Missing My Dad…

Yesterday would have been my father’s 86th birthday.  Every once in a while when I call my mother I get my father’s voice on her answering machine; I’ve gotten to the point in my grief that my heart jumps with a smile instead of it shaking and jarring me. I’m glad my mother hasn’t changed it but I sure wish there was more. What I would give for more. My nephew gave him a tape recorder for his birthday a few years ago so my father could record his stories, but he never used it. I really wish he had.

The old phone message

survives;

I hang on the too short fragment

of your voice,

waiting,

longing for more,

unable to speak.

The silence that follows,

abrupt,

sharp,

final.

Beep.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Down 2

I couldn’t resist doing a different take after looking at some other people’s wonderful shots: These were taken a couple of years ago on a trip to Lookout Mountain in Tennessee with Chattanooga below…

And this is how we got there…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Down

I couldn’t choose one:

Hyacinths-too early!

What do you make of that??

Weekly Photo Challenge: Regret

Regret…in a bottle…in an ashtray…

When Winter Doesn’t Come…

It’s snowing lightly out my window today, but it is barely sticking to the ground. It has been an EXTREMELY mild and snow-free winter. Next to my driveway I have bulbs that are coming up (tulips and hyacinths), and in the fall my azalea popped out an extra bloom. It’s a very different year from the last.

This year summer and fall hung together;

Taking turns, day by day,

they held off winter.

Bonded, they confused the hardy plants,

who normally hunkered down and waited

as winter rode through town,

whooping and shooting

like a gun-slinging gang;

they would quietly shiver in the darkness unseen

with their hoarded food until it was safely spring.

This year the azalea let loose a bright flower

amidst its dark purple fall leaves, feeling the change.

This year is different, it seemed to announce,

a premonition of a toothless, gun-less

snow-free winter.

 

Speaking of Horses…

I’m finally reading “Seabiscuit.” (I know, I’m a few years behind.)  When I went to see the movie years ago, everyone I talked to who had read the book said it was a lot better, and they were right. It is very well-written and engrossing, and I’m really enjoying it.

The last remaining horse statue I own...

Aside from the writing and the history, the book is taking me back to my childhood when I was a typical 8 to 12-year-old girl, obsessed with horses.  I had horse statues and horse toys (the heck with Barbie, I had a wonderful plastic Palomino, complete with removable saddle and bridle).  I read countless library books and saw all the movies about horses: National Velvet, My Friend Flicka, and The Black Stallion, among them.  And I harassed my parents about buying me a horse.  My father (probably to shut me up) told me I had to wait until I was 11. Oh, I took things so literally back then.

On my 11^th birthday I went outside searching for my horse—was it in the garage? Not finding it, I went back inside and said, “Dad, I’m 11…where is my horse?”  He said, “They cost too much.” And that was that.  My father rarely disappointed me, but he did that day.  It was only recently I was talking to my mother about it and she told me he really did look into it and discovered that the cost of feeding a horse was way beyond what our large family could afford.

It was probably just as well.  My experience with horses in my life has actually been very limited and not necessarily the best.  I’ve only ridden them a handful of times in my life, including my wedding/honeymoon trip when my husband and I went on a horseback excursion in St Lucia. The horse in front of mine kicked me in the shin out in a rainforest.  By the time we got back to the barn, I had quite an egg on my leg and our wedding was the next day.  It took all afternoon in the cool pool to calm it down and leave just a very small bruise.

Things have a way of working out the way they should.  But I can still admire them from afar as the beautiful animals they are.

Hopping the Train

Wednesdays are the days I most want to hop the train.  My gym exercise is lifting weights (BORING); it is a slow day at work, and there’s nothing on TV in the evening I want to watch.  It seems to be the day nothing ever happens, so…maybe no one will miss me.

I can go to my favorite place in Qville: an open meadow I hike to near the top of a mountain.  There are large rocks to sit on at one edge, warmed by the sun, with a beautiful view. The birds are singing. There are tall flowering weeds: Queen Anne’s lace, cornflowers, and yellow flowers (I don’t know what they are, but they are pretty). If I’m quiet and lucky, I might see a deer at the edge of the woods.

There. .. It was a quick trip, but now I feel better.

A Poem about Reading

The previous post about reading a good book reminded me of a poem I wrote back in 2003.

 

The Reader

 

It’s so easy for me

to be lost in a book,

to pull on a novel character

like a change of clothes,

new and refreshing;

No matter how sad

their life may be,

I’m not me.

When I close

the book

I’m an awakened

sleepwalker:

I am placed

in my life

like a colorform

or a paperdoll;

as if I am teetering

on the edge of a cliff

and dare not move

until I touch

the harsh reality

of the world around me

and feel sure it can hold

the uncertainty of myself—

Lock me once again

into my own life.

Finding a Friend in a Book

I just started reading a book I purchased at a yard sale over the summer, a true bargain at two for a quarter. (The other book I picked was “Must Love Dogs”.)  Its title is “The Pull of the Moon” by Elizabeth Berg. It is the story of a 50-year-old woman going through menopause who goes on a trip to “find herself.”  The format is composed of “letters” to the character’s husband alternating with journal entries. The writing is vibrant and introspectively emotional; the images detailed and beautiful. As I read it I feel the bittersweet pang of writing envy, the not-unpleasant feeling of admiring the writing to the point that I wish I had written it: the ultimate compliment.

The book was published 15 years ago, but for me, it is as if its character/author was sitting down and having lunch with me right now, and I feel blessed. I feel as if she is giving me a much-needed hug, reassurance, and laughter; it is a wonderful relief and joy. The author may be 10 years older than me, but for right now, she is the same age. She is telling me that I’m okay and there’s nothing wrong with me. For this moment in time, she is my friend. For someone else picking up the book 10 years from now, she will once again be the perfect age and a perfect friend. I SO love books!!

At the Back of the Closet…

I dug these boots out of the back of my closet.  I’m trying to clean things out..the usual New Year’s resolutions.  I’d probably keep them for a Halloween costume or something if they still fit, but they are WAY too tight.  Before discarding them, I took a trip down memory lane and decided I would give them a little “memorial”; a photo and an off-the-cuff poem…

Viva Le 80s

The boots were ripped from a dark back closet corner;

layers of dust had dimmed them some,

decades converted playful to garish.

In their heyday

they were club fodder, party wear, perfect companions

for a young woman’s feet as they danced the night away,

hugging and supporting them,

best friends through twenty-something dramas,

crushes, lost boyfriends, flip-flopping passions.

But maturity and years, life’s weight,

layered on and the boots got tight, were obsolete;

they became jokes, banished ghosts of youth.

Back in the light, they need a new home,

a new friend,

New retro-chic feet.