Silent vigil...

There are people running through the streets above us.

There is nowhere to run but it doesn't seem to matter.

I was running and fell through this door way. I barely escaped being trampled.

I can make out shapes in the darkness.

I think there are seven of us down here.

It's hard to know for sure.

Fear and hunger have driven some of the others into the damp corners where the light falls off
suddenly and all that's left is the stench.

We are all just waiting.

My hair keeps sticking to the concrete wall I'm leaning against.

I'm not sure but I think it's sticky from the blood.

Every time I move my head a few more strands are pulled out adding to the growing number left on the wall behind me.

Most of us have gathered in a space away from the door, more toward the center of the room.

The corners are too dangerous.

The young man with the glasses was curled up in one of the corners when he was attacked by a rat trying to gnaw through the blood soaked towel around his leg.

I think we may be in the basement of an old grocery store.

We found some boxes of stale crackers but they were gone after the first few days.

There are some tin cans of something but the ends are bulging and there's nothing to open them with anyway.

The water ran out yesterday.

There is an old couple sitting across from me.

The woman couldn't stop crying, she just sobbed and clutched a photograph to her chest.

Her husband said it was a picture of their son.

He tried to comfort his wife but after two days, he stopped.

After that she cried all the harder.

Yesterday she stopped crying. She's been silent ever since.

The blond girl at the end of room talked to me for the first couple of days.

Now she just sits in silence like most of the others.

Today I tried to talk to any of them but there was no response.

None of them will answer me.

My brain feels sluggish and I just want to sleep.

I don't feel the hunger anymore but I'm very thirsty.

I mention this to the old couple across the room but there is no reply.

I have begun to crave the sound of another human voice more than that of water to quench my thirst.

If someone doesn't speak to me soon , I'm sure I will go mad.

My eyes feel heavy.

Maybe it would be alright to sleep for just a little while.

When I wake up maybe someone will talk to me.

I'm sure one of them will have something to say soon...

Imagination...

She crawled under the blankets with the flashlight.

In this tent of far off adventures, she would wander the entire world, slay dragons and waltz among the stars.

She would be lost for hours in a world of books.

And when her mother found her still awake, the flashlight would be confiscated but the adventures would remain.

Grandpa's watch...

It had belonged to his father and it was one of the only things he'd brought to this country with him.

He would sit in front of the television set at night watching the boxing matches.

Every once in a while he'd throw a punch in the air in solidarity.

We'd be in the doorway watching, giggling.

He made wine in the basement.

You could smell the grapes fermenting when you went to get the laundry.

He always wore suspenders and flannel shirts, even in the summer.

He'd wait until he thought no one was looking before giving the dog a piece of whatever he was eating.

Then he'd pet her until someone happened to glace over in which case he'd push the dog away as if she was bothering him.

He did the same with me when I was little but I knew it was all for show.

He was afraid of looking weak, looking too nice.

He spent many years in a nursing home unaware of his surrounding's or the people who visited.

It broke my heart.

The watch sat on the bedside table along with a photograph of his wife until the day he passed away.

Vows...

Then it all just went dark.

Darker than she could ever have imagined.

There had been plenty of very bad days in the past.

Twenty six years they'd been doing this...this thing.

It began even before the vows were spoken.

Year by year it just got harder to pretend.

And now it was just a black hole of pain and misery.

That place in the universe where things went to die.

She'd hung on because that's what you did didn't you?

In the end, staying had ended up being much more destructive.

shine on...

He had always been fascinated by the stars and the planets.

Once she had explained to him that we were all made of stardust.

That we all contained bits and pieces of exploded stars and planets floating through the universe.

She stood looking up into the night sky remembering those evenings when they would go out into the field in back of the Dairy Queen, put down a blanket and lay there watching the stars overhead.

She'd point out the constellations and by the time he was 4, he knew them all by heart.

Cassiopeia was his favorite.

He had said that if we were all made of stardust that we all had our own way to shine and wouldn't it be something if we all decided to shine at the same time?


Now there would be no more stories about moon beams and galaxies...

but there is still that shine.






🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

Shine on sweetie...

Slow dancing...

The black taffeta skirt rustled as she swirled across the floor of her bedroom.

Bending and swaying to the notes of the melody coming from the radio.

She let the music and the rhythm lead her around the room.

And she couldn't have cared less that she was her own partner...

. 

Facade....

She took one last look around the house.

It looked bare and unloved now without all the little bits and pieces that dominated the rooms, much like her grandmother's personality had dominated her childhood.

A harsh, cold woman who didn't see a need for empathy or compassion.

Those things only made you weak.

Yet some nights she would wake to hear the strains of Beethoven or Strauss floating through dark and she'd sneak down the stairs to watch as her grandmother sat at the piano.

Alone in the dark with only the light of the moon shinning through the windows, lost in the music she was making.

This soft and tender side her grandmother never let anyone see.

This facade, this side of herself her grandmother kept hidden.

She would never understand why...

Loss...

                               

What is left is a faded blue puppy given to him by a volunteer on one of his too frequent stays in the hospital, several small wooden trucks, a Snoopy pillow case and boxes of photographs.

Over the years you wait for the pain go away but it never does.

It just changes.

It shifts from day to day and year to year and becomes something different, sometimes better sometimes worse.

And you manage to get through the days...at least most of the time.

You hold on tight and breath and even though you are not the most religious person in the world, you pray a lot.

And if you are very lucky you make it through to the moments when you remember things without the pain and you smile...and then you cry again and that's okay.

For Brandon

xoxoxoxoxox

Release...

She was only fourteen.

I listened as all the pain and frustration came pouring out of her.

Time spent trying to hold it all back had made it something thick and black and choking.

I could hear the desperation in her words.

My soul is weary and raw, she said.

Her eyes looked tired and haunted.

Years of anguish had taken its toll.

She wasn't crying because she wasn't strong.

She was crying because she'd had to be strong for so long.

Empty...

They hadn’t drawn him wide enough to add a heart.

He was a stick figure and thus had no depth or width

He was merely a doodle in the margin of someone’s imagination.

But Oliver wanted so badly to be a real boy.

She wears silver bangles...

It's the sound they make that announces she's in the room.

She uses her hands to punctuate her words as she speaks and the bracelets dance around on her wrists.

I listen as she talks and the bracelets tinkle.

I close my eyes and remember my childhood and the sound of the wind chimes hanging from my grandmothers back porch.

Ode to childhood...

It was in the time before the wheel chair.

Things were still possible and dreams could still come true.

Fairy tales still had happy endings and the world made sense.

It was a time of innocence and bliss.

Then came the doctors and hospitals and fear.

And childhood was no more, replaced by heartbreak and loss.

And the dreams were now nightmares and the stories had no happy
endings and innocence no longer applied...

My Grandmothers ring...

She gave it to me on my 18th birthday.

I'd never seen her wear it, not once.

The gold was a rose gold with a design so intricate you could almost imagine little elves had craved it.

It held the most beautiful moonstone I had ever seen.

In the right light you would swear it wasn't even there, just the glow of it remained and you'd  have to reach out and touch its smooth surface to reassure yourself it hadn't just up and disappeared...

"Bella Luna" she called it; beautiful moon.

I rarely wore it, too afraid that I'd lose it or damage it.

And so it sat in a box for 20 odd years

Last week I gave it to my daughter.

She of the will of iron, the brave of heart who embraces all things in life.

She who colors outside the lines and dances to her own drummer's beat.

I gave it to my daughter and that minute she put it on and she has worn it ever since.



Lemon tea...

                                    

When I was a little girl I had trouble with my tonsils. I had a lot of sore throats...

Grandma would make me a cup of her special feel better lemon tea with a big spoonful of honey and I would fall asleep while she told me stories about fairies and princes and happily ever after's...

I remained blissfully unaware until recently that each one of those cups of tea contained a stiff shot of Grandpa's whisky...

The box...

It sat on the shelf of the bookcase for as long as I can remember.

I never really thought too much about it or what was in it, it was just there.

Sitting next to the bowl of wax fruit and  the battered copy of  The Fannie Farmer Cook Book

When my mother died it took me quite a while to go through her things and when I did my heart just wasn't in it at the time.

Then I came to the box.

It was filled with small pieces of all sorts and colors of scraps of paper and on each one she had written a wish, a prayer.

Some were big, some small, some were long, some were short.

Some just one word.

But there they were hundreds of hopes and wishes and prayers all slipped  into the old oak box.

Quietly waiting in the hopes that one day they would be heard and answered...




Laura
May 15, 1943-February 6, 2016

Human concerto...

                      

She held the instrument close.

She wanted the notes of her life to accompany the music of her soul.

She wanted all others to listen to their own music and applaud loudly.

Then perhaps someday everyone might listen to the strains of
each others melodies...

and delight in the symphony of humanity.

The ladies of the Sunshine Laundry...

photo copyright; BNPS.co.uk


When she was growing up she would stop by the laundry and visit her grandmother on her way home from school.

She would open the doors and immediately be hit by the heat and humidity of the steam irons and giant white and grey mangles.

The smell of bleach, starch and sweat.

This was hard work and her grandmother would come home tired and withered.

But there was also something elegant about it.

Through the thick rising steam,
you could just make out the shapes of women floating across the floor
as they folded huge sheets and table cloths used in some of the most expensive
and exclusive hotels in the city.

It took several of them to fold one enormous fabric sheath.

Watching them was like watching a ballet.

Their movements were precise and coordinated, learned over years of practice.

They swooped and swirled.

In and out, back and forth in a dance too light and delicate for such
harsh and exhausting work.

Every afternoon, she'd be engulfed in hugs.

Folded into the arms of women who had known her ever since she could remember.

They always had candy in their pockets,
and lavished big sweaty kisses on her cheeks.

They were the poor.

They were the immigrants

They were the working class.

Everything has a story...

Looking at it , it seems like just another old kitchen utensil but the ravioli cutter has quite a history behind it...


We couldn't mention the Mafia out loud.

In our house it was whispered like people used to whisper cancer.

My grandparents were both from Sicily you see.

It wasn't until I was in my teens that I heard about my great Uncle Frank.

It seems Uncle Frank was a Don in the, you know the M word.

He was arrested for tax evasion and sent to federal prison.

Coincidentally my grandmother had the exact same name as Franks younger sister and was able to visit him in prison under the guise of being said sister.

While in that prison Frank was being rehabilitated and one of the things they thought would do the trick was to have the inmates participate in wood working, metal workshops and such.

Frank worked with metal and being Italian, had made a ravioli cutter.
It was made of brass and copper and steel and it was given to my grandmother on one of her visits to the prison.

Not long after leaving prison, Frank disappeared.

They found him in the desert in southern California.

He had been on his way to his farm where he produced, you guessed it, olive oil when he met a very unsettling fate.

Frank was the recipient of an Italian neck tie.

That was in the thirties.

The ravioli cutter became a fixture during my childhood.

Something that was always around and always in use.

Grandma used it faithfully until she died.

Cutting hand made ravioli to serve to family and friends for many years.

I inherited the cutter when grandma passed away and I have it to this day.