Detachment

I see that the temperature is supposed to go down into the forties tonight.  This morning, I threw open the windows to chase away the heat and the humidity that has hovered in the air since May.  The flies appear to have been listening to the weather forecast: A group of them has taken up residence in the kitchen and I find it fair sport to chase them with a dishtowel.  It’s a battle I often lose.

A couple of days after I lost the War of Tug with Destructo, my eye started flashing—a quick burst of lightning that disappeared immediately.  The flashing began on an inconvenient day: the day of Filibuster’s photo preview: The studio owner greeted us warmly at the door and seated us upon a plush velvet couch before a gigantic movie screen.   She dimmed the lights.

My eye flashed.

Read more »

Traveling to Ohio

On the Pennsylvania turnpike, I see a woman riding on a motorcycle behind her husband.  She passes through mountains and never looks up from the Kindle in her hands.  I am intrigued by this woman.  I’d like to keep watching, but…”Dad, I have to go.”

My husband pulls in at the next rest stop and we lose her.

Read more »

Things You Need

To get to the creek at my parents’ farm, leave the house by the back door.  Stop to admire my mother’s giant pots of herbs and other plants on the wooden deck before heading down the stairs and onto the brick walk.  To your left, you’ll see a perennial bed of, if I remember correctly, white and purple flowers.  And to your right, another smaller bed with shrubs and hosta and a gas lamp permanently lit to welcome visitors.

The gravel driveway will crunch beneath your shoes—and cut bare feet if you’re not careful.  Walk past the garage towards the barn.  To the right, another long and narrow perennial bed.  To the left, the remains of the pasture fence: a small length of wooden sections of posts and rails representing years of farm labor and lessons.  Tall pines on either side of the drive will escort you past the barn to your left.  And to your right, you’ll see the syrup shed, where my father spends late winters turning gallons of sap into the maple syrup that I use to sweeten peaches and strawberries and be reminded of home.  Know that into the concrete floor of that very shed, my children carved their initials with a thick nail. 

But we must go on.

Read more »

Crooked River

We put in at Route 422 near the old Riverside Restaurant.  Squints, my husband and I were in one canoe.  V and Filibuster rode in another.  My sister, my niece and nephew were in a third.  Another nephew rode solo in a kayak.

Our journey was a seven mile ride down the Cuyahoga River—the Crooked River—south towards Akron.  But our boat was put into the water backwards and as we shoved off, we accidentally headed north. 

We couldn’t turn the boat around.  We paddled on one side.  We paddled on the other side.  We paddled on both sides, one left, one right, Squints eagerly and haphazardly slapping the water with his paddle from the center of the boat.  “Hey, I’m good, Mom.  Haven’t I gotten better?” 

Read more »

The Permanence of Elephants

Like everything else of importance, the piano teacher’s home was on Main Street.  The house was small and painted a light gray and full of mystery and contradiction.  A huge magnolia tree shaded the path from the sidewalk to the three concrete steps leading to the porch.  Formed into the risers of the first step and the third were identical images of a fat elephant in profile.  I never knew how those elephants got there and never thought to ask.  My six year old self imagined that the elephants had been chiseled out by some former teenaged occupant of the house.  But my older self—my adult self—eventually realized that was unlikely: The images were too perfect; too uniform; too deep.  Perhaps a form was pressed into the concrete before it dried.  Perhaps the images were carved into wet cement the way my children would—years later—use a nail to carve their initials into the new concrete floor in my father’s equipment barn.  I will never know the story of how they got there, but those elephants were as much a part of the piano teacher’s house as the piano teacher’s house was a part of Main Street.

Read more »

Manufacturers Rule

When I was very young, our milk was delivered.  Once a week, the milkman would drive up in his truck and put the milk in the metal box on our front porch.  My sisters and I looked forward to these deliveries: You never knew when the milkman would deliver a quart of ice cream, too.  We’d walk through the front room and open the screen door leading to the porch.  We’d open the metal lid and take the milk into the house and put it into the refrigerator.  We didn’t want it to spoil.

Read more »

Simple Treasures

etsy.com

We lived at the top of a small hill in our second house, the first house I can remember without benefit of photographs.   Our drive was concrete—perfect for hopscotch and biking and jumping rope—and sloped down over a ditch that occasionally filled with rainwater and snowmelt.  A galvanized steel pipe ran beneath the drive and drained into that ditch.  And when it wasn’t too wet, that pipe was the perfect place to hide treasures.  My sisters and I could lie on our sides and stretch an arm about a foot in and our treasures—generally the few Matchbox cars we owned—would be safe.  Eventually we moved, leaving behind forgotten treasures.  I’ve often wondered what I would find there, were I to go back. 

Growing up, I remember a bank that belonged to my mother.  It was an iron treasure chest—brown—with an image of a pirate on one side and a skull and cross bones on the other and a slot in the lid for coins.  The chest was hinged and I loved to fold back the curved lid to run my fingers through the pennies contained within, pretending that it was real treasure; real gold.

Read more »

School Trip

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:

School trips. We all go on them. What trip do you remember the most? Where did you go? Who was with you? How did you get there? Have you ever been back?

* * *

At the end of every year, the elementary kids would walk out the front door of our school and turn right.  When we reached the Variety Store at the corner of Prospect and Main, we’d head left—towards the village park.  There, we would ride the swings and scoot gingerly down hot slides.  We’d play kickball and baseball and red rover until we were hot and sweaty.  The teachers would call us to the shade of the pavilion where we’d sit at wooden picnic tables with green paint flaking from them.  We’d eat our lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Wonder bread.  Ruffled chips.  The obligatory apple.  A couple of chocolate chip cookies and, best of all, a Coke wrapped in foil to keep it cold.

And it’s this Coke wrapped in foil that reminds me suddenly of another class trip of sorts: The annual Memorial Day band parade.  As a member of the marching band, I would don a woolen uniform and board a bus with my baritone and—with the rest of the band and the cheerleaders, the flag girls and the majorettes—would march in four parades. 

Read more »

Driving Lessons

This post was written in response to a prompt from The Red Dress Club:

The first time I ________-ed after _________-ing
Unfortunately, I was able to fill in the blanks with crashed and buying a car. 

“Here’s a nice one.” The salesman pointed to a red Dodge Charger hatchback.  “Bucket seats.  AM/FM.  Reliable.  Practical.” 

Practical wasn’t an image I was shooting for.

“It has a sunroof.  Wanna’ take it for a test drive?”  He held up his hands and mimed driving. 

I nodded, feeling the hot vinyl of the steering wheel beneath my fingers.  I got in the car and bucked my seatbelt.  I reached for the keys dangling alluringly from the ignition.  And there, in the center of the vehicle was...  “But I don’t drive stick…”

“Oh, well…I’ll just drive it for you then.” 

We exchanged seats.  The salesman cranked up the radio and popped open the sunroof.  He pulled onto the street and changed gears, all the while extolling the virtues of the car over Madonna’s “Material Girl.” 

We returned to the dealership.  The salesman casually draped his arm across the steering wheel.  “Whaddya’ think?”

* * *

My father insisted that my sister give me lessons.  Kathy went over the basics: clutch, brake, shifting, and we were off, the car rocking violently every time we arrived at a stop light, my sister shouting, “the clutch! Hit the clutch!” while other drivers and pedestrians, too, pointed and laughed with open mouths.  

Brake.  Clutch.  It was too confusing.  Fifteen minutes into the lesson, I pulled over.  I shut off the stupid car and let my sister drive home.  I could practice there.  It would be safer that way.

* * *

A circular driveway surrounded our house, separating the lush lawn from the woods that secreted our home from the busy state highway.  Lining the driveway was an army of massive boulders my father had culled from the back field.  Fifty-foot pine trees kept watch over those majestic stones, shading them and allowing thick moss and ivy to grow up along them.  Perfect.  Test.  Track.

That evening after dinner, I went to my car, popped the sunroof and switched on the radio.  I turned the key.  The engine sputtered…and caught!  At a rate of no more than three miles per hour, I pulled towards the front of the house.  So far, so good.  I sat up confidently and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of Queen’s “Bicycle Race.” Ahead, there was a slight grade: I had to accelerate a bit to make it up.  Too fast.  I was going to crash into the fence and let the cows escape from the pasture.  I was…

Quickly, I steered to the right and hit the brakes.  The car lurched.  Again, the brakes.  Another lurch.  I slammed the brakes tight against the floor of the car, pressing so hard I lifted myself from the red bucket seat with faux leather trim. 

But the brakes had failed.  The car began rolling down the driveway.  Faster and faster, I rolled backwards, the pine trees passing outside my window at what must have been a hundred miles an hour.  There was a terrific scraping and then, suddenly, I stopped, my practical little car caught up on the mountain range lining the driveway.

I had the sense to cut the engine before opening the door.  I jumped from the car as it teetered precariously on its undercarriage and ran, sobbing, to get my father.  An hour later, from an upstairs window, I watched my dad laughing with the tow truck driver as his assistant wound the winch before leaving to get a different—larger—truck to drag my car from the rocks. 

When the car was finally free, my dad got in to drive it to the back of the house.  “You can’t drive it, Dad.  The brakes don’t work.”  I wanted him to go right to the dealership; to demand my money back; to punish that salesman for having taken advantage of me. 

“These brakes are fine,” he said, his foot depressing the pedal I’d sworn was the clutch.

Howard Snickered

This posting was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:

"Physical beauty.

It can open doors - and can also shut them.

Write a scene in which a physically beautiful character is somehow impacted by that trait."

Of course, I probably broke the rules again. 
I also rushed it a bit: Filibuster is home and I'm off to pick her up.

Howard Snickered

Lilly Jean Jacobs plopped herself down right next to Howard Heacock and flipped open her menu.  “I’m not even going to say good morning to you, Dumbass.”

Howard swiveled slightly upon his stool to acknowledge his stepmother, a woman three years his junior, and was accosted by her bosom.  He turned away quickly and added three packets of sugar to his coffee.

“Lilly Jean, must you store your drink there?”  Bitsy nodded towards the plastic sports bottle tucked neatly in Lilly Jean’s ample cleavage.  “You’re nauseating my customers here.”

Read more »

The Fair

Schools were dismissed at noon today, due to an excessive heat warning.  At the corner, the bus discharges a group of sweaty students, too hot to celebrate their unexpected good fortune.   They trudge down the sidewalk, beat-up backpacks dangling from listless shoulders, and head home to the shade.

The dogs lie on their sides, panting.  The cat sprawls on the cool wooden floor beneath the ceiling fan and refuses to budge.   The curtains at the front of the house are pulled closed to keep out the sun’s warmth; a warmth only three months ago we so desperately wished for.   My glass of ice water weeps condensation.  The couch is too hot to sit on, so we gather at the kitchen table and start a card game.  I toss the dog an ice cube and promise the kids that I’ll flip on the AC if it reaches 100 degrees.

Read more »

Yoga Lessons

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club: in which we were supposed to write about happy endings.

My mother was in constant motion.  In the evenings, she would make our clothes at the dining room table, the sewing machine whirring until late into the night.  The following morning, all evidence of my mother’s nighttime sewing would have disappeared except for the new pair of pajamas waiting on the table.  Every day, Mom would do laundry; wash dishes; wipe countertops; vacuum.  At least once a month, she would run a cloth doused in Liquid Gold over the faux wood of the kitchen cabinets—brown with a decorative inset of black where food would invariably get stuck.  She would go grocery shopping.  Take us to doctors' appointments.  Make us lunch.  And then, in the afternoons, before she made dinner, she’d get her book.  My sisters and I would sit on the couch.  Mom would lie down, stretching her legs across our laps, and the contest would be on: The three of us would begin rubbing my mother’s leg, each trying to win the coveted best leg-rubber award.  Mom would read a few pages before her book fell against her chest.

 “Who’s best, Mommy?”

“Hmmmmm?” 

Read more »

By Heart

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club: asking us what we learned by heart in childhood.

To know something by heart is to love it so much that you hold it within your heart forever.  Growing up, I knew by heart our community bookmobile.  Every two weeks the bookmobile would round the bend in the road and toot the horn a couple of times before parking at the side of the road in front of my neighbors’ house.  I would go to my jewelry box and grab my library card; thick salmon cardboard with a piece of metal affixed to it.  I loved everything about this card: the raised letters of my card number; my shaky yet solemn signature; the little plastic sleeve it lived in between bookmobile visits.  My library card was my license to travel. 

Mom would give us the go-ahead, and my sisters and I would race out the door and down the hill.  There were three bushes—small, medium and large—separating our property from the neighbors’ place.  I ignored them, running between them and on to the lawn next door. 

Read more »

When Ricky Sneezed

I attended elementary school with this boy named Ricky.  I remember that Ricky had black hair and black eyes and, if memory serves, he was fond of wearing tee shirts printed with race cars.  But what I most remember about Ricky is that he had a dangerous sneeze. 

Ricky’s sneeze was always sudden and unexpected.  It shot from out of nowhere and made his classmates jump in surprise and caused the teacher to roll her eyes and pause in her struggle to teach her disinterested third graders long division.

“Ricky” she would sigh, setting down her chalk and rubbing at her temples.

Read more »

To Speak Again

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club: "This week's prompt is all about character development. We'd like you to write about what your character wants most."  Posting my fiction online is not easy for me!

Daddy Sheriff told me I had to hold my tongue; told me that he’d kill me if I ever breathed a word about that night to anyone.  He told me he was just trying to help me to get ahead; to get me the hell out of Medford before the town rolled over and died.  Said he didn’t mean to kill Duke Ellis anyhow, just wanted to roughen him up a bit, and shouldn’t that count for something?

Daddy Sherriff told me to hold my tongue.  I guess I been holding it ever since.

Read more »

Preserving Memories

I drive to the school and pick up my daughters after their final exams.  Over lunch, I tell them I want to pick strawberries.  They sigh.  Summer has just started for them.  They want to relax. 

Just an hour, I tell them. 

They tell me they hate summer.  All this picking, picking, picking. 

I tell them it’s a short season—Strawberries don’t last. 

The room grows heavy with silence and resentments.  We eat our sandwiches without speaking.  The jubilation marking the end of the school year has passed.  No words are exchanged on the drive to the patch.  No radio plays to cover up the tension.  I find myself wondering why I bother.  Is it worth all this?

Read more »

On Target

Well, I’ve got to head to Target today because the cat is out of food and no one bothered to mention it except the cat and I’m ignoring him right now because of the ick he left on the basement carpeting.  On my way out, I stop to pull a few weeds from my perennial bed, because if I don’t keep up with these weeds, they’ll get ahead of me and take over the entire neighborhood.  I see that the violets have moved in with my hosta, and the black-eyed Susans are positively encroaching upon the lilies.  Clearly, something must be done about the situation.

Read more »

Is This Situation Only Temporary?

My daughter needed a ride into school today so she could be on time for an AP test, a test which no longer seems an honor but a requirement for college entry. 

My car was at a quarter tank, and this was a big driving day, so I pulled into a local Shell, a behemoth of a station: At least six bays of three pumps each.  There was a hand-lettered sign taped to the pump I pulled up to: “Super (93) Only."  I pulled away and drove into another bay.  Same thing.  Every single pump was labeled Super (93) Only.

“Be right back,” I told Squints.

Read more »

Cultural Maps

I raced as fast as I dared, keeping careful watch on the kilometers lining the inner circle of my speedometer.  I didn’t yet have my Canadian driver’s license.  My Ohio plates screamed “foreigner”.  Anything could go wrong if a police officer suddenly appeared behind me, lights flashing.  On the other hand, an officer might help—I’d be escorted quickly to the hospital.  I’d have sufficient time to get my son’s emergency chest x-ray done before I had to meet my daughters’ school bus.

I left the doctor’s Oakville office and headed west along Lakeshore, towards the hospital.  I suddenly found myself in Bronte—an area east of Oakville.   How could this have happened?  I’d used the navigational technique my mother taught me years ago when I was learning to drive.  “Use the lake as your guide,” she told me as we drove along Lakeshore Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.  “The lake lies to the north.” 

Of course: I no longer lived with Lake Erie to my north.  I lived on Lake Ontario.  And it lay to the south.  I’d been navigating according to my old map.  How could I have been so stupid?  My world, my life, had been turned upside down.  And I’d forgotten to make adjustments.

Read more »