Jamming

Jamming

They were shiny, messy and delicious - I really, really loved cherries. But I didn’t want to eat any of them. I was stuck in the kitchen when all I wanted to do was finish my homework and get outside. And I’d like to skip the homework but it was Saturday. I wasn’t allowed out of the house until I had these stupid cherries pitted. Why did she have to make jam today! I finished my homework yesterday anyway. All I had to do was make a list for my writing teacher. And it didn’t have anything to do with writing. Five imaginary lives. That was it. Done. And kind of fun but I’ll keep that a secret. 

“Mom! I’m splashing this messy cherry juice all over me! Can I stop now?”

“Did you put an apron on, sweetie? Just wipe the counter when the juice splashes.”

Of course I put an apron on - what does she think I am. Stupid.

“Yes I put an apron on, but it’s splashing on my jeans anyway and they’re my best jeans.”

“Well, just be careful. How did they splash on your jeans anyway? I’ll come help you when I’ve finished the project I’m working on. I’m just about done with the last coat of paint on the dresser.”

She could have done these cherries. Hmm. I wonder what would happen if this was the best cherry jam ever? But if I just cut them up and put them in the slow cooker, my mom would get all big headed when I did all the hard work. And she used my iPad to look the recipe up. It doesn’t look too hard. I bet I could do it real fast - but what if it turned out awful. Cherries, sugar, lemon juice and some stuff called pectin. I’ll ask. She’ll never know why I’m asking.

“Mom do we have any pectin and where is the slow cooker?”

“Yes, we do have pectin? I keep it up in the cupboard on the shelf beneath the slow cooker. By the way, honey, have you finished your homework yet? I know you want to get outside with your friends. Isn’t the new Internet cafe opening today?”

“I haven’t even started my homework yet, and it’s taking me a long time to work with these cherries. And we’re going to meet at the Internet cafe - if I’m a bit late it’ll be ok.”

“Do you even remember what your homework was? Did you read farther on your assignment sheet or just stop at making a list?”

“Just some other dumb thing about writing that isn’t even about writing. But, if you insist, I’ll read it again out loud so you know I read it - ‘Look at your list. Pick one and do bits and pieces of it this week.’ See. Nothing to do with writing. Just like my list:  

1. Captain of a Fire Department 

2. Artist  

3. Chef 

4. Race car driver

5. A Rock Star

“It’s very hard to write a song alone. It’s only by 

jamming that you can get a song together.”

~ Maurice Gibb

Fledgling

Fledgling

“I don’t know if any of you will remember me. That’s not important. Let me take you back to a drizzly gray day on the street when fifty of us stood in a line-up waiting for that shuffle forward into the shelter for a bowl of soup. There was this one young man in the line who looked like he didn’t belong. He reminded me of the baby gull that had fallen from the roof top in the building beside the soup kitchen. Not much of a baby if I were to look at his size. His white gray feathers were all ruffled. His eyes looked sad. Don’t know if a gull can have sad eyes. And he looked tired. He’d been walking around the big apartment building that housed some fortunate folks. Squeaking out his baby gull cry over and over. His parents stayed at the edge of that apartment building the whole time, calling and grieving. It was like they knew it hadn’t been time for that young one to fly. That they had made a mistake by pushing him out of the nest. They called and called until the people on the top floors were angry and just wanted them to shut up. Those folks at the ground floor just wanted the baby gull to find his wings and fly away - or at least be quiet. 

Anyway, I was telling you about Steve. Yeah, that was his name. I’d just about forgotten. There he was in the soup kitchen lineup not knowing what to do. Kind of like that big baby gull. I often wonder where he got to. After showing him the dining hall, and sharing a meal with him he just seemed vanish.  I did show him where all the pamphlets were, but I could tell by the shame on his face that he didn’t want to be seen there. He had already told me the company he worked for was bankrupt. In the few words he did say at supper, he told me that he had just found a job that he was passionate about. He went kind of silent then. I wanted him to tell me more but he just put his spoon down and walked away. Now that I have this little room that I call home, I think about my own early days on the street. 

Did Steve ever find even a little room? Did he get back on his feet and find a passion to live life, not just give it up to the corporations. And all those men and women in the soup kitchen lines in their greying worn clothes, long hair and beards, in need of a shower, and a family? I know that some of them have gone on to their reward - and I do hope the reward is better than what they left behind. Some of them lived and died on the street. Some of them lived on the street and died in some hospital. Some of them returned to their families or found new ones. To look at’em you can never tell which is which. The soup kitchen lineups are just as long and sometimes longer. 

Well, I suppose it’s time for a cup of tea and get ready for bed. That still sounds strange to me - a bed and a cuppa when I spent years on cement with the cuppa filled with the soup kitchen tea. Good night to you all and thanks for listening to an old man’s ramble.”

“How shall I ever learn who I am when 

there is so much of me that belongs to someone else?”

~ Madeline Claire Franklin, The Poppet and the Lune

Renewal ~ 3

Ten Tiny Changes 

don’t seem like much

yet my passion for writing 

seems covered in dust!

Ideas, opinions

float about in the air

but no meaning to them

if I just leave them there!

So what do I do

to renew that old flame?

Make ten tiny changes

again and again?

How boring is that?

Going over again 

ground already stirred

but has settled again.

If I’ve learned nothing else

in these seventy years,

it’s that ten tiny changes

will prick up my ears.

Open my eyes, open my heart!

Those ten tiny changes 

will keep me afloat whilst 

ideas, opinions come back into range.

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”

~ Paul Gauguin

Ten Tiny Changes: 

a recommendation from Week Two of Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron to recover identity and renew self-care. For me, self care involves writing, personal care and attention to my home.

Book Review - Surface by Stacy Robinson

While I was folding clothes in the laundry room, I noticed this book. The cover looked interesting. I piled it on top of my folded clothes and returned to my suite. I started reading it later that day, but for reasons unknown to me now, did not pick it up again for a few weeks. The next time I picked it up, I must have been in ‘a mood’ because it didn’t grab my attention. Finally, stubborn as I am, I picked it up again another a week later and determined to read past the few pages that had stopped me before.

What stopped me?  The opening was brutal with adultery, explicit sex, drug use and near death in a small nuclear family. Screeching halt. Then a deep breath to see if there was more to this story than a continuation of what I had found too difficult.  I was pleasantly surprised. The unfolding story delved into the tumultuous consequences of the tragic events that opened this first novel for Stacy Robinson. 

Claire and Michael Montgomery are at a pinnacle in their lives. Their son, Nicholas, is seventeen years old and attending private school. Michael has traveled with his business dealings from home in New York. When Stacy Robinson’s novel opens Michael is in London and Nicholas is just home from boarding school. Claire organizes successful museum and art fundraisers while maintaining a high society lifestyle. Claire allows herself to be seduced by a business colleague of her husband. Nicholas, her son,  succumbs to a cocaine overdose and is suddenly the focus for Claire. The Montgomery’s marriage crumbles and for that Claire blames herself, but what she learns is that the marriage has been falling apart for much longer. Claire is left to care for Nicholas, leave her family home, spend her days with Nicholas while he is in hospital and then a physical rehabilitation hospital in Los Angeles. Returning to New York several months later and an small apartment she took up the challenge to renew badly needed friendships. Most of them, in the high society circles, have turned their backs on her, but she has a small circle remaining. Her sister Jackie was her first support. Lillian, owner of a thrift shop Claire previously had donated to, supported her in gently used clothing along with an invitation to a society dinner at her home. Gail and Carolyn, both at the dinner and both past friends, continued to support and encourage her as Claire tried to regain and reshape her life.

A passionate story of love, loss and awakening to reality.

“Ah, yes,” Gail said meaningfully. The little white lies 

we tell ourselves. It’s much nicer that way.”

~ Stacy Robinson, Surface

Title: Surface

Author:  Stacy Robinson

First Trade Paperback Printing:  March, 2015

First Electronic Edition:  March, 2015

Copyright: 2015

Format:  Soft Cover

ISBN-13: 978-1-61773-375-8

ISBN-10: 1-61773-375-X 

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-61773-376-5

eBook ISBN-10: 1-61773-376-8

Type: Fiction

Publisher:  Kensington Publishing Corp

Taste the Rainbow

I have no photos of rainbows so just chose a beautiful blue sky. 

At a recent writer’s gathering on Friday evening, we were challenged by random selection of writing prompt’s: little strips of folded paper with just a line or phrase written on them. From that we were to write a poem with a ten minute limit. I received ‘Taste the rainbow….what flavours does your rainbow have?”  Poetic form is rather poor, however here is my piece, slightly edited:

Fruits of the Land

Taste the rainbow

Passionate colours of

  oranges and plums

     apples, apricots and lemons

There are still the colours of blues and pinks

   blueberries

      and crabapples

Colours that arc across the sky

   Colours that cut softly through clouds

      Colours that soften my heart on a summers day when

gentle rain mists in the sky and moistens the land below.

Taste the rainbow for 

the colours of clear water

rinsing sun rays with the tastes 

of the fruits of the land.

“Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours; 

let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.”

~ Kahlil Gibran

Grace and Gratitude

Passion slowly fizzles 

as the day moves on ~

only grace and gratitude

keep the flag unfurled

when the race to 

foster healing 

feels like a marathon.

“One minute of sincere gratitude 

can wash away a lifetime’s disappointments.”

~ Silvia Hartmann

A Passion to Live

Wants and needs.

Which comes first?

When the want is to quench thirst

When the want is a door to lock

When the want is to nourish the body

When the want is to be warm and dry

When the want is to belong

Want and needs

Which comes first.

“The less fortunate will never have what they need until we 

who are more fortunate realize how little we require to be happy.”

~ James Castleton, MD, Mending of a Broken Heart