Hearing Roddy

     We didn't learn my little brother Roddy was hearing impaired until he was six years old.  A wave of retroactive shame washed over the family as we thought about all the times we had yelled at him or complained about his "not paying attention."  Hearing aids at that time, at least for little boys, were worn in a pocket strapped to the chest, with a long cord reaching to the earpiece.  It was an improvement, but primitive by modern standards.  About four years later, Rod received his first behind-the-ear hearing aid, which opened for him a whole new world of sounds.  Roddy had never before heard a toilet flush, and enjoyed it so much he spent part of that day flushing it over and over.  That was also the day he learned that the telephone made a sound even when it wasn't ringing or no one was talking on it.  He had never before heard the steady hum of the dial tone.  The first time he heard it, he pulled the hearing aid from his ear, handed it to me, and said, "Connie, listen."  His first impulse was to share this exciting new sound with me, who for all my 14 years had never given it a thought.  I remember it so well because that was the day Roddy began to hear--and I began to see.
     Here is a poetic look at the same story:

         Hearing Roddy

On the day Roddy exchanged
his better-than-nothing,
chest mounted, hearing aid
for the new
behind-the-ear model,
he heard, for the first time,
the toilet flush
the dial tone hum.

Excitement in his voice,
he handed me the earpiece
and said, "Connie, listen."
And, for the first time,
I really did.

Alone in Neverland

    Yesterday I was devastated to discover that I had forgotten a tradition that had been so important when the kids were growing up--pumpkin faced sugar cookies.  Shortly before Halloween I always made pumpkin shaped sugar cookies with jack-o-lantern faces.  We have been out of homemade cookies for a couple days, which is a tragedy all by itself, and I had been mulling over what kind to make.  It wasn't until my niece came over after school and we began to talk about upcoming Halloween activities that I realized I had totally forgotten the tradition.  When our daughter married and moved to Minnesota, I paid ridiculous postage to mail Halloween sugar cookies to her because I couldn't bear for her to not be part of the family tradition. (Although it was a relief not to eat the malevolent faced cookies she used to decorate.)  Now, all the children are gone from home and my carefully cultivated traditions are dying of neglect.  I still want very much to keep the traditions, I just don't know who I am keeping them for.  An innocuous cookie fired an arrow of emptiness right into my heart.
     I am afraid that the hole in my heart since my children left home will never close, and I am afraid that it will close, and I will lose the magic to the mundane.  Will the mystery of being out after dark turn to fear of stumbling? Will I start going to bed early on the 4th of July so I won't be disturbed by the fireworks?  Will leaf piles cease to be for jumping and hiding in and only represent work?  Am I alone in Neverland?
     I grew up starving for a chance to make some occasions stand apart from the ordinary days, but my childhood attempts were always sabotaged by my mother's mental illness. If I couldn't erase the bad memories I could, at least, bury them under layers of good ones with my own children.  My children are grown, my niece and nephew growing up, the memories are fading.  Now I know why I am so sad.  I have nothing new to put between me and the bad memories.  Once again writing has become my cheap therapist.
     But if I am alone in Neverland, I still choose to be making cookies.  My children appreciated the traditions, but they did not begin them and their growing up should not end them.  Perhaps in Neverland memories can be made out of cookie dough.  Maybe the magic of motherhood is not in having children, maybe it is in me.

Autumn Leaves

     I wrote this poem last fall, but didn't want to publish it until the leaves were actually falling (as if I could be sued for false advertising).  Now that a regular rain of foliage is falling, I feel free to share.

  Autumn Leaves

Autumn leaves

bare, branched bones,

bright colored foliage,

suddenly blown

neither needing, nor needed by, the tree

Free.

Autumn leaves

turning pages

books opened by

junior sages

needing to learn, but desiring to be

Free.

Autumn leaves

empty homes

college bound children,

suddenly grown

leaving their parents, each learning to be

Free.

Autumn leaves

fields at rest,

harvest is gathered,

pantries blessed,

quiet beneath nature's cold canopy

Free.

 

Brighten the Corner Where You Aren't

     Alternate title:  Let the Lower Lights Be Burning
    The basement bedroom in our house was the most coveted by my children because it has an attached bathroom (after our daughter's time), is as large as the master bedroom and, most importantly, is a whole floor away from the master bedroom.  When Will was the favored resident, he chronically left the light in the family room on when he went to bed. I could understand that. Since the only switch for that light was at the top of the stairs, shutting it off meant stumbling down the stairs in the dark to go to bed.  It became a nightly ritual for Reed or me to shut off the basement light before going to bed. However, by the time of Tracy's reign in the pine paneled palace, we had rewired the family room so there was a switch to shut the light off at the bottom of the stairs.  Problem solved, but nothing changed.  Every night we still found the family room light on.
     Eventually Tracy left home and there was no one occupying the basement bedroom.  That is when I discovered that leaving a light on had become an official requirement in our home because Reed exchanged being the person who shut lights off for the position of Light Leaver On-er.  It has been more than a year since Tracy moved out and I still have to shut the basement light off if, for any reason, Reed has been downstairs. If he hasn't been in the basement, he leaves the computer room light on.  He tells me he does it because he will be going back in there later.  Apparently he means later in the week.  I have tried to convince him that modern light bulbs do not require warming up, they will come on again the second he flips the switch, but to no avail.  I usually accompany Reed when he travels, but I suppose on those occasions when I am alone at night, I really should leave a light on somewhere.  It will be a dark day when I switch off an official family tradition.

Resistance Is Not Futile

     This thought was inspired by Curves, not the Borg. Yesterday I worked out at Curves for the first time since my knee malfunctioned. I was supposed to take it easy with my left knee for a week and a half following the cortisone shot--my new bfft, best friend for temporary. Not to be left out in the cold is my left shoulder, which has been doing its own version of the pain and stiffness maneuver both before and after the knee rebellion.   Since both my knee and shoulder were being obstinate, I didn't do the computerized routine that increases the hydraulic resistance, so yesterday's work out was more '"out" than "work".  I not only didn't break a sweat, I didn't even bend one.  Using the machines without the Curves Smart tag had about the same benefit as not exercising at all.
     That's where resistance comes in.  I've admitted many times in this blog that I am partial to easy but, if I'm going out of my way to stop and exercise, I would like my heart rate to be higher when I'm finished exercising than it was on the drive over.  Resistance is not futile. Resistance makes exercise worthwhile. Maybe that is why God doesn't give us all easy, downhill paths on our long circuit to heaven. In order to keep us from becoming spiritually flabby, He allows a controlled amount of resistance to make us stronger. If I can trust an inanimate computer at Curves not to push me harder than I can bear, how hard should it be to trust the God who loves me to program my life for the greatest challenge and benefit. If I want my heart to rate with God, what I need to resist is the path of least resistance. Whether we are working out our body or our salvation, if we aren't facing any resistance, it is an "exercise" in futility.

Easy Writer

     I just submitted my first story to a magazine for publication.  I am so far out of my comfort zone I will need a GPS to relocate it. It's not just that having something published would validate my skills as a writer, it would make me feel a lot better about all the time I waste writing if it were actually a marketable product.  My goal is to submit something somewhere every week until I run out of material.  That should not take long. The story I sent was of the human interest/true/Christian/humor genre so I submitted it to a Christian/senior/90% freelance/pays actual $ magazine.
     I have also been "honing my craft" for my pretend profession by attending classes.  This week I took a lunch hour comma class.  I've had this suspicion that I am overcommaing and I would like to overcome that.  It turns out I have been doing them correctly for the most part but now I have the comma rules to know why I've been doing them correctly.  The next lunch hour class is on getting organized to write.  I'm not sure if I am writer enough to need the class, it's not as if editors are making demands, but anything that makes writing easier sounds good to me.  My college major was in Easy. I am not sure where to go from here with my writing, even in this blog.
     

Anger and Andy

     The poetry class I am taking is continuing ed., meaning nongraded. Therefore, though the instructor is free to give assignments, I am also free to ignore them.  But I gave myself an assignment. Since nearly all of my poems have come out of my own experience, my goal was to write a fiction poem. I found it interesting and challenging.  Two verses into this poem about an unopened package, I realized I had no idea what was in the package. Modern poetry is often abstract, but it still seemed like a good idea for the author to know what was coming next.  This is what came next:

          Anger and Andy

All through the years he had wondered
what was in the package
but he had never opened it,
partly out of spite,
partly fear
that the pain of her leaving
would come back to him.
It was better to stay angry.
Anger had kept him company
these nine years
constant as a friend
or, at least, a drinking buddy.
They had done a lot of that together--
Anger and Andy.

But  the package tormented him, sitting there
in all its brown smugness, looking down
on him the way she had.
There was no more money
for liquor tonight,
not even beer.
So Anger did Andy one last favor
before he left for the night
to keep company with some other drunk.
Together they torn open the package,
the mocking memory of his marriage,
tore it to pieces.

A picture fell to the ground
his son, in a broken frame,
the mangled memory of his murder.
Torn to pieces
when he went through the windshield
as the car nosed into the ground
because his drunken father
was angry for having to do the favor
of picking his son up that night
when his wife normally did.
He'd had only beer,
no hard liquor.
He thought he was sober enough
to look after his only child.
Tormented he remembered

looking down at the small brown coffin
a package forever unopened.
Nine years she had stayed away;
his wife would never come back to him.
She left behind only the package--
and Anger
Anger and Andy.