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| Birthday - 2020 |
a child, a teenager, a young woman
Except when I am reflected in the mirror
~ I am really not that old!
When I clean my glasses
I can see the world clearly.
Except when I look through their panes
~ I am really not that old!
“One day you will look back and see that
all along you were blooming.”
~ Morgan Harper Nichols
A monkey’s mouth?
A coiled snake?
A hand puppet?
I guess trees are not just for shade and bark is not just bark.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
cold, wet curtains
of stabbing rain.
Fall approaches with
the sharpened edges
of changing winds.
Fall flowers in
sun warmed hues
of red and gold.
“August rain: the best of the summer gone,
and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”
~ Sylvia Plath
Only a Smile
“What were you smiling about James?” Martha pulled her sweater around her. Cool air had followed her in the door, after she walked the Storyteller to her car. “What do you mean? When? I smiled several times this evening.” He wasn’t really certain about what his wife meant, but her question did unnerve him.
“Well, Storyteller and I were talking about - oh, I don’t know - flowers, or grandchildren, or what she was doing with her life besides writing. You were washing up like the good husband that you are, dear. I caught a hint of a smile. You know; that smile when you know something that the rest of us don’t.”
James turned away and picked up the tea tray on the cupboard. “You’re chilled, dear. I’ve made a fresh pot of tea. Clean teacups and I found the cookies you hid on me. Did the Storyteller tell you she’ll be out at the Estate again tomorrow?”
“I’d love a fresh cup of tea, James. And don’t change the subject. That secret smile of yours.” She sat down at the kitchen table with her tea and picked up a cookie. “I really should leave these alone. My tummy is still quite full from supper……now talk to me, James.”
James poured his own tea and, pacing, said “Well, it just feels like something is about to happen. I don’t know what exactly. Miss Emelina has been in and out of the office for weeks now. She asks for files, takes them for a while, brings them back. Seldom says anything, except maybe that she just wants to know about the running of the Estate. I was talking to George Winston one day about some expenditures. When I asked if he knew anything, he just cleared his throat and changed the subject. And I didn’t hear a smile in his voice.” He took a deep breath and sat down, setting his still full cup of tea on the table. Martha looked concerned “James, you’re worried aren’t you? That’s why that smile didn’t last long, isn’t it?”
“I couldn’t say anything to you or to anyone else with nothing but my imaginings. Where would we go and what will we do if Miss Emelina is firing us?” His shoulders slumped, he took a sip of his cold tea. “She’s not going to fire us, dear. Maybe she really is just getting to know all the ins and outs that are second hand to you. I can’t imagine what it might be, but she would talk to us all first. And now that Brigitte’s leaving, she really needs to know more.” Martha gently covered her husband’s hands with her own. “It will be all right. We’ll be all right. Miss Emelina will tell us her plans when she’s ready. After all she’s only been up and around not even two years now.”
“You’re right. You know, maybe I’m just tired and almost ready to retire.” James laughed and drank up his cold tea. Pouring himself some fresh hot tea he said. “What about you, Martha? What would happen if we both retired?”
“What?! I’m not ready to retire. Maybe a cut back in hours - and I’d have to train someone new. That would take some time. And you? What would you do all day? Do we have enough to retire on?” Almost excited by the prospect, Martha fiddled with her napkin and ate another cookie. “Get these things away from me, James.” She pushed the plate away.
He picked up the plate and took it to the cupboard. “We could travel. Not far, as long as this pandemic is still running our lives. There’s a lot of the Island we haven’t seen for a long time. Remember that little place up Island - a little cabin with all the grasses around it. Walking paths that took us into that quaint little town?”
Martha stood behind her husband, rubbed his shoulders, smoothed his never out of place hair. “That’s better. We’ll just go over our finances and see if retirement is an option. We've been taking our jobs for granted, haven’t we?”
They talked and planned into the night.
~~~~~
The Storyteller had seen the little smile. It wasn’t much, but enough to get her spidey-story senses aquiver. She would be at the Estate tomorrow. Maybe she would find out something then.
“If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
I could hear it coming ~
rumbling, muttering
crawling forward
giant wheels screeching
against roiling greyness
hiding a waning moon
scraping across the city
brilliant flashes of cold fire
lit the night as silvered rain
sluiced through the city.
“There is a moonlight note in the Moonlight Sonata;
there is a thunder note in an angry sky.”
~ Dejan Stojanović
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Online from 'Cafe Delites for all good food lovers' |
“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure.
In cooking, you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”
~ Julia Child
My thoughts today are about story spaces and the stories that we fail to tell ourselves. After all, we are in the midst of our own stories. What or where is the story space for those of us that live alone? I suppose it could be said that anytime anyone is listening to the radio, TV or any screened metallic voice, stories infuse the air around us. Little difference from a group of friends meeting around a table in a coffee shop, or just a husband and wife at their kitchen table. But I am specifically interested, quite selfishly I suppose, in those of us that live alone. When I turn the radio or the TV on, it is often to hear the sound of another human voice. (Cats have a very limited vocabulary and I’ve never really understood feline linguistics.) Today, I listened to and watched a news story about the women in Afghanistan being left behind by the international community. Women fearing for their very lives, their freedom and their futures. Relief is not on their horizon.
There were three of us at this electronic kitchen table. Myself, the news reporter and a young Afghan woman residing in Norway. The news anchor and the Afghan woman were interviewer and interviewee. I was the shy quiet person, sipping coffee and remaining silent outside the story space ~ invisible to the others, behind the screens and within my home’s privacy. Such outside world stories connects me to a greater world that filters into my singularity like the light rain on my windowpane. I have reminded myself that I do not have to live in fear.
“We are like islands in the sea,
separate on the surface but connected in the deep,”
~ William James
