May 30.22 Memorial Day: Coping, but barely

You’d have to be as old as I am, dear reader, to remember the days of packing red geraniums into the trunk of a car and heading out to cemeteries. Every year at the end of May. It was boring. I hated it.

We’d clean winter’s debris off the graves and then plant the flowers. Guess who was sent for water. There were faucets in the cemetery spaced with the express purpose of making kids walk miles with sloshing, heavy watering cans.

There was always a moment of prayer. What videos play in our heads at such moments! I can only imagine the videos that played in my grandparents’ and my parents’ heads: wars, polio and flu epidemics, floods, heart attacks, cancer.

The video in my head had to do with my bike, waiting for me to start summer vacation.

My complaints, registered every five minutes or so, were roundly ignored; it was Decoration Day, after all, and this tedious, bleak trek to the cemetery was non-negotiable, as were many family dicta. Against my young will, I learned that it wasn’t about the geraniums; it was about lives lived. Real lives. It was about remembering.

Decoration Day became Memorial Day and a three-day weekend, honoring real lives lost in service to this country’s ideals. Remembering.

This Memorial Day comes in a bloodbath. Locally and globally we are awash in the blood of real lives. I hope those who lost their lives in service to this country, in service to ideals, aren’t sorry they made the sacrifice. And I wish all kids were thinking only about their bikes.

 

My family served, but none died in service.

I do not pretend to the grief this day renews for many.

But I do think of the graves and the real lives lost.

It becomes harder to remember peace.

 

 

May 22.22: Coping, but barely

A machine that makes ice cream cones?

How could it be?

I thought they materialized

from some alchemy.

They simply appeared

from a summery haze

by a wave of the scoop

on tropical days.

In colorful turbans

turned quickly to goo,

they left us goatee’d

with sugary glue

while teaching hard fact

under brilliant hot sun

that time and fudge ripple

wait for no one.

Speed was the essence

of masterful lick;

neat slowed us down:

it had to be quick.

Racing the drips,

maneuvering the cold,

to push it all down

into cone’s hold

was no easy victory,

the skills were hard won,

but practice made perfect

and we’d hardly begun.

Like all childhood magic,

a part of it lingers

as we lick chocolate chip

from between grown-up fingers.

 

For me, dear reader, the only cone worth the drips was the “sugar cone,” which was the ultimate in crunch. It did not, like those flat-bottomed would-be’s, turn to flab in my hand and chew like rubber. No. The sugar-cone had character. It also had the tiniest hole at the bottom so that only the most skilled could come away with clean clothes. But the crunch held. What else mattered?

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,

and to Doumar’s Cones and Barbecue, Norfolk, VA.

 

May 21.22: Coping, but barely

I have seen Medusa,

been turned to stone;

all I want

is to be alone,

relearn, perhaps,

to feel, and own

myself.

Ocean, wind

in husky roar

seem like whisper

to restore

some softening life

into my face

within a granite

carapace.

Bending low,

the clouds incline

to touch sky forehead

onto mine,

ancient seer,

patient, wise,

whose galaxies

miniaturize

my

 self.

I stood for years

insensate, still,

absent vision, soul,

and will,

while unseen chisels

from unknowns vast

chipped away

my body cast.

When I could move,

I didn’t much,

but cautiously

allowed the touch

of  breeze and mist,

permitted feeling,

holding back,

still not unsealing

myself.

 

 

There was a time in my life, dear reader, of concentrated loss including caregiving, illness, deaths. After the third death, but not the last, I found myself at the Pacific Ocean, utterly disoriented by the absence of walls. This photo brought to mind that moment.

Thanks to Carolyn Rogers at Wheat Salt Wine and Oil blog for the photo,

part of Dan Antion’s Thursday Doors Writing Challenge.

This post submitted to that same challenge:

Dan Antion’s Thursday Doors Writing Challenge.

Thanks, Dan!

(If you admire doors, dear reader, check out his Thursday Doors blog.

It will take you around the world.)

 

 

May 11.22: Coping, but barely

The palate palette,

wizard’s sleight,

fairest fare,

ocular bite,

art most toothsome,

evanescent,

conjured deftly

to gild the present.

 

 

More thanks to photographer and gastronome S.W. Berg.

And to The Baker’s Wife Bistro and Bar, Hampton, VA.

May 7.22: Coping, but barely

This was me

and this was you,

our wings be-fuzzed,

mysterious, new.

Tipping, toppling,

learning where

we stopped and started,

unaware

of cliffs and quicksand,

Pandora’s box,

we braved the world

of thorns and rocks.

Or so we thought. The really brave

were those close by

who hovered and watched

with wary eye,

letting us learn

from life’s tough classes

even if we fell

on our little

ummm

grasses.

 

Tomorrow is Mothers’ Day here; I am not a fan. I think it’s become a national day of panic. But that does not mean I don’t value mothering. I absolutely do. There are many who mother even if they’ve never given birth, and I salute every one.

Please pardon the quality of the photo, dear reader. You probably, and rightly, guessed that I was hunched down behind Venetian blinds muttering to that baby to HOLD STILL. He didn’t. Mother Goose (so to speak) did not cast a benign eye on me.

 

 

May 1.22: Coping, but barely

Many the wonder of spring

but the jaw-dropping best of them all

is a flower that never had bloomed

until one redoubtable fall.

A lilac in fall?

What could it portend?

Why in that dismal

tormented year’s end?

Pandemic exhausted,

hostility worn,

with leaves curled in death,

dry and forlorn,

we slumped into autumn

weary of strife,

and here blooms a lilac

with anomalous life.

A lilac in fall —

a thing beyond reason —

would it come back again

in traditional season?

The purpling answer

no nose can resist

nods in affirmative

its resolve to exist.

As fancy a flora

as ever hoorayed

exalts this springtime

in new life arrayed.

 

In my years here, this lilac had never given the slightest indication that it knew how to make a flower. Then, in the last gasps of 2021, it bloomed! An autumn-blooming lilac seemed in keeping with the chaos of the times. But would it bloom in the spring? Now we know!