May 10.24: Coping, but barely

The key

 

One day a very young me walked into my grandma’s simple kitchen and stopped dead, transfixed and wide-eyed. There, on the other side of her rolling floor, was the marvel of my life.  It was a dollhouse made out of a tall cardboard box. A townhouse (not that I knew at the time what a townhouse was). I’d never seen the like.

Some of its contents were real honest-to-Woolworth’s store-bought dollhouse furniture, and maybe a plastic baby or two, but most of it was created out of scraps. Imagine custom curtains made from bits of the pink plastic ruffle thumb-tacked to the edge of pantry shelves (eat your heart out, Martha Stewart). Oh, it was wonderful, and I spent countless happy hours playing with that, living, of course, inside it. Pretending.

That is why it is Grandma’s fault that I look at homes like these and immediately start placing my furniture. Imagining living in rooms shaped like that. Imagining walking up those stairs and being elegant. Imagining curtains of vines and trees. Imagining such refuge from the wind-up world.

Pretending is the key that unlocks all doors, so I can go in and know just where the chocolate is.

 

With thanks to photographer Kerfe at methodtwomadness,

submitted to Dan Antion’s

Thursday Doors Writing Challenge

 

 

May 5.24: Coping, but barely

The trees far away

turn to blue,

dissolving into the sky,

hinting of things new.

But there are slippers at the door.

The air rolls on forever,

wanting to be breathed,

a world in wondering

unknowns wreathed.

But there are slippers at the door.

Tail-twitch of squirrel

throws down the glove;

wobble of rabbit ear,

coo of the dove

beckon like fireflies,

here but then not,

threshold moment,

indecision-fraught.

Because there are slippers at the door.

Isn’t it inner-dwelt,

a creeping unstilled fear:

if I seek that open world,

will the slippers still be here?

 

Submitted by photographer S.W. Berg

and me

to Dan Antion’s

Thursday Doors Writing Challenge.

(Dan, did I do this right?)

 

March 2.24: Coping, but barely

The finest crystal

can’t compare

to Pepsi’s streamlined

fit and flare.

Cozy in hand

like tailored glove,

holds the cold —

what’s not to love?

And yet still more

its virtue shining,

back in the day

of starch and ironing,

when mangles graced

each family proper,

and Pepsi bottle

wore its stopper,

turning it

to quick appliance,

sprinkling away

wrinkle defiance.

For vase, there wasn’t

other cola

could hold the queenly

gladiola.

So I toast the bottle

just as I oughter

with twenty-first century

filtered water.

 

Back in the day, Pepsi, which lived all frosty and fizzy in our refrigerator, was the forbidden fruit. Not to be had except with written permission from the pope, the president, and, even more formidable, The Mom. No one just opened it and took a swig. Uh-UH.

It was therefore my favorite drink.

A select few of you might remember the fine art of dampening hankies. Or white dress shirts. Or sheets. (Yes, we ironed sheets and pillowcases, and don’t get me started on my mother as ironing queen.) The Pepsi bottle ruled as sprinkler. I still have the artifact to prove it. How else can I demonstrate to my grandchildren the ways of prehistoric cave dwellers?

 

More thanks to photographer S. W. Berg

for the photo of the classic Pepsi vase.

And kudos to those creative repurposers!

 

February 29.24: Coping, but barely

February garden,

my tabletop Versailles,

petalled constellation

against a winter sky.

Regally aloof,

raucous in its joy,

exalting in itself

above the hoi polloi.

This season of the drab,

the common grey mundane,

is quite beneath the station

of beauty so insane.

 

 

December 7.23: Coping, but barely

I grew up,

very long ago,

in another world,

the Land of Just-So.

This went here,

that went there,

in the Land of Just-So,

a scrupulous air.

Monday awash

in detergent solution,

all things foldable,

household ablution.

Tuesday’s iron,

clothesline scent,

dampened hankies,

Helen Trent.

Saturday’s shoes,

shampoo and set,

all spit-polished

for Sunday’s debt.

Christmas! Caution!

Order ruled!

In art of tinsel

were we schooled.

Lights with ruffs

like daisy petals,

real tree,

hot lights and metals.

Do it this way —

it’s a must!

Peace on earth,

but first we dust!

I remember.

But I disdain

neurotic Christmas

plague and bane,

and have matured

impatient, restive,

thinking cobwebs

might be festive.

I’ve left Just-So

as turtles run

for the saner land of

Just-Get-It-Done!

 

You may believe me, dear reader, when I say that this gap in my tree, pictured above, would have had my mother grabbing for the smelling salts. Further, there are ornaments that do not hang freely but slouch against other things — and light cords that show! To the fainting couch!

I have written before about Just-So and I’m sure I will again. Everything just so. I still struggle to overcome it, but I’m making good progress.

 

November 26.23: Coping, but barely

It was school year 1957-58. Sputnik had just upended my world, which was suddenly hyperventilating about science and math as I was beginning high school. Mom was in her third year of teaching, and Dad had begun driving to night school in Chicago after his workday to finish the undergrad degree he’d started in the 1930s. My brother was in junior high. We weren’t Ozzie and Harriet, but we were pretty typical of the 50s myth: home, Mom, and apple pie. For Dad, it was apple pie with a chunk of cheddar cheese.

Until it wasn’t.

One night on his way home from Chicago, Dad drove himself to the ER instead. Then the phone call which was our Sputnik; Dad’s heart was bad. The end/beginning of an era.

Mom, our resident pie master, could bake no more pies. The occasional Friday extravagance of homemade French fries with French-fried shrimp went the way of the pies. Bacon? A mere quiver of the lower lip. Mom’s fried chicken? Boiled.

Like it or not, we were all in it with Dad.

Now when apple pie comes to my plate, I savor every flake, every sugary cinnamony sticky bit of oozing pie drool. But I admire it too. A fleeting work of art. Banksy is trivia next to this ephemeral.

When my wedding was imminent, Mom said she would teach me how to make pies. Yeah, right. We didn’t get one pie off the ground: she’d forgotten everything. We were pathetic.

I know nothing about making pies. But I know something about eating them and am willing to learn more.

 

(P.S. Dad died in 1999. Living pieless bought him a lot of time.)

 

Thanks and kudos to The Apple Store at Conner Prairie.

 

September 25.23: Coping, but barely

The other day, dear reader, I happened upon a product display in a store. I stopped and stared. Then I lifted one off and studied it. It was mysterious to me, and I slowly, somewhat cautiously, hung it back in place. But I still stood there, puzzling. It was a neatly be-ribboned packet of fabric rectangles called “cleaning cloths.” The label said they were good for cleaning all kinds of things.

Seriously?

Didn’t we use to call those “rags”? And didn’t we find them neatly folded (or not) in a box in a closet or down in the basement? And, if we were sent to get one, didn’t we pull one out from the middle of the pile and say “Oh, I remember these pajamas!”

There were some limitations, yes, like for washing windows, when lint was anathema, but for the most part those rags indiscriminately cleaned everything. Before we had the word “recycle,” we had rags. Old undershirts had a second life. Then, if not completely repulsive or toxic, they’d be washed and folded and go for a third life. And so on.

“Cleaning cloths”? That people pay actual money for? The older I get the more I don’t get.

 

April 9.23: Coping, but barely

When I tell you, dear reader, the trains were in our back yards, it’s not hyperbole. You can see the railroad track behind me. Those trains were roaring behemoths, shaking the house, kicking up cinders while the open coal cars, toting fuel for homes and industry, dribbled black along the way.

So when I say spring cleaning with reverence and a slight shudder, you have some small idea why. All the curtains came down and went into the washing machine with the wringer on top. The lace curtains, still wet, were mounted carefully on wood frames with a million tiny sharp nails around the edges that held the curtains taut while they dried. OMG. Of course Grandma ironed them anyway before they were tenderly re-hung.

That was the same grandma balanced up on a ladder with a fistful of some goo, wiping the wallpaper in careful strokes, slowly revealing the color under the grit. Repeatedly turning the goo, wiping, wiping, down the ladder, move the ladder, back up, wipe, wipe. OMG.

Rugs rolled up and lugged outside to be thrashed?  Check. Hardwood floors, woodwork, windowsills scrubbed? Storm windows taken down, inner windows washed, screens hosed down and installed? Check, check. Dump the dirty water in the alley, fill the bucket again? OMG.

Then dinner to be made with no microwave, no dishwasher, no counter space, and a freezer the size of a shoebox? OMG.

And so was Easter dinner served in pristine newness. Old walls, old curtains renewed. Fumes of Fels Naphtha gave way to the perfume of ham and lemon meringue pie.

How close our metaphorical trains. How timeless the human need for renewal. I wish it for you, dear reader, and for us all in this season of many traditions.

 

July 25.22: Coping, but barely

A garden in a kettle,

what enticement to know more;

no ordinary flowerpot

hints so of family lore.

Kettles are like aprons,

remnants, scraps and shreds

of kitchens gone to dust

except inside our heads.

Replaced by kitchen jewelry

gleaming, digitized,

its plump and stolid air

is yet unbowdlerized.

Something in its roundness

brings noodle dough to mind,

vegetable soup with barley,

doughnuts cinnamon-brined,

children up on tip-toe

to watch and sniff, content,

the world in proper order

as it was surely meant.

Today its storied depths

give rise to happy greenery,

rooted, like our memories,

in distant kitchen scenery.

 

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,

and to gardener and family preservationist D.J. Berg.

 

December 29.21: Coping

Last night I flipped the light switch in an upstairs bedroom and the whole house went dark. I asked every homeowner’s favorite question: now what? Then lights back on. Then off. On. Off. Off…off…

I found myself in a world of India ink. Not a glimmer, not the tiniest shard of light. Groping is a graceless ballet, but just so did I find the stairs, the banister, and warily make my way down. Why, you may ask, did I not think to grab the flashlight that’s upstairs? Because it’s me.

Bumping along, I looked out the front windows. A world without light. Disorienting, unsettling. As I inched through the house, a timid glow startled me. My battery candles! Beacons! My feet steadied immediately, and I made it to the back door, next to my shadowy Christmas tree. The houses across the pond were black. Not a light anywhere. It was as though every person in the world was gone but me.

A lightless world is an empty world.

The power company did me the courtesy of calling to tell me there was a power outage. Really?

Why are the robots never programmed to tell the customer what happened? So far as I could tell, I flipped the switch in an upstairs bedroom and shut down a small city.

How oppressive that solid, unforgiving darkness. What a slamming shut of life. Our fears are never far from us, are they?