there is an art to writing letters my grandmother
once told me....you must begin with paper that
you love, and a pen that feels perfectly weighted
between your fingers...
the scent of the ink should be neither sweet, nor
acrid, but something clean and soft upon the
nose...
the way the ink flows from the pen, onto the paper. is
very personal, and very important...
do you like the scratching sound of
an ink-drawn nib across the page, or the silent rolling
of a ballpoint along invisible lines....
once you have paper that makes you want to run
a light hand along it's smooth cheek, find a place where you
can close your eyes and imagine the face of your loved one...
how will he look smiling at your wry humor, or the set of
her brow as she reads your sad news...
then open up the floodgates of your heart and watch your
love, your tears, your laughter flow like a river from head
and heart, through arm and hand.... filling the pen with
words that your fingertips will dance into a trail of love
notes...a symphony upon the sheet of paper you will fold
with care, seal with a kiss, and post in tomorrow's mail...
for how could you even begin to gather together your text
messages, turn them into treasured heirlooms that can be
tied with blue satin ribbon, and kept secretly tucked away
for a granddaughter's finding
her daughter surveys the stacks of beige cloth
neatly folded and tucked into the cedar-lined
shelves of a small closet, hidden under the stairwell
"what was she thinking," this once-a- girl,
now-a-woman, asks aloud to no one in particular,
standing back and appraising "just another"
cupboard waiting to be inventoried, and tagged,
for the estate sale at the end of the week.
how many shades of grayish-brown cloth could
one woman need, or want, she muses, and turns
towards the cabinet under the bay window...where
the silver candlesticks and Wedgewood platters
still wait for a special occasion to strut their stuff...
dismissing the "brown cloth" as undesirable
but i'd lingered with the carefully folded lengths
of linen...fine, soft, crisp, rough, silken...each a
different version of itself...Quaker plain and
Shaker honest....i'd reached into a treasure chest
of simplicity and grace...trailed a fingertip
along their folds and selvage...sigh, and in that
sighing, betrayed my love for a mother that
wasn't mine...
her mother had been a woman who loved nuance....
the subtle shifts in tone, texture, shade, and draping...
a woman who delighted in what was hidden to
the eye of a girl who'd always wondered why her mother
never wore purple, or fuschia, or peacock blue....
" i'd like these," I say quietly...and with the distracted
wave of her daughter's hand, they were no longer orphans...
and in some way...I could never explain... neither was i
seven stones...each a reminder of that summer we
packed the car...just the three of us...and headed east
the beatles "one" CD playing in an endless loop
until we all knew every word and had begun to
choreograph hand dances to "eight days a week" that
made us giggle through the entire state of pennsylvania
singing and sleeping and stopping for ice cream cones
we were mom and the girls on an adventure to the sea
new york, connecticut, rhode island, the bourne bridge
cape cod....bringing you back to the first home you knew
and the sound of gulls, and surf, and the lapping of
water against your ankles.
day after day we walked the beach, collecting stones,
transluscent as alabaster when wet, and soft as marble
in your small hands. mile after miles you would run
ahead, then turn back with a treasure for the small tin
pail we carried...until the sun was high and your skin
was pink...
a stone for the day we were caught in a rainstorm and
discovered the village library with its cozy armchairs
covered in pink chintz, and a section devoted to sea
stories...
a stone for those afternoons when you discovered how
far your hearts could stretch, how deep your love
could reach, and how big your family really was...
a stone for the morning a wave washed my book into the
sea, and you both laughed as I ran in to pull it from water
and dried it in sun...so that I could read those last seventeen
pages all wrinkled and salt bleached.
a stone for the night we sat on the seawall and watched the
moon rise over the ocean and paint a path of light all the
way to the edge of the world....each of you falling asleep
with your heads on my lap and my fingers in your hair
a stone for the day we followed a family of sea lions,
the three of us walking down the beach as they splashed and
wrstled in the water just beyond the breakers...
a stone for the everytime you held eachother as the
foam curled around your ankles and the waves rocked
your bodies back and forth in a dance of love...
a stone for sandcastles, and salty kisses, and the sound of
you sighing in your sleep after a long day of sun and
singing "yellow submarine" for the "millionth time"
a stone for the strength of those memories to carry us
through the storms of adventure, change, and growing
up far from the sea...
stone that I hold when you are not here...when a school
day seems too long to be away from the sound of
your laughter...stones that remind me... that
there was a magical summer when, like lemmings
we made our journey home to the sea and gathered
stones for remembering....
her little dress hangs waiting
on the small wooden hanger
by the wardrobe door
the palest slip of organza
confection, as light and airy
as cotton candy on a white
paper cone...
To be a flower girl is an honor,
she thinks to herself, as mother
ties her soft brown hair up in
curling rags while she sits still as the
bunny on the lawn beyond her
bedroom window
She dreams of nosegays and
white satin...a wreath of tiny violets
circling her curls...a shower of
rose petals fluttering around
her own "someday" wedding wishes
on this summer night under a
new moon....
tornado sirens wail like keening widows
at a wake, while rain falls in sideways
sheets washing windows deep under the
eaves for the first time...ever....
I look out and she is sitting there unhurried
unharried, un shaken...
what does she know, I wonder, as she dips
her beak for one more grain of millet, one more
black sunflower seed...that if she drops it, may
spring into the tall promise of a Kansas prairie
in August...one pixel of summer gold against a
backdrop of heat-shimmering blue Midwestern
sky...
does she know that to be taken by the wind is
to dance unbidden, that to fight the storm is
to deny the power of God to lift her higher, and
higher still, upon the thermals of something
swift and stronger than her own wings could
bear...
what does she know that brings such peace...
as she sits on the edge of the feeder and selects
another tiny seed...what does she know...that
if I listen I might hear...
"a strain, low, sad, and sweet whose measure
bind the power...
...'gainst which the winds and waves can shock
oh, nevermore..."
-M.B. Eddy
my mother had a hope chest made
of fragrant cedar with a small black key
that locked away all of her dreams of
monogrammed pillow slips, Reed & Barton
silver, peignoirs, and old lace...
my mother had a hope chest...a simple cedar
chest that eight children used as a low table for
building with blocks, eating dinner in front of
Ed Sullivan, and for sitting with her on a rainy
Saturday...watching her caress cedar-scented
blankets trimmed in heavy satin, and silver
iced-tea spoons with delicate, long-throated daffodils
for handles...
my mother had a hope chest...it was her place for
dreaming and for sharing her dreams with us...
it was as strong and invincible as her love,
and as full of hope as her dreams for each of us...
there was a time, when she was just
a girl, that I would find her spoon left
lying on the table, the arm of a chair,
the edge of her sandbox...a bowl of cereal
half-eaten lying nearby...and I would
sigh, tired and exasperated,
wishing she'd learn, once and for
all, that used spoons and bowls belonged
in the sink...
that was then...
but today I found a spoon, a bit of milk pooling
in its bowl, sitting on the table in a scattering of
errant sugar...
and smiled...
how could I have missed it then...
those days, not so long ago, days too wonderful
to realize "in the moment"
but seeing that spoon this morning I wanted to
leave it there forever, like a shrine,
to never move it, or let it be washed...to discover
it "left behind" over and over again...every day...
for the rest of time...
and I would still sigh...but this time...
with gratitude...
a random breeze blows in from the east
cool, wet, full of salt and something more
the weight of dark clouds that roll in from
far out at sea and hover just this side of
the horizon...heavy with sheets of rain that
will wash the beaches clean...
but there are no beaches here where corn
grows high and magnolia blossoms linger
into the month of may
and yet, sitting on our wide front porch steps watching
a bank of steel gray replace the midday blue
I can smell the salt-scented air of the gulf coast
and hear the call of gulls dipping towards
the foam-edged surf, looking for their next meal
yes, sometimes when a storm is brewing,
and the air is heavy with the echo of thunder,
I narrow my eyes toward the sound of seabirds and
for the briefest of moments, i can see the place
where the edge of the world meets the sky above
a sailor's tomorrow and beneath the shade of
dogwoods, i feel the white sand of spring break
between my toes...and smile.
it sat in the far corner of her potting shed
a little white step stool peeling from years
of being used in the garden...come rain
or shine.
there must have been a time when it was
taller, a small bedside table perhaps,
one that held a lamp, a clock, a book,
and a glass of water...
but somewhere on its journey from the
bedroom to the garden shed, someone
had cut down its legs, one, always a
bit shorter than the other three, and now
there is a charming lopsidedness,
perfect for the uneven rows of
soft black dirt between the strawberries...
last summer I visited her, and what she wanted
most was warm strawberries, fresh from
her garden, still smelling of soil and sun..
that old step stool fit across the fragile outline
of her narrow hips beneath bedsheets and soft quilts...
as lumpy and uneven as the topography of her garden
a tiny table for holding a saucer of strawberries
the perfect altar for her last morning meal...
I met him at the diner during an early December blizzard
I had just started a new pot of coffee and was wiping down
the counters after the dinner rush. The diner was quiet,
as quiet as the large flakes of snow dancing in the light
from the sign in front of the empty parking lot, outside
the wide windows that loomed above table-top jukeboxes
playing Crystal Blue Persuasion and Hooked on a Feeling...
I saw the headlights from his blue VW beetle slice through
the snow and pull into the space nearest the front entry
he came through doors announced by the sleighbells that
let us know when someone was coming or going...his
the collar of his army jacket pulled up high over a black
turtleneck sweater, jeans, boots and a wooden cane...his limp
as near the sound of a tear falling, as the lump that formed
in my tight throat with each tap along the black and white
tile floor.
His story had been told a million times by a thousand other
boys...the delta, schrapnel, a free ticket home...nothing the same...
his parent's had moved, school friends were in college...he
was different...inside...especially inside...he said with a look
of sad wearines and confusion written on every expression...
I listened until my shift ended and my apron was
hanging on the hook behind the stainless steel swinging doors
stamped with diamond-shaped pattern, each with a
steamed-up porthole window, and that barely masked
the echo of the cook's voice shouting at my replacement in Greek
We sat and talked until my dad arrived to pick me up, but not
before I invited him to dinner that Sunday afternoon....my dad would
like him...a vet and all...we'd talked about the war, and his desire
to move to rural Maine, start a farm, carve wooden toys,
and bake bread to sell at the nearest village store...
And for months, he taught me how....
when I was young the world was small
and my dreams were holdable
a featherbed with soft white sheets and a stack of books,
a lamp that I could turn on anytime I wished
and a nest of pillows to snuggle down in, on a rainy saturday
i wanted a wall, my very own wall for hanging sheets of
notebook paper filled with my own handwriting
poems, and quotes, and favortie definitions copied from
Bartlett's, and Webster's, Browning and Thoreau...
an attic room high in the trees with tall windows that
let in filtered light, and shutters for those bright summer days
when I wanted to pretend i was napping in a forest glen, or
hiding with the tartan-clad wallace clan beneath the roar and splash
of a waterfall deep in the scottish highlands...
I would rise on winter mornings and watch snowflakes, as large
as pure white butterflies, fluttering through a sky flecked with
magic....and take to my bed like a story princess...where I would
dream of a little room, where I was allowed to be me...
saturday morning...the sidewalk from
our house, to the library, is cracked and lifted by
the roots of ancient sycamore, oak, and maple trees.
"eyes up," my mother says, as I try to
finish the last few pages, of the last book,
I'd had stamped a week earlier
by Miss Bonnie, the libraian in the
children's section...my young heart's home...
I was now eight. And "eight" meant you could
take out twelve books at a time...on your own card...
I couldn't wait. I always ran out of books by
Saturday and had learned to pace myself so that
the final page lasted until we climbed the steps
in front of the big brick building in the town square
The air was warm with
the promise of late-spring-into-summer magic...
fireflies and lemonade, sleeping on the summer porch
and going barefoot in the tall grass...
Peonies burst like overweight duchesses after a
royal feast...pink silk and white satin in an endless layer
of petticoats....one upon the other...
But I could only think of one thing...twelve books...
twelves adventures
I would soon enter, savour, devour, and inhabit...
stories about horses, giants, fairies, mermaids,
princesses, knights, forests, and kings...
the scent of paper and the song of a date stamp...
manilla cards with lists of names...those who
have traveled the wizard's path before me...
Miss Bonnie congratulating me as I signed my
name in my best cursive, "you are now a library
patron..."
half a century later
I still am.....
when I was just a little girl
about four or five, we moved to
a farm in Iowa. We had cows and
chickens, and dad planted a big
garden with pole beans, and tomatoes
the size of melons, and potatoes
and peppers, and tiny heads of
cabbage which reminded me of
something that might blossom any day...
each morning I would look out of my
bedroom window while the moon was still
in the sky but the birds were chirping,
and I would see my dad bent over rows
of lettuce and carrots...pulling weeds and
eating warm tomatoes off the vine
as if they were apples plucked from the
highest branch of a gnarled tree.
in his back pocket, barely visible from
my second floor window, was a salt shaker...
he'd pull weeds for a while, reach down and
pour cool water over his hands from the old
wateringcan at his side, then reach across the
rows of spinach and mustard greens, to
pluck a ripe tomatoe from its small green cap...
some mornings it was all I could do to let him
be alone in the garden....but he was happiest there,
and watching him do what he loved most,
was even more lovely than
eating warm tomatoes for breakfast while
watching the sun rise....
we gather like school girls
grown women on a field trip for
tea and chocolate...
there is a tinkling of something light
and sweet, like powered sugar falling
on finely blown crystal and a voice
calls from somewhere secret, "hello.."
we are giddy with anticipation as
the scent of steeping tea and tempering
chocolate wafts through the air.
the crackle of spun sugar and the
someone softly humming from behind the
swinging wooden door....the whisper of
a Viennese waltz...
we are entering the land of confection,
the sacntuary of sweets...a place where
all women become girls, and teddy bears
at the tea party, are replaced by "best friends forever"
who have seen you through, heard your cry,
dried your tears, and told you "you can do it..."
lavender-infused dark chocolate truffles,
sea salt on milk chocolate caramels,
strawberrys and raspberries in fluted petals of
semi-sweet....oolong, earl grey, ginger peach...
and, most importantly, laughter....
laughter and tears...
my childhood was punctuated by
mornings filled with heavy white bowls of
hot cereal...grainy oatmeal or cream of wheat
that plopped and bubbled and simmered
on the stovetop while we set the table
with deep-bowled spoons and jelly glasses
half-full of orange juice we mixed in an
old yellow pitcher with a long wooden spoon.
on cold mornings before the school bus arrived
we held our bowls between cold hands
and let them warm us from the inside out
i liked mine with plump raisins and more
brown sugar than we were really allowed,
sprinkling it in lumpy spoonfuls from a blue-striped crock,
a pat of butter and a dash of salt...
i'd eat as slowly as I could, letting the hot bowl prepare
my small fingers for the chill of a winter morning at
the bus stop...the curve of its round warmth lingering
in the palm of my hand, like the memory of home
on a cold, rainy day at school...
it is just another summer day
but it is our day to pretend we
are girls again, with nothing to
do but play.
we don't know where we will go,
but we leave anyway.
the road is full of promise and
each small town a gift to be opened
as we stroll old streets and
dust-covered shelves of antique shops
and empty used bookstores
talking of nothing...and everything,
or not at all...
we come through doors that ring
like sleigh bells when we enter
and then we part to explore fragile tea cups
and old quilts, first editions, and
small vignettes of embroidered handkerchiefs
and old sheet music, yellow bread bowls
and sepia-toned photographs
but then one of us stumbles across a
wooden box of vintage silver spoons
a small cry of delight draws the other closer
in almost holy communion, like the kind arm
of an older sibling around the shoulders of
a younger child saying, I have found what we
were really looking for all along.
the tines of silver dessert forks,
spooning within the twisted sheets of a slender,
delicate slip of blue satin ribbon,
a handful of teaspoons that once stood erect in
heavy tavern mugs of coffee, a family...a place-setting
...of Rogers' sterling, refusing to be separated by time or
circumstance, estate sales or squabbling heirs.
we caress them, commenting on depth of bowl, intricacy of
pattern, balance of weight on the fulcrum of an exquisitely
designed handle...pure and satisfying as the word "good."
she will leave with a fine-boned tea cup and shallow saucer
kissed with rose buds and sweet william,
a staffordshire stamp in gold leaf on the bottom...
a translucent treasure that settles in the hand
like a perfectly weighted bird,
a feathered creature that coos of summer
when winter rages outside the frost-painted window panes
of her cottage on the high plains
long after I am gone.
I will leave with a sisterhood of spoons engraved with the
name of a tavern in Maine.
they will join a sorority of sterling sylphs i've gathered
into the spoon jar on my farmhouse kitchen counter.
and each time i select one, I will think of mountain days,
a river valley, and a friendship that stands the test of time...
hidden in the nutmeg seed,
a clove of garlic,
bay leaves dried for tomorrow's use...
is the secret that
each have a clear scent, a precise flavor,
a clarity of purpose...
I close my eyes and lift the lid
even before the seed is grated, I
know...
pumpkin soup, and quiche lorraine
i can taste them as surely as if they were
baking, simmering, stewing on
the old farmstove in the corner
the next jar takes me straight to naples and
a cafe near the mediterrenean sea. I can
feel the taunt skin of roma tomatoes and
hear verdi and puccini pouring from
the old victrola in the summer kitchen
the plumpness of a clove of sweet garlic between
my fingers...
and when the third jar releases her rich perfume
I am not a woman standing in an abandoned
prairie farmhouse before a shelf of forgotten
spices and herbs, I am a small girl sitting on the
counter of her own mother's kitchen learning that
brittle bay leaves come alive in red sauce
and that this is where a family is born...
in the scent of bay leaves, and garlic, and nutmeg
...grated for pie, or soup, or sauce...
and in a mother's encouragement
to close your eyes and breathe deeply
so that you will know
where each one fits...
today is my wedding day
something borrowed, something
blue...something old, something new...
my sisters will wear dresses of periwinkle
and no shoes....
i will wear a dress the color of sand....
the pale, sun-bleached sand of a summer's
day....
we will cross the boardwalk and let the
sea call us like baby turtles to our native soil
he will be there waiting with my brothers
and his mother
I have dreamed this day...forever...and a day
his niece will carry a pillow that my grandmother
made from an old pillowslip
one she trimmed with the battenburg lace
her own mother had carried in a small suitcase
from the "old country"...a someday heirloom
she sewed with tiny stitches
and filled with lavender...
all my hopes fill that pillow.
so, for me, hope carries the scent of
old lavender and sun-bleached linen...
this is where I will thread his wedding band
with satin ribbon and tie a soft bow,
then, I will wait by the sea
to slip it free from its anchor on linen
and lace... to place it where it
belongs...where it has always
belonged...
the night is far gone...
too soon
it seems as if it were all over, way too fast
his arrival at the door, my father's concern
my mother on the verge of giggling
like a girl....and he so handsome
with corsage in hand
my dress felt like fairy wings, dove's feathers and
butterfly kisses fluttering around me in
the colors of a faded heirloom rose
my mother wanted me to visit the shops and
try on newer dresses, ones that sparkled with jewels,
but i had always known what I would wear on
this magical night...i found it folded in an
old trunk with leather straps and brass fittings
her initials barely visible above the tarnished lock
but i was named after her, and so i knew the monogram
we shared...
she'd called it her honeymoon dress, part of
her trousseau, worn for dinners with the captain
and a baroness from Austria on their voyage
across the Atlantic. She had always dreamed
of London and the Kew Gardens,
Westminster Abbey, and tea in a Cotswold
cottage...and he made her dream come true...
he always did...
I always knew I would wear it for my first
dance, my first kiss, my first date...I always knew
when we were young
the desert was our laboratory
and were anthropologists
dad with maps and shovels
small picks and soft paintbrushes
old stories of saloons and brothels
where rustlers slept with
guns for companions and
an one eye on the door
he read of apothecaries and dispensaries
where old doc mcCafferty dosed men and horses
on the same elixirs...potions
poured from bottles of every
shape and
size.
we would map it out all week and
on saturday we would count out paces
from the large boulder near the riverbed
and begin to dig.
bottles of amythest, cobalt, the palest
sea glass blues and and greens...the red
sand of a southwest canyon our beach
of treasures
once home again, we'd wash, and rince and
polish them to place in a window so that
mother could imagine the sea when soft-hued
glass turned light into the colors of maine
and dream of gulls, and shells, and the
rhythm of surf and sand...the ebbing and flowing
of her heart's landscape
she weeps,
for all those years of
wasted moments
moment that were wasted,
wasted
wishing for
more
silence...
but, what is the silence,
what is the beauty of solitude
without a reason for its wanting
the laughter of her children, the
train at midnight coming into the station,
the rattle of carriages on the cobbles
just outside her window
the whistle of a tea kettle, the whispered
urgency of a daughter's eager demand for
just one more lullaby, a son's basketball
against the garden wall.
it is in the context of these rich life-noises...
the breathing and weeping,
the giggles in church, arguing from the
backseat of the car...that we find
the very things that make solitude rich with
promise...
but tonight she longs to be able to sweep the
silence out with last night's ashes
to hear her daughters secrets, her son's
loud music throbbing through the kitchen
walls.
to hear the radiators clank and the bathwater
running, her husband snoring from the arm
chair in the other room...
tonight, the clock on the mantle ticks slowly,
she dreams of what is never forgotten...and weeps
for the sounds she once thought were
not as full of divine music as silence
would have been...
she was wrong...
isadora...
remove your shoes mes ami
tonight we will dance
with our feet kissing the floor
we will remove our corsets,
drape ourselves in scarves and
tunics and we will fly...
let your body be a
paintbrush for all the colors of
your soul...
let it weep your anguish,
leap with delight, and sweep the clouds
from your day "on pionions of
joy"
so we remove shoes, that will take
forever to button without buttonhooks,
strip away stockings and petticoats,
to sing with our arms, and sculpt the air
with our bloomer-clad torsos...
oh isadora...
such freedom...
don't you have
anything with color in it
my daughters ask as they
search my closet for something
they think I might wear today...instead
of white
hmmm...no,
I like white shirts, and dresses,
skirts and sweaters, little white waistcoats and
vintage slips with bits of lace,
pale satin ribbons that droop with age
I like knowing that everything I own
will match...if not because of a similar color,
for lack of one. the palest shades of
blush and ecru, ivory and the softest
robin's egg blue.
colors that are as faded as my hair and
delicate as the fine lines and
tissue-paper skin I am beginning
to notice around my eyes
I no longer match my accessories to my
clothes, I now match my clothes to me...
it's just easier that way....
white hair with white linen, sand and
khaki for what has yet to change to white,
denim eyes with jeans and scarves in
shades of sea and sky, pale blush
and that wonderful "flesh" tone of
crayola fame...
each year I get closer and closer to wearing
a christening gown...every day...
ready each moment, to be baptized in Spirit,
and wedded to Love...
"dearest michael..."
she writes from the bank of
the seine on a cloudy may day
in paris...
"the days are long and dusty here
as refugees pour into the city from
every corner of the continent
they are hungry and tired,
hollow with fear and sorrow
i miss the rough wool of your
uniform and that funny way you have
of saying my name as if it is something
delicate you are holding on your tongue
i dream of indiana and your mother's
kitchen, and your father's garden full of
long beans and pink sweetpeas climbing
over white pickets near the mailbox where
your sister will pick up this letter
and you will know I am
out here...somewhere.....
i do not care that you will never see my face
or that your mother must read this to you...
I did not fall in love with your ability to see
trees, and trucks, and the color of the sky,
i fell in love with the way you saw into my
heart and led me out from the prison of my
terror.
the barrister you hired says that my papers
will come soon and that I will be able to
board the steamer in july, I will be there in
time for the pumpkins you have described.
I will be there to walk to you in a white dress
and say, "i do" in front of your family.
I will say it in English. I have been practicing
I love you,
Emilie
p.s. thank you for reading this to michael
my grandfather had an old
bucket he used to stir molasses
into oats for the horses,
to harvest tomatoes from the garden,
to gather kindling for the fire,
and bring in pine boughs for the
mantle at christmastime...
but in the summer,
his bucket was the place where babies
splashed on hot days under the willow tree,
it held a mountain of ice for rootbeers on
the fourth of july,
and when we came back from picking
potatoes in fields of black dirt,
his bucket was a washtub for our muddy feet.
then one day,
my grandmother asked me if I wanted
his pocketwatch,
the baseball signed by babe ruth,
a set of cufflinks, his collection of coins...
but all I wanted was the bucket
that rusty, dented old bucket
he'd sat beside while babies splashed,
and horses pawed the grass beside
the barn...waiting for
sweet oats and the familiar
comfort of his hand
there were lilacs that day
their heady scent drifted through the
open window on a midday's breeze
while I sat with her,
motionless on the edge of
her small quilt-draped iron bed.
we barely breathed as blade,
after blade, of tender grass
was carried to her for placement
each one offered like a holy
sacrifice on their bridal altar
then
without warning he fluttered
through the open casement to
take a narrow slip of pale, blue
ribbon from my daughter's
bureau....and was gone again
we watching as she wove a
sliver of something feminine
and lovely into her
nestling's cradle of straw...
ribbon, and
the scent of lilacs
at my grandmother's house there
were always books without dust jackets
their spines are still so beautiful to me...
I loved to run my fingers, gingerly,
across their
covers and feel the indent of
words and pictures, borders and
flowers, stamped on faded cloth
with my index finger I'd gently slide one from
its perch, and hold it in my palm watching
it fall open....pefectly balanced on thumb and
fingers, precisely weighted on a fulcrum of
wonder....I'd lift it to my face and breathe in
decades of children's dreams of adventure,
fantasy, mystery...
this scent is the perfume of my youth...
books...old books. books that once offered an
escape from the noise of a large family,
and the uncertainty of it all.
in books the world made sense. Sentences
had periods, names were capitalized,
heroes were good, and right was triumphant...
as a child, I only slept in a house, I lived
in books...
"bless me father,
for I have sinned..."
I say it over and over again with
a fervent reverence...I think I have it right...
my mother's pearls spilling
between my fingers
through praying hands
"....but I really haven't
...sinned, that is"
I am not a sinner
I am jsut a wisp of a girl
wanting to be holy
a child who dreams in
habits and cloistered cells
and spinning on a mountain top
before the convent wakes
I am not-yet-grown
and yet, I practice walking
noiselessly through the world
hoping to become
no more than a kind face
in a sister's robe and
a whimple
I am a sister of mercy
on saturdays
with an abbess for a mother
and a convent for a home
the speckled linoleum in our suburban
kitchen
is prayer-polished cobblestone
beneath my hands.
I accept my duties without resistance
as I am a postulant in training,
my nightgown a noviate's robes of innocence
as summer turns to fall
I harvest our garden and
bake grainy loaves of simple bread...
this is what they do...right?
I know my fate and
walk into it like a woman drawn
to deep waters...
eager to give up
fresh air
for gills.
to breathe holy water...
to climb every mountain,
to have confidence in sunshine...
to start at the very beginning...
to be
a sister,
a governess,
a wife,
a friend,
a mother,
a woman....
to be something
with meaning,
and to sing...
yes, I would also like to sing...
to sing
from a mountaintop
in a convent,
on a bus,
during a storm,
around a gazebo,
through a city,
for a captain,
with marionettes,
under the stars....
to God.
most of all,
she made me want to
sing to God...
