Good morning,
The cursed cell phone alarm rang at seven. I had not intended to be jarred from sleep but I let myself lie abed for a few minutes so no harm befell me. When I finally rose, my legs worked well enough, the dizziness had passed, and the craving for caffeine had taken hold.
I padded around the house shamelessly, slippers on my feet and robe clutched against my chest. One of the nicest things about middle-age has to be the sudden lack of concern for one's morning appearance. Hair scrunched, skin blotchy, nails bitten and bent. Yawn. Heat another cup of coffee, why don't you, you'll be fine. I laughed at myself and did just that, as the dog thumped her tail against the floor and eyed me, wondering, no doubt, if I would make her go outside.
I had to tell my son that Easter had come, during a call last night which ended with ten minutes at the end of the driveway talking into the air. I still marvel over the concept of Bluetooth, which connects itself to my mobile and allows me to chatter away as I drive down the roadway, both hands on the wheel, radio off, looking obliviously loony except for the fact that no one sees, since they're all on their hands-free cell phones, talking to their sons. Or daughters. Or whatevers. My son said, Tomorrow's Easter? I had no idea. Doesn't that come in April?
I didn't raise my son with any sort of religion. He's baptized in the Catholic Church, because that's what Catholics do, even recovering ones, and he spent two grueling years at St. Peter's Catholic Grade School which experience, he said, turned him atheist at the age of 10. I don't know where he stands on the existence of a divine entity, let alone on the divinity of Jesus Christ or life ever after, amen. We did Easter with the Taggarts, ham on the table, chocolate in baskets. Occasionally we visited other people's churches in our "Sunday Best", but usually we just did brunch in the dining room, eggs hidden in the yard, and lots of candy.
One year the Easter Egg Hunt halted while Maher Sagrillo, age 9, listened to his father tell him that as a Muslim, he could not hunt for pagan goodies in Auntie Corinne's front yard. When the phone disconnected on the faraway father, Maher's mother consoled him and Auntie Corinne said, Fine, then, don't hunt, and commanded the other little boys to fill Maher's basket before their own. Done and done. In their matching white shirts, the ones they'd worn in Auntie Corinne's wedding, Patrick, Chris, Sam, and Maher sat on our steps and ate themselves sick with jelly beans and Reese's Peanut Butter Bunnies.
When my brothers Frank and Steve were about that same age, mother made Easter cards from prints of the two little boys carving the pumpkin at Halloween the previous year. I hand-wrote the message inside each card: Happy Easter, Happy Spring, Happy Happy EVERYTHING. My mother loved a good metaphor.
In a little while, I will make a visit to the cemetery and then throw my bag into the car and drive to Honker Springs Farm. I will give myself over to Ellen Carnie's hug, and sink into her comfortable couch. We'll figure out dinner, and maybe have a glass of wine. Jerry Stewart, her gentleman friend, will squire us wherever we go. I'll sleep like a baby in the guest room under an old quilt, and waken with the first light. I will putter around her kitchen making coffee, which I'll drink on the deck, with the sun pulling itself over the horizon. I will tug a shawl around my shoulders and let the cool air cleanse me inside and out. By and by, we will go to Stony Point Presbyterian Church where Ellen and her friends will celebrate their risen Christ.
For my part, I will remember last Easter, when I sat in this same church numb from crying. I will shift so that I can see the people around me. Ellen will beam at me, and Jerry will ask me if I am okay. I will shake my head at both of them, signalling that they should pay me no mind. The choir will raise its voice, and within that tiny warm building, I will close my eyes and let the music flow around me, silently giving thanks that I have survived another year.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Saturday Musings, 19 March 2016
Good morning,
I survived the brutal schedule of the last two weeks. Every chair in my house bears a jacket; most surfaces hold stacks of legal pads, files which should be at my office, and clutches of unsorted mail. I paid the utility bills online but otherwise merely glanced at each day's haul from the mailbox checking for anything critical. Junk, mostly; and bound for the recycle box; but temporarily occupying space as flotsam and jetsam scattered about the place.
Once or twice each year, my docket falls apart like this. But coming on the heels of my California trip, this spate proved particularly grueling. In the middle of the span, I attended a funeral; and tomorrow, I will make a brief appearance at another. Untimely deaths, both: A young girl, and a middle-aged man who had reclaimed a broken life. I sip my tea, here on earth, and realize that both had radiant smiles; dancing eyes; loving, tender hearts.
Perhaps God needed a new crop of angels to breathe life into heaven.
I pad around the house with a touch of aimlessness while my tea brews. The tasks before me seem more daunting than the ones through which I've just safely navigated with only a few scrapes along the hull. I don't dare think about the number of laundry loads or the layer of grime on the stove from the few meals that I've managed to cook for myself. I stare at the nearly bare shelves of the refrigerator. Old Romaine; two yogurt containers; dubious-looking carrots; a half-depleted container of hummus. I close the door and go upstairs with my tea and a rice cake.
A conversation with a friend yesterday has reminded me once more of childhood and the ladies who raised me. My mother, her mother, my sisters. I reflect on our weekly bus trips to my grandmother Corley's apartment in the city; the opulence which surrounded her, as she sat ensconced in her quiet existence. I sank into the quiet, so different from the chaos of my parents' house. I lifted one child's finger to touch the china figurines, the glass birds, the gilt frames. No one scolded me as I marveled over the sheer elegance of everything I saw.
Last night I took myself to my favorite neighborhood restaurant for dinner. I had to feed myself and could not face the drudgery of shopping, exhausted and feverish, bone-weary, laden with the raw emotions of others heaped on me in the course of doing my job. Instead I sat at the counter and ordered the exact assemblage of food that I always get there: three appetizers -- pakora; spiced corn; and vegetable somosas. I strained a bit to settle myself on the high stool, but declined to occupy even a table for two on a busy Friday night. The owner raised his hand, brief thanks for my courtesy, then poured filtered water, setting a linen napkin beside me, asking after my son who used to work for him and whom he never fails to mention.
I ate my meal with my tablet open to a detective novel, translated from Norwegian, light, unchallenging. Afterwards I paid at the register and took the leftovers home for Saturday's lunch. As I pulled away from the curb to drive the three blocks to my house, I saw several families navigating the broken sidewalk towards the restaurant: A teenage girl, a young woman pushing a sleeping toddler in a blue stroller, a couple holding hands. A cat darted in front of my car and I pressed gently down on the brake pedal. As I stopped, I noticed a man watching my car, and I caught his eyes. He smiled and nodded, then walked on, into the restaurant.
I took his smile home with me. Its essence lingered far into the night, a flickering candle warding off the gloom.
Today holds errands. I will grocery shop, buy a few household needs, run to Target for a pair of tights to replace the ones that finally tore beyond usefulness this week. I have not been to my favorite curmudgeon's grave since before I left for California. Though tomorrow's service for my friend Robert will take me to the same cemetery, I want to visit Jay and Joanna's resting place today, in the quiet of the afternoon. I will lay the orange roses on Joanna's headstone, and speak a few quiet words to the lingering essence of the man whose ashes lie beneath the ground there; the man who called me "Honey" and told me he loved me, every time we met. Then I will come back home, and begin the process of setting things right in my world.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
I survived the brutal schedule of the last two weeks. Every chair in my house bears a jacket; most surfaces hold stacks of legal pads, files which should be at my office, and clutches of unsorted mail. I paid the utility bills online but otherwise merely glanced at each day's haul from the mailbox checking for anything critical. Junk, mostly; and bound for the recycle box; but temporarily occupying space as flotsam and jetsam scattered about the place.
Once or twice each year, my docket falls apart like this. But coming on the heels of my California trip, this spate proved particularly grueling. In the middle of the span, I attended a funeral; and tomorrow, I will make a brief appearance at another. Untimely deaths, both: A young girl, and a middle-aged man who had reclaimed a broken life. I sip my tea, here on earth, and realize that both had radiant smiles; dancing eyes; loving, tender hearts.
Perhaps God needed a new crop of angels to breathe life into heaven.
I pad around the house with a touch of aimlessness while my tea brews. The tasks before me seem more daunting than the ones through which I've just safely navigated with only a few scrapes along the hull. I don't dare think about the number of laundry loads or the layer of grime on the stove from the few meals that I've managed to cook for myself. I stare at the nearly bare shelves of the refrigerator. Old Romaine; two yogurt containers; dubious-looking carrots; a half-depleted container of hummus. I close the door and go upstairs with my tea and a rice cake.
A conversation with a friend yesterday has reminded me once more of childhood and the ladies who raised me. My mother, her mother, my sisters. I reflect on our weekly bus trips to my grandmother Corley's apartment in the city; the opulence which surrounded her, as she sat ensconced in her quiet existence. I sank into the quiet, so different from the chaos of my parents' house. I lifted one child's finger to touch the china figurines, the glass birds, the gilt frames. No one scolded me as I marveled over the sheer elegance of everything I saw.
Last night I took myself to my favorite neighborhood restaurant for dinner. I had to feed myself and could not face the drudgery of shopping, exhausted and feverish, bone-weary, laden with the raw emotions of others heaped on me in the course of doing my job. Instead I sat at the counter and ordered the exact assemblage of food that I always get there: three appetizers -- pakora; spiced corn; and vegetable somosas. I strained a bit to settle myself on the high stool, but declined to occupy even a table for two on a busy Friday night. The owner raised his hand, brief thanks for my courtesy, then poured filtered water, setting a linen napkin beside me, asking after my son who used to work for him and whom he never fails to mention.
I ate my meal with my tablet open to a detective novel, translated from Norwegian, light, unchallenging. Afterwards I paid at the register and took the leftovers home for Saturday's lunch. As I pulled away from the curb to drive the three blocks to my house, I saw several families navigating the broken sidewalk towards the restaurant: A teenage girl, a young woman pushing a sleeping toddler in a blue stroller, a couple holding hands. A cat darted in front of my car and I pressed gently down on the brake pedal. As I stopped, I noticed a man watching my car, and I caught his eyes. He smiled and nodded, then walked on, into the restaurant.
I took his smile home with me. Its essence lingered far into the night, a flickering candle warding off the gloom.
Today holds errands. I will grocery shop, buy a few household needs, run to Target for a pair of tights to replace the ones that finally tore beyond usefulness this week. I have not been to my favorite curmudgeon's grave since before I left for California. Though tomorrow's service for my friend Robert will take me to the same cemetery, I want to visit Jay and Joanna's resting place today, in the quiet of the afternoon. I will lay the orange roses on Joanna's headstone, and speak a few quiet words to the lingering essence of the man whose ashes lie beneath the ground there; the man who called me "Honey" and told me he loved me, every time we met. Then I will come back home, and begin the process of setting things right in my world.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Saturday Musings, 12 March 2016
Good morning,
As I stood waiting for the kettle to boil this morning, the sounds of a steady rain surrounded me, wafting into the house through the slight opening in the back door. The dog sniffs the yard, then takes the stairs in the slow ponderous way she has developed, mostly, I've concluded, to guilt me into letting her come back inside. She sprints out the front door if it's left ajar and makes 63rd street before I can find the leash.
But I let her have what she wants, another hour in her bed under the dining room window. As she settles I pour hot water through the cone of the coffee dripper. The Mr. Coffee died while I cavorted about the ocean side. I don't understand why; I had just purchased it six or seven months ago. So I've gone back to my college roots with a 10-Cup Melitta with its plastic cone. I got a single-burner warming plate to replace the one I donated years ago when I thought I'd never need it again. This one has four settings and sits high on the conter. I miss the low, flat one with its single-button feature but I couldn't find a replacement on Amazon.
My mother bought my first Melitta, forty or so years ago when she came to my little apartment on Russell Street where I paid by the week. I kept the place scrupulously clean, not too difficult since I owned next to nothing. Mother stocked my kitchen with cast-off pans from her collection, the Melitta, and dishes from Vet's Village. We had repaired our relationship that far, after my petulant decampment from home the prior year.
My living room had a futon on a folding frame, a couple of rockers, and an old recliner. Mother brought me the old full-sized bedframe and we found a mattress and box spring set somewhere cheap. I had no air conditioning. I ate at a Formica table on a metal chair with the back door propped open for circulation.
Mother did not understand why I insisted on living in the city. But she kept her complaints quiet. By then I had quit my hospital job in North County and found a similar one near my college. I had bought my first car, an MG midget which constantly needed my brother's ministrations. I burned through clutches like Kleenex.
When I got tossed out of that place for bringing black people around my bigoted landlady's precious four-plex, I moved to Laclede Town with two roommates. One of them had a full set of dishes and a couch. They both had lots of friends. Donna, one of them was called -- which I only remember because we worked together, later, at Legal Aid. I think the other one's name was Linda but I'm not sure. It could have been Sue.
They both had their lives on track while I mostly worked, cut classes, drank Scotch at the Student Union, and sat in my bedroom with the door shut feeling sorry for myself. But I adored those girls. I cut my hair because they wore theirs short.
Three campus cops lived in the townhouse across from our back patio. One or the other of them would slip out their patio door and across to ours, rapping on the glass. Whoever heard them pulled the wooden dowel from the well of the doors and let them into the house. They'd borrow coffee, bring us booze, carry heavy furniture without much prompting, and otherwise do what guys do when three women move into the neighborhood. None of us dated any of them. They had girlfriends now and then; Donna and Sue -- yes, her name definitely was not Linda -- always had boyfriends. Our place drew a small crowd once a month. The little dishwasher got a lot of use.
Donna and Sue finished their studies before I did. I stayed in the place by myself for a full semester, not counting the pregnant teenager that lived with me for a few weeks and sat on the patio, smoking, in the November rain. She drank cup after cup of coffee brewed in my Melitta. I took her to an adoption lawyer who helped her find someone to pay her expenses and take her baby. After she left, I was alone.
On my twenty-first birthday, during that last fall of college. Donna, Sue, and a friend of Sue's named Kathy who had a broken voice box and spoke in a whisper, took me on the Admiral to celebrate. On the crowded deck, music blaring, the Mississippi gliding behind us, they pressed frozen drinks with little umbrellas into my hand. I got hopelessly drunk and cried. They danced and held me in a room so crowded that I couldn't have fallen down if I had tried. The music pounded in my head for weeks, fading only with October's chilly evenings, when I'd stand in their empty bedrooms and will them to return.
In a couple of hours, I will don a black flowered dress, and a pink sweater, to attend the funeral of Maddie McDowell who died this week. Her family has requested that mourners wear pink in honor of her youth and sweetness. This will be the second funeral that I've attended in pink, the first having been that of a sixteen-year-old who killed herself. Maddie, with whom my son attended elementary school and who lived across from another family we know, died in her sleep after minor surgery. Her loss grieves me. I cannot imagine bearing the pain which her parents and brother must feel.
The rain saturates the ground and flows from my gutters. I stand at the front door with my crystal mug and think about replacing the broken rocker and buying new plants. Soon spring will unfold herself and spread her grandeur over Brookside. I am ready. I intend to plant pink roses in Maddie's honor.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
As I stood waiting for the kettle to boil this morning, the sounds of a steady rain surrounded me, wafting into the house through the slight opening in the back door. The dog sniffs the yard, then takes the stairs in the slow ponderous way she has developed, mostly, I've concluded, to guilt me into letting her come back inside. She sprints out the front door if it's left ajar and makes 63rd street before I can find the leash.
But I let her have what she wants, another hour in her bed under the dining room window. As she settles I pour hot water through the cone of the coffee dripper. The Mr. Coffee died while I cavorted about the ocean side. I don't understand why; I had just purchased it six or seven months ago. So I've gone back to my college roots with a 10-Cup Melitta with its plastic cone. I got a single-burner warming plate to replace the one I donated years ago when I thought I'd never need it again. This one has four settings and sits high on the conter. I miss the low, flat one with its single-button feature but I couldn't find a replacement on Amazon.
My mother bought my first Melitta, forty or so years ago when she came to my little apartment on Russell Street where I paid by the week. I kept the place scrupulously clean, not too difficult since I owned next to nothing. Mother stocked my kitchen with cast-off pans from her collection, the Melitta, and dishes from Vet's Village. We had repaired our relationship that far, after my petulant decampment from home the prior year.
My living room had a futon on a folding frame, a couple of rockers, and an old recliner. Mother brought me the old full-sized bedframe and we found a mattress and box spring set somewhere cheap. I had no air conditioning. I ate at a Formica table on a metal chair with the back door propped open for circulation.
Mother did not understand why I insisted on living in the city. But she kept her complaints quiet. By then I had quit my hospital job in North County and found a similar one near my college. I had bought my first car, an MG midget which constantly needed my brother's ministrations. I burned through clutches like Kleenex.
When I got tossed out of that place for bringing black people around my bigoted landlady's precious four-plex, I moved to Laclede Town with two roommates. One of them had a full set of dishes and a couch. They both had lots of friends. Donna, one of them was called -- which I only remember because we worked together, later, at Legal Aid. I think the other one's name was Linda but I'm not sure. It could have been Sue.
They both had their lives on track while I mostly worked, cut classes, drank Scotch at the Student Union, and sat in my bedroom with the door shut feeling sorry for myself. But I adored those girls. I cut my hair because they wore theirs short.
Three campus cops lived in the townhouse across from our back patio. One or the other of them would slip out their patio door and across to ours, rapping on the glass. Whoever heard them pulled the wooden dowel from the well of the doors and let them into the house. They'd borrow coffee, bring us booze, carry heavy furniture without much prompting, and otherwise do what guys do when three women move into the neighborhood. None of us dated any of them. They had girlfriends now and then; Donna and Sue -- yes, her name definitely was not Linda -- always had boyfriends. Our place drew a small crowd once a month. The little dishwasher got a lot of use.
Donna and Sue finished their studies before I did. I stayed in the place by myself for a full semester, not counting the pregnant teenager that lived with me for a few weeks and sat on the patio, smoking, in the November rain. She drank cup after cup of coffee brewed in my Melitta. I took her to an adoption lawyer who helped her find someone to pay her expenses and take her baby. After she left, I was alone.
On my twenty-first birthday, during that last fall of college. Donna, Sue, and a friend of Sue's named Kathy who had a broken voice box and spoke in a whisper, took me on the Admiral to celebrate. On the crowded deck, music blaring, the Mississippi gliding behind us, they pressed frozen drinks with little umbrellas into my hand. I got hopelessly drunk and cried. They danced and held me in a room so crowded that I couldn't have fallen down if I had tried. The music pounded in my head for weeks, fading only with October's chilly evenings, when I'd stand in their empty bedrooms and will them to return.
In a couple of hours, I will don a black flowered dress, and a pink sweater, to attend the funeral of Maddie McDowell who died this week. Her family has requested that mourners wear pink in honor of her youth and sweetness. This will be the second funeral that I've attended in pink, the first having been that of a sixteen-year-old who killed herself. Maddie, with whom my son attended elementary school and who lived across from another family we know, died in her sleep after minor surgery. Her loss grieves me. I cannot imagine bearing the pain which her parents and brother must feel.
The rain saturates the ground and flows from my gutters. I stand at the front door with my crystal mug and think about replacing the broken rocker and buying new plants. Soon spring will unfold herself and spread her grandeur over Brookside. I am ready. I intend to plant pink roses in Maddie's honor.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Saturday Musings, 05 March 2016
Good morning,
I've heard it said that the mark of a good party comes when something breaks, preferably a wine bottle or a beautiful crystal goblet. It's a party now! But for me, the sign that a function has succeeded lies in the ache of my feet, the knot in my knee, and the exhaustion that claims me when I finally collapse into bed.
I felt every speck of that last night after the opening reception for the latest artists at Suite 100, the professional suite that I've shared with four other professionals (friends, all) for the last six years. I'm not sure I can faithfully reconstruct how these art receptions developed, but we have them four times a year. The March and June openings are "all about the art". In September, we do a fundraiser for two area domestic violence shelters, Rose Brooks in Missouri and SAFEHOME in Kansas. Then in December, our big annual Holiday Open House provides a chance for us to thank our clients, colleagues, and friends for their faith in us and their support of us. At each, new art graces our walls and artists have a chance to mingle and sell their art.
It's hard work, but rewarding. This morning I feel each day of my sixty-plus years, from the ends of my hair to the gnarled tips of my toes. But I'm okay with that; I can feel, therefore, I still live.
As I sit peering through the still-broken slats of the blind in one of my north-facing windows, I can hear a faint roar. Traffic out on Troost Avenue, perhaps; maybe a distant passing train. A motorcycle courses through my neighborhood, its engine racing to a crescendo as it nears my house, then fading as it moves south. Five birds flutter in the air and land on a taut wire. As they sit, the wire gently sways; suddenly, they lift and dart out of sight. I watch the movement of the wire in their wake and wonder where they would light if humanity had not provided this perch.
Four houses to the north of mine, an overturned wheelbarrow protrudes from a pile of spaded earth. Squirrels dart along its upper edge, catapulting into a nearby spindly dogwood. My neighbor has torn down a small gazebo and started work on her backyard, hoping, I suppose, to match the beauty of her front yard plantings which already put the rest of us to shame as we walk past. I remember when the people before her leveled the yard for a swing set. Our children took turns on the glider before running three yards over to conquer the jungle gym in my backyard. The littlest, Rebecca, scurried behind her brother Dane and my son Patrick, dragging a doll in the dirt as she ran. Though our yards were fenced, a series of old gates yielded as the kids darted from one house to the other,
The gates are gone now. Rebecca and Dane moved to Kansas, and my son found other playmates. Decades receded; those laughing, flushed children no longer exist. The Girl Scouts who lived on 61st Terrace are college students and graduates. I see their parents at parties once or twice a year. We trade stories of our children's successes, beaming and proud beneath our grey hair.
I have survived to middle age. I count among the days gone by, the loss of both parents and one brother; four failed pregnancies including my son's twin; one live birth, three marriages and three divorces; life in three states and five cities; two home purchases; a moderately successful law practice; three separate, successful efforts to overcome substance dependence; the intentional loss of eight-two pounds; and the acquisition of a heartbreakingly loyal group of friends. I've fallen in love five times; had my heart broken six times (counting the loss of my son's twin as one); and outlived a firm prediction of my impending death by eighteen years and counting. I survived Catholic schools, an alcoholic abusive father, two tornadoes -- one of which some disputed, calling it a mere straight-line wind; and an attack on an emergency room in which two people died from close-range shotgun blasts. I stood fifteen feet behind one of them as he fell to the floor. I have been hit by cars while crossing a street three times, twice unscathed and once with only a crushed leg -- and not one drop of blood shed.
I'm cleaning out the closets at the Holmes house. I sense the approach of a storm; or perhaps a tidal wave. Change looms around the corner. I feel the need to jettison anything that will not aid my survival. Meanwhile, the world turns outside my window. My son voted for the first time this week, in the Illinois presidential primary. I have tried off and on for the last six years to convince him to exercise his civic duty. I had stopped trying; his decision to register had nothing to do with me, unless you count whatever passion I have inspired in him for the betterment of the world around us.
Now the dog barks to be let back into the house, pulling me from these pleasant reveries. By the light streaming through the window, I know that the hour of my next obligation draws near. I leave the keyboard, and the cold cup of coffee beside it, and take up the day.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
I've heard it said that the mark of a good party comes when something breaks, preferably a wine bottle or a beautiful crystal goblet. It's a party now! But for me, the sign that a function has succeeded lies in the ache of my feet, the knot in my knee, and the exhaustion that claims me when I finally collapse into bed.
I felt every speck of that last night after the opening reception for the latest artists at Suite 100, the professional suite that I've shared with four other professionals (friends, all) for the last six years. I'm not sure I can faithfully reconstruct how these art receptions developed, but we have them four times a year. The March and June openings are "all about the art". In September, we do a fundraiser for two area domestic violence shelters, Rose Brooks in Missouri and SAFEHOME in Kansas. Then in December, our big annual Holiday Open House provides a chance for us to thank our clients, colleagues, and friends for their faith in us and their support of us. At each, new art graces our walls and artists have a chance to mingle and sell their art.
It's hard work, but rewarding. This morning I feel each day of my sixty-plus years, from the ends of my hair to the gnarled tips of my toes. But I'm okay with that; I can feel, therefore, I still live.
As I sit peering through the still-broken slats of the blind in one of my north-facing windows, I can hear a faint roar. Traffic out on Troost Avenue, perhaps; maybe a distant passing train. A motorcycle courses through my neighborhood, its engine racing to a crescendo as it nears my house, then fading as it moves south. Five birds flutter in the air and land on a taut wire. As they sit, the wire gently sways; suddenly, they lift and dart out of sight. I watch the movement of the wire in their wake and wonder where they would light if humanity had not provided this perch.
Four houses to the north of mine, an overturned wheelbarrow protrudes from a pile of spaded earth. Squirrels dart along its upper edge, catapulting into a nearby spindly dogwood. My neighbor has torn down a small gazebo and started work on her backyard, hoping, I suppose, to match the beauty of her front yard plantings which already put the rest of us to shame as we walk past. I remember when the people before her leveled the yard for a swing set. Our children took turns on the glider before running three yards over to conquer the jungle gym in my backyard. The littlest, Rebecca, scurried behind her brother Dane and my son Patrick, dragging a doll in the dirt as she ran. Though our yards were fenced, a series of old gates yielded as the kids darted from one house to the other,
The gates are gone now. Rebecca and Dane moved to Kansas, and my son found other playmates. Decades receded; those laughing, flushed children no longer exist. The Girl Scouts who lived on 61st Terrace are college students and graduates. I see their parents at parties once or twice a year. We trade stories of our children's successes, beaming and proud beneath our grey hair.
I have survived to middle age. I count among the days gone by, the loss of both parents and one brother; four failed pregnancies including my son's twin; one live birth, three marriages and three divorces; life in three states and five cities; two home purchases; a moderately successful law practice; three separate, successful efforts to overcome substance dependence; the intentional loss of eight-two pounds; and the acquisition of a heartbreakingly loyal group of friends. I've fallen in love five times; had my heart broken six times (counting the loss of my son's twin as one); and outlived a firm prediction of my impending death by eighteen years and counting. I survived Catholic schools, an alcoholic abusive father, two tornadoes -- one of which some disputed, calling it a mere straight-line wind; and an attack on an emergency room in which two people died from close-range shotgun blasts. I stood fifteen feet behind one of them as he fell to the floor. I have been hit by cars while crossing a street three times, twice unscathed and once with only a crushed leg -- and not one drop of blood shed.
I'm cleaning out the closets at the Holmes house. I sense the approach of a storm; or perhaps a tidal wave. Change looms around the corner. I feel the need to jettison anything that will not aid my survival. Meanwhile, the world turns outside my window. My son voted for the first time this week, in the Illinois presidential primary. I have tried off and on for the last six years to convince him to exercise his civic duty. I had stopped trying; his decision to register had nothing to do with me, unless you count whatever passion I have inspired in him for the betterment of the world around us.
Now the dog barks to be let back into the house, pulling me from these pleasant reveries. By the light streaming through the window, I know that the hour of my next obligation draws near. I leave the keyboard, and the cold cup of coffee beside it, and take up the day.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Saturday Musings, 27 February 2016
Good morning,
I sit in a kitchen in the Dolphin building at Pigeon Point Lighthouse hostel. A mother and daughter drink coffee at one end while I write. Beside them, at their end, a woman with lovely black hair and a marvelous Canon talks about the photography camp that she's been attending. This scenario evokes the deepest contentment in my breast. When you ask why I stay at hostels, this is the "why" of it; not the low cost, or the quiet, or the ability to cook my own food though all of those appeal to me. But I stay at hostels for the people.
I lay in bed last night contemplating the events of Friday, listening the gentle snoring from someone in the bunk above me. I had gotten lost in a fog bank on Hawk Point above Marin Headlands. I maneuvered the one way road at fifteen miles per hour, terrified. I did not intend to climb the hill; I just wanted to take the coastal route back to San Francisco. I finished the round back at the hostel and headed for the tunnel on Bunker Road and back to the city and the Nineteenth Street exit which put me on California Highway 1.
With the ocean to my right I drove south, first to Pacifica where I had breakfast. The owner of the cafe told a tender tale of buying mugs with large handles in order to always accommodate people with arthritis in honor of his father. I drank coffee and thought about fathers. And brothers. I tried to ignore the pain in my legs, breathing in the heady scent of the sea, taking the air deep within me and letting it ease the tension.
My brother Frank's face rose in my mind. But not my brother the father of seven, grandfather of two. My brother the nine year old standing in the doorway of the front bedroom in our childhood home. I lie in bed, twelve years old, suffering my first bout of dysmenorrhoric menstrual cramps. My brother does not understand why I cannot do the dishes. He knows my turn to wash has come; he's stamping his feet and accusing me of faking so that he will have to do my chore. She does not LOOK sick, he insists. My mother does not know what to say. Close the door! I snap. I cannot believe the pain.
I fall asleep.
I waken to a gentle tap on the door. What do you want, I groan. The old walnut door creaks as it swings forward. Through the gloom, I see Frank standing in the doorway, backlit by the soft light of the hallway. I brought you something, he whispers, stepping forward with a tray. I scrunch forward and prop a pillow against the wall. My brother settles the tray across my legs and I see that he has brought a plate of vanilla wafers, a cup of hot tea, and the Sunday comics.
Now the sun rises over the waves which crash against the shore. The tension has drained from my body with a night of sleep. I still feel a lingering anger at whoever stole the shawl from the front seat of my rental car and the billing officer from Stanford who waited until the Friday before my Monday appointments to tell me that one setting of testing has not been approved by my insurance company. But with the night's passing, these seem less grim, less hopeless. I realize that Brenda, who gave me the shawl, will not blame me. I know that the one test which has been disapproved for payment can be done in Kansas City and the results sent back to Stanford. Still I mourn the chance to sit beside the ocean wrapped in that beautiful shawl.
The cramps which wracked me at age twelve prompted that first Darvon prescription, my first step on the long slippery slope to dependence and addiction. I once wrote a poem about those vanilla wafers that my brother carefully arranged on a purple Melamac plate. I still have those plates; I claimed them when we divided my parents' belongings. Every once in a while, when the pain claims me, I put a little pile of cookies on one of those plates and eat them slowly, with a cup of tea, and think about home.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
I sit in a kitchen in the Dolphin building at Pigeon Point Lighthouse hostel. A mother and daughter drink coffee at one end while I write. Beside them, at their end, a woman with lovely black hair and a marvelous Canon talks about the photography camp that she's been attending. This scenario evokes the deepest contentment in my breast. When you ask why I stay at hostels, this is the "why" of it; not the low cost, or the quiet, or the ability to cook my own food though all of those appeal to me. But I stay at hostels for the people.
I lay in bed last night contemplating the events of Friday, listening the gentle snoring from someone in the bunk above me. I had gotten lost in a fog bank on Hawk Point above Marin Headlands. I maneuvered the one way road at fifteen miles per hour, terrified. I did not intend to climb the hill; I just wanted to take the coastal route back to San Francisco. I finished the round back at the hostel and headed for the tunnel on Bunker Road and back to the city and the Nineteenth Street exit which put me on California Highway 1.
With the ocean to my right I drove south, first to Pacifica where I had breakfast. The owner of the cafe told a tender tale of buying mugs with large handles in order to always accommodate people with arthritis in honor of his father. I drank coffee and thought about fathers. And brothers. I tried to ignore the pain in my legs, breathing in the heady scent of the sea, taking the air deep within me and letting it ease the tension.
My brother Frank's face rose in my mind. But not my brother the father of seven, grandfather of two. My brother the nine year old standing in the doorway of the front bedroom in our childhood home. I lie in bed, twelve years old, suffering my first bout of dysmenorrhoric menstrual cramps. My brother does not understand why I cannot do the dishes. He knows my turn to wash has come; he's stamping his feet and accusing me of faking so that he will have to do my chore. She does not LOOK sick, he insists. My mother does not know what to say. Close the door! I snap. I cannot believe the pain.
I fall asleep.
I waken to a gentle tap on the door. What do you want, I groan. The old walnut door creaks as it swings forward. Through the gloom, I see Frank standing in the doorway, backlit by the soft light of the hallway. I brought you something, he whispers, stepping forward with a tray. I scrunch forward and prop a pillow against the wall. My brother settles the tray across my legs and I see that he has brought a plate of vanilla wafers, a cup of hot tea, and the Sunday comics.
Now the sun rises over the waves which crash against the shore. The tension has drained from my body with a night of sleep. I still feel a lingering anger at whoever stole the shawl from the front seat of my rental car and the billing officer from Stanford who waited until the Friday before my Monday appointments to tell me that one setting of testing has not been approved by my insurance company. But with the night's passing, these seem less grim, less hopeless. I realize that Brenda, who gave me the shawl, will not blame me. I know that the one test which has been disapproved for payment can be done in Kansas City and the results sent back to Stanford. Still I mourn the chance to sit beside the ocean wrapped in that beautiful shawl.
The cramps which wracked me at age twelve prompted that first Darvon prescription, my first step on the long slippery slope to dependence and addiction. I once wrote a poem about those vanilla wafers that my brother carefully arranged on a purple Melamac plate. I still have those plates; I claimed them when we divided my parents' belongings. Every once in a while, when the pain claims me, I put a little pile of cookies on one of those plates and eat them slowly, with a cup of tea, and think about home.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Saturday Musings, 20 February 2016
Good morning,
I always have a cup of something warm at hand, and today coffee sits in one of my collegiate collection mugs, on the little clay disk that Patrick made in his pre-school days. The sun has not yet risen. The dog still sleeps.
Last evening, I completed a form for yet-another-specialist, this time an audiologist at Stanford. When I got to the "Vertigo Questionnaire", I could have started the "yes" circle at the top of the page and looped them all. But I answered each individually. Halfway down, one stood bold against the page:
Are you ever worried that your dizziness will cause other people to think you are intoxicated?
A montage of painful memories clutters my mind. Not my dizziness, I said, outloud, to the empty room. Not that. Not that.
I am walking across St. Louis University's campus, eighteen years old, under a waist-length sheath of knotted curly hair, wearing frayed bell-bottom blue jeans and an army jacket. My stomach knotted, my heart pounding.
I had not anticipated the size of the place, nor the hordes of students, the rushing bicycles and blaring radios. Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. Other than short trips to rural Illinois, I had only left Jennings, my hometown, twice before my college days. I had taken the train to Washington, DC to visit my sister, and I had flown out to Denver for the same purpose during the week of the McGovern election in the fall of 1972. Even being driven to the wrong DC quadrant by an unscrupulous cab driver late at night did not prepare me for walking across a crowded college campus.
In the days which followed that first frantic encounter with the underbelly of academic life, I learned to walk with my head down, watching my feet, clutching my notebooks. In the warm autumn days, the quad teemed with groups of students. They flopped on the ground, flipped skateboards on the sidewalk, and drilled Frisbees through the air. I stumbled past all of them, from dorm to lecture hall, from the parking lot to the Student Union.
My progress yielded not the catcalls bestowed on other females but disgusted muttering. Watch it, someone would bark at me, as they rambled down the sidewalk, swinging a heavy satchel. Get out of the way, would you? came to me from a swiftly moving bike. I dodged and darted. Sometimes I fell. Often I fell. No one leaned down to lift me from the ground in those days before being disabled got some measure of coolness, the days before the ADA.
Are you drunk? The most-asked question, despite the time of day. Professors, grad students, my contemporaries, maintenance workers. I never bothered to tell them that when I was drunk, I never walked anywhere. I just slid further down in my chair and grinned at whoever sat nearest.
I had not really dated in high school, not in the way of my classmates. I had a couple of boyfriends who had been friends of my brothers. But I had not "gone to Prom", nor worn somebody's senior ring or letter jacket, signs of the time showing you were no longer single. I did not expect much more from college. I had not changed; I understood that most folks don't like to date people like me.
But one person did, and I greedily accepted his invitation. He came to get me -- driving from his family's home in Webster Groves all the way into the city in his Gremlin.
A block from campus, an Oldsmobile ran a stop sign and slammed itself into the passenger door. An hour later, clinging to a fireman, I listened as the jaws of life wrenched me free of the gnarled metal that had been the little car in which we rode.
In the following weeks, I learned to walk with a new twist, a dislocated hip. My guardian angel had cloaked me in her protective arms and I had escaped any other injury. But oh, that hip! It popped out of joint with a dogged capriciousness that defied prediction.
And now the memory rises higher, and I see myself:
I'm walking down the hallway of my dormitory. It's midnight. I've just come upstairs from the vending machine in the lobby. I carry a diet Coke and a Snickers bar. Protein and Caffeine, I called the snack, when I walked back into the lobby of the women's dorm beyond the security guard. He smiled and went back to his book, a work-study student putting himself through college guarding girls who defied his presence by sneaking their boyfriends through the basement windows.
I take the elevator to the second floor and start walking to my room. Suddenly I am down, staggering against the wall. The can of soda skitters down the carpet, coming to a halt against a closed door. I hear the echo of the thud and then silence.
My situation seems hopeless. I lean against the wall and close my eyes, waiting for the long shudder of pain to subside. I listen for signs of life, of other girls coming from their evenings at the library or in the boys' dorm on the other side of the lobby, or one of the floors of co-ed housing in the tall building in-between. But no one comes for a long, long time and I begin to cry.
Just then a group of girls rounds the corner and sees me. Oh thank God,I think, and call out to them, Can you help me? But they hurry into a room at the other end of the hall. I hear someone say, She's always drunk, just ignore her, and then, the hallway falls silent and empty.
An hour goes by and I'm still there when the R.A. comes back to her room and finds me. She hoists me up and carries me into her room and calls the campus medics. She holds my hand while they load me on the stretcher, and followed in her car as the ambulance took me back to the very hospital where the firefighters and medics had rushed me after they freed me from the metal trap. That R.A. sat with me while the ER doc examined my X-Rays, wrote a prescription, and scribbled on my discharge papers. Then she took me back to the dorm and settled me into my room.
We didn't have cell phones yet, but we all had phones in our room and she pulled mine on its long cord to sit on the floor beside me. Then she slipped away, just before dawn, just before the pain medication pulled me down into a delicious fog, an abyss from which I would not emerge for decades.
Now the sun has risen and my duties call to me. Today we have a "closing reception" at my Suite for the artists whose work has shown there since December. I have laundry to do, and plans to make for tomorrow's Rotary workshop and my trip to California on Wednesday. I place the completed audiology questionnaire in the blue folder where I have print-outs of all the reservations for that trip. I drain the last of my coffee, and then, the day begins.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
I always have a cup of something warm at hand, and today coffee sits in one of my collegiate collection mugs, on the little clay disk that Patrick made in his pre-school days. The sun has not yet risen. The dog still sleeps.
Last evening, I completed a form for yet-another-specialist, this time an audiologist at Stanford. When I got to the "Vertigo Questionnaire", I could have started the "yes" circle at the top of the page and looped them all. But I answered each individually. Halfway down, one stood bold against the page:
Are you ever worried that your dizziness will cause other people to think you are intoxicated?
A montage of painful memories clutters my mind. Not my dizziness, I said, outloud, to the empty room. Not that. Not that.
I am walking across St. Louis University's campus, eighteen years old, under a waist-length sheath of knotted curly hair, wearing frayed bell-bottom blue jeans and an army jacket. My stomach knotted, my heart pounding.
I had not anticipated the size of the place, nor the hordes of students, the rushing bicycles and blaring radios. Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. Other than short trips to rural Illinois, I had only left Jennings, my hometown, twice before my college days. I had taken the train to Washington, DC to visit my sister, and I had flown out to Denver for the same purpose during the week of the McGovern election in the fall of 1972. Even being driven to the wrong DC quadrant by an unscrupulous cab driver late at night did not prepare me for walking across a crowded college campus.
In the days which followed that first frantic encounter with the underbelly of academic life, I learned to walk with my head down, watching my feet, clutching my notebooks. In the warm autumn days, the quad teemed with groups of students. They flopped on the ground, flipped skateboards on the sidewalk, and drilled Frisbees through the air. I stumbled past all of them, from dorm to lecture hall, from the parking lot to the Student Union.
My progress yielded not the catcalls bestowed on other females but disgusted muttering. Watch it, someone would bark at me, as they rambled down the sidewalk, swinging a heavy satchel. Get out of the way, would you? came to me from a swiftly moving bike. I dodged and darted. Sometimes I fell. Often I fell. No one leaned down to lift me from the ground in those days before being disabled got some measure of coolness, the days before the ADA.
Are you drunk? The most-asked question, despite the time of day. Professors, grad students, my contemporaries, maintenance workers. I never bothered to tell them that when I was drunk, I never walked anywhere. I just slid further down in my chair and grinned at whoever sat nearest.
I had not really dated in high school, not in the way of my classmates. I had a couple of boyfriends who had been friends of my brothers. But I had not "gone to Prom", nor worn somebody's senior ring or letter jacket, signs of the time showing you were no longer single. I did not expect much more from college. I had not changed; I understood that most folks don't like to date people like me.
But one person did, and I greedily accepted his invitation. He came to get me -- driving from his family's home in Webster Groves all the way into the city in his Gremlin.
A block from campus, an Oldsmobile ran a stop sign and slammed itself into the passenger door. An hour later, clinging to a fireman, I listened as the jaws of life wrenched me free of the gnarled metal that had been the little car in which we rode.
In the following weeks, I learned to walk with a new twist, a dislocated hip. My guardian angel had cloaked me in her protective arms and I had escaped any other injury. But oh, that hip! It popped out of joint with a dogged capriciousness that defied prediction.
And now the memory rises higher, and I see myself:
I'm walking down the hallway of my dormitory. It's midnight. I've just come upstairs from the vending machine in the lobby. I carry a diet Coke and a Snickers bar. Protein and Caffeine, I called the snack, when I walked back into the lobby of the women's dorm beyond the security guard. He smiled and went back to his book, a work-study student putting himself through college guarding girls who defied his presence by sneaking their boyfriends through the basement windows.
I take the elevator to the second floor and start walking to my room. Suddenly I am down, staggering against the wall. The can of soda skitters down the carpet, coming to a halt against a closed door. I hear the echo of the thud and then silence.
My situation seems hopeless. I lean against the wall and close my eyes, waiting for the long shudder of pain to subside. I listen for signs of life, of other girls coming from their evenings at the library or in the boys' dorm on the other side of the lobby, or one of the floors of co-ed housing in the tall building in-between. But no one comes for a long, long time and I begin to cry.
Just then a group of girls rounds the corner and sees me. Oh thank God,I think, and call out to them, Can you help me? But they hurry into a room at the other end of the hall. I hear someone say, She's always drunk, just ignore her, and then, the hallway falls silent and empty.
An hour goes by and I'm still there when the R.A. comes back to her room and finds me. She hoists me up and carries me into her room and calls the campus medics. She holds my hand while they load me on the stretcher, and followed in her car as the ambulance took me back to the very hospital where the firefighters and medics had rushed me after they freed me from the metal trap. That R.A. sat with me while the ER doc examined my X-Rays, wrote a prescription, and scribbled on my discharge papers. Then she took me back to the dorm and settled me into my room.
We didn't have cell phones yet, but we all had phones in our room and she pulled mine on its long cord to sit on the floor beside me. Then she slipped away, just before dawn, just before the pain medication pulled me down into a delicious fog, an abyss from which I would not emerge for decades.
Now the sun has risen and my duties call to me. Today we have a "closing reception" at my Suite for the artists whose work has shown there since December. I have laundry to do, and plans to make for tomorrow's Rotary workshop and my trip to California on Wednesday. I place the completed audiology questionnaire in the blue folder where I have print-outs of all the reservations for that trip. I drain the last of my coffee, and then, the day begins.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Saturday Musings(tm), 13 February 2016
Good morning,
I can see only one light from my window. It shines from the back of a grey house four dwellings north of my back yard. An old pine rises above that home, like the cedar that I finally allowed myself to be persuaded to have removed from my side yard. I miss that cedar. The holly bushes planted in its place shed no debris but do not tower; they do not shade my upper story; they do not even seem to be thriving.
I found small pleasures this week. A trio of apps from my favorite Pakistani restaurant for dinner one night; a spontaneous friendly hug from a nervous client outside the cold courtroom where his wife sat and fumed; the snug warmth of the slippers which my son bought me for Christmas. I ordered a new hair stick for myself from Amazon Prime -- buffalo horn, translucent at the ends, creamy and dark. The low cost surprise me. It came in a box, with a note attesting to its genuineness and instructing how to tell the difference between horn and plastic, as though I would take a heated pin and poke the side of the thing just to ensure that I wisely spent my eight dollars.
I used to have four fat copper hair pins, three inches long with thick prongs. My mother gave them to me. She said they had been given to her by my father's mother, and had originally belonged to my great-grandmother Corinne. I don't know if she spoke the truth but I believed her. I have no reason to think otherwise.
I had crazy long hair for most of my life. I had someone cut it to protest my mother's decision to make me wear orthopoedic shoes in eighth grade. When she cried over my short ragged hair, I spat bitterness at her: If I am going to be ugly, I might as well be ugly all the way. I had paid eight dollars for the hair cut. She paid ten more to have another shop make it look decent.
I cut my hair again when I finished college and moved to Boston. I painted blonde streaks with a kit from the drug store. The new roommates that I found in Brighton, down the Green Line by BC, thought I was gay; they thought their boyfriends would not be tempted by me. They had nothing to fear but not for the reasons they assumed. I ended up dating the only man among them who hid his own true nature. We stayed up all night every night for a week scheming how he could tell his mother and father. I helped him make a plan to come out. I left town a few months later, with shoulder-length hair, faded blonde streaks, and the knowledge that I had succeeded at only one thing in seven months: Helping someone claim his homosexuality.
Twelve years, one-and-a-half degrees, three cities, a marriage and a divorce later, my hair had reached my waist. By that time, I had escaped from Newton County, Arkansas, where the marriage had failed on the horns of our emotional immaturity. I lived in Winslow, practiced ag-law with a radical firm, and twisted my hair into a French chignon for court appearances, securing it with my mother's copper hair pins.
I drove from Fayetteville to Springfield, Missouri in the dead of the winter of 1989 to defend a local cattle rancher in bankruptcy court. My two instructions from the head of my firm: Don't talk to the local press, and don't let that judge push you around. We knew the federal indictment would soon be made public. My mission that day involved protecting the fees paid to my law firm from recapture into the client's bankruptcy estate. My client's original local attorney had gone over to the government's side. I would be cross-examining him and his female partner.
My client drove us both to the federal courthouse. A half-dozen marshals waited by the metal detector. They made my client take off his cowboy boots, the heavy-buckled belt, and his leather jacket. The Oklahoma City bombing would not occur for five and a half years; 9/11 could not even have been imagined. But that courthouse and those U. S. Marshals had prepared for an old cattle rancher accused of selling cows out of PCA trust and his five-foot-three, hundred-pound lady lawyer.
When my turn came, the machine through which I walked bleated in wild and accusatory tones. I wore no belt. I had metal in my knee which they wanded. A gruff-voiced female officer said, It's not her knee, and made me take off my shoes, watching as I struggled to untie them with no where to sit. They put my brogues through the X-Ray conveyor belt while I stood shoeless on the cold floor.
Then they gestured me to walk back under the detector's arch. I came around, ignoring the two officers who had taken everything out of my trial bag and my pocketbook, strewing the contents of both across a table. But one of them said, Wait, what's this? and held up the four-inch crescent wrench that my erstwhile husband had given me, a year or two ago, to tighten the nut on my windshield wiper. My stomach lurched.
It's a weapon, that's what it is, his buddy replied. I had grown weary of this game. My client started forward from the wide stretch of floor beyond the security station. I gestured him to stand down. I explained why I carried the little tool. They confiscated it and told me to go through the metal detector again. When I did, the alarm sounded and then I remembered my hair pins. I thought, does copper set off metal detectors? about the time that one of the female officers said, I bet she's got something hid in that bun of hers.
We were due in court in about ten minutes. I frantically pulled the pins from my hair while my client started shoving my files back into the bag and my personal things into my purse. One more pass through the detector, with my hair spilling down over my coat, bare foot, seething, and they let me go. I grabbed my shoes and we ran for the elevator.
They kept my grandmother's hair pins and the little crescent wrench. I went back after the hearing but nobody knew where they were.
I followed the news about the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, and the stand-off between an anti-government militia group and U.S. local and federal law enforcement agencies. I did not agree with what the occupiers demanded. I would not have chosen their method of protest. But as I sit here, seeing my reflection in the old wooden make-up mirror, with my hair held by the buffalo horn hair stick, I yearn for those copper hair pins, which my mother once touched, and my father's mother once used; and which federal marshals confiscated and kept, so many years ago.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
I can see only one light from my window. It shines from the back of a grey house four dwellings north of my back yard. An old pine rises above that home, like the cedar that I finally allowed myself to be persuaded to have removed from my side yard. I miss that cedar. The holly bushes planted in its place shed no debris but do not tower; they do not shade my upper story; they do not even seem to be thriving.
I found small pleasures this week. A trio of apps from my favorite Pakistani restaurant for dinner one night; a spontaneous friendly hug from a nervous client outside the cold courtroom where his wife sat and fumed; the snug warmth of the slippers which my son bought me for Christmas. I ordered a new hair stick for myself from Amazon Prime -- buffalo horn, translucent at the ends, creamy and dark. The low cost surprise me. It came in a box, with a note attesting to its genuineness and instructing how to tell the difference between horn and plastic, as though I would take a heated pin and poke the side of the thing just to ensure that I wisely spent my eight dollars.
I used to have four fat copper hair pins, three inches long with thick prongs. My mother gave them to me. She said they had been given to her by my father's mother, and had originally belonged to my great-grandmother Corinne. I don't know if she spoke the truth but I believed her. I have no reason to think otherwise.
I had crazy long hair for most of my life. I had someone cut it to protest my mother's decision to make me wear orthopoedic shoes in eighth grade. When she cried over my short ragged hair, I spat bitterness at her: If I am going to be ugly, I might as well be ugly all the way. I had paid eight dollars for the hair cut. She paid ten more to have another shop make it look decent.
I cut my hair again when I finished college and moved to Boston. I painted blonde streaks with a kit from the drug store. The new roommates that I found in Brighton, down the Green Line by BC, thought I was gay; they thought their boyfriends would not be tempted by me. They had nothing to fear but not for the reasons they assumed. I ended up dating the only man among them who hid his own true nature. We stayed up all night every night for a week scheming how he could tell his mother and father. I helped him make a plan to come out. I left town a few months later, with shoulder-length hair, faded blonde streaks, and the knowledge that I had succeeded at only one thing in seven months: Helping someone claim his homosexuality.
Twelve years, one-and-a-half degrees, three cities, a marriage and a divorce later, my hair had reached my waist. By that time, I had escaped from Newton County, Arkansas, where the marriage had failed on the horns of our emotional immaturity. I lived in Winslow, practiced ag-law with a radical firm, and twisted my hair into a French chignon for court appearances, securing it with my mother's copper hair pins.
I drove from Fayetteville to Springfield, Missouri in the dead of the winter of 1989 to defend a local cattle rancher in bankruptcy court. My two instructions from the head of my firm: Don't talk to the local press, and don't let that judge push you around. We knew the federal indictment would soon be made public. My mission that day involved protecting the fees paid to my law firm from recapture into the client's bankruptcy estate. My client's original local attorney had gone over to the government's side. I would be cross-examining him and his female partner.
My client drove us both to the federal courthouse. A half-dozen marshals waited by the metal detector. They made my client take off his cowboy boots, the heavy-buckled belt, and his leather jacket. The Oklahoma City bombing would not occur for five and a half years; 9/11 could not even have been imagined. But that courthouse and those U. S. Marshals had prepared for an old cattle rancher accused of selling cows out of PCA trust and his five-foot-three, hundred-pound lady lawyer.
When my turn came, the machine through which I walked bleated in wild and accusatory tones. I wore no belt. I had metal in my knee which they wanded. A gruff-voiced female officer said, It's not her knee, and made me take off my shoes, watching as I struggled to untie them with no where to sit. They put my brogues through the X-Ray conveyor belt while I stood shoeless on the cold floor.
Then they gestured me to walk back under the detector's arch. I came around, ignoring the two officers who had taken everything out of my trial bag and my pocketbook, strewing the contents of both across a table. But one of them said, Wait, what's this? and held up the four-inch crescent wrench that my erstwhile husband had given me, a year or two ago, to tighten the nut on my windshield wiper. My stomach lurched.
It's a weapon, that's what it is, his buddy replied. I had grown weary of this game. My client started forward from the wide stretch of floor beyond the security station. I gestured him to stand down. I explained why I carried the little tool. They confiscated it and told me to go through the metal detector again. When I did, the alarm sounded and then I remembered my hair pins. I thought, does copper set off metal detectors? about the time that one of the female officers said, I bet she's got something hid in that bun of hers.
We were due in court in about ten minutes. I frantically pulled the pins from my hair while my client started shoving my files back into the bag and my personal things into my purse. One more pass through the detector, with my hair spilling down over my coat, bare foot, seething, and they let me go. I grabbed my shoes and we ran for the elevator.
They kept my grandmother's hair pins and the little crescent wrench. I went back after the hearing but nobody knew where they were.
I followed the news about the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, and the stand-off between an anti-government militia group and U.S. local and federal law enforcement agencies. I did not agree with what the occupiers demanded. I would not have chosen their method of protest. But as I sit here, seeing my reflection in the old wooden make-up mirror, with my hair held by the buffalo horn hair stick, I yearn for those copper hair pins, which my mother once touched, and my father's mother once used; and which federal marshals confiscated and kept, so many years ago.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
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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. ®