When the universe gives you a sign, sing along

Sometimes when I run, I make the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father (forehead), Son (chest), Holy (left shoulder) Spirit (right Shoulder). I started doing it way before that football player got everyone hooked on Tebowing. When I run, I make other signs too. Like, when I’m jogging up a hill, I’ll do a thumbs up with both thumbs to remind myself to stay strong. And sometimes I give the one-fingered salute, but only if a driver really deserves it.  But I always begin and end every run with the sign of the cross.  It’s my thing. 

I think I started this running/making the sign of the cross when I first started training for marathons. I don’t remember the exact day or time or why, but this makes sense: I was worn out and far from home, and just needed something to help me keep putting one foot in front of the other. I’m pretty sure that’s when I crossed myself while running for the first time. I remember being embarrassed about drivers seeing me do it. 

Now I don’t care who sees me and sometimes I’ll deliberately cross myself at busy intersections just because there ARE lots of cars there. Having witnesses cements something inside me and helps me feel more committed and stronger. 

  

Somewhere down the line, again it was many years ago on one of those many long runs,  my reason for making the sign of the cross changed. Instead of doing it to ask for help, it became my way of expressing thanks to whatever force out there, or set of circumstances or who knows what, that made my biggest problem on that particular day a relatively silly one -- getting up some hill or across some bridge. 

In other words, it finally occurred to me one day that maybe rather than asking for help, I should be acknowledging how lucky I am. I’m not dying on the streets of Calcutta. I’m not wasting away at the top of a liver transplant list. I’m running huge distances of my own volition. Any misery I’m feeling? Geez. I’ve brought it on myself. And in the grand scheme of things?  I have no business complaining and have every reason to be thankful.  

I don’t know what my religion is any more, but I do know that I have it pretty good. I have a roof over my head, a steady job, and the ability to run fairly long distances at ridiculously slow speeds.  

Today I crossed myself at least a half dozen times.  The first time was when I started my run. Springsteen's Promised Land was the first song on my shuffle. If there's one other thing I believe in, besides always being grateful, it's this: when the universe gives you a great sign, sing along. The last time I crossed myself was as I finished and realized that even though I was stopping, I had another mile or so in the tank. Believe it or not, Promised Land was playing again. 

Two weeks ago I barely made it through five miles. I was flattened like roadkill. Today I ran nine and could have done more. I know that eventually there's "gonna be a twister to blow everything down." But for now, I'm grateful and I'm good.

On chocolate and my latest male obsession

How YOU doin'?

I’m having trouble staying awake because I just ate half a pan of Ghirardelli brownies, dark chocolate with chocolate chips. There. I did it. I put it out there.

I admit it. I am a brownie addict. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either. It’s not like my addiction interferes with my job or my social life or my family. I just can’t keep pastries, like brownies, in the house, because once I start eating them, I can’t stop until they are gone. 

But I can go days, weeks, months, okay maybe a week and a half, before my craving for cocoa, sugar, and flour overtakes me. I can and do live for days at a time on an ascetic diet of egg whites, fruit, the occasional almond. But then I’ll see an ad for cupcakes, or I’ll get a whiff of something dark and sensuous when I’m out and about.  The taste buds waken, the mouth starts watering, and suddenly, I’m standing in the bakery aisle at Shaw’s, trying to decide between the pedestrian Duncan Hines stuff on sale, or my gloriously decadent Ghirardelli. 

I know what happened today. I misjudged my willpower. 

I had a decent breakfast – a homemade fruit salad of cantaloupe, strawberries and red grapes, and two pieces of weight watchers whole wheat toast topped with just a smidgen of peanut butter. Then I went to hang with my mother while she received her weekly dose of gemcitabine. We’re both sitting in her little curtained nook, quietly reading our books, minding our own business. The intravenous pump is doing its sainted job, shooting poison into my mother’s veins – Die cancer die is what I keep thinking --  – and the kind nursing staff keeps stopping in to ask us if we’d like a snack. 

Well, I am only human.  Plus, my book is boring. I start thinking about what this snack could be, and my brain calls up chocolate in all its nefariously delightful forms: cookies, brownies, cakes. And that’s when I realize I hadn’t eaten enough that morning to get me safely to mid-afternoon.

  

I shrug it off because I’ll be home by three and I have plenty of fruit salad in the fridge. I make a plan to head right to the fruit salad when I get home. Though I do need to stop at the store for milk. That could be dangerous. I wonder if I have enough willpower to ride out this hunger storm.

I head into Shaw’s and my brain tells me to head left to the dairy aisle but my body drags me, a woman possessed,  in the other direction, past the crackers, the coffee, the on-sale cereal, to my destiny my downfall, the bakery aisle.  Next thing I know, I’m in my kitchen, pouring the mix into a bowl.  

I could tell you how I started scooping up the little balls of powdery yumminess as they fell from the box, and plopped them into my mouth with much abandon, or how I kept sampling the wet mix, tablespoon at a time,  just in case it needed more oil. I could detail how sloppily I scraped the mix into the pan to ensure there’d be a generous amount left in the bowl for me to feast on while I waited for the delectable mess to bake.  No. Some things are sacrosanct. The bond between me and my chocolate needs to stay intimate and inviolable and mysterious.

    

Now I would really love a nap, but unfortunately I’ve had another lapse so to speak, and I need to go and bake more brownies, metaphorically I mean.  Last week I renegotiated my cable/phone/internet contract and now I have a bazillion new stations and much to explore. 

Here’s how that all went, sort of:

Me: Are you people trying to kill me? Why did my bill double?  

Charter person: Oh. We can fix that. It’s just that your contract is up for renewal.  We can give you a new contract, and save you ten bucks a month.  Oh. I see you don’t have HBO or hardly any other neato channels like normal people. Would you like to upgrade to this century? It will only cost ten bucks more a month. 

Me: Huh. I rarely watch television because instead I’m usually too busy making fun of people who watch television. But this seems like a good deal and Weeds the best show ever is ending in a few weeks and then I’ll need something to fill the gap besides chocolate.  So, um yeah. Okay.

Long story short: I’ve discovered Game of Thrones and am only halfway through season one. I have a lot of catching up to do.  No napping for me. Peter Dinklage is waiting. Yum.

The soundtrack of my life? Springsteen please

I first “met” Bruce Springsteen in college. I should mention right off the bat that up until college I was a musical neophyte. I didn’t own many albums. When I listened to the radio, it was top forties stuff. Most of what I liked back then has faded from my brain. Then along came college and the images sharpen. 

I remember my Tretorn tennis shoes, the soles sticky with beer, singing until I was hoarse, and jumping as high as I could to Rosalita and just wanting that song to go on forever.  Of course there was Born to Run and Thunder Road and Jungleland and so many other greats. But when I think of college, I think of Bruce and Rosalita and so many other things that still make me smile: smoking cigars in The Pub (probably did that once?), Red, White and Blue beer (more than once), jogging up College Hill into Auburn and back, and talking the whole way about the wide open future (too many times to count).  

Cut ahead a few years to February 1988 and I’m waiting for my husband to come home. It will be my first ever Bruce concert. I have a toddler and a three week old. My mother is at the house babysitting. I’m itching to get out, but nervous about leaving the baby for the first time. On top of that,  I’d been sick with bronchitis since mid-January, and am recovering from a C-section, I wasn't feeling like myself at all.  

The show is a few miles away. He’s supposed to be home at 6:30. It’s now seven. There’s no office to call. He’s in sales. His car is his office. This is before cell phones. He doesn’t have a car phone. There’s no way to get in touch with him.  I haven’t had an adult night out since before Christmas, at least.

He finally shows up and says he has to change his clothes then we’ll leave. Something feels off but I can’t put my finger on it. Things have been off for awhile though he keeps telling me it’s all in my head and I take things too seriously. 

We finally get out to the car, which is freezing. The front windows had been rolled down the whole time he was in the house. Here’s roughly how the conversation went. 

Me: It’s February. Why are the windows down? It’s cold.

Him: Oh stop it. I just wanted some fresh air.

We roll up the windows. He blasts the heat.

Me:  What’s that smell? 

I see the roach clip in the ashtray.

Me: Seriously? Are you kidding?

Him: Oh will you lighten up. Geez.

This is what I remember about the show. We arrived on time and had great floor seats. The guy next to me was sweaty and fat and kept brushing up against me. Bruce played a slow acoustic version of Born to Run. I thought about all the times I’d run to the livelier version of that song over the last few years. I felt old and used up. Here’s what I thought: This is as good as my life is going to get.

Now fast forward through many years and a divorce. The kids are old enough to stay home alone. I only work one job now. I’d spent much of the nineties teaching during the day and waitressing at night. Now I’m just teaching. I have down time. I join a gym, where I ride the stationary bike, listen to music, and read. One day, instead of the bike, I choose the treadmill.  I walk and read. Then Rosalita comes on. Something gets stirred up inside me. I drop the book onto the floor. I move from a walk to a jog to a run. The song ends. I walk a bit to catch my breath. I hit replay. Rosalita comes on again. I run. 

Now it’s August 2002. I’ve run two marathons and am training for New York City in November. I’m in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, running the Beach to Beacon, a ten kilometer road race that draws thousands of top runners from all over the world, and regular folks like me.  My right hamstring aches. I’d pulled it a few days earlier, pounding down a steep hill, seven miles into a ten-mile run. I end up walking the last two miles of the B2B, and bite my tongue when little old ladies along the side of the road tell me earnestly to not give up, “You can do it!” I try to tell one of them that yes, I know I can do it but not today because if I run I’ll damage my leg even more. But she’s already started cheering on someone else who’s  limping and so she doesn’t hear me. 

During the two-hour drive home, I play the entire Rising disc over and over until I know all the words. And when they finally sink in, I think how lucky I am to be alive. I remember to dream of life. I run New York City that November with “Rise Up!” magic markered on my thighs.   

The next few years fly by. There are marathons, Bruce concerts, high school graduations, college graduations and always Springsteen songs on my runs: favorites come and favorites go, though some are always part of the background music.  Thunder Road, Badlands, Darkness on the Edge of Town get played every time I run because they remind me that I want more. I don’t want to “lie ‘neath the covers and study my pain.” I’m done with “wasting my time waiting.” I’m ready and willing to “pay the cost for wanting things that can only be found in the darkness on the edge of town.” My darkness is a good thing: my hopes, my dreams. 

Sometimes I goof a bit. For a few months I obsessively play Girls in their Summer Clothes. I sing it while I run, changing some of the words: “The boys in their running clothes pass me by.” That makes me smile. I love the ending: “I ain’t got no sense but I’ve still got my feet.” That was me then. That's still me today. 

Now there’s Wrecking Ball and cancer and I acknowledge that it is true: “hard times come and hard times go, just to come again.” The words by themselves?  A little depressing, I guess. But there’s that driving melody, the surging repetition, crescendos and crashes, and for me, it’s a fight song. See, that’s the thing about Bruce. There’s always something I can latch on to. There’s always a lesson to chew on. There’s always something that fits.

The first song to come up on my shuffle this morning was Thunder Road. I listened to it while I walked for a few minutes and warmed up for a six-mile run. I'm smiling and thinking: I’m no beauty, but I’m all right. I’ve got my ghosts, like anyone of my advanced age. But I’m not ready to give up on living just yet. I don't need to wait for a savior to rescue me. I'll rescue myself.  

“These two lanes will take us anywhere. . .”  The timing was perfect, because I was staring at double yellow lines on a smooth swath of pavement that rose and curved and disappeared into the future. I took a couple of swigs of water as the song wound down. Hid the half full plastic bottle under a bush so I could grab it on my way back when I was at the mile four mark.

 
The song finished. I hit the repeat button, and you know what I did next? Of course you do. I ran.

When is it okay to murder our darlings?

Murder your darlings. If you have any writing background or any interest in writing, you’ve probably read the phrase. It’s attributed to a lot of authors, including Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Stephen King, and the British writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who wrote about the phrase in his book  On the Art of Writing (1916). I didn’t just pull this stuff out of my head, by the way. My brain is more of a sieve than a sponge these days.

I’d never heard of that hyphenated guy until a few minutes ago. I googled the phrase. His name popped up, along with many others. Maybe one day I’ll write a post on how the internet has not only made it easier for us to research, but has also made it easier for us to forget things. One reason I don’t hold on to many facts any more is because I don’t have to. Everything I want to know is just a couple of clicks away.  That doesn’t sit well with me, and yet I google rather than recall.

   

Isn’t it a great saying? Murder your darlings. Love it. It’s not about taking an automatic weapon to your Hansels and your Gretels, your grannies and marathoners. It means cutting out all the extraneous verbiage that breaks down the relationship between reader and text. Almost always, it’s stuff that you are in love with, which is usually one of the main clues that it needs to go. Like replacing the phrase “extraneous verbiage” with something that better fits the mood and tone of this paragraph and doesn’t make me sound like such an idiot. 

Here’s Quiller-Couch’s quote, so you can see for yourself: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

The phrase has been going through my head the last few days. I’m wondering if one of the reasons has to do, not so much with editing out and rewriting words that I’m in love with, as with editing out and rewriting parts of my history. This blogging is getting dangerous. I thought the process would help unclog my words and make it easier for me to write in my authentic voice. But what I’m finding more and more is that my authentic voice isn’t just about words on paper. It’s about writing my own story.

See, when I think “murder my darlings” I’m not thinking overblown phrases, I’m thinking how telling my story could destroy the spirits of certain loved ones. 

Yesterday’s entry was not what I had originally intended to write.  I started yesterday by writing about sociopaths. I got into uncomfortable territory really fast. Uncomfortable in that I was chomping at the bit to share my story, but was afraid to because of how it would affect others. I don’t care about how my story reflects upon me. I really don’t. I’m an underdog and proud of it. I overcame. I lived to tell the tale. But the problem is, how do I tell the tale without invading the privacy of beloved others? 

Maybe I don’t tell it? Maybe I tell it another way?

I read somewhere that that’s what Anne Rice did in Interview with the Vampire. She wrote the book while she was still grieving the death of her young daughter. Supposedly, the young vampire girl that Lestat adopts was meant to represent Rice’s daughter. I've read that the Train song Calling on Angels is actually about the death of the lead singer's mother.

Yesterday’s original post, since deleted, was on gaslighting, which is one of the sociopath’s favorite weapons.  The term comes from Gas Light, a 1944 movie starring Ingrid Bergman. Bergman plays a woman who is gradually driven to near insanity by her spouse. Gaslighting means to mess with someone’s reality to the point where they start questioning their own sanity. It’s the pedophile priest who tells the abused altar boy that he brought this on himself. It’s the cheating husband who tells the suspicious wife that she’s got to stop letting her imagination run wild.  

Gas Light -- watch it and learn

I know gaslighting. I want to write about it in my story. No. It’s not want. It’s need. I need to write about it.  The challenge now becomes walking that tightrope between revealing and holding tight. I need to figure out how to write about it without murdering my darlings.

Just flexing some muscles

A few days ago, I needed to curtail an evening out. I’d spent half the day at doctors’ appointments with my mom, and the other half at the gym to get some feeling back in certain body parts that just aren’t used to pressing into waiting room chairs for four hours at a time. I was at a restaurant with a friend, enjoying hot soup and popcorn – a weird combination but it worked for me -- when I mentioned it was almost time for me to leave because I had to get home to write my daily blog post.  

The friend suggested I skip writing that day and enjoy an evening with no time constraints.  “You work hard. Give yourself a break.” 

My reply? “No, absolutely not.”  

When I started this blog, I made a promise that I would write every day for at least twenty-eight days. I picked that number because I have a lot of facebook friends who like to challenge themselves at the gym, and they’re always throwing out that magic two and eight. 

“Today was day sixteen at Cross Fit! More than halfway to my goal! Here’s a pic of my blisters!”

“Kicked butt at boot camp today! Just six days left! Awesome! Get a load of these abs! Woohoo!” 

I want to get into the habit of writing every day or close to every day.  So I figured I’d do twenty-eight days of public blog posts. Now since then I've googled “how many days to form a habit” and learned that some psychology experts say you need much more than four weeks to create a habit. In fact, many say you need sixty-six days to get a habit to stick.  

Sixty-six. Twenty-eight. Whatever. I just wanted a number that was within reach but maybe a titch unattainable too. Ten would have been too easy. I probably wouldn't have even bothered writing because there's no challenge there. Fifty is way up there. I wouldn’t have gotten past day two, I’d have been so overwhelmed. 

Maybe I’ll choose to continue this daily post for another six weeks past my self-imposed finish line. Maybe I won’t. The important thing for me is to get to twenty-eight days. I am focused on the end. I am resolved to finish what I started. 

Once I schlump back to my real job in a few weeks, I’ll have a lot of distractions to fight off. I’ll be worn out. I’ll want to sleep in. The house will need cleaning. The cats will need combing. Perhaps if I set up good work habits now, those distractions won’t get the best of me. 

I am writing a book. I have been working on it for a few years. Right now, I am on my third draft, though certain sections have been rewritten ten, twenty or even thirty-five times. The book is not yet where I want it to be. I still have a lot of junk to sort out. The plot has some holes. The ending sucks. The action in the middle just plain unravels. The reason for the blog isn’t to cure these ills. The reason for the blog is to clarify my voice; to clear my writing throat. I read my book and I get a little annoyed. I think, “This is not me yet.” 

I want a voice that is undeniable and fearless. A voice that looks you square in the eye and says, "Yup. That's me. Deal with it." So I flex my muscles. I write it out. The more I write, the closer I get. Hopefully, one day I’ll finally tear away the conceit the fluff the gluey outer layers, and get to my truth.

The other night I returned home early from my dinner and sat at the computer and I wrote. I’ll be here writing tomorrow too, and for at least a week after that. I promised myself that I would write for twenty-eight days straight. It’s just a random number. I know that. And in the end, the only one who’ll care whether I do it or not is me. So really, it would be easy to stop. That makes me more determined not to.

Smart women and sociopaths: Why?

I have spent the morning reading about Carol Dimaiti Stuart and Rachel Entwistle and what I need right now is a good run because the rage inside me won’t subside any other way. But first this. 

This morning I embarked upon some steps necessary to begin revising my book. I need to flesh out my main characters just a little more. I need to reveal motive more explicitly. The main character, a female, is book smart but people dumb. The main male is a sociopath. And yes, the story is based somewhat on my own life. But only a little bit. It’s mostly fiction.  

Here’s my problem. I’d thought I’d done a decent job establishing the female’s character using back story, thoughts, actions, conversations. But my workshop group wanted more. Many of them couldn’t understand how such a smart woman could end up with such a loser of a guy. And therein lies the problem. It’s something many women, myself included, ask all the time. How could I have married such a jerk? How did I miss the signs? What was I thinking? 

   

When I first started writing my book, I had in mind a main character not that unlike the girl next door sweetie-pie played by Drew Barrymore in The Wedding Singer. She’s a waitress engaged to an ubersuccessful businessman, who is a liar and a slut and only marrying her because he trusts that her intentions are pure: they’d been dating since before he made all his money. I was also kind of thinking of Rosanna Arquette’s naïve housewife character in Desperately Seeking Susan. She’s a quiet mousy thing in a loveless marriage to a dull guy who’s all about appearances. 

Sweet girl, idiot boyfriend

But neither of those characters had the brain power and arrogance of smart-ass Miranda Hobbes, Cynthia Nixon’s Sex and the City character. I mean in the show, not the movie. The movie sucks. My blog. My opinion. Miranda is a Harvard-educated lawyer who, for most of the series, keeps falling for these total idiots: the guy who needed to watch porn while having sex; the verbally abusive litigator whose behavior she kept excusing because he was under a lot of pressure trying to make partner. Just to name a few. Granted, she never falls prey to a sociopath, but she certainly puts up with her share of creeps. 

Smart woman, terrible choices

I draw upon these characters because before I was married, I wasn’t that unlike dear little Drew. While married and miserable, I could see escaping into a fantasy world like Arquette’s character, though my marital problems weren’t anything akin to hers. And as for Miranda Hobbes? Her experiences with the dregs of high society aren’t that far off the mark from reality.  Just look at that Harvard-educated woman who was married to looney toon Clark Rockefeller, the serial liar now being investigated for murder in California.

  

Why do some smart women make such poor choices? That’s where my mind is this morning and what brought me here, to Carol Dimaiti Stuart and Rachel Entwistle, brilliant women who died too young. And I can't help thinking, "There but for the grace of God."

 

Both women graduated from top Jesuit colleges: Carol from Boston College and Rachel from Holy Cross, my alma mater. Carol was an attorney and seven months pregnant in 1989 when her husband murdered her and their unborn child, and tried to pin the crime on an anonymous, non-existent black man. Rachel, a stay at home mom, and her nine month old daughter were murdered in 2006 by her husband, who then bought a ticket to England and scooted back to his parents. He claimed he’d come home from running an errand, found them both dead, and couldn’t handle the horror of it all. Entwistle was in the news again the other day because his appeal for another trial was just turned down. 

I’m guessing, based on what I’ve read about their personalities, and what I know based upon our shared academic and cultural backgrounds, that both women were taught to turn the other cheek, defer to authority, study hard, raise your hand, make a difference, put others first, give people the benefit of the doubt. These are just some of the characteristics that hit me quickly. Give me a half hour and I bet I could come up with another ten pages. I could write an entire  paper on what it means to be a good Catholic  girl, or on the Jesuit dictum “men and women for others.” 

I’m not saying that any of this Jesuit/ Catholic/ cultural stuff is bad. I’m saying that sometimes, smart women end up with horrible men. And I am struggling with why. How did it start? What was the initial attraction? What signs did we miss? What lies did we overlook? Why did we minimize?

I got out of my bad situation. There was some collateral damage, and there was a long road back to health and happiness, and there was of course that shadowy puzzling beginning many years ago that led to the whole avalanche. I’m drawing on that but I need more. 

I need to flesh out my character. I’ll be doing more research here on the net, but also I'd like to hear what you have to say. Think of women you know, smart women who made terrible choices. What was the attraction at the start? What blinded them? I’d appreciate hearing back. Message me privately if you would like, or respond openly. Or not at all. Whatever works for you.

Now I’ve got to get to the gym and take the edge off the anger. It never goes away totally. But that's a story for another day.

The view from Vernon: More writing practice

I remember plaid Keds and a big belly and the tight grip of my grandmother’s hand around mine.  She wore dark dresses that skimmed her calves and tie-up shoes with small heels. Sometimes she wore a kerchief in her hair. I’m not sure if she wore one that day, but then again, I’m not remembering a specific day here.

 

Though one day I did wear a piece of paper taped to my forehead and the top of my braids. I was probably four. 

We were returning from our daily walk maybe to the park and the swings or to Jack's, a store across from Vernon Pizza where they sold a lot of penny candy.

   

We turned from Vernon Street onto View and came upon my friends playing house in a pine cave in the Wasgatt’s side yard. “What did you do to your head?” That was Michael Cannon, a son of my mother’s best friend. He was a few months older than me. His blonde hair was never more than an inch long. He pointed to the paper.

I hadn’t yet learned to be embarrassed. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m a nurse. I’m coming home from work. This is my nurse’s hat.”

I twisted my hand to break free and join my friends, but Ma said no because it was almost dinner time.

Our house was halfway down the hill, just four houses from Vernon, the main street in the neighborhood. We lived in one of the bigger three-deckers on a street full of them in a city famous for them. Like others nearby, the first floor was vanilla clapboard, while the top two floors were covered in chocolate shingles. 

My grandfather had died a few years before I was born, but his legacy was the green yard, overgrown but still beautiful when I was a little girl. My grandfather was also good with his hands and built the three-car garage that was slightly behind and off to the side of the house. But I’m sure when I was four I didn’t know that he’d built this garage that Ma and I were walking toward. I didn’t know then about the turkey he once raised in the cellar and killed for Thanksgiving dinner (my mother said it was delicious). My world at this stage of my life was the park, the pine cave, and the narrow steep driveway we had to climb to reach the back door.

I’m guessing as we walked we probably avoided the big bump in the center of the drive that the bottom of the Rambler always scraped against and my father always swore about. I may have tried to pick some of the red berries from the prickly bushes we passed, and it’s likely I noticed the fluffy blue hydrangea that sat under Ma’s bumped out dining room windows. Hydrangeas are still some of my favorite flowers, though I love lilacs more. We had a wall of lilacs in the backyard, with leafy fragrant nooks where I’d hide and read. 

Once in the house I liked to play rescue while Ma made dinner on the big gas stove. The yellowed linoleum would be a sea full of monsters, and the only safe places to stand were the red tiles that formed a sort of square in the center of the kitchen floor. I’d hop from square to square, rescuing myself from sea snakes and crocodiles and other slimy things. 

The scarlet table with silver trim was pushed against the long wall opposite the stove. After the spaghettios were heated up, Ma would sit at the head of the table with her back to the pantry. I would be on her left. She’d pour the spaghettios from the aluminum pan to our shallow plastic bowls, and always gave me most of the pasta. 

Then together, we would count the meatballs: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. We would each get three of the tiny meatballs, and Ma would carefully halve the remaining one so we had an even amount. Ma didn’t care much for spaghettios, but she loved her meatballs. 

While we ate, I would rub my palm over the cool surface of the shiny metal table. It fascinated me. Our table upstairs was wood. 

I was very close to my grandmother. When I first wrote the skeleton of this, I was at a poetry workshop in Santa Fe. We were given this prompt: I remember. And then this came pouring out.

What I wrote I hadn’t thought about in maybe forty-five years. These images rushed into my head, but I don’t know why. Maybe someday I’ll have to do something more with this.