Funny you ask. Yesterday was another conversation about the dead. At this point these things come up often. See, at age 75 you are at the average life expectancy of the American male. This means, approximately, half of all the people you ever knew are already dead. The other half is falling fast.
Then you think about the houses where they all lived, for now we’ll stick with family. The grandparents and aunts and uncles and parents, all those homes we grew up in, ate meals, made love, wept, shouted, lied, laughed, drank, fought, sat in the summer sun with lemonade, smoked ten thousand cigarettes. A boat wrecked on the rocks, marriages on the rocks, writing into the dumpster, lovers dumped, most the entire goddamn picture show on the cutting floor.
And there you are. Nowhere. Nothing is left, everything you knew gonzo. The people, the places, the particularities of it all.
But it’s not all quite like that is it? It is and it isn’t. Here is a picture of the grandsons. Over there are some printed pages of something written only yesterday. Already updated this morning. Here is this screen I’m typing on and watching the words sprinkle across the page. The childhood homes are gone, but there are the dishes to be done, the crumbs of this morning’s waffles. Pending is the decision to make a second cup of coffee. I only drink instant now, like my mother did in her old age, to avoid the clean up, and really, the difference between instant and brewed coffee isn’t worth talking about. My coffee cup is white, and reliable, and when it’s empty it never fails, coffee has run from the rim where my lips were, to the bottom of the cup, as if a slug had crawled down and left its mark.
Love all of this, Tod. Life just keeps going until it doesn't. "...dishes to be done, the crumbs of this morning's waffles." And the reliable mug with the slug trail. I am a former instant-coffee drinker and would return in a snap, but my husband brews me a pour over each morning and, well, who can say no to that?
Amy licked her finger and thumb and ran them along the end of the thread. She picked up a needle and held it up close in front of her face. At the third attempt, she pushed the thread into the eye, then pulled it through. She felt next to her for the pair of scissors that she had used to unpick the name tag that had been sewn neatly into the jumper. That name tag had fallen to the floor by her knees and rested amongst short strands of thread exactly matching the jumper’s colour. It had on it a picture of a car, and next to that the name, Arthur.
Her phone buzzed. She placed the needle between her lips, leaned forward, and reached for her phone. She tapped the screen, scanned the notification, and flicked it away.
They had moved to the house six months ago and had barely unpacked anything. She had found the cotton reels, the needles in their round plastic case and the sewing scissors in a margarine tub labelled ‘Candles/Party Things’. On Jake’s birthday she hadn’t been able to find the candles. She thought, now, of how Jake had tried to smile as she sang to him.
Jake pushed the door open, shifting it against the boxes she’d had to move while searching for the sewing kit. Three of them were still taped up. He pushed through and said, ‘Why are you in here?’
She turned him around and held up the jumper to his back. He twisted back around.
‘That’s not mine,’ he said.
He looked down and saw the label.
‘It’s Arthur’s’
‘Is he one of your friends?’ she asked.
Jake shifted on his feet.
‘You’ve got to make friends, Jake. It’s been six months.’
He twisted his fingers into the curls that had come free when Amy tied her hair.
‘I don’t know how,’ he said.
‘Just ask them, say ‘My name’s Jake, can I join in?’ Just ask.’
Her phone buzzed, she bent away from his twirling fingers, scanned the notification.
She flicked it away.
‘Try this on,’ she said.
She pulled it over his head, he lifted his arms, she tugged the sleeves down his arms until his fingertips came through.
‘There,’ she said.
Later, Jake waited in the dining room. Amy flicked off the light, and brought from behind her back a plate with his dinner. Stuck into the jacket potato were seven lit candles. She placed it in front of him.
There is a big story encased inside of this short one! The phone that keeps ringing; the unpacked boxes... and Arthur. And then, the potato instead of a cake. Something has happened here, something sad or even frightening. I feel for that little boy who misses his friends and hasn't made new ones. Life! So hard sometimes!
She didn’t give it to me. I found it underneath a pile of papers after she died—a 4 inch cut crystal vase. The exact item I asked for for my birthday—and here it was, just waiting for me. Hidden, as I was cleaning out her house. I’ve put it on my desk, stuck an azalea blossom in it. “Thanks Maria,” I say, even though she’s dead.
She was 98 when she died—the same age my mother would have been had she not died of breast cancer at the age of 50. Maria was a poet who thought highly of herself. But come to think of it, if poets don’t think highly of themselves, who will? She wrote two books of poetry. The first one is dated 1998. The last 2015. A total of 108 poems, that’s 6.35 poems per year between publication dates. She didn’t count. She’d be annoyed to think I did.
Here are the items she gave me: first, I needed a white gown to play the part of Emily Dickinson in some long-forgotten poetry event. My nightgowns tended to be see-through and clingy—so not Emily. I asked Maria if I could borrow a white cotton nightgown. How did I know she’d have one? How does a dog know when to stop waving its tail?
She gave me a painting on a mirror of an old fashioned girl holding a parasol. I put it in my bathroom. Then I asked for an oil painting of her from years ago, when she posed for the Art League. She was holding a cup of coffee, her ubiquitous libation. She was happy to give it to me. But her son Billy got wind of it and made me give it back. Did he want it? No. Did he resent me? You bet. Petty, that’s what he was. Maria was not petty.We didn’t talk about Billy.
Then she gave me a belt buckle—yes a belt buckle. You can’t make this stuff up! It said “Moxie” on it, which was, according to AI, “one of America’s oldest continuously produced sodas, known for its bold, bittersweet, and highly polarizing herbal flavor.” That was Maria—she had moxie, descended into the lexicon as spunky. And she needed spunk, after both sons and her husband died, when improbably I began her ersatz daughter.
I threaded the buckle on a belt, wore it for a while until I stopped wearing belts—why accentuate my middle, as it morphed from the center of an hourglass to a chunky salt shaker? And then I lost it. Maybe in a move. Maybe just careless. Now, I regret it didn’t treasure it, didn’t mount it on a velvet ribbon and place it next to her two poetry books. Now that neither of us is filled with Moxie.
An ant on the peony bud is making its way to the edge of the green leaf wrapped tight around the bud. The blossom will be white; it is folded inside itself waiting for the ant to start chewing away at the leaf edge. It will start chewing soon. Maybe another ant will join it. The blossom will be patient, listening to the chewing, knowing that eventually enough green leaf will be gone and it — the blossom — will be free to stretch a petal, then two, then three, then all it has to stretch.
Over there, another blossom-to-be is awaiting its ant. It doesn’t know that’s what it’s doing; this is its first time being a peony bud. Once an ant starts climbing its stalk, though, it will know the anticipation that the first blossom is already feeling.
Carly Simon wrote a song, Anticipation. Making me wait. I was disappointed when she sold it to the ketchup people. She could have waited for her song to mean something in the time it was meant to, instead of blam, being on TV every other commercial break dripping red goo into our ears. Now it just means hamburgers on the grill.
Another ant has joined the first. The bud will blossom soon. The second bud is still ignorant of its future. Ketchup is in the fridge, and Carly is probably on Nantucket, maybe Martha’s Vineyard. It’s going to be a very rainy holiday weekend. Not good for cookouts on island paradises.
And you, reader, are at your desk or in your chair or on a sunny beach, thinking for a moment about these two peony buds and their ants. And ketchup.
Oh, wow, I adore this. And is this true about ants and peony buds? I almost don't want to know. Love all the connections here, the way you let your mind wander and come back.
I think it’s true. If it’s not, it should be. What else are those ants doing there? I wrote the word ‘anticipation’ and the way my mind works the song came up, then the ketchup. Maybe I should have said catsup.
I think my father said 'catsup.' you know, how you can hear a voice you haven't heard in a long time say something unexpected. Maybe it was the Brooklyn way. Good old days indeed. Let's stay right here.
The work of a writer. (One just feels or knows this, from energies beneath, what buoys up the lines and paragraphs.) Every summer we watched the peonies open, the pink, the magenta, and the white, and they always had scores of ants swarming them. They must serve some function--without diving to AI for anything, these days, I'm preferring to wonder--just as they do, here, with liquidambar (sweetgum) trees. I absolutely respect, and revere, the thought that the blossom "listens," "knows," "waits," and "is ignorant." It really is like that, if one has ever tended a garden, got to know the plants intimately.
It seemed, maybe, that an extra line between these two might help:
Once an ant starts climbing its stalk, though, it will know the anticipation that the first blossom is already feeling. [extra (optional) line]
Carly Simon wrote a song, Anticipation....
**
Otherwise, it might be too associative, if that makes sense--whereas the narrator here clearly has all his marbles, is with the tides and rhythms of Creation, through observation, through respect and reverence. Through being with, companioning "things." Something might soften the landing, but I don't know what (yet).
I remember listening to the album at a ninth-grade "get-together" so well. We felt pretty cool, if not quite edgy. James Taylor invariably was put on in tandem. The jocks tended to hope for some harder rock and roll - like Led Zeppelin, which I hated. It depends who was hosting the party - usually a girl.
Those were funny times, listening to Carly Simon on the weekend then going to school on Monday to hear the boys go on about Zeppelin or Clapton. They were so muscular in their opinions I just kept quiet.
(Author's note: my daughter and I share the same name, and this is an excerpt from the series I write here based on my journal.)
Last night not long before I went to bed Polly came over to have me print some documents for her EMT class that she is not able to print from her iPad for some reason. With the window open I heard the back gate clink and then saw the light come on and Polly walking with Hollis trotting at the end of her leash toward the deck. Even though I was winding down and without much energy I was still glad to see them except Hollis could have been less enthusiastic about trying to get her muzzle into the cereal with heavy cream I was having from Mom’s banged-up aluminum measuring cup with the black plastic handle. Hollis whimpered and squirmed next to me on the couch until I started to whimper and squirm myself and then Polly pulled her away to sit on the bean bag. While I printed the documents Polly told me about her class and Hollis thrashed Polly’s Birkenstocks. It sounds like Polly is off to a good start with class, feeling comfortable and confident. Of her classmates she said a few have medical backgrounds. Two are nurses. Another is a physician’s assistant. Others are veterans. One is a rising senior in college. Polly thanked me for How to Start. She likes how it is short and to the point and said that she had heard a commencement address a few days ago where the speaker told graduates not to choose a career to please parents. One morning a few months before Mom died she was feeling especially listless about breakfast. I am never hungry for breakfast, she said, sitting slumped in her walker at the table. Using her measuring cup I poured some cereal into a bowl and topped it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and sprinkled it with sugar. How’s that? I asked after sprinkling the sugar. More, Mom said. She ate all of it.
It was made of wood and had a small landscape painted on top. The sides had hidden sliding panels that allowed the top to open. It came with a small page of printed instructions and a line drawing of how to move the sliding panels. Over the years the corners of the panels developed a patina and gave away the secrets. I bought it at the magic shop when I was old enough to ride the bus downtown by myself. I kept my favorite things inside, more tchotchke than secret or anything of value: an arrowhead, an elk tooth, some mountain goat wool, the key to my bike lock, some old coins, a few special marbles that clacked around inside. I think one of my kids took a hammer and screw driver to it when I wasn’t around. I was pissed of course but totally understood the frustration and so I tossed it in the garbage.
Summer Brigmont hadnt fixed a problem in ages, apart from the bees - which were happily buzzing on roses.
She'd planted thoughtfully so there'd be flowers all year round. Bees were particular and methodical, she knew they wouldve noticed her hard work, and blew them a kiss, mentally. The kiss bounced in the roomy moonlight of her head, as perfectly arranged as her garden.
I'm probably some kind of Bee Goddess, she thought, imagining herself lying on a golden leaf whispering butter me in honey. No she didnt want even the most adorable bees dropping honey on her or whatever they did and what if some other creature was doing a ride along with them that weekend? No there'd be none of that.
High on the sweet lemon fragrance of a pink Heritage, Sweltie sighed.
Since his promotion, and Mission - to keep the Bee Princess Happy - he'd been flummoxed, ineffective.
He'd been lost in her half thoughts, abandoned daydreams. How did she live, her mind crowded with upended objects in fog? Stumbling and fumbling - how did any of them live? If he could stop her cycle of Perceptual Hoarding perhaps he could help the Goddess find happiness.
Now she'd imagined someone else visiting the Bees that weekend and he'd logged it right before she cast it off like a fisherman. The 'Butter me in Honey' had been immediately deemed unsuitable but the 'Visitor' approved. There was only ever one. That bastard Timothy Cricket.
Timothy swept in Thursday night, picking his four teeth with a sliver of wood. No one knew what creature he'd taken the teeth from but they were thin sharp and yellow. This time I'm getting something Big he whispered to Sweltie and a foul odour filled the air. Timothy looked round, tipped his tiny fedora over one eye and said 'I'm puttin down a tap root' and settled under Summer's window.
He waited til dark, rubbed his body parts together and chirped.
After three sleepless nights Summer called her old neighbour to get rid of the bug by any means necessary. Smote it. Smoke it. Beset it. Please.
Bradley had grown handsome in his spare time. He kept it smooth and smelled good.
Summer was supposed to go to chuch but looked like a tombstone, she couldnt chat, sing, pray, she couldnt be an inspiration to young girls striving for excellence. She could only beg Bradley to put her out of her misery.
He ran her a bath and talked through the door until he knew she was soaking safely, awake.
He'd always liked her ridiculous overconfidence but this pathetic exhausted Summer was pulling tenderly at his heart. He wanted an apple crumble made from her uncertainty.
Bradley couldnt locate Timothy Cricket but found a feral kitten and gave it a bowl of tuna where Summer had said the noise was coming from.
Summer slept well that night and forever more. Bradley put her out of her misery, always. They had a long happy life with three children - Bradley ran the garden now, and it was precise, monochromatic. Summer often looked out and saw Bradley mowing, or weeding, his fedora pulled down over one eye.
J.D.A., wonderful wonderful. I love "Smote it. Smoke it. Beset it. Please." Especially "Beset it." And Bradley wanting an apple crumble made from her uncertainty. All that language, and a happy ending, too (or is it?).
Its absence has vexed me, saddened me at the loss, ran me through the proverbial rabbit hole of internet research...that cardboard, multi tiered Hospital Dollhouse. I received it when I was four, shortly before I was subjected to a week stay without my Mommy and sleeping in a room without my sisters for the first time in my life, to have my tonsils removed. Does trauma live in the cells. Hell, yeah it does! I can still picture the girl in one of the beds with her see-through cover, hooked up to a machine, and watching the cover rise and fall, sure the would die and would be the only one to notice. Things like that did not happen at my Hospital. The figures were of hard styrofoam and the doctors (all men) had surgery gowns that you could attach. The working elevator, powered by a string hooked to a reel was the highlight. The kid with the measles was a part always relegated to my little sister. My older sister refused to play, as I never let her be the Head Surgeon. My game, my rules. In all other areanas, my older sister always made the rules. Somehow, when we left for Kansas, Dad decided that the Hospital did not "make the cut" for items the Army would pack and ship as long as we did not go over a specified limit. Really? A cardboard hospital was going to tip the scale? I think not. I found it on E Bay the other day, after years of searching. It was made by Kenner...and...it was sold. Damnit. That hospital was "control" for me, and I will find another, because I knew, that with every "surgery" and every elevator move, I was in control.
Lovely poem! Do you make collages? (I do. I love making them.) Of course, I thought of YOU when you mentioned the husband of the caretaker, fresh out of prison (sorry...? but true, nevertheless!). I'm thinking about you asking yourself questions in your head. What I find myself doing inside MY head is giving lectures! It's terrible! Lol
I sure do! I even once had a business called Wizard of Vase consisting of Vases I collaged. Some were quite beautiful (thank God I had them well photographed). I couldn't really make it profitable though, and gave most of them away. (Great housewarming presents) but some I just have no idea where they went. I also "art" all of my poetry, and I've tagged you in Notes to show you what I did with this one. (Sometime real art, mostly digital) My walls are covered with my art, often mixed media, always including collage.
My aunt loved my grandfather's caretaker, but her husband was an abusive bad guy, though I think he pretending to have cleaned up his act and been a good guy while he "helped" her, all the while removing sections of the stamp collection. When my aunt discovered it after my Grandfather's death it was devastating. The collection was probably worth $100,000 - quite an inheritance. And it was impossible to track down where they'd been sold. The bastard went back to prison. (No sympathy from me!)
We bid for the metronome on ebay. Shopping I discovered was another fun activity for us. And I was desperate to fill the long day with Simon while, his brothers were in school. We were in a homeschooling phase. Simon’s last school (Montessori) had been a disaster for a twelve-year old who was not a fan of knitting socks or folk dancing. Unfortunately, Montessori had been the solution to our local elementary, great for his mainstream brothers but deadly for my learning-disabled child’s sense of self.
While shopping was not part of our cobbled-together curriculum, the metronome was anything but frivolous. Simon had just started piano lessons after chucking the violin. “Homeschool” actually meant mornings with a tutor who un-like high-school dropout me, was qualified to teach algebra and grammar. After tutor we would go out to lunch and then visit “Paws” a cat adoption center where we fawned over the kittens and my son earned A’s in compassion lavishing extra attention on senior cats who had lost owners to illness and old age. After Paws was a stop for frozen yoghurt then piano.
When we won the metronome on ebay we jumped up and down like a contestant winning a car on the Price is Right. Aweek later it arrived, swathed in newspaper and my son carefully unwrapped it, revealing its beautiful mahogany wood patina, its delicate mechanism cached in a removable wood panel. Somberly Simon set our prize atop our rented piano and my eyes filled with tears as he practiced his scales to its hypnotic rhythm. Later that year we would enroll Simon in an alternative school that finally fit his needs and Simon would give up piano for drums, eventually giving up all instruments for marijuana but that day, the metronome ticked back and forth with all the stability and consistency I was struggling to provide.
I found this comb in the closet when I moved in. I had arrived gradually, taking over a bit more space in the closet next to the sweaters and scarves, necklaces, eyeliner his previous girlfriend had left behind. I don’t know if the comb had actually been hers or if it had belonged to her predecessor – or another of his women. Sometimes I show her things I found in various places in the house and she has no idea where they came from. All I know is that it lived in that closet, which had been hers and was now mine, for all the 41 years I spent with him, and when I moved out after he died, I took it with me. I had never particularly liked it, I don’t usually go in for combs but now that I use them more I appreciate its robustness. Plastic combs tend to break easily and their tines clog with hair and dirt. Not this one. Made of blue metal, the handle is decorated with black swirls, intersecting waves that culminate at the bottom in a schematic face that looks like something out of Aubrey Beardsley. I call it my art deco comb but it is perfectly functional comb. Who was its owner? How had she acquired it? Was it a gift? Why had she left it?
Fern green, wooden, shaft broken, it lay on as it had landed when Simon pulled it from his back pocket on moving day. A tunnel of wood at one end of the longer piece–leadless. Portrait of the writer’s soul on the day the writing stopped. The shorter piece, its marking end fractured, rested atop the longer at a right angle. As though inviting him to sharpen it. A futile action.
He kept them near. A dedicated spot on the corner of his desk. Talisman.
Another green Faber Castell–this one pine green–nestled in his back pocket. A permanent resident on his travels around the city. The writing had returned. Renewed.
But on this day, the haphazard structure had disappeared. He wasn’t aware of their absence at first, his fingers flying across the keyboard, muttering to himself, alternately staring, unfocused at blue green ocean he could glimpse beyond the half open cabin door. Artemus had left the mug of coffee and a kiss near his left ear, murmuring “Casting off–drink it while it’s hot” and slipped outside.
How long ago?
Simon leaned back, picked up the mug and sipped. Bah! Tepid. He grimaced, slammed it down, sloshing black coffee onto the desk. And that was the moment of realization.
“Hey!” He stood, scrambling for his flannel shirt, distracted as he mopped the desk top. Simon stooped and peered under the desk. Had it rolled off onto the floor when the boat swayed?
No. The floor under the desk was pristine. A testament to Artemus and housekeeping.
Artemus. Housekeeping.
Three weeks ago:
An image–Artemus frowning at the broken pencil. Reaching for it. Simon’s hand flashing out to stop him.
“NO!”
“Why are you hanging onto that thing?”
“So I don’t forget.”
Over whiskeys that evening, Simon told him the part of the story he didn’t know. Or did Artemus know? Simon was never quite sure.
Now, he burst through the cabin door. Flaming accusation at the ready.
“What did you do with it?” Hands on his hips, head tilting forward.
The dimple popped in Artemus’s left cheek.
“Are we having our first argument?” The man asked him, grinning.
“I–you–” Simon’s arms flew up. “You don’t understand–” spluttered words. Outrage tensing his face, his shoulders,
“Sit down.” Artemus’s voice was soft.
“No! You can’t just–” He flopped onto the seat.
“Just what?” Artemus cocked his head, his dark eyes on Simon’s. In his hand, a small wooden box. “Open it.” He pushed the box into Simon’s hand.
Inside, the pencil lay on a bed of velvet–unchanged, same angles.
Though I do have fond memories of a beat-up old pair of cowboy boots I used to have repaired till they fell apart. But in those days, there was a lot less slime.
Thank you for this prompt. I wrote about the Dick Tracy watch my dad gave me when I was five. He died when I was seven, and the watch was stolen when I was in my twenties. I've tried to replace it (unsuccessfully), and I still long for it.
I encourage you to copy that form! Begin writing, then--make a huge turn (this comes from letting your mind flow where it will flow) and see what happens.
I knew my mother’s music box, a treasured keepsake that when my brother and I were little she sometimes let us wind up and play if we were very, very careful. The tune it plunks out is a simple, sentimental waltz; the mechanism turns hypnotically behind a sliding glass. One day she showed me a post-it she’d decided to affix inside the music box, with these words: “I bought this music box for my mother with my first paycheck in June 1942.”
She’d have just graduated from high school and proudly started in the ladies’ skirts and blouses department of Filene’s. She marked her emergence into womanhood with this music box. I wonder whether it was the gift she wished her mother had given her. Instead, she did the giving, perhaps in hopes that her blank and self-centered mother would finally notice her.
She couldn’t help herself. By the time she showed me the humble yellow post-it with its roughly scrawled testament to her longing for her mother’s love, I was 40, old enough to know that conflicted feelings between mothers and daughters are not the exception but the rule.
Of course she had conflicted feelings about her mother! Why wouldn’t she? God knows, I do. When she died, I went right to the music box and claimed it. In hopes that she intended it for me as a message that it’s okay to have conflicted feelings about a mother, and encouragement to keep making my way in the world as best I could.
Funny you ask. Yesterday was another conversation about the dead. At this point these things come up often. See, at age 75 you are at the average life expectancy of the American male. This means, approximately, half of all the people you ever knew are already dead. The other half is falling fast.
Then you think about the houses where they all lived, for now we’ll stick with family. The grandparents and aunts and uncles and parents, all those homes we grew up in, ate meals, made love, wept, shouted, lied, laughed, drank, fought, sat in the summer sun with lemonade, smoked ten thousand cigarettes. A boat wrecked on the rocks, marriages on the rocks, writing into the dumpster, lovers dumped, most the entire goddamn picture show on the cutting floor.
And there you are. Nowhere. Nothing is left, everything you knew gonzo. The people, the places, the particularities of it all.
But it’s not all quite like that is it? It is and it isn’t. Here is a picture of the grandsons. Over there are some printed pages of something written only yesterday. Already updated this morning. Here is this screen I’m typing on and watching the words sprinkle across the page. The childhood homes are gone, but there are the dishes to be done, the crumbs of this morning’s waffles. Pending is the decision to make a second cup of coffee. I only drink instant now, like my mother did in her old age, to avoid the clean up, and really, the difference between instant and brewed coffee isn’t worth talking about. My coffee cup is white, and reliable, and when it’s empty it never fails, coffee has run from the rim where my lips were, to the bottom of the cup, as if a slug had crawled down and left its mark.
Love all of this, Tod. Life just keeps going until it doesn't. "...dishes to be done, the crumbs of this morning's waffles." And the reliable mug with the slug trail. I am a former instant-coffee drinker and would return in a snap, but my husband brews me a pour over each morning and, well, who can say no to that?
Well if there was a wife brewing a pour over here, wouldn't that change everything.
when we come visit, he'll make you one
such a sad, poor fella...... :)
Your husband and Steve would get along well over how to make coffee! Every morning, he brews a fresh pour over pot. Best moment of the day.
Lovely! Although I strongly disagree about the difference between instant and brew coffee.
Ha! Yes, I know you do!
Enjoyed that last observation, Todd.
"most the entire goddamn picture show on the cutting floor"
That's not how good movies are made?
It is, indeed! Good stories too.
Tod, that last line is wonderful. I can see your coffee cup. Also the words sprinkled across the page.
lovely Tod
Amy licked her finger and thumb and ran them along the end of the thread. She picked up a needle and held it up close in front of her face. At the third attempt, she pushed the thread into the eye, then pulled it through. She felt next to her for the pair of scissors that she had used to unpick the name tag that had been sewn neatly into the jumper. That name tag had fallen to the floor by her knees and rested amongst short strands of thread exactly matching the jumper’s colour. It had on it a picture of a car, and next to that the name, Arthur.
Her phone buzzed. She placed the needle between her lips, leaned forward, and reached for her phone. She tapped the screen, scanned the notification, and flicked it away.
They had moved to the house six months ago and had barely unpacked anything. She had found the cotton reels, the needles in their round plastic case and the sewing scissors in a margarine tub labelled ‘Candles/Party Things’. On Jake’s birthday she hadn’t been able to find the candles. She thought, now, of how Jake had tried to smile as she sang to him.
Jake pushed the door open, shifting it against the boxes she’d had to move while searching for the sewing kit. Three of them were still taped up. He pushed through and said, ‘Why are you in here?’
She turned him around and held up the jumper to his back. He twisted back around.
‘That’s not mine,’ he said.
He looked down and saw the label.
‘It’s Arthur’s’
‘Is he one of your friends?’ she asked.
Jake shifted on his feet.
‘You’ve got to make friends, Jake. It’s been six months.’
He twisted his fingers into the curls that had come free when Amy tied her hair.
‘I don’t know how,’ he said.
‘Just ask them, say ‘My name’s Jake, can I join in?’ Just ask.’
Her phone buzzed, she bent away from his twirling fingers, scanned the notification.
She flicked it away.
‘Try this on,’ she said.
She pulled it over his head, he lifted his arms, she tugged the sleeves down his arms until his fingertips came through.
‘There,’ she said.
Later, Jake waited in the dining room. Amy flicked off the light, and brought from behind her back a plate with his dinner. Stuck into the jacket potato were seven lit candles. She placed it in front of him.
There is a big story encased inside of this short one! The phone that keeps ringing; the unpacked boxes... and Arthur. And then, the potato instead of a cake. Something has happened here, something sad or even frightening. I feel for that little boy who misses his friends and hasn't made new ones. Life! So hard sometimes!
It makes me want more. Why doesn’t Amy answer the phone ? Who’s Arthur?
Powerful last paragraph
It makes me want more. Why doesn’t Amy answer the phone ? Who’s Arthur?
Evocative story
love the specificity of sewing the label. tension of threading the needle. The mystery of Arthur. I hope there is more to come
I like Amy, a lot, and your story, too.
She didn’t give it to me. I found it underneath a pile of papers after she died—a 4 inch cut crystal vase. The exact item I asked for for my birthday—and here it was, just waiting for me. Hidden, as I was cleaning out her house. I’ve put it on my desk, stuck an azalea blossom in it. “Thanks Maria,” I say, even though she’s dead.
She was 98 when she died—the same age my mother would have been had she not died of breast cancer at the age of 50. Maria was a poet who thought highly of herself. But come to think of it, if poets don’t think highly of themselves, who will? She wrote two books of poetry. The first one is dated 1998. The last 2015. A total of 108 poems, that’s 6.35 poems per year between publication dates. She didn’t count. She’d be annoyed to think I did.
Here are the items she gave me: first, I needed a white gown to play the part of Emily Dickinson in some long-forgotten poetry event. My nightgowns tended to be see-through and clingy—so not Emily. I asked Maria if I could borrow a white cotton nightgown. How did I know she’d have one? How does a dog know when to stop waving its tail?
She gave me a painting on a mirror of an old fashioned girl holding a parasol. I put it in my bathroom. Then I asked for an oil painting of her from years ago, when she posed for the Art League. She was holding a cup of coffee, her ubiquitous libation. She was happy to give it to me. But her son Billy got wind of it and made me give it back. Did he want it? No. Did he resent me? You bet. Petty, that’s what he was. Maria was not petty.We didn’t talk about Billy.
Then she gave me a belt buckle—yes a belt buckle. You can’t make this stuff up! It said “Moxie” on it, which was, according to AI, “one of America’s oldest continuously produced sodas, known for its bold, bittersweet, and highly polarizing herbal flavor.” That was Maria—she had moxie, descended into the lexicon as spunky. And she needed spunk, after both sons and her husband died, when improbably I began her ersatz daughter.
I threaded the buckle on a belt, wore it for a while until I stopped wearing belts—why accentuate my middle, as it morphed from the center of an hourglass to a chunky salt shaker? And then I lost it. Maybe in a move. Maybe just careless. Now, I regret it didn’t treasure it, didn’t mount it on a velvet ribbon and place it next to her two poetry books. Now that neither of us is filled with Moxie.
Such a lovely tribute!
Some great lines: “If poets don’t think highly of themselves, who will?” “How does a dog know when to stop waving its tail/“
Moxie is the official state drink of the state of Maine !
Tod you are fantastic! Drink up!
An ant on the peony bud is making its way to the edge of the green leaf wrapped tight around the bud. The blossom will be white; it is folded inside itself waiting for the ant to start chewing away at the leaf edge. It will start chewing soon. Maybe another ant will join it. The blossom will be patient, listening to the chewing, knowing that eventually enough green leaf will be gone and it — the blossom — will be free to stretch a petal, then two, then three, then all it has to stretch.
Over there, another blossom-to-be is awaiting its ant. It doesn’t know that’s what it’s doing; this is its first time being a peony bud. Once an ant starts climbing its stalk, though, it will know the anticipation that the first blossom is already feeling.
Carly Simon wrote a song, Anticipation. Making me wait. I was disappointed when she sold it to the ketchup people. She could have waited for her song to mean something in the time it was meant to, instead of blam, being on TV every other commercial break dripping red goo into our ears. Now it just means hamburgers on the grill.
Another ant has joined the first. The bud will blossom soon. The second bud is still ignorant of its future. Ketchup is in the fridge, and Carly is probably on Nantucket, maybe Martha’s Vineyard. It’s going to be a very rainy holiday weekend. Not good for cookouts on island paradises.
And you, reader, are at your desk or in your chair or on a sunny beach, thinking for a moment about these two peony buds and their ants. And ketchup.
Oh, wow, I adore this. And is this true about ants and peony buds? I almost don't want to know. Love all the connections here, the way you let your mind wander and come back.
I think it’s true. If it’s not, it should be. What else are those ants doing there? I wrote the word ‘anticipation’ and the way my mind works the song came up, then the ketchup. Maybe I should have said catsup.
Yes, it should be! And I think I write it ketchup. Catsup kind of bugs me. (Also: These are the good old days!)
I think my father said 'catsup.' you know, how you can hear a voice you haven't heard in a long time say something unexpected. Maybe it was the Brooklyn way. Good old days indeed. Let's stay right here.
The work of a writer. (One just feels or knows this, from energies beneath, what buoys up the lines and paragraphs.) Every summer we watched the peonies open, the pink, the magenta, and the white, and they always had scores of ants swarming them. They must serve some function--without diving to AI for anything, these days, I'm preferring to wonder--just as they do, here, with liquidambar (sweetgum) trees. I absolutely respect, and revere, the thought that the blossom "listens," "knows," "waits," and "is ignorant." It really is like that, if one has ever tended a garden, got to know the plants intimately.
It seemed, maybe, that an extra line between these two might help:
Once an ant starts climbing its stalk, though, it will know the anticipation that the first blossom is already feeling. [extra (optional) line]
Carly Simon wrote a song, Anticipation....
**
Otherwise, it might be too associative, if that makes sense--whereas the narrator here clearly has all his marbles, is with the tides and rhythms of Creation, through observation, through respect and reverence. Through being with, companioning "things." Something might soften the landing, but I don't know what (yet).
Brian, thank you for such a close read and the accompanying thoughts. I appreciate it tremendously.
And then there are the bees hovering around the peony buds. Maybe they’re doing that while they wait for the ketchup.
I want to know where the Carly Simon vinyl with Anticipation went.
It went the way of all my vinyl: A guy in a pickup truck came by and took them all away. But who needs it when it's so embedded?
I remember listening to the album at a ninth-grade "get-together" so well. We felt pretty cool, if not quite edgy. James Taylor invariably was put on in tandem. The jocks tended to hope for some harder rock and roll - like Led Zeppelin, which I hated. It depends who was hosting the party - usually a girl.
Those were funny times, listening to Carly Simon on the weekend then going to school on Monday to hear the boys go on about Zeppelin or Clapton. They were so muscular in their opinions I just kept quiet.
Sugar
(Author's note: my daughter and I share the same name, and this is an excerpt from the series I write here based on my journal.)
Last night not long before I went to bed Polly came over to have me print some documents for her EMT class that she is not able to print from her iPad for some reason. With the window open I heard the back gate clink and then saw the light come on and Polly walking with Hollis trotting at the end of her leash toward the deck. Even though I was winding down and without much energy I was still glad to see them except Hollis could have been less enthusiastic about trying to get her muzzle into the cereal with heavy cream I was having from Mom’s banged-up aluminum measuring cup with the black plastic handle. Hollis whimpered and squirmed next to me on the couch until I started to whimper and squirm myself and then Polly pulled her away to sit on the bean bag. While I printed the documents Polly told me about her class and Hollis thrashed Polly’s Birkenstocks. It sounds like Polly is off to a good start with class, feeling comfortable and confident. Of her classmates she said a few have medical backgrounds. Two are nurses. Another is a physician’s assistant. Others are veterans. One is a rising senior in college. Polly thanked me for How to Start. She likes how it is short and to the point and said that she had heard a commencement address a few days ago where the speaker told graduates not to choose a career to please parents. One morning a few months before Mom died she was feeling especially listless about breakfast. I am never hungry for breakfast, she said, sitting slumped in her walker at the table. Using her measuring cup I poured some cereal into a bowl and topped it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and sprinkled it with sugar. How’s that? I asked after sprinkling the sugar. More, Mom said. She ate all of it.
Took me a moment, but then I saw it: the measuring cup that pulls it all together. Nice job!
Yep. Thank you.
Chinese puzzle box
It was made of wood and had a small landscape painted on top. The sides had hidden sliding panels that allowed the top to open. It came with a small page of printed instructions and a line drawing of how to move the sliding panels. Over the years the corners of the panels developed a patina and gave away the secrets. I bought it at the magic shop when I was old enough to ride the bus downtown by myself. I kept my favorite things inside, more tchotchke than secret or anything of value: an arrowhead, an elk tooth, some mountain goat wool, the key to my bike lock, some old coins, a few special marbles that clacked around inside. I think one of my kids took a hammer and screw driver to it when I wasn’t around. I was pissed of course but totally understood the frustration and so I tossed it in the garbage.
There's just something about boxes with stuff inside.
agreed!
Wow--there is so much inside of this tiny story!
Thanks, mary and thanks for the prompt.
Such details in so few words - like the puzzle box containing all those childhood memories.
Summer and the Bees
Summer Brigmont hadnt fixed a problem in ages, apart from the bees - which were happily buzzing on roses.
She'd planted thoughtfully so there'd be flowers all year round. Bees were particular and methodical, she knew they wouldve noticed her hard work, and blew them a kiss, mentally. The kiss bounced in the roomy moonlight of her head, as perfectly arranged as her garden.
I'm probably some kind of Bee Goddess, she thought, imagining herself lying on a golden leaf whispering butter me in honey. No she didnt want even the most adorable bees dropping honey on her or whatever they did and what if some other creature was doing a ride along with them that weekend? No there'd be none of that.
High on the sweet lemon fragrance of a pink Heritage, Sweltie sighed.
Since his promotion, and Mission - to keep the Bee Princess Happy - he'd been flummoxed, ineffective.
He'd been lost in her half thoughts, abandoned daydreams. How did she live, her mind crowded with upended objects in fog? Stumbling and fumbling - how did any of them live? If he could stop her cycle of Perceptual Hoarding perhaps he could help the Goddess find happiness.
Now she'd imagined someone else visiting the Bees that weekend and he'd logged it right before she cast it off like a fisherman. The 'Butter me in Honey' had been immediately deemed unsuitable but the 'Visitor' approved. There was only ever one. That bastard Timothy Cricket.
Timothy swept in Thursday night, picking his four teeth with a sliver of wood. No one knew what creature he'd taken the teeth from but they were thin sharp and yellow. This time I'm getting something Big he whispered to Sweltie and a foul odour filled the air. Timothy looked round, tipped his tiny fedora over one eye and said 'I'm puttin down a tap root' and settled under Summer's window.
He waited til dark, rubbed his body parts together and chirped.
After three sleepless nights Summer called her old neighbour to get rid of the bug by any means necessary. Smote it. Smoke it. Beset it. Please.
Bradley had grown handsome in his spare time. He kept it smooth and smelled good.
Summer was supposed to go to chuch but looked like a tombstone, she couldnt chat, sing, pray, she couldnt be an inspiration to young girls striving for excellence. She could only beg Bradley to put her out of her misery.
He ran her a bath and talked through the door until he knew she was soaking safely, awake.
He'd always liked her ridiculous overconfidence but this pathetic exhausted Summer was pulling tenderly at his heart. He wanted an apple crumble made from her uncertainty.
Bradley couldnt locate Timothy Cricket but found a feral kitten and gave it a bowl of tuna where Summer had said the noise was coming from.
Summer slept well that night and forever more. Bradley put her out of her misery, always. They had a long happy life with three children - Bradley ran the garden now, and it was precise, monochromatic. Summer often looked out and saw Bradley mowing, or weeding, his fedora pulled down over one eye.
A love story! So many lovely lines: "The kiss bounced in the roomy moonlight of her head, as perfectly arranged as her garden." Sigh.
What a sweet jumble of a story. Fun to read.
thanks Charlie
thanks Charlie
J.D.A., wonderful wonderful. I love "Smote it. Smoke it. Beset it. Please." Especially "Beset it." And Bradley wanting an apple crumble made from her uncertainty. All that language, and a happy ending, too (or is it?).
Its absence has vexed me, saddened me at the loss, ran me through the proverbial rabbit hole of internet research...that cardboard, multi tiered Hospital Dollhouse. I received it when I was four, shortly before I was subjected to a week stay without my Mommy and sleeping in a room without my sisters for the first time in my life, to have my tonsils removed. Does trauma live in the cells. Hell, yeah it does! I can still picture the girl in one of the beds with her see-through cover, hooked up to a machine, and watching the cover rise and fall, sure the would die and would be the only one to notice. Things like that did not happen at my Hospital. The figures were of hard styrofoam and the doctors (all men) had surgery gowns that you could attach. The working elevator, powered by a string hooked to a reel was the highlight. The kid with the measles was a part always relegated to my little sister. My older sister refused to play, as I never let her be the Head Surgeon. My game, my rules. In all other areanas, my older sister always made the rules. Somehow, when we left for Kansas, Dad decided that the Hospital did not "make the cut" for items the Army would pack and ship as long as we did not go over a specified limit. Really? A cardboard hospital was going to tip the scale? I think not. I found it on E Bay the other day, after years of searching. It was made by Kenner...and...it was sold. Damnit. That hospital was "control" for me, and I will find another, because I knew, that with every "surgery" and every elevator move, I was in control.
What a fantastic memory! i hope you find another one!
Talismans
I don’t know about you
but I spend an inordinate time
answering questions in my head
that no one will ever ask me.
If I was a castaway
allowed only one object
on a deserted isle,
what would it be?
An atlas or a dictionary?
Forgive my hesitation
in responding,
for I do not know
if I love maps more,
or words.
What if I had to choose between
the paw print of my perfect dog,
preserved to comfort me,
and a shrapneled pocket watch
reputed to have saved my French grandfather’s life
in the Second Battle of the Marne?
I would be very hard put to choose,
they are both my sacred talismans.
Speaking of Grandpère,
he started a stamp collection
in 1909.
By the time he was dying
80 years later,
well, you can imagine its worth.
But the husband of his caretaker,
recently out of prison
found and stole this treasure
selling it off, section by section.
(Thank God Marcel died before he found out,
because it would have killed him.)
I love cancelled postage so much
I make art from it.
Perhaps I hope to somehow summon
those stolen stamps,
dispersed beyond recovery.
In my dreams,
they lift from the pages
where they never should have been glued,
and fly to me on that castaway island
so I would no longer be lost
but found.
MCO 2026
Lovely poem! Do you make collages? (I do. I love making them.) Of course, I thought of YOU when you mentioned the husband of the caretaker, fresh out of prison (sorry...? but true, nevertheless!). I'm thinking about you asking yourself questions in your head. What I find myself doing inside MY head is giving lectures! It's terrible! Lol
As for questions in my head, oh my, the amount of talk shows I've been on! But doesn't everybody to that?
I forget to mention how beautiful I thought your piece was on the black belt.
Thank you, Mark
I sure do! I even once had a business called Wizard of Vase consisting of Vases I collaged. Some were quite beautiful (thank God I had them well photographed). I couldn't really make it profitable though, and gave most of them away. (Great housewarming presents) but some I just have no idea where they went. I also "art" all of my poetry, and I've tagged you in Notes to show you what I did with this one. (Sometime real art, mostly digital) My walls are covered with my art, often mixed media, always including collage.
My aunt loved my grandfather's caretaker, but her husband was an abusive bad guy, though I think he pretending to have cleaned up his act and been a good guy while he "helped" her, all the while removing sections of the stamp collection. When my aunt discovered it after my Grandfather's death it was devastating. The collection was probably worth $100,000 - quite an inheritance. And it was impossible to track down where they'd been sold. The bastard went back to prison. (No sympathy from me!)
Oh, wow. That's a lot of money.
My walls are also covered with MY art! I paint, collage, and make embroideries. They are EVERYWHERE. (Including my avatar here on Substack.)
We bid for the metronome on ebay. Shopping I discovered was another fun activity for us. And I was desperate to fill the long day with Simon while, his brothers were in school. We were in a homeschooling phase. Simon’s last school (Montessori) had been a disaster for a twelve-year old who was not a fan of knitting socks or folk dancing. Unfortunately, Montessori had been the solution to our local elementary, great for his mainstream brothers but deadly for my learning-disabled child’s sense of self.
While shopping was not part of our cobbled-together curriculum, the metronome was anything but frivolous. Simon had just started piano lessons after chucking the violin. “Homeschool” actually meant mornings with a tutor who un-like high-school dropout me, was qualified to teach algebra and grammar. After tutor we would go out to lunch and then visit “Paws” a cat adoption center where we fawned over the kittens and my son earned A’s in compassion lavishing extra attention on senior cats who had lost owners to illness and old age. After Paws was a stop for frozen yoghurt then piano.
When we won the metronome on ebay we jumped up and down like a contestant winning a car on the Price is Right. Aweek later it arrived, swathed in newspaper and my son carefully unwrapped it, revealing its beautiful mahogany wood patina, its delicate mechanism cached in a removable wood panel. Somberly Simon set our prize atop our rented piano and my eyes filled with tears as he practiced his scales to its hypnotic rhythm. Later that year we would enroll Simon in an alternative school that finally fit his needs and Simon would give up piano for drums, eventually giving up all instruments for marijuana but that day, the metronome ticked back and forth with all the stability and consistency I was struggling to provide.
Oh, that ending! Too good.
that metronome reminds me of the advice to put a ticking clock with a new puppy to mimic the sound of its mother's heart. Lovely piece, Dinah!
I found this comb in the closet when I moved in. I had arrived gradually, taking over a bit more space in the closet next to the sweaters and scarves, necklaces, eyeliner his previous girlfriend had left behind. I don’t know if the comb had actually been hers or if it had belonged to her predecessor – or another of his women. Sometimes I show her things I found in various places in the house and she has no idea where they came from. All I know is that it lived in that closet, which had been hers and was now mine, for all the 41 years I spent with him, and when I moved out after he died, I took it with me. I had never particularly liked it, I don’t usually go in for combs but now that I use them more I appreciate its robustness. Plastic combs tend to break easily and their tines clog with hair and dirt. Not this one. Made of blue metal, the handle is decorated with black swirls, intersecting waves that culminate at the bottom in a schematic face that looks like something out of Aubrey Beardsley. I call it my art deco comb but it is perfectly functional comb. Who was its owner? How had she acquired it? Was it a gift? Why had she left it?
this is beautiful, Karen.
Thank you Mary
An object, a comb, outlasts a life. That’s pretty interesting.
An object and and part of the ending.
Fern green, wooden, shaft broken, it lay on as it had landed when Simon pulled it from his back pocket on moving day. A tunnel of wood at one end of the longer piece–leadless. Portrait of the writer’s soul on the day the writing stopped. The shorter piece, its marking end fractured, rested atop the longer at a right angle. As though inviting him to sharpen it. A futile action.
He kept them near. A dedicated spot on the corner of his desk. Talisman.
Another green Faber Castell–this one pine green–nestled in his back pocket. A permanent resident on his travels around the city. The writing had returned. Renewed.
But on this day, the haphazard structure had disappeared. He wasn’t aware of their absence at first, his fingers flying across the keyboard, muttering to himself, alternately staring, unfocused at blue green ocean he could glimpse beyond the half open cabin door. Artemus had left the mug of coffee and a kiss near his left ear, murmuring “Casting off–drink it while it’s hot” and slipped outside.
How long ago?
Simon leaned back, picked up the mug and sipped. Bah! Tepid. He grimaced, slammed it down, sloshing black coffee onto the desk. And that was the moment of realization.
“Hey!” He stood, scrambling for his flannel shirt, distracted as he mopped the desk top. Simon stooped and peered under the desk. Had it rolled off onto the floor when the boat swayed?
No. The floor under the desk was pristine. A testament to Artemus and housekeeping.
Artemus. Housekeeping.
Three weeks ago:
An image–Artemus frowning at the broken pencil. Reaching for it. Simon’s hand flashing out to stop him.
“NO!”
“Why are you hanging onto that thing?”
“So I don’t forget.”
Over whiskeys that evening, Simon told him the part of the story he didn’t know. Or did Artemus know? Simon was never quite sure.
Now, he burst through the cabin door. Flaming accusation at the ready.
“What did you do with it?” Hands on his hips, head tilting forward.
The dimple popped in Artemus’s left cheek.
“Are we having our first argument?” The man asked him, grinning.
“I–you–” Simon’s arms flew up. “You don’t understand–” spluttered words. Outrage tensing his face, his shoulders,
“Sit down.” Artemus’s voice was soft.
“No! You can’t just–” He flopped onto the seat.
“Just what?” Artemus cocked his head, his dark eyes on Simon’s. In his hand, a small wooden box. “Open it.” He pushed the box into Simon’s hand.
Inside, the pencil lay on a bed of velvet–unchanged, same angles.
Your characters! Love that his talisman is a pencil. A true writer!
My boots that kept my feet away from the slime /
where shall I go without you?
I hope you buy yourself a new pair of boots!
Ah, but those were different! And you've surely noticed how deep and very slimy the slime has become?
The slimiest
Yes indeed.
Would this be sheep slime, or a metaphorical slime, maybe both.
Both boots and slime, metaphorical.
Though I do have fond memories of a beat-up old pair of cowboy boots I used to have repaired till they fell apart. But in those days, there was a lot less slime.
Thank you for this prompt. I wrote about the Dick Tracy watch my dad gave me when I was five. He died when I was seven, and the watch was stolen when I was in my twenties. I've tried to replace it (unsuccessfully), and I still long for it.
So happy the prompt spoke to you.
I love the turn, Mary, in your story... the shift in perspective that balances it like a sonnet.
I encourage you to copy that form! Begin writing, then--make a huge turn (this comes from letting your mind flow where it will flow) and see what happens.
I knew my mother’s music box, a treasured keepsake that when my brother and I were little she sometimes let us wind up and play if we were very, very careful. The tune it plunks out is a simple, sentimental waltz; the mechanism turns hypnotically behind a sliding glass. One day she showed me a post-it she’d decided to affix inside the music box, with these words: “I bought this music box for my mother with my first paycheck in June 1942.”
She’d have just graduated from high school and proudly started in the ladies’ skirts and blouses department of Filene’s. She marked her emergence into womanhood with this music box. I wonder whether it was the gift she wished her mother had given her. Instead, she did the giving, perhaps in hopes that her blank and self-centered mother would finally notice her.
She couldn’t help herself. By the time she showed me the humble yellow post-it with its roughly scrawled testament to her longing for her mother’s love, I was 40, old enough to know that conflicted feelings between mothers and daughters are not the exception but the rule.
Of course she had conflicted feelings about her mother! Why wouldn’t she? God knows, I do. When she died, I went right to the music box and claimed it. In hopes that she intended it for me as a message that it’s okay to have conflicted feelings about a mother, and encouragement to keep making my way in the world as best I could.
And did you find the music box?? Love this remembrance, and especially the post-it note.
Thanks for letting me know that was unclear! I made an edit…
That music box opened up a lot of a life.