Growing Pains

Thanks to the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop for publishing my very first blog post on their site today... Growing Pains.

Talk to you soon!

Exchanged

Every year, right around Thanksgiving, or, likely before, my sisters would begin planning the cookie exchange. This annual event filled me with terror: While my mother and sisters birthed perfect creations, each cookie so lovely, eating it was almost a crime, my yearly contributions always fell a bit short of the mark. Rather than being festive, my cookies looked a bit wilted and sad: Either the tips of the stars I'd painstakingly cut out would break off or, worse, they'd curl, giving the stars the look of a hippy, happy starfish, the effects of which no amount of stoic, starry frosting could counteract. Or I'd roll out my cookies wrong: So thick that a saw would be required to break them or so thin they'd be nearly translucent and burned at the edges.

It's not just cookies that elude me. I am, in fact, rather inept at most things domestic. It is easy to identify me in old family photographs: I'm the one with the messy hair or the gaping zipper or the shirt tugged on inside-out. My infrequent attempts at sewing usually bring me to utter words not often heard in our house. And I've knitted the first two rows of a sock thirteen hundred times, only to drop a stitch, or drop the needles, or to lose count while chatting and have to pull out the stitches and begin again.

Read more »

Freely Given and Eternally Kept

A female cardinal sits in the branches of my magnolia tree niggling at something—next year's flowers or a bit of this year's fruit, suddenly exposed. She turns upside down in order to reach her treasure before fluttering her wings to right herself again.

Small buds adorn the branches, promises neatly bundled and held tight until spring. Like a kid awaiting Christmas, I'm anxious to see the tree in bloom: It will be my first spring in this house.

On Saturday, I went to the fabric store to get some thread and elastic to finish the pajamas I'd promised my children and husband. This promise of pajamas was made in a weak moment, brought on by the feel of soft flannel beneath my fingers and the vision of what it could become. But I am not a seamstress of any note, unless you note the errors that I make.

Read more »

Perspective

Twenty-four degrees for the high today. In our house, where there's no insulation, the cold finds a way in through the cracks in the walls and around the windows. We learned quickly, this year, to dress in layers. To wear scarves inside. To gather in one room, beneath quilts and comforters, waiting for the space heater to work its magic.

We're cranky and irritated, cooped up, all of us, in one room with two energetic dogs and a cat. We need to get out. 

We bundle up in hats, scarves, boots and gloves; clip a leash on one of the dogs; and head for the woods.

Our breath comes out in great puffs. Our feet crunch the frozen ground. We can hear the stillness of the world as it quiets. Ahead of us is a man without a hat, his three dogs darting through the trees, barking and yipping, zipping towards us before veering away again. Besides him, besides us, the woods are empty.

The mud puddles are filled with water and frozen over with ice so thick I can't break it. But the water in the creek still flows. We cross, careful not to get our boots wet, and climb up the bank.

The water at the reservoir ripples in the wind, wind that tears at our faces and fingertips. The sky begins to spit snow.

We head towards town.

Read more »

November 7, 2013

The wind blusters.

The clouds are gray.

I shiver in my coat,

     yank on my hat,

          wish I'd thought to bring a scarf.

The mittens I wear are mismatched

     pink and white

and belong to one

     (perhaps both)

of my daughters.

The dog,

     I notice,

          has chewed a hole

into one thumb.

I step into the woods,

     head for the creek.

The water has risen in the rain.

I toe across flat and mossy rocks

     carefully,

          tentatively,

               trying to keep my feet dry.

I pass the bridge.

     The owl's nest.

          The fallen tree.

               And emerge.

No fishermen are at the lake

     today: The icy wind has chased them away,

          empty bait containers,

               a forgotten lure

     the only evidence that

          they were here a day ago.

The pair of ducks is gone as well,

     the widening v they cut into the calm and

          still water ripped and rippled away by the wind.

The heron, too, has disappeared,

     the bird with two grey feathers missing

     from its left wing.

     Sentenced to flights

          short and low, his feet skirt the trees as he passes

overhead.

Today, I round the lake

     alone.

          Grateful for the sudden

          appearance of the sun that

               warms my back,

   

reminding me of

     hot mugs of tea

          and the soup I have

simmering on the stove,

     a mishmash of things left over,

unedited words

     strung together

          and stirred

               and bubbled

in hopes that they'll collaborate and decide to coalesce

     into something

          of meaning.

This was written for this week's Write at the Merge prompt: "The third day comes a killing frost." ~William Shakespeare

Kelly Garriott Waite on Google+

Signs of Snow

I do not know how long my daughter has been driving around on a flattish tire.

Neither does she.

Neither, in fact, does my husband, who, in denial of the sad, sagging evidence before him, declared the tire gauge to be broken.

Today is the day: Monday, mother of all get things done days, the day of fresh to-do lists, lists full of intention and promise and hope. Today, I get my daughter's tire fixed.

I step outside and work the ice from the windshield, glancing nervously at the tire, wondering if it will be able to limp the half mile into town. I drive slowly, holding up traffic and occasionally driving down the center of the road to avoid the potholes that gather at the street's edges. At the repair shop, I hand the keys over to the woman behind the desk and head home on foot.

My breath comes in thick puffs as I walk, gloved hands jammed into my coat pockets. Everywhere I look, fallen autumn leaves are edged in frost.

Read more »

On Broad Street

We caught the six-o-five to Philly. For the entire ride, the conductor groused about the way the train had three extra cars for him to tend by himself and that next weekend, thanks to Race for the Cure, it would be the same story.

Mainly, he was ignored: Despite the hour, everyone was in a festive mood.

We were headed to the Broad Street Run, a ten mile race with an expected forty thousand runners and countless spectators.

I hate the city.

I hate crowds.

I hate noise.

I hate traffic and sirens and the white pavement that seems to cover everything.

Most of all I hate having to worry about my children getting hurt.

Read more »

Twenty Candles

Well my eldest turned nineteen yesterday, so that meant twenty candles on her birthday cake. I don't know if mine is the only family to add "one to grow on" but we do. As my mother would say, my daughter is now in her twentieth year.

Despite the fact that she and her sister wouldn't get home until nine o'clock, the birthday girl insisted we wait to have dinner. It was her special day, after all. I suggested perhaps having the celebratory dinner on another evening, so we could eat when normal people do. But she'd have none of it: Birthdays are to be celebrated on the correct day, after all. And so we agreed: Dinner was to be served (in the form of takeout pizza) at nine, followed immediately by the cheesecake I'd baked the night before.

At eight forty-five, my husband and son went for pizza. I went to the kitchen, stomach growling, and began peeling carrots for the next day's school lunches.

Read more »

Home

My husband and I went to our son's reading tournament last week. The kids competing in the event sat in two groups on the floor in the center of the room, leaving parents, siblings and grandparents to find seats in the student desks shoved in a tight and hazardous bunch at the room's perimeter. To my immediate left, a woman played a gambling game on her iPhone, sharp red fingernails stabbing at the screen to stop the wheels from spinning, hopefully revealing a lucky combination of cherries or apples or the number seven.

To my right and a bit forward, something much more interesting was going on: There was a man with a bushy grey beard and long silver hair spilling down his back and onto the black windbreaker he wore. The windbreaker was adorned with the name of a local boxing group and a pair of red laced-up gloves. The man wore a baseball cap and reading glasses. He held a yellow mechanical pencil in his right hand. In his left, he held a letter, tri-folded and opened and closed many times. It was written on both sides of two sheets of unlined paper in neat rows straight as the rows of peas and carrots and green beans my father marks in his garden every spring.

Read more »

Spring

We're not permitted to look at the dresses until we're assigned a consultant, someone who inquires with eyebrows raised about color and size and price, of course. "Ask my daughter," I say, pointing. "I don't pay for prom."

Technically that's incorrect: My husband and I kick in a hundred bucks towards the occasion. But between up-dos and nails; shoes and makeup; flowers and a limo; tickets and alterations for a made-in-China gown costing between two- and twelve hundred dollars, our contribution is laughable.

We select an armload of dresses and are directed to the bank of rooms at the back of the store. Our consultant misspells my daughter's name on a pink sticky note in the shape of a heart and affixes it to her dressing room door.

Read more »

State of Community

February 13 and the crocuses are already in bloom, white and purple petals in stark contrast to the dingy lawns I pass as I walk with the dog. Snow threatens. And yet, it's still unseasonably warm. Music blasts from a car with Maryland plates. A man driving a van bearing the advertisement "Equestrian Dentistry" turns around in a driveway, obviously lost.

Of the few people I encounter on my walk, I recognize nobody.

Nobody says hello.

Read more »

River of Regret

Somewhere on Pioneer Trail, in a quiet and wooded place; somewhere between Mantua and Ravenna, is a spring. There, at the side of the road, is a face of rock, stained red beneath from the iron-rich water that flows from a thin metal pipe. Lush wildflowers grow there: black-eyed Susan, daisies, sweet peas.

Whenever she took Pioneer Trail to transport her grandchildren to or from the hundred-acre farm she shared with her husband, my grandmother would pull her white Mustang to the side of the road. My sisters and I would scoot off the red vinyl seats and emerge to pick flowers to fashion into jewelry or to take home to wrap in a vase of wet paper towels and foil. After we drank our fill of the water, icy and fresh and thick with minerals, my grandmother would take two or three plastic milk jugs from the trunk and fill them at the spring.

This was my introduction to bottled water.

Read more »

The Gap Between Stitches

My daughter is teaching herself to knit.

Her college friends mock her: It's a rocking-chair hobby, they tell her. An old-lady hobby. Still, she persists.

She frowns over her work, each hand tightly clutching a gold needle, a multi-colored scarf slowly taking shape between them. I watch her take up the yarn and incorporate it into the scarf. I listen to the clacking of the needles in the perfect stillness of the house. Listening, I am reminded of my mother and my grandmother and the work that has come from their needles: scarfs and hats; dishcloths and blankets and the long-outgrown sweaters that I keep in my trunk for my children's children.

My daughter sighs. The clacking stops. She holds up the scarf revealing another dropped stitch. “I hate knitting.” The comfortable quiet is replaced with frustration. “Should I tear it all out?”

“No,” I tell her. “Just keep going.”

“Then the problem will just continue,” she says, taking up her needles again.

Read more »

Trash Day

Thursday. Trash day. I walk along the sidewalk past garbage cans heaped with refuse. A deer lay on its side, adorned in white Christmas lights, metal legs bent backwards as it waits to be scooped up and tossed into the back of the garbage truck. On this trash day, I walk past stuffed animals; plastic toy kitchens; empty hamster cages.

At around six o'clock every Wednesday, a man drives through my neighborhood, inspecting the wares. Occasionally, he'll stop to claim a bike or a table and load it into the bed of his truck.

Now, the wind picks up and sends garbage blowing down the street: newspapers; discarded Christmas cards; empty cans and plastic milk jugs. As it blows past, I wrestle with myself, part of me saying I ought to pick up the trash, the other part saying it does not belong to me. It is not my responsibility.

I claim no innocence in this tossing. My cans, too, overflow with the stuff of life and of death. Plastic bags of dog waste, neatly knotted. Tissues. A bathroom sink.

Opportunity. Costs.

Trash day reminds me of all we have purchased to make our lives simple; to entertain ourselves and to distract our children. We buy to fill ourselves up and end up empty.

Trash day reminds me of that we have wasted; all we have willingly thrown away.

Harmonica

Sandwiched in between thick jail walls, the harmonica player's music snakes and curls into cells, dark and lonely. Perhaps he plays to overcome the silence of the gallows, nooses swaying in gentle breezes.

This piece was written for this weekend's Trifecta Writing Challenge.  

This weekend we are giving you three variations on a prompt.  We need you to give us 33 words back, and 2 of those words must be either "cheap flights," "sandwiched in" or "spectacularly clean."  This weekend, your piece must also be non-fiction (poetry or prose).  And yes, we reserve the right to call your mothers and former lovers to ask for verification on your tales.

Bridge

Well, Filibuster's college tuition suddenly went up two hundred dollars a month. I sent her a message on Facebook the other day: “Call them and see what's up.”

She messaged me back. “I don't know who to call.”

“Business Office.”

“Can you?” She wrote.

“No.”

Read more »

Santa's at the Mall

Well, it's not not yet Thanksgiving and Santa's at the mall. Just outside of Sears, I pause, clutching my plastic bag, to watch the scene below.

Dominating the display is the Christmas tree, of course, extending through the second floor nearly to the ceiling. In front of the tree is Santa's chair, covered in red velvet. Currently an elf sits there, chin in hand, staring out at nothing.

I can't see Santa anywhere.

Perhaps he's run to Starbucks for a cup of joe.
Read more »

Illusion

It was the year they left Mantua; the year they left the bank where the teller sat in the drive-through window framed by brick—a pretty picture of small-town life and love—dispensing cellophane-wrapped lollipops and conversation with every deposit and every withdrawal.

It was the year they moved to forty acres of cornfields and woods; dreams and intentions. She remembers waking to the silver tanker pulling into the dairy farm across the street. She remembers standing at the window, staring at the holsteins dotting the field, wrapping thick muscular tongues around patches of grass.

Read more »

Observations From the Seventh Floor

By eight o'clock, the tailgate party has begun. We gather at the window of the hotel room, staring down into the the parking lot. A few men, shrugged into heavy coats of black and gold, weave through the lot, looking for tickets to the game.

A black pickup pulls into the lot. The driver shells out thirty-five dollars and and backs into his space. There's only one row of parking here and a six foot space behind each truck to set up shop. Further down the row, there's a man wearing a gold apron around his waist and a Steelers jersey bearing number 94 He has five eight-foot tables covered in white plastic. Gigantic coolers—red and blue and yellow and black, of course, littler the ground. Number 94 stirs a pot of chili; offers a spoonful to number 83 for a taste. Other men and one women mill about, hands jammed into pockets, watching. Number 94 dishes up five aluminum containers with chilli, places lids on them, and carries them to the lot attendant's booth, stacking them in the window before shaking the attendent's hand and returning to his pot of chili. Someone asks for a picture. Numbers 94 and 83 lean in, arms around each other, hold the pose for a moment.

Read more »

Memories

I don't know why I remember those baby birds lying twisted and dead upon the cement floor of the garage of the second house I lived in. The front of the garage had a set of tall built-in shelves, more than likely constructed by my father. Likely, too, given his affinity for the color, they were painted grey. Or perhaps white.

Read more »