Good morning,
An odd phenomenon has occurred several times in recent days. I have found myself lapsing into inexplicable tears while reading about someone killed in the tornado in Joplin. A husband shielding his wife; a mother dying with a child in her arms, its lifeless body clutched against her breast. The thought of these tragedies stabs into my heart, though I imagine it resembles a mere splinter compared with the rending of the hearts of those who cherished them.
I stood in a neighbor's yard when a tornado touched down, when I was five or six. The father of that household ran out into the melee and scooped my small frame into his arms as their sliding board flew away, just after the tree in our backyard had been torn from the earth. I know what a small funnel cloud can do, and I see the devastation in the before-and-after photos so I am not left to imagine the impact of the largest and most deadly of them. My breath catches; I drop the newspaper, and tears well in my eyes.
Next to the pictures of those whose lives ended last week in Joplin, I find a reference to the resolution of several competitions on television -- shows that I do not watch, and have never seen -- American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, and so forth. I cannot acknowledge the virtue of shows such as this, even as a distraction, though I am known to watch entertainment just as pallid, such as Top Chef and Project Runway. But even I know better than to find such pablum newsworthy in the face of tragic loss. Who cares? I ask myself. Who cares who won this shlock? But someone must.
The world keeps turning. My cases march into fruition; my son ages another day. The balance in my bank account drops at an alarming rate; but my mortgage also dwindles. Three weeks have passed since I broke my wrist; nearly twenty years have slipped away since I first heard my child laughing, under the glaring lights of the delivery room. Fourteen years since my brother died. Twenty-six since we lost my mother.
But only seven days since the lives of over two hundred people ended on the day after the date that an old California man had predicted thousands of faithful would be borne aloft. One week, in which the lives of scores of survivors have stood still while rubble was searched. The collective breath of a nation held; the collective head of a community bowed.
My little world still dances on its axis. I have not lost anyone of recent years; and the three smiling children of this blended family bounce through the summer with glee. Their grades please us; their laughter soothes us; their slightly patronizing air amuses us. We hold them close. We know that we have been incredibly fortunate, to come unscathed, thus far, through the spring of 2011, when others did not fare as well, and now grieve.
One child stayed the night where he spent the evening; another watched television until the wee hours, then rose in time for his Saturday shift. The third has her own orbit, with which our days occasionally intersect. And I, in the last third of my life, can only feel grateful that I was not in Joplin, Afghanistan, Reading, or Iraq this week, and that none of them was. For those who were, I shed some tears, and made a modest contribution to help the efforts of Heart to Heart. I feel inadequate, I feel blessed, and I feel that somehow, somewhere, I should find or make an opportunity to do more.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Saturday Musings, 21 May 2011
Good morning,
The world has not yet ended, so perhaps I have time for one short reflection on my life. I say "short" because I find it difficult to type with a splint encasing my left hand. Yes, folks, all those cautionary tales have come true: I did fall, and I did break my wrist, and all those head-shakers and nay-sayers can now sigh and intone, We told you so!
Every year, at my annual visit to the neurologist, he cautions that I should consider a cane or a walker. I thank him for the suggestion, and remind him of the best advice my mother gave me, which was, "If you walk every day of your life, you will be able to walk every day of your life." I mention, too, that I already have two legs that do not properly communicate with my brain, and the addition of a third just causes a third more confusion (assuming my math skills serve me). He smiles, an enigmatic smile that I choose to interpret as mild amusement, and we part, to reconvene and dance the same dance in twelve months.
My current injury hardly rises to the level of exciting. I took a spill after stepping on a piece of yard debris sitting at the bottom of my front stairs. I felt my body slice through the air and, as usual, thought only of protecting my head and my artificial joint. I landed on my outstretched left hand. Fortunately, I have a thin, small body, and the resultant crack is not "displaced" nor did it extend into the joint. Because I broke my non-dominant hand, I did not have to have a cast.
I think my most glamorous break resulted from doing the chicken dance at my first wedding in 1987. If you are unfamiliar with the chicken dance, imagine a circle of intoxicated hippies in the middle of which each, in turn, must imitate a chicken while the others clap and march first to the right and then to the left. By the time I got to the doctor in Little Rock after my Newton County wedding, my foot had swelled far beyond the capacity of any of my shoes. That ortho guy scratched his head as he showed me the X-Ray, remarking that my foot showed signs of prior breaks. He asked, "Didn't you ever feel any pain that must surely have accompanied these old injuries?" I shrugged. Pain? A Jewish woman I knew back in my misspent youth would say, "Mah nishtanah ha-lahylah ha-zeh mi-kol ha-layloht, mi-kol ha-layloht?", which apparently means, "Why should today be different?"
I owe my artificial knee to a crazed Iranian in a VW Scirroco who couldn't see me because of the glare of the setting sun. He struck me from the left, and I flew higher than the second story of what was then the Tivoli Theatre in Westport. Summer Shipp, now tragically deceased but who owned the Tivoli in 1982, called the police as I sailed past her window. I swear I saw an angel, high above Westport Road, who urged me back down with a gentle push of her heavenly hand. It's not time, she said. I hit the VW's hood, then cracked its windshield with my right knee, shattering the entire leg. Twenty years later the knee surrendered its struggle to endure, and now I have plastic and metal that sets off airport alarms.
But not one drop of blood spilled on the hard asphalt that day, and I lived to make jokes about losing a contact and admonishing bystanders not to carry me to the sidewalk by asking -- Don't you people watch TV? You never move anyone who might have a neck injury!!!
My ankle broke in a horrible accident involving the joystick of an electric wheelchair and generally excessive alcohol consumption. The emergency room didn't catch the break at first, but my diligent doctor did. Those poor little feet had all their toes broken years before that, in a freak spill out in my backyard caused by a mischievous gutter hiding in a bank of snow. My son, aged three at the time, walked down the street to get the neighbor who carried me into the house. And in 2007, I fell going into the Minnesota state fair, resulting in a suspicious chip at the end of my elbow and a painfully dislocated shoulder.
As my husband set out this morning to make the drive to Greencastle, Indiana, to fetch the prodigal son, I tightened the Velcro straps on my splint and cautioned him to drive with care. In addition to my vehicle, of which I am fond, he'll be transporting the two beings most precious to me in this world. He smiled -- not entirely sure, perhaps, of which worried me more: the thought of having to replace the car, or the thought of losing my husband and only born-to-me child. He knows better; but my St. Louis-style humor still occasionally baffles him.
It's been a long nine months, without my son but with a new husband and a new young person barreling in and out of the house with raucous good humor and bursts of song in his beautiful voice. A confident young woman serves as another borrowed daughter, this time with a solid legally recognized connection to match the bond of love. The summer stretches before me. I check over my shoulder, and see that my guardian angel remains watchful. She winks, raises a heavenly cup of Joe, and gives me a little salute.
God is, indeed, in his Heaven, and all is, indeed, right with the world.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
The world has not yet ended, so perhaps I have time for one short reflection on my life. I say "short" because I find it difficult to type with a splint encasing my left hand. Yes, folks, all those cautionary tales have come true: I did fall, and I did break my wrist, and all those head-shakers and nay-sayers can now sigh and intone, We told you so!
Every year, at my annual visit to the neurologist, he cautions that I should consider a cane or a walker. I thank him for the suggestion, and remind him of the best advice my mother gave me, which was, "If you walk every day of your life, you will be able to walk every day of your life." I mention, too, that I already have two legs that do not properly communicate with my brain, and the addition of a third just causes a third more confusion (assuming my math skills serve me). He smiles, an enigmatic smile that I choose to interpret as mild amusement, and we part, to reconvene and dance the same dance in twelve months.
My current injury hardly rises to the level of exciting. I took a spill after stepping on a piece of yard debris sitting at the bottom of my front stairs. I felt my body slice through the air and, as usual, thought only of protecting my head and my artificial joint. I landed on my outstretched left hand. Fortunately, I have a thin, small body, and the resultant crack is not "displaced" nor did it extend into the joint. Because I broke my non-dominant hand, I did not have to have a cast.
I think my most glamorous break resulted from doing the chicken dance at my first wedding in 1987. If you are unfamiliar with the chicken dance, imagine a circle of intoxicated hippies in the middle of which each, in turn, must imitate a chicken while the others clap and march first to the right and then to the left. By the time I got to the doctor in Little Rock after my Newton County wedding, my foot had swelled far beyond the capacity of any of my shoes. That ortho guy scratched his head as he showed me the X-Ray, remarking that my foot showed signs of prior breaks. He asked, "Didn't you ever feel any pain that must surely have accompanied these old injuries?" I shrugged. Pain? A Jewish woman I knew back in my misspent youth would say, "Mah nishtanah ha-lahylah ha-zeh mi-kol ha-layloht, mi-kol ha-layloht?", which apparently means, "Why should today be different?"
I owe my artificial knee to a crazed Iranian in a VW Scirroco who couldn't see me because of the glare of the setting sun. He struck me from the left, and I flew higher than the second story of what was then the Tivoli Theatre in Westport. Summer Shipp, now tragically deceased but who owned the Tivoli in 1982, called the police as I sailed past her window. I swear I saw an angel, high above Westport Road, who urged me back down with a gentle push of her heavenly hand. It's not time, she said. I hit the VW's hood, then cracked its windshield with my right knee, shattering the entire leg. Twenty years later the knee surrendered its struggle to endure, and now I have plastic and metal that sets off airport alarms.
But not one drop of blood spilled on the hard asphalt that day, and I lived to make jokes about losing a contact and admonishing bystanders not to carry me to the sidewalk by asking -- Don't you people watch TV? You never move anyone who might have a neck injury!!!
My ankle broke in a horrible accident involving the joystick of an electric wheelchair and generally excessive alcohol consumption. The emergency room didn't catch the break at first, but my diligent doctor did. Those poor little feet had all their toes broken years before that, in a freak spill out in my backyard caused by a mischievous gutter hiding in a bank of snow. My son, aged three at the time, walked down the street to get the neighbor who carried me into the house. And in 2007, I fell going into the Minnesota state fair, resulting in a suspicious chip at the end of my elbow and a painfully dislocated shoulder.
As my husband set out this morning to make the drive to Greencastle, Indiana, to fetch the prodigal son, I tightened the Velcro straps on my splint and cautioned him to drive with care. In addition to my vehicle, of which I am fond, he'll be transporting the two beings most precious to me in this world. He smiled -- not entirely sure, perhaps, of which worried me more: the thought of having to replace the car, or the thought of losing my husband and only born-to-me child. He knows better; but my St. Louis-style humor still occasionally baffles him.
It's been a long nine months, without my son but with a new husband and a new young person barreling in and out of the house with raucous good humor and bursts of song in his beautiful voice. A confident young woman serves as another borrowed daughter, this time with a solid legally recognized connection to match the bond of love. The summer stretches before me. I check over my shoulder, and see that my guardian angel remains watchful. She winks, raises a heavenly cup of Joe, and gives me a little salute.
God is, indeed, in his Heaven, and all is, indeed, right with the world.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Saturday Musings, 14 May 2011
Good morning,
Our schizophrenic weather staggered back into winter this morning, though the Saturday morning tennis players wore their customary white shorts as they whistled their way to their cars and wandered off, leaving me to shiver and huddle over a chilling cup of bad coffee. Weak light streams into my bedroom through the tilted slats of the blinds, falling onto the faded, tangled black lace of my grandmother's shawl.
The sight of this shawl reminds me of the time that I first wore it, at a party given by me and my college roommates. We all wore black lace dresses and heavy jewelry, old Hollywood hair-styles and shiny sling-back sandals. We posed for our portrait on the stairway to the upstairs of our Laclede Town townhouse, heads thrown back, varying degrees of vibrancy on our faces. I stand on the bottom step, in a tea-length dress with a wide skirt, capped sleeves and scooped neckline. I am not smiling; but my eyes squarely caught the camera's lens. I cannot tell what I was thinking.
At the end of that party, the three of us pushed the chairs back against the walls. I listlessly vacuumed crumbs from the carpet while someone carried beer cans and Margarita glasses to the kitchen. Outside, the night air began to yield to the rising sun, and the first glimmer of Sunday morning noises rose from the street -- the heavy ramble of the newspaper truck, a last, desperate siren's wail, the beckoning of a church bell. When we had finished cleaning, we shed our finery in favor of flannel, and crawled into our respective beds, with curtains drawn against the brightness of the morning light.
I awakened that day long after noon, though the house remained silent and my roommates' doors still had not opened. I softly padded down the stairs, and pulled the coffee-maker from its cubby under a cabinet. As I waited for the brewing process to be completed, I pushed the furniture back into its customary configuration.
With my coffee clutched closely to my chest, I slid the patio doors open, and stepped outside. The vague chill of a spring afternoon kissed my face and I closed my eyes, sipping coffee, receiving the grace of the wind's caress.
A woman's voice startled me, and I nearly dropped my mug. You all had one heck of a party last night, she said, softly. I turned towards the patio next to ours, regarding the slender form of my neighbor, who sat on a low stool with a small child leaning against her body. We had not met. When the three of us had rented our place, the entire row had been unoccupied. I didn't know anybody lived there now, I told the woman. I'm sorry; did we disturb you?
She turned away, wrapping one arm around the child's small frame, gazing across her patio to the abutting edge of the yards behind ours. She shrugged. Not really, she admitted. This one don't sleep too good, since his daddy left.
I set my cup down on the small metal table between our two lawn chairs. Do you want some coffee, I asked the woman, and when she accepted, I stepped into the kitchen and then returned with a mug for her, and a glass of juice for her son. She took both with a tiny nod and the briefest of smiles below her somber eyes. I sat down on the chair closest to her and the boy, and for a few minutes, no one spoke.
The child broke the uneasy silence. This is good, he whispered, and his mother's body jerked, just briefly, as though in fear. Thank you, honey, I offered, putting as much sincerity into my reply as I could. Silence resumed.
When the little boy had consumed all of his orange juice, he slid from between his mother's bony knees and handed his glass to me. Thank you for my breakfast, he said, solemnly, carefully, before returning to the woman's side.
My neighbor rose, then, and placed her empty coffee cup beside mine on the table. She swung the boy high into her arms, and spared me another small bend of her head. Without further comment, she carried her son into her own house. As the door slid closed, before the beige drapes blocked my view, I glimpsed a scattering of cardboard boxes, a few bulging black trash bags, and a tiny, lonely pile of broken toys.
From within my apartment, I heard sounds of my roommates rummaging in our kitchen. One called to the other as they debated whether they would have breakfast or dinner. Someone spoke to me, and I pulled my gaze away from the wrinkled expanse of fabric covering the neighbor's patio door. Coming! I responded, and hauled myself up from the chair, scooping all three cups from the table, tossing a little cold coffee onto the bare ground between our patio and the one next door.
From time to time, over the next few months, I would see the woman leaving for work and bid her good morning. The child walked beside her, usually with a tiny backpack settled between his shoulder blades, and a grimy stuffed bear held in the crook of his arm. Neither of them spoke to me in those brief encounters, although the child often let his eyes slip sideways to meet mine, and occasionally he flashed a hurried, radiant smile, to let me know that he still remembered the taste of the cold, sweet juice.
We broke housekeeping at the end of the school year. I moved out last, and whatever man I was dating at the time hauled my belongings for me, backing his pick-up truck as close to the entry of the apartment as he could. We loaded it with an odd assortment of storage containers and suitcases, the bookshelf my great-grandfather made, my old bed frame, and a couple of boxes of books. We bundled the last of the rubbish to be taken to the dumpster. As we finished cleaning, I noticed that the front door of the town house next to ours stood open. I stepped across to the stoop, and peered into the living room.
It took a few minute to realize that the place was entirely empty, with no sign of the woman or her son. No boxes, no bags, no broken toys. No furniture. Nothing. I stood, surveying the barren look of the place, astonished that I could have been as oblivious to their departure as I had been to their initial arrival.
After a few minutes, my boyfriend honked the horn, impatient to get the load to my new apartment before sundown. I shrugged, to no one in particular, and closed the doors of both houses, making sure the locks clicked. Then I left, without a backwards glance.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Our schizophrenic weather staggered back into winter this morning, though the Saturday morning tennis players wore their customary white shorts as they whistled their way to their cars and wandered off, leaving me to shiver and huddle over a chilling cup of bad coffee. Weak light streams into my bedroom through the tilted slats of the blinds, falling onto the faded, tangled black lace of my grandmother's shawl.
The sight of this shawl reminds me of the time that I first wore it, at a party given by me and my college roommates. We all wore black lace dresses and heavy jewelry, old Hollywood hair-styles and shiny sling-back sandals. We posed for our portrait on the stairway to the upstairs of our Laclede Town townhouse, heads thrown back, varying degrees of vibrancy on our faces. I stand on the bottom step, in a tea-length dress with a wide skirt, capped sleeves and scooped neckline. I am not smiling; but my eyes squarely caught the camera's lens. I cannot tell what I was thinking.
At the end of that party, the three of us pushed the chairs back against the walls. I listlessly vacuumed crumbs from the carpet while someone carried beer cans and Margarita glasses to the kitchen. Outside, the night air began to yield to the rising sun, and the first glimmer of Sunday morning noises rose from the street -- the heavy ramble of the newspaper truck, a last, desperate siren's wail, the beckoning of a church bell. When we had finished cleaning, we shed our finery in favor of flannel, and crawled into our respective beds, with curtains drawn against the brightness of the morning light.
I awakened that day long after noon, though the house remained silent and my roommates' doors still had not opened. I softly padded down the stairs, and pulled the coffee-maker from its cubby under a cabinet. As I waited for the brewing process to be completed, I pushed the furniture back into its customary configuration.
With my coffee clutched closely to my chest, I slid the patio doors open, and stepped outside. The vague chill of a spring afternoon kissed my face and I closed my eyes, sipping coffee, receiving the grace of the wind's caress.
A woman's voice startled me, and I nearly dropped my mug. You all had one heck of a party last night, she said, softly. I turned towards the patio next to ours, regarding the slender form of my neighbor, who sat on a low stool with a small child leaning against her body. We had not met. When the three of us had rented our place, the entire row had been unoccupied. I didn't know anybody lived there now, I told the woman. I'm sorry; did we disturb you?
She turned away, wrapping one arm around the child's small frame, gazing across her patio to the abutting edge of the yards behind ours. She shrugged. Not really, she admitted. This one don't sleep too good, since his daddy left.
I set my cup down on the small metal table between our two lawn chairs. Do you want some coffee, I asked the woman, and when she accepted, I stepped into the kitchen and then returned with a mug for her, and a glass of juice for her son. She took both with a tiny nod and the briefest of smiles below her somber eyes. I sat down on the chair closest to her and the boy, and for a few minutes, no one spoke.
The child broke the uneasy silence. This is good, he whispered, and his mother's body jerked, just briefly, as though in fear. Thank you, honey, I offered, putting as much sincerity into my reply as I could. Silence resumed.
When the little boy had consumed all of his orange juice, he slid from between his mother's bony knees and handed his glass to me. Thank you for my breakfast, he said, solemnly, carefully, before returning to the woman's side.
My neighbor rose, then, and placed her empty coffee cup beside mine on the table. She swung the boy high into her arms, and spared me another small bend of her head. Without further comment, she carried her son into her own house. As the door slid closed, before the beige drapes blocked my view, I glimpsed a scattering of cardboard boxes, a few bulging black trash bags, and a tiny, lonely pile of broken toys.
From within my apartment, I heard sounds of my roommates rummaging in our kitchen. One called to the other as they debated whether they would have breakfast or dinner. Someone spoke to me, and I pulled my gaze away from the wrinkled expanse of fabric covering the neighbor's patio door. Coming! I responded, and hauled myself up from the chair, scooping all three cups from the table, tossing a little cold coffee onto the bare ground between our patio and the one next door.
From time to time, over the next few months, I would see the woman leaving for work and bid her good morning. The child walked beside her, usually with a tiny backpack settled between his shoulder blades, and a grimy stuffed bear held in the crook of his arm. Neither of them spoke to me in those brief encounters, although the child often let his eyes slip sideways to meet mine, and occasionally he flashed a hurried, radiant smile, to let me know that he still remembered the taste of the cold, sweet juice.
We broke housekeeping at the end of the school year. I moved out last, and whatever man I was dating at the time hauled my belongings for me, backing his pick-up truck as close to the entry of the apartment as he could. We loaded it with an odd assortment of storage containers and suitcases, the bookshelf my great-grandfather made, my old bed frame, and a couple of boxes of books. We bundled the last of the rubbish to be taken to the dumpster. As we finished cleaning, I noticed that the front door of the town house next to ours stood open. I stepped across to the stoop, and peered into the living room.
It took a few minute to realize that the place was entirely empty, with no sign of the woman or her son. No boxes, no bags, no broken toys. No furniture. Nothing. I stood, surveying the barren look of the place, astonished that I could have been as oblivious to their departure as I had been to their initial arrival.
After a few minutes, my boyfriend honked the horn, impatient to get the load to my new apartment before sundown. I shrugged, to no one in particular, and closed the doors of both houses, making sure the locks clicked. Then I left, without a backwards glance.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Saturday Musings, 07 May 2011
Good morning,
Danger alerts sound outside: dogs bark, birds start a frantic twittering. Intruders pass -- a young mother with a stroller; a prissy little poodle, walked by a broad-shouldered man with a bald head. I don't look out the window, but I recognize the noise made by the three dogs at the side of our house -- mine and the neighbors' two -- and I imagine the morning brigade. Saturday in Brookside. I continue reading my paper, drinking my coffee, listening with half an ear to the soundtrack of my life.
I'm rushing myself a bit; I'm distracted by the knowledge that the number of coffee cups accumulated on the floor of my Saturn has started to effect my gas mileage, as has the heavy layer of road dirt on its exterior. I cannot think of any more excuses for avoiding this chore, so I'll grab a pair of jeans and my heavy shoes, and spend a half hour pumping quarters into the do-it-yourself car wash, holding the heavy wand with my right hand, babying my left wrist which still smarts from a recent sprain.
I used to take better care of my vehicles. My first car shone with endless rounds of wax that I rubbed into its British Racing Green surface. An MG Midget, in which I felt chic and fashionable. In a photograph album somewhere, in a box, in my basement, my eighteen-year-old self gazes out from its driver's seat. The top is folded back; the wind, doubtless, plays on my face. I wear shades in the picture, back in the days when I could still correct my vision with contact lenses -- the hard kind, for which one often had to search on one's hands and knees, on the tiled floor of the bathroom. In that decades-old snapshot, I have a bandanna tied over my tangle of long, curly hair and I wear a blue-jean jacket. I've got my arm dangling over the door, the other hand touching the steering wheel, and a broad smile widens my mouth.
The summer after my second year of college, I dated a police officer who worked second shift, ending his duty after eleven o'clock, when he would rap on my apartment door after parking his vehicle in the underground garage of my building. On one such night, he arrived well after midnight, and as I opened the door, he remarked, When I saw your car wasn't there, I figured you got tired of waiting and went out with somebody else. I shuddered as he spoke the words, and pushed past him, running down the interior stairwell, bursting through the garage entrance, standing, shocked, in front of my assigned space, in which I had parked my car earlier that evening.
My friend came up behind me, softly, putting his hand on my arm. I'll call it in, he said. I nodded, without speaking.
They found the car, stripped of its wiring, several miles from my apartment. My brothers installed a fuel-line kill switch when they replaced the wiring harness. Periodically, I would come down and discover it had been taken again. I would set out walking, dangling the keys, and find it a block or two away, the farthest it could be driven on the gas left in the line. Hot-wired, taken, and then abandoned.
I burned the clutch out on that MG three times before I finally gave it to my brother and bought a Chevy Nova from my cousin Angela. I took the Nova with me to Kansas City, when I moved here in 1980 for law school. The first summer, its carburetor rebelled and the car kept stalling; the guys at the Montgomery Ward Auto Center couldn't figure out what was wrong. I bought a carburetor rebuild kit and a Polaroid camera. I took the thing apart in the parking lot at the shopping center, piece by piece, photographing it as I went. Then I rebuilt it, using the line of pictures as my guide. When I finished, the vehicle started on the first try, and I wiped my hands, threw away the trash, and went home.
I sold that Nova for more than I had paid for it, and bought a big Oldsmobile which talked to me. The door is ajar, it said, in an insipid female voice. Fasten your seat belt, she admonished me. Oh, shut up, I took to telling her, before I figured out which fuse ran her and pulled it to silence her. The transmission went out on the Olds and she went for scrap, just before the accident which crushed my leg and netted me enough from my Uninsured Motorist provision to buy my first new car, a Nissan Sentra. I drove that little wagon until 1990, then gave it to a law student who worked for my firm in Fayetteville. I bought an old Audi with a sunroof until I drove until I returned to Kansas City to manage a Congressional campaign and had to dump the German car to appease the UAW contingent.
In the last decade, I've had three Buick Centuries, a small Saturn with manually operated windows, and a Chevy Blazer that introduced me to the world of SUV drivers, a world that just seems safer. Now I drive a Vue, and I'm hoping to get a sweet new Buick Enclave some day.
I can step through my life on the roofs of the cars that I have owned. I never expected to care about something so seemingly trivial, but I find that I am nostalgic for the little MG Midget with its classic lines and traditional paint job. I long to reclaim the casual air with which I shifted gears, as I accelerated into third on the highway between my mother's home in North St. Louis County and the dingy streets of the city where I lived. I have studied the face of the girl in the photo, her head thrown back, her eyes shielded but surely wild with laughter, her smile radiant. I do not know where she went, that girl; and I wonder what I have in common with her.
The house has assumed a deserted air with the departure of most of its human occupants. The cat yowls for water, no doubt standing on the edge of the sink in the downstairs bathroom. I tear my gaze back to the present, and swallow the last cold coffee. I rise from my chair, and the world shifts to a forward spin, while outside my home, the barking of my dog diminishes, and the startled birds fall silent.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Danger alerts sound outside: dogs bark, birds start a frantic twittering. Intruders pass -- a young mother with a stroller; a prissy little poodle, walked by a broad-shouldered man with a bald head. I don't look out the window, but I recognize the noise made by the three dogs at the side of our house -- mine and the neighbors' two -- and I imagine the morning brigade. Saturday in Brookside. I continue reading my paper, drinking my coffee, listening with half an ear to the soundtrack of my life.
I'm rushing myself a bit; I'm distracted by the knowledge that the number of coffee cups accumulated on the floor of my Saturn has started to effect my gas mileage, as has the heavy layer of road dirt on its exterior. I cannot think of any more excuses for avoiding this chore, so I'll grab a pair of jeans and my heavy shoes, and spend a half hour pumping quarters into the do-it-yourself car wash, holding the heavy wand with my right hand, babying my left wrist which still smarts from a recent sprain.
I used to take better care of my vehicles. My first car shone with endless rounds of wax that I rubbed into its British Racing Green surface. An MG Midget, in which I felt chic and fashionable. In a photograph album somewhere, in a box, in my basement, my eighteen-year-old self gazes out from its driver's seat. The top is folded back; the wind, doubtless, plays on my face. I wear shades in the picture, back in the days when I could still correct my vision with contact lenses -- the hard kind, for which one often had to search on one's hands and knees, on the tiled floor of the bathroom. In that decades-old snapshot, I have a bandanna tied over my tangle of long, curly hair and I wear a blue-jean jacket. I've got my arm dangling over the door, the other hand touching the steering wheel, and a broad smile widens my mouth.
The summer after my second year of college, I dated a police officer who worked second shift, ending his duty after eleven o'clock, when he would rap on my apartment door after parking his vehicle in the underground garage of my building. On one such night, he arrived well after midnight, and as I opened the door, he remarked, When I saw your car wasn't there, I figured you got tired of waiting and went out with somebody else. I shuddered as he spoke the words, and pushed past him, running down the interior stairwell, bursting through the garage entrance, standing, shocked, in front of my assigned space, in which I had parked my car earlier that evening.
My friend came up behind me, softly, putting his hand on my arm. I'll call it in, he said. I nodded, without speaking.
They found the car, stripped of its wiring, several miles from my apartment. My brothers installed a fuel-line kill switch when they replaced the wiring harness. Periodically, I would come down and discover it had been taken again. I would set out walking, dangling the keys, and find it a block or two away, the farthest it could be driven on the gas left in the line. Hot-wired, taken, and then abandoned.
I burned the clutch out on that MG three times before I finally gave it to my brother and bought a Chevy Nova from my cousin Angela. I took the Nova with me to Kansas City, when I moved here in 1980 for law school. The first summer, its carburetor rebelled and the car kept stalling; the guys at the Montgomery Ward Auto Center couldn't figure out what was wrong. I bought a carburetor rebuild kit and a Polaroid camera. I took the thing apart in the parking lot at the shopping center, piece by piece, photographing it as I went. Then I rebuilt it, using the line of pictures as my guide. When I finished, the vehicle started on the first try, and I wiped my hands, threw away the trash, and went home.
I sold that Nova for more than I had paid for it, and bought a big Oldsmobile which talked to me. The door is ajar, it said, in an insipid female voice. Fasten your seat belt, she admonished me. Oh, shut up, I took to telling her, before I figured out which fuse ran her and pulled it to silence her. The transmission went out on the Olds and she went for scrap, just before the accident which crushed my leg and netted me enough from my Uninsured Motorist provision to buy my first new car, a Nissan Sentra. I drove that little wagon until 1990, then gave it to a law student who worked for my firm in Fayetteville. I bought an old Audi with a sunroof until I drove until I returned to Kansas City to manage a Congressional campaign and had to dump the German car to appease the UAW contingent.
In the last decade, I've had three Buick Centuries, a small Saturn with manually operated windows, and a Chevy Blazer that introduced me to the world of SUV drivers, a world that just seems safer. Now I drive a Vue, and I'm hoping to get a sweet new Buick Enclave some day.
I can step through my life on the roofs of the cars that I have owned. I never expected to care about something so seemingly trivial, but I find that I am nostalgic for the little MG Midget with its classic lines and traditional paint job. I long to reclaim the casual air with which I shifted gears, as I accelerated into third on the highway between my mother's home in North St. Louis County and the dingy streets of the city where I lived. I have studied the face of the girl in the photo, her head thrown back, her eyes shielded but surely wild with laughter, her smile radiant. I do not know where she went, that girl; and I wonder what I have in common with her.
The house has assumed a deserted air with the departure of most of its human occupants. The cat yowls for water, no doubt standing on the edge of the sink in the downstairs bathroom. I tear my gaze back to the present, and swallow the last cold coffee. I rise from my chair, and the world shifts to a forward spin, while outside my home, the barking of my dog diminishes, and the startled birds fall silent.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Saturday Musings, 30 April 2011
Good morning,
A vague ache clings to the spot between my shoulder blades where I store stress. I spent Friday in court, listening to a pair of parents, who formerly loved one another, present their differing views on where the child should reside, and who should control the major decisions in her life. That I represent one of the two gives little comfort; the mere fact of the fight still saddens me. Not even the collapse of the other parent's carefully scripted lies, which came, I note, before she left the stand, unclenched my tightened jaw.
I hear the unmistakable noises of a burgeoning spring, rising above the soft whirring of the air filter in the living room. A determined bird describes its pleasure with the glorious morning; the neighbor's dog sounds reveille. Cars lumber over some debris in the street; steel plates have vanished from our landscape, but litter still occasionally accumulates in the dips and cracks of the aging asphalt. Morning in the city; day 120.
A thousand days ago, a thousand times a thousand, more maybe -- another morning, on a balcony above a dirtier street in a noisier city. I sat on a webbed aluminum rocker, gazing down at a bunch of grubby, cheerful boys kicking something unrecognizable between the two rows of parked cars on the narrow road. Mothers occasionally leaned from their own balconies, cigarettes in hand, admonishing their sons with little enthusiasm and not much result.
My college semester had ended with no fanfare. Memorial Day loomed, and my only plans held no appeal: Yet another backyard barbecue at my parents' home, to which I would arrive late, and from which I would depart early. I clung to the workaday world with glum determination. I held several part-time jobs and one which could have been full-time, had I given it much thought. The three months between my restless contemplation of that late-spring morning and the frantic day of enrollment for the fall semester weighed heavily on my mind.
The voices of neighbor women rose from the balcony below mine. Harsh cackles followed low murmuring. I cast a glance back down to their children, who seemed to range in age from three to thirteen. I could see no little girls, but assumed that some must be lurking on the sidewalk, doing whatever little girls do, in the morning, on Saturday, when the local stations' cartoon fare has played itself out, and impatient mothers insist that they take themselves outside.
Some draw to self-destruction got me up from the chair and pulled me down the inner stairwell of my apartment building, and out the front door. Three faces turned towards the sound of my clumsy exit, and six eyes shifted away, seeking each other before closing, briefly. One of the women took a long, disinterested draw on her cigarette. Another set her coffee cup down on the porch rail, and looked toward the street. Stephen, goddammit, get out of the way of that car, you'll get yourself killed, she hollered, as an old Buick tried to wend its way through the kickball game. None of the players altered his stride. She turned away with less concern than she had held in her rough voice and caught me staring at her. What's your beef, she snapped.
Nothing at all, I assured her, hurrying down the steps to my car. Too late, I realized that I didn't have my purse or keys. I turned back to the building, gazing with confusion, maybe, or entreaty, at the women on the porch. They laughed. I hadn't fooled them. I ran back upstairs, and when I found myself safely in my living room, I shut the French doors that blocked out the noise of their amusement.
As the spring wore out, and yielded to summer, the women's gatherings on the porch below mine became more frequent and lasted longer. Their children and I shared a schedule: Nine months in school; three months out; and the time between discharge and recommencement offered too much liberty. The children roamed further and further from their mothers' lazy domain, straying north to the Park, and south to a little store which sold candy and single-bottle beer in equal measures.
Occasionally, one of the women would hoist her frame from the sunken porch chairs and bellow over the railing, and a bunch of kids would trickle into the scruffy yard, gathering on the cracked cement of the sidewalk that led into the building. When enough of them had gathered, they would get Velveeta sandwiches, or boiled hot dogs on soft white buns. The kids chewed their food where they stood, and sipped Kool-Aid from Dixie cups, before swiping a hand across their catsup-smeared faces, and scattering back out into heat of the afternoon.
On a Saturday night, one of many that summer when I had nothing better to do but show my stupidity, I ventured down to the street. The women had pulled their chairs out onto the sidewalk that ran the length of the street. Someone had jacked open the fire hydrant, and the children of the block ran through the heavy stream of water, pushing each other, lowering their faces to the gush, and screaming gleefully. None of them wore shoes, and most of the boys had discarded their shirts.
I hauled a cold six-pack of diet cola down with me, which I offered to my neighbors. None of them accepted, but one gestured to an empty chair. Sit yourself on down there, she said. I did so, and then I told them my name, and tried to pay attention as they each said theirs.
The conversation didn't go much further for a while. A child would occasionally run towards us, and the women would protest the spray of water that drifted their way in the wake of the child's passage. They smoked, and drank Budweiser, and periodically waved, without much hope, at the rising heat of June. I searched my mind for something to say, and drank soda.
After longer than I care to sit in uncompanionable silence, one of the women directed a question at me. You ain't married, are you?
I thought about lying. But I had lived there for a couple of months without so much as an overnight boyfriend presenting himself at the end of a date, so I didn't think I'd convince anyone. I admitted the fact. They laughed, and the weight of their amusement hung in the air. It seemed to say everything.
The woman, though, thought more should be noted. You're in college, ain't you? It sounded like an accusation. When I agreed that I was, she nodded -- a short, curt nod, the kind you might give if you were acknowledging a convicted felon sitting next to you in jail greens or a bunch of bugs you knew haunted your kitchen. A certain unmistakable wariness arose between me and the women. I began to reconsider my decision to join their group, and shifted in the chair.
Just then, a car slid to the curb, long, low and noiseless. A man climbed from the driver's seat, shrugging himself into a standing position, unfolding his length with an air of self-possession. I had never seen any of the husbands, and I took this to be one of them.
On my left, a woman chuckled. Don't get no ideas girl, she said. My head snapped towards her, and a slow blush rose in my face. I don't know what you're talking about, I told her. The idea that I might be gazing on her spouse with something like lust at first amused her though it shocked me. I studied the man as he strode down to their building without so much as a grunt in our direction. I returned my attention to the woman, and told her that I had no interest in her husband.
My disavowal worsened the situation. What? she demanded. You think you're better than him? You got no man of your own, you gotta work day and night to pay the rent on your cracker-jack apartment, and you got the nerve to turn your nose up at a good man what brings his pay to me and the kids, and works damn hard to do it?
Her companions moved closer to her, shutting me out from their circle. They stared at me, a solid wall of anger. I took in the lines and pits of their faces, the sharp angles of their thinness, the taughtness of their cut-off shorts and the deep plunges of their summer tops. No, no, I stuttered. I wasn't thinking anything like that, I really wasn't.
The women did not break their ranks. The wronged wife turned a corner in her fury and held on. What, you think you're so high and mighty that you could handle him better than I do? You ever seen a man come home so drunk and tired, that he can't get off the toilet or pull his head from between his legs? Retching on the floor, gorging out the beer he filled his belly with after grubbing all day, then climb in bed next to you and want what he thinks is his due? Huh? You think you could live like that? You think we got it easy?
Her venom blasted me, the charge of her hatred for whatever I represented to her. I had no chance to tell her that none of that was true, that I just got lonely and wanted a little company. I had not meant to start a war. I did not want to wage a referendum on the relative merits of our lives. I did not expect that I could win that battle, nor did I believe that she would be assuaged by my defeat.
I rose so quickly that the lawn chair on which I had been sitting collapsed backwards. The women stood, too, surrounding the one whose husband had gone unknowing into their apartment, where he probably pulled a beer from the refrigerator and flopped, still clueless, into a cracked vinyl Lazy-Boy recliner. Out on the street, I stumbled away from the wives of my street, retreating into my apartment, into the solace of my middle-class existence.
Last night, as my husband and I drove through the streets of a neighborhood from which his family comes, where they no longer live, and where I have never aspired to live, I thought about those women. I drew a measured glance across the lawns which stretched a distance that two or three houses in my neighborhood could occupy, and over the tall, locked gates that stood between the grand, ugly houses and the rest of the world.
After our evening drive, we parked in front of my bungalow, and I climbed out of the passenger street. In the dim light, I reflected on the rise of my home's roof, and the pitch of its beautiful porch. I let my eyes linger on the Japanese maple, with its delicate leaves swaying in the evening breeze. I reached for my husband's hand, and walked toward our home, with the satisfaction that comes with knowing that a journey has brought me to my proper place.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
A vague ache clings to the spot between my shoulder blades where I store stress. I spent Friday in court, listening to a pair of parents, who formerly loved one another, present their differing views on where the child should reside, and who should control the major decisions in her life. That I represent one of the two gives little comfort; the mere fact of the fight still saddens me. Not even the collapse of the other parent's carefully scripted lies, which came, I note, before she left the stand, unclenched my tightened jaw.
I hear the unmistakable noises of a burgeoning spring, rising above the soft whirring of the air filter in the living room. A determined bird describes its pleasure with the glorious morning; the neighbor's dog sounds reveille. Cars lumber over some debris in the street; steel plates have vanished from our landscape, but litter still occasionally accumulates in the dips and cracks of the aging asphalt. Morning in the city; day 120.
A thousand days ago, a thousand times a thousand, more maybe -- another morning, on a balcony above a dirtier street in a noisier city. I sat on a webbed aluminum rocker, gazing down at a bunch of grubby, cheerful boys kicking something unrecognizable between the two rows of parked cars on the narrow road. Mothers occasionally leaned from their own balconies, cigarettes in hand, admonishing their sons with little enthusiasm and not much result.
My college semester had ended with no fanfare. Memorial Day loomed, and my only plans held no appeal: Yet another backyard barbecue at my parents' home, to which I would arrive late, and from which I would depart early. I clung to the workaday world with glum determination. I held several part-time jobs and one which could have been full-time, had I given it much thought. The three months between my restless contemplation of that late-spring morning and the frantic day of enrollment for the fall semester weighed heavily on my mind.
The voices of neighbor women rose from the balcony below mine. Harsh cackles followed low murmuring. I cast a glance back down to their children, who seemed to range in age from three to thirteen. I could see no little girls, but assumed that some must be lurking on the sidewalk, doing whatever little girls do, in the morning, on Saturday, when the local stations' cartoon fare has played itself out, and impatient mothers insist that they take themselves outside.
Some draw to self-destruction got me up from the chair and pulled me down the inner stairwell of my apartment building, and out the front door. Three faces turned towards the sound of my clumsy exit, and six eyes shifted away, seeking each other before closing, briefly. One of the women took a long, disinterested draw on her cigarette. Another set her coffee cup down on the porch rail, and looked toward the street. Stephen, goddammit, get out of the way of that car, you'll get yourself killed, she hollered, as an old Buick tried to wend its way through the kickball game. None of the players altered his stride. She turned away with less concern than she had held in her rough voice and caught me staring at her. What's your beef, she snapped.
Nothing at all, I assured her, hurrying down the steps to my car. Too late, I realized that I didn't have my purse or keys. I turned back to the building, gazing with confusion, maybe, or entreaty, at the women on the porch. They laughed. I hadn't fooled them. I ran back upstairs, and when I found myself safely in my living room, I shut the French doors that blocked out the noise of their amusement.
As the spring wore out, and yielded to summer, the women's gatherings on the porch below mine became more frequent and lasted longer. Their children and I shared a schedule: Nine months in school; three months out; and the time between discharge and recommencement offered too much liberty. The children roamed further and further from their mothers' lazy domain, straying north to the Park, and south to a little store which sold candy and single-bottle beer in equal measures.
Occasionally, one of the women would hoist her frame from the sunken porch chairs and bellow over the railing, and a bunch of kids would trickle into the scruffy yard, gathering on the cracked cement of the sidewalk that led into the building. When enough of them had gathered, they would get Velveeta sandwiches, or boiled hot dogs on soft white buns. The kids chewed their food where they stood, and sipped Kool-Aid from Dixie cups, before swiping a hand across their catsup-smeared faces, and scattering back out into heat of the afternoon.
On a Saturday night, one of many that summer when I had nothing better to do but show my stupidity, I ventured down to the street. The women had pulled their chairs out onto the sidewalk that ran the length of the street. Someone had jacked open the fire hydrant, and the children of the block ran through the heavy stream of water, pushing each other, lowering their faces to the gush, and screaming gleefully. None of them wore shoes, and most of the boys had discarded their shirts.
I hauled a cold six-pack of diet cola down with me, which I offered to my neighbors. None of them accepted, but one gestured to an empty chair. Sit yourself on down there, she said. I did so, and then I told them my name, and tried to pay attention as they each said theirs.
The conversation didn't go much further for a while. A child would occasionally run towards us, and the women would protest the spray of water that drifted their way in the wake of the child's passage. They smoked, and drank Budweiser, and periodically waved, without much hope, at the rising heat of June. I searched my mind for something to say, and drank soda.
After longer than I care to sit in uncompanionable silence, one of the women directed a question at me. You ain't married, are you?
I thought about lying. But I had lived there for a couple of months without so much as an overnight boyfriend presenting himself at the end of a date, so I didn't think I'd convince anyone. I admitted the fact. They laughed, and the weight of their amusement hung in the air. It seemed to say everything.
The woman, though, thought more should be noted. You're in college, ain't you? It sounded like an accusation. When I agreed that I was, she nodded -- a short, curt nod, the kind you might give if you were acknowledging a convicted felon sitting next to you in jail greens or a bunch of bugs you knew haunted your kitchen. A certain unmistakable wariness arose between me and the women. I began to reconsider my decision to join their group, and shifted in the chair.
Just then, a car slid to the curb, long, low and noiseless. A man climbed from the driver's seat, shrugging himself into a standing position, unfolding his length with an air of self-possession. I had never seen any of the husbands, and I took this to be one of them.
On my left, a woman chuckled. Don't get no ideas girl, she said. My head snapped towards her, and a slow blush rose in my face. I don't know what you're talking about, I told her. The idea that I might be gazing on her spouse with something like lust at first amused her though it shocked me. I studied the man as he strode down to their building without so much as a grunt in our direction. I returned my attention to the woman, and told her that I had no interest in her husband.
My disavowal worsened the situation. What? she demanded. You think you're better than him? You got no man of your own, you gotta work day and night to pay the rent on your cracker-jack apartment, and you got the nerve to turn your nose up at a good man what brings his pay to me and the kids, and works damn hard to do it?
Her companions moved closer to her, shutting me out from their circle. They stared at me, a solid wall of anger. I took in the lines and pits of their faces, the sharp angles of their thinness, the taughtness of their cut-off shorts and the deep plunges of their summer tops. No, no, I stuttered. I wasn't thinking anything like that, I really wasn't.
The women did not break their ranks. The wronged wife turned a corner in her fury and held on. What, you think you're so high and mighty that you could handle him better than I do? You ever seen a man come home so drunk and tired, that he can't get off the toilet or pull his head from between his legs? Retching on the floor, gorging out the beer he filled his belly with after grubbing all day, then climb in bed next to you and want what he thinks is his due? Huh? You think you could live like that? You think we got it easy?
Her venom blasted me, the charge of her hatred for whatever I represented to her. I had no chance to tell her that none of that was true, that I just got lonely and wanted a little company. I had not meant to start a war. I did not want to wage a referendum on the relative merits of our lives. I did not expect that I could win that battle, nor did I believe that she would be assuaged by my defeat.
I rose so quickly that the lawn chair on which I had been sitting collapsed backwards. The women stood, too, surrounding the one whose husband had gone unknowing into their apartment, where he probably pulled a beer from the refrigerator and flopped, still clueless, into a cracked vinyl Lazy-Boy recliner. Out on the street, I stumbled away from the wives of my street, retreating into my apartment, into the solace of my middle-class existence.
Last night, as my husband and I drove through the streets of a neighborhood from which his family comes, where they no longer live, and where I have never aspired to live, I thought about those women. I drew a measured glance across the lawns which stretched a distance that two or three houses in my neighborhood could occupy, and over the tall, locked gates that stood between the grand, ugly houses and the rest of the world.
After our evening drive, we parked in front of my bungalow, and I climbed out of the passenger street. In the dim light, I reflected on the rise of my home's roof, and the pitch of its beautiful porch. I let my eyes linger on the Japanese maple, with its delicate leaves swaying in the evening breeze. I reached for my husband's hand, and walked toward our home, with the satisfaction that comes with knowing that a journey has brought me to my proper place.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Saturday Musings, 23 April 2011
Good morning,
A wave of color catches my attention each time I turn my head. I recently acquired a temporary prism on my right glasses lens, which raised the number of corrective prisms from 3 to 9. As a consequence, I feel as though I have consumed just enough intoxicating beverages to be tipsy, feeling faintly nauseous; and the world shimmies.
Growing old might well surpass the alternative in desirability, but not because of how easy I find it. Ah, life.
Spring surrounds me, with its nippy air, and the bright, verdant expanse of lawn. The Japanese maple raises its delicate tendrils towards the pale stretch of the clean sky. My world shakes itself, rising from the fog of hibernation.
In recent conversations, I have had to confront the coming religious holiday and this morning, as it looms, I discover that I have fewer ties to Christianity than I thought possible. In the past, I have been able to ignore the religious celebrations and focus on honoring the turning of the seasons and our commitment to a fresh start. But now, I have married into the Episcopal faith, and although my husband goes to church only for the big days -- Christmas, Easter -- and when he appears on the usher schedule, still, the inevitable confrontation occurs. I am not a Christian, I remind him, not as gently as I might have. He blames Catholicism for my corruption,and he might be right. Still, re-conversion is unlikely. It troubles him, I think; nonetheless, I shudder at the thought of embracing his faith with the overtones of hypocrisy. To keep the peace, I will sit in church beside his mother, and browse through the Book of Common Prayer, and quietly talk to God, but the rituals will not affect me. It cannot be helped; so I will make the most of it, and allow myself the luxury of an hour in quiet mediation.
I think about my mother's last Easter. Cold gripped St. Louis. Her backyard still looked barren, with only a few brave flowers nudging themselves above the frost line. She had lost her hair to chemotherapy, and wore a tri-corner scarf over the smoothness of her skull, perhaps to keep out the cold, perhaps to save her grandchildren from the fright of her grim appearance. She sat on a park bench and watched the children hunt for eggs -- Lisa, Rick and Cate, in their church clothes, with serious looks as they concentrated on the search. I sat beside my mother and held her hand from time to time. I caught her glancing sideways with annoyance, and let her fingers slip from my grasp.
Later that day, after my siblings had helped to wash the dishes, and my mother and I sat at the breakfast room table in the quiet of the empty house, my mother searched my face with her warm brown eyes. Not finding an answer, she inquired, in gentle tones, if anything was wrong. Oh, not much, I replied. Only that my mother is dying, that's no big deal. I pushed back my chair and snatched at our tea cups, moving without grace into the kitchen while she sat, alone, in the darkening room. I might as well have slapped her face.
I came back and lowered myself into the chair, and looked down at her worn hands, resting on the surface of the wooden table. She moved, slightly, slowly until one of her fingers rested on my arm. The weight of her illness hung in the chilly air of the evening, in the silence which surrounded us. I fidgeted beneath her gaze, resisting the comfort that she wanted me to take from her own acceptance of her fate. Easter Sunday, 1985, and I was not quite 30. My mother would not see her next birthday, and my boyfriend and I would end our relationship a few days after her funeral. He only stayed for my sake, to help me through; and by Christmas, my grandfather would have died, and I would have slipped into a pattern of drinking, carousing, and forgetting to go to work.
I don't know if she foresaw my decline in that moment. She reached further over, to place her hand on my shoulder. It's going to be okay, she told me, in the soft tones that only a mother can use. But I did not believe her, and I slumped against the chair, falling into my misery, while the sun set outside my childhood home, and my father watched television in the living room.
The house around me has grown quiet. My stepson trundled off to work, and his father, just behind him, to his weekly tennis game. In a little while, I will start to clean the house. I will send the dog out into the yard, where clumps of grass surround the wild violets. I've bought good chocolate, and I have chosen a dress to wear to church tomorrow. There is a slight chill in the air, but spring has taken hold, with a stubborn, cheerful insistence that I might do well to emulate.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
A wave of color catches my attention each time I turn my head. I recently acquired a temporary prism on my right glasses lens, which raised the number of corrective prisms from 3 to 9. As a consequence, I feel as though I have consumed just enough intoxicating beverages to be tipsy, feeling faintly nauseous; and the world shimmies.
Growing old might well surpass the alternative in desirability, but not because of how easy I find it. Ah, life.
Spring surrounds me, with its nippy air, and the bright, verdant expanse of lawn. The Japanese maple raises its delicate tendrils towards the pale stretch of the clean sky. My world shakes itself, rising from the fog of hibernation.
In recent conversations, I have had to confront the coming religious holiday and this morning, as it looms, I discover that I have fewer ties to Christianity than I thought possible. In the past, I have been able to ignore the religious celebrations and focus on honoring the turning of the seasons and our commitment to a fresh start. But now, I have married into the Episcopal faith, and although my husband goes to church only for the big days -- Christmas, Easter -- and when he appears on the usher schedule, still, the inevitable confrontation occurs. I am not a Christian, I remind him, not as gently as I might have. He blames Catholicism for my corruption,and he might be right. Still, re-conversion is unlikely. It troubles him, I think; nonetheless, I shudder at the thought of embracing his faith with the overtones of hypocrisy. To keep the peace, I will sit in church beside his mother, and browse through the Book of Common Prayer, and quietly talk to God, but the rituals will not affect me. It cannot be helped; so I will make the most of it, and allow myself the luxury of an hour in quiet mediation.
I think about my mother's last Easter. Cold gripped St. Louis. Her backyard still looked barren, with only a few brave flowers nudging themselves above the frost line. She had lost her hair to chemotherapy, and wore a tri-corner scarf over the smoothness of her skull, perhaps to keep out the cold, perhaps to save her grandchildren from the fright of her grim appearance. She sat on a park bench and watched the children hunt for eggs -- Lisa, Rick and Cate, in their church clothes, with serious looks as they concentrated on the search. I sat beside my mother and held her hand from time to time. I caught her glancing sideways with annoyance, and let her fingers slip from my grasp.
Later that day, after my siblings had helped to wash the dishes, and my mother and I sat at the breakfast room table in the quiet of the empty house, my mother searched my face with her warm brown eyes. Not finding an answer, she inquired, in gentle tones, if anything was wrong. Oh, not much, I replied. Only that my mother is dying, that's no big deal. I pushed back my chair and snatched at our tea cups, moving without grace into the kitchen while she sat, alone, in the darkening room. I might as well have slapped her face.
I came back and lowered myself into the chair, and looked down at her worn hands, resting on the surface of the wooden table. She moved, slightly, slowly until one of her fingers rested on my arm. The weight of her illness hung in the chilly air of the evening, in the silence which surrounded us. I fidgeted beneath her gaze, resisting the comfort that she wanted me to take from her own acceptance of her fate. Easter Sunday, 1985, and I was not quite 30. My mother would not see her next birthday, and my boyfriend and I would end our relationship a few days after her funeral. He only stayed for my sake, to help me through; and by Christmas, my grandfather would have died, and I would have slipped into a pattern of drinking, carousing, and forgetting to go to work.
I don't know if she foresaw my decline in that moment. She reached further over, to place her hand on my shoulder. It's going to be okay, she told me, in the soft tones that only a mother can use. But I did not believe her, and I slumped against the chair, falling into my misery, while the sun set outside my childhood home, and my father watched television in the living room.
The house around me has grown quiet. My stepson trundled off to work, and his father, just behind him, to his weekly tennis game. In a little while, I will start to clean the house. I will send the dog out into the yard, where clumps of grass surround the wild violets. I've bought good chocolate, and I have chosen a dress to wear to church tomorrow. There is a slight chill in the air, but spring has taken hold, with a stubborn, cheerful insistence that I might do well to emulate.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Saturday Musings, 16 April 2011
Good morning,
Beside me at the window stands an antique rocker, draped with the scarves and shawls with which I often warm myself when sitting, peacefully, on the pillow that pads its worn seat. The shock of silver, mauve and gold fabric mingles and shimmers in the pale, determined light of a sun that refuses to concede to the cold of the rain's greater force. I see the overgrown hedges on the back fence of my neighbor's yard dancing against the wind's breath. Spring struggles to assert itself. Cold lingers.
I've spent the last two days in trial in a juvenile court matter involving my client's grandsons and their drug-addicted parents. She has no explanation for how the little ones came to test positive while in her custody but visiting their parents under the auspices of the state's workers. The juvenile officer wants to apply a res ipsa loquitor reasoning to circumvent her "clear, cogent and convincing" burden. Meanwhile, the guardian ad litem, whose appalling lack of effort would have gotten me removed, draws a county paycheck and takes cheap potshots at the defense lawyers, mainly me. Two days of being fodder for his snickering degenerated into my taking an uncharacteristic jab at the social worker's lawyer, when he rehabilitated her by feeding her leading questions that directly contradicted her earlier responses, to which pablum she responded with automatic affirmative answers, without thought, wanting only to please. The charade prompted me to snap, and I said, loud enough to be heard across the room but not, thankfully, on the bench: Uh, oh, she left the reservation to tell the truth, and he's got to rein her back in.
Not nice, I knew. But when I later apologized to the Court, I owned the faux paus, though stating, on the record, that though lamentable and discourteous, the sentiment was sincerely felt when said. The judge, with whom I have no prior personal relationship, forgave me and admonished all counsel to stop their sniping.
I rushed out of the unexpected second day of trial to dinner at my in-laws, though I wished that I could have taken a long, hot shower first, to cleanse myself of the detritus of Juvenile Court. At the start of yesterday's proceedings, when only I and the first witness, a scientist returning to conclude his testimony, sat in the courtroom, I mused out loud that the day had promise since I had awakened on the right of the grass. Really, I continued, any day I wake up is a good day in the making. And every time I come to Juvenile Court, I remind myself that I managed to navigate my son's childhood without having to appear as a litigant here instead of an attorney.
A glance at the calendar reminds me that it is my sister's birthday. I dial her cell phone, and sing the birthday song into her voice mail in flat but lusty tones. She turns 61 today. I've told her, every year since I can remember with increasing glee, that she will always be five years older than I am. This obvious truth delights me more and more as we age. I am not yet sixty; she will never be less. I am still young; she is middle-aged. As I acknowledge middle-age, she concedes to growing old. I will always be Lucille and Richard's baby girl, and she will always be the sophisticated one who wore make-up long before I did and taught me how to shave my legs. She will forever be the big sister who shared her pretty rock with me, the one embedded in the newly poured concrete of our driveway that glistened after a rainstorm. When we move beyond the counting, beyond caring about the numbers, I will still be younger, and we will both still giggle when I remind her of it.
Meanwhile, the oldest daughter in my family-by-choice celebrates her second child's fifth birthday today, and my new husband and I plan to be in attendance. The pages of my calendar flutter; the stack of keeping days grows tall and heavy. I close my eyes to summon memories of my own childhood. Did I ever have a birthday party? I recall a cake after supper,with ice cream and presents, while my siblings clustered around me. I don't remember anything more; nor do I remember that it felt deficient at the time. The effort to recall signifies that I have forgiven my parents any failings that might have scarred me, and that the scars, which long festered, have finally healed.
As I sat at counsel table these last two days, I realized that my own family would have been hauled into juvenile court had such things existed in their present configuration five decades ago. I've wasted too many otherwise decent paragraphs describing the events which would have marked us as children in need of care, and too few remembering the drives to the Johnson Shut-Ins, the bunny-shaped Easter cakes, and the magic glistening of our tinsel-covered Christmas trees. The trials of the past fade. I am left to savor the endless antics of the eight Corleys, and the deep, unassailable warmth that I felt when my sister Joyce came home from her dates, and sat on a twelve-year-old's bed, speaking in delightful whispers about the unfathomable world of boys, which I could not wait to enter.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Beside me at the window stands an antique rocker, draped with the scarves and shawls with which I often warm myself when sitting, peacefully, on the pillow that pads its worn seat. The shock of silver, mauve and gold fabric mingles and shimmers in the pale, determined light of a sun that refuses to concede to the cold of the rain's greater force. I see the overgrown hedges on the back fence of my neighbor's yard dancing against the wind's breath. Spring struggles to assert itself. Cold lingers.
I've spent the last two days in trial in a juvenile court matter involving my client's grandsons and their drug-addicted parents. She has no explanation for how the little ones came to test positive while in her custody but visiting their parents under the auspices of the state's workers. The juvenile officer wants to apply a res ipsa loquitor reasoning to circumvent her "clear, cogent and convincing" burden. Meanwhile, the guardian ad litem, whose appalling lack of effort would have gotten me removed, draws a county paycheck and takes cheap potshots at the defense lawyers, mainly me. Two days of being fodder for his snickering degenerated into my taking an uncharacteristic jab at the social worker's lawyer, when he rehabilitated her by feeding her leading questions that directly contradicted her earlier responses, to which pablum she responded with automatic affirmative answers, without thought, wanting only to please. The charade prompted me to snap, and I said, loud enough to be heard across the room but not, thankfully, on the bench: Uh, oh, she left the reservation to tell the truth, and he's got to rein her back in.
Not nice, I knew. But when I later apologized to the Court, I owned the faux paus, though stating, on the record, that though lamentable and discourteous, the sentiment was sincerely felt when said. The judge, with whom I have no prior personal relationship, forgave me and admonished all counsel to stop their sniping.
I rushed out of the unexpected second day of trial to dinner at my in-laws, though I wished that I could have taken a long, hot shower first, to cleanse myself of the detritus of Juvenile Court. At the start of yesterday's proceedings, when only I and the first witness, a scientist returning to conclude his testimony, sat in the courtroom, I mused out loud that the day had promise since I had awakened on the right of the grass. Really, I continued, any day I wake up is a good day in the making. And every time I come to Juvenile Court, I remind myself that I managed to navigate my son's childhood without having to appear as a litigant here instead of an attorney.
A glance at the calendar reminds me that it is my sister's birthday. I dial her cell phone, and sing the birthday song into her voice mail in flat but lusty tones. She turns 61 today. I've told her, every year since I can remember with increasing glee, that she will always be five years older than I am. This obvious truth delights me more and more as we age. I am not yet sixty; she will never be less. I am still young; she is middle-aged. As I acknowledge middle-age, she concedes to growing old. I will always be Lucille and Richard's baby girl, and she will always be the sophisticated one who wore make-up long before I did and taught me how to shave my legs. She will forever be the big sister who shared her pretty rock with me, the one embedded in the newly poured concrete of our driveway that glistened after a rainstorm. When we move beyond the counting, beyond caring about the numbers, I will still be younger, and we will both still giggle when I remind her of it.
Meanwhile, the oldest daughter in my family-by-choice celebrates her second child's fifth birthday today, and my new husband and I plan to be in attendance. The pages of my calendar flutter; the stack of keeping days grows tall and heavy. I close my eyes to summon memories of my own childhood. Did I ever have a birthday party? I recall a cake after supper,with ice cream and presents, while my siblings clustered around me. I don't remember anything more; nor do I remember that it felt deficient at the time. The effort to recall signifies that I have forgiven my parents any failings that might have scarred me, and that the scars, which long festered, have finally healed.
As I sat at counsel table these last two days, I realized that my own family would have been hauled into juvenile court had such things existed in their present configuration five decades ago. I've wasted too many otherwise decent paragraphs describing the events which would have marked us as children in need of care, and too few remembering the drives to the Johnson Shut-Ins, the bunny-shaped Easter cakes, and the magic glistening of our tinsel-covered Christmas trees. The trials of the past fade. I am left to savor the endless antics of the eight Corleys, and the deep, unassailable warmth that I felt when my sister Joyce came home from her dates, and sat on a twelve-year-old's bed, speaking in delightful whispers about the unfathomable world of boys, which I could not wait to enter.
Mugwumpishly tendered,
Corinne Corley
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
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. ®