In the end, we talk about endings.

A gathering of new friends, each
just not sure what the other might bring
to the table.

How was the visit with your daughter?

The answer goes somewhere else:
Who won the chowder contest?

We came to enjoy the prize-winning
chowder after our book meet
feeling immunized against food memories
like daughters tap-dancing around hot cookie trays
and spilled tea.

And your last doctor's visit?

I'll know more after the tests results.
I keep taking my pills and try to lose more weight.

We  laugh, about daughters
escape fiction, skinny doctors who
read only charts.

In the end, we end up talking
about what
it feels like to count days
so close to the end.

You smell like your days.

What was I thinking

that I'd live 

to tell

and that all the

grime

and the soot

would be washed

from my skin?

I still smell like the storm of 58, the one that buried us alive, beast and men

huddled in a cage, wearing all our clothes day and night, our legs mottled with burn marks for

all that standing by the fire, the fire that had to be kept bright and hot else melting  snow would douse it forever. We broke up chairs and baskets and bed posts to stay warm, 

killed all the small animals in our care

our stock of olives and nuts barely nourishing us

until the day came, was it days or months later,

when we shoveled ourselves out

smelling forever of

olive pits

soiled papers

and all the shit

we ate and burned to keep ourselves alive.

The times when we didn't take pictures.

Remember Tallahassee, the best six years of our lives!
I was quite anxious the whole time!
You seemed happy, you said.
Well, I kept a calendar, counting the days when we'd get back to a normal life.
You're exaggerating!
Not exaggerating, ruminating on how something felt in the moment experienced.
You had the best smile ever, every day for six years. Everyone envied us.
I envied everyone else, those eighteen year olds with great figures, those who left after two years of graduate work, those whose lives were richer and more meaningful than ours.
All our friends envied you.
For what?
You were the perfect wife, mother, never complaining, always gracious...Wait,I have this picture...
I wanted more. No, that picture was taken way before Tallahassee and...
More what?
Our own place, for one thing. We have no pictures of those times. Do you know why?

(to be continued...

Retracing our steps.

Memory is a faded photograph, people, places, events
sometimes crisp and bright. sometimes grey turned black
waiting for interpretations by the next generation.

What happened to that tree in that corner you ask.
It fell in the storm of 08, or maybe 09. I know it was there during that Memorial Day BBQ
when this picture was taken. You were busy with the BBQ and I took this view right from the living room door.

 Monterey cypress graced two thirds of our view when we first arrived; before the big storm knocked one down. It hit the chain link fence and we had to replace that.

Was that the time  when the water line broke and you had to dig and try to find the break to get repairs done... The year you went to France!

No. It was after Dad had cataract surgery; or was it the carotid surgery? You know that I'm learning anatomy the way I learned auto mechanics, after something breaks down and...

I could swear these trees were there every time I visited!

Progress.

This is how we write our story:
a river bed channeled
through another swale
its pulse
trees and grasses
bent to our will.

Swirls
of wind
on still water.




 

Wonders.

Spasms of creation.

The ocean
keeps history
alive
with sound
bounce
and splash.

Rules for old ladies waiting...

I have ten rules of life, maybe less
or is it fewer...I forgot
forgot the date my mother died
and many other important things.

I have rules for things that still matter
rules to go to sleep-with classic radio
and to wake-with espresso coffee
and to pray to heaven and the dead
to drive slowly- watch for deer darting on the side.
brush teeth often, after each meal
and to be grateful when it's sunny.

Do you remember feeding me
slices of peeled fig with honey and crushed
pistachio, one slice at a time
a game
until we got sick of
figs?

We tried to break every rule then
not knowing that  rules come in medicine jars.

Daily-over unslippery mats
I use no-tear shampoo
and watch my step
so not to end up
wet and naked
on the tile floor.

I rather prefer
the same weather
the same food
the same schedule
of deliveries
to order my
life into
a path I can easily follow
but I feel quite new when something
out of the ordinary makes me forget all the rules.