Good morning,
I walked over a muddy patch of yard yesterday, sinking in my soft leather boots to a half-inch below sidewalk level. As I shifted the load of my briefcase to my left hand to flash the key fob in the direction of my dingy Saturn, I drew in a long breath of the morning's coolness. Surely I felt an undernote of spring?
A client sat in front of my desk, two hours later, earnestly clutching a plastic bag in which she had carefully placed a velvet embroidered blanket. This is from home, she told me. I brought it for you, because I was so hard on you. I stared, unthinking, at her pale smooth face and the high arch of her delicate brows. I said I hated you, she gushed. I shouldn't have told the judge that. I sighed.
She had made her sister bring a bundle of things from storage, including the mauve expanse of bead-fringed tapestry that she now held out to me, the only peace offering she could afford. I thought about her home, about an under-nourished eleven-year-old foster girl walking in the streets of a Kansas town, meeting her first Mexican immigrant. He needed something, she recalled. The others were afraid of him, but I wanted to know what he was saying. I begged him to teach me and I just learned, and I stole food from my aunt's kitchen for him, and then others came.
She walked along a train track with her new friends. They chattered in Spanish, gesturing to the strange, foreboding world around them. She gazed at what they saw, the familiar, drab Midwestern contours. They met in winter, and walked along the train trestle high over the old streets of the dingy town, along the concrete overpasses. They scrambled down the sides of culverts, the young girl speaking English, pointing, gesturing, a cluster of children behind, the tall young man beside her. Above them, birds soared with timeless ease, and she said, Hawk, and he said, Halcon. As they raised their faces -- his a dusky gold, hers ivory -- a winter wind kissed their cheeks, and he said, viento, and she laughed, a long, high trill. He stopped; she stopped; and the gaggle of chattering little ones behind them stopped. He lifted one hand, slowly, and touched her mouth, and said Que bella.
She had her first child three years later, fourteen, thin, living in her sister's small frame house. He had left while she still carried the baby, moving west to a bigger city, looking for work. Before getting into his old Toyota, he had placed his hand on her belly, and said, bambino, and she had put her own frail hand over his and said, baby. He smiled at her then, and told her, in his smooth, practiced American, I will send for you. And she believed.
He did not return until the child was walking, and his stories of struggling to earn money appeased her. She sat at his feet, in her sister's living room, while he raised a can to his mouth and took a long pull of cheap beer. It stinks, bella, he muttered. Nobody hires Mexicans. From another part of the house came the sound of laughter, as her sister bathed the boy and sang to him. She closed her eyes, and from far away she swore she could hear her mother's voice, singing the same words, carrying the same gentle melody, Little boy kneels at the foot of his bed, droops on little hands, little gold head. Hush, hush, whisper who dares. Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.
The man did not stay. Another day, another walk, another tall, brown boy speaking in rapid Spanish. Her child had the same smooth dark hair, the same golden complexion. She talked to the child as she talked to all the children, in rapid Spanish with the dialect of his father's Torreon. And the child grew, and the new baby inside of her grew, and the English of the new lover grew, and this time, he held her as they lay on the twin bed at the back of hersister's house, the boy in his trundle, her silent disapproving sister in the one bedroom next to them. And he said, Que bella, and this time, he walked one day to the pawn shop on the main street and bought a thin gold band for her finger.
And then they went to the city, because he could not get work, and she was twenty-one with two children and had nearly forgotten how to speak English. Standing at the counter in the local state office, begging for WIC and food stamps, she peppered her speech with rapid Mexican. Her children went to a free program for the children of immigrants, and they lived in one room with a hot plate, a cracked sink, and a small grimy toilet in a cupboard that the landlord had called a washroom.
The darkness first descended upon her when the little one was six months old. Her husband had vanished by then, leaving one day with a promise to return while the infant still nursed at her breast and the older boy stood beside her chair, seven years old and uncertain to whom he belonged. She smiled with the painful pretense that all women have worn as their men departed, for all time, in all countries, in all ages. When the black moods overtook her, they all huddled under the bed, or in the closet of the room to which she moved when she could no longer stand their old landlord's hungry stares. The baby cried, the boy pleaded, and still she drew them close to her, with their filthy clothes and empty bellies. And when the fury passed, she felt weightless. She scurried around the room, bagged their trash to throw onto the back stoop, and scrambled eggs in a battered pan on the grubby, two-burner stove.
She never knew who called the state. Leaning forward, towards me in my office, months later, she speculated. I wouldn't let the landlord touch me. He might have called. Her eyes darted around the room, searching for a secret listener. My baby's father wouldn't call, but the older boy's father might. He never trusted me. I ran my finger across the pictures of the room as the police had found it, on the dank December day when the arrested her for child neglect. The older boy had come to the door of their apartment holding a bowl of Ramen noodles. He had told them, in his peculiar mix of Spanish and English, that he was making spaghetti for the baby. Where is your mother, they asked. He went away and returned with a note in her delicate, spidery hand. Call my cell phone, it asked, and gave a number. Open the door, they told the child, and he did.
She had been piling trash on the back stoop for a month. I had a toothache, she explained. I shook my head. We didn't live there, she told me, and I asked if anyone could corroborate her story. I was moving out. We were just there to pack. I spread the pictures out in front of her. Nearly empty rooms, a cradle in one corner, mouse droppings on a thin, soiled mattress. Stacks of empty cans. Strips of cloth hanging from the windows, duct-taped to the wall. See? she begged. I love my children, we would not live like this. I was just there to pack. I am not a bad mother.
Her rapid speech. The fragments of Spanish. The frenzy in her eyes. The soft, urgent whisper. Por favor, guardar mis bebés. I did not need a translator. I knew what she meant.
Sitting now, at my computer, in my warm home, with the dog lying at my feet glancing at me occasionally to make sure that I am not displeased with her, I hear my client's voice, echoing in my mind forever. In the background, just behind her lilting, urgent queries, I hear other sounds -- a crying child, an angry man. The eager cries of a beautiful, tall boy, calling to his lover. The noises of a city street, far below the iron rail on which a young girl walks, free, unprotected, unafraid. The lyrical voice of a tired young woman, soothing her child, telling him that everything will be all right when Papa comes home.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Saturday Musings, 20 February 2010
Good morning,
If the sky allowed, I could see the weak winter sun higher than usual as I sit to write. I have allowed myself a solid eleven hours of sleep after one of the most arduous weeks of recent years. As I made my weary way home from court yesterday, I could feel the weight of work settling with intent on my spindly shoulders, across my fragile back. I had had enough. I was going home.
On the narrow city street, heavy trucks wind their path through my neighborhood, their occupants hopping down from the pondering beast to snatch the trash or the recycling. The noise of their grinding gears perforates the steady whooshing of my furnace and the ticking of the keys beneath my fingers. Around me, the floors have a gathering grime from lack of attention, and a fine layer of dust and dander sits on shelves, tables and the smooth backs of my oak chairs.
I have had crowing victories and orchestrated acceptable but bittersweet compromises this week, and the stench of near-defeat combines on my tired frame along with the intoxicating aroma of success. I have suffered no failure other than the unavoidable battering that any family law litigant must suffer to some degree, though even that inevitable collateral damage seems to me to be too high a cost to pay for untangling oneself from a bond meant to be eternal. While I would not trade my practice in Love's aftermath for a less emotional area of law, at times I wish that I could leave my clients' stress on the entryway to my office suite, and abandon their problems after five, as I might a discarded draft contract left waiting to be examined after nine a.m. on the next working day.
The city workers have completed their round on my street, and quiet descends onto my home. I hear the steady hum of the computer's fan, and an occasional sigh from the hound in her bed. The black cat, with one bad leg served by three strong ones, has mewled until the front door swung open to let him back into the fresh air, and I can only hope, for the sake of his human servants, that this is not the adventure that is his undoing. I cannot cage him, just as I cringe at seeing a wild bird caught and foisted into a cage. I cannot curtail his freedom, and so, knowing each foray might be his last, I allow him to choose.
My sister called last evening and mentioned that her blood pressure had sky-rocketed. I cannot even fathom what that might mean, since my own normal blood pressure is a dizzying 90/60. Hovering at 170/123, she murmurs, and I feel my own heart race. But I am a Corley, and so, as Corleys must, I disdain to speak of fears. Well, if you die tonight, can I have the quilt that Mom gave you, I ask. She giggles. You're terrible! she protests. If I die tonight, do you want me to tell Dad hello? comes her reply. Dad? How about Mom!, I protest. Or Steve. . . and don't forget cousin Judy!!! And then we are helpless with laughter, picturing her impending reunion with a host of equally irreverent Corleys clustered around a celestial percolator. She admits that she didn't get a quilt when Mom died -- she got our mother's afghan. Even better! I say. I got a quilt! I wanted the afghan!!! She assures me that I can tell her daughter, if she dies tonight, that I get the red afghan that our grandmother made for our mother. Oh, and don't forget to tell Mom 'hello', I urge.
I think her blood pressure might have been nearly normal by the time we finished talking.
I closed my own eyes and let the flood of fatigue overtake me after our call. I felt my body sink against the bed, and a haze of sleep rise to claim my brain.
On Thursday, I had basked in the sweetness of victory. I had pushed against the righteous indignation of a mother trying to prevent the normalization of her daughter's relationship with my client, and the righteousness of our position had prevailed. He had his first Friday overnight in several years last night as a result of his own diligence in pursuing unnecessary but certainly not unhelpful efforts to rehabilitate a problem that I believe never existed, which remediation he had agreed to undertaken at a time when he had no counsel. Whether the remediation was needed or not, he had completed it, and in the face of his former spouse's efforts to deny him his due, the judge, hearing our evidence, so decreed, and lifted the restrictions. I felt gratitude to have been even the instrument of this accomplishment, and made my way back to the office with the exhilarated feeling that is more reward than any payment could ever hope to be.
I looked into the eyes of defeat yesterday, in the person of a federal police officer at the moment he finally realized that his marriage was over. A sturdy, stocky fellow, with shaved head, a broad back, and a Fraternal Order pin on his lapel, this man had come into my office last summer with two requests: I want my kids and I want my house. In a day of intense negotiations with a respected colleague from parts East of here, I hammered out an agreement whereby he remained in his home, has his children three nights of each seven one week and two nights of seven the next, and pays a reduced but still high child support to his part-time teacher, much beloved, now former spouse. At hour four, the deal nearly done, and standing in the hallway in the Independence Courthouse, this man -- who learned to do braids on his own, and select dresses for his delightful daughters, and who was injured on deployment to Afghanistan while his wife, at home, launched the affair that would trigger her filing for divorce -- capsized into his brother's arms with anguish while I stood by, having no more clue how to console him that I ever have at such moments. After losing his wife to her desire not to serve as a patient Army wife any longer, he had also lost his career to that busted knee, and for the rest of his life, he will have bittersweet memories of both.
I do not know how I am supposed to be detached at such times. I cannot. I will not.
And yet, I appeared calm. I waited for his return from the sidewalk to which he had retreated, and when he returned, he spoke the words that I had counseled him to utter. All right, he said. Do it. And so, we did. They each climbed into the box and swore to tell the truth. She agreed that the marriage was irretrievably broken and could not be preserved. She forswore her right to maintenance, agreed to joint legal and joint physical custody, agreed to a reduced child support, and to the division of the stuff with which the marital home, now to be his, had been furnished. He assumed the seat after her and consented to the final brush of the scrivener's pen on a chapter of his life that had only brought him pleasure, or that he saw as only pleasurable now that it was closed. He carried my case to the car, and gave a whoop of relief while clasping his brother's out-stretched hand. And then he walked away. I heard the crisp chirp of his car alarm as he approached and climbed into it. I sat, unable to move, for some long moments, before starting my own car, and heading towards the highway.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
If the sky allowed, I could see the weak winter sun higher than usual as I sit to write. I have allowed myself a solid eleven hours of sleep after one of the most arduous weeks of recent years. As I made my weary way home from court yesterday, I could feel the weight of work settling with intent on my spindly shoulders, across my fragile back. I had had enough. I was going home.
On the narrow city street, heavy trucks wind their path through my neighborhood, their occupants hopping down from the pondering beast to snatch the trash or the recycling. The noise of their grinding gears perforates the steady whooshing of my furnace and the ticking of the keys beneath my fingers. Around me, the floors have a gathering grime from lack of attention, and a fine layer of dust and dander sits on shelves, tables and the smooth backs of my oak chairs.
I have had crowing victories and orchestrated acceptable but bittersweet compromises this week, and the stench of near-defeat combines on my tired frame along with the intoxicating aroma of success. I have suffered no failure other than the unavoidable battering that any family law litigant must suffer to some degree, though even that inevitable collateral damage seems to me to be too high a cost to pay for untangling oneself from a bond meant to be eternal. While I would not trade my practice in Love's aftermath for a less emotional area of law, at times I wish that I could leave my clients' stress on the entryway to my office suite, and abandon their problems after five, as I might a discarded draft contract left waiting to be examined after nine a.m. on the next working day.
The city workers have completed their round on my street, and quiet descends onto my home. I hear the steady hum of the computer's fan, and an occasional sigh from the hound in her bed. The black cat, with one bad leg served by three strong ones, has mewled until the front door swung open to let him back into the fresh air, and I can only hope, for the sake of his human servants, that this is not the adventure that is his undoing. I cannot cage him, just as I cringe at seeing a wild bird caught and foisted into a cage. I cannot curtail his freedom, and so, knowing each foray might be his last, I allow him to choose.
My sister called last evening and mentioned that her blood pressure had sky-rocketed. I cannot even fathom what that might mean, since my own normal blood pressure is a dizzying 90/60. Hovering at 170/123, she murmurs, and I feel my own heart race. But I am a Corley, and so, as Corleys must, I disdain to speak of fears. Well, if you die tonight, can I have the quilt that Mom gave you, I ask. She giggles. You're terrible! she protests. If I die tonight, do you want me to tell Dad hello? comes her reply. Dad? How about Mom!, I protest. Or Steve. . . and don't forget cousin Judy!!! And then we are helpless with laughter, picturing her impending reunion with a host of equally irreverent Corleys clustered around a celestial percolator. She admits that she didn't get a quilt when Mom died -- she got our mother's afghan. Even better! I say. I got a quilt! I wanted the afghan!!! She assures me that I can tell her daughter, if she dies tonight, that I get the red afghan that our grandmother made for our mother. Oh, and don't forget to tell Mom 'hello', I urge.
I think her blood pressure might have been nearly normal by the time we finished talking.
I closed my own eyes and let the flood of fatigue overtake me after our call. I felt my body sink against the bed, and a haze of sleep rise to claim my brain.
On Thursday, I had basked in the sweetness of victory. I had pushed against the righteous indignation of a mother trying to prevent the normalization of her daughter's relationship with my client, and the righteousness of our position had prevailed. He had his first Friday overnight in several years last night as a result of his own diligence in pursuing unnecessary but certainly not unhelpful efforts to rehabilitate a problem that I believe never existed, which remediation he had agreed to undertaken at a time when he had no counsel. Whether the remediation was needed or not, he had completed it, and in the face of his former spouse's efforts to deny him his due, the judge, hearing our evidence, so decreed, and lifted the restrictions. I felt gratitude to have been even the instrument of this accomplishment, and made my way back to the office with the exhilarated feeling that is more reward than any payment could ever hope to be.
I looked into the eyes of defeat yesterday, in the person of a federal police officer at the moment he finally realized that his marriage was over. A sturdy, stocky fellow, with shaved head, a broad back, and a Fraternal Order pin on his lapel, this man had come into my office last summer with two requests: I want my kids and I want my house. In a day of intense negotiations with a respected colleague from parts East of here, I hammered out an agreement whereby he remained in his home, has his children three nights of each seven one week and two nights of seven the next, and pays a reduced but still high child support to his part-time teacher, much beloved, now former spouse. At hour four, the deal nearly done, and standing in the hallway in the Independence Courthouse, this man -- who learned to do braids on his own, and select dresses for his delightful daughters, and who was injured on deployment to Afghanistan while his wife, at home, launched the affair that would trigger her filing for divorce -- capsized into his brother's arms with anguish while I stood by, having no more clue how to console him that I ever have at such moments. After losing his wife to her desire not to serve as a patient Army wife any longer, he had also lost his career to that busted knee, and for the rest of his life, he will have bittersweet memories of both.
I do not know how I am supposed to be detached at such times. I cannot. I will not.
And yet, I appeared calm. I waited for his return from the sidewalk to which he had retreated, and when he returned, he spoke the words that I had counseled him to utter. All right, he said. Do it. And so, we did. They each climbed into the box and swore to tell the truth. She agreed that the marriage was irretrievably broken and could not be preserved. She forswore her right to maintenance, agreed to joint legal and joint physical custody, agreed to a reduced child support, and to the division of the stuff with which the marital home, now to be his, had been furnished. He assumed the seat after her and consented to the final brush of the scrivener's pen on a chapter of his life that had only brought him pleasure, or that he saw as only pleasurable now that it was closed. He carried my case to the car, and gave a whoop of relief while clasping his brother's out-stretched hand. And then he walked away. I heard the crisp chirp of his car alarm as he approached and climbed into it. I sat, unable to move, for some long moments, before starting my own car, and heading towards the highway.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Saturday Musings, 13 February 2010
Good morning,
Serenity surrounds me. The brown Beagle sleeps in her tattered bed; my old white cat has consumed her fill of water from the bathroom faucet and resumed her customary position, curled in a ball under the chair that stands beside the piano, in front of the register from which warm air flows, trickles, or blasts depending on the thermostat's whim. I haven't seen the fierce male cat since Thursday, but I am confident that one morning soon, he will appear with the newspaper on my stoop. I canceled his appointment at the vet due to a docket conflict, and he celebrates, instinctively knowing that his time as a rogue cannot endure much longer.
The front page startles me, spreading its word of death at the Olympics as I bend over it, coffee held away to avoid dripping. Sadness momentarily grips my heart, causing an ache that matches the sharp pain of the pulled muscle in my back, so that, briefly, my physical and emotional states coincide. Then I turn the page, take a long pull of hot caffeine, and settle against the smooth curve of the arrow-back chair.
My friend Penny has acquired a new art space, and later today, I will join a motley assemblage of VALA Gallery groupies in a clean-up and painting party. I'm hoping there will be plenty of coffee. There are just three weeks until the first opening there, in this bold new venue on Johnson Drive, in the old part of Mission, and there is much to be accomplished. We are none of us young enough to make work duty anything but a hilarious commentary on the possible ways in which one can discover muscles that have been abused or forgotten since the days when we roamed our respective childhood neighborhoods until the street lights flickered and our weary mothers summoned us to bath and bed from concrete stoops under the yellow glow of June-bug encrusted light bulbs.
The luscious leisurely days of childhood summer occupy a small, hidden corner of my mind. Lightening bugs intermittently called to us, hovering in the heavy cloud of fragrance rising from the dark expanses of newly-mown grass. On any given summer night, the old hand-mower might rest against the wide oak, beyond which, on the downward slope of the driveway, the thick green hose might lie, forgotten. Metal chairs with high rounded backs stood on the uncovered side of our porch, the side with small square drainage holes that my sister would occasionally clog with rocks so she could fill that side of the porch with water. I would sit in one of the painted chairs and dangle my feet into a cool rushing expanse, my own private swimming pool. That child was an innocent incarnation of this fifty-four year old, stuck on the porch from illness, or the invalid state of her legs, or maybe just because she did not dare compete with laughing boys running back and forth through the sprinkler's spray like banshees in the wild.
I close my eyes and summon sensations long resting unneeded in those creaky crevices of my subconscious. The piercing chill of snow cones, sweet, impossibly blue liquid sliding down their paper encasement. Sharp edges of a broken branch scraped against the sidewalk until a point forms, and on that point, the sticky mass of a marshmallow, turned black. Hot oozing foam pouring into my mouth as I lift that stick to break the burnt crust and get to the inner bounty. The fluttering specks of soot from a steady fire in the massive pit with its angled sides forming a square chimney from which the smoke rose to vanish into the blackness of the night sky. Stinging burns on the edge of my hand from fierce, purposeful whacks at a tether ball. High familiar voices, marking the count as the rest of us run for cover. The firm smooth expanse of the concrete well of our basement steps, where I huddled, night after night, hoping that I would not be found first, or last, in our game of hide and go seek.
On those same steps, with crumbled edges washed clean with a watering can's worth of water, I sat near my mother two decades later. I remember that she wore her customary wrap-around-skirt, one of many made from the same pattern -- in denim or cotton, plaid, solid or print. She settled onto a plastic stool that might be the very one which I now use to reach the top shelf of my bedroom closet. Taking a trowel into hands once smooth, now mottled with the brown badges of age, my mother sank its blade into the cold damp soil of a Missouri spring, turning, loosening, letting the soil's rich odor surround us. Last night, I had a vision, she said. I saw a white being. He told me that I have about a year left to live. I handed her a garden fork, with which she broke the fat clumps of dirt. I watched a worm squiggle free, followed by a frantic curly bug, which tightened into its shell and let itself roll away from her steady onslaught of careful preparation for the tomato seedlings standing at the ready in their cardboard flats. My mother's liquid brown eyes met the grey-blue eyes of her youngest daughter. I'm okay with that, she told me, and turned back to her work. I sat, useless and sad, leaning my back against the cinder block foundation of our home. How can you be okay, I screamed, but silently. How can you be all right with that! You'll never see me marry! You'll never meet my children! You'll never call them in at the first warm glow of the streetlights, to snuggle, as you read to them, in the old spring beds, pushed against the windows in the sunroom where their mother and her siblings slept. In the cool of that spring morning, with the heavy scent of freshly turned earth around me, I stared with rage and useless fury at her determined frame.
She died fifteen months later, less than a month shy of her fifty-ninth birthday. I cannot pass a compost pile without thinking of her, nor see the grave of an infant without remembering that she wanted to be buried in the unbaptised babies section of the Catholic cemetery, to keep watch over those forgotten children. The heavy smell of freshly baked bread causes me to fall into a sweet little dream about my mother, and standing next to her on the wooden stool, painted white that year, green the next. With a dish towel wrapped around my waist, secured with a clothes pin, I bellied up to the counter to learn to knead, pushing my small knuckles in my bit of dough, on its eager pile of flour, watching her smooth hands demonstrate, lifting my eyes to find approval in her face. Pungent wafts from rising yeast in warm water fill the kitchen. I flip my braids back over my shoulders, then push, and turn, and push and turn, until the sticky surface becomes smooth, and the dough is ready to plop into a china bowl slick with shortening. It will stand, covered with a clean white towel, on the heated stove, and rise, while my mother and I clean the counter, and wash the utensils. When the kitchen is neatened, I will go, with her hand in mine, into the breakfast room, and then, contented, I will sit, for a few idle moments, while she drinks Eight O'clock coffee from a melamine cup.
When I open my eyes,it is my heavy china mug of coffee then sends its steam rising in the room around me. I push back my chair and stand, lifting my arms high above my head and arching my back. I glance around, half-expecting to see a sneaker's rounded edge disappearing around the corner of the doorway to the next room and to hear the round ring of the ice-cream truck's entreaty. Giving my shoulders a tentative shrug, I move away from the table, and into the TV room, where I will do thirty minutes of yoga, before taking my aging self out into the world.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Serenity surrounds me. The brown Beagle sleeps in her tattered bed; my old white cat has consumed her fill of water from the bathroom faucet and resumed her customary position, curled in a ball under the chair that stands beside the piano, in front of the register from which warm air flows, trickles, or blasts depending on the thermostat's whim. I haven't seen the fierce male cat since Thursday, but I am confident that one morning soon, he will appear with the newspaper on my stoop. I canceled his appointment at the vet due to a docket conflict, and he celebrates, instinctively knowing that his time as a rogue cannot endure much longer.
The front page startles me, spreading its word of death at the Olympics as I bend over it, coffee held away to avoid dripping. Sadness momentarily grips my heart, causing an ache that matches the sharp pain of the pulled muscle in my back, so that, briefly, my physical and emotional states coincide. Then I turn the page, take a long pull of hot caffeine, and settle against the smooth curve of the arrow-back chair.
My friend Penny has acquired a new art space, and later today, I will join a motley assemblage of VALA Gallery groupies in a clean-up and painting party. I'm hoping there will be plenty of coffee. There are just three weeks until the first opening there, in this bold new venue on Johnson Drive, in the old part of Mission, and there is much to be accomplished. We are none of us young enough to make work duty anything but a hilarious commentary on the possible ways in which one can discover muscles that have been abused or forgotten since the days when we roamed our respective childhood neighborhoods until the street lights flickered and our weary mothers summoned us to bath and bed from concrete stoops under the yellow glow of June-bug encrusted light bulbs.
The luscious leisurely days of childhood summer occupy a small, hidden corner of my mind. Lightening bugs intermittently called to us, hovering in the heavy cloud of fragrance rising from the dark expanses of newly-mown grass. On any given summer night, the old hand-mower might rest against the wide oak, beyond which, on the downward slope of the driveway, the thick green hose might lie, forgotten. Metal chairs with high rounded backs stood on the uncovered side of our porch, the side with small square drainage holes that my sister would occasionally clog with rocks so she could fill that side of the porch with water. I would sit in one of the painted chairs and dangle my feet into a cool rushing expanse, my own private swimming pool. That child was an innocent incarnation of this fifty-four year old, stuck on the porch from illness, or the invalid state of her legs, or maybe just because she did not dare compete with laughing boys running back and forth through the sprinkler's spray like banshees in the wild.
I close my eyes and summon sensations long resting unneeded in those creaky crevices of my subconscious. The piercing chill of snow cones, sweet, impossibly blue liquid sliding down their paper encasement. Sharp edges of a broken branch scraped against the sidewalk until a point forms, and on that point, the sticky mass of a marshmallow, turned black. Hot oozing foam pouring into my mouth as I lift that stick to break the burnt crust and get to the inner bounty. The fluttering specks of soot from a steady fire in the massive pit with its angled sides forming a square chimney from which the smoke rose to vanish into the blackness of the night sky. Stinging burns on the edge of my hand from fierce, purposeful whacks at a tether ball. High familiar voices, marking the count as the rest of us run for cover. The firm smooth expanse of the concrete well of our basement steps, where I huddled, night after night, hoping that I would not be found first, or last, in our game of hide and go seek.
On those same steps, with crumbled edges washed clean with a watering can's worth of water, I sat near my mother two decades later. I remember that she wore her customary wrap-around-skirt, one of many made from the same pattern -- in denim or cotton, plaid, solid or print. She settled onto a plastic stool that might be the very one which I now use to reach the top shelf of my bedroom closet. Taking a trowel into hands once smooth, now mottled with the brown badges of age, my mother sank its blade into the cold damp soil of a Missouri spring, turning, loosening, letting the soil's rich odor surround us. Last night, I had a vision, she said. I saw a white being. He told me that I have about a year left to live. I handed her a garden fork, with which she broke the fat clumps of dirt. I watched a worm squiggle free, followed by a frantic curly bug, which tightened into its shell and let itself roll away from her steady onslaught of careful preparation for the tomato seedlings standing at the ready in their cardboard flats. My mother's liquid brown eyes met the grey-blue eyes of her youngest daughter. I'm okay with that, she told me, and turned back to her work. I sat, useless and sad, leaning my back against the cinder block foundation of our home. How can you be okay, I screamed, but silently. How can you be all right with that! You'll never see me marry! You'll never meet my children! You'll never call them in at the first warm glow of the streetlights, to snuggle, as you read to them, in the old spring beds, pushed against the windows in the sunroom where their mother and her siblings slept. In the cool of that spring morning, with the heavy scent of freshly turned earth around me, I stared with rage and useless fury at her determined frame.
She died fifteen months later, less than a month shy of her fifty-ninth birthday. I cannot pass a compost pile without thinking of her, nor see the grave of an infant without remembering that she wanted to be buried in the unbaptised babies section of the Catholic cemetery, to keep watch over those forgotten children. The heavy smell of freshly baked bread causes me to fall into a sweet little dream about my mother, and standing next to her on the wooden stool, painted white that year, green the next. With a dish towel wrapped around my waist, secured with a clothes pin, I bellied up to the counter to learn to knead, pushing my small knuckles in my bit of dough, on its eager pile of flour, watching her smooth hands demonstrate, lifting my eyes to find approval in her face. Pungent wafts from rising yeast in warm water fill the kitchen. I flip my braids back over my shoulders, then push, and turn, and push and turn, until the sticky surface becomes smooth, and the dough is ready to plop into a china bowl slick with shortening. It will stand, covered with a clean white towel, on the heated stove, and rise, while my mother and I clean the counter, and wash the utensils. When the kitchen is neatened, I will go, with her hand in mine, into the breakfast room, and then, contented, I will sit, for a few idle moments, while she drinks Eight O'clock coffee from a melamine cup.
When I open my eyes,it is my heavy china mug of coffee then sends its steam rising in the room around me. I push back my chair and stand, lifting my arms high above my head and arching my back. I glance around, half-expecting to see a sneaker's rounded edge disappearing around the corner of the doorway to the next room and to hear the round ring of the ice-cream truck's entreaty. Giving my shoulders a tentative shrug, I move away from the table, and into the TV room, where I will do thirty minutes of yoga, before taking my aging self out into the world.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Saturday Musings, 06 February 2010
Good morning,
Above my small patch of the world, the sky stretches with a powerful greyness that threatens to ground my spirit. I pride myself in remaining cheerful regardless of the weather, but I feel oppressed by the steely expanse. I adjust the thermostat and add a layer to my amusing assemblage of clothing -- an old pair of socks, a nightgown, a T-shirt, a bed jacket.
These snowy days remind me of the long walks between my parents' house and our grade school. "I know, Ma," my son would groan. "Uphill both ways, barefoot, in the snow.". We had three choices: down our street, McLaran Avenue, to West Florissant Road and straight through town; up our street and on to Jennings Station Road; or over a steep dead-end that took us to the railroad tracks.
Our house faced Kinamore Avenue, and to the northeast was Avis Road which ended in a stand of mulberry trees beside which lived the woman whom we called Aunt Agnes. We passed Aunt Agnes' small, white-framed home to descend the far side of the hill, and in those days, there was an old van lodged against the backside of the street, on which, if memory serves, there was a picture of a newly hatched chickie. Since we often came to that site to gather mulberries for my mother's baking, the street became known as Pick-A-Chick, and that is how I recalled it, sitting on the far side, on Carl Avenue, in a Ford Focus, on January 2, 2010.
The van has long since been hauled away, and perhaps had been at some point during my childhood. The mulberry grove has been thinned. I cannot recall the name of the family living in the large white house on the hill across from where Agnes lived with her many cats, but that family had special standing in the old days -- descendants of James Jennings, perhaps; or maybe a family whose father had relative wealth -- a doctor, maybe; a lawyer. Neighborhood legend held that the streets of the original section of Jennings were named for Mr. Jennings' daughters -- Avis, and Ada, and perhaps Carl was a son or brother. I had not realized until now that the road running parallel to the train tracks bears the name "Main Street", and I am somewhat amused -- the houses along its southern edge are small, nondescript, and anything but glorious.
To the north of that inauspicious row of dwellings, the railroad tracks run downtown and into Illinois by way of the Merchant's Bridge. They cross McLaran just before the street makes a turn and runs east, to Jennings Station Road and on into Baden, ending at N. Broadway just west of the Mississippi River, past small, old houses in crumbling neighborhoods that once held the families of children with whom I went to grade school. To the north of those railroad tracks is a short stretch of road called Huiskamp Avenue, which dove-tails into Shirley Avenue, which in turn ends at Clinton Avenue, just blocks from the site of Corpus Christi Elementary School on Switzer Avenue, which Google tells me is now called "Corpus Christi District School", a fact that my fifty-four-year-old self finds astonishing.
On a grey day much like this one, in the drab weeks between Christmas and Easter, when nothing ever happens, my brother Mark and I walked over Pick-A-Chick and descended the short stretch of cold, broken pavement, turning left on Carl to reach the place where we would climb to cross the railroad tracks and continue our journey on the back end of Switzer and thus to school. From our house to Corpus Christi was a solid mile, more by the front route, less if you took the shortcut as we were doing on that day. I wore the heavy navy blue jumper of a second grader, with a short-sleeve, Peter Pan color white shirt, a navy cardigan, heavy Brogues and knee-socks, and a coat that probably had been handed down through three sisters and doubtless had seen better days. I don't recall of what the boys' uniform consisted; probably it involved navy blue pants of some type and a white shirt similar to mine. With my old eyes closed, bowing my head a bit to concentrate, I have a recollection of Mark's blond hair, heavy black glasses, and a plaid coat, probably lined with quilting. I see the earnest expression on his face as he coaxed me up the grade to the thick, sturdy surface of the railroad ties over which the cold steel tracks ran. With two fat braids flying from under my round, flat beanie, an old knit scarf wrapped around my neck and tucked into the thin wool of my coat, I struggled to settle my foot into the spaces between the loose gravel spewing down the side of the hill.
Mark crossed the tracks and turned to watch as I made the last step up onto the tracks themselves. His face wore the heavy mixture of kindness and impatience with which the strong always greet the beloved weak. Shifting my book bag, intent, I stepped forward and slightly swayed, then stood still, in between the two rails, to get my balance.
He heard the heavy sound of the train before the whistle blew. Then came the engineer's warning, long, low and mournful. "Come on," he urged. His face lost its slackness and I saw only worry, the fleeting thoughts -- he promised Mom, I am sure, to see me safely to school; we would be late for Mass; his friends would laugh as we rushed into the back of the old brick church. "Come on, Mary, come on. You can do it," he told me, but I had lost my capacity for movement and stood, the carved statue of a seven-year-old Catholic school girl, suitably clad, red-plaid scarf dangling, mittens on their string, the strap of her book bag tenderly slipping down one arm, as the train made its inevitable approach.
I saw it. It came from the west, heading towards Illinois and the mining country, the frozen bleak farmlands, perhaps on, into Indiana. A round light shone on the front of the engine. The air around me, sharp with winter's cold, seemed to quiver with the nearing weight of the iron beast. Still I did not move, and still I heard my brother's voice, calling me to the other side and the mundane safety of our last stretch to school. The train kept coming.
Moving more swiftly than I might have expected, had my mind not been numb, Mark reached, grabbed my arm with one hand and my book-bag with the other, and pulled as hard as his nine-year-old frame would allow. I toppled, sending him backward, and landing on top of him with a quiet thump as the train raced by and the whistle blew, chiding us this time, reminding us of all the earnest warnings our mother had ever meted out. "Don't walk on the railroad tracks," she had cautioned, endlessly, often, urgently. We lay, winded, unbelieving, for some seconds, maybe minutes, before Mark shoved me away and stood, brushing dirt from his pants and turning to scramble over to the street. "Let's get going," he said, gruffly, and I followed, adjusting my clothing, replacing the strap on my shoulder, nervously smoothing the ends of my braids.
When I was a prosecutor, defense attorneys would try to wheedle special treatment out of me with whiny tales of their clients' difficult childhoods. I would push back my chair, fold my arms and invite them to bring their burglars, thieves and robbers to my table. "I'll match them, story for story, about terrible times, and if I run out of stories before they do, I'll dismiss all charges." No one ever accepted my challenge. It is true, I must admit, that we had a tough life in many ways. My father drank, rarely worked, and had a terrible temper. I could have given most of their clients a run for their money, and probably outpaced many. I have wondered, often, why such persons turn to crime, while I have not. As I pour my third cup of coffee, and nibble half a Wolferman's English muffin, I look out onto the wintry sky and think, perhaps, I understand at last.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Above my small patch of the world, the sky stretches with a powerful greyness that threatens to ground my spirit. I pride myself in remaining cheerful regardless of the weather, but I feel oppressed by the steely expanse. I adjust the thermostat and add a layer to my amusing assemblage of clothing -- an old pair of socks, a nightgown, a T-shirt, a bed jacket.
These snowy days remind me of the long walks between my parents' house and our grade school. "I know, Ma," my son would groan. "Uphill both ways, barefoot, in the snow.". We had three choices: down our street, McLaran Avenue, to West Florissant Road and straight through town; up our street and on to Jennings Station Road; or over a steep dead-end that took us to the railroad tracks.
Our house faced Kinamore Avenue, and to the northeast was Avis Road which ended in a stand of mulberry trees beside which lived the woman whom we called Aunt Agnes. We passed Aunt Agnes' small, white-framed home to descend the far side of the hill, and in those days, there was an old van lodged against the backside of the street, on which, if memory serves, there was a picture of a newly hatched chickie. Since we often came to that site to gather mulberries for my mother's baking, the street became known as Pick-A-Chick, and that is how I recalled it, sitting on the far side, on Carl Avenue, in a Ford Focus, on January 2, 2010.
The van has long since been hauled away, and perhaps had been at some point during my childhood. The mulberry grove has been thinned. I cannot recall the name of the family living in the large white house on the hill across from where Agnes lived with her many cats, but that family had special standing in the old days -- descendants of James Jennings, perhaps; or maybe a family whose father had relative wealth -- a doctor, maybe; a lawyer. Neighborhood legend held that the streets of the original section of Jennings were named for Mr. Jennings' daughters -- Avis, and Ada, and perhaps Carl was a son or brother. I had not realized until now that the road running parallel to the train tracks bears the name "Main Street", and I am somewhat amused -- the houses along its southern edge are small, nondescript, and anything but glorious.
To the north of that inauspicious row of dwellings, the railroad tracks run downtown and into Illinois by way of the Merchant's Bridge. They cross McLaran just before the street makes a turn and runs east, to Jennings Station Road and on into Baden, ending at N. Broadway just west of the Mississippi River, past small, old houses in crumbling neighborhoods that once held the families of children with whom I went to grade school. To the north of those railroad tracks is a short stretch of road called Huiskamp Avenue, which dove-tails into Shirley Avenue, which in turn ends at Clinton Avenue, just blocks from the site of Corpus Christi Elementary School on Switzer Avenue, which Google tells me is now called "Corpus Christi District School", a fact that my fifty-four-year-old self finds astonishing.
On a grey day much like this one, in the drab weeks between Christmas and Easter, when nothing ever happens, my brother Mark and I walked over Pick-A-Chick and descended the short stretch of cold, broken pavement, turning left on Carl to reach the place where we would climb to cross the railroad tracks and continue our journey on the back end of Switzer and thus to school. From our house to Corpus Christi was a solid mile, more by the front route, less if you took the shortcut as we were doing on that day. I wore the heavy navy blue jumper of a second grader, with a short-sleeve, Peter Pan color white shirt, a navy cardigan, heavy Brogues and knee-socks, and a coat that probably had been handed down through three sisters and doubtless had seen better days. I don't recall of what the boys' uniform consisted; probably it involved navy blue pants of some type and a white shirt similar to mine. With my old eyes closed, bowing my head a bit to concentrate, I have a recollection of Mark's blond hair, heavy black glasses, and a plaid coat, probably lined with quilting. I see the earnest expression on his face as he coaxed me up the grade to the thick, sturdy surface of the railroad ties over which the cold steel tracks ran. With two fat braids flying from under my round, flat beanie, an old knit scarf wrapped around my neck and tucked into the thin wool of my coat, I struggled to settle my foot into the spaces between the loose gravel spewing down the side of the hill.
Mark crossed the tracks and turned to watch as I made the last step up onto the tracks themselves. His face wore the heavy mixture of kindness and impatience with which the strong always greet the beloved weak. Shifting my book bag, intent, I stepped forward and slightly swayed, then stood still, in between the two rails, to get my balance.
He heard the heavy sound of the train before the whistle blew. Then came the engineer's warning, long, low and mournful. "Come on," he urged. His face lost its slackness and I saw only worry, the fleeting thoughts -- he promised Mom, I am sure, to see me safely to school; we would be late for Mass; his friends would laugh as we rushed into the back of the old brick church. "Come on, Mary, come on. You can do it," he told me, but I had lost my capacity for movement and stood, the carved statue of a seven-year-old Catholic school girl, suitably clad, red-plaid scarf dangling, mittens on their string, the strap of her book bag tenderly slipping down one arm, as the train made its inevitable approach.
I saw it. It came from the west, heading towards Illinois and the mining country, the frozen bleak farmlands, perhaps on, into Indiana. A round light shone on the front of the engine. The air around me, sharp with winter's cold, seemed to quiver with the nearing weight of the iron beast. Still I did not move, and still I heard my brother's voice, calling me to the other side and the mundane safety of our last stretch to school. The train kept coming.
Moving more swiftly than I might have expected, had my mind not been numb, Mark reached, grabbed my arm with one hand and my book-bag with the other, and pulled as hard as his nine-year-old frame would allow. I toppled, sending him backward, and landing on top of him with a quiet thump as the train raced by and the whistle blew, chiding us this time, reminding us of all the earnest warnings our mother had ever meted out. "Don't walk on the railroad tracks," she had cautioned, endlessly, often, urgently. We lay, winded, unbelieving, for some seconds, maybe minutes, before Mark shoved me away and stood, brushing dirt from his pants and turning to scramble over to the street. "Let's get going," he said, gruffly, and I followed, adjusting my clothing, replacing the strap on my shoulder, nervously smoothing the ends of my braids.
When I was a prosecutor, defense attorneys would try to wheedle special treatment out of me with whiny tales of their clients' difficult childhoods. I would push back my chair, fold my arms and invite them to bring their burglars, thieves and robbers to my table. "I'll match them, story for story, about terrible times, and if I run out of stories before they do, I'll dismiss all charges." No one ever accepted my challenge. It is true, I must admit, that we had a tough life in many ways. My father drank, rarely worked, and had a terrible temper. I could have given most of their clients a run for their money, and probably outpaced many. I have wondered, often, why such persons turn to crime, while I have not. As I pour my third cup of coffee, and nibble half a Wolferman's English muffin, I look out onto the wintry sky and think, perhaps, I understand at last.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday Musings, 30 January 2010
Good morning,
There are quiet moments when I think that I can hear my bones speaking to me, or perhaps, it is the voice in my head that measures the passing of my days. I shake my muscles and throw back my head, stretching, pushing for the depth of my strength, reaching for the limits that my muscles can endure. In the stark chill of an early morning rising, I bend, striving without success to lower my fingertips within whisper distance of my toes. I am content to reach my ankles and feel the strong pull of the reach against the muscles of my calves.
In the bite of wind on a Kansas soccer field, I watched a young man defend his goal last Sunday. He dove, as the goalie must; and at times he made the save, his lean arms snagging the ball, his sturdy, taut body sending it flying back into the field of play. I stood on the sidelines with his father, and on the playground, beyond another field, his brothers sent a merry-go-round on its endless flight. The goalie's father glanced backwards from time to time, checking on the little boys, then reverting his gaze to the game. A bungled play drew a soft, under-spoken word of encouragement; a clean save triggered a volley of praise into the cold winter air.
Afterward, we walked back to the cars, the tall father and the nearly-as-tall son at the front, the cheerful little boys coming next, kicking their soccer balls across the concrete walkway, and I a distant pace behind them. My muscles protested the hour spent in an inadequate coat without gloves, my hands stiff, my feet, in their cotton socks and low shoes, already starting to ache. I hugged them each, and watched as an earnest father and his happy sons rambled into their van, and kept watching, as the van made its way out of the soccer park and onward, to St. Louis, to their home.
A day later, I sat with another father in my conference room. This one had never lived with his children. On his own since age 17, once noted by the local paper as a teenager fighting to raise himself up from poverty and degradation, this father of two had come to me to help secure his rights to time with children whose mother had never disclosed their existence to him until she wanted child support. In front of me at the wide, round oak table, he nodded quietly as I explained an upcoming court procedure. Blue-tooth shoved in one ear, sincerity spread across his wide features, he narrowed his eyes and raised one hand as though to snag my words from the stale atmosphere of the office suite. "But when can I see my son?" he asked. "It's my daughter's birthday soon -- can I give her presents to her?" I met his gaze, then shifted mine away. I could not yet answer his questions. I stared instead out the window, at the billboard advertising a music release six months ago. I shook my head, feeling the high note of the stiffness born of age in my left shoulder. We finished our conversation and I placed my small, pale hand in his large dark clasp. "Don't give up," I managed. His nod did not reassure either of us.
The next day, I watched as a friend absently played with a tattered white scarf around his neck. "That scarf is too short," I told him, in the poorly heated old house on 39th street, where young Java barristas wear thrift-store fashions of my own youth and play too-loud cuts of 21st century rock. My friend shook his sturdy head of short, white hair and bent his lean old frame to confide that he had plenty of warmer scarfs, but this was the first scarf knitted by his youngest daughter. His long, rough fingers caressed the knobby surface of the tattered work, and I pictured the vibrant high-spirited filly that had sprouted from a sincere, intent child bent over knitting needles, struggling with each purl, each knit, each turn. My friend raised his head and our eyes met. "It's a lovely scarf," I admitted, as he pulled it around his neck and tucked its short length into his old wool topcoat.
Still later in the week, at my computer, in the still of my office, I traded messages with my son, eight hours to the east,as he struggled to re-write a short-story for the final assignment in his January-term English literature class. "What about this concept," he would ask, in the modern way we have of talking, words in a white window with its blue border, prefaced by pale notations -- "Patrick is typing. . . Patrick has entered text." That night, he sent version after version, each one with an added paragraph or a careful edit. "That's clever. . .that's maybe trite. . .re-consider that last" I would message, in the window at the lower right hand corner of the flat screen monitor on my desk, in the breakfast nook from which I have been addressing the virtual word for the last decade. On delivery of the completed story, the last punch of drama still resonating in the pit of my stomach: "Oh Buddy -- this is really, really good." Silence followed, ten or fifteen painful seconds of it, while the window told me nothing of what he thought, what he might say, until finally the pale notation -- "Patrick is typing. . ." preceded his simple reply: "Thanks, Ma."
My best efforts, the push of my years of experience, have not managed to orchestrate a parenting session for the father desperately wanting to connect with a ten-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter. Not yet, not yet, I tell myself, But it will happen. My last act on Friday was to schedule a teleconference for Monday afternoon, with the guardian ad litem and the mother's lawyer, to confront her perpetual excuses for why she cannot bring the children to even a supervised visitation. As I terminate the call, I am reminded of my walk down that cold sidewalk last Sunday, and the sight of a father's arm briefly resting on the shoulder of a son of whom he is enormously proud. I remember my brother's quiet insistence that his youngest son finish one more spoonful of soup, at Panera's on 135th and Metcalf, earlier that day, and the long, slow look of child to father, measuring the sincerity of his father's words. My nephew took that last bite, and his reward came in the form of a hug from his father, and a tall cup of hot chocolate, which I later carried for him across the remnants of snow beside our cars, holding it as it grew cold, raising it to demonstrate that it still awaited him each time he glanced my way -- until we finally discarded it in the trash can next to the soccer field, just before my brother and three of his sons said goodbye and began their four-hour trip back out of my life.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
There are quiet moments when I think that I can hear my bones speaking to me, or perhaps, it is the voice in my head that measures the passing of my days. I shake my muscles and throw back my head, stretching, pushing for the depth of my strength, reaching for the limits that my muscles can endure. In the stark chill of an early morning rising, I bend, striving without success to lower my fingertips within whisper distance of my toes. I am content to reach my ankles and feel the strong pull of the reach against the muscles of my calves.
In the bite of wind on a Kansas soccer field, I watched a young man defend his goal last Sunday. He dove, as the goalie must; and at times he made the save, his lean arms snagging the ball, his sturdy, taut body sending it flying back into the field of play. I stood on the sidelines with his father, and on the playground, beyond another field, his brothers sent a merry-go-round on its endless flight. The goalie's father glanced backwards from time to time, checking on the little boys, then reverting his gaze to the game. A bungled play drew a soft, under-spoken word of encouragement; a clean save triggered a volley of praise into the cold winter air.
Afterward, we walked back to the cars, the tall father and the nearly-as-tall son at the front, the cheerful little boys coming next, kicking their soccer balls across the concrete walkway, and I a distant pace behind them. My muscles protested the hour spent in an inadequate coat without gloves, my hands stiff, my feet, in their cotton socks and low shoes, already starting to ache. I hugged them each, and watched as an earnest father and his happy sons rambled into their van, and kept watching, as the van made its way out of the soccer park and onward, to St. Louis, to their home.
A day later, I sat with another father in my conference room. This one had never lived with his children. On his own since age 17, once noted by the local paper as a teenager fighting to raise himself up from poverty and degradation, this father of two had come to me to help secure his rights to time with children whose mother had never disclosed their existence to him until she wanted child support. In front of me at the wide, round oak table, he nodded quietly as I explained an upcoming court procedure. Blue-tooth shoved in one ear, sincerity spread across his wide features, he narrowed his eyes and raised one hand as though to snag my words from the stale atmosphere of the office suite. "But when can I see my son?" he asked. "It's my daughter's birthday soon -- can I give her presents to her?" I met his gaze, then shifted mine away. I could not yet answer his questions. I stared instead out the window, at the billboard advertising a music release six months ago. I shook my head, feeling the high note of the stiffness born of age in my left shoulder. We finished our conversation and I placed my small, pale hand in his large dark clasp. "Don't give up," I managed. His nod did not reassure either of us.
The next day, I watched as a friend absently played with a tattered white scarf around his neck. "That scarf is too short," I told him, in the poorly heated old house on 39th street, where young Java barristas wear thrift-store fashions of my own youth and play too-loud cuts of 21st century rock. My friend shook his sturdy head of short, white hair and bent his lean old frame to confide that he had plenty of warmer scarfs, but this was the first scarf knitted by his youngest daughter. His long, rough fingers caressed the knobby surface of the tattered work, and I pictured the vibrant high-spirited filly that had sprouted from a sincere, intent child bent over knitting needles, struggling with each purl, each knit, each turn. My friend raised his head and our eyes met. "It's a lovely scarf," I admitted, as he pulled it around his neck and tucked its short length into his old wool topcoat.
Still later in the week, at my computer, in the still of my office, I traded messages with my son, eight hours to the east,as he struggled to re-write a short-story for the final assignment in his January-term English literature class. "What about this concept," he would ask, in the modern way we have of talking, words in a white window with its blue border, prefaced by pale notations -- "Patrick is typing. . . Patrick has entered text." That night, he sent version after version, each one with an added paragraph or a careful edit. "That's clever. . .that's maybe trite. . .re-consider that last" I would message, in the window at the lower right hand corner of the flat screen monitor on my desk, in the breakfast nook from which I have been addressing the virtual word for the last decade. On delivery of the completed story, the last punch of drama still resonating in the pit of my stomach: "Oh Buddy -- this is really, really good." Silence followed, ten or fifteen painful seconds of it, while the window told me nothing of what he thought, what he might say, until finally the pale notation -- "Patrick is typing. . ." preceded his simple reply: "Thanks, Ma."
My best efforts, the push of my years of experience, have not managed to orchestrate a parenting session for the father desperately wanting to connect with a ten-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter. Not yet, not yet, I tell myself, But it will happen. My last act on Friday was to schedule a teleconference for Monday afternoon, with the guardian ad litem and the mother's lawyer, to confront her perpetual excuses for why she cannot bring the children to even a supervised visitation. As I terminate the call, I am reminded of my walk down that cold sidewalk last Sunday, and the sight of a father's arm briefly resting on the shoulder of a son of whom he is enormously proud. I remember my brother's quiet insistence that his youngest son finish one more spoonful of soup, at Panera's on 135th and Metcalf, earlier that day, and the long, slow look of child to father, measuring the sincerity of his father's words. My nephew took that last bite, and his reward came in the form of a hug from his father, and a tall cup of hot chocolate, which I later carried for him across the remnants of snow beside our cars, holding it as it grew cold, raising it to demonstrate that it still awaited him each time he glanced my way -- until we finally discarded it in the trash can next to the soccer field, just before my brother and three of his sons said goodbye and began their four-hour trip back out of my life.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Saturday Musings, 23 January 2010
Good morning,
Once again, I have awakened in the gathering light with a sense of thankfulness. Lying on flannel sheets, beneath a pitched, knotty-pine-paneled ceiling, a wide bank of windows surrounding me and the warm air from my furnace filling the room with gentle comfort, I drift in a haze of pre-consciousness. As I slowly shake away the grip of sleep, I sense the reassuring, familiar noises of the 1542 square feet that I call home. On the first floor, the dog snuffles at the closed door to my sanctuary; the boycat mewls in the television room beside his empty dish. I slide from beneath my mother's Ohio Star quilt and slip into a cotton robe, pulling a clip into my hair and pushing my glasses onto my face. With a flick, the stairwell is illuminated, and I trudge, tipping a bit to the side to brace myself against the rail, down to the kitchen, where I am soon rewarded by the strong scent of ground Arabic beans, and the steam of water hissing from the coffee-maker's mechanism into the pot.
My Friday has been spent as my Fridays often are: a brief court appearance, then back to the office to force myself to do some much-needed paperwork, which I abandoned before noon. I garnered a pleasant several hours with my artist friend Penny Thieme and her charge-of-the-day, a brilliant, beautiful nine-year-old whom I call Hanna Banana. We filled and re-filled our cups with Fair Trade coffee from Revocup, and I feasted on curry chicken salad, while at a high table behind us, Hanna ate a blueberry muffin and wrote a short story about an orphan who is curious about her parents' origins. The cafe slowly filled with the twenty-first century sound of clicking keys and low, murmured conversation seemingly thrown into the air, but really tendered to the flickering blue of the earpieces magically communicating to distant companions through small, flat rectangular objects innocently sitting beside mugs of cappuccino. Nibbling on one side of Alice's mushroom, the world grows smaller.
Later, standing in an Italian deli after seeing an early movie, I felt my stiffened legs shudder, and found that I could barely manage to take so much as one step. This phenomenon has plagued me for years, the result of more decades of spasticity than doctors believed my body would be able to endure. The funny thing about spasticity and me centers around our symbiosis: I cannot take an anti-spasmodic, because my condition, curiously, deprives me of the ability to strengthen myself sufficiently to stand. That is to say, my spasticity keeps me vertical.
The server placed my spinach salad on the table, and my companion brought water, silverware and napkins. As he quietly began to enjoy his pasta, glancing at me from time to time with the look that I have come to associate with gracious hesitance, the woman behind him caught my attention.
I first noticed her hands. Long, bent and blemished, one held a knife while the other attempted to manipulate a fork. I lifted my eyes to her face, seeing a fine bead of sweat across her brow, beneath the carefully curled hair. Her eyes, half-closed, focused on the food in front of her, the piece of pizza that she strove to cut. As I watched, a section of crust skittered off her plate, landing on the floor behind my companion. I quickly averted my eyes, hoping to avoid embarrassing the woman as she bent over to retrieve it.
My dinner companion noticed that I had not begun to eat. Is something wrong, he asked, though he knew that I felt poorly and might have assumed that my pain prevented me from enjoying my dinner. No, I told him. I was just watching the lady behind you, she seemed to be having dexterity issues, and I was sympathizing.
I met his gaze. I cannot, with certainty, say what he thought at that moment. A connection flowed from me, to him, to the elderly, awkward diner behind us, and back, full circle. His compassion for me, for the predicament with which I have learned to live but which sometimes overwhelms me, inspired my compassion for her, for the strong young woman whom she doubtless once was, who still lives in the straight back, the deliberate hairstyle, the impeccable clothing. As I cut my pickled beets, and the tender, seasoned grilled chicken, I found my pain to be not less, but less bothersome.
And, then, today, in the quiet of my morning home, freshly brewed coffee within reach, I opened an e-mail from a friend, and read about his own reckoning, in a situation where he stood with a group of financially secure individuals and gazed upon a panhandling poor person. Caught between their self-righteous snickers and the mournful entreaty of the man on the corner, as he and his group crossed, my friend faced a choice: give, or don't give. I can only guess at his decision, because he told me the story and then admonished me: If you are faced with such a choice, please, throw a few dollars in the hands of the beggar. He did not tell me if he had done so. Rather, he noted -- If I did, and I tell you, I am bragging; if I didn't, and I tell you, I am a hypocrite. Point taken, my friend. Point taken. Another nibble, and the world shrinks again.
The blower's noise rises and the house grows even warmer. The grey of the morning sky has deepened, but I cannot tell if it will snow or rain. The earth of my county remains solid; I do not feel the hard rumble of after-shocks, the walls of my home have not suffered from relentless and insistent shifting of the ground beneath them. The cat sleeps in front of the grate, basking in the heat which emanates from it, oblivious to his impending appointment for shots. I am comfortable, in my house, in Brookside, with its poorly installed vinyl kitchen floor, its chipped door frames, and its hopelessly stained hardwood. In a few minutes, I will, with no small measure of reluctance, make a list of the day's chores. I will rinse the breakfast dishes, and wipe down the counters, my mind already tabulating the items on my Saturday to-do list. I'll get dressed, shove the cat in his carrier, and drive to the vet's office, where I will grouse under my breath about the cost of shots. I'll talk myself out of getting a scone at the Oak Street Bakery, and come back home, to an afternoon of laundry, and house-cleaning, and maybe a quick trip to Lawrence to learn about a grant for which Penny wants to apply.
But for now, I think I will pour another cup of coffee. I will prop my feet on the cedar chest in the television room, turn on a cooking show, and after a while, I might just fall asleep.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Once again, I have awakened in the gathering light with a sense of thankfulness. Lying on flannel sheets, beneath a pitched, knotty-pine-paneled ceiling, a wide bank of windows surrounding me and the warm air from my furnace filling the room with gentle comfort, I drift in a haze of pre-consciousness. As I slowly shake away the grip of sleep, I sense the reassuring, familiar noises of the 1542 square feet that I call home. On the first floor, the dog snuffles at the closed door to my sanctuary; the boycat mewls in the television room beside his empty dish. I slide from beneath my mother's Ohio Star quilt and slip into a cotton robe, pulling a clip into my hair and pushing my glasses onto my face. With a flick, the stairwell is illuminated, and I trudge, tipping a bit to the side to brace myself against the rail, down to the kitchen, where I am soon rewarded by the strong scent of ground Arabic beans, and the steam of water hissing from the coffee-maker's mechanism into the pot.
My Friday has been spent as my Fridays often are: a brief court appearance, then back to the office to force myself to do some much-needed paperwork, which I abandoned before noon. I garnered a pleasant several hours with my artist friend Penny Thieme and her charge-of-the-day, a brilliant, beautiful nine-year-old whom I call Hanna Banana. We filled and re-filled our cups with Fair Trade coffee from Revocup, and I feasted on curry chicken salad, while at a high table behind us, Hanna ate a blueberry muffin and wrote a short story about an orphan who is curious about her parents' origins. The cafe slowly filled with the twenty-first century sound of clicking keys and low, murmured conversation seemingly thrown into the air, but really tendered to the flickering blue of the earpieces magically communicating to distant companions through small, flat rectangular objects innocently sitting beside mugs of cappuccino. Nibbling on one side of Alice's mushroom, the world grows smaller.
Later, standing in an Italian deli after seeing an early movie, I felt my stiffened legs shudder, and found that I could barely manage to take so much as one step. This phenomenon has plagued me for years, the result of more decades of spasticity than doctors believed my body would be able to endure. The funny thing about spasticity and me centers around our symbiosis: I cannot take an anti-spasmodic, because my condition, curiously, deprives me of the ability to strengthen myself sufficiently to stand. That is to say, my spasticity keeps me vertical.
The server placed my spinach salad on the table, and my companion brought water, silverware and napkins. As he quietly began to enjoy his pasta, glancing at me from time to time with the look that I have come to associate with gracious hesitance, the woman behind him caught my attention.
I first noticed her hands. Long, bent and blemished, one held a knife while the other attempted to manipulate a fork. I lifted my eyes to her face, seeing a fine bead of sweat across her brow, beneath the carefully curled hair. Her eyes, half-closed, focused on the food in front of her, the piece of pizza that she strove to cut. As I watched, a section of crust skittered off her plate, landing on the floor behind my companion. I quickly averted my eyes, hoping to avoid embarrassing the woman as she bent over to retrieve it.
My dinner companion noticed that I had not begun to eat. Is something wrong, he asked, though he knew that I felt poorly and might have assumed that my pain prevented me from enjoying my dinner. No, I told him. I was just watching the lady behind you, she seemed to be having dexterity issues, and I was sympathizing.
I met his gaze. I cannot, with certainty, say what he thought at that moment. A connection flowed from me, to him, to the elderly, awkward diner behind us, and back, full circle. His compassion for me, for the predicament with which I have learned to live but which sometimes overwhelms me, inspired my compassion for her, for the strong young woman whom she doubtless once was, who still lives in the straight back, the deliberate hairstyle, the impeccable clothing. As I cut my pickled beets, and the tender, seasoned grilled chicken, I found my pain to be not less, but less bothersome.
And, then, today, in the quiet of my morning home, freshly brewed coffee within reach, I opened an e-mail from a friend, and read about his own reckoning, in a situation where he stood with a group of financially secure individuals and gazed upon a panhandling poor person. Caught between their self-righteous snickers and the mournful entreaty of the man on the corner, as he and his group crossed, my friend faced a choice: give, or don't give. I can only guess at his decision, because he told me the story and then admonished me: If you are faced with such a choice, please, throw a few dollars in the hands of the beggar. He did not tell me if he had done so. Rather, he noted -- If I did, and I tell you, I am bragging; if I didn't, and I tell you, I am a hypocrite. Point taken, my friend. Point taken. Another nibble, and the world shrinks again.
The blower's noise rises and the house grows even warmer. The grey of the morning sky has deepened, but I cannot tell if it will snow or rain. The earth of my county remains solid; I do not feel the hard rumble of after-shocks, the walls of my home have not suffered from relentless and insistent shifting of the ground beneath them. The cat sleeps in front of the grate, basking in the heat which emanates from it, oblivious to his impending appointment for shots. I am comfortable, in my house, in Brookside, with its poorly installed vinyl kitchen floor, its chipped door frames, and its hopelessly stained hardwood. In a few minutes, I will, with no small measure of reluctance, make a list of the day's chores. I will rinse the breakfast dishes, and wipe down the counters, my mind already tabulating the items on my Saturday to-do list. I'll get dressed, shove the cat in his carrier, and drive to the vet's office, where I will grouse under my breath about the cost of shots. I'll talk myself out of getting a scone at the Oak Street Bakery, and come back home, to an afternoon of laundry, and house-cleaning, and maybe a quick trip to Lawrence to learn about a grant for which Penny wants to apply.
But for now, I think I will pour another cup of coffee. I will prop my feet on the cedar chest in the television room, turn on a cooking show, and after a while, I might just fall asleep.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Saturday Musings, 16 January 2010
Good morning,
There is a slick across the cracked concrete of my porch, comprised of one part rock salt, one part melted snow, and one part accumulated dirt, the crud from the bottoms of Doc Martens, old sneakers, and the heavy, high-top workboots worn by our letter carrier, the Fed Ex man, and a few others who tramp across the slush that is our front yard. I haven't sat on my porch rocker in weeks, forced inside by influenza and the raging, persistent winter weather that lashed across Missouri and took hold of Kansas City with its gleeful, punishing grip. The snow shovel leans against the mailbox, beside the worn broom with which we doggedly clean the cars and rearrange what is left of the rotting leaves under the cruel crush of January's reluctant surrender to the leaded skies above us.
I feel the flirting promise of spring in temperatures hovering in the low 30's, ten times as warm as what we endured two weeks ago. On the coldest day of the year, I trudged out to my car despite the nauseating grip of fever, and made my way downtown to get a client divorced. With piles of snow pushed by desperately careless street workers into the handicapped parking spots near the courthouse, I chose instead the parking garage, and due to the lateness of my arrival, found myself parking on the eighth floor. Wrapped in a long wool coat two sizes too big, three scarves entwined around my neck and a bright green wool cap pulled over my barely-combed hair, I gripped my client's file between gloved-fingers and shuffled down the ramp to the elevator.
I stood under the heat lamps for five minutes before the hard slap of leather soles on the adjacent stairway penetrated the thick cloud of flu in my head. Glancing to my right, I saw a passable imitation of Nanook of the North, bearing a leather briefcase, barreling down the stairs. She flicked her eyes in my direction only long enough to break the news to me in breathless tones: "The elevator is not working," she said, and then rounded the corner, her head bobbing in dark felt, her shoulders disappearing in a descending blur of puffy down and knit.
I stood in front of the tall expanse of the double-elevator bank for another five minutes, stubborn, hopeful, weary. An hour before, I had watched my son traverse the security checkpoint at the airport, then driven through a fast-food line for steaming coffee, which I had ingested with an eagerness born of that slightly dingy state in which the newly sick can only hope to dwell, ringing ears, detached air, consciousness waiting to yield to sleep if you merely lean against the back of your car seat. I had driven straight to court tilted carefully towards the steering wheel, one glove off, gloved hand guiding the car, the other orchestrating the careful sips of hot liquid, red-rimmed eyes scanning the quiet highway. Waiting for the hopelessly frozen lift technology to rescue me, I closed my eyes and swayed, slightly, shuddering within my old camel-hair coat that provided an illusion of warmth over the pockets of cold air created by the ironic juxtaposition of my thinning body and its unaltered contours. "Come on, come on," I muttered, but the elevator did not come, and in a few moments, I followed the stream of commuters down sixteen flights.
During my first marriage, I lived for six months in Little Rock. Just outside Arkansas's capital, to its west, rising a couple of miles above the Arkansas River Valley, Pinnacle Mountain provides a novice hiking experience. Half of one trail is paved, but beyond that, the climb takes you over rocks, between brambles, steeper and steeper until you pass the point at which your effort changes from a jaunty saunter to a breathless struggle.
Half-way to the top, casual climbers who had passed us on their way to the peak did so on their way back down to the parking lot. "Don't give up!" they called over their shoulders. "It's worth it!" I tossed a smile, a word of thanks, but did not turn; my success depended on momentum, and the firm grip of my spouse's hand, and the caution that I knew he would exercise, his care evident in the slight note of worry in his voice that morning, when he had expressed gentle reservations about the wisdom of mountain climbing on lily-white, spastic legs.
The last few yards of Pinnacle Mountain's trail to the top require you to stretch your legs over boulders worn round by the winds of time. In my case, I bellied down to their cold curves, slithered and strained, and then lifted my arm to hook myself on my husband's strong hands and allow myself to be pulled to my feet. My eyes met his. He steadied my body with his arms, never letting go, never losing the lock of our gaze. He knew, with the academic knowledge of the unafraid, that the real victory lay not in my painful traverse of the two-mile path but in my decision to make the trek at all, despite my intense, life-long struggle with acrophobia.
I slowly turned away from the center of the space on top of Pinnacle Mountain, and faced outward. A warmth spread from the clenched pit of my stomach upward to my chest, to the constricted airways; downward to my feet and toes tightly curled within my shoes. My eyes did not work, at first. I trembled, my knees cratering, my body slack against Chester's strong, sturdy frame. We did not speak. In a few minutes, my vision cleared, and I beheld an endless swathe of sapphire meeting an expanse of emerald, with the crystalline river snaking through it. There were no clouds, no wind: just the mountain, and the valley, and the shimmering sky.
As my foot struck the last step on the first floor of the parking garage, and my mind wrenched itself back to 2010, I closed my eyes to savor a memory of the sweet kiss of the sun's warmth, in Arkansas, on a spring day, in another life, another century, another world. And then a hurrying body bumped against me as I pushed the heavy, cold glass of the door to Oak Street, and the fumes of the city hit me, and I heard the repeated mechanical click of the accessible walk light, mixed with the diesel roar of a passing bus.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Brookside, Kansas City, Missouri
There is a slick across the cracked concrete of my porch, comprised of one part rock salt, one part melted snow, and one part accumulated dirt, the crud from the bottoms of Doc Martens, old sneakers, and the heavy, high-top workboots worn by our letter carrier, the Fed Ex man, and a few others who tramp across the slush that is our front yard. I haven't sat on my porch rocker in weeks, forced inside by influenza and the raging, persistent winter weather that lashed across Missouri and took hold of Kansas City with its gleeful, punishing grip. The snow shovel leans against the mailbox, beside the worn broom with which we doggedly clean the cars and rearrange what is left of the rotting leaves under the cruel crush of January's reluctant surrender to the leaded skies above us.
I feel the flirting promise of spring in temperatures hovering in the low 30's, ten times as warm as what we endured two weeks ago. On the coldest day of the year, I trudged out to my car despite the nauseating grip of fever, and made my way downtown to get a client divorced. With piles of snow pushed by desperately careless street workers into the handicapped parking spots near the courthouse, I chose instead the parking garage, and due to the lateness of my arrival, found myself parking on the eighth floor. Wrapped in a long wool coat two sizes too big, three scarves entwined around my neck and a bright green wool cap pulled over my barely-combed hair, I gripped my client's file between gloved-fingers and shuffled down the ramp to the elevator.
I stood under the heat lamps for five minutes before the hard slap of leather soles on the adjacent stairway penetrated the thick cloud of flu in my head. Glancing to my right, I saw a passable imitation of Nanook of the North, bearing a leather briefcase, barreling down the stairs. She flicked her eyes in my direction only long enough to break the news to me in breathless tones: "The elevator is not working," she said, and then rounded the corner, her head bobbing in dark felt, her shoulders disappearing in a descending blur of puffy down and knit.
I stood in front of the tall expanse of the double-elevator bank for another five minutes, stubborn, hopeful, weary. An hour before, I had watched my son traverse the security checkpoint at the airport, then driven through a fast-food line for steaming coffee, which I had ingested with an eagerness born of that slightly dingy state in which the newly sick can only hope to dwell, ringing ears, detached air, consciousness waiting to yield to sleep if you merely lean against the back of your car seat. I had driven straight to court tilted carefully towards the steering wheel, one glove off, gloved hand guiding the car, the other orchestrating the careful sips of hot liquid, red-rimmed eyes scanning the quiet highway. Waiting for the hopelessly frozen lift technology to rescue me, I closed my eyes and swayed, slightly, shuddering within my old camel-hair coat that provided an illusion of warmth over the pockets of cold air created by the ironic juxtaposition of my thinning body and its unaltered contours. "Come on, come on," I muttered, but the elevator did not come, and in a few moments, I followed the stream of commuters down sixteen flights.
During my first marriage, I lived for six months in Little Rock. Just outside Arkansas's capital, to its west, rising a couple of miles above the Arkansas River Valley, Pinnacle Mountain provides a novice hiking experience. Half of one trail is paved, but beyond that, the climb takes you over rocks, between brambles, steeper and steeper until you pass the point at which your effort changes from a jaunty saunter to a breathless struggle.
Half-way to the top, casual climbers who had passed us on their way to the peak did so on their way back down to the parking lot. "Don't give up!" they called over their shoulders. "It's worth it!" I tossed a smile, a word of thanks, but did not turn; my success depended on momentum, and the firm grip of my spouse's hand, and the caution that I knew he would exercise, his care evident in the slight note of worry in his voice that morning, when he had expressed gentle reservations about the wisdom of mountain climbing on lily-white, spastic legs.
The last few yards of Pinnacle Mountain's trail to the top require you to stretch your legs over boulders worn round by the winds of time. In my case, I bellied down to their cold curves, slithered and strained, and then lifted my arm to hook myself on my husband's strong hands and allow myself to be pulled to my feet. My eyes met his. He steadied my body with his arms, never letting go, never losing the lock of our gaze. He knew, with the academic knowledge of the unafraid, that the real victory lay not in my painful traverse of the two-mile path but in my decision to make the trek at all, despite my intense, life-long struggle with acrophobia.
I slowly turned away from the center of the space on top of Pinnacle Mountain, and faced outward. A warmth spread from the clenched pit of my stomach upward to my chest, to the constricted airways; downward to my feet and toes tightly curled within my shoes. My eyes did not work, at first. I trembled, my knees cratering, my body slack against Chester's strong, sturdy frame. We did not speak. In a few minutes, my vision cleared, and I beheld an endless swathe of sapphire meeting an expanse of emerald, with the crystalline river snaking through it. There were no clouds, no wind: just the mountain, and the valley, and the shimmering sky.
As my foot struck the last step on the first floor of the parking garage, and my mind wrenched itself back to 2010, I closed my eyes to savor a memory of the sweet kiss of the sun's warmth, in Arkansas, on a spring day, in another life, another century, another world. And then a hurrying body bumped against me as I pushed the heavy, cold glass of the door to Oak Street, and the fumes of the city hit me, and I heard the repeated mechanical click of the accessible walk light, mixed with the diesel roar of a passing bus.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Brookside, Kansas City, Missouri
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The Missouri Mugwump®
- M. Corinne Corley
- I've been many things in my life: A child, a daughter, a friend; a wife, a mother, a lawyer and a pet-owner. I've given my best to many things and my worst to a few. I live in Brookside, in an airplane bungalow. I'm an eternal optimist and a sometime-poet. If I ever got a poem published in The New Yorker, I would die a happy woman. I'm a proud supporter of the Arts in the California Delta. I vote Democrat, fly a Peace flag, live in a tiny house on wheels, cry at Hallmark commercials, and recycle. I am The Missouri Mugwump. ®