OLD MAN DOWN

On Wednesday morning, Husband rushed me to go to the store for necessities before he went on his truck-driving mission for that day.  We were leaving Food Lion and putting groceries in the car, leaving Husband to put away the cart.  I got in the passenger front seat and heard him calling my name urgently.  Looking back, I spied two legs flailing and none of the rest of Husband.  I got out and rushed to help him up and tend to his injuries along with two young men who saw it all.  They were very helpful and advised he ice everything, these competent helpers who were not born when I got my last paycheck.

He had lost his balance stepping off a curb and crashed to pavement on his 75-year-old knee, then his 75-year-old forehead.

He refused to see a doctor, and insisted on driving the truck that day, a consequence of his 75-year-old stubborn streak.

Husband and I without the damages of 50 + years of marriage.

THE FALL OF 2015

It has been a wild time on Waverly Lane this year.  Long existing as a placid repository of peace and well-being, our little island of ordinary acts and Stepford propriety has been unduly pounded by ill fate and misfortune.  I suppose our time was due if you have a math mind.

One strapping healthy neighbor had five by-passes.  Another long time friend and neighbor suddenly developed irrevocable heart problems and died.  A lady who lived among us for years died at age 99.  And then the insidious finger of fate chose our family.

Chesapeake Bay woman was hit head on driving on a winding

wooded road

She looked like this leaving the hospital

She will be okay

Someday

Her flowering bushes still bloomed

The dogwood turned red

And Christmas is clearly on the way

The accident was not her fault, but guilty or not everyone suffers when this happens.  We all just know that next year will be kinder, at least that is our hope.  

FLYING

Jacek Yerka, 2011

Leaving the Port of Care

I drift

On ripples new and dare

To lift

Above trees and ascend

 Stark fright

Alighting a gust of wind

Floating down the night.

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FLOWERS

"Peonies", William Merritt Chase, 1897

Exotic flaming accent

Afloat the serene neutral sea,

Whisper in the ear of ages and seasons

The essence of femininity

DEPTH OF WATER

Raining down on Death's heated earth

 Mists of souls swirl up to rebirth.

Steamy scents on senses unbound

Releasing an altruism new found.

No hate survives,

No difference abides

In the final all inundating tide.

Husband's chum since forever lies terminally ill in a local nursing home.  They shared escapades that are folk lore in our family get togethers, Husband always capping the event with a funny story of their antics.  Sidney, a.k.a. "Prunes," telephoned husband every day to chew the fat.  Husband saw to it that Prunes got property for his home across the road on Waverly Lane.

After many years at their respective jobs, each retired and took small jobs driving for a seafood business in a neighboring county.  They mutually fussed over the trucks, keeping them in good working shape and made a little money to boot.

All his life, Husband was friends with black people, playing for a while in an all black band (minus one).  He and Prunes agreed to disagree on that and never discussed the matter. Being basically good, Prunes could never shake the animosity he felt for his fellow black human being.  These things get handed down, I believe, and we did not hold that weakness against him while at the same time being a little sorry for his attitude.

Now at his most helpless state, he still makes the occasional bad joke, but also over the years has befriended some of his natural enemies by bringing them gifts to buy their favor when being unloaded in his job as a driver.  He boasted about how well they treated him. I see progress and a desire for good will.  Amen.

Sidney "Prunes" in high school,

One of three remaining amigos:

Mahon (deceased)

Sidney

Victor

and Sam (Husband)

THE WAY BACK

I came so long

To that place

Before knowing I had to return.

I go to redeem memories

To face the dragons, the black annihilating holes

To be myself again,

Whatever that is

To forgive everyone

To be the pure child

And be done with it.



A response to Magpietales.com

FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS

When Noah built the ark, he was given some warning and time to complete the task.  Here in my garden, we rejoiced with every rainfall and planted and planted.  We had no idea the blessing would be overdone with unpleasant outcomes.  What's the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it!"

My make-shift water gauge, the garden wheelbarrow

shows how much water has fallen lately!

The garden has done it's best with beautiful promise, but sad production.  The beautiful green tomatoes (23 plants) exploded and rotted on the vine...a few made it and they were good.  I continue to hope there are better days for them ahead.  

Meanwhile the natural weeds and grasses are proliferating and expressing their abundant good health, I almost hate to pull them.

Just weeds on steroids.

Flowers are doing well and we learn which ones should come back next year.

Zinnias are proven in my garden and lure goldfinches and butterflies.

Because of the continuous rain, mosquitoes prevent me from harvesting the green beans.

Green beans wait for no man.

There is our average mosquito on my shoulder!

A sturdy pair of wooden clogs made in the Netherlands is the best
footwear for when the dikes of Heaven give way!

LIFE BEGINS AT EIGHTY

My ever young cousin celebrated his eightieth birthday on Sunday.  I'm going against his wishes by spreading the news.  It isn't a small accomplishment to round the bend of fragile mortality into the warm calm waters of your senior years.

 Carl Douglas Thomas talks to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ingram, fellow

producers of local daffodils at one time.

Mr. Gene Goin and Mr. Lowery Hudgins helped him celebrate and enjoyed the day.

Daughter Cindy Wright manned the food stands.

Daughter Carla helped make the day special.

.

It was also flag day and flags were waving!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY C.D.

You're a very special guy!

THE LOST

Husband is an accomplished enigma of rational behavior.  Usually appearing an average 74-year-old shuffle along, he contains anecdotes that can only be described as absurd enough to stop a clock.

A very predictable Husband looks handsome and un-mysterious on  a Spring day

This morning while I sipped my first coffee, he challenged me:  "You'll never guess what I found in the basement this morning."  My mind went immediately to dead mice, errant snakes, and a category of huge, venomous spider.  "Three balls the cats batted through the old plumbing holes."

"Oh," I voiced unimpressed.

"Guess what else I found," he teased.

"What?" I answer mystified.

And here it comes, the tense still  moment before the perfectly unexpected answer, "My lower dentures!" without blinking an eye.  Bingo, I didn't see, hear, or smell that coming, I thought.

But with Husband, looks are deceiving!

It seems the dentures went missing several years ago and to Husband's chagrin, he had to purchase new ones.

In the past, I have located his glasses hanging from a tree limb, his perpetual runaway cell phone on the ground by a neighbor's lawn chair, and the cat litter he placed in the refrigerator because it looked like a milk carton.  But this was new heights even for him. Now he has a backup set of lowers if he chooses to use them.  Another deep mystery has been solved, except how the dentures got there in the first place.  That we may never know, but speculation is endless.

SUNUP

   NATURE

O Nature!  I do not aspire

To be the highest in thy choir, -

To be a meteor in thy sky,

Or comet that may range on high,

Only a zephyr that may blow

Among the reeds by the river low,

Give me thy most privy place

Where to run my airy race.

In some withdrawn, unpublic mead

Let me sigh upon a reed,

Or in the woods, with leafy din,

Whisper the still evening in.

Some still work give me to do, -

only - be it near to you!

For I'd rather be the child

And pupil, in the forest wild,

Than be the king of men elsewhere,

And most sovereign slave of care,

To have one moment of thy dawn,

Than share the city's year forlorn.

Henry David Thoreau
And this morning on Queen's Creek

OTHER EYES

I never know, the way I go is right,

I need to have some other eyes

See with me, agree with me, 

Meet in a glance of mutual delight

Nellie Strigle and Carl Douglas, her nephew, play in a wagon

Nellie (16) holds her niece (me)

A single working girl at Langley Air Base in Hampton, Va

Just married to first husband Al Berger

 

Their first daughter, Linda Nell

Second Husband, but first boyfriend, Bill Braxton

Our sweet beautiful Nellie has Alzheimer's and will not be coming home from skilled care. Her love, Bill is crushed.  He e-mailed me that he loves and misses her so much.  His health has taken a dive and he requires a stint and age 99.  Nellie will be 90 in the spring if things go well.  She has had a long life filled with everything, some of it tragic.  Even so she could express warm love and friendship to everyone she met.  She knew this was coming and tried urgently to keep in touch with her nieces and nephews.  She deserves the best Heaven has to offer.  I know how much she loves her children, grandchildren and both Al and Bill.  They should never ever doubt that!  She has other eyes.

ON THE SURFACE

magpietales.blogspot.com

Husband and I become the apple

Bond of Union, 1956, by M. C. Escher

"What is apple skin made of?," my seven-year-old daughter asked as we motored cross-country in our venerable Volkswagon bus complete with pop-up tent camper.  It's just another part of the apple," I supplied reassuringly knowing she was nursing a fever from a cold.

"No, I mean what is it made of, that skin?". Hoping to escape the quantum field of play, beyond our mutual abilities to comprehend or explain, I offered, "It's like our skin, it has cells and they cooperate to protect the apple inside as our skin protects us."

Husband remained with eyes glued to the road, mercilessly determined to have his family experience sea-to-shining-sea quality time in the summer of 1977.

As I feared, my child pursued her quest for the one answer to quiet her curiosity, the one still eluding me.  Then came the tears:  first mine, then hers.

We had forged much deeper into the mystery of apple skin and human skin than the problem required, I reflected.  As I turned to face the backseat of our bumpy, noisy conveyance to deliver my final launch of subatomic particles, of fields and spheres, of string theory and black holes (even though they hadn't been conceived yet), my angel was asleep.  Good job I congratulated myself.  Husband remarked confidently, "We'll be in Yellowstone by evening."

VERIZON ET AL, PART II

Happy Husband lolls in the pool in less stressful times.

Husband received an unpleasant surprise in the mail after all his contorted convolutions with Verizon, the telephone company,  not Verizon, the wireless company.  I heard mighty cursing from our little dingy dark den full of cats, and wanting to spare the cats further corruption let them outdoors.  It appears that when he sought to change his telephone setup to lower his bill, he incurred charges, $297.00 worth of charges.  The temperature soared in our little den, which is electrically heated so whoopee a bit.  Then the telephone conversations commenced.  The script from a former blog can be cut and pasted here because it was the same.  They still don't know who we are or why we'd be complaining about a large bill.  Thank you, Sam, you own my sanity and I'd be defenseless without you because I'm an introvert and waiting to be smushed by the mighty foot of corporate-clandestine savagery.

After much wrangling, Husband agreed to pay a small fee to return to his old setup with all parties.  Has he learned his lesson yet?   I hope so.  Jumping on something because your friend, or a relative of your friend, says so is dangerous.  We can only hope that those folks aren't around when the decision of whether to disconnect my life support is made. For that I rely on daughters #1, #2, and #3.

Back to normal, we await the arrival of Granddaughter's cell phone, which must not be activated until we phone daughter #2,  Aunt Diane, who will then change the number to match granddaughter's old number.  Oh Dear Lord, how did it all come to this?  That number in the Bible, which is supposed to identify us as individuals before the end of time...was it a cell phone number?  And why does FedEx not recognize our address as deliverable?  Corporations are people too, my friend.  That is extreme baloney, or perhaps Supreme (Court) baloney.  I hate to get political on my family history blog, but there you have it.  We studied in school that monopolies were bad things, and American workers were good things.  What changed?  Around here we have Walmart and Food Lion supplying majority needs.  Only 50 years ago, my parents owned a grocery store and made a living.

If we seriously ask ourselves these questions we will be labeled as job-killing, baby-killing, and unAmerican.  I could live with the America of my youth, like most people; but when America becomes as concrete-block stratified as it is today, some folks are going to be talked into supporting bad stuff.  We all fit that.  Still, big business is one thing, public ownership of this country is another and we all share an ownership of our nation by the very act of paying taxes.  To say that the helpless and unemployable in this country have to pull themselves up by the bootstraps is inane.  There has to be public charity or aid. That and public education are the most hated policies by the seriously rich.  The seriously rich also want wars and who better to fight them than the uneducated children of the modern vulgate.

This rant was brought to you by Verizon, the telephone company.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

What does it mean
To be beautiful?
What spoils the view
Ugly selfishness
Lusty wantonness
To name a few

What does it  mean
To be beautiful?
I really wish I knew
 Purple mountains' majesty
Over a fruited plain
Or two?

What does it take

To be beautiful?

Colors so strong of hue

Spirit, Heart and Mind

sing out,

“We are Red, White and Blue!”

A response to  http://magpietales.blogspot.com/

HAPPY VETERANS DAY

NANCY, THE COW

When I was still in elementary school, my father bought a cow and brought her home to our 30 acre farm and country store/home.  He tried everything, having grown up on a real working family farm.  We had two pigs, Ricky and Johnny, who seriously lacked personality and social skills.  "Nancy," as our new cow was named, had personality, but was more challenging than Daddy had anticipated.  While she provided more than enough butter, cream and milk, Mother was overwhelmed with too much of a good thing.  She churned, skimmed, and boiled (for safety) milk for our use and had much to spare.  For a while we were in surplus with items made from milk, including Mother's famous butter pound cake. You can only eat so much cake.

Ricky and Johnny watched with quizzical interest as Daddy daily chased after Nancy, who was obsessed with freedom.  To boot, Nancy was hand-raised by women and had no interest in or respect for men.  Couldn't help but admire her for that.  Time and again Daddy had to resort to asking for help from Mother or me.  I felt Nancy was making my point for me, that women are just as good as men at everything.

Since there were no other children in our family, I used to commune with Nancy after school and soon she began to look forward to our talks.  I fed her what goodies I could find and she enjoyed licking my hands and face.  With a tongue as raspy as sandpaper, I didn't need to exfoliate.

Whenever I approached her tied in the field, she would rush madly to the end of her tether and give me pause for my safety.  She was a big inscrutable animal and I was a sliver of a girl.  I didn't want my final adventure to be "trampled by a cow in the bud of youth." Somehow I know my intimidation was surely excessive because she did indeed love me and the feeling was mutual.

Without pictures of Nancy, I send along my version.  

Nancy, the man-hating cow

LIFE

To find oneself alive is at once wondrous and mysterious.  For nine months we gradually come to know our own awareness and witness the muffled sounds of a world just outside the womb.  When Mother cries or becomes excited, we perceive her cries or protestations magnified.  It is a fine home with mostly warm baths, no hunger, and soft walls that caress our coiled legs and compacted bodies.

Then the day comes unwanted, violent, and world shattering, when we are forced from fetal Utopia into a chaos of bright lights, beings other than Mother, and detachment from security into endless space.  Hands slapping us into vocalizing our horror are delighted when we utter our first scream.

Daughter #3 cautiously observes all things new.

Childhood is long and humiliating.  We can't wait until we are a grownup.  We fall down and cry; we run away from home and are spanked; we do things to explore our boundaries and have mixed success.  We chew and swallow food that we abhor.  We attend school and graduate school and begin adulthood.

I play Miss Muffet at a May Day celebration.

Adulthood is busy and needs to be a field of competition;  competition for paying your way with jobs and careers;  competition for finding happiness in a life companion and children to carry on; and fulfilling all the personal dreams of achievement featured on our personal bucket list.  For some it is an outer crust, a show of wealth, for some it is a high hat of personal importance, for some it is a sensory composition of what is was to live.

As a grownup, I always felt fulfilled by gardening.

Having sat upon our self-specialized seat, we reach the narrowing lane of life where we sense the ride may soon be over.  A sense of losing all we built to our design begins to enter our thoughts and we reflect on all the people in our past who no longer live.  What did life mean?  Was it just a challenge?  Did we do it right?  Were we really born to just achieve wealth, status, or fame?

No personal goal achievement ever felt as good as participating in Nature.

I conclude for me that the only time is now and that every now has to be appreciated, no matter what your status in the world, which after all is just applause for the soon-extinguished ego.  I conclude for me that appreciation of this beautiful world and its inhabitants is the only value that outlives life.  It is the ultimate thanks for the ultimate experience and adds to a collective living choir of never-ending praise.

My mother marveled at everything celestial and I do too.

VIBRATIONS

Everything that Nature rocks

Has its own vibration rate

Jam and toast and juice and socks

And legs and floors a picture make

A response magpietales.com

FALL

The season you loved so well

Does fill me with nostalgia for you

I miss you each day of  the remains

Can you hear me?

Burning leaves and clear skies

The October month delivers

Immortal beauty and comfort

And I cannot hear you agree

I am here and you did hold me

With love and assurance

You soothed my gravest fears

But Death whispers the final decree.



Response to www.magpietales.com

THE MANY VIEWS OF NOW



Every pair of eyes that behold

A moment of reality spent

Does fashion it with every fold

Of delicately woven intent

A response to magpietales.com

DREAMSCAPE

Out of place, out of time, running

Dropped off, sent away, searching

Steal away

Tear a way

Trying

Find a place to be.

A response to:  Magpie Tales (magpietales.com)