Love Amid the Kibble

The unwieldy fifty pound bag of dry dog food toppled over with a thunderous crash.  Rushing into the pantry, I slipped on the landslide as it spilled out, forming islands like the rich silt of the Mississippi delta.  Twelve furry limbs protectively straddled the kibble as three muzzles bolted down an unexpected bounty.

I cursed and ran to grab the broom and dust pan.  As I returned to the closet-sized storeroom, I consoled myself with the thought that the dogs wouldn't mind a little dirt with their dog food.  As I began to sweep up, I now counted four eager heads face first in the brown, red, and gold cornucopia of crunchy goodness. 

"Kaden!"  I shouted, dropping the broom.  I lifted my sixteen-month-old grandson up and away.  Denied his share of the treats set him off on a sobbing fit of toddler rage and frustration.  Fastening him into the high chair took precious minutes, allowing handful after handful of kibble to continue to disappear. 

Kaden has had to adapt to spending most days at Gran-pa and Ya-ya's house.  He sobs piteously as Grandpa leaves the house each morning, but is unlikely to fuss when he leaves his mother on Sunday nights.  Each day he demonstrates a sponge-like absorption of everything in his brave new world.

Most nights Gran-pa lifts and spins him high in the air and thrills him with well-tested silly facial expressions.  Together they share quality guy time during late night moments of mutual insomnia, dozing off together in the big recliner watching NBA basketball or John Cena in yet another WWE smack down.  When the dogs' bulging bladders awaken Ya-ya late at night, she smiles as Grandpa, fast asleep, keeps the remote in one hand and shelters Kaden and his spittle-covered binky with the other. 

Ya-ya is less fun and must prevent Kaden from falling down the stairs or climbing on all the things that he knows that he can summit by himself.  He resented being strapped into his high chair, even when it helps him to focus on the meal at hand.  In a recent developmental milestone, he grasped that the high chair is less a prison than a magical source of power.   The dogs that often bowled him over when he stood at their level, now obsequiously touch their noses to his feet.  The wise toddler then magnanimously drops his surplus Cheerios to the three grateful creatures.  

These canines tolerate Kaden's antics, though they all draw the line when he examines their every orifice with toddler fascination.  The aged Avalon, often treated like a rug to be stepped on, merely moans placidly and moves a bit further away.  Remy growls and barks when he fears his role as spoiled puppy has been usurped.  Sparky is a rough collie and the most tantalizing of the three creatures.  Kaden crawls all over him, exploring and pulling the many textures of his thick, snarled fur.  As part of a symbiotic relationship, the collie expects that the toddler will in turn tip back his head after each meal and open his mouth to offer a taste of whatever remains masticated but unswallowed, and Sparky laps and cleans him thoroughly like any maternal creature in the wild. Together, these creatures attempt to express themselves and get complex needs met:  building and knocking down, throwing and catching, barking and bellowing, demanding and rarely sharing.

This evening the dogs encouraged Kaden to join them in barking at passing cows and horses.  But
Kaden chose to smile and sing to his own angelic image in the mirror.   He later joined them and, wearing his clean socks and new shoes, stepped happily into the dogs' water bowls.  The dogs will continue to be important instructors in his life and he in turn may learn to use his power wisely to enhance their quality of life in this tiny corner of earth. 

Come Live With Me and Be My Dog

with apologies to Christopher Marlowe.

Come live with me and be my dog,                     
I need a little bat-eared hog,
We'll frolic, pounce like crazy girls,
Annoy the birds and chase some squirrels.

Around the house we'll play and hide
Across my hardwood floors you'll slide,
Your optimistic doggie eyes,
Will beg off so much exercise.
           
And I will buy you Alpo chunks,
Forgive you when you catch those skunks,
Or in the park and neighbors' yards,
You leave your little calling cards.
               
A jacket of the finest wool,
A leash that stretches when you pull-
O wrinkled grins! O happy fools!
We both shall hate obedience schools
       
A vet trip or just flea-tick lotion
No cost shall limit my devotion.
And should you hurt past any mending
The Gentle Sleep shall be your ending

I miss my lover's snores at night,
But, unlike him, you'd never bite.
If all my time and love you hog
Then live with me, and be my dog.

I created this parody sometime ago to deal with my infatuation with my french bulldog.  It is time I pulled it off Deja Net and reposted it.  
                       
    
       

Home

     For fifty years, my parents' farm in Mexico, New York was home.  No matter what flat I occupied, I knew that I could drop by, find a meal and to a limited but warm acceptance.   The pantry was converted early on into a dining room with curtained windows.  I relied on this view in all seasons, and it was through these small windows that I developed a sense that this home and land would remain my touchstone of security. 

     Winters were bitter and the deep snow rose up and beyond those windows, on one occasion opening to let in my brother's white Samoyed pawing to come in for warmth.    By February, I would crunch my boots on crisp snow following the trail of buckets to deliver a thermos of hot chocolate to my father as he boiled sap into maple syrup in a sugar shack collapsed long ago.  My fingers were often burned by the thick liquid, as they brought unfinished sweetness to my mouth.   

     Each spring, May flowers rose and quickly died in our woods and soon after tulip and daffodil rose and exploded into bright colors.  Further beyond the window, I once lost a new red leather shoe in a mud hole created by hidden springs and the heavy hooves of our Holstein cattle.   And in that same field, my mother once pointed out a rare stag cautiously step out of the mists.  Closer to the house is a tiny gully where my brothers and the neighbors' children arranged rocks into great castles of the imagination.  It was on this land that I developed a sense of adventure as well as an appreciation of the very real fruits of hard labor.  
     
      Beyond those windows, we tossed heavy hay bales on hot summer days onto an unpainted wagon pulled by an aging, still reliable tractor. The children tired quickly, while my father and his hired hands had to continue to work in a race against the weather.  With pure joy we would scamper on top of the haybales for a triumphant ride to a red barn whose upkeep fell to my father, decade after decade.  As Butterfly Creek evaporated, we failed to notice its flow become a slow stagnation.   And in the dawn of my earliest memories, I once asked my father why a rare, tired old black man on his last odyssey napped in our roadside ditch beneath a maple tree felled long ago. 

       Autumn brought orange school buses, brilliant leaves and moments of contemplation.   As I played in piles of fallen raked, dry brown leaves my first sense of impermanence awoke, no matter the bounty of each harvest.  Yet on my lowest of days, I would cross the road alone, crossing the small bridge over the swelling creek  -- up, up, field beyond field, to the highest point on the farm and turn around.  I looked toward the window through which I envisioned so much -- and wept for the end of my Eternity.
   
     

Mundivagant

Within dry, cracked leather album covers white corners with the scarcest trace of adhesive hold each black and white image feebly in place.   Decades of family photographs fill the tiny trailer that my mother has retired to since my father’s death.   Corner stickers have long fallen out of favor, replaced by two sided tape, adhesive dots and slide-in photo albums.  I wonder how well they will hold photographs in fifty years’ time?  Mother urges us to flip through her albums and take home the ephemera and artifacts of a distant childhood, although our homes already are overflowing with tchotchkes acquired from our own messy lives.  

The few times that we do take the time to browse through her albums, Mother supervises, hoping to impose her interpretation of events on our own recollections.  Most images show a sunny but predictable childhood.  A few are departed elders posing unsmilingly long after old camera technology required unmoving grimness.   Despite my own tattered, fading memories, there is one small image that holds truths that I will never share in discussion -- things that have been both a cipher and a beacon throughout my life. 

A two year old waif walks along the side of a gradually rising rural road.  A small kerchief, tied hobo style to a long stick, rests on her shoulder and holds a few possessions – a special order Mighty Mouse doll, a crushed molasses cookie, a snakeskin found drying in the sun.  A teddy bear held firmly under the other arm is pursued by a cat and dog who smell crumbs.  Both are puzzled by the fact that they are not in the soft comfort of the usual armchair in the living room.  The small girl resolutely (albeit temporarily) is running away from home.  This image crystallized a long held suspicion that my mundivagant nature was forged early in life.   More memories pour out of that single snapshot.

A tall, well-kept red barn rises before me.  Within it my father tends to the dairy cattle or cleans the milking parlor.  When I enter, he will patiently allow me to milk a cow or to wash part of the milking machines.  Such small effort earns a moment of approval – my father’s gruff, unguarded smile.  Throughout my childhood I seek out that rarest of rewards.

My mother’s recollection of the photograph she took long ago would likely be that her toddler has been caught reacting momentarily to the attention transferred to her newborn brother.   My inner child would in part jealously agree.    But in counterpoise to the push of a needy, newborn brother, yet another motive for these early meanderings is the pull of shiny stainless steel machinery, well worn hand tools, and dozens of black and white bovines whose drooling, cud-filled mouths and engorged udders provide wonder and just a hint of danger.  My father, busy at his life’s work, remains nearby for any needed reassurance.  

This equilibrium of unregulated exploration and precious parental affection gave me the ability to fearlessly wander through fields, woods and quicksand filled wetlands, join Grammie's  visits to my unknown ‘Bahston’ relatives, argue politics with my father's ultraconservative friends, beg to become an exchange student, and attend college in far-off Washington, DC.   It also got me into great trouble in late teen and early adult years, expressed by a pronounced inability to remain at one job or relationship until well into my thirties.   And after twenty-five years in the increasingly unsatisfying field of public education, exhausted by familial obligations and lacking attention from a husband who rarely leaves his media-filled life, I have taken a cue from the little girl in that photograph.  

I am running away from home again.  I will leave emotional chaos behind and despite poor eyesight and a thoracic aneurysm that could blow at any moment, I will visit India, teach English and design curriculum for low caste gypsy children.  I will earn a bit of income and barter places to stay from online LinkedIn contacts – editing Nepali papers on aid and democracy and tutoring a bit of online English to the Chinese affluent classes.   Reestablished relationships with Asian college friends from long ago provide a touchstone of approval if I run into trouble.   I walk towards the unknown along a new path of my own making.  

My bohemian adventure requires minimal clinging to material goods.  I cashed in my retirement IRA and used part of it to finish our basement and turn it into a small apartment.  This will both provide a small source of income while I am gone and gently force my husband out of his man cave.  Perhaps we will again become intimate since, now across continents and oceans, I provide him with the distance he so craves.  Without my presence my daughters will find their own paths through rocky choices and challenges.  And I myself will deal with intolerable heat, frequent power outages, chronic bureaucratic paralysis, challenging situations for the independent woman and a hope that I may be of use for often imperceptible small change.  

I carry an old photograph of a small child in my weak but happy heart and, as I walk alone down unpaved roads, I will try not to look back. 

Sierra Leone at the Millenium

Kumba never sleeps anymore.  The night sounds of the bush that once comforted her – the whistled tututututu of the owl, the chchchchch of crickets, even heavy swaying of unknown creatures in the branches above – are silent.  Now there is only the certainty of sporadic gunfire and screams of women in far off blackness. She closes her eyes in guarded exhaustion, matching the breathing of the pikins surrounding her, also pretending sleep.  Even Miriama, her cot-mate, no longer makes her laugh by snorting and grunting like a sow with her piglets.  All action – all reaction heightens fear.  Listen and be ready to run. 

She thinks for a moment about crawling off the cot and slithering to the ground to steal the other children’s food stores.  The bigger ones have taken her food often enough.  But by now, there is none secreted away.  Hungry rats snatch up any remaining crumbs.  A snake might be waiting for a more substantial meal so the little pikin stays put.  And just breathes. 

Hearing “De soldier de coming” was terrifying the first time.  Now it hardly matters – RUF rebels, government forces, adult soldiers, child soldiers – all bring beatings, torture, gang rape, arson, death.  Tonight the soldiers will not find any food among the pikins.  Auntie caretakers and their own children have food and eat it with aggressive pleasure in front of the orphans.  Kumba has long watched such base survival instincts.  Her father is dead, her mother is missing.  Fight or flight only makes sense when there is immediate violence and anarchy.  For now, she does neither and freezes.  Her fighting instinct will arise at a wrong time and place years later.

Kumba no longer remembers her mother’s face though she once bragged that she had the lightest of black skin.  Krio speakers absorbed European terms and attitudes.  Freetown residents still have that sense of superiority today.  Many words ‘fair’, ‘light’, ‘bright' -- distance each person from being merely 'black'.   Mariatu, Kumba’s mother – uses them all to describe her two daughters.  She deserts them for long periods of time to drink palm wine, earning money with her body from the miners and soldiers.  Kumba remembers candlelight-lit black shining eyes that return home late at night. 

Maman changes locality and patrons with regularity.  In the manner of migrating gypsies, her identities and aliases change as well.  Mariatu’s beauty finds opportunities near the mines and sluices outside industrial Makeni.  At times, Kumba is put in the yard to sleep with the dogs.  Her small arms hug them as fiercely as she will later hug Miriama on a cot.  The dogs warn her of danger and keep her warm.  The rebels finally shoot the dogs but she clings to them tightly, even as hungry tics and fleas detach themselves from corpses to feast on her living blood. 

Kumba remembers when she was her mother’s gold mine.  More accurately, her diamond mine. Kumba‘s mother, pregnant, tied herself to the father, a diamond miner panning in the muddy rivers and creeks in the north.  Kumba watched the overseers with machine guns who watched her father panning.  They were quick to seize any sparkle in the pan, tossing him a few worthless CFA or a bottle of beer.  She remembers a man tall, darker than her mother, and strong.  He switches the backside of Kumba's legs when she vexes him, but sometimes lifts her up with a smile and she chortles in uncontrolled joy.  But now her memories are red, lying on the bank of the river.  Whatever he was – miner, husband, father, lover, pimp, child molester – he is now just raw meat in a hail of machete and hatchet blows.  She does not remember which side killed him, if she participated.  Her friend, Fatu, still awakens at night, hearing RUF soldiers ordering children to beat a certain person to death, or they will be next.  Soon Kumba's mother flees with Older Sister,  less a liability and able to earn money on the streets.  With new names, Saafi and Aisha, they disappear and are never seen again.  

A woman claiming to be Kumba’s grandmother hands her over to a Christian group, perhaps out of love, perhaps for a bit of free rice.  It helps the community to turn over the damaged, homeless nuisance to the Western run orphanage.  Official declarations and death certificates appeared quickly although all bureaucrats had fled to the capital and beyond with their own families.  The old woman, too, disappears into the chaos of a war that soon destroys all remaining records. 

The orphanage burns down -- for the second time .  Kumba, now four, walks with the children of two agencies toward the capital of Freetown.  The caretaker Aunties ride in a jeep with their sons, including the one who touches Kumba when she tries to pee in the bush.  But soon, on the side of the road, soldiers stop them and carry one Auntie away into the bush.  Kumba must now carry baby Abraham and his hand carved leg of dark red wood.  He always pees on her.  She carries him along bombed out roads into Freetown.   She swallows the remnants of anger and crushes the sadness. Resting for a moment with baby Abraham on her lap, she swallows the last drop of bitterness and begins to eat his rations.

Small In Sight

Laura hurried back from the restroom at the New York – Massachusetts border, hoping Mommy would buy her something at the wood-frame souvenir shop.  She hoped to parlay a moment of shopping into avoiding contact with these dull adults – her distant and rarely visited Worcester relatives.  Almost to the shop door, she slid to a stop, apprehensively staring at a man posing by the doorway.  The crowd snapped picture after picture.  Laura stood back and examined him with the cautious eye of a child who has been teased and tricked far too often.

He stood now with straight posture and stared off into the tree line, allowing Laura to creep closer.  His skin was acorn brown and heavily lined.  His solemn expression was tinged with tiredness.  His loosely braided black hair was held by clips on either side of his face.  The hair continued down to the chest of his fringed leather clothing.  But Laura could not take her eyes off the feathers.  Hundreds of white feathers in immense headdress covered most of his hair.  Laura frowned.

Mommy pulled out her battered old boxy Brownie and pushed Laura forward.   Without success she then ordered each family member to stand beside this apparition from storybooks.  “He’s a real Mohawk!”  Mom crowed with excitement.  Laura swayed her short legs and held her hands protectively behind her back.  She was not about to approach another strange man, even if he was two hundred pounds lighter than Uncle Maurie.  One by one the rest of relatives pushed by her and posed with the genuine human artifact and then rushed over to grab the best picnic tables for a last lunch together.   It was unspoken that several uncles were required as counterweights for Uncle Maurie’s table.  In exasperation, Laura’s Mom gave her a dollar to stand next to the Indian, struggling, for a photo that captured her expression as unenthusiastic.  

Finally Mommy turned and rejoined the clan rapidly unpacking lunch.   Laurie still remained watching the Indian, trying to remember a book from elementary school.  When there was a break in the crowds, she edged closer and said “Your feathers – they aren’t….”

He looked around then down and finally saw the expression of the young child before him.  He bent down to her ear, “It s what the shop owners make me wear.  It’s not authentic.  At home we wear the Kastowa or porcupine quills.”  He added, ruefully, “I am old and . . . this pays the bills.”  Laura nodded, forgot him and ran into the souvenir shop to spend her dollar on a small rubber tomahawk decorated with colorful feathers and colorful plastic boondoggle strings.  As she came out, she thought and handed the Indian her change – a whole dime.   “Did your family see the fire tower?”  he pointed.  “That is where the forest rangers go to watch for fires.  It also has a wonderful view of the land.” 

Laura squinted her eyes up the structure beyond a small field.  For the first time on this boring visit to see her distant relatives, she was curious.  She imagined Smokey the Bear at the top of the tower, or how she would see him putting out fires in the distance.  And the Berkshires that Mom always saw as so pretty would be nice at the top of those alluring tower steps.  “I can climb that”, she said to herself. 

The family at the tables chit-chatted politely, trying to eat their sandwiches and keep Uncle Maurie from flipping them over the table.  Everyone ignored subtle slights and past misunderstandings.  Cousins who were Laura’s age played among themselves and drank something called tonic.   Laura grabbed a quarter of an egg sandwich, making sure there were no disgusting green olives in it.  No one noticed as she headed toward the ranger tower. 

It took no time to cross the field.  There was no chain or bar duck under, so she hopped up the first level, and ran up the second.  From the first platform level and she looked down at her family, almost finishing the meal.  Soon they would pack up and make obligatory promises to do it again sometime, soon.   Several colorful leaves blew past Laura, reminding her that Mommy took her on a tightly controlled trip to Vermont last autumn.   It is better to sit and have them blow past you than drive all over and get sick to your stomach from the lurching curves in the roads, she thought. 

By the third flight of stairs, her resolve was weakening.   Her small chest gasped and heaved forcing her to sit down for a moment.  Catching her breathe, she took the last flight one slow step at a time.  It was so quiet.  So nice.   No squabbling family she didn’t know.  She heard a boy chickadee crying for his girlfriend “Phoe—be”.   The fence on the top platform prevented her from seeing Smokey the Bear in the beautiful maple and oak trees in the distance.   She realized that if lifted herself up and balanced on the top of the railing, her view would not be blocked.  She pulled herself up and over, balancing on her belly.  As she glanced down, she forgot about leaves and bears. 

No one appeared to miss her although the expressions on these tiny figures were too tiny to make out – even Uncle Maurie seemed to be just a soft grey circle.  She waved and said “Mommy!”  There was no change in the figures below.  She took a moment and inhaled a deeper breath of air. 

“Mommy,” she shouted. “I’m way up here!”  The figures now dart like ants communicating a new cache of food.  Suddenly, one head turned up, then another, and another.  Soon all the ants looked up at her.  There was silence, and then one screamed: “Laura!”

At last, she smiled.  They saw her. 

Deep Pain

           “Mr. Richard Smith?  Is this Mr. Richard Smith?”  the operator inquired unemotionally.   

Rick grunted in assent, still focused on his New York Times Crossword puzzle. 

“Your wife is Melody Smith?”  the operator tonelessly pressed on, in order to make certain that her job had been done to its utmost bureaucratically correctness. 

My shaky voice demanded that the volunteer hold up the cell phone next to my ear.  
“Rick, I think I just broke my shoulder or arm or both just outside the SPCA on the sidewalk.  They have called an ambulance. . . an ambulance or rescue thing is coming.”  I waited for the sort of reaction that one gets from loving, emotionally open spouse.  I heard no sign of a raised emotional register, other than his hurried “I’ll be right there.” 

“No, no, don’t bother.  I am being helped, and you have all that work to do.”  I replied, calm and reasonable.   I was surrounded by a crowd of eager SPCA volunteers; visitors searching for a furry new member of the family; and in the distance, a few worried staff, probably calculating the impact of this accident on their non-profit’s financial health.     

I was probably in shock, shaking as pain radiated from my shoulder in two directions; down my arm and across my shoulder blade.  My cell phone rang again, and a helpful hand pressed the button to answer it and held it up to my ear.  It was my daughter, an eighteen year old new mother who had just imposed on me to babysit for a week while she tried to register a week late for classes at a community college that she had no real interest in. 

“Mom!” she said, chewing loudly on a stick of gum.  The speed of her chewing often indicated the number of favors she would ask of me.  “(Chomp … chomp … chomp) Hey Mom, I was wondering if you could --”

Wracked with another spasm of pain as I spoke into the phone with frustration,  “Honey, I love you but I am in pain and have to go to the ER right now!” 

Long pause.  She would neither ask me why nor what was wrong.  As an emotionally disturbed, unattached child, she might blow up at the inconvenience of my broken arm or simply move on to the next target to meet her needs of the moment. 

“OK, Mom, I’ll call you later, but it’s important.  I need to know someth--   (click).”    I dropped the phone.  The motley crew of helpers and gawkers piled SPCA dog owels all over my body to keep me warm, despite my protest that I was comfortable, save the damaged shoulder area.  I hoped these towels were from the clean towel bins and not the ones recently used to clean up dog slobber and other canine bodily fluids.   My boss, B., lumbered over to me, peered down and asked,

“What happened to you?”  

in the careful way that probably led to her gradual  promotions from unpaid volunteer to overworked and underpaid volunteer coordinator, whose main perk appeared to be the right to bring her dog to work.   I looked at all the future witnesses in some future litigation and responded in as casual a manner as I could manage:

“Oh, I felt I was not getting enough attention and drama this week, so I decided that I needed to break or severely bruise something.” 

P., the oldest paid staffer, who would have had a lit cigarette in the corner of her mouth if it was allowed, graced me with the first laugh I had ever elicited in her presence.  Yesterday, she harshly notified me that my favorite dog at the adoption center, Cecil, had been put to sleep before I had arrived to give him some last words and affection.  Today, perhaps she understood that I was more humiliated than injured.  But I began to wonder what led me to this predicament? 

I began to remember a long to-do list of too many items, many postponed when my car broke down.   Slowly it came back to me.  I had come in to donate money in the name of a Rottie who had been put down to ease my aching heart.  I became distracted by clients who wanted to see some dogs and took a moment to again pitch in on my day off.  I decided to walk  Rudy, who wore a behavior harness that leads a dog by his nose.  I got outside and found the play area already occupied by other dogs.  I tried to maneuver past these dogs as well as SPCA visitors who viewed us as a petting zoo:  “Please don’t pet him, we are working on training him.”  I got passed a second group of older ladies and suddenly Rudy had had enough.  He lunged.   I said firmly,  “Stay back.”   Just as I felt he was under control, he lunged again. 

Seconds slow down when there is an accident.  My nano thoughts certainly filled a notebook.  I knew that I had wanted to prevent another dog being put to sleep.  I also knew that I could not simultaneously hold his leash and keep my balance.  And so, in a sense of service and resignation, I crashed to the pavement, hanging on to Rudy’s leash with all my might. 

The new problem was that I was horizontal.  Fortunately, Rudy was confused by my new position. 

“Are you OK?  What can I do to help?”  In seconds, two of the customers that I had just shown dogs to came up and offered me kindness.  I said, “One of you go inside and get a staff member with purple dog training out here.  Then someone call an ambulance”.  They scurried to help and it was not until I relinquished Rudy into the hands of an experienced walker that I allowed myself to look down and feel my pain.  My left arm was flat out away from my body.  Someone tried to bend it in and I screamed in pain.  I said, “Leave it” and looked down.  My knees were bloodied.  Pain radiated up and down my shoulder blade. 

Suddenly I heard voices say, “Is this your husband?”  He looked down on my newly broken body and said, “Did you need some attention today?” completely cracking up B. and others who had heard me state the same reason for the damage.  He kept the gawkers entertained while the rescue ambulance arrived and treated me to a free ride on the power lift ambulance gurney. 

            I announced that I had good insurance and told all the authorities within earshot that I was not going to sue for tripping while walking a dog.  In a pouty voice I asked the ambulance crew when the good stuff would be put in my veins.  The young EMT smiled and told me not until I got to the hospital.   They asked the same questions over and over, and I remained calm.   I felt only the slightest twinge when my husband asked if he had to come right away to the hospital, since he had work to do at the office.  I nodded and smiled a thank you that I could not feel. 

            I hide my sadness and pain behind humor.  The ER nurses giggled when I asked them if the ER doctor with “beard, glasses, arrogant manner who was always such a pain in the ass” was on duty tonight.   I made sure that everyone else felt better. 

My husband finally arrived with a cookie and water hidden under a newspaper and I smiled my thanks.  Soon after, the morphine went into my arm and I began to feel the warmth that most people feel from family.   I hardly heard the X-ray technician declare that I had a hairline fracture of the humerus bone nor felt the ice packs arriving late for my now greatly swollen knee. 

Two middle school kids arrived with lacrosse and football injuries.  My small room became full of worried parents.   I whispered for the nurse to set me free from the little space in which my heart had been hidden.   A day later, friends from around the world responded with concern and good wishes through the social media in a way that those who are closer never do.    

Decaying Chakras

This was written in response to a prompt about a piece of music.  Everyone else responded with lovely classical, jazz or even well known bands.  I had an earwhig... The Age of Aquarius!  

Declining Chakras

Sahasrara:  the Crown
Minerva full-grown sprang
From Zeus' grey matter;
My forehead ensconced less
Intelligent chatter.

Ajna:  the Brow or Third Eye
Make vivid mementos
Impress every sight
As my weakening vision
Turns day into night.

Vishuddha: the Throat
A smooth swanlike neck
Once unblemished and fair,
Hangs wrinkled and crepey,
With new chins to spare.

Anahata:  the Heart
"A thoracic aneurysm blows only one time in a hundred patients," my doctor reassured me.
"If those were lottery odds, everyone would be buying tickets," I responded grimly. 

Manipura: Solar Plexus
Gut pain and vomiting bile.
Laparoscopic cholecystectomy
   NOW!  the doctor said.
Christmas in the hospital
Seems like a spa instead
With home life far too stressful
And all my family's woes
For no presents and no gallstones
I'll take morphine at St. Joe's.

Swadhisthana:  Sacral
I feel compression on my spine
Despair sneaks in again
My spirits are held down by pain
I need a little Zen.

Muladhara:  Root
As aging fingers touch the soil
With fall's decaying matter,
I sense an ending similar
Let my ashes simply scatter.

Gate, gate, paragate
Parasamgate
Bodhi svaha.

A Modest Proposal on Adulthood

     It is difficult to recognize the moment that you leave adolescence and attain adulthood in modern America.  In traditional societies, women are welcomed into adulthood upon the onset of first menses, just as menopause and the eventual cessation of fertility signals the arrival of old age.  But here in the States, there is no single, universal rite that announces, “You are now an adult.”   Passing a driving test, registering to vote or for selective service are just bureaucratic processes.   And as for the legal drinking age, why allow a vice that leaves you puking in the streets the first few times to be the moment that announces maturity?  I propose that we adopt as the symbol of adulthood a ritual that is considered taboo in open discussion and virtually unknown to most teens:  one’s first colonoscopy. 

     In my case, adolescence dragged through my twenties.  I was invulnerable, jogging braless and barefoot at night on the asphalt and concrete streets near Syracuse University.  My career was still undecided and I would chase will-o-the-wisps for another decade.  AND there was no likely marriage material on the immediate horizon . . . I had obviously blown the chance to earn my "Mrs" degree as a profligate and utterly neurotic undergraduate.

     I took a dreadful job as a legal secretary (this was before everyone became “administrative assistants” to make secretaries feel more important without requiring a pay upgrade).   The law firm paid each legal secretary almost nothing, and got what they paid for.  I worked for a boozy corporate litigator, who arose from his stupor only when I nudged him off the office couch with a large cup of fresh brewed coffee each morning.  In return, he provided me with regular exercise when he would call me because he had forgotten his briefcase.   I ran in heels over to the courthouse, up two flights of stairs carrying his briefs while he stalled and covered the smell of bourbon on his breath.  The other attorney was the son of a well-known local politician.  It was rumored that the firm allowed him only to fix traffic tickets with supervision for a long, long time.  Today, I smile with grim satisfaction as he advertises on radio and television as a litigious ambulance chaser.   

     Our secretarial pool was run by the daughter of a friend of the head of the firm who cracked the whip like an overseer on a plantation.  She was defensive about her youth and hostile to suggestions.   The younger secretaries feared her.   When I ignored the inflexibility of her rules, she began to time my visits to the ladies; room.  It was in my fourth month confined to my cushion-less office chair that I began to notice a new discomfort DOWN THERE.   No, not DOWN THERE – the OTHER SIDE.  

     I thought it might be my first acquaintance with a yeast infection or worse.  I had no health insurance until I had six months in.  I saved to visit my GP, who sent me to a specialist: a very old and relatively inexpensive proctologist.  My first visit was terrifying although he and his nurse explained everything in a kindly manner.  He had an old-school table that I have never seen since.  It was clear that most of his clients were men – no woman would have put up with this device.  It reminded me of what transpired at the end of weekly church suppers.  Each of the tables would fold in half to be neatly put away.  Except on this particular table, I was told “bend over”.   ANDDD, church suppers are more relaxing -- of course, this was long before proctologists and gastroenterologists made wide use of anesthetics for “small” procedures.  

     I asked for permission to leave the law office for my second visit, red faced and unable to tell my teen mutant supervisor why I needed a day off.  I went to my apartment and began to prep, a process which involved drinking two gallons of a nauseating, foul substance that no amount of ice could make palatable.  When I hear patients today complain about the new prep -- two coke can sized drinks with a choice of three flavors, I want to send them back to the deep dark 1970s and see how entire families suffered through the agony of monopolization of the single toilet household. 

     The next day, drawn and pale, I visited Dr. K’s table of darkness and submitted to a procedure in a part of my body that I rarely thought about.   Determined not to miss work, I spent precious dollars to purchase the so-called "doughnut hole" cushion and thought I had brought it unobtrusively into the office.  Asked the nosy teen supervisor without blinking, “Will that help you stay seated and work longer?”  I decided to seek work elsewhere and within two months found yet another dreadful but temporary position.  

     A few years later, my first husband invited me to the home of a college friend, Tom, who lived in a a local trailer park with his wife and kids.  His extended family lived in the trailers to the right and left of him.  Despite some degree of poverty, they worked hard for their pay and enjoyed life and family to the fullest, not unlike the loveable characters in the dated but still watchable sci-fi film, “The Last Starfighter”.  Tom’s father stood in the kitchen as we told stories and drank beer.  He refused a second beer, stating openly “It aggravates my hemorrhoids and I don’t want THAT experience again!”    It dawned on me that was with a fellow traveler.   

     I sidled up to him and said “You mean you’ve had that procedure?”  

     Without skipping a beat, he replied:  “That bend over the table experience!”

    “Did they blow up your intestines like a balloon?” 

    “Hell, they humiliated me as all that air loudly departed my body!"

     We began to compare probes and doctors with great laughter.  Long before celebrities urged the public not to ignore rectal bleeding, we discussed, gesticulated, and made human the procedure that forever separates the innocent from the knowing, as we face the recognition that our bodies will one day fail us in ways unfathomable in our youth.  

      Years later, I watched a “King of the Hill” episode in which Hank received the first cartoon colonoscopy – yep, the first animated portrayal of a cartoon rectal exam, with the animated doctor expertly racing through the animated large intestine projected on an animated  monitor in all its plump, pink animated detail.  I laughed with all the audience members across America who have eaten of that tree of knowledge.  

     I now more openly share my experiences with those whom I feel would benefit or are feeling a little nervous about this medical procedure.  At my last colonoscopy, a younger and profit-driven doctor had a group of us lined up in hospital beds on our sides.  As one of the male nurses placed an IV in my vein that was quite uncomfortable, I saw that they were used to terrified, complaining patients.  During a long delay I shared with them the story of one of my father’s last surgeries.  

My dad’s heart operation was delayed by complications of another patient already in the OR.  The minutes dragged on until my father slipped his hand under the sheets and pulled out a small harmonica.  For the next hour, he entertained the nurses and technicians with “Red River Valley” and various Irish tunes.  When it was his turn, he had endured and laughed. . . and when he awoke in intensive care, he was spoiled by every nurse on the floor who had heard of the miraculously good-natured patient who smuggled his harmonica into the operating room.  

     The two male nurses smile appreciatively, and I dryly add, “Of course, I guess all you get around here are a lot of assholes.”  The joke genie is out of the bottle, and these young men know that I will give and take a lot of ribbing as we deal with nervous stress.  After quite a few corny and obvious jokes, they ask if I need anything.  I admit that I am cold and the IV in my hand hurts.  Suddenly they rush to bring extra pillows and blankets and readjust the IV to make me as comfortable as a princess.    

     At least. . . as comfortable as a mature, adult, butt up in the air princess can be.