Showing posts with label Childhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Childhood. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

DREAM DOOR

 


In the dream there is a small hidden door in my mother's bedroom, the kind that was once used for ice deliveries in old apartment buildings, or a crawl space leading to a tangle of wires, spiderwebs, and rusty pipes. But when I bend low to open it, the exact same room appears on the other side, the same bedside table and lamp, the same red bedspread, the same bottles lined up like a miniature skyline. In fact, the whole interior of the house is there, in reverse. Though I am very young, I can walk through it by memory, taking a left where normally I would go right. I can hear and smell coffee percolating from the kitchen, a television sounding low and far away. But nothing happens in this dream. It is merely a feeling of calmness I have walked into, the very strangeness of the mundane. No one is shouting here. No one is leaving. There are no sirens wailing outside the window, no red lights reflecting against the glass. It is impossible for me to tell if this is before, or after, or never was. It is a dream that I tell to no one, for there is nothing to tell. But after I wake, it's a dream I immediately want to get back to. But of course I can't return. I can never return.

Sunday, September 7, 2025

MY MOTHER AT EIGHTY-SIX, RECOVERING FROM AN ISCHEMIC STROKE

 


This isn't the first time she has left this way -- hovering between sleep and awake, speech and silence, breath and no breath. When we were kids, the pills and the Stoli nearly washed her away, bringing her only partway back. The ECT and barbiturates softened her eyes to a blue-tinged fog, a weather we could not grasp. But this time she seems closer to the further shore, more resigned to stand among its trees and shadow. Her body sleeps on one side, like a child nuzzling closely in the first chill of autumn. The words that come now, if they come at all, tumble out in fragments, like the torn scripture of some long lost gospel. They break free of source and context, uncertain but continuing, trailing off like the memories she has spent a lifetime trying to erase. This woman, stubborn as the sun and moon, whose version of Jesus brandished a sword toward the open sky, offers neither confession nor consolation. She travels silently on wheels now, waiting without expression for her lunch and medication, for whatever can be easily recognized, waiting for her own version of leaving to return.

Sunday, August 10, 2025

EARLIEST MEMORY


The first thing I can remember is water -- not a lake
or river but the rising level of it in the bathtub, the untroubled
sheen of its surface splashing over the lip of porcelain,
below which many imaginary explorers went in search of
new worlds, new creatures, new routes of escape.
I am holding my favorite rubber alligator, the one I will
soon bring with me to foster care. But not just yet.
I have locked the door, but cannot remember
doing so. I can hear voices calling on the other side,
going back and forth, but do not answer.
I like the hum and gurgle of the water. I like the quiet.
But my older sister, convinced that I am drowning,
has scaled the creaking fire escape and kicked in
the window with her flimsy summer sandals, throwing
shards of glass across the smooth tiled floor.
They are like small jewels, aquarium green at their edges;
I want to pick them up and turn them in my hands.
We are fine, but we are both in trouble now.
Though our mother does not stir from the sanctuary of
her television-blue room, the permanent dusk she cultivates,
and does not bother to unlock her door. It is not time
for us to break that door in, its frame dangling
like a broken cross, nails bent downward. Not just yet.
For now, she stays in bed as though tethered there,
drifts in an ocean that is not quite oblivion,
steered by starlight we can neither follow nor understand.
We are fine, we are; but we will be in trouble soon.

Tuesday, August 5, 2025

ON THE RURAL ROUTE

 


We arrived in the heat-thrum of summer
without warning, two young towheaded aliens from
the land of housing projects and junk yards
commandeered as playgrounds, spent the newly
lengthening days wandering, seeking out box turtles
and toads, garter snakes, plucking fat shining ticks
and the dark tongues of slugs from our sunburned arms
and legs, setting out on small, rickety boats, each
painted a different shade of ever-peeling blue,
puffy orange life vests smelling of must,
of those thick, watery seasons long since passed.
In the winter months, the school bus sometimes
could not get through, and the snowplows were slow
to find us, scraping their stubborn way up that
narrow curve of road to our small scattering
of cabins barely visible, the deep-frozen lake on one
side and the deep hibernating fields on the other,
furrows grown hard as gravestone beneath.
The small black-and-white TV was mostly snow
as well, only one local channel's signal strong enough
to reach our clothes-hanger antenna, giving us
the news we could easily see for ourselves.
The weighted sky hung low, the white earth rising
to meet it, growing closer from all directions,
while all else in the world became hopelessly far away,
our lessons for the day stretched out before us,
waiting to be written, before the early fall of dark.


Thursday, May 22, 2025

MATHEMATICS

 


My scalp prickled with tiny beads of anxiety.
Everyone had left school but me and Mr. Heaney,
who hovered like an unwelcome shadow, occasionally
rising from the fortress of his desk,
hands clasped behind his back,
gray New Balance sneakers
all but silent in their slow, deliberate steps.
The blackboard had been wiped clean of equations,
dark and certain as the night sky,
with only
a few ghostly wisps of that other world showing through.
I was trying and failing, trying and failing to master
long division and algebra, the worksheet paper
worn nearly to nothing from my endless revisions.
The universe, he liked to remind us, is made of numbers.
You must know this if you are to know anything.
I did not doubt this, though it was a language
the Creator had clearly chosen to keep from me.
I labored on as the afternoon light gradually shifted,
the blank face of the clock counting out its lengthening
seconds, each with a small sense of finality.
I could imagine the invisible threads connecting
all things, like the elaborate webs of spiders,
glistening, though I gave them neither name nor meaning.
I could hear the voices of what sounded like summer
outside the window, voices rising and falling,
could almost make out the words that elicited their sudden laughter, though it all seemed, in those
strictly measured moments, to be light years away.

Friday, May 9, 2025

PENNIES

 


I'm going to miss them when they go,
as they inevitably will, those impractical
remnants of the past, smallest
of small change that we, as kids, placed on the sun-warmed railroad tracks, waiting for the weight of a Burlington Northern
to wipe their words and images clean.
I'll miss the glass jugs and Ball jars
filled with them, soapy light slanting through the kitchen window
sparking each of them in a different way.
I'll miss their jangle and their coppery smell, and how they could make a kid feel rich waiting to cash them in at the bank,
to be counted and rolled like cigars.
Most of all, I will miss their random promise of luck,
how a moment, a mood, a day
could turn on such a small object,
dropped or tossed along the sidewalk,
waiting to be reclaimed, waiting to reveal, to you alone, its secret worth.

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

MY MOTHER'S CHINA

 


My mother's china -- bone-white, heavy in young hands,
encircled with a pattern of sky-blue flowers
and filigree, tiny leaves pointing in all directions
at once -- emerged from the far reaches of the cupboards
only twice a year -- Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
It was a set acquired, piece by piece, each having its day,
by saving up a small fortune in S&H green stamps
from the local Red Owl -- the delicate teacups
and saucers, the weighted serving tray, dinner plates
and bread plates, a cream pitcher for coffee.
Even butter claimed its own home -- such extravagance!
Yet we could not have know -- how could we? --
what such an ordinary luxury might mean to our mother,
to at last have something simple and fine, something stately
among the brick and cinder block of the projects,
the mountain girl from Tennessee, denied even a doll
or summertime shoes, trying hard to forget one
lifetime while imaging another, brighter somehow,
which might or might not choose to emerge.
But twice a year, at least, we drank our milk from goblets
like royalty, poured our canned, grayish vegetables
and gelatinous cranberry sauce onto what we imagined
must have been the prettiest plates in town,
while that gravy boat, loaded with thick, brown cargo,
sat motionless among the white cloth of its waters,
dreaming already of the long voyage home,
its sturdy bow not to be seen again for months.

Monday, April 28, 2025

MYSTERY LIGHT

 



Sometimes, when I'm in an old building --
marble floors and dark wood smelling of history --
I can't help but press one of the light switches
on the wall, those ancient metal buttons
blackened by the touch of countless fingers,
curious to see if they are still functional.
I did the same as a kid, in church basements
and schools, houses with unfinished attics,
half-expecting someone to storm through the door,
demanding to know who flipped the switch,
the one that controlled the whole neighborhood.
We certainly lived in enough places with wiring
from the turn of the century, lights flickering,
unsure if they wanted to work or not;
some you'd have to flip three times, rapidly,
to wake, or press with just the right force.
Not surprisingly, more than one of those houses
burned to the ground after we had left.
These days -- so many years turned to shadow
in my periphery -- I can't help but wonder,
against my own reason, if I'm turning on the light
in some distant room of the past, my brother
blowing ribbons of cigarette smoke, balanced on
the narrow window ledge, my older sister
curling her hair for a date, telling another corny joke.
There are rooms I would not want to enter --
some known, some forever closed -- but I'd take
my chances to see those faces lit up again.

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

AIRPORT SUNRISE

When I was a kid, and you could do so, I loved
to wander through the vast, complex city of the airport,
past its chintzy gift shops and stuffy bars,
wafts of blue-tinged smoke and stale beer drifting
out into the clamor of air-conditioned lobbies,
where everything was in motion, the lives
of strangers and their families suddenly so close,
everyone embracing, everyone either waving
goodbye or hello for the first time in years.
Someone was always crying, sometimes a whole
congregation, shuddering as if from the cold.
Someone, you suspected, might never be seen again.
I would have been there with one of my sisters,
visiting from, or returning to, their separate family
in California, a mysterious land of earthquakes,
sun, and ocean, where the only snow they ever saw
came from postcards or their TV screens.
I loved the enormous glass walls at the terminals,
how they scaled upward seemingly without end, drifting
into shadow, the mighty and monstrous planes
gleaming on the tarmac, tiny men waving
each of them this way and that, flares in hand,
signaling in a language no one else could fathom.
I loved to see the sun hovering on the horizon,
throwing out a few tentative ropes of light,
then pulling itself up in earnest, blanketing this
flat and slightly tilted corner of the world; and I, too,
would be waving a solemn goodbye as my sister,
along with the other passengers, slump-shouldered,
moved forward down that accordion-like tunnel,
something small closing behind each of them,
like the shadow of a page being turned, sparks of blue
and yellow from a doorway I could not see.

Friday, March 21, 2025

FAST

 


You were always so fast, brother, even when we
were just kids back in the housing projects;
couldn't sit still, your limbs constantly fidgeting,
growing long and quick seemingly overnight,
your lankiness slowly turning into grace.
You were always in pursuit of something else,
something new, risky, while I, the annoying kid brother,
could never keep up, tagging along though I did,
daydreaming, awkward within my own skin.
You drank your first beer, kissed your first girl,
unclasped your first bra as though there was no time
to lose, as though they were the only things
that mattered in a life you could already see drawing
to a close, as though you were on a timeline
the rest of us could neither see nor understand.
When you said, as casually as though commenting
on the weather, that you'd never make it to forty,
I put it down to the whiskey, the dark romance of youth.
Only now, gone so many years, do you linger,
speaking openly as you rarely did before, no need
to rush, or to leave out any detail in the telling.
There is no road. We walk now side by side.


Saturday, February 8, 2025

THE LOST CITY

 


We pondered the popular myths of our childhood,
large and small, the blurred and grainy image
of Bigfoot walking through the woods,
so alone that we felt more sympathy than fear;
considered whether to spend our weekly allowance
on those X-ray glasses or sea monkeys
advertised in the backs of our comic books,
those other worlds of myth and muscle,
where humanity, which had been so foolish,
was always saved at the last possible moment.
We wondered, too, where all those planes
and ships had vanished, their signals lost forever,
while attempting to cross the Bermuda Triangle.
Wondered how many miles into the ocean
the lost city of Atlantis -- which we knew to be
true -- could be, and if one of us ever traveled there
in this lifetime without the other, how we might
send word back to the bright world above.
It's the way I speak to you now, brother,
through the weight and distance of all these years,
your reply moving slowly through the waves
while I wonder at the beauty of that city,
sparks of ancient light flashing against its glass,
a story, like you, I am not willing to let go.


Thursday, January 2, 2025

VISITING AMELIA EARHART'S HOUSE WITH MY DAUGHTER

 


We slow to a stop on Fairmount Avenue, the gentle swaying of summer Ash and Elm rising above us on either side, casting an imperfect net of shadows around our sneakered feet. The tall Victorian house has been well cared for, newly painted, as though lifted from another century and gently placed on this small slope of earth. People still live here, so we are mindful not to step upon the freshly-clipped lawn, or to gawk too long into the small curved windows above; though it's easy to imagine the face of that young girl looking out, dreamy and despondent in this foreign place, a harsh Minnesota winter swirling outside the glass. Was her adolescent mind already in flight, mapping a course amongst the heavens which no one else could see? My daughter and I wonder why some details seem clearer when farther away, ponder whether the sky is the greatest of all distances, or in fact its opposite. We have no schedule to keep, and nowhere in particular to be on this day, which makes such questions come more easily, if not their answers. The earth is tilting, though we cannot tell from where we stand; the afternoon sun is both warm and receding.

Friday, December 27, 2024

THE SCENT OF THINGS

 

What I disliked most about moving into all those
different places during childhood -- houses
of family, friends of friends, or rank strangers --
was that nothing ever smelled familiar.
The dark scarred wood of dressers and doors
breathed silently in and out, the salt-grease aroma
of food arose from pots and pans long ago
scorched and settled into their particular seasoning.
Even water boiling was somehow not the same,
the grimy tea kettle hopelessly shrieking out of key.
Soap, perfumes and perspiration clung to every fold
of fabric, laundered or not, the musty basements
and dry dusty attics, the damp funk of dogs
had claimed their territory years before we arrived.
Most days I felt that I had stumbled onto a stage set
without the benefit of lines, or even motivation.
Most days came and went with neither incident
nor reason, the cloudy stove clock ticking.
The air outside felt closer to the truth, even in a place
I did not know. I followed my own tracks from
the day before, addressed the birch trees as family.
When I slept, I curled beneath the covers, knees
to elbows, even in summertime, worried that if I lost
the signature of my scent, I might lose myself for good.

Friday, December 6, 2024

GOVERNMENT CHEESE


We knew we were poor, clad in our secondhand outfits, forever shaped to someone else's frame, the bangs of our unruly hair trimmed to a high and crooked fringe by the uncertain hand of our mother. But we knew, occasionally, the joy of opening that oblong box of cardboard, the newness of its smell, silver foil gleaming within, brighter than a handful of freshly washed coins. We would tear into it with haste, cut a jagged slice with a butter knife, then another, never making a straight line. We never asked where it came from or why, though we gave thanks, as always, before wolfing down our grilled cheese and tomato soup, the finest I've had to this day. It was a delicacy lost to many, but not on us peasant kids, smiling our greasy smiles, wiping our mouths with the backs of our hands before racing out into the world again.

 

Monday, October 14, 2024

THE LAST K-MART

 


The last K-Mart department store in the country
is closing today, and I am reminded suddenly
of those long-ago Saturday afternoons, following
my brother along the forbidden shortcut
through the tall grass and weeds which ran
alongside the junkyard, fresh quarters in hand
for finishing our weekend chores, to be quickly spent
on some small novelty, or if we had pooled
our money, a new hamster to replace the one we
had just buried, our first undeniable shock
at the fleetingness of this world and all it holds.
I am reminded, too, of my brother's name
for the store: Came-Apart, which never failed
to make us laugh, remember back-to-school shopping
with our tired mother, the generic Trax sneakers
and stiff, creased denim of Husky jeans, which
became the tell-tale wardrobe of welfare kids and
project brats -- which is to say, many of us.
I remember blue light specials in the cafeteria,
and our family TV and sofa on layaway.
I wonder what will become of the gumball stands,
the rusted merry-go-round and plastic pony
outside the entrance that you could sit atop for a nickel,
dreaming of faraway prairies and open sky.
No doubt they will be hauled away for the indignity
of the landfill, or to some industrial warehouse,
while my brother sleeps the same silent sleep
that he has mastered for more than twenty years,
not far from here, not far from anywhere.
When last I checked, that shortcut was still there.


Sunday, August 4, 2024

CANNED LAUGHTER

 


Most of the laughter we heard when
growing up did not come from the grownups
around us -- who seemed perpetually
glum, reserved in speech and movement --
but from the canned laughter rising
and falling from the small, dusty speakers
of bulky television sets -- sharp, tinny laughter
you could hear from the next room,
even if you had somehow missed the joke.
Even Saturday morning cartoons,
that most sacred of childhood rituals,
had a laugh track with which to instruct us,
not unlike the voices at church, hesitant
at first, then growing robust as their numbers
swelled and converged, demonstrating
to us when to sing out, if not precisely how.
Say what you will, but there's something
strangely reassuring in knowing
that all of that laughter from ages past --
the low, persistent titter, the chortle
and guffaw, the outright snort -- is there,
waiting patiently to be opened again,
in times of war and uncertainty,
when grief has once again shrouded us
in its oily rags, following us like an unremittent
beggar -- times not so unlike our own.


Thursday, April 11, 2024

ALL ABOUT THE BLUES

 

It's all about the blues, you remind me,
smiling, nodding in affirmation -- dry, chalky blue
of the sky brushing itself one way, then another,
unfathomable cobalt of the great lake churning below,
haint blue of my mother's Appalachian home,
undiluted sininen of the old country,
midnight rising like a bruise beneath the snow.
How many have come to greet us today,
come to call us back to the pulse and hum of this
indelible world, this never-too-familiar world,
this world of unfolding luxury, fear, and surprise?
You say there is a horizon here some days,
and sometimes we must make our own.
You say the colors we love most are the ones
we can never know by name, would not want to know,
colors that no amount of mixing could create.
Not until later, when you have painted this
landscape and placed it in my hands, its colors
still wet and shimmering -- reaching for one another,
as all things will -- do they begin to reveal
themselves, becoming at once a place I could
walk into, land or no land, sky or no sky,
a place in which I could easily drown.

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