Saturday Musings, 19 October 2013

Good morning,

I don't dare venture onto the porch in the sharp cold winter morning.  I huddle in the dining room, tablet perched on the five dollar wooden folding table which, with its mate, I scored at an estate sale years ago.  The furnace whirrs; the dog pants, lying on her bed; and periodically my son tells me something clever that he sees on The Onion.  Morning, late fall, Brookside.

My brain clenches and my son's voice melds into that of his long-ago uncle.  I've played this scene before; Stephen hugging a coffee cup, me slouching around in velour pajamas; my mother long gone for work, my father in the basement.  "You don't look much better..."  Steve mumbles as I smirk.  Expletive deleted.  My poison of choice doesn't give me hangovers like his does.  1977, both of us stuck in the family home at the same time, me back from Boston licking my wounds; him between high school and college, before his wild ride into his last two decades.

I take my coffee cup out onto that porch, the porch in Jennings, wide and brick, fronting a street that I know so well.  Tall oaks provide a canopy for the yard.  Wind whistles through their branches; golden leaves flutter to the ground.  I sit on a slightly damp metal chair and settle my feet onto the porch's low wall.  I take another sip of coffee, acrid and strong.  I try to bring myself to full consciousness but the coffee hasn't hit my veins yet.

The door opens and my brother comes out.  He settles into the chair beside mine and sets his coffee cup on the brick pillar.  "Welcome to winter," he says, and we share a short, rueful laugh.  We sit in a silence broken only by the sound of rain  and the occasional rush of a passing car.  We sip our cooling coffee and set the cups onto the brick in unison, glancing towards each other.  No doubt, we are Corleys.  He lights a cigarette.

"So, Boston didn't do it for you," he remarks.  If anybody else had raised this subject, I would have tensed. My little brother accepts my imperfections because they mirror his own.  I tell him no, it didn't do it for me.  "You were going to grad school," he adds.  I shrug.  I was.  I got accepted.  I panicked.  But he knows that, so I remain silent.

"Now what," he asks.  I turn and meet his eyes.  I don't know what happens next, I tell him.  St. Louis U had put my entrance on hold and would take me in January, might even refrain from snickering in the direction of Boston College, which I had planned to attend.  He nods.  Grad School.

"I thought you wanted to be a writer?"  Now he's treading close to rocky waters and neither of us know where the iceberg lies.  He finishes his cigarette and lights another.  I toss my coffee dregs over the south wall onto the neighbor's driveway and don't speak.  The weight of a half-dozen years of stupid choices settles on my shoulders:  The AP classes down the drain because I did not complete the paperwork; the college years swirling round in gallons of Scotch; the seven months in Boston lost in a haze of partying with folks who sobered up faster than I did and excelled at their day jobs.

"Yeah," I tell him. "I wanted to be a writer."  The rain quickens; the sky darkens; and my brother and I sit on the porch with the smoke from his Marlboro rising around our heads.

"It seems to me," he says.  "It seems to me that if you want to be a writer, you should just write."  He finishes his cigarette and stands.  He juggles both our cups by their handles and looks down at me.  His strong jaw juts out from under his pale blue gaze.  "Just write," he  repeats, and goes into the house.

Last night, I got notice that I lost I trial.  I didn't expect to win; the facts turned against my client.  But the decision had been delayed so long that a flicker of hope rose from the ashes of the three-day trial.  Earlier that day, I had learned that I have to try a case on Monday that all the lawyers involved thought would be continued.  We kicked into high gear, and I expect that I will be ready.  My bones ache; I've had a long week, my second funeral this month and the periodic bleating of my heart monitor all soured my faith in the angels.  But here I am, nonetheless, just writing.  And I think the sun has come out.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

Saturday Musings, 12 October 2013

Good morning,

The begonias on my porch have burst forth in bloom again.  Each spring, I trot off to Soil Service and return with a flat of the carefree plants.  I dig my hands in my huge bag of soil and gently set each small begonia in a new bed of dirt, in a clean pot.  I fill my old plastic watering can and soak their roots.  They boldly raise their leaves towards the sun, unfurling their colorful adornment, until late July, when the Missouri heat scalds their greenery and shrivels the delicate petals.  But this year, only my shy little gardenia bush withered; the potted plants grew tall, and full, and sent out blossom after blossom.  I sit looking at them, and thinking of the most recent gardener in my life, my mother-in-law, Joanna Mitchell MacLaughlin, who slipped away from us this week.

She spent the last six months of her life in comfort at a facility aptly called The Sweet Life.  Though at first, she wanted only to go home, nonetheless she felt the room to be comfortable and pretty.  She would pat the table which stood under the window, and gesture to the matching chairs and the wide dresser.  Jay bought these things for me, she told me, time and again, as though perhaps I might have forgotten.  And he bought that lamp, too, she would add, and smile at me.  The smile told me, I am loved, you know; Jabez MacLaughlin loves me.  She didn't need to say the words.  The sweep of her hand, encompassing the tangible  proof of his adoration, said them for her.

I tried to visit her as often as I could.  The "speech therapist" -- a Sweet Life code word for the folks who prompted her to strain her failing memory -- urged us to keep her mind stimulated.  I tried bringing her books in the genre we both enjoyed, but she could not focus.  Then, one clear blue Saturday, I went to Suburban Lawn and Garden, and found a willing clerk.  I want to put together a portable gardening kit, I told him.  I want to garden with my mother-in-law, but we only have a four-foot table on which to work, and one window sill's worth of space.  The man smiled, and pulled a cart over.  He told me to push, and walk with him.  He found a window box, some sturdy hand tools, a good-sized bag of soil, and a flat of begonias.  I added gloves, and a small, long-spouted watering can, and away I went.

I loaded it all on the same dolly that I use to take my trial bag into the courthouse, a small silver carrier which unfolds to the perfect size for one banker's box.  I wheeled it into the Sweet Life and past the wide-eyed, covetous glances of the other residents.  I made my way to Joanna's room, where she sat in a chair, gazing out her window.

She turned her eyes towards me and the corners  of her mouth curled upward.  But the light in her eyes turned radiant when her glance fell on my burden.  You've got begonias, she exclaimed, and extended her hand towards my little four-wheeler.  I hauled the plants, and the window box, and soil, and the shiny new tools, to the dining room table that Jabez MacLaughlin had bought for his beautiful bride.  I spread some newspaper down to protect the table's surface, remarking that the paper probably wasn't good for much else, so bad had its writing gotten.  Joanna laughed, a small, gentle sound; but she did not join me in criticising anything, even the local rag.

I situated the supplies within Joanna's reach.  She looked over the pile without speaking, as though assessing and planning.  Then she picked up the canvas gloves and pulled them over her slender fingers.  She turned her eyes towards me and gestured for me to put some rocks into the bottom of the container.  I held open the bag of soil and she took a handful of good rich dirt, and covered the stones.  She eased the plants from their plastic cups, aligning them in a row within the long rectangle, on top of the first layer of soil. To that point, she had been sitting; but she seemed impatient with my manner of doling out the dirt.  She raised herself from the chair, and dug both of her hands deep into the bag, then changed her mind.  She lifted the bag and dumped a generous mound of dirt, enough to surround the flowers.  She patted the mound level, added more, then looked up at me.  And at that precise moment, I took her picture: Joanna -- making a tiny but lovely garden, on the table that Jabez MacLaughlin got for her.

A few minutes later, her fatigue overcame her and she lowered herself into the chair.  She let me fill the watering can and bring it to her.  It took both of her arms to lift it, but she soaked the soil, then pressed it firmly down around the slender stalks.  I hoisted the finished box to the window sill, situating it under the stained glass piece that Joanna's sister Patt gave her, which dangled from the window lock.  I cleared away the debris, and repacked the gardening tools.  She sat by the table, with a sweet, contented expression molding her delicate features.  I like to garden, she remarked, her face glowing.  We sat in silence for a while, surrounded by the flowers and, restored to their places on her table, the photographs of her daughter Virginia, her son Jim, her grandchildren, and her beloved Jabez.  At that moment, we had no need for words.

I only knew Joanna for a little more than four years.  Like all great ladies, though, she taught me much.  She smiled whenever anyone came into the room.  When she first saw you, she would invariably mention something pleasant -- some little thing about you that she remembered:  a class you were taking, a new job you had, or something she remembered doing with you.  She offered you something refreshing, to eat, or drink; and listened to your stories with an air of interest.  She'd tuck those stories away, and trot them out the next time she saw you, to ask you how things were, and whether you had managed to succeed at something you mentioned intending to try.  And you would go away thinking, what a nice lady, and for the rest of the day, you would wear the smile that she had given you. And that, I would say, is the mark of a wonderful person.

It stormed last night.  The wild release has cleared the air.  I hear my husband's tread upon the stairs, James, the son of Joanna and Jabez.  It's a sound I love.  He's just about to come around the corner; and I feel Joanna's smile, rising to my lips.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

In Memory:  Joanna Mitchell MacLaughlin, 08/17/30 - 10/08/13.  Rest easy.

Saturday Musings, 05 October 2013

Good morning,

At 12:30 a.m. today, a rapid screeching awakened me. I fumbled for my glasses, the small blue flashlight at my bedside, and the little black box clipped to my nightgown. Through groggy, glazed eyes I saw it: A "1" where there had once been a zero. Event recorded. I reached for the phone, punched the 800 number, and imparted this news to the reassuring voice at the other end of the line. I performed the reporting procedure, bolstered by my husband's gentle touch on my arm. Then I hung up the phone.

In the last few weeks, I've answered a slew of questions about my medical history. I'm not sure why I've had to repeat myself, over and over, to techs and doctors whose computer systems merge with one another. Perhaps, like the sly prosecutor or the clever psychologist, they strive to see if my answers change. But that  disembodied voice wanted only to comfort me. A rapid heartbeat for 4.7 seconds provides good information, just what your doctor wants to know, he told me. But nothing about which to feel immediate alarm. The soft cadences of his voice take me back more than three decades, to a waiting room outside of a surgery theatre in North St. Louis County.

A huddle of Corleys stand or sit in small groups. My mother rises, paces, plunks herself back down onto a square vinyl cushion which releases a sharp puff of air with the impact of her body. A couple of brothers stand together in the corner, murmuring in tones too low for me to follow. My boyfriend of the year leans against a wall somewhat apart from them, not accepted, not expecting to be.  

We sit vigil for my father, on whom a cardiac surgeon works, pulling veins from his legs to create bypasses buried in his chest.  

I gaze out a broad window, eyes not seeing the parking lot or the tops of neighborhood trees. I've come from Kansas City, where I'm due to start my first semester of law school. I've been there since May, starting a job that would pay for the first year's expenses, getting situated in an apartment two blocks from the hookers' favorite stroll, trying to decide what to do about the boyfriend. I feel mild resentment at being called home.

I shift from foot to foot. I close my eyes, and let the indistinguishable mutterings of my brothers and sisters wash around me. I prepare to mourn, in case the surgery fails. I do not know if I can. I am twenty-five, and I have yet to forgive my father for his awful sins. That won't come for another five years or more. At this juncture, I cannot summon any sorrow from my belly.

A door swings open. A doctor joins us, wiping his hands on his scrubs, pushing a smile to his weary face. He's fine, he tells my mother. Your husband's a fighter. And funny. My mother stands. Her children move closer, our foreheads pinched, our eyes narrowed. Neither relief nor disappointment floods us.  I experience just some vague emptiness. What do you mean, 'funny', my mother asks. The doctor shakes his head. When he woke in Recovery, he asked the nurse how many bypasses he got. 'Seven,' she told him. The doctor chuckles. 'What's the record for one surgery?', your husband asked. 'Nine', the nurse said. Your husband laid there for a moment, then replied, 'Wheel me back in, I want three more.'  

A wave of something close to amusement ripples through the room. My mother laughs, then, and drops the tightness of her shoulders, and the gaggle of her children present follow suit. I study her face; I realize she would have mourned him, despite everything he has done to her. I do not know, standing beside her small, tired body in that brightly lit waiting room, if she would have mourned my father alone.  And I will never know, as she will die five years later, and he not for another six after that.

The doctor is thanked, his hand shaken, and he tells us we can see our father, two by two. My oldest brother goes first, with my mother, and the rest of us pour ourselves more cups of bad coffee, in little styrofoam cups, and sit down to think our various thoughts, which we do not share.

The tech who did a cardiogram on me yesterday told me that some of the problems for which all the tests searched could be hereditary. Did someone in your family have a heart condition, she asks. I think a moment. My father, I admit. But I have my mother's heart. She spares me a small glance, but doesn't ask me what I mean.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

Saturday Musings, 28 September 2013

Good morning,

When someone several degrees of separation away from the shortest strings of your heart passes, you feel caught between the remoteness of unfamiliarity and the twinges of affection. Did you know her well enough to mourn? Or does that right belong to others, closer, more special, who don't have to strain to remember when they last saw her?

I actually do remember when I last saw Jeanne Jasperse.  She came to my office for some small exchange with Alan White, her long-time friend and music collaborator, also my legal assistant and Chief Damage Control Officer.  I stood next to the counter in my office's kitchen, staring with unseeing eyes at a pleading just received by fax.  Fatigue came over me in waves as I struggled to cope, at that moment dealing with a broken hand.  

Jeanne crossed the dozen feet between us with her long-legged stride and folded me in her arms.  It's so good to see you!  She exclaimed.  Emotion washed over me; not the cleansing wash of baptismal waters, but the damning taint of guilt.  When are we going to have coffee again?  She asked this with smiling reference to our only coffee date, six months before this encounter, when she had materialized in response to my broadcasted wail of self-pity.  Since then, I'd not taken the time to see her again; no reason, really, just a nagging feeling of disconnect, a sense that I might have to climb down from the fence and really engage with someone more genuine that I felt capable of being sometimes.

When were we going to have coffee again?  It turns out: never.

And I remember the first time I saw Jeanne Jasperse: Blayney's, 1986, a week after my first hospital discharge in a decades-long parade.  Wearing black, a shadow of my former self, I slipped into a chair in the farthest table from the stage and assumed an expression of remote disdain.  I flipped my dark shades over the red I carried in my eyes, and pulled my back ram-rod straight, preparing to dislike the two women who stood side by side on the stage next to Alan White.  I grunted my order to Heather, the waitress, then fixed my reluctant eyes on the front of the room, ready to condemn the act, a trio which had formed during my absence from the scene.

And then the voice of an angel filled the room.

Of the two women, Jeanne had the less trained voice back then.  But hers carried sweetness, and the promise of something soothing, and a fragile joy that could not be denied. Her eyes flashed; her hands raised; her chin tilted heavenward; and I felt my resistance fade.  How could I dislike a person so devoid of malice, so drenched in glory?

Over the next thirty years, I rarely saw Jeanne without a beer.  But I also rarely saw her without a smile.  She wore her delight at each meeting with anyone whom she called "friend" like a silk shawl that kept away the evening's chill.  And she considered me a friend, though even before she died, I classified myself as less than a poor excuse for one.

I don't know enough about Jeanne Jasperse to write her obituary.  But these things I know:  She laughed without hesitation.  She cherished her son.  She stuck by her friends. She persevered, though sometimes, she succumbed to the bogeyman who hovered in the corner with his wicked grin. She danced without reservation and loved without expectation.  She faced adversity that I can never comprehend; and lost her way more times than I will ever know, stumbling on broken cobblestones, clutching at the long gnarled branches of trees hanging over her  path which blocked the guiding star and the warming sun.  And this, too, I know:  Jeanne Jasperse sang with a raging purity and an unrelenting passion.

It's just gone midnight.  I cannot sleep.  As always happens when the universe suffers a sudden rending in the shape of a precious and worthy soul, I am awash with a burning mixture of loss and guilt, and something more: gratitude, for the time that I knew her, and the gentleness with which she touched me.

Heaven's choir grows richer this week, and the Kansas City skyline suffers the loss of an under-appreciated treasure.  Oh, Jeanne, Jeanne.  We shall miss you.  Rest easy, my friend.  And thank you.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

Saturday Musings, 21 September 2013

Good morning,

Autumn's gentle bite greets me at the threshold.  I've overslept, after a twenty-four hour period of cleaning, cooking and entertaining for our mini-supper club.  Over a table laden with summer's last best harvest, we dissected the comments of the pope; the tattoo trend; and red wine versus white.  I fell asleep with the ghost of a smile lingering on my face, my husband's snoring acting, for once, like white noise.

My dreams rose in an instant.  I wake, haunted, on the other side of the state.  I realize that I still sleep, but the images surrounding me seem real, touchable.  I stand, back against a wall, in a crowded apartment.  I clutch a thick, short glass, ice clinking, liquid swirling.  A nearby table holds trays of food which I ignore.  I take another drink and gaze around.

I know no one.  I've followed someone to this party who has now left, and I am thinking about doing the same.  But the Scotch is plentiful and free.  I gulp some down and move to another wall.  I close my eyes, just for a moment, and try to catch the thumping rhythm of whatever record spins on the turntable.

I feel something brush against my arm and open my eyes.  A girl stands beside me.  She wears a gauzy dress with thin straps.  She herself barely breaks a hundred pounds, and she stands an inch or two taller than my five feet three.  Her hands are empty; she glances at my drink.  I raise the glass and gesture toward the make-shift bar; speech seems impossible, with the blare of the music and the rumble of the dancers' bodies pounding the floor in crazy staccato.

"Not for me," she mouths; sound might accompany the movement of her lips, but I can't tell.  We stand for a few minutes, strangers holding up a common corner.  She tries to speak again and I shake my head.  She raises one  hand and points to the French doors opening onto the balcony.  I shrug; there's no reason not to leave the noise.

Once outside, we lean against the railing.  "You know these guys?" she asks.  I assume she means whoever lives here.  I tell her no.  We trade names and I finish my Scotch.  "You reminded me of my sister," she tells me.  "I thought you were her, for a second.  That's why I came over."  I wait; a revelation would surely follow.  But she fell silent.  I slid an ice cube into my mouth and  crunched it, tasting the lingering smoke of a quite decent single malt for the place, the day: 1979 in a two-bedroom flat in University City shared by four Washington University grad students.

My new friend shakes her head; she seems to be arguing with herself.  "I'm so tired of all this," she finally sighs.  "Party after party, night after night, bodies pressed too thick, too close.  The smell of sweat and too much perfume.  Doesn't it ever get you down?"

I think a minute.  I see what she means but I'm not sure I can speak.  I have suddenly realized that the drink I've just finished must have been my fourth or fifth, and I can no  longer remember why I'm there.  I look at her profile; her face seems tense, the set of her mouth angry.  I place my glass on the railing and try to say something, anything, to move the conversation away from an edge over which I do not feel capable of stepping.

The girl tosses her shoulders, reaching the end of whatever inner debate she had undertaken.  "Well, I finally did it, I finally dropped the dime.  I called Mom and Dad and told them I've had it with all this.  I haven't been to class in weeks.  I'm going on the road. " She slides  her eyes in my direction.  "I can't live their dream anymore.  I can't make up for what they lost."  She wraps her frail arms around herself; her shudder runs through my own body.  It's clear to me that I have become irrelevant.  Even in my drunkenness, I can see she's talking to someone that I am not.  She falls silent, and gazes down at the street, at the tops of the trees with their straggly brown leaves.

The girl stirs. " Well, I gotta get going," she finally says.  "It's nice to meet you."  She slips between the doors, and I stand, motionless, on the balcony.  In a few minutes, I see her form on the sidewalk.  She stops a few feet from the building, and turns her face upwards.  I swear, I swear, I hear her say, "Goodbye, Sis." And then she is gone.

I've lost my whatever interest I might have had in the party.  No one notices me leaving, or standing on the street baffled because I cannot find my little MG.  No one laughs when I finally realize that I gave that car to my brother and bought a Chevy Nova, which  I have stumbled past three times.  No one watches as I lurch from the curb, and run three red lights before I make it home.  And no one waits in my apartment but I sit on the couch anyway, hoping to hear someone's welcoming voice, until the Scotch finally wins, and I fall asleep, fully clothed, just as the sun starts to rise.

The radio says that it is 53 in Kansas City this morning.  My bones tell me that I did too  much yesterday; but oh, what a nice party we had.  It's a lovely day.  I shake off the ghosts, and move to the kitchen, to pour myself another cup of coffee.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

Saturday Musings, 14 September 2013

Good morning.

Pleasant and high, barely discernible, a critter chirps to its mate.  Last week's heavy drone of locusts has vanished, without the swarms we expect from the periodic awakening of the horde.  I stood on my porch last Sunday, drawn by the unrelenting drone, wondering what year it must be in their cycle.

Another year, another porch.  Our old one, square and flat-roofed, with tall, bowed screens and peeling paint.  My son stands at the edge of our living room, just inside the screendoor, small sticky hands on the bottom panel, nubby nose against the grimy surface of the mesh.  "What is that noise," he asks, in his awed whisper.

I stand behind him, my hand on his head, wondering if our cat has slipped outside to the porch on which she loves to scamper.  She's an indoor cat, white with black heart-shaped spots on her coat, a year old and beloved. I stir, restlessly, as the noise of the locusts rises.  The mild air of September wafts through the screen.

I pull my child away, and close the door against the chatter.  We spend the day in the pleasant ways of mothers and sons: chores, and reading books, and singing songs.  Saturday surrounds us with its warmth.  I set aside my worry that my meager book of clients will not be enough to sustain us.  I pretend I face nothing more challenging than the worn heels on the black cowboy boots that my son wears everywhere, even to bed.

I am asleep before he is most nights, in those days when I have not yet found the balance of the approaching decades.  But I awaken early, lying in a bed too wide by half, wondering if I should make Schmarren for breakfast, thinking about church, missing my mother.

A shriek pierces the air of our home and jolts me from my languid reverie.  I tear away the quilt and race to the sound of my son's cries, wracking sobs punctuated by pleas.  His toddler bed is empty and the sound pulls me to the living room, where he has thrown open the front door.

I hear other sounds from ten feet away, and I quicken my pace, grabbing his small body as his hand reaches for the outer door knob, clutching him to me.  I cannot quite grasp what noise surrounds us; some high, some intense, some low, mixed with a growl.  I realize the whooping throb emanates from the alarm panel and lean against the wall, pressing the buttons which will silence it.

With the blare of the security siren stilled, the other noises stand out:  The locusts have errupted, smashing through through the  screens, swarming, thick as winter rain, filling our porch with their denseness.  I cannot see sunlight.  I slam the front door.  But Patrick's howling intensifies.  He has crossed the line to incoherence, and I sink to the floor, rocking him, murmuring, cooing.  Still he cries, then pummels my chest with his small tight fists.  "Listen to me, Mommy," he demands.  "Listen to me!"

So I stop the motion, and focus.  "My cat is out there!  I have to save my cat!"

The growling.

I must have left the cat on the porch at evening's end.

Only with my strongest promise to rescue his cat can I persuade my son to stay back from the door.  With a broom up-ended held out, wrapped in a trench coat, feet clad in Doc Martens, I pull the front door open.  The swarm's shrillness assaults me.  My son urges me: "Save my cat, Mommy!  You can do it, Mommy!"  And I open the screen door, pulling the heavier inner door behind me, praying that I've been quick enough.

I see our little cat huddled in the corner.  I hear her hiss, and the low rumble of her guarded growl.  I cross through the swirl of locusts and throw the towel I hold down onto the cat, scooping her off the floor, wrapping her tightly.  I drop the broom.  I don't know why I thought it could do anything to protect me.  Locusts slam against my face, my head, my long thick hair.  The cat opens  her claws and presses them against me, clinging.  I back to the door, one arm clutching my burden, the other flailing backwards, until it lands on the brass knob.  I fall through the opening, slamming out the host, stumbling, collapsing onto the sofa.  The cat scrambles away.

My son stands, crowing.  A locust or two has fallen across our threshold, and he stomps on them, pajama legs bunched over his boots.  "I killed them!  I killed them!  Mommy and I saved Sprinkles!"  Sprinkles, the cat, does not thank us.  In fact, she does not even come out from under my son's bed for several days, except, perhaps, to steal food from her dish while we sleep.

The locusts did not hatch this year.  Perhaps the loud drone that engulfed our neighborhood last weekend had some other source.  Perhaps they hunkered down wherever locusts live, before they rise to overtake our porch, and just sang a bit to rattle me.  This morning, though, I cannot hear them.  Maybe what we heard last Sunday was just a memory, like the teasing flash of white and black I spied flicking around the corner of the bushes today, a few feet from the Yellowstone rock, under which our Sprinkles sleeps.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

Saturday Musings, 07 September 2013

Good morning,

I've yet to venture outside the house further than my nose sniffing the calm morning air.  What little news  appears in our morning paper entertained me over a cup of lime yogurt.  I stopped short, appalled, over the story of a mother assaulting her kindergartner's teacher because the five-year-old came home with a scratch  on his face which he attributed to the teacher.  I would be furious to learn that my child had been scratched by his teacher but would I yank her from a chair and slam her face against a file cabinet?  I don't think so.  And certainly, neither my mother nor y father would have.

My parents did defend our honor.  My father marched me back to school after my fourth grade teacher sent me home, a long mile walk, for raising my hand to her after she dug her red pen into my face "to give [me] a check mark that matched [my] freckles", for poor penmanship.  My father admitted that I should not have slapped the teacher but raged at the principal for the deep gouge  in his daughter's nine-year old face.

My mother organized a picket at the convent after one of the elderly nuns pulled me from the floor of the chapel -- the floor that I was scrubbing -- screeching that I was the sister of hippies and not fit to clean a House of God.  We marched behind my mother, carrying signs she had made with pages torn from magazines, depicting flower children and peace-niks.  We crowed in triumph when the mother superior reinstated my $5.00/week job, though transferred me to the high school to appease the smug nun who had sent me sprawling with a flick of the wrist which held one long, fat braid which she had torn from the pins securing it around my head. The new job required me to sling milk, a process which involved standing on a conveyor belt which  fed into the high school kitchen, hauling crates of milk and juice from the back of the delivery truck.  This entitled me to free lunches.

Images of my parents' faces rise around me.  My mother making a straight  row of coins on the breakfast room table, the purpose of which she did  not disclose.  A long rambling story fell from my mouth, word tumbling over word. My mother periodically slid a coin from the row, closer to her, away from me.  My voice faltered.  I eyed her solemn face, careworn olive skin, brown hair rolled in tight curlers held in place by little plastic pegs.  One coin gone; then two; then three.  I resumed my account, though more slowly, as I scrambled to  find a co-relation between something I had said and my mother's silent subtraction of quarters from the shiny line.  I spoke a few more sentences,  saw her finger raise once more and in a flash I got it:   She removed a coin each time I punctuated my sentence with the useless phrase, "you know".  When my story came to an end, six of ten quarters remained, and my mother gave them to me.  

I learned to read at the age of three sitting on my father's lap.  He held the Post-Dispatch in front of me, with one arm encircling my shoulders. One strong hand kept the page still while the other showed me the words as he intoned them.  The blurs crystallized into recognizable blocks of letters as I strained to follow, evening after evening, in the summer before I turned four.

My father didn't teach me very much.  He left the bulk of his children's upbringing to his wife, while he retreated into a fog of alcohol and what I would now call post-traumatic stress disorder, a lasting legacy of the Second World War.  But he taught me to read, and gave me such wonderful rules as he knew:  Always play the house odds; never draw to an inside straight; don't get caught without zip ties, duct tape, and a spare car key.  All the rest  of what I know came from my mother. I like think I am a credit to them both.

The dog paces around the  dining room, wondering why I haven't fed her.  My son retreated back into his room after showing us how to work the new Google Fiber.  My husband has left to join his tennis group for coffee.  I've lost my taste for the newspaper and it lies idle.  Within its pages linger stories of assault, and rape, and mass murder, tales of people who rise or fall on their parents' teachings.  It is enough to make a grown woman cry.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

In Memory:  Richard Adrian Corley, 12/27/22 - 09/07/91.  RIP, Grandpa Sport.