May 12.24: Coping, but barely

Once upon a time I was maybe in third grade when Sister Eleanor hovered over my desk. The word “terror” applies. “Who taught you to write?” she asked (was that a tear in her voice?). Thank goodness that terror tied my tongue and I didn’t reply “You did, Sister.”

Penmanship. Woe. Those hideous circles and ovals — just what had they to do with real life?

My mother’s handwriting was beautiful. Did I inherit that gene? Not even close. I have mastered a hybrid, part print, part longhand, which I can (usually) read. I should give thanks for the keyboard, yes? No. There is something about handwriting which is a fragment of a real person.

Many of us have handwritten recipe cards. There’s a person there under the ancient splots. When we take out those cards — or, from my grandmothers’ kitchens, scraps of calendars — we hold a flesh-and-blood woman. A mom. A grandma. A voice. An ironed apron.

We all know that you don’t have to give birth to be a mother. And for all those women in our lives who have mothered us, with or without the ironed apron, we stop for a moment today. We salute them all.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all who mother and have mothered!

 

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

 

 

April 12.24: Coping, but barely

Here is a bit of U.S. history, pertinent to some of us at this time.

1948, dear taxpayer:

   

 

There you have it, beginning to end, four pages: three for calculations, one for tax table. This, of course, excludes the instructions, which no doubt were as illuminating as the directions on these pages. I was only five at this point and didn’t notice such things, but as I grew older I learned to give Dad a wide berth at tax time. When he spread papers out on the table in the breakfast nook and held his head, we knew this was time to be respected almost as much as a Notre Dame game on television.

 

March 19.24: Coping, but barely

Which hour, which day,

which year would you pawn?

A moment close by,

or a moment long gone?

And if it were gone

would you regretfully weep?

Would subsequent life

collapse in a heap?

Or without that time

would your life stand stronger,

with lighter heart,

healthier, longer?

Would anyone else

want that card from your deck,

or would it languish in dust

amid others’ dreck?

 

This part of the year brings my annual pondering: is Time a sentient being? Does Time KNOW?

Life goes on, we say, but I’m not sure about that. I think Time sometimes stops and enters into us as a deliberate, knowing cycle. We feel it deep down, sometimes only dimly aware, tired in spirit and wondering why. It’s Time. Time is aware even if we’re not.

Others say, “It’s the same for me!” No, it isn’t. The humanness of it might be the same, but no one has lived another’s Time.

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

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!

 

January 30.24: Coping, but barely

I stood in the kitchen pondering the winter world through my window; what wasn’t brown and grey was grey and brown. Sunless days had lumped into a lead weight in my head. What a fine moment for a poet’s melancholy, and then I looked up. Darn. There was Grandpa Mauck, looking out from his winter day, telling me to get real!

You might know the movie “A Christmas Story,” dear reader, set in Hohman, Indiana, which was really Hammond, Indiana, where I was born. This is Hammond. Grandpa was a Borden milkman there. A milkman! What mystique! What could be more enviable than riding a sled behind horses delivering milk in freezing temperatures?

Grandpa left Borden for a so-called better job, but all he had then was a lot of paper and people working for him. Boring.

Meanwhile, I was growing up in a house with a wooden milkbox at the side door. The milkman drove a truck, not a horse, and stopped by a couple times a week. The milkbox had a door that pulled out, making it a cozy place for the cream to freeze and push up over the (glass) bottle. I remember the pleated-edge paper caps that sat like cloche hats atop the frozen cream.

In the summers, before air conditioning, the milkman allowed us to climb into the cool back of his truck, which smelled awful, but the ice was remarkably clear and therefore desirable, so, much to my mother’s horror, we sometimes got chips to chew on.

Then I looked out the window again, and everything was still brown and grey.

(Grandpa is the one in the middle.)

 

January 19.24: Coping, but barely

No one will know who they were,

or mark each simple grave,

or note their dutiful lives,

this sisterly enclave.

The curtains have rotted away,

the table and chairs to trash,

“pocketbooks,” hats, laced shoes,

to compost, dust, and ash.

But this I know for certain:

they do not fade away —

hard work, hard knocks, hard faith,

carry on in my DNA.

 

The women who raised us. The grandmas. Some not even related to us. But there they were, almost always working. Occasionally they would stop to play canasta.

The woman seated in the center is my grandma, wearing my face.

Sometimes an old photo shows us who we are. Have you noticed that, dear reader?

 

January 15.24: Coping, but barely

Beanies on the trellis,

a topping most precarious,

a balance act of daring,

defying air nefarious.

The steely north wind roars

head on to southern blast

of pugnacious rainy air

over garden mizzenmast.

Rambunctious winter storm,

duking cosmic knuckles,

can’t displace the beanies

no matter their swashbuckles.

Proud and straight the trellis,

unbowed by storms or mirrors,

it hasn’t any clue

how goofy it appears.

 

Perhaps you too have beanie memories, dear reader. I have several. One was back in fourth grade, when Confirmation was a significant milestone, and we were dressed accordingly in gorgeous white robes, with sleeves that flowed like the Mississippi. I loved those sleeves, and I flapped around in happy contentment. I was a butterfly queen in that white robe. But then they crowned me with a beanie. A beanie! In Holy Ghost red, more’s the ignominy! I went from queen to fungus in an instant.

I still think the Holy Ghost laughed uncontrollably.

All this from looking out the window.

 

January 6.24: Coping, but barely

So many ago’s,

when the world was young,

and the wheel was new

and fire just begun,

there was on the corner

a little shack,

with roof of tin,

two sides and a back.

Very unpretty,

but functional, dry,

where one could wait

until by and by

that lumbering workhorse

the city bus

unfolded its doors

and ingested us.

To wait at the bus stop

in tin corrugated —

a memory suddenly

resuscitated.

 

Yes, dear reader, a sudden flashback to those penny-loafered days of yesteryear, when we waited for the city bus to take us to high school. I wonder what brought that to mind.

 

December 28.23: Coping, but barely

Some Christmas gifts like Yule itself

are slow to be, and then

are whisked away like dreams

into the past’s packed den.

And there they somehow linger

deceptively fresh and bright

within the deep forever

of memories clutched tight.

 

As follow-up to my Christmas Eve post, here is my post-Christmas post. To show you what magnificence that bowl of mince was made into. Pastry reindeer heads, no less! Oh, it was a coup de mince, dear reader, and will be one of my best Christmas memories forever! Beautiful to eye and to tongue. I am already looking forward to next year’s mince. (Are you reading this, Kelley?)

p.s. This delectable was meatless, and thus did mincemeat turn to mince.

 

With endless thanks to my daughter-in-law,

Kelley Wilson Mesterharm.