poetry

DIY Faucets, Switches and Pizza

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 2 Comments

One of my kids had an IN-PERSON appointment today. I’m sitting in the waiting room looking at their artwork and wondering who thought it was a good idea to hang a very large picture of an angry man looking straight out of the canvas. I’m feeling very judged in my jeans with the hole in the knee! But too bad. I love these jeans and also, I’m very happy that we arrived early and freshly showered. One has to celebrate the little things.

As is the nature of home-ownership, as soon as I got the dishwasher humming along, the faucet in the kitchen decided that 10 years was long enough. I disagreed and disassembled it to see if there was something clogged. It’s one of those spray faucets, which look cool but aren’t super easy to disassemble. The internet suggested several options. I have now tried all of them, including soaking the spray head in vinegar overnight. None of my efforts have improved the situation. In fact, the faucet continues its campaign to retire and I am slowly coming to the realization that perseverance may not get me anything but very, very slow running water.

I’ve replaced faucets before so I suspect that it won’t be more than the normal amount of annoying. The worst part of faucet work is how tired my arms get as I lay under the sink, applying putty and tightening bolts … and occasionally feeling the water drip in my hair or on my forehead, running down into my ear. 

Last weekend, a light switch mysteriously stopped working. The light is now permanently on. Since it is not a bedroom light, it’s slightly less important than a non-working faucet but it’s definitely on the honey-do list. I’ve replaced light switches before (yay, two things I know how to do!) but since electricity scares the heck out of me, I have to turn off all the electricity to the house in order to do the work. That’s annoying and requires coordination with family members who don’t like it when I spontaneously (to them) shut off the electricity. Yes, I know there’s a better way but since I haven’t killed myself yet, this clearly works for me.

My daughter is in spring-cleaning mode and yesterday she pulled up the carpet in her closet. We have mostly hardwood floors in our house except for those darn carpeted stairs (see previous rants about vacuuming stairs!) and the floor of some closets. (I’m not really sure why people carpet closets and apparently neither is my daughter.) The good news is that she found a beautiful hardwood floor underneath a hideous green pile carpet of indeterminate age. 

It’s not that much of a surprise. The previous owner told us that he had covered the hardwood on the second floor with laminate (why would anyone do that?!) but we’ve never checked because, honestly, we’ve had other things to do. 

The bad news is that, now that I have confirmation that the original floor is intact, I have to fight my inner beast. She-who-roars (inside my head) wants to rip up all the laminate right now to expose the original flooring. We don’t need to do that now. We don’t need to do that now. We don’t need to do that now…. Any bets on whether the inner, impetuous problem-creator or the outer, sensible problem-solver will win this battle? 

I just finished reading a young adult new release (and NYT best seller!) called Wings of Ebony, by J. Elle. It’s about a powerful Black girl who discovers she has root magic. She is caught between her origins in Houston and her ORIGINS. There’s some graphic violence, a lot of grief, complex and sometimes hard to follow magic, and a good bit of anger over colonization. If you enjoy reading YA fiction with strong female leads, it’s worth your time, even with its problems (which I hope she is able to solve with book 2). 

Wings of Ebony is only one of a bunch of children’s books worth picking up. If you still think Dr Seuss is the epitome of children’s lit, you haven’t looked in the kids’ section of a book store in a long time. 

About Dr Seuss I will only say this: many of the people we admire are not wholly good. Geisel created racist imagery. That’s a fact. That fact doesn’t make The Cat in The Hat, for example, any less of a treasure but it does acknowledge that some of his books were and are hurtful. If you are having a panic attack about Geisel’s foundation stopping sales of material that is actively hurtful to huge portions of the population, it might be time for you to do some self-discovery. See also, Disney’s Song of the South ….

And that’s all I have to say about that.

As I was preparing the dough (recipe link below!) for tonight’s cast iron skillet pizza, I did a little mental math. We’ve used more than 80 pounds of flour since the start of the pandemic. That’s a lot of bread, pizza dough, (chicken pot) pie crusts, cookies! 

Skillet pizza is genius for us because we’re particular about our toppings. My daughter is from the school of you-can’t-have-enough-veggies. Ian prefers pepperoni and black olives. I like a meat-lover’s pizza, light on the crust, heavy on the cheese. I doubt that I’ll ever order pizza again, honestly, not when I can make it at home, exactly the way I like it.  We made three 10-inch pizzas and ate all but one slice. We even have enough dough left to make garlic knots to go with tomorrow’s “something and sauce” as a dear friend’s mom used to say. 

For those of you interested in a homeschooling update, Ian is about halfway through Earth Abides, a great post-pandemic story that, unfortunately, includes some painful stereotypes. We’ve had some great discussions about racism as Ian has questioned some of the language and descriptions in the book. 

We’ve started combining our current events discussions with some historical context. During the freeze in Texas, we spent quite a bit of time following the catastrophe, exploring their role in the Civil War, recent secession threats and how those align with their request for federal aid, as well as the history behind the devastating heating bills some of their citizens are now facing. (It takes a lot of after-hours research to make these conversations work!)  

Our first crocus bloomed — purple! — over the weekend. The sun was bright and warm against chilly March winds. It was cold again today but that’s just Winter’s final temper tantrum before it heads off to its room to sulk. Spring has arrived.

Here’s the recipe for our pizza dough. If you want the easy-peasy details for making skillet pizza, hit me up in the comments below.

Stay safe. Wear your mask. 

Much love.

DIY Faucets, Switches and Pizza

If You Give a Cat a Twist Tie

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 2 Comments

My elderly cat — she is 18 or 19 — has always had a penchant for bringing a little something to the food bowl. As a last resort, she’ll carry a stuffie or sock to gnaw on in between bites of cat food but her favorite item — far and away — is a twist tie. My next question, really my only question: where does she find the abundance of twist ties? Socks? Pretty easy to find. We leave socks stuffed inside shoes or drop them by the washer. Stuffies? The dogs leave them absolutely everywhere. 

But twist ties? I may not be the tidiest housekeeper you’ll meet but I can assure you that there are no twist ties just lying around for a cat to collect. Does she have a secret stash? Can she open the junk drawer to get one out? Does she have a twist tie radar that pings out the coordinates to the lone twist tie that somehow ended up under the frig? I expect that I’ll never know the answer, that I’ll go to my grave (or the crematorium) with this question lingering like the last hint of honeysuckle in the air.  

I have been thinking a lot recently about “what I’m good at” and “what I like to do.” For some, these are usually complementary concepts. With the exception of writing and making foods that I shouldn’t eat, I’m sorry to report that I can’t claim that level of compatibility. That’s okay, though. Instead of being good at things, I am learning how to do things. 

Last week, I installed a new dishwasher. Removing the old, broken one was the hard part, surprisingly. While it wasn’t heavy, it was … um, connected, tightly, with the screws inserted backwards. There was a lot of puzzling and out-of-the-box thinking involved in figuring out how to remove screws that couldn’t be reached and how to remove epoxy (don’t ask) and on and on.

Connecting all the bits and pieces and having the new dishwasher work was an extraordinary feeling … until I heard Haley say, “Uh, Mom. You need to come down here.” Water was dripping, paint was bubbling. The dishwasher was leaking into the finished basement, in exactly the same place I repaired after the old dishwasher leaked in 2015. Sigh. 

I’d like to thank the inventors of pipe dope and the internet for assisting me in figuring out that teflon tape was not the leak-proof solution I had expected. And yes, for those who will inevitably ask, I did test for leaks prior to running the dishwasher. To the dishwasher industry, I would like to suggest a product enhancement:  the addition of a leak frog to the underside of the dishwasher! 

Really, the greatest gift to myself since I lost Ken nearly 4 years ago has been allowing myself to learn, to make mistakes, to try with uncertainty. Yes, I will be checking the basement drywall for damage and yes, I’ll be repainting a wall where the paint bubbled but that’s okay. I learned that I can replace my own dishwasher and that I can fix mistakes in the process. The dishwasher has been working like a champ for a week now and I’ve chiseled away at another insecurity. 

A member of my writing critique group gave me the nicest compliment, saying that they could see their teacher-spouse reading my latest book to their classroom. I hope I find an agent who agrees with that assessment.

The weather is improving here. We’ve had multiple dry, warm-ish days and even held school outside today for the first time. It was lovely to sit on our patio while the birds chirped and tweeted and the neighborhood kids giggled and shrieked and the sun shone on the backs of our pets as they sprawled in the warmth.

Stay safe. Wear a mask. Get your Fauci ouchie.

Much love.

If You Give a Cat a Twist Tie

If You Can’t Be Nice …

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 5 Comments

My daughter and I were out doing the food shopping recently and we stopped at the Dunkin Donuts drive-through. (Haley likes their coffee.) She wanted a doughnut but they didn’t have any. So, she asked for hash browns and the voice, a young person, said “I’m sorry. We’re really short-staffed and we can’t cook anything.” 

I said, just casually, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry. That must be making your day really hard.” She told the manager. Get this. They comped Haley’s coffee because we were the only people who had been nice to them that whole day. 

And that’s all I’ll say about that.

If you live in the eastern US, you may be feeling a little down today because Phil has doomed us to another six weeks of winter. Here in Pittsburgh it has been a shockingly snowy winter; already this year we’ve more than doubled last winter’s total snowfall.  It feels some days like we’re hibernating, settled in our winter nests, awaiting the warming breezes of spring.

After a disastrous four months of virtual learning, Ian and I decided to begin a new journey. In January, we moved to homeschooling for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year. I mean no disrespect to any of his teachers or the administrators trying to figure out how to help students learn this school year. We simply came to the realization that Ian could not be successful in the current learning construct. 

It has been a remarkably positive experience for both of us thus far. We’re lucky to be living in interesting times, as they say; so our civics lessons always run over. We both dislike math so we bless Khan Academy for helping us over the hurdle of geometry. The Khan Academy site has also supported Ian’s science requirements gracefully. 

Ian wants to stop talking about sentence structure (hehe) but we’re really enjoying our literature discussions.  This week, we’re reading books that have been re-told as movies. He’s reading Stardust. I’m reading Chocolat. We’ll be discussing them next week and picking out our next books from the stack I’ve already put together. 

Having far too many books has been helpful on this journey. We’ve pulled from the shelves for our civil war/confederacy discussions, our review of sentence structure and the roles of passive/active language, our early budget creation, even our discussions about propaganda.

We had our first conflict when I tried to do a combined civics/poetry lesson using the inaugural poems by Jericho Brown (in the NYT) and Amanda Gorman. We watched the inauguration live, including Ms Gorman’s moving reading of The Hill We Climb; but when I planned to review the role of poetry and those poems in particular, Ian staged a protest, stating emphatically that he has no particular love for poetry and no desire to review either the messages in those poems or the means by which those poets communicated their thoughts. He was both more direct and less polite than I’m being. It made me think again that we don’t pay teachers even half what they deserve for their efforts.

As we sit together every morning, however, I watch his eyes light up before he laughs and I listen to him sing softly to himself while he works on a problem and I am thankful for all of the decisions that brought us to this particular moment, to this opportunity to be here, now, embracing the slower pace of our lives and the strengthening bond of our relationship. 

Writing has been more of a challenge, as I expected. I carve out some time every day to work on my current WIP but teaching is intellectually and emotionally draining which means less daily progress on the WIP! I used to complete four full verses daily for the book but now I’m happy to get one *mostly* done each day. Mary Oliver’s exploration of grief has helped a lot and has inspired me to do some exploring myself. 

We continue to cook. Last week, for National Chocolate Cake day, I made half of a dark chocolate layer cake (it’s made with boiling water — MOIST!) with chocolate buttercream frosting and shared half of that with our next door neighbors. 

They’re in their 90s and don’t make many treats anymore. The cake was a big hit but Mr Neighbor especially likes it when I share homemade cookies. I gave them a gift bag of Christmas cookies over the holidays — buckeyes, ginger snaps, frosted nutmeg cookies, decorated sugar cookies, etc — and his wife texted me that she didn’t get to eat any! Mrs Neighbor said she was inspired to make Scottish shortbread. She’s from Scotland so when I say that shortbread SMASHED, I suspect you get what I mean. 

My current favorite recipe is heavy cream biscuits. They are tender and flaky, heavenly with the spicy winter stew that simmered on our stove all afternoon today. 

Stay safe. Wear your mask. Be kind.

Update: Here are the recipe details for the foods I mentioned.

Beef Stew — I add approximately 1/4 cup of dark soy sauce and 1/4 cup of Worcestershire sauce with the beef stock/bouillon/better than bouillon and I simmer it for 2 full hours before adding the veggies. Sometimes, I also add a hearty shake of Penzey’s Black and Red Pepper (a spicy black and cayenne pepper mix).

Heavy Cream Biscuits — After trying a zillion different biscuit recipes, I stumbled on this one in a cooking subreddit. It’s a Kenji sausage gravy and biscuits video. The biscuit recipe is the first five minutes of the video. I’ve never made the sausage gravy but the biscuits have turned out perfectly every time. We cut them in half and ladle the stew on top.

Dark Chocolate Cake — I halve the recipe, making a single 9″ layer that I then cut in half to make a half layer cake.

Buttercream Frosting — This is identical to the Hershey frosting recipe we used when I was little. Still my favorite! Don’t forget to halve this if you’re making a smaller cake.

If You Can’t Be Nice …

If The Fates Allow

Deb Zuroski, , , , 3 Comments

As I stood at the window a little after noon today, a tufted titmouse landed on the sill. We looked at each other for a moment before he warbled a sweet note and flew off, leaving behind only two small bird footprints in the snow that has been falling steadily for several hours. 

I’ve been thinking about friends and family. Certain lyrics — “…we all will be together, if the fates allow” — resonate. I miss my distant family deeply. More than once this year, I have had to argue myself out of going to events that I wanted to attend with a longing that nineteenth century writers expressed so well because they knew what we’ve forgotten, that sometimes you cannot be where you want more than anything to be.  

Although we are not religious, we decorate a tree every Christmas. Many of the ornaments are pictures of family or are handmade, like the pictured snowflake from my mother-in-law. We bought this year’s tree from Gene, a veteran who sells fresh cut trees in a small parking lot behind a gas station in the East Liberty neighborhood. 

It’s as seedy as it sounds and Gene may be the nicest man you’ll ever meet. In his 70s, he’s tall with the ramrod spine of a man who spent some serious time in uniform and he barks orders like he’s still wearing the insignia of a leader. My kids aren’t used to authority figures and they were delighted by his “you do this” and “you carry that” teasing demands. Perhaps we would not have made particularly good soldiers but we jumped to obey his commands as though we were. We talked about him the entire ride home and agreed that, if the fates allow, we’ll buy from him again next year. 

If the fates allow … 

Tristan’s 2020 Wreath

A week before the zoo was shuttered by the new closure rules, we were blessed to make our annual wreaths at their fundraiser. They changed the structure this year, reducing attendance to 3 masked families at a time and using their auditorium to ensure that we had a lot of social distancing. The four of us shared a big round table, laughing and teasing each other while we decorated our wreaths.

Haley’s 2020 Wreath

I took lots of pictures of my three blessings as they leaned into each other and discussed their creations. Then, we squealed (okay, Haley and I squealed) over the prehensile-tailed porcupine named Rianna who was happy to eat her dried mango and pose for pictures (per the handler, don’t touch her tail unless you want to spend the rest of your day pulling quills from your torso). 

Ian’s 2020 Wreath

Ian’s wreath is a treatise on the failures of capitalism in a pandemic. It’s not outdoor-friendly so we’re using it as a table wreath to maintain its quality. Also, it can’t hang because it’s very heavy!

Might have a poem to share before year-end. It depends a lot on my brain which is a dangerous thing to rely on these days.

Wear a mask. Stay safe. Don’t let your guard down; we still have months to go before the vaccine is widely distributed. 

Wishing you all the best.

If The Fates Allow

BOO!

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 1 Comment

I woke up at 5:30 in the morning recently with two phrases swirling around in my brain. One of them, “mourning for one’s self,” is from the poem “Melancholia” by C. Dale Young. The other, “slip this skin,” is from the Bruce Springsteen song, “Streets of Philadelphia.” Did you make the same connection I made — growth, change, fear? I wrote most of the poem right then, in my phone’s notes app. It still needs some polishing but I like the idea it represents. 

The last month has been busy. I’ve been submitting poems to a variety of poetry festivals and literary journals. In addition, I’m STILL editing the novel I finished. Plus, I just finished the first draft of a picture book. I’m absolutely in love with the main character so I’m going to put the story away for a couple weeks. I can’t edit my little guy until he’s no longer in my head. 

Like poetry, picture books rely on a small number of words to convey their message. Having grown up as a writer in the minimalist writing movement, I really appreciate the goal of requiring every word to matter, every word to carry a significant amount of the weight of the idea. Have you ever listened to an audiobook and been suddenly yanked out of the story by a word that is just wrong? When you’re writing 100,000 words, an untidy word here or there is pretty easy to miss and less impactful than in a story or poem that’s 100 words long. 

I’ve been working on sestinas lately. The form is really challenging: six stanzas of six lines each and a final tercet, which is a three-line stanza. 

That isn’t what makes it challenging. The six final words of the first stanza are the final words (in a changing order) of each stanza of the poem. For example: 

Apples red (A)
Sunshine yellow (B)
Leaves green (C)
Sky blue (D)
Clouds grey (E)
Puppy brown (F)

Earth brown (F)
Blood red (A)
Eyes grey (E)
Sunshine yellow (B)
Ocean blue (D)
Grass green (C)

Motion-sick green (C)
Chocolate brown (F)
Depression blue (D)
Flame red (A)
Butter yellow (B)
Stone grey (E)

Do you see the pattern for the next three stanzas? The ending tercet is usually AB, CD, EF, though it’s a little more flexible than the overall form. The challenge of a sestina is conveying the idea without becoming repetitious or overly rhythmic. My first try at this form was almost a chant and very frustrating. 

All poetry forms take a lot of practice honestly. I’ve said before that Jericho Brown’s Duplex form, which involves a word re-use somewhat similar to the sestina, is wrenching to work in. The Duplex form is two-line stanzas which, according to my son, is so fast-paced and immersive the reader can’t catch their breath. Jericho Brown deserved the Hell out of that Pulitzer.

One of the forms I find immensely frustrating is haiku, which I may have mentioned before. My  husband was particularly good at it and, worse, he made it look easy. Some people describe the form as “single breath poetry.” For example, here is a haiku I wrote recently:

Autumn leaves falling
To a migrating wing beat
Wintersong calling

I’m annoyed by the rhyme of the first and third stanzas but I like the staccato sound, which matches the rhythmic imagery of leaves falling and wings beating as birds fly south. 

Speaking of migration, we have a problem in our house: migrating critters. I’ve found four mice and a chipmunk on the first floor in the past month. I’m sorry to report that I was not alone in the finding. There were two pups (the third disdains hunting rodents) and three cats involved. No critters survived the event, unfortunately. 

Finding five leads me to a passionate interest in knowing how many small creatures have successfully moved in. We’ve not previously had unauthorized tenants. I have thus informed the pets that they are failing to cover the cost of their residency and that I expect better work from them. They have all responded with wags but I am not optimistic since they immediately went to sleep after our discussion. 

It’s time to get back to work. I’m writing a middle grade horror short. It’s a commissioned project that doesn’t pay particularly well but I am enjoying the exercise of writing horror. 

Have a delightfully spooky day and, please, wear your mask….

And, you know, VOTE.

BOO!

Hell Has Karaoke

Deb Zuroski, , , 5 Comments

It is, apparently, karaoke day at the university across the street. To be fair, I’m not a karaoke fan and thus a poor judge of the relative merits of watching other people sing poorly in front of a microphone. For the past three hours I have been listening, as if they were screaming from my front yard, to a variety of skill levels belting everything from Justin Timberlake to Green Day. A criminal effort at Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” was by far the worst karaoke experience so far today, with the exception of an excruciating effort at “No Diggity.” 

I’d like to attribute my karaoke criticism to a “Get Off My Lawn” middle-age curmudgeonliness; but in fact, I truly believe that whoever felt authorized to belt out Eminem before noon, and completely sober, on a Wednesday, deserves retribution in the form of multiple compulsory hours listening to Steve and Eydie (a favorite of my maternal grandmother). 

We (not the royal we, the entire neighborhood) are now listening to Black-eyed Peas, “Let’s Get It Started In Here,” and I won’t accept your reassurance that it could be worse. I doubt that “My Humps” is included on the karaoke playlist. 

The music is so loud that it’s hard to concentrate. What are people on conference calls doing — “Uh, excuse me. Could whoever is playing that Camila Cabello ‘Havana’ song please go on mute?” The weird thing about this is that I feel strongly that there are live musicians playing along because someone is drumming the heck out of the Havana song right now and someone else just jumped in with a very off-key saxophone.   

I blame Glee and Pitch Perfect for this. We’re now singing “Price Tag,” which is the third Pitch Perfect song. Do these folks not realize that Pitch Perfect didn’t actually spontaneously bring a couple dozen really good (Broadway level) singers to the SAME college for extracurricular acapella singing? 

Aaaaand now we’re on to “Cake By The Ocean.” It wasn’t a good song on the radio. Let me assure you — the karaoke version is much, much worse.

Please, send help. Or earplugs.

On a side note, I am still writing like mad. I have poems submitted to several contests and am still editing a book ….Hold on; they’re singing Taylor Swift right now and I hear sirens. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks there is a crime in progress across the street ….

Anyway, I just finished a poem that I’d love to share (I’m really happy with it) but it’s designated for a publication that doesn’t accept anything posted to social media. If it gets rejected, I’ll post it for your enjoyment.

Despite the smoke haze from the fires, it is a glorious fall day. I hope you have a moment to enjoy it.

Stay safe. Wear a mask when you go out for the same reasons you wear shoes, to keep other people safe (alternatively to keep from being thrown out of the store).

And sing in the car, in the shower, in the kitchen, just not in front of a microphone … unless, of course, that’s Gretchen Wilson currently singing Gretchen Wilson’s “I Want You To Want Me.” (It’s not.)

Also, please VOTE early.

Much love….

Hell Has Karaoke

Take Up Space

Deb Zuroski, , , , , 8 Comments

In 2013, Terry Tempest Williams wrote a book called When Women Were Birds. I haven’t read the book (I’ll get to it but the “to be read” stack is already going to kill me if it falls over while I’m sleeping) but the title cries out to me. It swirls in my head like windswept leaves taunting the freshly raked lawn. I have started so many times to write a poem using that imagery that each version now has a numbered title. They are collected in their own folder in my storage. I keep telling myself I will wrestle this poem into some shape. However, what I actually need to do, I think, is give it time and space, let it take flight. And I mean that in both the most pun-y and literal way.

I’ve been following, over the last 24 hours, an interesting and sad example of erasure of women in power. Having myself struggled both to be heard and to be given credit in past leadership roles, I feel a lot of empathy for Nandini Jammi, co-founder of Sleeping Giants. If you aren’t familiar, it’s worth looking into it just to read her article and her co-founder’s shameful “life is really hard for me” non-apology.

Anyway, for all the women and girls who have been told you are “too bossy” and that you “will get recognition, we promise” and that your male colleagues are “more relatable” and, my personal favorite, that “you’d be prettier if you wore makeup,” I’ve been working on a poem. Tell me what you think of it.

Take up space
Oh, you beautiful girl
Spread your arms
Widen your stance
Lift your chin
Choose your place

Raise your voice
Oh, you warrior queen
Call your truth
Speak your song
Spread your words
Live your choice

Dance your dance
Oh, you wondrous woman
Mark your time
Set your beat
You are those who came before
You are all who take the chance 

Wear a mask because you’re not a monster.

Much love.

Take Up Space

Thanks, Sam Neill, For the Inspiration

Deb Zuroski, , , 2 Comments

Sometimes, I’ll read or hear something that takes root in my head. Maybe a week ago, Sam Neill — yes, that Sam Neill — posted a video on Twitter about his Gran. Several times during the 2 minute video, he called her “a lovely old thing” as he talked about how blessed he was to have lived with her briefly when he was about 7 years old. This poem is about my “lovely old thing,” my paternal grandmother, Myrtle, who died when I was 17.

She Was a Lovely Old Thing

She never walked when she could
Stomp or glide or march, mowing down
Every obstacle, physical or mental
No doubt or hesitation, ever 
Stayed her hand or her feet 
Or her voice 

If there was music she was dancing
And when there was silence she was still dancing
Though you probably wouldn’t know why and
She wouldn’t tell you because 
Your opinion didn’t matter and  
She would even say that if you asked

When she walked in the room
People sat up straighter and
Waved, even if she wasn’t looking
And if she stopped beside you and
Put her hand on your shoulder
You knew what a blessing was

So far as I know 
She was never afraid of anything
Though of course she was 
But she would never, ever let it 
Change her or alter how
We were allowed to see her 

She lived fiercely and when she got sick
I didn’t know what that meant and
Then, when she died 
The sun fell out of the sky
And I finally understood 
What she’d been saying all along
Thanks, Sam Neill, For the Inspiration

ConGraduations

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Today would have been our final Kennywood picnic at the school we’ve been a part of for more than 19 years. Of course our sorrow is as a paper cut to the gaping wound that is 2020 for many people. It is unfair, though, not to recognize the reality and truth of our own grieving. We join with many graduates who lost the opportunity to say good-bye to their younger, fully outgrown selves as they look toward whatever comes next. 

It was a complete shock when a group of teachers showed up at the house this afternoon with an air horn, balloons, a gift, and a graduation sign, personalized, which they stuck in the lawn. Secretly, I think my son was pleased, though his demeanor was … er, understated. 

I was thinking, last night, about our years at that school and I wrote the below short poem. There’s another thought about this bereavement floating around in my head like Emmet’s double-decker couch but when I try to grab hold, it slips away. “Pazienza, Bella,” my mother-in-law would say. She would nod as she said it and, maybe, pat the back of my hand. 

Time has stepped 
Into its wing-ed shoes
And flown
Leaving behind 
Only the deepening bereavement
Of memories

The helicopters aren’t circling outside my window today, the first time since the protests started. There were two, one higher in the sky and one low enough that sometimes I could just spot the pilot. I’ve gotten so used to their chop-chop-chop that the absence of their sound feels like a warning. I hope the rain, and not something more sorrowful, is what keeps the protesters away. Things became violent here on Monday. We could smell the smoke on the breeze as the police used gas and smoke canisters and rubber bullets on members of our community. 

Stay safe.

ConGraduations

Hummingbird

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As I sat on my little deck in my tiny backyard Friday morning, the early sun shone in a stripe on the bright pink-red flowers of our weigela bush. I looked up as I finished reading aloud a poem I had written about a hummingbird. There, hovering above the flower cups of the weigela in that brief strip of sun, was a little gray hummingbird. I watched as she lingered for a moment, sipping from various flowers, before darting off to parts unknown. 

I can’t share the poem. It’s part of a book that is currently with an agent; fingers crossed, my friends. Most of the work I’m producing right now is for specific projects and I can’t share it … this after setting myself up on Instagram to highlight some of my work, though I did post the hummingbird spoken word below that is not included in the book. 

My name is hummingbird
And I’m here to say
I don’t flap my wings 
In the usual way

I make a figure eight
Which is kinda cool
It helps me fly and hover
Yo tiny birds rule 

Most of my children’s poetry is written in quatrain, some of my more adult stuff too. If you are looking for a brain exercise, I recommend giving it a try. (It’s not hard!) Don’t try to be prophetic or deep. Just pick a subject and give it a go. I like to write poetry that makes me laugh, though, unfortunately, a lot of the stuff I end up writing is pretty sad. I think it’s just the nature of the path my feet tread. 

We had a dog guest for a few days last week. She did not enjoy her stay. My dogs didn’t enjoy her stay either, to be honest, though they accepted our guest much better than our guest accepted us. She went for walks, growled at my dogs, napped on the sofa, and tried to jump onto the kitchen counters/ dinner table. Her efforts to steal food caught me a bit by surprise. My expectation that she would eat the dog food I gave her caught her by surprise so, overall, I think we can call the experience a draw.

Although my plans went awry, I did, initially, expect to make one of my mom’s signature dishes, German potato salad, over the weekend. My kids have never had it but it was a staple growing up. For almost every picnic we ever attended, Mom made German potato salad and lemonade cake. 

In my memory of cutting up the onions for the potato salad (my least favorite childhood job, perhaps tied with grating cabbage for coleslaw), my mom is still younger than I am now, teaching me the difference between onions for meatloaf and onions for potato salad. “Don’t chop,” memory Mom says. “Slice them thin so the warm sauce coats the onions and makes them soft.” 

Saturday, late afternoon, I discovered a tiny bunny who had somehow gotten herself trapped in the window well. The kids took charge and, after putting on gloves, they rescued the baby, who screamed like she was being targeted by a hawk. She has a paw injury so we’re currently keeping her safe in a pet-free area while we await the re-opening of our local wildlife rehab center.  I must say: she has absolutely the best ears I’ve ever seen. 

One last thing: For many of us, today is a day like any other. That, my friends, is privilege.

Stay safe. 

Hummingbird