This is the tale of a coat. A coat I picked out, some warm, wooly, little camel coat. A camel from India, fleecy and curled. It had a zipper. It carried a hood. A coat for a girl who knew what she wanted. A coat, a light cream coat with leaves worked into the warp. It was a coat so dreamed and so appeared in the shopping trip to Sears. A coat to prepare a young girl, a brown-eyed laughing girl, a girl the color of squirrel, a darting, laughing girl, for the slowing down of winter.

 

It was a coat, such a coat. A cocoon, a fuzzy-wuzzy that I could wear on the bus, on the playground, sitting by Mama in church. It was a zipped-up, chicken soup of a coat and it warmed my outside, filled my inside with pleasure. It was a daisy of a coat. You must know the butterfly inside flies high in spring. She pulls colors from sky, from cottonwoods, from clover, from bubblegum, from her daddy's pocket and hangs them on her coat. Carries her love wrapped 'round her, some caramel toffee girl in a shiny new wrapper.

A first grade girl, I, a first of a first-timer. First big bus. First school. Five-and-a-half, no kindergarten rehearsal, just plop on the yellow jitney and off to show off. I could already read, count clothespins, could dream, could love, could choose a magic coat, could try to fly, could do anything, anything. But I could not, I found one day, take off my coat. It was time, bell well rung, silence in that tile tidy place outside the classroom. It was a hurry and hang up my coat time, find my desk, begin life, begin counting and marching, begin to get a grade for breathing. But my mitt of a hand could not work the magic of that zipper. The coat stayed on, hugged me was if I were the mother, it a baby koala.

The sky frowned, the tile grew cold. Sister Mary Theophane looked down and down and down. Coat plus girl equals trouble. Coat plus girl equals, "Watch this one." Coat plus girl equals tears, spilt milk, a terse, "Take it off, now!"

And the coat held its breath, held mine. I looked at the floor, imagined snow, thought of making an angel, thought someone will remember how clever, how soft, how jubilant, how right. But this girl was sent down the hall to find a taller girl, her sister. Kathleen would fix the coat, explain it was time for it to nap and me to learn not to care what happens when you go off to school thinking it must be like heaven and realizing it's not true, it's not true, it's not true. Not true for the curly bear girl, no angel at the gate. No play. No time. No forgiveness. The little teeth of that zipper holding on for dear life.

Liz Hannon, writes in Santa Rosa, CA. She can be reached at Lizardo_99@yahoo.com

 

And home

Sings me of sweet things

My life there has its own wings

To fly over the mountains

Though I'm standing still.

Karla Bonoff

 

I had left to return home many times. The destination was the most elusive place, far surpassing the concept of miles per hour.  So, it had become more of a journey unto the heart than the highway.  That is what happens when one approaches the mid-life, the journey ultimately becomes secondary to the final destination.  I was in my own skin again. It had taken years. Careers. Marriages. Childbirth. The passing of lives. The traveling of miles. I was tired. As I blinked into the pavement of the night sky, I knew. It was a sudden epiphany. An awakening. A turning point. 

I had been chatting with a friend earlier that day.a non-descript 'any day,' an o.k. kinda day. As I glanced up and saw them I heard myself say, "Oh.there is my husband with his girlfriend." and as they drove by we both realized the impact of those simple words and their bearing on an extremely complex situation. That was the moment that Yeats would understand when things fall apart, a key moment as they are in the widening gyre of my life. The falconer. I must remember to thank my husband's mistress for becoming the understudy of my life, rescuing and freeing me from that suffocating time that was my second marriage. That collapsing lung of a marriage. Thank you. Here's an aspirator. Good Luck.

I left the next morning with my son who was working relentlessly on his own decay and growth that held the form of a lower tooth; an endlessly shedding six-year-old Shepard, and Rand McNally. We drove for thirteen weeks.

I thought as we began,  

"Here we go boy, riding on the coat tails of your mom's road trip. But you are only five, and until you get your license, you are riding shotgun with me. Put on your seatbelt, have a juice box, and soak up America as it flies past your window. You are now a part of the most beautiful thing you will ever witness-riding over the belly of this country with me. Open your window, and fill your lungs with the scent of the moment we are passing through. These moments will build upon themselves til one day you wake up and find yourself in a raging vortex whose winds will ride you if they are allowed. I have felt these winds, but being me blew them to the north to welcome the sweet southern winds of my soul, the 'core' to prevail and blow within. The winds are tricky, but if you conquer the craft of breathing you will forever ride the warm breeze of the south. And that is what is taking us back. Ironically North. Far North back to Maine, letting her strong and honest arms welcome and hold us. It is a place that talks back to you."  

I allowed life to carry me back this time. And allowed the gut feeling to finally have it way with me. I can be a passenger. I trusted life and myself as I had not trusted them in many years, and I let it blow us back with gale winds that even Dorothy would envy.

Heart, brain, and courage were sitting beside me all the time. He was dozing-sucking on his tooth. The home piece was my job.

And a nod to the ingenuity of Alexander Graham Bell for engineering the call that gave us a direction. An old friend with an offer.

Cooking. Remote. Fishing Camp.

Good Pay. Honest work. Good people.

Long hours. Black Flies.

Makers Mark. Bug Dope.

Sunrise. 

"What other options do you have?  Good. Call when you get to the dirt road. We'll know if you don't show up in a few hours, something happened."

"What should I bring?"

Warm layers. Books. Notebooks. Sheets. Soap. Batteries. Sense of humor. Good scotch. A Wobbler, Joe Smelt, a Super-Duper. Leaded line. Net. Faith. Two toothbrushes. It may be a long season. No pharmacies. Bring what you need now. It's three hours out.

I realized it was time to extinguish once and for all the black smoldering timbers. New beams. God grant me oak this time, I am so sick of soft pine. I glanced back and caught the flicker of a dream passing over his face, and in my mind's eye my life flashed before me.

 

Kathleen Lynch lives in Farmington, Maine. She says she wrote the second paragraph in her car, driving home one morning. That is where this small piece began.  Any comments or input is appreciated: klbmaine@netscape.net

 

 

When my father was dying I touched his face.  With the back of my fingers I stroked his cheek and he smiled. He leaned into the touch with the innocence of a young kitten. I stood behind his wheelchair, rubbing his shoulders, conscious of the massive barrier I was crashing through. Thinking: I have never touched him.  When I was ten, I found a picture of myself as a baby, sitting in his lap. I snuck the black and white photograph into my room, and kept it in my second drawer under my shirts. I don't know if I hoped to hide the truth, or if I wanted to hold on to this surprising possibility.

When I thought that my older sister might die, I tried to picture a final bedside scene, tried to imagine what kind of strength that would take, what kind of comfort I could offer. In my dreams I did not touch her. We have never touched. When I seek out my childhood memories, she is always there, the thing that gives definition to me, yet I can't find the kind of knowing that comes with physical ease.

But Anne. A thousand times we walked along a street holding hands or arm in arm.  A thousand times we leaned into each other, rested a head on a lap or spoke in soft tones, foreheads pressed together. We spent hours laughing giddily on her front porch glider.  I know Anne. I know the structure of her bones, the texture of her skin and just what to expect of her teeth when she smiles. They look like elephant toes. Small and curved like that.  I know how she smells. No matter where she is or what she has been doing, she always smells the same. 

The night she came home from Nepal, she made me stay with her. Her plane landed at midnight and we all took the long drive along the river to greet her-her parents, her sister, her brothers, her brother's wife and son, the two-year-old nephew she had never met. We cheered when we saw her approaching, and she forgave us for embarrassing her with the begrudging acceptance of one who comes from a large and boisterous family. Then we went back to her parents' home. A home she had never seen, because they sold the house with the glider while she was gone. 

We ate shrimp cocktail until the sky held an edge of morning light, and then she would not let me leave. Don't go. She made me lie next to her on a narrow single bed in a room that had never been ours. She smelled like traveling and foreign countries but still Anne inside of all that. I couldn't sleep. I would have tossed and turned, but there was not enough room. So I lay still, my body feeling the jumble of all of that familiarity coming face to face with our new and unknown futures.

 

Sindee Ernst, Owings Mills, MD, lives with her husband and two daughters. She gives private computer lessons, drives her kids around, and writes when she can find a free moment. She often has a fiddle or banjo in hand, and composes fiddle tunes as well as writing poetry and memoir. She is a member of the Feckless WOE writing group.

 

I brought the bottle of Bombay Sapphire up to the checkout stand. Benny was working there. I know Benny-a little guy, maybe older than me, traces of a New York accent although he'll tell you he's from L.A. Benny works retail. He would fit in anywhere behind a cash register, always looking a little sad, always looking as if he's going to be disappointed.

He scanned the bottle, and his eyebrows went up when he saw the price. "Wow," he said. "Twenty bucks for a little bottle of gin!"

I told him an old friend who drinks it might be visiting later this year, and I wanted to try it, see what it was like.

"Must be a chick," Benny said.

"Well, yes, it's a woman" I said, "but how did you know that?"

"Only a chick would pay twenty bucks for gin. And in a frou-frou blue bottle, too. Gin's gin. Pay eight bucks tops. It's all the same."

"Well, let me try it," I said. "I'll let you know what I think."

"Yeah, yeah," Benny said. "But gin's all the same. And do you know what they got now? Flavored vodka! Can you think of anything dumber? The whole point of vodka is no taste, no smell. Drink it for breakfast if you want, no one knows. Now they put flavoring in it, just like a soda. Damn chicks ruin everything."

I gave Benny the money, and he gave me change back. "Look at that-just for a damn bottle of gin. Jeez!"

I picked up the bottle, and told him I'd let him know how I liked it.

"Let me give you a tip, man to man," he said. "You finish it up, then fill that frou-frou blue bottle back up with the house gin. She'll never know the difference."

"Well, I don't know, Benny. I think she might."

Larry Maxcy lives in the desert, in a place where frou-frou liquor is available. He has written numerous articles on gardening, but prefers to write about gin.

 

 

You begin with the four basic ingredients: quiet, strawberries, moonlight and imagination.  That's all you need.  For what?  For coming to life. 

Out of the quiet comes clothing and shelter. After all, when your world turns still, eventually you realize things.  That you are cold, for instance. Or you are sad. Or you are lonely. 

And strawberries-what could be more scrumptious and eye-catching, more sensual? I mean the big strawberries, the dark ones, almost maroon in color.

Moonlight and imagination go hand in hand. Moonlight is indirect light, a subtle radiance, and soothes the spirit.  It also encourages imagination. In the presence of moonlight, you can use your imagination with more finesse and deftness.

Tonight, sometime past midnight, I have all four. Sitting in the center of an open field, I am surrounded by quiet while eating strawberries from a glass bowl and gazing at the full moon overhead. My imagination takes flight on a trip to the past. To another field, in the midday heat of July, a field of ripe strawberries. We pulled them like corks from the ankle-high vines. We ate half, put the rest into a tin bucket.

I was with my parents. "Too much work for strawberries," my father grumbled while picking some. "I want them served to me.  With sugar and sour cream."  He wore a long-sleeved shirt, his face dripping sweat. Red face to match the strawberries.

My mother was bent over a clump of vines. "When else can you harvest the foods you eat?," she asked. She flapped a hand at my father. "We live in the city. We have a plot small as my pinky." She had on a sleeveless shirt and shorts. The shiny jet black of her hair danced around her head.

My nine-year-old body crumpled into a heap-right on top of those strawberries to be picked. I laughed so hard that I could have peed in my underpants under my magenta shorts. Like I'd never really seen my parents before. Like I suddenly saw opposites. I had polar opposites for parents and if I wasn't careful, they could pull me apart. But instead, I could laugh, which is just what I did.

Life sprang forth that day, something revealing itself for the first time, like God or perspective or rock-bottom truth. All I know is that I felt wiser, bigger. As if I'd grown one hundred inches and could touch the sky. 

Tonight, looking through the dead of darkness, I wonder whether I can again touch the sky. Even the moon.  I stretch out one arm. Then I have an idea. I grab a strawberry from the glass bowl and throw it as hard as I can, straight up at the silvery orb. And it must have hit, because mid-flight the strawberry stops, changes directions, falls back down.

I think, Ah. I have touched the moon. That is life more than anything. All from the mingling of quiet and strawberries and moonlight and imagination. Where my parents can exist again, beside me as always, as if they never left.  I can taste the sweetness.

Mella Mincberg is a writer who lives in Sonoma County, California with her family. She is working on a novel. Strawberries are her favorite fruit.

 

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