowell. I slipped through and proceeded to make my left turn. I wasn't in a big hurry, though I was a bit later than I'd planned to be on the way to a pre-Mother's Day "tea and dessert" with Mom, 99, and the seniors at her independent-living facility. I didn't impatiently beep my horn or wave my arms. The driver witnessing all this, on Lowell to my left, who couldn't go anywhere anyway except backwards, sported a beaming smile. In her twenties, hair tied up, she flashed an exuberant, bright-toothed smile of wonder and delight. It said, "Look at you, maybe you are lost. you've decided to correct your 'mistake' and do a 180. How sweet. Isn't life grand!" Or notions along those lines. Her smile was rich, patient, buoyant -- and unmistakably genuine. I was immediately grateful that I had not beeped my horn or waved my arms. I was also relieved I had not given U-Turner the finger or yell to no one in the car, "What's the matter with you? What are you doing? How dare you slow me down? What is this country coming to?" I first thought the two female drivers knew each other or were related. I assumed Smiler's breezy tolerance was several doses of "hey, that's cool, we'll find the place, no hurry, we'll get there, I'm good." But as I drove on, on Lowell, with U-Turner in my rearview mirror, Smiler was nowhere to be seen. Now it appeared that Smiler and U-Turner were strangers to each other, as they were to me. With U-Turner in my rearview, searching Tipp Hill slowly for her destination, I had a revelation. Why is familiarity the pretext for kindness? Why couldn't Smiler be someone who took the world in stride, as it came to her, at its own speed, someone who took the "good" with the "bad" equally, not personally offended or distraught by life's disturbances or challenges? Before you dismiss this view of life as either sappy/sentimental or deranged (and I get that, I really do), think again. (Or feel again. Neuroscientists tell us there is no difference biologically and neurochemically between thinking and feeling.) Aren't we offered many moments in every day with an opportunity to be either the Smiler or the FingererGrowler? I am not suggesting that I (or you) can inhabit a Hallmark, gauzy world of inhuman tolerance, or walk or drive in a hazy, psychotic fugue of benign delight. 

Well, maybe I am.

p.s. This episode reminded me of Splashed Woman of Times Square, in the Eighties, who got doused by a cab. It drenched her. I witnessed this, fifty yards away, on my way to work. She laughed.

woman down

As I open the door to exit the senior-living facility, I am startled by someone facing me, in my face, more accurately. A thin, frail elderly resident, trying to get in. Do we both scream? We surprise each other. She is falling backward. It is all happening in slow motion, as they say. But it really feels that way. I am somehow summoned out of my slo-mo reverie. By what? I grab her, brace her, sort-of catch her in midair as she goes down. I break her fall. She lands on her rear or her arm or her leg. I cannot say for sure. Does she bounce against the railing? She does not hit her head. I help her up. We were both scared witless. Are you okay? Yes, she says. She says she thought she heard someone (me), from the outside, as if to scold herself for not preventing the incident. She talks about how easily she bruises. She lives next door to my mom. Are you sure you are all right? Yes, she says. We talk some more. As William Carlos Williams put it, "so much depends." Yes, so much depended. Could've been far worse. Phew. Hashtag grateful. You sure you are all right. Yes. Boy, I'm glad I wasn't speeding out that door.

hero

Today I was several feet away from my boyhood hereo, Willie Mays.

I suppose I could have even shouted out a question, a compliment, a hello, a thank you.

Couldn't.

It was like a reverent aura surrounded him.

Yeah, he is, you might say, a mere mortal, a baseball player. One of us.

Then, again.

But such elan!

And it is still there.

"Did you ever know you were my hero?" says the song.

When I was 9 years old or so, I tried to call Willie Mays in San Francisco across the country from me, on our Princess phone. I did not get through.

What would I have said?

beautiful solid free

In my reading today, Thich Nhat Hanh said he vows at the outset of the day to make each moment beautiful, solid, and free. That is a worthwhile goal, is it not? Even moments that embrace one of those elements are valuable. Amen.

eleven eleven eleven

We have survived the 11:11 a.m. and the 11:11 p.m. of 11/11/11, disappointing 11,1111 conspiracy theorists.

Nomenclature

The unshaven fellow with the shopping cart and plastic bags full of returnable bottles and cans, the one whom neighbors fear (not because of who he is but who he might be, or what they might be), has real eyes that I have looked into, a real hand I have grasped, and a real name I have uttered.

His name is Michael.

He remembers my name, for he has a brother, Paul.