The clock on the shelf

I loved to visit my grandmother's house
When I was little.
That's where my mother seemed happiest
Talking with her mother and sister,
Freed for a brief time from daily chores,
And the loneliness of isolation
With her husband gone all day at work
And only small children for company.
Laughing around the kitchen table,
As they recalled past adventures,
My mother seemed relaxed and content.
So I did too.

We usually left for home in daylight,
Old car, bad roads, pets at home
All called us home before darkness came.
But a few times, for now forgotten reasons,
Iced-over engine, someone falling sick,
Or my father's leaving to go elsewhere,
And returning to pick us up.
We stayed at my grandmother's house
Past the daylight hours.

Darkness transformed everything.
No more walking the fields to pick wildflower,
Or playing with Aunt Helen's trove of little treasures,
Or sitting at the big square dinner table,
Feeling special enthroned on the Monkey Wards catalog,
So I could reach the plate set before me.

It was dark, the rooms were quiet.
Conversation had stopped.
All was still-------except THE CLOCK.
It sat on its shelf in the kitchen,
Above the sink that had no water.
After the talking had stopped for the night,
And with no electricity to break the silence,
The clock ruled the night.
I would sit, bleary-eyed with sleep,
Waiting, and wanting to be home in my bed,
Feeling lost and alone, a pit in my stomach,
At every TICK-TOCK the clock intoned.
Odd that the clock went unheard during the day,
But at night, the sound was overwhelming, and unceasing.
I will always connect that sound with waiting,
Waiting, and filled with the dread
That what we wait for
Will never come to be.

"Over Home"

The house had a full-length porch at the entry, which I think Matt added to the shot-gun style construction some time after Ellen Hogan and her remaining children moved into the house. She bought the house with the insurance payment from her oldest son's accidental death. She wanted to get out of the city of Troy where he so tragically died, and so she moved to what must have seemed the end of the earth at that time, a little house out in the country on a dirt road neighbored by a few hardscrabble farms. No power, or phone lines, and at first no plows or road repair, as I remember being told. My mother told me her mother had paid for the house with the check she received when Timmy died, the sum of $200. That doesn't seem like enough, but back in about 1916, it may well have been. But back to the house we visited every 2 weeks or so, when my mother yearned to go "over home." Walk up a few steps, through the glass-windowed porch into the kitchen, which led into the dining room, and then into the parlor. There were rooms to the right of each of those 3 rooms. The kitchen had 2 adjoining rooms, a narrow pantry just to the right of the sink (no running water though). I remember going into the pantry with Helen to get the wooden potato masher. The second doorway off the kitchen led to Nanny's bedroom. I think I only entered that room one time in the 12 years of "over home," and that was to say good-bye to her. She'd taken sick, we made an unscheduled visit, Ma stayed while Daddy drove us home, and that was the first time I ever saw my grandmother in her bedroom, and the last time I ever saw her alive. To the right of the dining room was Matt's bedroom, and I'm pretty sure I never entered that room. All the bedrooms were probably just about big enough for the bed, and maybe a dresser. Back in those days, with no central heat and no electricity, a bed room meant exactly that. The dining room held most of Matt's stuff---his radios and equipment and stacks of Popular Mechanics' magazines. Though Matt dropped out of school in about the 6th grade, after punching the nun who pulled his ear to get him back in line and off the haywagon, he was genius-like in teaching himself about the new invention of radios. Even without electricity, he built and powered them with batteries using all the skills he learned from magazines. Later in life he found additional work as a radio and then TV repairman. The last room in the series was the parlor, always cold, unused and unheated, but when the temperature allowed, we kids played on the antique pipe organ, imagining we were making music. However, off that room was Helen's bedroom, and that was the high spot of many of our visits. Helen was delighted to have visitors, especially kids. Looking back, I suppose she may have been lonely but she was always cheerful. Sometimes she would invite us to go "furging" among the many treasures she had stowed in her tiny bedroom. There were religious items, buttons, beads, jewels, pictures, little boxes and containers, and once she had hand-sewn a family of little cloth dolls, and stuffed them with cotton. Helen joined us in playing with those little items, always carefully returning them to their places afterwards for the next time. As is true in life, sadly, we never know at what point there will be no "next time." I have a feeling that we kids gave up on this adventure while Helen would gladly have continued; it is a fact that childhood lasts only a brief time.

Gobble

There is a 22 lb. turkey in the freezer in my house. I hope somebody will come for dinner at some time in the relatively near future. It will require about a 10 day notice; it's solid as a brick.

Punctuate this.

I can't explain why I hate it when writers use periods to emphasize that they are being dramatic and their words are measured. They. Seem. Like. Idiots.

Long ago in February

One February, I went on vacation to New Orleans. I was teaching then in Cambridge, and two other teachers and I decided to take in the city. Another teacher had wanted to go, but her boyfriend had just surprised her with an engagement ring, so she felt she shouldn't go. (We recently reminesced about our old teaching days and she said she'd always regretted not going with us. She married and divorced that ring-bestowing trip spoiler.) We'd wanted to go for Mardi Gras, but couldn't get reservations until after that event, so we arrived in The Big Easy in time to see all the celebratory trash, and a few celebrants themselves, strewn in the streets and alley-ways. We stayed in the French Quarter at the Hotel Monteleone, and we had the time of our lives. Pat was an exchange teacher from England and she was bound and determined to experience every attraction that New Orleans had to offer. She was super-sociable and so had a network of friend contacts with people and places in New Orleans. So we had the "Letter of Introduction" to the trendy Playboy Club in town. Three nice young men met us and escorted us as their guests to the club, where they knew everybody, and to a Revue, a play where one of the guys was a cast member, though he wasn't then performing. The title was "Nobody Likes A Smartass," and it was a riot. That cast member, Dave, and I became quite good friends for the 5 days or so we were in town. But it all had to end! I think we 3 girls ate in every famous restaurant in the area, at Pat's insistence, no doubt. My favorite was The Court of the Four (or was it 3) Sisters. Pat had ordered frogs' legs, and gamely did her best to enjoy her dinner. I had ordered some kind of game hen, and it came flaming, and with live musical accompaniment--a gong, and maybe trumpets, I don't remember but it was exciting. One morning we had breakfast at the famed Brennan's, which Pat and Liz really enjoyed, but I couldn't find anything to order that didn't have eggs in it. We spent an evening at Al Hirt's Nightclub; he wasn't performing that night: I think we saw the young Checkmates, and they were very entertaining. We walked into Preservation Hall, where mostly older black musicians performed live for donations, and one afternoon we witnessed an elaborate Jazz Funeral procession right down the middle of the street Then, I don't know about now, you could drink on the streets, and at night everybody seemed to do so, carrying their drink glasses with them. You had to be careful where you stepped to avoid stepping on discarded glass. I was 24, maybe 25, at the time, the same age as the other 2 girls, but I was proofed at the clubs, even though the drinking age was 18. I thought I looked at least as sophisticated as they did, so felt a little embarrassed at having to prove my age. (Those good old days.) Pat was from England and loved to walk---we didn't mind, but within limits! One morning we took a streetcar to the outskirts of town. (We saw The Streetcar Named Desire, but it was on display, not in service.) I followed whatever was scheduled for the day, willing to let somebody else make the plans. The only other riders were black women, who it turned out were traveling to their housecleaning jobs in the wealthier section of the city. We got off, near Lake Ponchartrain, and Liz and I proceeded to follow Pat on her walk. We walked, and walked , and walked, miles. Finally I asked what was our goal, and it turned out she wanted to circle the lake. I think that would have taken several days, so we persuaded, well, forced her to turn back, and we eventually got back to civilization. We cruised the Mississippi on the "Mark Twain" where the Cajun operator told us we were in danger from crocodiles and rocks in the river, but we thought he was just trying to make a rather boring trip interesting. Oddly enough, on that boat, Liz encountered her mother's neighbors, who had no idea Liz would be there. Liz lived in Cambridge at the time, and her mother lived in Greenwich. They were surprised to run into each other, joking that it was fortunate they hadn't been seen with a different partner. We went to several plantations, old churches, and to the capital, Baton Rouge, which seemed oddly deserted. The people in New Orleans were invariably friendly, and offered us all kinds of unsolicited advice. One woman stopped us to tell us that if we wanted genuine food,to eat in the cafeteria of whatever office building we were near at the time, so we did. The specialty of the day was red beans and rice cooked in New Orleans style. I don't remember anything about how the others reacted, but I regretted that meal, for sure. I remember when we flew into NYC , it was dark, and we were so exhausted and befogged, that we set our watches the wrong way. When we landed, we thought it was almost morning so decided to drive home instead of staying over. Pat had driven us in her car, which was a borrowed-in-this-country really really old clunker. The roads were snowy, slippery,and eerily deserted, but we finally made it home, back to Cambridge. There we discovered we had made the time mistake, and had driven through the dead of the snowy, slippery night. Back then, though, we didn't worry or care about that type of thing---as I said , "The good old days."

Pimp your Homecoming

Why do so many of the military on leave from their overseas assignments orchestrate a reunion at their children's schools, with audience present and cameras on? The reunions are always of the "Surprise!" type. Sure, the reunions are emotional, especially if the newly arrived father/mother/sister/brother/beloved aunt/revered uncle has been gone a long time. But isn't that kind of a double whammy for the kids, to be reunited in such a public way. Wouldn't it be easier for the children to have the meeting in the privacy of their own homes? Not every memorable event has to be recorded, and certainly not before an audience. (I just saw such a televised reunion, where the announcer said it was an emotional event: a woman was meeting, of course by surprise, her little sister, of course in the child's school, and the cameras were rolling, of course. The little sister came forward when the older sister motioned for her to do so. The child looked confused, seeming not to recognize her elder sister, after a 2 1/2 year absence. I would say the only "emotion" displayed was awkwardness.)

Mitt, Noooo!

"I'm not concerned about the very poor." You just can't SAY that! And it doesn't help to try to balance it off by saying you're "not concerned about the very rich either." Don't you realize you just fed red meat to your opponents. Maybe you thought you were in the clear because you seem to have weathered the storm you created by saying you liked to fire people. Diplomatically speaking, you could have said that you think people who are not doing their jobs do not deserve your business. You didn't have to reveal that you enjoyed firing them; you could have stuck with saying it was out of necessity as they weren't able to do the job. You didn't have to say that you were not concerned about the very poor. The segment of our society that comprises the very poor is a negative, costly, shamefully frustrating national problem of epic proportions, needing much time and energy to try to eradicate the causes that create a caste system of abject poverty, where individuals must rely on social programs and charity for their existence. You could have stated the truth that the very poor do have resources that the working poor do not have, and that you wanted at this time to prioritize assistance for the "working poor." But then you would have to venture into the territory where the working poor are worse off than the "very poor," and since many of the working poor would name lack of health care as a primary concern, you would be venturing onto the subject of the dread Obamacare. Of course, the very poor are not voters, and it's open season right now on people who receive social services, or "welfare," except of course for notable exceptions like Social Security, tax writeoffs, etc. So now you will have multiple media opportunities to explain what you really meant. Anyone can misspeak, though preference should dictate that politicians, representing others, should be able to choose their words more carefully. So your statement about not being concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net, is either a thoughtless foolish blunder, or else, if you're as smart as is rumored, your statement is a deliberate pandering to those in our country who are fed up with what they perceive as parasitic welfare recipients. Which is it, Mitt? Please clarify.