Boogeyman - Michael Lisboa

“Why am I awake?” I thought.

I was groggy. I rolled over to check out the green LED display of my alarm clock and been stunned to read 12:34 on it. I’d gone to bed a scant two hours before, yet I felt like I’d been sleeping for hours.

I’d had strange and vibrant dreams. Something about a family portrait when I was younger, except there was a lion in it. Another about sex with a woman with a half-shaved head. And yet a third about urinating for what felt like an hour. This last was no surprise now that I was awake. My bladder felt like a bulging water balloon.

I made my way down the hall to the restroom careful not to wake the kids. It was my weekend with them. Tim, 7 going on 12, and Victoria just turned 3 and blessedly sleeping long, full nights.

I sat down on the toilet. Many men consider this a sign of weakness for reasons I don’t understand. I consider it a sign of cleanliness. Get closer to your target, make less of a mess. Seems simple enough to me. Immediately after I sat down, I heard a scratching at the bathroom door directly in front of me. Marcus Aurelius, the cat. It would only get worse if I didn’t let him in. He loved rubbing his head against my knees while I sat in there, regardless of what kind of business I was doing and would not be denied.

I leaned forward and cracked the door. I’m not sure about what happened next, so here’s my best recollection: Instead of cat’s paw, something akin to a lobster’s leg loudly onto the white tile of the bathroom floor. Before I could register a reaction, another appeared beside it and then a third. Jesus Christ, how big is that cockroach? I thought. I tried leaning forward to slam the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Whatever belonged to those 3 enormous insectile legs was strong enough not to let itself be crushed between door and jamb. I had however managed to pin in between the two. Sensing my intent, the hardened legs began hurriedly scratching at the floor. Whatever it was wanted to get in or out and I didn’t want to find out until I had my pants somewhere other than around my ankles.

I stood up from the toilet, careful to keep my weight against the door. In retrospect, I’m both aghast and amused that my overriding thought at the time was keep that thing away from your penis, Dan. I had 2 relatively helpless children sleeping 15 feet away and I was worried about my johnson. I’m not sure who would have more to say on that subject, my ex-wife or Freud. Especially considering that once I got up and got my pajama bottoms pulled up with my free hand, my precious manhood was now armored with all the protection that an 1/8 of an inch of 100% cotton could provide.

Sensing an impasse perhaps, the intruding legs had stopped their furious clattering against the tile. I had to know what I was up against. I had thought cockroach before, but really, what cockroach has foot-high legs? Now that I was really awake, I realized my folly and decided I was in dire need of a weapon. The toilet brush seemed ineffectual. The plunger slightly less so. The only other potential blunt instrument within reach was the shower curtain rod. Still leaning against the door (the more I regarded those legs, the more intent I was on not letting that thing move until I was armed), I reached up with my right hand and yanked on the shower rod. It wouldn’t budge. It was probably never going to budge. Two years back, I’d redone the bathroom. As part of that makeover I’d opted for the fancy convex curtain rods one sees in hotels. To mount it, I’d drilled into studs on both ends. To bring it down, I was going to need more force than I could muster from my half-lean against the door. The plunger it was.

I was just able to reach it’s wooden handle with the tips of my fingers. Gingerly at first, then firmly I took in my grasp. I placed it underneath my foot and unscrewed the handle from the rubber sucker at the end. I heard something and looked down to see one of the legs tapping impatiently, like the grotesquely manicured nail of the world’s most horrific DMV employee. Child, you best have brought your birth certificate if you don’t want to get back in that line.

I had been breathing heavily before, but now I panicked. Whatever was on the other side of this door was demonstrating impatience. I had coped with my relative nudity. I had coped with the alien presence. I had even coped with its relative indestructibility against the pressure of the 200 pounds of weight I had thrown against the door. I was not prepared to cope with its peevishness.

At that I threw open the door and swung down toward the... the thing... with all my might. I landed a solid blow to no avail. The plunger handle snapped and went flying. This fight was over before it had begun and the thing knew it. I knew it knew it because it proceeded to tell me so.

“Really, Dan, that’s going to leave a bruise,” it said in a bored, patrician voice. “Did you really get a glimpse of these legs and think you were going to subdue me with... what was that? A toilet plunger.”

I sat back down on the toilet. I was staring at relatively intact (completely intact except for the bump that was rising where I had whacked it) human head resting on foot-long insect’s legs. I didn’t know what was about to happen, but I knew it wasn’t going to matter if I was sitting or standing.

Boogie, Man - Camilla Basham

Just hanging with Jack;
thinks he’s Dean Moriarty;
dressed all in black;
sipping a brew in a smoke filled room;
rolling the dice;
hoping it lands on seven;
rolling up to the bar;
hoping he lands on a babe.
He breaks out his moves;
she’s hot and blonde.
I’m straining to see them through the fog of smoke;
can’t tell if he’s making progress.
Just then, man, she lifts her tiny manicured hand
and smacks him across the face.
I almost spit out my beer.
And there he comes;
sauntering back to the table
with a sheepish grin on his face.
He puts out his cigarette;
runs his hand through his hair and exclaims,
“This place is a dive. Let’s boogie, man.”
Look at him.
Even with the hand mark from some hot blonde
embedded on his face
he still thinks he’s Dean Moriarty.

On the Radio - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

The radio is small, square and white. It sits on a shelf above my grandfather’s shoulder and plays the news while we eat supper. Stories of the war in Europe and England paper the background, ``Today, U.S. forces…’’

The radio is in the car, a silver grille set into the dashboard of our black Buick with three holes in the hood. It is hot, and the car is parked in the garage. My older brother and I sit with the carved wooden garage doors flung wide as are the doors of the car, spread like wings for take-off, while he listens to the Brooklyn Dodgers 2,000 miles away. He was a fan before we left New York for New Mexico and follows the team from the only famly radio that can get the broadcast from Dodger Stadium. I am allowed to keep him company if I carry out my job of sitting on the passenger side with my big toe pressed against the little knob of the door light to keepit off. If it is left to shine at the same time the radio is on, it will burn out the car battery and earn us scoldings and trouble from our father. I am not really interested in baseball but I am thrilled to be allowed to keep company with my brother who is three and a half years older and lofty, or charming, as the mood strikes him. This is a major act of sibling kindness.

The little black radio sits on the shelf behind the toilet, far enough so I can’t reach it and electrocute myself as I lie in the bathtub, submerging as much of me as I can below the tepid water. We have a small hot water heater and the hot water runs out quickly, but I am determined to stay there until the end of ``Mr. and Mrs. North’’ and ``The Fat Man’’ whose show is introduced by the sound of him stepping on the scales which tick up and up and up to: 300 pounds!

The radio is on in the great wooden trastero, the cabinet, that holds the first high fidelity set in town, shipped from the East. My father on the couch listening to a recording of Wanda Landowska, the great harpsichordist, playing Bach. My mother, who hates the harpsichord, is in retreat at the other end of the house reading with the bedroom door closed. She is with him through the radio broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera which plays every Saturday afternoon and leaves when he putson Landowska.

The radio is on in my husband’s earbuds as he sits at the Giants game in his season seats, high above the Bay with a view of Oakland, the Bay Bridge, the ferry that brings fans from the north. He likes the commentary of the radio announcer because he hears information about the players and the history of games. At home, he does the same, preferring to hear the radio and see the screen with a lag of a few seconds, the radio telling the plays before they appear on television. He also takes walks with the games playing into his ears, making conversation with him like talking to a dear, absent-minded, slightly deaf person, requiring careful enunciation and sometimes a touch on the sleeve to get his attention. At least, to keep him company, I don’t have to keep my big toe on the light switch.

On the Radio - Julie Farrar

Deep in Texas. The empty plains of Kansas. Highways of Oklahoma. The cornfields of Iowa. When I was a college student in northeast Missouri working late into the night on a research project for my history seminar or on literature paper, I could put my clock radio close to a window, turn it just so, and pick up radio programs from all across the Midwest and the plains. Bored truckers wanting some Don Williams’ “Livin’ on Tulsa Time,” abandoned lovers longing for the aching sound of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine,” someone on the third shift hoping for an energy shot during the 3 a.m. lunch break with Alabama’s “Forty Hour Week (For a Livin’).” A friend at school in Iowa told me about an NPR radio program he listened to every day at lunch. They read, yes read, the classics on air Monday through Friday for an hour until the story was done. This week Dickens’ David Copperfield, next week Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If the weather was bad, I’d miss a chapter or two, but it was a wonderful break in the day just to hear the words of those writers read aloud. As Nanci Griffith sang so aptly, “When you can’t find a friend, you’ve still got the radio.”

Sometimes the best part of a road trip is still trying to find the gems of the local airwaves. Somewhere around Lake Barkley, KY on the I-64 and I-24 routes south from St. Louis to Atlanta, if I’m driving on the right day at the right time I can pick up a local bluegrass program that does what I remember radio doing all the time I was growing up. It introduces you to music and musicians you haven’t heard before and tells you the story behind the music. You learn who played on the cut, who was the biggest musical influence of the artist, what musical path did the artist travel before he got to that particular song at that particular stage of his career. My kids stare at me in slack-jawed boredom when I try to tell them about a time when there were people known as DJ’s who were the absolute professors of musical culture in America. They programmed their own music based on what was interesting and what was musically valuable, not what SoundScan or a generic programmer in New York told them to play. They educated us about what we were hearing. My kids hate the radio, though, and only plug into their iPods because, like me, they’re sick of hearing the same five artists played in rotation all day every day.

When my son was younger he found “Weird” Al Jankovich on MTV when it still played music videos. But I can tell him about radio programs like “The Dr. Demento Show” where Al first found his calling. He loved listening to “Purple People Eater” and “Monster Mash” just like I did, I tell my son. Radio actually dared to play music like that all night long – with barely a commercial introduction. So I go through my music collection and show my kids all of the great music in the world that they’ll never hear on the radio. And some days I get them to sit up and take notice. My son has Johnny Cash singing “Personal Jesus” playing right next to Frank Sinatra doing a little Cole Porter right next to his ubiquitous Eminem. And on their computers they now have Pandora Radio bookmarked because someone out there remembered what it was like when radio was all about finding new music and connecting it to the old. You could even find Nanci Griffith there – but you’ll never hear her on radio today.

On the Radio - Melody Cryns

The radio blasted Led Zeppelin music as we bounced down the road in the Star Cruiser, me and all the kids. Sometimes the radio blasted Beatles music, or the Who, or Pink Floyd, but right now, “Been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely lonely time!” blasted on the radio as the Dodge Aires Wagon that needed shocks and a muffler careened down the road, the teenagers and baby Megan strapped in her massive carseat yelling and singing along as I drove and Megan in her childish voice shouted, “The riva, mommy, let’s drive by the riva!”

“We are driving by the river Megan,” one of the older kids said, and Megan giggled and laughed.

Someone had hung a wind chime on a hook that was most likely once used for hanging clothes in the old car so it jingled as we drove along and made a tinkering noise that seemed to blend with the radio music. Peace and love stickers adorned the back of the Star Cruiser, the old Dodge Aires Wagon, which sometimes I was convinced made me a magnet for cops who stopped me for every little thing, a burnt out light, whatever. It wasn’t until years later that I would learn that my 15-year-old son took the Star Cruiser out a few times on “joy rides” with all of his teenage friends while I slept…never messing the car up, but still!

But today was a glorious cool day as I drove the Star Cruiser with all of my kids down River Road right outside Salem, Oregon. The kids loved this road especially because of all the rolling hills and every single time I drove across one of the small hills, it felt as if the car was about ready to fly and take off into outer space, thus the name of the car.

The radio always played in the car, whether it was the Star Cruiser or the red Ford Escort wagon I had before the Star Cruiser, and I still remember all three of my kids when they were much younger swaying in the back seat to “Hip To Be Square.”

The Led Zeppelin song ended and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird began to play, the familiar beginning riffs filling the car, “If I leave her tomorrow, would you still remember me…’cause I’m as free as a bird now and this bird you cannot change!” Everyone knew all the words as the car leapt over another small hillside and everyone in the car laughed and I wondered if this was truly safe and hoped the car wouldn’t fall apart, but it seemed sturdy enough.

I didn’t know at the time that less than a year later, I’d sit in the Star Cruiser in the middle of the night,,, right after my shift at Hollywood Video, and I’d listen to the radio – to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird and think of my mother and say, “It’s okay Mom, you can go now” and two days after that I’d be riding around with a metal box in the way back – that was “Grandma’s Ashes.” We had them for a short time before our ceremony on the beach when we scattered mom’s ashes into the ocean.

But for now, it was a beautiful, happy day in the Star Cruiser, the car my kids loved best, that I kept until it almost fell apart, and was able to afford a “nicer car” and the Star Cruiser went to where all good spaceships go when they retire and when the teenagers are no longer teenagers and Megan is no longer a baby.

On the Radio - Anne Wright

Harvey liked to clean motorcycle parts in his workshop in the garage. It was his way of getting out of the house, and he always felt like he’d accomplished something when the rag was full of black grease and the pieces of his motorcycle engine sat arranged, lovingly, in a straight line on the battered bench.

Uncle Bob had given Harvey the motorcycle. Actually it was a couple of cardboard boxes of oily blackened parts and a pile of wheels and a dusty frame that had sat in Bob and Louise’s screened in side porch. The people who cleaned out the house after they died had instructions to call Harvey to come get the stuff.

Harvey and his wife Elizabeth both worked during the week. She was a night administrator at the hospital and he helped in the accounting department of Smith’s Family Clothing. Sometimes they met at the restaurant to have dinner, but other than that Harvey was either asleep or thinking about the motorcycle in the garage when Elizabeth was home. He liked it that way, just like he found peace and quiet in his little office at work, with the radio turned low so only he could heard the songs.

Favorite Whine - Donna Shomer

We didn’t receive your abstract
We didn’t get your phone call
We have misplaced your telephone number
your email, your address, your vital statistics
your medical records.
You, on the other hand,
have lied to the receptionist
misplaced the traffic ticket
forgotten the appointment,
forgotten jury duty, your birthday,
the pledge of allegiance
the Lord’s prayer
your own age,
the whole idea of it.

Favorite Whine - Bonnie Smetts

Summer wore on and there’s one thing that Sissy kept saying to me, “Ain’t no boys around here.” She’d say ain’t like she’s from here and I’d laugh. But she must have kept that up with her grandma and granddaddy because before you know it, she’d come get me on her red bike and then one of the grand’s would be dropping us off in town for a few hours. The longer I’d known the Baptists, the more surprised I’d get with them. Sissy and me loved going to the diner. Who’d have guessed I’d be working there a few years on. So one of the grand’s would drop us off with just enough money for a Coke or something. The diner had set up tables out to the side of the place and that way they could say no kids could sit in the diner. You bought your Cokes and then you’d go sit outside with who’d ever come by.

Now having Sissy with me changed things in Nordeen, but not all at once. “Who’s that?” Sissy would point out the cutest boy she could find. I knew too much about each of them, remembering every single bad thing they’d said to me, but I tell her who’s who.

“OK, that guy, the one with the striped shirt, that’s Jackson. He’s real popular and he’s a jerk.” I had to be honest but sometimes I tried not to tell her too much.

And at first, Jackson and Judd and the rest of them laughed at me, at us. But then they took a little bitty interest in Sissy. Even with those teeth of hers, she was an attraction. Not that anybody new in Nordeen wouldn’t be an attraction. But she was a genuine attraction, new and a pretty girl. And so one day after not too many trips to town for drinking Cokes, and one of the boys comes over to our table.

“Rawling, who’s your friend.” That was as original as it got. And like I did the first time Sissy came to our church when I was going to church with the Baptists, I’d introduced Sissy to the class.

“This is my friend, Sissy. She’s here from Chicago.” I’d always add that because it seemed then that I knew where Chicago was, and this big city was some part of me.

Now Sissy’s a light as a butterfly but she’s no dummy. She’d flirt with Jackson, and then the next time we’d be there, she’d ignore him. I don’t where she learned all this. I gotta say I was a little worried when I saw this side of her. It’d suited me more if we’d just gone back down to the creek to eat our oranges. But Sissy told me that it was time for me to grow up. But I’d been grown up for a while and I’d seen more than enough about what it was like to be grown, and I just wanted to stay down there by the creek.

Wine in a Box - Chris Callaghan

I buy my wine in a box, a nice Chardonnay from Franzia. I didn’t even know that these things existed until I began running white water rivers in 1991. The first time I rowed the Green River in Utah I learned more than just how to get my rubber raft downstream right side up.

There are no 7-11’s on the Green, so anything you will need in the next ten days after you launch had better be in your waterproof boat box. Since big rapids are notorious for snatching things off your body or your boat, make sure everything has a strap or lanyard and is secured. Always carry spares. For instance, if you can’t see without your glasses, tie them onto your face, ditto your hat.

Lost your hat in that last rapid? Check the boat box for another. Did the batteries die in your flashlight? There’s more in the box. Lost your sunscreen overboard in the last water gun fight? More in there.

Another practical rule on rivers is that everything you carry in, you must carry out, including trash and human waste.

This is an important factor to keep in mind when provisioning for a trip. Rule # 1 is: no glass containers. We compact our trash using foot power into old army duffels, after every meal. Plastic containers can be smashed flat, we cut the ends out of metal cans and stomp on them, extraneous paper can be burnt in the camp fire. But glass is heavy, can’t be compacted and might shatter. This is not something you’d want on your inflatable rubber raft.

On that first trip, I never saw the ‘box’ of box wine, those got left at home, too bulky. What I saw was the naked Mylar bags that are inside the box. Each bag has it’s own attached spigot and they are so malleable, they’ll fit in any boat box or cooler. We label them with magic markers as to color and flavor. And when they’re empty, they smash up into a compact ball as small as your fist. Very practical. Also each bag holds the equivalent of three bottles of wine, which is a good thing for me as I love wine and hate to run out.

In the seventeen years that I’ve been running rivers, I haven’t made one trip without box wine, so as well as being practical, they hold a lot of memories for me. I row the Green almost every year and have floated and rowed down many of the rivers of my dreams, including two spectacular eighteen day trips on the Grand Canyon. They don’t call it the Grand for nothing.

Every night, on every river, we had box wine with dinner and around the camp fire later.

So tonight when I turn the spigot on the box of wine in my refrigerator maybe I’ll think of some of those camps and hear the roar of the rapid just above it. And maybe I’ll lift my glass in a toast to all the rivers I’ve known.

Favorite Whine/Wine - Randy Wong

4:30 PM – Hey guys! Are we still on after work? I haven’t heard! Text me back! I didn’t get the invite, but I heard! Is that cool?

4:45 PM – Still haven’t heard! Ignoring me? LOL. Been waiting outside for 15 min. I will wait for you guys inside.

5:00 PM – Sitting at the bar. Opened a bottle of wine. Starting without you. LOL.

5:45 PM – Been almost an hour. Something wrong? Where is everybody?

6:20 PM – ½ done with 1st bottle. People around me are getting concerned. So am I. Did I do something wrong? You would tell me if I did something wrong, right? You would tell you old buddy at work, right?

7:10 PM – OK .. Mebee I shoulda asked. Ya know. 2 be sure that i was inviteed. I thgth were kewl. Arnt wee kool?

7:38 PM – FINE your not showin up! Wtf?? Shoulda called .. somebody??

7:58 PM – Ur ess hose! All off U! U R jellus!! ahnewit!! Ths was aall alie! A kumpleeet LIIEE!!

8:07 PM – um alone … im sorry … pleez cumover? Pleeeezz??!?

8:13 PM – d ali dfl d fk yu knw azc d

8:18 PM – Hi. This is the manager of the bar. Your friend has passed out. If no one comes to pick him up in 20 min, he will be hauled off.

Heat - Carol Arnold

Listen to me, he says. I want to take off your clothes. He looks out the window at that huge cheese ball moon hanging there so sad in that big black sky.

No I say.

Why not? You’ll like it. We’ll just sit here in the moonlight naked. It’s a good night for it.

He’s right about that. It’s hot. Too hot. I’d like to take off my clothes but he’s just so, well, old. Why would I want to sit with him in the backseat of his T Bird naked looking at the moon? I like the car and all, but he has a grey mustache, just like my grandpa. I haven’t sat naked with any boy since Jimmy and I played doctor that time, let alone one with a grey mustache.

Maybe we could go swimming in the creek after, he says.

After what? I say.

You know.

No I don’t.

Well, if you don’t know I can’t tell you.

I like the idea of going swimming, letting the cool water slide over my naked body. I like that feeling, just floating downstream in that green water to where the tree overhangs the creek. That water is the color of my sister’s ring, Emerald, she said. She got it out of a Cracker Jack Box. It was real pretty, shiny and glowed in the dark. I could pull myself out there under that big tree, lie on the bank, smell the stars, think about my sister’s ring. She’d be 15 now, three years older than me. If she wasn’t dead that is. I wish she was here to tell me what to do. I miss her.

Heat - Katie Burke

The heat and the dust – not just any dust, but that microscopic, alkaline, Burning Man dust, that darts into every pore and nests there for posterity – were stifling. I was sweating, caked with metallic crud posing as dirt, and tired of trying to dodge the sand dunes and divots, which rose and sank to meet me no matter which trail I attempted.

My biking partner was a nice, nerdy guy, and this made me angry. I’d finally formed a camp of my good friends, so this was supposed to be the Burning Man experience I’d always dreamed of celebrating.

In 2004, four years before, I’d been to Burning Man for the first time. It was a cherished memory: temperate weather, as desert climates go; smooth bike paths on which I gained speed enough to make my bike commutes across the playa worthwhile; and I was in heat, all right, but only the good kind. My playa buddy back then was a fun, sexy, creative guy I’d barely known from the city, but with whom I became intimately – or at least carnally – familiar on the playa that year.

The bumpy roads of 2008 were explained by rains that had come just before we’d all descended. The combination of water and alkaline produced an unworkable effect: muddy clumps that worked like quicksand on a bike tire, which weren’t readily available to the rider’s eye. Bike rides across the playa that year wasted time: no one could gain traction for longer than 20 seconds or so, before hitting a divot (by day or night) or a dune (by night only).

Those friends I’d gathered this year, after waiting four years for the right opportunity to go again, had scattered like frightened ants, the moment our caravan had arrived at our campsite. This left me with a literal stick in the mud, a nice guy who bored me, the co-worker of one of the scattered ants.

When I scratched my cornea and had to avail myself of the medical tent, reminiscent of TV’s M.A.S.H. – except with casualties of bad acid trips, rather than battle, for my fellow patients – I knew I’d never return to Burning Man. I cursed the fact that my magical memories of a sexy guy, a powerful “letting go” ritual at the Burning of the Man fire, and all-night-long dancing at the playa’s hottest makeshift nightclubs, had been tainted by this.

Never mind that my “Burning Man Soul Mate,” whom I’d summoned by applying for him at Costco, the matchmaking camp that promised love in bulk, came to find me in the medical tent. A romantic gesture and a charming, Australian accent made him seem gorgeous, though my saline-drip-occupied, cornea-scratched eyes could not be sure. “Katie?” Asked a male version of Olivia Newton John in Grease. “Yeah?” “I’m your soul mate!”

My campmate Kim and I would laugh later, about how your soul mate comes when you’re not looking; how love is blind; etc. She confirmed his sexiness, and, always a champion for love, she’d been the one to send him to the medical tent when he’d come to the camp to find me: “Look for the cute blonde who can’t see,” she’d told him.
Alas, even the blind run-in with my Burning Man Soul Mate could not entirely console my overheated, rust/dirt-covered body or weary mind. It was time to go home – just in time to miss a violent, miserable dust storm that forced everyone, Burning-Man-wide, to take refuge in her/his respective camps – and leave my wild playa days to two opposing memories.

This I concluded in my Burning Man diary, a spiral notebook I bought in Reno, where the nerd and I stayed in different hotel rooms of the same hotel, and I celebrated air conditioning and a clean, temperate bath. The heat safely contained outside my hotel room door, I’d never engulf myself in it, with only the shade of a paper-thin tent, again.

Shoes - Carol Arnold

If anyone had told me I’d marry a shoe salesman, I would have told them they were as crazy as my father who once told my mother, just before he walked out, that she might as well marry the cat for all the attention she paid to that old tom. Thinking about it though, marrying the cat doesn’t seem so bad. At least he had a silky head that you wanted to stroke, and a long striped tail that stood up straight. Marrying Ronald is another thing entirely. I never want to stroke his bald old head, and nothing on him stands up straight, if you know what I mean.

What would you do with a man who comes home smelling like other people’s feet? It’s the question of the century why I did marry him. He’s pretty good at foot massage, I must say that, and the fact that I like that better than the other things he thinks he’s good at, should have given me a clue. Ronald rubs away on my tired old feet just like they’re Cinderella’s or something. I have to give him credit for that because my feet look more like the wicked stepsisters’ feet. They look like a pair of gun boats my father used to say. He was in the Navy so he should know.

My father thought it was a good idea for me to marry a shoe salesman. He’ll always keep you supplied, he said, he’ll always know where to get those size 15 triple A shoes. I wished he wouldn’t have talked about my feet so much, how ugly they were flapping there at the bottom of my legs which in and of themselves weren’t so bad. If I didn’t have these feet my legs might have qualified for a Betty Grable contest or something. I heard my father talking about her once, how he’d like to have those gams wrapped around him. I was jealous of Betty Grable. I thought I would like to wrap my gams around my father, not knowing at the time what gams were. When I think about it now, I want to throw up. For one thing, how could anyone’s gams fit around my father? He was so fat he could have been the blimp to my gun boats. No wonder my mother paid more attention to that old tomcat. Maybe I’ll get a cat for Ronald, a sweet little thing with dainty feet. But I’d miss those foot rubs. Yes I would.

Shoes - Donna Shomer

The room – a scene of last night’s
affair – it could be passion
or foul play.
It tips off the canvas towards
the viewer – as if everything might
slide to the museum floor at your feet.
The alarms would go off and the
dour watchman would scold you or worse.
The other museum-goers would scowl
or ‘tisk’ under their breath or giggle
uncontrollably there are wilted flowers
and tipped glasses and clothing pitched here and there
and shoes at the very corner.
They will drop first, for sure.

Shoes - Bonnie Smetts

It was a busy week for me at the diner, not that I’d asked for it or anything. The night after I’d had my conversation with Randy and she promised me she’d do right, I was doing my cleaning up late when the little bell jingles telling me and Raulo that somebody’s in our place. I look up because I was bending down below where the coffee machine sits, I got to sweep down there because the coffee’s always falling down like snow there, so I look up and There’s Roy. Now I hadn’t seen Roy since that sweet night after my momma’s funeral. Didn’t expect to see him for along time, just because that’s the way it is with us and the way it shall be, forever. I’m not fooling, I’m not a fool.

So I must have been looking at him like, what in godsaname are you doing here, when he says, hey baby.

“Baby, why you calling me baby all of a sudden?” I’m not happy to see him.

“Hey, I need you tonight,” he says. That’s when I’m fully standing up and I see that Roy’s lit up like something else. He’s buzzing inside with something going on. He’s got a wild look that I’d never quite seen so wild.

“Roy, what you been doing?” I’m kind of frightened by him now and I’m glad the counter is blocking me from him. He comes right toward me. “Baby, I just wanted to see you, we got some business to do.”

“Roy, we got no business. You know our routine. We’re the best of friends, right? And we don’t do nothing except for the exceptions. Right?”

He’s crazy, he’s coming toward me making his way stumbling like a bull toward that little passage way between two sides of the counter that leads to those swinging doors and the kitchen.

“Roy, you gotta stop. You gotta get a hold of yourself.” Then he’s on me he’s taking me behind my waist and pushed me up against the counter and I feel the coffee machine, those spigots pushing in my back, and I’m wondering if I can get a hold of one of my shoes to hit him in the head or something. I’m pushing at him. “Roy, stop it. Get a hold of yourself now. Stop it.”

A coffee pot falls on the floor, and I think maybe I can get that and I’m screaming and wiggling like a snake caught by a bunch of mean kids and right then, Raulo opens the door.

He’s standing there, as bronze as his Maya ancestor’s I’d learned he had. Raulo’s not big, about as tall as me, but he’s tough as anyone, I’m guessing, seeing how he got to Nordeen and seeing how he stays alive here.

Roy stopped and the two of them stared hard. “Go.” That’s all Raulo says, he’s checking with me with his eyes, Yes. I want this guy to go.

And then Roy makes a lunge at Raulo, but the amazing thing is, Raulo just steps aside and let’s Roy fall. Now Roy’s banged up his head and it banged a tiny bit of sense in to him. How can this be the same man that was so sweet to me the night after I left my momma in the funeral home to never been seen again.

Shoes - Mark Maynard

My Vans were the first pair she chose. She rooted into the right one like a pig seeking truffled toe boxes. I knew that what is loved is soon chewed, but she seemed to leave the canvas alone except to bury as much of her head and body into my 8 1/2s as she could. After a quick walk to her potty spot, Rosie, our new 8 week old Labradoodle decided on my wife’s running shoes as her new litter mates. Later, my flip flops, placed by the door for the easy on, easy off convenience for late night potty runs, became her fickle favorites.

Our black stone entry has a wood bench facing the front door and various pairs of shoes belonging to four different humans are lined underneath the bench since it is a de facto house rule that shoes don’t go past the black border of the entry – especially when there is still snow on the ground outside. There are, at any given time, kids’ Vans, dad’s Vans, mom’s running shoes, flip flops, snow boots, slip ons, lace ups and laceless orphans.

Rosie seems to think that she has rediscovered her litter mates and can be found curling up on shoe row with a new partner each time. Her glossy black coat blends perfectly with the glossy black stone and, after dark, we all must be careful not to carelessly slip our socked feet into a doodle dozing in one of our kicks.

From the size of her paws, it won’t be too long before she will be able to slip her own feet into my son’s skate shoes or his brother’s soccer cleats and march through the house clomping on the hardwood floor. I’m a little afraid that she may even be able to slip her paws into a pair of my boots some day and challenge my authority as the alpha male of the house simply by walking a mile in my shoes.

Until then, she is permitted to find the perfect pair that seems the most comfortable in terms of padding, sole, scent and just that certain flair that puppy’s seeking out shoe dens look for. I’m waiting for the inevitable destruction of the first pair of shoes hiding beneath the bench and the odds are stacking in favor of that pair belonging to me. So I offer up my shoes to Rosie and know that one day I will slip my bare feet into a favorite pair of shoes and find something completely unexpected inside, left to me with her compliments.

Shoes - Katie Burke

My mom brought in the first bag of groceries, placed her keys on the wall-mounted, wooden key rack with my oldest brother’s green-painted handprint on it, and said, “There are more groceries in the trunk.”

(Throughout my childhood, that would be our cue, the signal for my two older brothers, two younger sisters, and I to scamper out and bring in all the bags, like elves. Forever curious, I never minded my elfin role, as I got first viewing rights to the week’s loot.

At that point, though, I was only six months old, not a fully formed elf and incapable of working at the Grocery Get: that assembly line between my mom’s trunk and our refrigerator, and often, the second freezer outside, where we stored the extra bread. Also, there were no younger sisters then, and the brother next up from me in age was only two years old. But every time the story was recounted to us, I could only imagine my mom walking in with her infamous “groceries in the trunk” line, as that was just the way of my world.)

Walking in behind mom’s grocery announcement, my four-year-old brother, the one of the green handprint, looked despondent. He moped over to my dad and said, “They didn’t sing the ‘new shoes’ song.” Seeing his forlorn face, my dad busted it out: “New shoes, new shoes! Christopher Burke has new shoes!”

My brother cracked a tiny smile, but the song didn’t have the same ring when sung by my dad. It wasn’t my dad whose voice he’d imagined blessing the new penny loafers my mom had bought him over the weekend. He’d wanted the recognition of his peers and his preschool teacher, the one who had started the tradition of singing to celebrate children’s new shoes (in retrospect, a dangerous ritual, as current economic times reveal such praise for consumerism to be the cause of our global demise), and ultimately the one who had forgotten my tiny big brother and his vested heart. He’d wanted lots of tiny voices to notice his shoes and break into spontaneous song, and my dad’s best efforts to compensate wouldn’t heal him.

Or so the story goes. That tale my mom became fond of telling. The one that made us know that when my brother got new shoes, we should sing, “New shoes, new shoes! Christopher Burke has new shoes!” Making light of this trauma, by being the voices he’d wished to hear back then, would get him to laugh over time. That would heal him.

When my two older brothers and I were teens, with two younger sisters aged 11 and 9, the joke was still alive. When my then-17-year-old brother walked into the house and placed his keys on the green-fingerprinted rack, toting a bag from Robinson’s May Department Store with a shoebox inside, I rang out, “New shoes, new shoes! Christopher Burke has new shoes!” And we all laughed.

Just like he’d wanted it to happen those 13 years before.

Death and... - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

Death and I have spent our lives getting acquainted. My first introduction was when I peered under the farmhouse in Florida where houses are often mounted on blocks to keep them from moisture and creatures.

I went down on my knees in the sharp grass and peered into the dimness under there. Mama Kitty had given birth to a litter and my grandmother said they were dead. I saw my cat sitting up braced on her front feet, licking and licking down at a shapeless mass that was not moving. So that’s what it was: dark, mysterious, not quite visible, and no kittens to jump and play.

The next visit came when my grandfather died 2,000 miles away from us, we in New Mexico and he in Florida. My mother had gone to be there at his end, and I, about 7, alone in my room, knocked his photo over and it fell to the floor. ``Oh no,’’ and I cried, because I thought it had hurt him. When my father told he had died, I was sure I had brought him bad luck.

I felt the hand of death when I visited my grandmother in the hospital, I in college, and she in her bed. My mother had left the room and I was alone with my little roommate who had fussed at me for my untidiness.

``Grandma,’’ I said, touching her. ``Grandma!’’ I shook her arm and took her hand. I was shocked at how a dead hand feels, how life is so warm and gives a force, and energy, at the worst of its times, but this, this was no-longer-living tissue, round and plump as always, but heavy, without the translucence that the flow of blood brings to flesh. Empty. Gone. She was just gone.

Death and... - Randy Wong

This past year, my family celebrated the Chinese holiday known as qingming (Tomb Sweeping Day.) This day occurs on the fifteenth day after the Spring Equinox on the Gregorian calendar. The Qingming Festival is an opportunity for Chinese to remember and honor their ancestors at grave sites. Young and old pray before the ancestors, sweep the tombs and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks, (joss) paper accessories, and/or libation to the ancestors. As we had done the past two years, my mother, my two brothers and I visit the graves of my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father (all from my father’s side of the family) at Greenlawn Memorial Park in Colma.

It is a very somber and sad day as this is the second year since my father’s passing. He did not want a plot like his ancestors. He wanted a cremation, so his ashes are sitting in a lovely ornate urn inside a building in the park. It’s still very hard to look at that little picture of him in his forties celebrating a birthday. He had a great big smile that went from ear to ear. We brought some food for the ceremony on a little table in front of the shelf that held his urn and prayed. It is still hard on all of us, but especially hard for my mother.

I’ve been coming to this cemetery for most of my life ever since dad buried his great-grandfather here. I never knew him, and I sort of knew grandfather. He lived with the family off and on for a few years before he had to be put into a nursing home. When he passed away in 1982, my father was able to secure a plot within twenty feet of his grandfather, so it works out quite nicely.

My family has always had a hard time remembering where the graves are located. I finally came up with a working system that involved a water faucet that is located near the edge of the road. If I walked directly straight past this water faucet, I will eventually run into a grave marked with a little marble statuette of the Virgin Mary. To the left of this statuette is the grave of my great-grandfather. From this vantage point, if great-grandfather’s tombstone is twelve o’clock, then grandfather’s tombstone is two rows deep at about ten o’clock. It is a very plain rectangular shaped tombstone with his name on it. Thank god for left brain thinking. Of course, if something should ever happen to the Virgin Mary statuette, then we are lost.

After we do our praying, we usually linger around for a few moments to stand silently and pay our respects to the surrounding graves. This is usually the time when my brothers and I start to giggle uncontrollably at the gravestone of a guy named Wong Fuk Soo. It kills us every year.

Whenever the qingming holiday arrives, I am always reminded of a little odd situation that occurred one year. For years we would bring two bunches of flowers to put on the graves (one each for gf and ggf.) I was the man with the crowbar. Basically, I used the crowbar to dig a little hole next to the tombstone where we would plant the flowers. That was my duty for qingming for many years. One year, I had just finished planting a bunch of flowers next to grandfather’s tombstone. My knee had locked up, so I had to place my hand on top of the tombstone to my right, and used it to brace against while I stood up. After I stood up, I heard a very loud thud! When I turned, I discovered that the tombstone I had leaned on had fallen over.

Now, it should be noted that honoring ancestors and the dead is a very big deal for the Chinese, especially during qingming. There are many things that one can do to celebrate qingming, but I’m pretty sure that knocking over a tombstone isn’t one of them. I believe this is called “desecration.” I like to call it “not my fault.” I mean, what was going on with that gravestone? Geez, all I did was lean against it. C’mon, it could’ve happened to anyone, right?

Now, gravestones are heavier than they look so when this thing fell over, it landed with a very loud THUD. It was bad enough that I did this during qingming, but the two gentlemen standing twenty feet to my right heard it and gave me a stern look. I suppose I should count my blessings that the actual family that owned the stone was not present. Now, that would have made a really interesting situation. As it was, my father gave me a look and shook his head. My brother Ron just raised his eyebrows. My other brother Rick did a cartoonish double take with his mouth wide open. I knew what I did was pretty bad, so I tried to fix the situation by picking up the tombstone and stand it up again. It was at this point that I noticed that something was wrong with the base. It looked like it wasn’t finished yet, so it was not ready to go into the ground. It was just standing there balancing on its own. When I tried to balance the tombstone to stand it straight up, it weebled and wobbled, and after a few seconds, fell over again with another loud THUD! I looked at my father again. This time he rolled his eyes and turned away. Ron did the same. Rick executed the same cartoonish double take with his mouth wider than before. I looked to my right and the two gentlemen were really giving me a dirty look. At that point, there was nothing more to do, so we got out of Colma as fast as we could. As we left Greenlawn Memorial Park, I counted my blessings that the family that owned the tombstone was not present. A blood feud is the last thing I need to worry about during qingming.

Death and... - Chris Callaghan

There is a yawning hole after those three ellipses that my brain keeps filling in with the expected word, taxes.

For one reason or another I hadn’t paid any of my estimated tax payments for 2008 which is why I had to drive to the other side of town to my accountant Amy’s office and write a whopping check to the IRS yesterday. Excuse me; make that the ‘United States Treasury.’

“Who do they think they’re kidding?” I mumbled to Amy.

“The government actually did a study,” Amy said, “and discovered that writing checks out to the IRS made people furious, but if they wrote the check to the US Treasury, it didn’t piss them off so much.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I said as I tore up the check I’d just written IRS on and tried again. I was still furious about having to give the government so much of my hard earned money, and on top of that I couldn’t remember how to spell treasury. “I don’t care what they call it, I’m still pissed,” I said.

“I agree,” Amy laughed. “It’s still the same old pot no matter what label they stick on it.”

I left Amy’s office with two meager consolations, one was I’d had the money to cover the check and the other was I wouldn’t have to face it again for another twelve months.

So today I’m thinking more of death than taxes. Right next to Buddha and Kwan Yin on my altar is a three inch by seven inch wooden box that holds exactly one cup of my mother’s ashes. I didn’t get to say good by to her just before she died or after. I wonder if the lump of crystals that dementia built at the base of her brain are in that box too, Alzheimer anthrax waiting to pop out and get into my brain.

I know the ashes are sealed in a zip lock baggie, but I still don’t open the lid. I keep putting amulets on the top of the box: sage sticks, earth crystals, tiny glass hearts and angels. They’re all there to keep the boogie man of inherited mental illness at bay. Do these offerings make me feel any better? Mostly yes.

But sometimes when I can’t think of a word I want, or where I left my keys, or if I really did lock the front door, I worry. I pat my head praying that there’s no crystals growing at the base of my brain and reassuring myself that whatever short term memory loss I get now and then is normal.

See, I don’t really fear dying so much, what terrifies me is dying crazy like her.

I Am the Place in Which Something Has Occurred - Anne Wright

The sheets were jumbled like peaks on a lemon meringue pie and the room reeked a sour citrusy scent, hot when it should have been chilled, and no sweetness here. Her robe was crumpled over his shirt on the floor, but in the doorway his pants made a perfect pile on top of the brown shoes he always wore.

The champagne flute, its lip broken and stem cracked had fallen upside down on the whiskery white wool carpet, a petal of rose red blood soaking into the fibers, turning dark around the edges. Balls of Kleenex wadded up on the nightstand.

I Am the Place in Which Something Has Occurred - Julie Farrar

I’m not my mother. And for that I’m immensely sad. She laughed all the time with us. The only times I can remember being angry at her was when I wanted to scream “Get out of my head!” because she always seemed to know me too well. Other than that I wanted to be the mother that she was – helpful, understanding, encouraging, competent, loving. I remember one night waking in the middle of the night to noise outside my bedroom. Mom was sitting on the edge of the tub, holding the head of my sister who was sprawled over the rim of the toilet suffering the not-unexpected effects of a teenager’s foolishness. This moment disappeared with the morning when she told us to be quiet because my sister was sleeping. That was the mother I wanted to be.

But for reasons that I still don’t understand, God gave me different children. Every minute of every day I’ve had to abandon yet another small piece of that vision I had held of who I wanted to be. I’ve had to write a completely original script, not an adaptation of someone else’s story. Since the day Brad and I walked them out of the orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia I’ve had to live with altered expectations. Fifteen years later, the little girl who stomped her foot in a defiant “Nyet, Momka!” as a frequent test for whether we loved her enough not to send her back to where we got her, still rejects all of our attempts at parenting, still tests the fact of our love. I’ve yelled, I’ve screamed, I’ve cried, I’ve begged, I’ve tried to talk my way into her life. She remains a mystery to me that I desperately want to unravel. But she will not open a single page for me to read. So I’ve learned not to chase after her. Trying to hold her even tighter, trying to parent her more fails every time. I want to be the mother who holds her as she suffers from too much foolishness. Because she’ll have none of that, however, I’ve been rocked by a seismic shift. It is enough, I’ve finally realized, to do nothing.

How does a parent do nothing, day after day, month after month? It goes against every instinct. I do nothing and expect less. A psychologist once asked me quite pointedly, “She probably will never change. Can you love her anyway?” I wanted her to play the young me, sitting eagerly at the feet of me starring as my Mom. I thought this would be my role of a lifetime. But my daughter won’t play the script as written. And so I’ve become a master at improv. I try to imagine how Mom would play each scene. I think that she wouldn’t do anything. She would know that she can’t change the other person, so she would change how she reacts. She would be there to sit on the edge of the tub if invited in. But love can also just stand outside that door, silently waiting.

I Thought We Were Lost - Melody Cryns

As we kept climbing further and further up the mountain, my sister Jennifer, Paul and me, I began to wonder where we were and if we’d ever figure out where we were or how to get back down the hill to where Paul parked the big yellow car near Muir Woods.

I could feel sweat pouring down the side of my face and twigs and branches scratched me as I grabbed the next piece of dirt, the next twig, to pull myself up, and I could smell the dirt mingled with evergreen as my sister shouted, “It’s only a little further, c’mon!”

This whole hike thing was Jennifer’s idea – it always was. She had talked our good guy friend Paul into driving across the bridge so that we could go on a nice little hike at Mt. Tamalpias – that’s all. It started off innocent enough.

“It’s Sunday, though, and my mom and dad might not like me to take the car that far,” Paul had fretted. Paul are dependable guy friend who actually had a car – whom we managed to talk into driving us to various places because he liked me, and it’s possible he liked my sister too, but it didn’t really matter, Paul the fisherman who caught huge bass in the San Francisco Bay. He was a good guy, really he was. And he had a car.

“Oh, c’mon,” Jennifer had said. “It would be fun to go on a nice hike!” I should have known better because every hike that Jennifer led turned into something like this, more like a day-long journey up dangerous cliffs or hiking for miles and miles while she cheerfully said, “Oh it’s only a little further.”

“This is pretty crazy!” I grumbled and all Paul could do as he struggled behind me was grunt in agreement.

“It’s only a little further!” my sister Jennifer shouted as she continued to climb upward. We were stupid enough to follow her, and I had begun to think we were lost forever and someone would eventually have to send out a search party for us, stuck on the side of this mountain.
But nobody back in San Francisco knew where we were even – and the only tell-tale sign would be the old yellow car parked in a “safe” hiding place close to Muir Woods.

We climbed and we climbed for what seemed like forever, until finally, we made it to a clearing near the top of the mountain, not just any mountain, Mt. Tamalpias.

“Eureka!” I shouted, catching my breath for a few moments as I looked around and saw a huge chunk of the bay area stretched before me.

“But we’re not done yet! Only a little bit further!” Jennifer said, cheerful as ever. At least we could actually see where we were, why ruin it, I thought? Or at least we had some semblance of where we were.

Jennifer led onward and Paul and I trudged behind her like lost, forlorn little ducklings who had no choice but to follow her Mom. It was her birthday after all – she had just turned 16 and this was what she wanted to do. And so what if it was Easter Sunday – hadn’t we already celebrated with our families with chocolate bunnies and too many colored hard boiled eggs, and a guitar folk mass with people shouting “It’s a long road to freedom!” and guitars and tambourines playing. And Paul went to church with his parents. So what was the big deal anyway, my sister had said.

So we walked up a much simpler gravel path onward to the very top because the clearing just wasn’t quite good enough for Jennifer, and when we finally made it to the top, I gasped because I felt as if we were on top of the world, where the clouds are and we could see so much. If we looked one direction, we could see the Pacific ocean just behind the hills and we could see Muir Woods stretched out, and the green tops of the mighty redwood trees. Another direction we could see just about all the San Francisco Bay Area stretched before us, the bay, San Francisco, Marin County, east bay, all there.

So we sat down on the rocks at the very top of Mt. Tamalpias and we gazed out at the entire world, and for a fleeting moment I wondered if we’d ever find our way back to the yellow car way, way down at the bottom of that hill, and how the heck we’d get down that hill – but for the moment, all was well with the world, as I sat there with my sister Jennifer and Paul the fisherman with the yellow car.

(and happy 49th birthday Jennifer, Friday, April 10, 2009 – Jennifer’s birthday periodically fell on Easter and when that prompt hit today, this is what immediately popped into my head)

Resurrection - Donna Shomer

"Then God said to me: Prophesy to these bones, and say to them. You dry bones, hear the word of the Eternal. Thus says the Eternal God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live." (Ezekiel 37:4-5)

I’m telling you –
between the dog and my husband
and the phone and the email –
the dry bones of this morning
will remain lifeless.

I could go on with images of
dust or decay
but really it is just about
getting showered
and finding that stupid envelope
and remembering to get gas.

Dry bones morning.

Infidelity - Julie Farrar

It starts with the little things. He’s gone for a few days and you rush to the phone to make that call – thin crust pizza with sausage and pepperoni – none of the vegetables he usually wants.

It tugs at your conscious just a bit when you feel so good to be on the road without him. This isn’t a “girls’ weekend”; you and only you wanted to travel out of town to the quilt exhibit. What does it mean when you hit the road alone and your endorphins start jumping? The entire time you’re trailing in and out of the antique stores, stopping at local diners to eat all the fried food you can handle, you never once consider calling home to check in.

There is the dark-haired waiter at the café who lingers a little longer than necessary at your table. He seems unusually interested in your opinion on the weather and you suddenly find the subject immensely important. You put aside the book you had brought to read during lunch. The banter as he passes your table while serving others reaches that point that you know he plays soccer at the park on Sundays at 3 p.m. Of course you’re not going, but you know you’d be welcome if you did.

You imagine on some days what it would be like to have the house completely to yourself, to never have to compromise, to never ask him what he wants for dinner. You imagine a life that fully belongs to you. You ask yourself one day, hypothetically, if you would ever remarry if you were in that position. Perhaps you’d sell everything and buy a home in France – on your own.

Your thoughts (only your thoughts) stray. He’s done nothing but be your husband for over two decades. He doesn’t deserve the disloyalty of a restless mind.

The Unseen Party - Anne Wright

Lidia couldn’t see them, but damn it they were noisy and having a good time. The neighbors, Leo and Sandy Phillips, had pulled their drapes tight. The music pulsed and boomed right through the side of their little wooden box of a house. Cars parked in the street and on their front lawn if you could call it a lawn, it was trampled weeds, she thought as she watched their door open to pull in some more partiers.

She went outside and through the gate to the Phillips’ side yard. Lidia’s bare feet had thick pink soles but she still felt the burrs and pointy rocks that she stepped on. Her dark face and arms made her feel even more invisible in the night, and when she approached the small high window a warmth coming from the ground and the house touched her.

The warmth was a sensual soft breeze like pigeon’s downy feathers beating across her neck and under the long black hair that fell to her waist. She shivered and stood on her tiptoes. Maybe she could see inside, see the laughter and friendship and hugging. Lidia reached for the wall to steady herself. Her arm brushed against some rough cloth and she jerked away. In the darkness next to her stood a man, quiet and smiling, and he led her back inside her own house.

What You Can't See - Bonnie Smetts

I’m finally sitting outside this house that the Records Department said is my grandma’s, white with a lawn and driveway that cuts to the side so you can’t see what’s down it. Big trees in front of the house so I can’t see what I’m walking into. Seems like there’s lights on so somebody’s likely to be home. Looks to me like my grandma got someone’s taking care of her yard, the plants trimmed like basket balls or something, and the rocks that ring the plants look like it’s somebody’s job to keep them in line. And all I can see of the porch is that it’s painted a nice green, one like you’d see in a magazine, kinda gray and kinda green all at the same time. And she’s got herself a swing, one on the porch like this is some kind of ad for country life in Nordeen.

I’m barely breathing because this wasn’t what I was expecting of someone who’d been my grandma. I’m not sure they’d given me the right address at the Records. Given how my momma and me lived, this can’t be what I’d been expecting. Another run down trailer, or worse, is all I’d prepared myself for. Not this. I’m sitting in front, in Randy’s car, this time she let me borrow it, so I’m half worn out from being nervous just driving her car so now I’ve got my breath up in my head trying to relax in front of what I didn’t expect to find. My nerves are jangled and I seemed to have lost the ones that give you the courage to do things you normally don’t want to do. I wished I smoked, like this is when you’d take out a cigarette to relax, but I don’t have that to do. So I’m just sitting here, spying on my grandma, or at least this must be her. But this makes no sense. Lacey curtains and yellow flowers in pots along the walkway. Makes no sense that this would be the woman who’d had my momma, and why they hated each other so much that I’d never even seen this woman. I wouldn’t have had to spend all that time with the Baptists if I’d known I had a grandma already.

But I can’t sit here all day and I can’t expect Randy to lend me her car again any time soon, or me to have the nerve to walk up to this door and see what’s inside. My nerves are ripping me up and I never had to get calmed down like this before. I’d been used to things flying at me and my dodging them, or the men at the diner thinking I don’t know what’s going on when they ask if I’m free later. But this is different and this is something I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to do.

OK, Rawling, you gotta open that door. You gotta take a big breath and squeeze that handle down and hear that creak and feel that pebbly road under you nice shoes. One, two, three…

Three Things I Can't See - Chris Callaghan

What is the shape of a soul, the texture of integrity, the sound of fate? Where in my body do they live?

For some reason I’ve always thought of my soul as round. It has all the colors of a prism, yet is soft as down and smells of jasmine. It resides just beneath my breastbone next door to my heart, a true and steady chronometer of me. Like a compass that always points north, I have only to be still for a moment to feel it.

Integrity is less ethereal. A chunk of granite, painted with lichen, slippery when wet, with a deep basso profundo voice. The moisture comes from its sad eyes when I have thought to ignore its words. The lichen are scabs of healing from childish mistakes of trying to tear myself away from it. I no longer take my hands from its surface. The sun warmed rock is my strength. It’s the base of my spine.

Fate is the bubble I dance on, also round, but much bigger. Music pours from it, helping my feet to fly, and lyrics are available, some I write and some are gifts. Once in a while in my obdurate way I try to change the tune and am gently rebuked by the maestro that I do not control the orchestra. Off tune singing is not allowed and only hinders the melody.

These three things are my light, my air, my sustenance. My day job is to keep them all in balance.

What You Can't See - Melody Cryns

“Where does the sun go after it slips into the sea?” my son Stevie asked when he was only around six years old.

“Well, ummm…it’s actually still there. It’s just that the earth is moving and the sun is moving, so then we just can’t see it anymore.” I attempted to sound as wise as possible but had no idea if I succeeded. I remember Stevie had looked at me and then out at the ocean and squinted his eyes as if that would help him see something that might or might not be there.

“But why?” three-year-old Jeremy asked, as he jumped up and down on one foot. “Why Mommy, why?!”

That was the stock question that Jeremy always asked – why?

“It’s just the way it is.” I smiled. How could I explain exactly why the earth moved and the sun moved around the earth in a way that my three young kids would understand? Melissa hadn’t said anything. She just looked out at the ocean at Nye Beach and contemplated the issue.

“Why did the sun go away, Mommy, why, why?” Jeremy ran up and down the sidewalk chasing sea gulls, his blonde curls bobbing with the early evening breeze.

“It’s just that the earth moves and the sun moves, so now they can see the sun in China.”

“China?” Stevie said. “China, where’s China?”

I sighed. “China is on the other side of the world. When we can’t see the sun, they can.”

“Wow, the other side of the world?”

“Yes,” I said, looking out at the different shades of deep oranges that burst across the darkened sky, just as it always did when the sun set on a clear day.

The other side of the world, I remember thinking, looking out into the Pacific Ocean. That’s where we had been for several years – in Germany on the other side of the world, and now here I was. I never in a million years thought I’d be standing there at Nye Beach looking out at the ocean with my three kids, and that I’d actually live in Newport, Oregon, this beautiful small town on the ocean that my mother had fallen in love with back in 1976. I could see why – there was a charm to the town, especially when all the tourists left in late summer and it was just the people of the town – the population had gone up from 3,000 to about 8,000. I remember how I couldn’t believe my mother wanted to move to the “boonies” when she already lived in San Francisco, the best city in the world. I secretly still thought San Francisco was the best city in the world, even though Newport was charming. And some day, no matter how many years it took, some day I’d return home…

But I didn’t have to say it – it was deep within me, that secret desire. And I couldn’t explain it any better than I could explain why the sun slipped into the ocean and why the people in China could see the sun when we couldn’t. I looked down at my kids and smiled… some day, some day when you’re a lot older, we will be standing at ocean beach in San Francisco.

What You Can't See - Randy Wong

I can’t see what my friends see in me. I can’t see what they say I look like. I can’t see the hair that is badly cut and dry. I can’t see the droopy left eye that reminded someone of a cartoon character. I can’t see the nose that must be like Pinocchio’s because no one ever gets the same measurement. I can’t see the ears that someone said looked liked handles to a water pitcher. I can’t see the chin that has generated repeated derogatory remarks about my Asian heritage. And, finally, I can’t see the teeth that are never straight and never white.

I can’t see these things because I don’t need to see them. I don’t have a mirror to gaze upon. The only reflection that matters is the one I see in Ana Maria’s green eyes.

I see her playfulness as she runs her fingers thru my hair. I see her shyness as she traces her finger from my eye to my cheek. I see her getting excited as I bury my nose into her neck and smelling her essence. I see her wavy brown hair up close as she nibbles my ear. I see her kiss my chin as we cuddle up against one another.

What’s the lesson that I learned? That it does not matter what my friends see in me. It only matters what I see in me, and what Ana Maria sees when we are together.

I also learned that I need to get new friends.

Write Using the Words 'Heartbreak,' 'Brake Fluid,' 'Trust' - Carol Arnold

There was no way I could deal with the heartbreak of losing Hunter except to go way down into it, wallow in it even. He was all I ever wanted, ever since that day we met at the AA meeting, him coming down off a hard binge, me far enough sober that my relapse dreams came only once a week instead of five. I just looked into those burnt bruised eyes and knew he was mine. I wasn’t so ignorant that I didn’t know addictions could transfer like that, that you could go from substances to men in a flash. I didn’t care. I was there for him from the first moment I saw him. Whatever he wanted, whenever and wherever he wanted it, I was there.

When he told me he’d met Petunia and fallen in love I ran home, locked the door, and ripped the phone off the wall. I played Achy Braky Heart over and over, eating nothing but mint chip ice cream and Cocoa Puffs. I welcomed that well of pain, swam in its acidy fluid until, exhausted, I would fall asleep for a minute or two before waking again in its sour grasp. Nelly finally broke down the door. She told me to trust that I would come out the other side but I had to want to, I had to begin putting on the brake of mental health. But I didn’t want mental health. I wanted to breath grief, drink it, eat it, have sex with it. I would have even hired a preacher to marry it if they had let me.

Write Using the Words 'Heartbreak,' 'Brake Fluid,' 'Trust' - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

OK, so I haven’t been driving that long, but I’m gonna go all the way down this road to Albuquerque and back before my daddy gets home from his trip. He’s driving the Buick with the two nifty stripes swooping from front to back, red on the top and and gray on the bottom, a cool car, but he won’t let us take it to the creamery and do a brodie, no sir. We got to drive this old truck but it’s OK and I can get lots of friends into it in the back, although Daddy says no friends in the back.

The reason I’m going to Albuquerque is to visit my lying girlfriend, the one who said she’d be true always even though we live sixty miles apart, but I heard from Buster Young that she was NOT being true but false, and so I’m going to see for myself whether I plan to go on trusting her or just dump her the way an untrustworthy girl should be dumped. I didn’t tell Ma I was going all the way to Albuquerque, of course, just told her I’d be picking up Jimmy and Swatter and them to go to the creamery.

``Don’t you go racing, now,’’ she said, like I would, except that I would if I had to, but mostly I can keep myself out of have to by joking around and pointing to this ramshackle truck and saying, ``Hey, now, you wouldn’t want to get beat by this old truck, would you? No sir, I’ll spare you the humiliation, and we’ll just get another Coke, viejo. I can drink mine faster than you can drink yours.’’ Sometimes a sense of humor can just save your ass.

And so it goes, until Buster tells me that Lucella is stepping out with some university fella and she only 15. I’m 15 too and don’t know if I can hold a candle to some university fella but I’m gonna try. If you don’t try you just run into heartbreak for no known reason. If I’m gonna have my heart broken, I want to know why.

I can drive to see this girl because you can drive in this state at 14, because we’re a farm state even if we don’t have a farm, even if we do have a truck. My mom wanted the truck for her garden business and it says right on the door, ``Amy’s Top Gardens,’’ so everyone always knows it’s me and that I borrowed my mom’s vehicle. A little humiliating, I’d say, but you gotta do whatever to get your wheels.

Here we come to La Bajada that makes the brakes whine and squeal ‘cuz you got to pump ‘em for a couple miles going straight down this old red huge hill. I can feel the brakes acting squishy and I’m pumping like crazy but the truck looks to me like it’s goin’ faster and faster. I wonder if there’s any brake fluid in these ancient brakes and if there’s not, I gotta throw this baby into gear and hope like hell it works to keep me from hurtling over the edge of the road into the ditch. God, help! There! I got the gear switched and we’re bucking back and forth and the gears are grinding like a squalling cement mixer but we’re slowing down, down, down. And stopped. You know, you can’t trust a really old truck if you don’t check the brake fluid first. Say, maybe I could apply that to Lucella and women in general. You never know when you’re gonna learn something useful.

Write Using the Words 'Heartbreak,' 'Brake Fluid,' 'Trust' - Katie Burke

I was the brake fluid in our vehicle, that vehicle being the magnetic, dysfunctional frame that bound us together, no matter how hard it was and how badly both of us wanted out sometimes.

Whenever Jon told me I was too serious, too heavy for him. Whenever I cried more than I laughed for having him in my life. Each time I leaned on him too hard and sensed him trying to shake free. These were the moments I’d serve as the brake fluid, helping us put a stop to our frantic, wild ride of desire.

Being the brake fluid caused me heartbreak. Jon never seemed to realize our car was spinning out of control. The crazy spinouts, the burning of the tires, and the resulting adrenaline rush for both of us seemed normal for him. He’d never been with a woman who didn’t serve as the brake fluid, I knew, for he was still alive, still functioning – although barely – in relationships. Someone had always kept his heart well maintained.

I knew my role was essential to what sanity either of us had left. But I didn’t like it. I always felt that, every time I poured myself into the reservoir and pumped – or slammed on – the brakes, he lost more trust in me. I knew he didn’t joyride with me because he trusted me, but because he loved the thrill. But he didn’t see that, and that’s why my role hurt me so much.

Ultimately, though, it kept us alive. Who knows how rampant either of us would be, had we continued that ride? Seat belts don’t save lives in every crash, and ours might have been an ugly one, had I not been there to prevent it.

But, like so many dangerous aspects of life, being a co-passenger in our driver-less car was some of the best fun I’ve ever had.

Write Using the Words 'Heartbreak,' 'Brake Fluid,' 'Trust' - Mark Maynard

The Heartbreak of Break Fluid: Why I Trust Nothing Under 350 CCs

My life used to smell of carbon and brake fluid. I grew up with the skinned knuckles, greasy fingernails and scatological vocabulary of a mechanic’s son. I put my trust in V8s, disc brakes and Snap On Tools. The throbbing of a big block engine was my own heartbeat, pounding in my ears.

That world was shattered. The timing belt gave out on my old man’s ticker one afternoon while he was flat on his back on a creeper under a 68 Impala in his garage. No one thought to check on him until closing time because the pristine legs of his powder blue coveralls and his polished Red Wing boots were as much a part of the shop as the well-endowed blonde on the Snap On wall calendar and the Ford-logo shop clock on the workbench wall.

It was Donnie, my dad’s shop foreman that finally rolled the heartbreak of my dad’s body out from under that Chevy. His wrench was still clutched tightly in his fist like some NRA slogan aimed at the bureaucrats aiming to take semi-automatic pneumatic wrenches off the streets, “you can have my torque wrench when you pry it from my cold dead hands.”

You Could Have Fooled Me - Julie Farrar

You could have fooled me.

I know that I put them right here, underneath this viburnum bush. And they were there under the dogwood tree, too. I had some buried in the English ivy, and over here along the stone path. In fact, I still have the package they came in, so I know it’s not my imagination. A neighbor noticed them this weekend and mentioned them, but when I went to look myself they were nowhere to be seen.

What thief had come in the night? How could they mock my hard labor like this? I get down on my knees and start searching in the chilly black mulch, moving handfuls of it aside to see if they are just hiding, waiting for the right time. No, nothing. But what’s that over there? Aaaaargh! My finger runs over just the smallest nub of a crocus stem. It sits just millimeters above the spring-damp earth, it’s white and violet-tinged cup of a flower decapitated and stolen away. The emerald green stem has been sliced cleanly at the dirt line.

Looking closer, I see other stem remnants barely peeking up from their winter homes beneath the soil, never to rise to the early spring sun again. Drat those rascally rabbits! They crouch in the bushes every fall and watch me fastidiously place dozens and dozens of crocus and snowdrop bulbs in the ground, carefully measuring the depth of the hole against the length of the shovel head. They watch me choose the colors carefully, mixing just the right amount of purple, white, and glorious yellow for drama above the last snow of the season that will inevitably hit after they are schedule to explode in waves of color.

Those rabbits, though, crouch under the nearby bushes and with their little rabbit minds they memorize the placement of every bulb so they will be ready to strike quickly when the moment arrives. And they do. One morning I’m in the yard with my dogs growing excited by the coming spring because I see the smallest hint of a purple bud sticking it’s head out of the ground, testing the air. The next morning the garden is as barren as Mars.

The rabbits know where their feast hides and they know the dogs do not go into the yard before 6:00 a.m. If I woke in the last dark of an early spring dawn and looked out my window I’m sure I’d see a full-blown bunny convention decimating my early spring bulbs. And if I listened carefully enough I’m sure I’d hear them laughing at me. But this year the joke’s on them. For an entire week I got to enjoy one lone purple crocus with yellow and white pinstripes live out its natural life cycle completely unmolested amid the overgrown ivy under the dogwood just east of the front stoop. This was the year I was going to yank out that tangle of overgrowth, but now I think I’ll decorate it instead with more bulbs.

Finally, One Morning We Found Ourselves in Bed - Ariana Speyer

It had come as a surprise, I told her, when actually I knew all along that eventually that’s where we’d end up. Sheets askew, clothes on the floor, the cat alternately meowing and sniffing. The cat loved Kelly, adored her, followed her around like a dog would, so my taking Kelly and doing things to her didn’t sit well with the cat.

The funny thing was it didn’t end up happening till the morning, I remember the date, June 12, because it was three days before my birthday. I had slept on the pull-out couch, as was my habit. Kelly was letting me crash at her apartment until I could find my own, but 2 weeks had turned in to 2 months and the more time I spent with Kelly, the less interested I became in finding another apartment. I liked the way she looked smudged in the morning, before she got in the shower, when she was making us coffee. Her hair stood out in a little halo around her head and her eyes puffed up slightly. Call me crazy, I thought it was sexy.

She would say, Don’t look at me, what are you looking at? Like I was a rubbernecker on the highway. I’d look away and then look back when she had turned to get the mugs out of the cabinet. I guess I even liked her coffee mugs, I liked everything about her. The way she’d come home from work and put on music and dance in her bedroom. She'd close the door, but I could tell that's what she was doing. The way she'd talk back to the TV and call herself a crazy person for doing so. What I meant to say is, I wanted it to end up in bed all along, from about the 3rd day, desperately, but whether or not that would happen was a question that seemed to suck up all my time and energy.

I had started to take her breakfast in bed most mornings, once I figured out what she liked to eat- a half a toasted whole wheat bagel, yogurt, fruit, and I’d run out and get the paper before she got up and put that on there, too. At first she acted suspicious, like I had put a razor in the bagel, but soon enough she got used to it, and we started talking on her bed while she ate, and she’d offer me bites. That morning, June 12, the bites turned in to kisses, and finally, we found ourselves in bed, not on top of it. And once I was in, believe me, I never wanted to leave.

You Could Have Fooled Me - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

You could have sent me flowers
You could have sent me wine,
You could have taken me dancing,
Pretending to be all mine.

You could have hired a limo,
You could have planned a bash,
You could have taken me hiking
On a coastal eco-dash.

You could have cut a caper,
You could have kissed my hand,
You could have sent a Valentine
Or led my marching band.

You could have stroked my cheek,
You could have rubbed my back,
You could have brushed my hair
Or rolled me in the sack.

You could have fooled me, sweetie,
You could have kept me blind,
You could have kept me happy
And easy in my mind.

Instead you came a-calling
To tell me your heart had jumped
To a new love for the season:
My place in line was bumped.

I‘d have been happy not knowing
You’re a two-faced rotten bum,
I never loved you anyhow.
Don’t slam the door, old chum.

You Could Have Fooled Me - Joyce Roschinger

The mouse stopped in to see his friend, the mosquito, on Wednesday evening. He found his friend quite sad.

"What has happened to you, my friend", said the mouse as he sat down on the green couch. The mosquito lifted his head and stared directly at the mouse. His big eyes were moist.

"I can't do it anymore. Keep going out on these blood sucking night runs".

"But why ever not?" The mouse wiped his glasses with a freshly pressed monogrammed handkerchief.

"I don't understand, after all, this is your life's work, what you have always done."

The mosquito stood up, walked across the room, and placed his hands behind his back.

"I can't keep losing my friends. We all go out together every night but some of us don't get to come back. Citronella candles and repellent often keep us from getting what we need. Humans are now wearing long sleeved shirts and long pants. Do you know how difficult it is to fly in under all those clothes?"

"No, I can't say that I do". The mouse was beginning to think that his friend needed a beer.

"But the bad part is that some of us are killed out there, " said the mosquito as he turned his back on the mouse.

"And one day, it is going to be me. That will be it. Do you know that I have never been in love? "

"You know, you could have fooled me, " said the mouse to his friend. " I have always thought you were happy because you do what you are meant to do, your life's work".

The mosquito flipped his wings back and forth. " I have to get ready to go out now."

The mouse walked back to his home in a Victorian house on a very steep hill in San Francisco.

The night was warm and clear. The moon cast a silver light over streets and sidewalks . From a distance, the mouse heard laughter and the clinking of glasses. He thought about his friend, the mosquito gliding over backyards. How could he have been fooled into thinking that his friend was happy?

Guilt - Anne Wright

Where did I go wrong? I searched my memory for that point, the exact moment when I chose the path that led me to my sad and sorry state, but can’t determine it because I have always done the wrong thing, my entire life. I am guilty.

I stayed in bed instead of getting up right away to feed my cat and let her out. Then when I got up I didn’t brush my teeth for over two hours after having cereal and coffee. I told my dental hygienist that I floss twice a day every day, which is a lie.

I drove faster than the speed limit and swore, though under my breath at the idiots that I have to share the road with. I interrupted my friend when she was talking, parked my car so it stuck out into a driveway, dripped gasoline on the side of the car and didn’t wipe it off, dropped a gum wrapper on the ground and left it there, trimmed my nails with the big scissors in my desk drawer, left a damp towel on the bathroom floor, put two bottles of wine back on the grocery shelf where they didn’t belong, turned off a DVD movie before I had watched the whole thing even though I had paid for it, fake smiled at the clerk in the drug store, did not go to the gym again for the second week in a row, discarded food into the garbage disposal when the water company has told me it is bad for the environment, left the heater on in the house all day when I am not home, charged another book on my credit card, and I can’t forget this, purchased an espresso machine that I only have used a few times and haven’t gotten my money’s worth, didn’t return a phone call knowing that it would cause an irate reaction in that person, I spent too much time thinking about writing this, and I went back and edited it, too.

Guilt - Mark Maynard

I’d flown to Hawaii with my eighty one year old grandmother so that we could say “goodbye” to her daughter, my aunt. The lung cancer had metastacized in her brain and I was shocked to see her eyes – permanently crossed and unable to focus clearly on me as I sat in her room taking stock of the end of her life.

I let the two of them have a little time together and I hung out in the front room with Darling, the enormous hospice worker who’d grown up on Kuai. We chatted about how little time my aunt had left on this earth and how the girls were doing everything they could to keep her comfortable. I knew this to be the case as I’d driven to the pharmacy in Hilo earlier that day and picked up enough morphine to relax a beef cow on the way to the slaughterhouse. They didn’t even make me sign for it.

When my grandmother needed another cigarette I helped her out to the far side of the porch (I’d already broken up a mother/daughter conversation earlier when my grandmother lit up too close to the open doorway and my aunt caught a whiff of the smoke):

“Mom, since I’m in here dying of lung cancer, do you think you could wait until you are all the way outside and the door is closed before lighting up a cigarette at my house?”

When I came back inside, my aunt called me back to her bedroom.

She had been waiting for me. Sitting on the bed next to her was a cardboard shirt box and a large manilla envelope. Inside were the hand drawn illustrations and a manuscript for the children’s book she had been working on for years. I hadn’t seen the drawings (many which had scared me) since I was a child. The sketches of the polar bears were beautifully done, but the bearded, heavily browed, green-skinned “Grow” had always set uneasily with me.

I had never had anyone make a dying request of me before, but it’s best to be blunt. My aunt knew of my aspirations to be a published writer and thus she bequeathed her book to me. I sat there and looked in her eyes as best I could and told her that I would be honored to try and find an agent and a publisher that would get her book out there in the children’s market. Then, after saying a last good bye, I put it carefully in my suitcase and brought it home to the mainland. The dusty shirt box that contains my aunt’s dreams, the pinnacle of a vastly creative life, sits under my bed and collects dust. I have done nothing with it other than occasionally slip it out and look at the pages.

Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear - Bonnie Smetts

As I’d said before, you can tell that Randy’s my best friend because she can let me be when I need to. After my time at the Records department, I needed time to let be. Randy had asked how’d it gone and all, but then didn’t press when I didn’t want to tell her what I’d found out. That yes, I got a grandma, and she’s living closer than I really want her to be living to me. If the information on that computer screen was correct. In the Records office, I’d been sent to a computer to do the work but when I’d located the person that’s got to be my grandma, I’d gone back up to the lady at the counter. Are you sure this information is really correct, I’d asked her. She assured me that it was as correct as it could be, baring things like deaths and all. She explained that my momma was probably listed as alive, her death certificate not having been received. But my grandma, now she’s most likely alive, baring that she’d died same time as momma, which isn’t likely.

So now I’m sitting in Randy’s car and we’re going back to Nordeen. Never though I’d really ever want to go home, never thought I’d have that feeling that I had a home, but I couldn’t wait to get to my room and watch the sun go down and the red lights from the diner’s sign come on. I couldn’t wait to sit there in the red night and think. Me and that sign had come together, when the red came on, some how’s it was time to be thinking. I had to look at that box again and take a look at that person who’d be my grandma. Right in the picture, she’d be more like my momma’s age and I wasn’t sure I wanted to see her looking any older. But she sure would be by now. And I have maybe even seen her sometime in my life and not even realized it.

But now I’m just sitting quiet next to Randy, who’s wearing that nice perfume she wears. It’s like being in Hawaii when she wears it, that’s one of the nice things about Randy. That and she never says too much when she knows I got nothing to share. Today my mind is full and as we’re driving along I’m staring at that sign in the side mirror of the new car Randy’s husband’s bought her. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. Seems pretty fitting seeing that my grandma is practically right under my nose somehow, if that computer had given me the information correctly. I’m staring at the mirror and then the side of the road and when Randy asks after a time, you OK honey, I tell her about my grandma.

Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear - Trina Wood

Somewhere along I-5 south of Portland, I wanted out. Out of this damn car, away from these damn kids, just out. I would hitch a ride home or maybe just walk for a few weeks. That sounded kinda good. Walk until my shoes fell apart, until the frustration and stress stopped oozing from my pores. You’d think with 14 years between them, the two spawns of Satan in the backseat wouldn’t fall into the patterns of sibling rivalry that were rampant in my family of five kids when I grew up.

My daughter was heading off for college in a few weeks for Christ’s sake and still she couldn’t keep from antagonizing the hell out of her four year old brother. Mom, he’s hitting me again!

Then don’t lay your pillow against his car seat; that’s his space.

But I don’t want to put my head in the sun, it’s too hot.

I could feel my teeth grinding together, reminding me of my latest trip to the dentist when he commented about the wear pattern and asked whether I was under a lot of stress. My grip on the steering wheel made my knuckles white while my husband dozed in the passenger seat, eyes closed, oblivious to the fact that I was close to driving them all off the road and into a ditch.

I looked into the rearview mirror to see Britt throwing her pillow up against the side window and pressing her face against it, closing her eyes to the sun beating in on her face. This was supposed to be fun, maybe our last family trip to the San Juans and we’d been miserable the whole ride home. I glanced at her face again, perched over the words in small print, objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

Were they? I felt I was losing her, all I wanted was to hold her tight, keep her safe, make sure she didn’t make mistakes.

Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear - Melody Cryns

It’s like a parallel world, Melanie thought as she peered at herself in the mirror…she saw a young girl with long, blondish brown hair wearing hexagon-shaped glasses – they were sort of in, and that patch, that darned eye patch that showed the battle scar of yet another surgery to see if the doctors could fix her blind eye, only they never could.

Her long bell-bottomed pants dragged on the ground which made her happy. Her mom hated it when her jeans frayed. Maybe she should wear the prescription sun glasses, she thought – but the kids in the neighborhood teased her when she wore those, said she looked like a movie star wanna be – her Mom said they were just jealous because they didn’t have sun glasses like hers. At least then maybe people couldn’t see the eye patch, or notice that she was blind in one eye and really it didn’t matter if she wore the patch or not.

Today was a special day and she wasn’t going to let the eye patch bother her. She sometimes wondered what it would be like to see out of both eyes – would everything look different? Would all the objects in her mom’s bedroom suddenly jump out at her like in that 3-D movie where everyone wore those special glasses? As she looked in the mirror, she could see her mom’s bed with the unmistakable blue bedspread, the colorful scarves hanging everywhere, and the beads – and the open closet door with the colorful clothing mixed with the suits from the past – from the early 1960’s…all in safe colors like brown, navy blue and black.

During the week, Mom wore the safe clothes and put her long, long hair up in a bun. But on the weekends she let her hair hang down and she wore tight-fitting black pants and cotton shirts with huge buttons and bright colors, and beads…it was as if Mom was two different people.

Melanie gathered her hair up and piled it up on her head. “Naaaaa!” she thought. She liked it down better – and she wanted bangs again. Why did her mom have to grow out her bangs? She had to wear her hair pulled back in a half-ponytail so it wouldn’t hang in her face.

“Melanie, are you ready yet! It’s time to go!” Mom shouted from the down the hallway.

“Coming!” Melanie’s wooden clogs made a loud clunking noise as she walked down the hardfood floor hallway.

Today was a special day and a momentus occasion – June 1, 1967, on the brink of summer of love – they were on a mission to stand in line at the record store on Haight Street to get the coveted new Beatles record – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club band.

The Opposite of Me - Chris Callaghan

There’s layers to her, as though she’d put on too many clothes for the temperature of the day.

I wonder if I’m the only one who sees beneath the white cashmere shawl, the top layer she shows to the world. It’s so soft, hand knit by my mother, all innocence, a cotton-candy confection of disguise.

Beneath that shawl are coats of many colors, my father’s army jacket crusty with war, a Guatemalan shirt proclaiming her connection to the wronged peasants, a gray London Fog raincoat stained with years of deluges. If you stand close to her when she walks you can hear the clink of rusted chain mail or catch a glimpse of medieval armor kept brilliantly polished for the camera. The hair shirt is brown and never seen but I know its there. She once showed me the sleeve.

The nun’s habit is black, the confirmation dress pristine white, all of them are costumes for her multiple roles.

I stand next to her and peer into her face trying to see into her eyes, said to be the mirrors of our souls. Her eyes are hooded like a falcons, cast in deep shadow, unreadable, and empty like a corpse.

Look into my eyes and you will see that my sister is the opposite of me.

The Opposite of Me - Randy Wong

“You’re late.”

Opposite Me sits down in the seat across from me panting heavily. Opposite Me is wiping a stain at the front of his shirt.

“Heh. The little one spit up on me this morning. Pureed peas.”

I smile and shrug. “Yeah, I can’t wait until ninety percent of the food she eats stays in her mouth.”

Opposite Me gets a cup of coffee. “So, how did the presentation go?’

“Oh, it was fine,” I remarked. “I traded in half a night’s worth of sleep to get it done, but it was worth it.”

Opposite Me grabs a donut from the box in the coffee station. “Of course, if I hadn’t had to work on the boy’s science project, you would have been done a lot sooner.”

I chuckled. “Man, the things they make kids do these days.”

Opposite Me laughs. “I couldn’t figure out how to make a small scaled tree so I took a fresh head of broccoli and glued the florets to the board. Bang. Instant forest.”

I laugh out loud, almost choking on my coffee. “Ha! How long do you think they will last before rotting away?”

“Oh, it should hold for a little bit. I sprayed a ton of shellac over them.”

Opposite Me paused for a second. “So, how did it go this morning?”

“What? Oh … yeah. It was fine. Pretty much what I expected.”

“Oh. Did he curse you out? Did he call you can asshole?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. Someone else in the world who thinks I’m an asshole.”

Opposite Me pointed his index finger at me. “Dude, I told you. You treat people like that, and in the end, everyone will hate your guts.”

I set down my coffee mug loudly. “Look, do you think I like laying people off? It’s the economy, stupid. What am I supposed to do? When the boss says that we will have a reduction in force, and so decide on whom you can let go, what can I do? I am just another cog in the large machine.”

Opposite Me rolled his eyes. “C’mon. There’s go to be a better way to do it.”

“Yeah? If you know one, tell me! You can think I am cold? You think that I didn’t think about his two kids? That the company is paying his severance package in one lump sum? Talk about a big screw you. But you know what? I can’t think of that. If I try to be too sympathetic, then they think I am full of crap. If I try to be too stern, then I am the bad guy who laid them off. I can’t win. But, someone has to make the tough choices, and someone needs to do the dirty deed.”

Opposite Me looked at me and smiled. “Well, I could never do what you do.”

“Well, you don’t have to. That’s why I’m here.”

I poured myself another cup of coffee. “How’s the boy?”

Opposite Me finished off the jelly donut he’d been munching on. “Oh, he’s fine. You know kids that age. I allowed him to release some steam before he felt better about it. Sometimes, you just gotta give them their space.”

“You’re right. I tried yelling at him once when he wouldn’t talk to me. I guess I’m not that patient. You did a good thing.”

Opposite Me wiped the smear of jelly from the side of his mouth. “Well, that’s why I’m here. You’re needed when control and order need to be established. I’m needed when kindness and understanding is called for. That is why this works for us.”

I nodded. “You make a good point. Truth is you’re too much of a wimp to make it in today’s cutthroat corporate world.”

Opposite Me smiled. “Yeah, well, you’re so aggressive, today’s little pea spittle would have degenerated into an all out food fight.”

“Ha! Hey, if she can’t take it, then don’t spit it!”

Opposite Me does a double take and reaches into his pocket. “Oh! That reminds me. I am supposed to remind you that Katie says don’t forget to add chicken thighs to the shopping list. You do remember that you’ll need to shop after work, right?”

“Huh. Well, I remember now.”

Opposite Me got up from his seat. “Lunch is just about over. Try not to be late. We’re supposed to help the boy with his math homework tonight.”

Making a mental note, I nodded. “Got it…”

* * * * * * * * *

“… hear me? Dude! Can you hear me?!”

I rouse myself from deep thought. “Yeah, yeah – I’m here. Time to go back to work?”

My assistant John stares at me for a second, and then punches me in the shoulder. “Wake up, sleeping beauty. Geez, you were a thousand miles away. What were you thinking about?’

I put my coffee mug into the sink, and start washing it. “Um, just thinking about stuff I have to do after work.”