Scrabble

          I love Scrabble. As a child I played with my friends. The wooden tile holders are covered with pencil notations: "today Teresa got a goat," when we were ten, and "Mary Lee Loves Bruce" when I was fourteen. For more than fifty years my mother and I played on the dining room table where soft Santa Monica light filtered in through the plate-glass windows. My father took a picture of us about ten years ago, smiling for his camera. We look so much alike, except my hair was long. Mother always wore hers short.  Neither of my parents liked long hair. They thought it hid one of a woman's most beautiful features, her neck. 

          The last years, before my dad died, Mother and I played Scrabble in the kitchen, at the little card table where they ate dinner every night, in front of the TV. 

          While my dad was napping, my mother would prepare dinner.  He'd get up from his nap and come into the kitchen, with all the wonderful dinner smells, which he couldn't smell anymore. All those years developing film in his narrow darkrooms, breathing in the hypo and the fix, probably destroyed his olfactory nerves.  He'd walk down the hall from the bedroom singing, "Hello Dolly!" my mother's nickname when she was a girl.  They would laugh. He'd give her a kiss, open the pantry and take out a big bottle of cheap, red wine. He'd pour a little in the short tumbler he kept on top of the refrigerator, covered with a plastic container lid. During dinner he'd sip about half the glass of wine, then put it back on top of the refrigerator to be refilled the next night.

          One of their clients, the pompous Peter Hayward, who coordinated the Rigid Tool Calendar shoots, was a wine snob. My dad once saved the bottle from an expensive wine someone had brought to a party, and filled it with Gallo. Of course Mr. Hayward raved about it. My dad gloated.

          When I visited my parents, my place at the card table was facing my dad, with the refrigerator and TV behind me. Mother sat with her back almost touching the oven, the kitchen was that narrow.  Just before the potatoes and vegetables were done, my father would broil salmon on a piece of aluminum foil. Then when everything was ready, Mother would hand around hot plates from the oven, take her seat, and my dad would serve us.

          Mother would have set the table with a well-worn blue-and-white check tablecloth, two short candles in triangular-shaped, mid-century wrought iron  holders, white paper napkins, and a delicate white china dish with several wedges of lemon.  I'd have already poured myself a glass of white wine, mother would drink water, and my father would serve us. We'd all say, "mmm" and "this is delicious" as we tasted the perfectly cooked fish, overdone zucchini, simple steamed potatoes.

          Mother liked to recount stories, remembering every detail until she and I were laughing and dabbing at our eyes. My father would stare at the TV wishing he could turn up the volume. He didn't like thinking about the past, but my Mother and I loved recalling and reliving stories that made us shake our heads and chuckle.

          After dinner, when I visited, my father retreated to the bedroom, where we could hear the TV blaring. We felt a little sorry for him, all alone in there, as we chatted, washed the dishes in hot soapy water, and set them to dry in the non-working dishwasher.

          We'd set up the Scrabble board, turn out the bright overhead light and sit in the more softly lighted kitchen, making our moves, congratulating each other on high-scoring words.  I'd keep score on the steno pad and flip back to previous games, which I always dated.  Little pangs of jealousy surprised me when I saw Mother had played with my nieces, Lauren or Tracy.

          "Lauren cheats," Mother once said. "She's very competitive." 

          I was glad to have this information on my sweet, kind-hearted, beautiful niece. No one could be as perfect as she appeared.

          Scrabble with Mother was cut short when she broke her hip, two years after my father died, and moved into a posh assisted-living facility overlooking the ocean. Over the course of two-and-a-half years her mind, which had been so sharp – she also loved  crosswords, reading, and watched Jeopardy every day - gradually evaporated. Her death certificate lists the cause of death as "end stage vascular dementia."

          Like a trapeze artist letting go, I let go of Scrabble with Mother and replaced it with Facebook Scrabble with girlfriends scattered across the country.  Moving to Texas was a little less traumatic knowing I'd play with my friends every day and could imagine them in their various homes: Tracy in her messy house cluttered with her son's toys; Diane in her little cabin in Mariposa, horses, sheep and dogs outside in the tall pines; Izabel in her sunny upstairs apartment in Fresno; Heidi in her wide, open house in Camarillo, Barbara overlooking hills of grape vines; and Holly with her tiki décor.          

          About a week ago online Scrabble introduced a new feature: The Teacher. After you make your move, the little face smiles or frowns and lets you know if you've made a good word or if you could have done better.  I hate the Teacher. The words he finds are higher in points but are words I've never heard of.  Sure it's fun to cheat a little and peruse the Scrabble dictionary when checking to see if a particular word is legal. But now I feel like a complete nincompoop because I didn't make "vav" or "lawny." Who in the world has ever heard of those words?

          I supposed I have the option of not using the Teacher. But just the fact that he's there, ready to taunt me for my low-scoring word, makes me feel like an intruder has entered my house. Maybe this is how my dad felt when I'd visit and take Mother away from him, so that he had to go into the bedroom and lie on the bed and watch TV, all by himself.   

I get tired of writing about myself so today I decided to write some flash fiction. 

           

          Colleen stands before the kitchen calendar counting the days till Christmas. A month since Daylight Savings Time ended but she's still trying to adjust to dark afternoons. Yesterday she didn't see a group of kids walking in the road until she was right upon them.  She came around a corner and there they were, like a small herd of cows bumping into each other in their dark clothes. She hit the brakes just in time. The screech sounded like an injured animal. Her wrists prickled with fear.

          "No one can see you!" she yelled at them, rolling down her window.

          The kids scurried to the weedy shoulder, and looked at her with open mouths.           

          "Really," she said more softly. "You should wear reflectors." 

          She could see now that they were young teens and one of them was a girl   with a pale face and big dark eyes. The girl blinked. "Sorry," she said softly.

          "Do you need a ride?" Colleen asked. 

          The kids looked at each other and back at her without answering.

          "I'm Colleen MacDonald, I live just down the road, the blue house on the hill?" 

          "Oh yeah," one of the boys said. "We're sorry about your son."

          "Do you need a ride?" Colleen asked again.  The kids looked at each other then the girl nodded. Colleen unlocked the doors.  The girl got in the front seat. Three boys piled in to the back. Colleen accelerated slowly, breathing in the scent of youth. She wished she could stop the car, reach over and embrace the girl, draw her close and absorb her ignorant vitality. 

          What would these children do with their unspent days? Did they sense, as she did, how time gobbles up moments until everything you think you have is gone?  One day you're a family, the next day you're floating, observing yourself standing in your kitchen staring at the calendar.  

          

Moon in Virgo

Every month I have a sense of relief when the moon moves into Virgo. Finally I can get something done. I breeze through the day, checking items off my mental list, the list that swims in my mind at four a.m. I'm always happier doing than thinking about what needs to be done.

Today I saw a picture of the house my husband is living in, with a woman he's fallen in love with. I can hardly call her a girlfriend, she's nearly seventy-years-old. To me it looks like he's finally found the mother he always wanted.   One of the things I liked best when I met him was he called his Mother every Sunday. He was a good, loyal son. He respected women. When I met her less than a year after we were married she poked him in the stomach and said "Looks like you've put on some weight." No hugs. Me she called a "string of spit."

Today I look at a picture of the house my husband is living in, a small stone house on a golf-course, 

short-shorn green a few little shrubs. Completely exposed.

I walk outside into our yard, I mean my yard, where cicadas' electric hum fills the wide open air. My beloved silver maple is still stuffed with leaves. They wave to me, that say admire me, which I do.

My yard contains my beloved white-muzzled dog, a dog my husband never liked, a dog who adores him, and the cat who came to us starving eight years ago. Both of them relaxed, but alert to the sounds and smells around them.  

Clustered under the maple's shade, rows of blue and black containers still burst with life, my husband's vegetable garden. Will it die this winter, along with our marriage? Or will I become a gardener now, in my autumn years?

Catching Up

In the months since I last posted on this blog my mother had a stroke and was unable to speak but has since recovered somewhat. She had her ninety-third birthday in April and is getting excellent, loving care from her round-the-clock caregivers and the staff at Ocean House. On my visit last weekend we sat on the roof/deck (she in her wheelchair) and took in the breathtaking view of sunny Santa Monica Bay with walkers, joggers, skaters and a few wetsuit-clad surfers  languidly waiting for waves. When I got home from the trip I sent Mother a pair of silver shoes which she wore yesterday to "Happy Hour," and got many compliments.

On what would have been my father's 97th birthday, April 3rd, (he passed away in 2010), my memoir Posing for My Father was published. I did not select this date, it just worked out that way.  The book tells of my life growing up in the home/studio of famous photographers.  Though not great at promotion I did schedule a reading at Beyond Baroque in Venice (during the mom-visit) with two of my California poet friends. We had a good turnout and I sold some books, even to total strangers!

On September 14th my husband of twenty-one years moved in with an older woman he met just about a month before. In the last six weeks I've gone through more emotions that I knew I had -- shock, anger, grief, relief, wonder, jealousy, sadness, hope, confusion, numbness, nausea, insomnia, hysteria, rage, forgiveness, disorientation – some emotions hang around for a few hours, others come and go in minutes.

I've done a lot of writing and talking to girlfriends.  The best part of going through a hard time is connecting with friends, both old and new.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a sad story.  By the time we're in our sixties we've all had heartache and loss.

Because he has a home office we've agreed that he will continue to come to work each day and then leave at night. Don't know how long this will go on. Some days I dread seeing his car pull into the driveway (I can see the street from my office window). Other days, perhaps I've had a good night's sleep and am feeling rested and happy, I'm glad to have his male presence in the house.

I have not told my mom or her caregivers about any of this. John put up a curtain rod for me this week and plans to cover the pool this weekend. I can usually say something about him when I call. I wore my wedding ring when I traveled but took it off when I got home. Still feels weird. Being a wife was so much a part of my identity.  On bad days I think, what if I slip in the tub or have a heart attack and no one finds me for days . . .

What I realize is that the John I miss is the Coarsegold John – he who cleared that beautiful land so we could build my dream home, and how he maintained it for the ten years we lived there. My favorite image of him is the view I had walking up the trail west of the driveway and seeing him barrel up the drive on his red tractor. I also love the memory of him in his white socks and underpants, in the garage with the door open to that magnificent view, working on his speakers.

But that John is no more. Now he has a life with someone I've never met, a widow, four-years older than us, who he says likes his snoring. Twenty-five years ago, when I was single I wrote a poem about my mother. Some of the lines echo in my mind now –

she likes having

the warm body in the bed

I choose a bed

big enough to thrash around in

and I do

What do I miss? Going out to eat on Saturday nights and having leftovers the next day, sitting on the deck with John listening to the birds, with the dog and cat nearby. 

Other than that, I don't miss the political lectures where I was not allowed to disagree. I don't miss the hateful glares and days on end when he would ignore me because I'd pissed him off.  I don't miss him saying, "I gotta find you a boyfriend," when I approached him for a hug.

For years I've grown used to sleeping alone, eating alone, showering and bathing alone, dancing alone, walking my dog alone, going to church alone, watching TV and listening to the radio alone, reading alone, writing  alone – including the poem for our yearly Christmas card.

On this cloudy Saturday morning I sit alone at my desk, with my dog and cat peacefully sleeping nearby. Today I'll work on the new Hill Country Poets anthology for our November 10th reading at the library, and tonight I get to take pictures at the Harvest Moon fundraiser for Riverside Nature Center. 

Perhaps I'll have a good dream tonight, like the one I had night-before-last, of swimming in a beautiful clear green swimming pool with a tiny green frog and a dark green turtle the size of my hand.

Today in Kerrville

"I look like a bug," I say to the cute, young, male clerk at Walmart, who leans against the frame display. "Oh well, they can't be any worse than these," I say, taking them off and putting back on my even bigger dark glasses.

          He nods.

          "You're not supposed to say that!" I cry. "You're supposed to help me decide."

          He shrugs.

          I turn toward the seated, young, female clerk with long, black-hair "I need a woman's help!" I say.  Then I see she's on the phone.

          "Oh, sorry!" I say to her; then to my clerk, "I'll take them!"

          He says, "Are you sure?"

          "Yes. I hate making decisions. They'll be fine."

          We sit. He asks my birth date and types it in, then my first name.

          "Your prescription expired," he says.

          "What! I can't believe this! I thought they're supposed to last a year! I just got my eyes checked three months ago!"

          "This one's from 2011," he says.

          "Oh, then, here. . . " I open my wallet and find the new prescription.

          The customer, who was seated across from the female clerk, but hidden to me by her computer, stands.  Now I see he has long, grey scraggly hair and a short grey-and-white beard. He's a little stooped and approaches shyly.

          "Excuse me for saying," he says, "but you would look good in anything."

          I want to say, You really must need glasses!  but I'm gracious and say, "Oh, you're so sweet," as he turns and leaves.

          To my cute young clerk I say, "I almost said 'I used to look good in nothing' but I stopped myself."

          He chuckles. He may be thinking, Yuck, what a sick old woman. But, maybe not. Maybe he's thinking I bet you did.  

II.

          Today in Kerrvile, I tore a sheet from a little cube tablet in the kitchen. The sheet underneath says, Cube bought 12-15-02 in my handwriting.  I like that I wrote a note to my future self, just like I used to do when I was a kid.

          Someone recently asked me, "Do you write every day," and I said no but then I told her I write in my diary every night, so that's writing.  I also write dialog in my head every day, practicing what I will say when I call my mother. I want to have something bright and cheerful to tell. I don't want to talk about her fragile life, her weakening body, her diminished mind.

          So I call in the afternoon, when the day has had time to bring me a gift that I can share with my mother, even if it's only over the phone.

Jury Duty

          My first reaction when I see the pale, dark-haired kid hunched over the table, looking like he wants to be under the table, is oh! Poor boy, let him go! But when he looks up with only his smoldering eyes, a

tentative squint, I think rotten kid. 

      Which of course, I feel bad for thinking, because he reminds me of the incorrigible third-grader, who was so disruptive in my after-school writing club, one of the few children I just didn't like.  He was so unlikeable, so ugly in his need to be disruptive. As a last resort I went to the principal and told her I just couldn't deal with the little devil. His writing was intentionally shocking, violent, meant to gross us out. He upset one girl, made her cry.

          When I met his mother my heart melted. Barely an adult herself, she had those big, hollow, scared eyes of someone who has lived in fear her whole life. I wanted to put my arms around her, tell her to sit down, I'd make her a cup of tea. I wanted to take her home, cook her a nice dinner, let her pet my dog.

          Her husband, the boy's father, terrorized the whole family. In and out of jail, he was currently home, on probation, trying to behave. I told the mother the boy could stay in my class. Maybe just talking to his mother would make him realize someone was paying attention to him. For wasn't it attention he wanted?

          Today in the courtroom I learn the definition of Criminal Mischief. It's similar to vandalism but the damages are less than $500.00. The second offense, for which the boy is charged, is Evading Arrest.  The defense attorney asks us, "Is it okay to run from the law?"

          Like good children we shake our heads, no, but how many of us are thinking hell yes - if the cops are chasing you with their pepper spray and stun guns and real guns? How many times have we seen videos of cops beating protesters?  How many incidents of police brutality have we read about? How many cops cover up for each other?

          My husband says I wasn't picked for jury duty because I asked too many questions, I was too talkative. "They don't want people who think," he says, "you're just supposed to sit there and listen."

          "But the attorneys said they wanted us to ask questions!" I say in my defense. 

          The trial is set for tomorrow morning. I could go and sit in the courtroom and find out what that skinny white kid did to get arrested.  I could watch the twenty-eight-year-old prosecutor call witnesses and explain to us the letter of the law. I could hear the sixty-something defense attorney plant doubt in our minds.

          It's probably good I didn't get selected. I don’t think I could consider the facts, and only the facts. Life is more complicated than that.

          

Today's Poem

HELL TO PAY

There's hell to pay in heaven today

A council has been called

Someone's ass is on the line

The Creator is appalled

He stands before our multitude

With anger in His eyes

It's rare we see this attitude

From one so mellow and wise

"Who decided to take these lives

Small children and their teachers?

Some were only as young as five

With complexions fresh as peaches."

Silence hangs like a London fog

We've all become so meek

I look around, we're shy as dogs

No one wants to speak

"Tell me!" God shouts and pounds his fist

"I need to understand."

Slowly I start to raise my wrist

And then I raise my hand.

"It was I," I say, and rise from my chair

I'm pierced by looks of derision,

Mouths drop open the angels stare.

"It was I who made the decision.

"I'm tired of bodies mangled by war

Battered and bruised and starved

I'm tired of AIDS victims covered in sores

And people mangled in cars

"I'm tired of junkies and teenage ODs

And old farts, long in the tooth

I'm tired of smelling the stench of disease

I wanted the sweet scent of youth."

After I speak I sit back down

My chest is heavy and tight

"Ach," says God, "you stupid clown.

Go, get out of my sight."

My shame is heavy as I leave

And no one follows after

But in the distance I perceive

The music of children's laughter.