READING POETRY AT RIVER POINT

        I volunteered to read poems to the residents of River Point, a new assisted living facility just a mile from our home. At one time I'd thought about bringing my mom from Santa Monica and situating her there, so I could visit her every day, not just talk to her on the phone. But that's not going to happen. My mom is living at Ocean House in Santa Monica, across the street from the beach, where she can feed the seagulls every day.

        So today when I arrived at River Point I went into a small activity room, with a lovely view of acres of wild green grass bordering the Guadalupe River, and spent time with two new residents: Louis, 96 years old, the same age my dad would be if he hadn't died two years ago, and a woman in wheel chair whose name I forget.

        Both had just moved in three weeks ago. They participate in any activities that get them out of their rooms. Louis was dressed all in blue. Until a few months ago he was still golfing, then suddenly his left leg got weak and he couldn't walk. He uses a wheel chair now and asked for a pillow, to sit on a regular chair. "Because you're bony, like me," I said which made him laugh.

        The heavy lady was on the phone, so I waited until she was done, and leafed through a magazine. I have trouble focusing my ears when there are other sounds going on around me.  Louis waited patiently. When the lady hung up she apologized, saying there had been "another death in the family."

        I told them I was a poet and read several of my students' poems. Then I read them "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, the poem commissioned for the base of the Statue of Liberty.  After I read it Olivia, the activity coordinator joined us and we had a discussion about ancestors.

        Louis' great grandparents came from Germany and settled in Texas several generations ago. He had many interesting stories to recount. Olivia added her own story – her father's family included a freed slave and a slew of red-haired Irish; her mother's family is Mexican and part Native American.

        Olivia had to run off to do something and so I told Louis and the lady in the wheel chair about how my parents met and married in 1941. Louis and his wife were married 70 years until her passing last year. 

        Olivia returned and took me into the "Memory Care" wing which is for patients with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. There was no small meeting room just a big open space with horrible acoustics.  She situated me in a chair and the residents gathered around me. One woman said she was a retired English teacher, so I said, "Sit by me!"

        One of the women had a caregiver. The rest seemed to be on their own. Some were in their own worlds, but others were able to focus on me. A man in a red sweater rolled his wheel chair up close, as he had a hard time hearing me. I had a hard time too. The workers were talking so loud, I had to practically shout to drown them out.

        I decided to read "The Spider and the Fly" because it's dramatic and I enjoy playing the parts of the spider and the fly. The retired English teacher knew many of the lines.

        Then I read my "Ode to My Stapler" and the fellow in the red sweater said, "I don't understand why you're here and what I'm supposed to do."

        I said, "I'm the entertainment! I'm supposed to entertain you!" and a woman across from me who had been staring vacantly looked me in the eye and chuckled.

        The retired teacher liked my poem but the man in the red sweater asked again what he was supposed to do.  I chose a few poems by students from a CPITS anthology. These were more "poetic," meaning less linear and didn't follow a logical progression. I think the residents liked them.

        But the workers on the phone and talking to each other were just too loud. I got up and told them, "This isn't working out, I can't yell over you."

        I was disappointed that they didn't say they'd try to be quiet. I told the residents I'm going to a writers' retreat in West Texas next week and I'll tell them about it the next time I come back.

        The retired teacher said, "That's lovely." I squeezed her arm and bid adieu to my audience.  Outside the wind was whipping. The last of today's rainclouds were vanishing, leaving the sky a bright, shocking blue. 

Too long since I wrote a poem, days flap by like pages of a book

one night two young men show up and go to work on my computer

like veterinarians about to put my beloved pet to sleep

my presence not welcome as they talk to each other in

words I don't understand, like they've swooped down from another planet

to perform surgery and I'm as embarrassed as if they'd seen me naked

and were repelled, not that they haven't seen this all before

another silly woman wanting to save her emails

documents that should have been deleted ages ago.

I pace the house, try to eat and watch TV but I keep trying to hear

what they're saying to each other. I want to rush in and tell them

to go home, leave everything as it was, and eventually I do, I tell them

I'll figure out the rest on my own.  Exhausted, I go to sleep dreading morning

and sure enough everything's different, I'm lost, disoriented, bravely

sniffling my tears as I navigate the maze of my life in words and numbers.

Unfortunately there is no more Microsoft Money, which for ten years

tracked every cent we've earned and spent. It's gone. Bye bye.

I go to Office Max and purchase Quicken, remembering that I used it

before, figuring it will do, but now I see it connects directly to my bank

sucks up the transactions and categorizes each purchase so

it appears we've spent our entire month's budget on beer.

Perhaps in John's perfect world. I spend several hours

good naturedly correcting the silly mistakes.

I press "save" and yet when I return three days later we're back to

the end of last month, why did all my work disappear?

I want to yell at someone so I yell at my husband who says,

"Welcome to my world" and the napping cat opens one eye, annoyed.

The world is full of danger and disorder. All I want is

for what's in my own, private, personal house to make sense.

Is that so much to ask?

Addicted to Words

THE WOMAN WHO LOVES WORDS

         

can’t get enough, she pores over the Sunday paper  

inhaling book reviews, travel essays, recipes, scientific

articles, the latest news. She leans in when the radio’s

disembodied voice talks about a memoir by a woman

whose mother was a cook. The author is not a cook, but a writer

who creates words for others to devour. In her dining room

books jostle on crowded shelves. By her bedside, magazines

folded open to the latest story by Alice Munro or Thomas McGuane wait.

She’s impatient to read them but wants to hold off, wants the comfort

of knowing they’re there, waiting for her eyes, her mind, her heart

to suck them up, the way she remembers sucking a frothy sweet

root beer float through a fat straw. She loves the way words can

smack her like a cold Santa Monica wave. Quite often she has to

put down a book and catch her breath.

Lately she’s fallen in love with her Kindle, a contraption

nondescript as a nun. She can’t believe it contains

such drama, intrigue, pain and loss.

Before going to sleep she has to will herself

not to kiss it. A few weeks ago, she got the Daedalus Catalog

and spent an afternoon reading reviews,

drawing big yellow circles with her highlighter, happy that

somewhere in a warehouse all these books actually exist,

they are real, not just her imagination. Perhaps it is because

her own imagination only comes alive when she’s asleep.

It brings friends from far away, it brings the Pacific Ocean

which is 1500 miles away.

During the day she treats her imagination like a dog,

tells it to sit, stay. It is not allowed to intrude into reality

and annoy her husband. Luckily she has friends.

She can go out to lunch and yak her head off and

listen to their stories about their most frightening trips

or the most beautiful kitchen they ever cooked in. 

And lucky for her she teaches writing where obedient students

give birth to stories that make her cry.

Only when she nestles her face into the briny scent

of her husband’s neck or the sugar-cookie smell

of her cat behind its ears, do words curtsey and depart.

Then she hears the beat of her own heart and theirs.

ACCEPTANCE

          I’m reading a fascinating memoir, Unorthodox,  by Deborah Feldman. I’ve always had an interest in people from other cultures - in this case she was raised as a Hassidic Jew – because I like to see what we have in common and how we differ. Today, doing laundry I thought about how women (and some men, or course) all over the world wash clothes and that it isn’t so much what we do that makes us different from each other, but what we think.  And even then, what we think is pretty similar. We want to live up to our own expectations, and we want to please those we respect (or fear), we want to be acknowledged, accepted, praised, loved. 

          In Feldman’s case she had to act according to a strict code of behavior that discouraged her from reading, something she loved. Circumstances beyond her control meant she was raised by her grandparents out of sense of duty, so she never felt truly loved or wanted.  And yet a fire burned within her which ultimately produced her wonderful book.

          I know that growing up I was always seeking my father’s approval and most of the time I thought I fell short.  He was a stickler for perfection, from the way he wanted me to make my bed, in the military style, to remembering to turn off lights when I left the room.   He had certain standards of what he considered beautiful and explained that beauty meant a symmetrical face, wide cheekbones, a long neck.  I fell short in the cheekbone department but fortunately I had big eyes and after years of orthodontic torture, straight teeth.

          As I got older my mother let me know how proud she and my father were that I had become a poet, a noble calling that I had in common with my father’s petite English mother.  And they were proud of me when they saw me working at the Sand & Sea Club, organizing and coordinating events.  I’m glad I made my parents proud.  And yet, I still remember the dozens of times my father asked incredulously why I would ever want to leave Santa Monica, where the weather was rarely too hot or too cold. Did he really not understand that weather wasn’t that important to me?

          I’ve always wanted to please the people in my life – family members, teachers, boyfriends, girlfriends, co-workers. I want to be liked. I want to feel needed. I like being part of a group, a team. I liked being in Brownies when I was little, and in the Duprees in high school. Tomorrow I get to emcee at our church talent show, and read two poems. I’m happy to feel that I’m “one of them.”

          I’m not a risk taker. I’m not a rebel.  My mother had to “kick me out” of the house when I was nineteen, saying, “Little bird, fly out of the nest!”  She was dealing with my father and his affair, she didn’t want to be wondering where I was at two in the morning.

          I didn’t voluntarily leave my first house in Topanga either. When I returned from having my wisdom teeth out my roommate’s dogs had trashed the house – my bed was a muddy mess.  In her defense she was stranded in Santa Monica and PCH was closed due to landslides, but the point is, I might have stayed there forever if I hadn’t been forced to get away from her and her druggie friends.

          Most big changes in my life came involuntarily – having to leave Ten Speed Press when I got hepatitis from Roger; divorcing Roger because he chose to go to Israel and live on a kibbutz; staying until the very last day when the Sand & Sea Club closed; leaving our home on Quartz Mountain to move to Texas because we couldn’t afford it anymore.

          And yet, with each change came new people, new experiences and new things and people to love. Oh, I suppose if I really scrutinized the choices in my life I might see that in some instances I was the one to initiate change. But not often.  This is why it’s so hard for me to be an independent writer and teacher, sending out proposals and crossing my fingers that someone will want me and my skills.

          I think of my friends, who of course are all intelligent, kind, enlightened individuals I admire – otherwise they would not be my friends. I want them to get the praise and recognition they deserve for their humor, determination and myriad talents.     I really do have the best, most interesting friends. I include in this group my husband who sees the world through such different eyes, it’s amazing we can communicate at all.

          The Unity church is big on stressing that we’re all one in this world together, bound by our humanity.  To emphasize this, we were divided into two groups and sang two different songs simultaneously. But as we did, I kept thinking that being part of a group automatically separates you from the other groups.

          So is my need to be accepted by my group really a desire to separate myself from the big, ugly, scary world of nasty mean, narrow-minded people who think differently than I do? 

          I hope not. If you put me in a room with any person on the planet I’ll sure I can find something in common with her (him?) because after all, we’re only human.

LOVE POEMS

I was sick for two weeks, then spent a lot of time working on my memoir.  This week I started teaching a new Creative Nonfiction class through Club Ed. Part of this week's assignment is to write a love letter to yourself from either an historical person, fictional character, animal or inanimate object. So here's mine, in the form of a poem:

A LOVE POEM FROM MY STAPLER

For Valentine’s Day 2012

I never liked being brown.

I wanted to be black

like the other Swingline Staplers

on the shelf at Palisades Stationers. 

How happy you made me

when you picked me up

and stroked me and said softly,

“I think this one’s cute.”

I remember you taking me out of the bag,

placing me on your mission style desk

beside the lovely Japanese cream and sugars jars,

with their geishas and swirling clouds.

It made me feel so glamorous.

Our first years together on

Pacific Coast Highway

I was happy to staple the timecards

from Marina Nautilus,  every two weeks

when you cut the pay checks.

The years in your condo

I liked looking out over the living room

to your kitchen wall where the big mirror

reflected my image back to me,

it made me feel less lonely.

Then, twenty years in the mountains.

It took a while to get used to the elevation

and the cold. I remember that first winter

when you were reluctant to turn on the heat.

In 1994 you wrote an ode to me

and I knew then that we were a perfect match.

You forgave me for growing old, you even liked

that I wasn’t perfect anymore.

And now, in Texas, I wait on the shelf

beneath your keyboard, looking at your shins,

watching as the dog plops down on the carpet,

and the cat pads past on her way to the couch.

I love you Mary Lee. I am yours

always. You are my owner and I am

your stapler, ready to bite into

whatever papers you decide

should be joined, like man and wife,

like brother and sister, bound together

always or until trash day comes

and you decide otherwise.

RED

          There’s a triangle of red on the J key of my ergonomic keyboard.

It isn’t blood, it’s nail polish but it looks like blood that has had a chance to dry - burgundy, maroon. The rare times I decide to paint my nails I can’t sit still long enough to let them dry completely.

          This red reminds me of the perfectly round drops of blood on worn wood floors of my apartment on

Pacific Coast Highway

. No matter how hard I tried squeeze my innards as I made my way, half-asleep, from bed to bathroom, the drops escaped. I remember the “th-wump” as the tampon fell out of me, completely saturated. I’d have to grab hold of the slippery string to keep it from falling into the toilet and plugging up the pipes. 

          How much blood did I lose, in my thirties, the prime of my life, my sexual peak?  I remember the day I was in Fireside Market, leaning on the shopping cart with cramps so bad I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stand upright in the checkout line. I’d bought a paperback of The World According to Garp. This was before the movie with Robin Williams which I believe is one of the rare occasions when a movie does justice to the book.

          I came home from the market, retreated to Earl’s enormous king-sized bed which nearly filled the bedroom in that little noisy apartment where cars whizzed past twenty hours a day. In the few quiet hours, between 2:00 and 5:00 AM, if I happened to get up to pee, or change a tampon, I could actually hear the ocean, I could hear waves breaking on the sand. 

          The only other time I remember quiet was that winter it rained so much the highway flooded, whole portions of bluffs simply melted onto the highway, like chocolate cake batter. Jane and I had to work, one Monday, to get the payroll done.  She parked in Santa Monica Canyon and walked to the Club and I simply walked from my apartment past the Nugent’s house, through Tee’s parking lot. We spent a couple hours adding up time cards, filling out the ADP sheets. Then we literally went out and stood right in the middle of the closed highway. The sun was out by now and maintenance crews hadn’t yet arrived to clean up the mess.     We stood in the silence of that sparkling January day, taking in the beauty of the Malibu mountains, the wide white sand, and an ocean that was slowly calming, like a baby recovering from a crying fit.  The beach was littered with all sorts of driftwood and debris and we, two young blondes, strolled down the highway feeling as if we were the first white people to ever set eyes on that magnificent bay.

PET PEEVES

          I gave my adult students the assignment to write about a pet peeve. I find that I have a whole menagerie of peeves and find it interesting that so many of them are traits or habits possessed by my husband.

          Why did I choose to marry someone who would constantly get my hackles up? The simple answer is I was lonely, horny and tired of being single, so when I met a nice-looking, employed man, my age, with a clean car, I was drawn to him like a meat bee to a picnic. 

          So you won’t think I’m totally heartless, the deal was clinched when I met the rescued cat he brought from Texas in a U-Haul. And when he got tears in his eyes talking about his daughter . . . I was a goner. 

          However, if we hadn’t gotten married after only knowing each other four months I wonder if we would have gone through with it. At first I found it so charming that we had different tastes in food, I took a picture: his whiskey, my tequila; his steak, my tofu; his mayonnaise, my hoisin sauce; his potato chips, my dried seaweed.  I was forty-one years old but as excited as a seventeen-year-old thinking how marvelous it would be to change his diet, in effect, change him.

          Of course it never happened.  Twenty-years later one cabinet holds his nuts, crackers, chips and coffee creamer while across the kitchen another cabinet is my Asian pantry.  The refrigerator crispers hold green, orange and red vegetables he never eats.  And yet, I continue to let myself be irritated by his diet and worry about his health.  When he dips a fork into the mayonnaise jar and spreads it on a saltine, then tops it with a slice of summer sausage my whole body trembles.

          Then there’s the dishwasher.  I have this “thing” about order. I love to open drawers and see everything placed like a puzzle, in individual compartments I’ve devised from various sized boxes. This is the case in my desk, my dresser, and all the drawers in the kitchen. Every item from a roll of tape to a shoelace has a place and everything sleeps peacefully until I need it.

          So, it follows that when I put dishes in the dishwasher, I place like with like, dishes with dishes, glasses with glasses, forks with forks, etc.  This not only presents a pleasing picture when I revisit it, but makes putting away more efficient.  Perhaps I over anthropomorphize – but how can I not? When I hold the cup Katherine and I purchased together on

Montana Avenue

twenty-five years ago, I remember that day. Everything I own has a story behind it. I didn’t create the story.  I’m not that crazy!

          Now, before I tell you this, I want you to be sitting down and preferably holding on to something: when I open the dishwasher after John’s cleaned up the kitchen here is what I see: chaos, the aftermath of a tornado, or what would happen if a super hero tossed everything in the air and let it land willy-nilly.  Sometimes small glasses are actually upside down.  He prefers the top rack, so he doesn’t have to bed over. This means it’s overcrowded with plates, cups, spatulas, knives, all going in different directions, some diagonal.

          He does use the basket for flatware, but flings them face down so that fork tines are inevitably wedged in the basket and have to be forcefully yanked out. Plus, I never know which is a fork or spoon because upside down they all look the same.

          I’ve made it a habit to clear the dishwasher when he’s not within ear shot, so I can apologize as I take all the items out and position them back in drawers and cupboards.  I imagine how happy they must feel being reunited.  The stack of salad plates, a nest of bowls, that lone hand painted Chinese bowl with the adorable children in their little caps!

          John is not going to change. Neither am I.  If I want something done my way it’s up to me to do it.  If he does it his way I live with the results. As he says, “the dishes got clean, didn’t they?”

          I nod in agreement as he walks back into his off-limits office and closes the door.  When I do the laundry I’ll deposit his clean socks on the stack of banker boxes that line the hall, the stack he was going to take to storage three weeks ago.  But that’s another issue. . .