Under the Veil

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Tamekia had no grace. None of them did. Yet even the most awkward dancers moved with an unstable kind of beauty. “No Barbie toes!” Shari, the instructor, called out. “Use the balls of your feet, Tami.” Tamekia rocked down, so her heels weren’t so high in the air.

The class was working on the taqsim, with its gentle vertical motion. “I think I got this figure eight thing.” A woman at the end of the line herked her hips up and down.

“You’re getting there! I can tell you’ve been working on it. You’re all getting better. At the end of six weeks, you’re going to be amazing.”

Without meaning to, Tamikia let her thoughts wander away from belly dancing. She wondered what her daughter was doing right now. Had Beth gotten home from school? Did Grandma Jean remember to give her fruit instead of cookies for an afternoon snack. Would they be around this evening, if Tamikia was allowed to call?

Her psychologist told her not to worry about these things, to let the outside world take care of itself and focus inward, to take things one day at a time. She all but forced Tami to sign up for the dance class. Tami didn’t think her counselor had ever handed her only child into the custody of her ex’s mother.

“I’ll take good care of her,” Grandma Jean had said. “And when you get out, I’ll take good care of you, too, honey. But you can’t go messing around with that son of mine. He’s dangerous, unpredictable.”

Tami and her cellmate counted down to freedom every morning. Every night, Tami went to sleep with Beth’s image in her mind. “I’ll do better by you baby. For both of us,” she swore.

Shari put one hand on Tamekia’s stomach and another on her rear end, then pushed, drawing the younger woman out of her reverie. “Remember to tuck in. You want that…”

“… right. Stable core.”

Shari smiled. “Exactly.”

 

Where you’ll also find me

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I swear I didn’t pose him. He insists on sleeping shirtless, and he’s always cutest at bedtime. The rabbit is called “Nobunny”

And this is the place

In the soul shaken darkness

Where I find my son

 

I went to my favorite writer’s conference last weekend. Killer Nashville was incredible, as always, and I came away with new insights, new friends, and a few things that I completely didn’t expect. I’m sure I’ll talk about those things at some point.

The day before that, I took Sam to one of the myriad of doctor’s appointments that dot his schedule and left so soul-shaken that I thought I wouldn’t be able to drive to Nashville. Again, I’m sure I’ll talk about it here at some point, but I’m not ready yet. I left that appointment at once validated and furious, certain that the evaluating team was both exactly right and exactly wrong about Sam, and that the things they had right are the ones that scare me. It’s time to face another of the hydra’s seven heads, one I’ve expected, but one I’m not ready for, not this soon.

More importantly, he’s not ready for it. No psychological therapy will be useful until we get the meds stabilized, and our efforts to implement such always end in utter travesty. I want to wait a few more months, weeks even, to see if the newest medication will put him on firm enough ground to start behavior therapy.

But I don’t think I have that kind of time any longer. The hydra wants for slaying now, so Scott and I will strap on our battle armor and get family therapy underway so we can learn some new tactics and buy Sam the time he needs.

I’ll let you know how that works out for us, but don’t hold your breath.

A Letter To The Editor

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I wish to lodge several complaints, and I hope you can be of help to me To begin with, I hate the way you fancify recipes. Perhaps, on a TV show, there is something inherently more satisfying about the texture of meatballs made with Panko, rather than average breadcrumbs, but frankly, I think not. Similarly, I believe sea salt, cremini mushrooms, lacinato kale, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and freshly ground anything are all included to make foods sound less plebian, more worthy of Pinterest or Emeril. There is nothing wrong with my iodized salt, ordinary mushrooms, normal kale, low-fat Parmesan Cheese, and dried spices.

Next, I think some of you use a food chart to determine what to write up. “Let’s see. I’ll throw one dart at “fruits and vegetables”, and another at “preparation method” and…. yes! Avocado Popsicles!”

Additionally, be warned that you will brand me with a brand name. You seem to be under the impression that simply because you include a company’s vitals in a recipe, I will feel compelled to cook it. How much are you getting paid for this advertising?

Finally (Cooking Light, I’m looking especially hard at you), if a recipe is intended to be healthy, why don’t you cut calories wherever possible? Why does your light version include 2% milk, which has tons of fat and more calories in comparison to skim, when the skim makes no discernible difference to the ultimate product’s taste? Or sour cream. Why does your “light” recipe include regular sour cream, which has sixty calories and 3 grams of fat in two tablespoons when fat free sour cream has 30 calories and, well no fat? Or better yet why not tell folks to use fat free Greek Yogurt, which has still fewer calories and a better texture.

All in all, your confusing practices baffle me, and I believe it is time to found my own line based on common sense and realistic dietary planning.

Sincerely,

A peeved diner

 

 

River

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Caroline, Devon, Mike, and Scott

The first day I met Scott’s cousin Mike and his wife Michelle, I had no idea how much we would develop in common. How we would each name our youngest sons Sam. How we would laugh about this every Thanksgiving at Michelle’s parents’ dinners. Who spends the holidays with her husband’s cousin’s wife’s family? Me. That’s who.

Ketchup With Us
About damned time! I’m FINALLY Ketching Up! You can, too. It only takes fifty seven words about a first day.

http://www.accordingtomags.blogspot.com/2013/08/ketchup-with-us-24.html

Ketchup With Us #24
 

I don’t wear them at night

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I bought my first set of prescription sunglasses this year. They cost more than I want to put in print. Initially, I justified my purchase with the bullshit line handed to me by the sales woman. “Even with featherweights, you’re going to have a hard time getting clip-ons over those thick edges.”  To her credit, this is true. I’m so myopic that she had already refused to sell me drilled rimless glasses like my old ones, because thick lenses crack under the drill. And the clip-ons have been sliding around on my face for at least three pairs now.

But I knew she was angling for a sale when she delivered her words so smoothly. She was choosing from a carefully narrowed script, tailored for my occasion. Yet I bought the sunglasses.

Guilty-souled, and knowing the real expense was in my lenses, I chose the cheapest frames, as if this balanced my frivolity. At home, I repeated her lies, and my stomach tightened every time I spoke or typed the words.

I knew what made me so squeamish. If I have to buy something expensive, it’s out of necessity or desperation. And I’ve never had the kind of disposable income that would make my regular glasses affordable, let alone a pair of sunglasses.

And I did not need new sunglasses. The doctor, another smooth dealer, had observed latticing in the back of my eye. It can be a precursor to retinal detachment but typically isn’t. It’s common in extremely nearsighted patients. He suggested I “take good care of my vision” like this was new advice. I chose to interpret it to mean I needed to protect myself from the southern sun’s glare. But it didn’t make me need a pair of four hundred dollar shades. (There. I wrote it.)

Still, I a m trying to shed some emotional detritus along with my excess weight. Part of that involves keeping only those things which I have chosen in my life. I’m tired of carrying around behaviors I acquired by accident, inherited from relatives, or developed as knee-jerk responses to a single situation. And that attitude, the one screeching, “You can’t afford it. It’s impractical. And you don’t need it,” was handed down from my depression era grandmother, to my hippie mother, to myself.

It’s a useful position. I largely keep to it. I’m a practical shopper, and I don’t spend money unnecessarily. But I don’t have to live in a state of martyred self-abnegation. And I wanted those sunglasses. That’s the real reason I bought them instead of bashing the sales woman with her tray of frames and taking my business someplace more honest. I bought the fucking glasses because I wanted them.

Now, every time I get in the car, I pop my case out of the crevice in the ceiling and swap out dark lenses for light, light for dark. It’s a small maneuver representative of a much larger shift. And it feels good. Damned good.

All My Best Friends Are Dead Rock Stars

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Earlier, John Lennon wanted me to join together, or maybe that was Roger Daltry. Lennon was the guy telling me to let things be. But who can keep those old rockers straight? Half of them are dead anyway. Doesn’t stop grandma from blasting them all over the house. She’s even got LPs for Christ’s sake. I tell my friends they’re like early MP3s to save having to explain vinyl and EPs; 78s, 45s, and 33s.

She sashayed past my room an hour ago with a broom, and now she’s belting one out in the can while she scrubs the toilets. I do not want to hear about her good vibrations at this moment.

Used to, Sis would plug her smartphone into those speakers, and we’d rock with something current. But Sis hasn’t been home in four weeks, and grandma doubts she’ll come back until that stick-legged boyfriend of hers sticks his third leg up some other skirt.

Grandma likes to croon The Eagles and tell me to take it easy, but only half her family has up and gone on her. She’s still got me and Uncle Jack, who lives next door. Mom, Dad, Sis, every one of them has walked out on me, now. I used to think I had to put up with Grandma’s music to make her stay, but I eventually worked out she wasn’t going to leave her own house after living in it for thirty-odd years.

Some days, I’d like to go, too, to see how I did living on the road. But my band of friends would miss me, and I don’t guess I could ever really hitchhike and drum for my supper. It’s something to think about though, on days like today, when the rain hammers on my window and Grandma sings descant above men who’ve been dead longer than I’ve been alive, when she tells me about their friends who should have died with them all those eons ago.

Anger, and Mercy, and the Spaces between our hearts

Posted on by February 25, 2020

 

The quality of mercy is not strain’d
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes…

Shakespeare – The Merchant of Venice 4.1

Sam sat in a ceramic explosion. But as soon as he saw me, his vampire grin turned to dust  “I was so angry.”

“Is this why you called me?” I scowled from the door.

“Yes.” He made fists and pounded the carpet. “I was so angry, and I smashed Pandy!”

His beloved panda bank was tonight’s victim. “There’s not much we can do but clean him up and throw him away.”

“No!” Sam leapt up bawling. “Please! I need something to remember him by.”

Sam has an innate ability to work sophisticated words and phrases into his conversations with perfect usage. His mood disorders are real, but they don’t somehow supersede the Asperger’s. It all works together in his body, and sometimes, like last night, it all works against him. He’s a smasher. An impulsive destroyer of objects. His destructive capabilities far outstrip his self-control.

But here’s the thing. So am I. I like to throw telephones. How many of our early dates did Scott spend reassembling the cordless phone I had just hurled against my parquet floor? How often did he take it on faith that my fury had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the English department?

“Maybe I can glue some parts back together,” I told my son.

“Would you?”

 “I’ll try.”

Scott ferried me pieces as he found them, and I reassembled Pandy shard at a time. My fingers were superglued together before I completed the first match, and I left skin behind at every turn thereafter.

Sam stared until he got bored; then he slunk off to the living room. “Watch him,” I told Scott. We both knew the dog, a constant victim of our son’s temper, was on the new couch.

After barely five minutes, I heard. “Sam, let Chewie have his … bone.”

“That pause sounded bad.” I looked for someplace to wipe my fingers that wouldn’t leave me permanently affixed.

“Almost. How’d you see that go in, buddy?”

“It was shiny.”

“What happened?” I gave up trying to clean my hands and held them away from my body as I ran for the living room.

“Look at that.” Scott extended a battery to me. “Sam pulled it out of Chewie’s throat.”

“The hell you say.” I gave my son an all-elbows hug.

“Last week the Skittles. This week, the corrosive acid. He could have killed himself.” Scott embraced Sam, too, and I returned to the bear.

Finally, I said, “Son of a bitch,” to nobody in particular.

“Now what’s wrong?”

“I’m pretty impressed, actually. Do you know you found me every single goddamned piece?”

I brought out the bear, and Sam smiled, his eyes blessing me, answering a prayer I didn’t know I carried in my heart.

 

Moving bodies in space

Posted on by February 25, 2020

It’s easier to rock backwards than forwards; the push comes faster than the pull. My thighs quake as I strain, and for a moment, I’m holding up a hundred pounds of wood. I want to repeat this moment of perfect balance; I want moving furniture to come with the rhythm of sex. I want the crack of our bones when we come together to be the sound that formed the universe. I want the crack between our bodies to be an infinitesimal quark.

_________

I always get nervous when I use two definitions of a Trifecta word. Note – I have #2 and #3 in there.

Furniture Gallery

Posted on by February 25, 2020

“My ass cheeks are going in opposite directions.” Scott glowered up from the couch. It had recently snapped in the third place in less than two months.

“Mm-hmm.” I sat across the room. In a chair.

“We have to replace it, don’t we?”

“Mm-hmm.”

It came to me used and free in 1998 when I went to grad school. After Scott and I and four friends nearly killed ourselves getting it into our first shared apartment, Scott said, “It’s coming out kindling.”

“Baby, I’ll buy the axe.”

But it didn’t. Instead, when we rented our first house, we gave all our friends rope burn dropping the couch over the balcony. And it didn’t even crack.

When we bought our first house, local movers hefted the corner cabinet more easily than the sofa, thanks to affixed cushions and a shape that required it to be turned upside down at a three-quarter angle to get it through any door.

Coming down south, Andre the Giant picked up the corner cabinet alone and carried it down a set of slick deck stairs on his back rather than be part of the team of three jamming the couch out the front door.

In Montgomery, it endured two dogs’ toenails, two kids’ stuffing obsessions, and two parents’ indifference to the insults delivered upon it. But this March something crunched when I sat. Sam delivered a second crack in April, and Chewie got in the third in early May.

A month and a half later, we watched the couch’s insides fly out as a final set of movers maneuvered it out our front door. Granted that they dealt with heavy furniture all day, it still seemed easier for them to heave it than anybody before. We took it as a cosmic sign that the thing was ready to go. Then, we reclined the ends of our new one and started planning how to protect it from our dog and children. I’ll let you know how that works out.

If you want to come fly with us at Trifecta, you really should give it a whirl. It’s a great community of writers. Take a look at the wide variety of genres and abilities we display, and you’ll see what I mean. Odds are, whatever your focus, whatever level blogger or writer you feel yourself to be, there’s somebody else to connect with. (And it’s not like you have to join or anything – it’s a link-up.)  Don’t feel intimidated by the number of people submitting, what your [typo – leaving for the sake of irony] perceive as people who are writing above you, or the creative prompts.(I count the 333 word limit as a creative prompt.) (Also, believe me. We aren’t.)

The best place to jump in is probably the weekend challenge, which is often only 33 words long. Promise, you’ll get addicted. After all, I did.

Look Homeward

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I can keep memorabilia; dishes, furniture, knick knacks, and books. I can take pictures of the rusty old house, its weatherworn shutters so incongruous under the new green roof. I can cradle my memories like flowers once pressed between dictionary pages. I can even recreate the flavors in my grandfather’s recipes.

But I cannot hold onto  the smells. The basement’s dankness. The musty cedar fragrance of my uncle’s old bedroom. The layers of soap in the bathrooms.

This is my deepest grief about the Louisville house. That when it is sold, I will never again close my eyes and inhale the mixture of fall leaves and motor oil that hung over the driveway or the combination of mulch and roses that exuded from Poppa’s gardens.

But then, with no one living in it these last four years, the place has fallen into disrepair. Even long after it was fixed, a refrigerator breakdown robbed two rooms of their aromas. We had to work to restore them, sitting around the dining room table telling my grandparents’ stories, raising the dead the only way we knew how until the whole house had the right odor again. But I’m sure the stale air returned with our departure.

I’ve been home two weeks. Though I know this is the right thing, to let strangers bring their own fragrances to that place, it is hard.

But some days, I am granted a moment of perfect sensory wholeness. This afternoon, when I came in from failing to mow, the kitchen was redolent with rosemary, red wine, and chicken. It was the precise bouquet that always greeted me when I walked in Mummum and Poppa’s back door, though I never knew them to them make this particular dish. I held my breath, trying not to waste those precious moments before my nose adjusted to the scent.

I wanted to breathe it in forever, because it smelled like a thing lost. It smelled like my grandfather’s kitchen. It smelled like home.