Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Not one message lost that day (flash fiction)
Morning drags herself in for night crew waiting those last hours, minutes, before shift changes and shut eye comes before the ache subsides. Radio room below deck of an aircraft carrier smells just like you’d think in an airlocked compartment where barely ten guys could stand and turn, elbowing on all sides. It was close quarters. Air piped in mixed with that machine smell of electrical boxes stacked floor to ceiling all with nobs and gauges that pulled thinly threaded sound into the ears via doughnut earphones. Static at least let you know the box was still hot. There were two of us fresh on duty that morning and we could hear the bombs in the distance even in that underwater tomb. Too far away to hear the warning signals. The next sound shook us, I looked up through the top and saw planes, meatballs on the wings. I shouted down, “Japanese!” Jumped to, adjusted the nobs, both of us trying to determine what was going on. Radio buzzing up with questions. Cautiously we said it looked like an attack—hadn’t heard from headquarters so we say nothing much. We knew the truth in each other’s eyes. Pearl Harbor was under attack. The Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor. Then we received and relayed orders to dispatch planes. We knew lives were flaming out with every sound and tremor. Pen and paper at my elbow. Suddenly my crew, my friends, my own life became most precious. No thoughts, only words. As pilots headed in they could see the mass destruction forming clouds with sparks flying, like crazed palm trees capping out with swirls of smoke and ships exploding in the seas. The pilots knew where they were headed and radioed in the letters. Voices like ghosts trapped in the wind screaming over screaming engines, each word fired into my memory, shot out of my pen, my lips trembling with their fear and bravery. “Tell Mom I’m thinking of her and I’m sorry I won’t be home at Christmas after all.” “Sally Fulbright, 157 4th Street, Tupelo: Honey, I love you—every hour was hoping to see you again. Okay?” “This one’s for you, Jimmy! Take care of Mommy for me.” “Mail the letter under my pillow. Got it?” “Mom, I remember the train engine you got me for Christmas—I was only 7 but I knew it cost you more than money.”
Saturday, October 4, 2014
between death and resurrection october 4
100414 Emotional bombs keep exploding at the sight of things I’d forgotten. Why do I weep? Does it matter? I weep. Dad, dead now only five months. Like yesterday and forever alive but I can’t reach him or talk to him or roll my eyes when he hangs up the phone without saying goodbye. Except for that one time just before we had to move him to hospice, I got home from a visit, they live three hours away, and I called him to say I’d arrived home safely and we chatted about how wonderful the weekend was (as we always do) and then in childlike fun we exchanged all kinds of goodbyes—his voice, my dad’s of all my life so familiar so right so him, but in light-heartedness so rare for a man so serious—we played with, exchanged, all the different words for bubye...see you later alligator, tata for now, ciao, ciao bella, so long, see you next time, it’s been real, sianara, toodloo, adios amigos, bubye...and it went on for awhile and I was giggling and he chuckling, so great to hear joy in his voice, and mama was in the background saying, “Jerry! Hang up the phone now!” Dad and I were gloriously stuck in some delightful spin of timeless, spaceless connection that of course now is weighted down with all the grief of time violently chiseling away at such precious moments of being and connection, forever here separated by a violent, traumatic death that quickly followed that call. It keeps roaring back at me like the relentless ocean waves storming onto the beaches of my memory and I can’t swim there any more.
Now Mama stands in her new, smaller, more cost efficient “garden apartment” sorting through for the third time in as many months, what she treasures. This last time she sorted without me and so I picked up boxes labeled “for Kim or for garage sale” (my friend and I and others are having a garage sale next month). This morning, back at my house, I opened one box she’d filled and in it, carefully wrapped, are the blue delft plates she so dearly loves from Holland they bought when they traveled there, permanent fixtures in every kitchen since, emblems of my youth and the certainty of a loving, mostly stable family and there they are in a box labeled “for Kim or for garage sale” and the whole world again crashes down on my heart and soul and it’s like the earth opens and swallows me into the shards of no longer being. And I hear echoing mama’s voice last weekend as she stands in her new, smaller, more efficient “garden apartment” say, “I just don’t really care about any of it any more. I’m over it. I look at things I’ve loved for so long and I’m just over it. Is that horrible?” I don’t remember what I answered (didn’t know she meant my childhood, our whole lives together, surely she didn’t mean that exactly) probably responded that it might just be the numbness of so much grief and loss happening all at once that this is kind of a defense mechanism. I’ll keep everything for you, Mama. Maybe one day soon you’ll want it back.
Then again maybe not.
As keeper of the treasure I feel the weight of all who have gone before more profoundly than ever. I have furniture and wall hangings and treasures with rich, variegated stories, swords and knives from all over the world, figurines and plates and, plateware, a window from Mama Ruth’s house, Chinese praying Jesus from Mema’s house, quilts from grands I never met, a village carved from a single piece of mahogany three feet long, and I can’t let go of any of it because I want my Dad back.
Now Mama stands in her new, smaller, more cost efficient “garden apartment” sorting through for the third time in as many months, what she treasures. This last time she sorted without me and so I picked up boxes labeled “for Kim or for garage sale” (my friend and I and others are having a garage sale next month). This morning, back at my house, I opened one box she’d filled and in it, carefully wrapped, are the blue delft plates she so dearly loves from Holland they bought when they traveled there, permanent fixtures in every kitchen since, emblems of my youth and the certainty of a loving, mostly stable family and there they are in a box labeled “for Kim or for garage sale” and the whole world again crashes down on my heart and soul and it’s like the earth opens and swallows me into the shards of no longer being. And I hear echoing mama’s voice last weekend as she stands in her new, smaller, more efficient “garden apartment” say, “I just don’t really care about any of it any more. I’m over it. I look at things I’ve loved for so long and I’m just over it. Is that horrible?” I don’t remember what I answered (didn’t know she meant my childhood, our whole lives together, surely she didn’t mean that exactly) probably responded that it might just be the numbness of so much grief and loss happening all at once that this is kind of a defense mechanism. I’ll keep everything for you, Mama. Maybe one day soon you’ll want it back.
Then again maybe not.
As keeper of the treasure I feel the weight of all who have gone before more profoundly than ever. I have furniture and wall hangings and treasures with rich, variegated stories, swords and knives from all over the world, figurines and plates and, plateware, a window from Mama Ruth’s house, Chinese praying Jesus from Mema’s house, quilts from grands I never met, a village carved from a single piece of mahogany three feet long, and I can’t let go of any of it because I want my Dad back.
The problem is clothes
100414 The problem is clothes.
What is more glorious than the sunrise? Or the sunset? Especially in south Florida? My home has a delightful patio in middle of the back, screened in, with privacy created by two oak trees, a couple of pines, and some other bizarre palms and ficus and hibiscus and oleander and bamboo and other things I don’t know the names of. The neighborhood is squeezed together somewhat so that blocks the view—I have a very dappled southerly view of branches near and far and these green beasts I’ve named.
I would have to leave the house in search of the sunrise and sunset. To leave the house I would have to dress. The problem is putting on clothes.
Just this morning I discovered, after living here about five years, that the best view of the skies at sunrise is out my bathroom window—the one over the toilet. This is most unfortunate for any kind of meditative gazing. To go out into the yard would involve shoes because between my patio and that side yard is an expanse of wet mulched ground and then the grasses on that side yard by Saturday are long a mucky with torrential rains of the night before and dew. And I’d have to drag a chair out from the inside.
Sounds like a lot of excuses. I did stand facing the toilet this morning and looked out the window at the view between my neighbors’ house that faces an angle away from my visage, and their tree line which is quite far from their door. They have a lovely view out their back over the corner of the rolling golf course. No one around here really sees the sunrise, just the red lines the clouds make when there are clouds, against that icy blue colored sky so early in the morning. It’s not long before the reds fade to pinks like cotton candy and then change to the gauzy white as the clouds seem to be left behind from the storms that tore through here last night. They, these leftover clouds, move imperceptibly, soaking up the warming sun.
The report back from the HOA is that I have a great deal of growth (told through chuckles over the phone) growing on my roof. I noticed that for the first time driving home yesterday. I do have. On the roof that’s right over my kitchen where the bay window protrudes. The mossy green on the roof is probably about a yard by a yard and quite healthy with the bright green of my distant homeland at least four generations back. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw it as I drove by—just a quick glimpse. I like having a garden on the roof so bright green. Very fetching.
How the heck am I supposed to get that off of there? Spend a fortune for someone else to do it. The someone elses came to do it apparently but couldn’t because I have six or seven broken tiles and that must be fixed before the germicide poisoning whatever it’s called will happen on the roof as part of what the company is doing in preparing the houses to paint.
But I digress.
The point is the problem of clothing. I sit in the mornings that I crave and enjoy, nay BASQUE in, in a large green Irish teeshirt that I cannot feel on my skin, it’s why I wear it, and my tiger print pajama bottoms that likewise comfort without really touching my skin. I don’t even go to the mailbox in these clothes. I certainly can’t drive out to the beach for the sunrise—plus it takes me away from the patio. Nor can I drive out to the bridge—which I haven’t fully figured out how I would do that anyway—to watch the sunset. I’d have to walk the bridge to see the sunset and I am just not into that at the moment. Perhaps I will one day.
I would also love to go to the pelican or osceola café for breakfast but again, the problem is getting dressed and missing out on this holy of holies—time and space in such comfort and quiet and absolutely private surroundings—except for the mucky squirrels and the occasional rabbit and sometimes the mourning doves...the occasional armadillo and family that migrate through are perhaps my favorite. Don’t know why. Love their rolly polly look and their quiet foraging. They are a vision of the ancient times when dinosaurs ruled the world and yet somehow futuristic silver armored scales so neatly laid from head to tail in that slight rounding of the back. Their claws are beautiful, their snouts perfect, waddling along wearing their armored clothing they were born with.
They don’t have to dress. And neither do I. Except I also need to go to the grocery store and really should go now or 20 minutes ago when the store opened to avoid the Saturday crowds but I don’t want to pull on the undergarments that squeeze the most sensitive parts of me or have to pull on clothes that remind me of how much weight I need to lose as I head for the market where I will purchase more of what will keep the weight on me. The hair and face would need some attention as well. I’m not lazy, just drained of all humanity’s noise and views and eyeballs and interchanges. I just want to sit here and read and write and daydream into the luscious healing shades of viscous greens and unselfconscious mammals and birds and color morphing sky patches and only occasional voices of walkers who cannot see me. I love not being seen! And I do not want to go out there where I will be seen and heard and have to see back and hear.
So it’s the clothes. And the face. The eyes and ears. Overexposure sends me to retreat in my open and glorious cave... But I miss out on the sunrise and sunset and I’m hungry. But I just can’t miss out on the even more precious quiet hours of sunrise and lingering in the words from books and emails and online readings and my own words clicking across the pale icy lighted screen.... I only wish of the two—sunrise or sunset—I could at least fully absorb one from my home.
What is more glorious than the sunrise? Or the sunset? Especially in south Florida? My home has a delightful patio in middle of the back, screened in, with privacy created by two oak trees, a couple of pines, and some other bizarre palms and ficus and hibiscus and oleander and bamboo and other things I don’t know the names of. The neighborhood is squeezed together somewhat so that blocks the view—I have a very dappled southerly view of branches near and far and these green beasts I’ve named.
I would have to leave the house in search of the sunrise and sunset. To leave the house I would have to dress. The problem is putting on clothes.
Just this morning I discovered, after living here about five years, that the best view of the skies at sunrise is out my bathroom window—the one over the toilet. This is most unfortunate for any kind of meditative gazing. To go out into the yard would involve shoes because between my patio and that side yard is an expanse of wet mulched ground and then the grasses on that side yard by Saturday are long a mucky with torrential rains of the night before and dew. And I’d have to drag a chair out from the inside.
Sounds like a lot of excuses. I did stand facing the toilet this morning and looked out the window at the view between my neighbors’ house that faces an angle away from my visage, and their tree line which is quite far from their door. They have a lovely view out their back over the corner of the rolling golf course. No one around here really sees the sunrise, just the red lines the clouds make when there are clouds, against that icy blue colored sky so early in the morning. It’s not long before the reds fade to pinks like cotton candy and then change to the gauzy white as the clouds seem to be left behind from the storms that tore through here last night. They, these leftover clouds, move imperceptibly, soaking up the warming sun.
The report back from the HOA is that I have a great deal of growth (told through chuckles over the phone) growing on my roof. I noticed that for the first time driving home yesterday. I do have. On the roof that’s right over my kitchen where the bay window protrudes. The mossy green on the roof is probably about a yard by a yard and quite healthy with the bright green of my distant homeland at least four generations back. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw it as I drove by—just a quick glimpse. I like having a garden on the roof so bright green. Very fetching.
How the heck am I supposed to get that off of there? Spend a fortune for someone else to do it. The someone elses came to do it apparently but couldn’t because I have six or seven broken tiles and that must be fixed before the germicide poisoning whatever it’s called will happen on the roof as part of what the company is doing in preparing the houses to paint.
But I digress.
The point is the problem of clothing. I sit in the mornings that I crave and enjoy, nay BASQUE in, in a large green Irish teeshirt that I cannot feel on my skin, it’s why I wear it, and my tiger print pajama bottoms that likewise comfort without really touching my skin. I don’t even go to the mailbox in these clothes. I certainly can’t drive out to the beach for the sunrise—plus it takes me away from the patio. Nor can I drive out to the bridge—which I haven’t fully figured out how I would do that anyway—to watch the sunset. I’d have to walk the bridge to see the sunset and I am just not into that at the moment. Perhaps I will one day.
I would also love to go to the pelican or osceola café for breakfast but again, the problem is getting dressed and missing out on this holy of holies—time and space in such comfort and quiet and absolutely private surroundings—except for the mucky squirrels and the occasional rabbit and sometimes the mourning doves...the occasional armadillo and family that migrate through are perhaps my favorite. Don’t know why. Love their rolly polly look and their quiet foraging. They are a vision of the ancient times when dinosaurs ruled the world and yet somehow futuristic silver armored scales so neatly laid from head to tail in that slight rounding of the back. Their claws are beautiful, their snouts perfect, waddling along wearing their armored clothing they were born with.
They don’t have to dress. And neither do I. Except I also need to go to the grocery store and really should go now or 20 minutes ago when the store opened to avoid the Saturday crowds but I don’t want to pull on the undergarments that squeeze the most sensitive parts of me or have to pull on clothes that remind me of how much weight I need to lose as I head for the market where I will purchase more of what will keep the weight on me. The hair and face would need some attention as well. I’m not lazy, just drained of all humanity’s noise and views and eyeballs and interchanges. I just want to sit here and read and write and daydream into the luscious healing shades of viscous greens and unselfconscious mammals and birds and color morphing sky patches and only occasional voices of walkers who cannot see me. I love not being seen! And I do not want to go out there where I will be seen and heard and have to see back and hear.
So it’s the clothes. And the face. The eyes and ears. Overexposure sends me to retreat in my open and glorious cave... But I miss out on the sunrise and sunset and I’m hungry. But I just can’t miss out on the even more precious quiet hours of sunrise and lingering in the words from books and emails and online readings and my own words clicking across the pale icy lighted screen.... I only wish of the two—sunrise or sunset—I could at least fully absorb one from my home.
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