In Which I Write About A Rhyming Poem of Garrison Keillor's

Garrison Keillor wrote this poem. And it's a rhyming poem no less, thereby reducing it, by default, to a lowish stature in the grand world of poetry. I like poetry, and good books, and I know that the poem is not particularly good writing, (although I think Keillor's books and other creative/entertainment talents are way beyond awesome).

But this poem, with all of it's wobbly weaknesses, speaks volumes; about life and dreams. Unfulfilled dreams. Living your life well, and happy and good, and not complaining that you had your heart set on something else. This is how we roll, here in the Midwest. This is our way.

It reminds me of the restlessness of my ex too, a man who pursued his ambitions and challenges every single day, driving up north every weekend to build hand scribed log cabins in his spare time, after working hard all week on a construction crew in the city. He was not searching for 'mountains by the ocean shore' but for something else, maybe something he didn't even know. I am more like the wife in the story, content to persevere wherever I find myself.

I cried the first time I read this poem, and every time since. It twists my heart. I have attached a copy of it, below.

A Letter From Copenhagen, Part 2

Our people aimed for Oregon
When they left Newburyport--
Great-grandma Ruth, her husband John,
But they pulled up in Wobegon,
Two thousand miles short.

It wasn't only the dangers ahead
That stopped the pioneer.
My great-grandmother simply said,
"It's been three weeks without a bed.
I'm tired. Let's stay here."

He put the horses out to graze
While she set up the tent,
and they sat down beside their blaze
And held each other's hand and gazed
Up at the firmament.

"John," she said, "what's on your mind
Besides your restlessness?
You know I'm not the traveling kind,
So tell me what you hope to find
Out there that's not like this?"

The fire leaped up bright and high,
The sparks as bright stars shone.
"Mountains," he said. "Another sky.
A Green new land where you and I
Can settle down to home.

"You are the dearest wife to me.
Though I'm restless, it is true,
And Oregon is where I'd be
And live in mountains by the sea,
But never without you."

They stayed a week to rest the team,
Were welcomed and befriended.
The land was good, the grass was green,
And slowly he gave up the dream,
And there the journey ended.

They bought a farm just north of town,
A pleasant piece of rolling ground,
A quarter-section, mostly cleared;
He built a house before the fall;
They lived there forty years in all,
And by God persevered.

And right up to his dying day
When he was laid to rest,
No one knew--he did not say--
His dream had never gone away,
He still looked to the west.

She found it in his cabinet drawer:
A box of pictures, every one
Of mountains by the ocean shore,
The mountains he had headed for
In the state of Oregon.

There beside them lay his will.
"I love you, Ruth," the will began,
And count myself a well-loved man.
Please send my ashes when I die
To Oregon, some high green hill,
And bury me and leave me lie
At peace beneath the mountain sky,
Off in that green and lovely land
We dreamed of, you and I."

At last she saw her husband clear
Who stayed and labored all those years,
His mountains all uncrossed.
Of dreams postponed and finally lost,
Which one of us can count the cost
And not be filled with tears?

And yet how bright the visions are
Of mountains that we sense afar,
The land we never see:
The golden west and golden gate
Are visions that illuminate
And give wings to the human heart
Wherever we may be.
That old man by dreams possessed,
By Oregon was truly blessed
Who saw it through the eye of faith,
The land of his sweet destiny:
In his eye, more than a state
And something like a star.

I wrote this poem in Oregon,
Wanting the leaden words to soar
In memory of my ancestor
And all who live along the way.
God rest their souls on a golden shore,
God bless us who struggle on:
We are the life that they longed for,
We bear their visions every day.

--Garrison Keillor

I Dig Minneapolis

Okay, shutty up. I know, yes, this is another post about snow. But think of it this way - you don't have to read another dating post. ;)

This is a pretty good pile of snow we received in the storm. 17" in Minneapolis, with plenty of blowing to create drifts. Back in the 1930's when the city laid out these blocks on paper, someone had the foresight to (or made the mistake to) give the west half of my block larger front and back yards, and the east half (my side) got what was left over. Thank God. I have enough mowing to do in the summer up at the lake, and I view my Lilliputian yard here as a wonderful thing. That sentiment doubles every time I need to go out and shovel my walks and driveway.

Actually I enjoy shoveling (and mowing). And yesterday evening, when the falling snow seemed to be in the winding down stages, I went outside to see what sort of dent I could start to make in it. I shoveled my way out the front door (I had already tried the back door and it was blocked closed by a good size snowdrift), down the front steps, and ever so slowly the very short front walkway. I got to the sidewalk, and was able to clear a path as wide as my shovel, down the middle. We're talking deep snow here. I went inside feeling fairly certain that I could shovel out the rest, and my little driveway, on Sunday.

Sunday: had a cup of coffee and then bundled up in fleece pants, jeans, 2 shirts, a hoodie, scarf, hat, warm coat, boots and mittens. Not exactly a fashion statement. Hah. As I take a last sip of coffee, I see someone snowblowing the rest of my front walk. I peek out to see this same guy snowblowing all the front sidewalks.

When I open the garage door from inside my house, I am looking at a cut out view of the snow on my driveway. 17" inches of solid snow to clear, plus the dreaded snowplow leftovers - those big snowcrete banks the plows block you in with as they go by. I will not look at, nor think about that snowcrete pile until I get there. As a matter of fact, the only way to tackle this is to divide this massive amount of snow into a imaginary grid. My job is to focus on removing enough snow for my car to get through to the alley. That is 5 shovels wide, by 4 shovels high, by I lost track of how many, rows long. A lot. I tried to be crabby, but seriously it is a GLORIOUS morning here. Blue sky and sunshine everywhere. And I really hate to say this - but this snow - it was the perfect type for shoveling! Not too heavy, not too light. Not loaded down with moisture, but just exactly the right amount so it formed a nice block of snow with every scoop. Very satisfying.

I am actually debating whether I will be able to remove all this snow, yes, there is that much. And my car is blocked in the garage until the snow is removed. I really like the idea of being able to do this on my own though, so I keep shoveling. I'm careful to try to lift correctly; my back is already starting to tighten up a little. 4 scoops down = one foot cleared. Move over, 4 scoops down = one foot cleared. Move over... I keep at it. When I see that I've cleaned off the first two feet of the driveway, I know I can do it myself. Shovelful by shovelful.

I have it about halfway cleaned off when a truck drives past me, down the alley. It's my neighbor, on the corner of the block. He's on the big yard side. There is a snowblower sitting on the open tail gate and the driver motions to me from inside the cab - "I'll come and do yours next".

What a nice offer! And I notice his coat is the same coat I saw on the mysterious snowblowing volunteer earlier, clearing every one's front walks. People are nice here. It is part of what makes Minnesota - Minnesota.

However, I'm on a mission now: a personal quest. I challenge myself, in the name of single women, in the name of hardy Minnesotans, hell - in the name of perseverance, and personal strength - YES I can shovel it with the best of 'em! I want to shovel myself out. Just to say I can, just to say I did it.

My corner neighbor returns with his snowblower, along with two other neighbors wielding snowshovels (but in good way), and all three offer to help me clear the rest of my driveway. I thank them, but send them on to the next neighbor. It feels good to toss that last shovelful, and head back into my house. Aching back and all.

Up next, a good movie and hot chocolate laced with ibuprofen.

One Shovelful At A Time, Sweet Jesus

My sidewalks and driveway are shoveled clear. Whew. It wasn't heavy snow, but it was deeper than I'd thought and I'm glad to finally be done with it. My shoveled areas here are a little on the sloppy side; the neighbor's walk was neat as a pin with it's broom swept trails, and as I cleared my driveway, I couldn't help but notice the drive directly across the alley from mine had apparently been licked clean, or vaporized with a blow torch.

House maintenance is sometimes a tough gig for a single female. My dad bought me a 'lady tool kit' earlier this year; a purple canvas tool bag, filled with a variety of hand tools with purple handles, which has come to my rescue several times already since I received it. Men's gadgets are cool, it's just that I never think to go and buy them.

I have plenty to do indoors today: cookie baking, gift wrapping, and writing out Christmas greeting cards, and also just generally relaxing. I had actually planned to go out shopping for the last few gifts I wanted to pick up, but so far the streets and alleys have not been plowed by my house, so Miss Vegas and I are cozy-ing in for the day.

Another thing mom and dad bought me when I moved into this house is a big counter-top mixer. That was three years ago, but I've been busy and didn't open the box until a few days ago. I'm looking forward to making some delicious treats with it. Mom, who is an excellent cook and baker, also recently gave me a rosette iron and a cookie press. So - I'll be venturing into baking territory this weekend.

The snow started to fall early yesterday and continued all day, and through the night.

When I went out this morning to shovel, everything outdoors was softened, covered with a thick blanket of snow. The cars parked on the street looked like puffy white cartoon-mobiles, the curb lines and sidewalks, even the streets - were softened, hidden beneath all the snow. My shovel scraped the sidewalk, guessing at where the edges were. Scoops of snow flung aside, revealing the steps up my front walk.

The snowstorm temporarily disengaged the physical boundaries of my neighborhood, a lot the way divorce dissipated the outlines of my life. I'm still discovering where they are. And it's been fun finding out.

Lucky Me

I don't remember the first Thanksgiving I spent as a single person. I know my friend Jobird H. invited me to Thanksgiving with his family, but I didn't go. I may have been wallowing in self-pity, not sure, but I'm guessing I spent it by myself, in my new home. It was probably all right. Maybe even enjoyable.

Thanksgiving number two, I drove to Fargo, to be with boyfriend number 1. He had the nicest family, they were all great. He was himself. We parted ways about a month later.

Thanksgiving number three: I was living at the Cowboy's house, and we worked our Thanksgiving dinner in around a couple of days when he returned from Texas. We went to Molly Cools for seafood on Wednesday night, and he left the next day. The weather was uncertain. Our future was uncertain. We parted ways shortly after that. I was back in my own house before Christmas.

Hey, I never said this would be as interesting as Elizabeth Taylor's memoirs. Just bear with me here.

Thanksgiving number four: I am about as happy as I have ever been in my life. Things are good, life is wonderful, and I have an awful lot to be thankful for.

I thank God when something good happens to me. I talk to God a lot. I really don't pray gracefully or in a very reverent sort of way. I pray fervently though, and candidly.

(I also pray fast, and can recite a rosary in record time. I'm not sayin' I'm proud of it, and it's not to achieve some kind of speed award, but just an adaptation to fit it into my busy life.) I often ask God for some help, or a push in the right direction. There are times too, when I've had to completely give up on trying to sort through a problem, and instead, just hand it off to God. This is something you learn as you to do as you get older and wiser. You have to be okay with bending your ego.

His answers have very simply fallen into place in my head. Solutions that I never would have thought of.

I've had a lot of good answers from God this year, gigantic stuff. Miraculous stuff.

Thank you Lord, for the big stuff. And the small stuff. And for family and friends. I've been blessed to be surrounded by people with huge, wonderful, caring hearts, who love me.

For this life I live, with all of you - I'm lucky, I'm grateful. I'm thankful.

Mealtime

Mom has always known her way around a kitchen, and that was a good thing, because Dad was kind of a picky eater. We ate home cooked, home canned, farm raised, garden gathered, food. Dad liked big meals with all the trimmings - meat, potatoes, vegetables, home baked bread, six kinds of pickles, and some sort of delicious dessert.

Unlike a lot of Minnesotans, we didn't have many hot-dishes, or things like sloppy joes, and we would have died-and gone-to-heaven to have pizza once in a while. (And that would have been the kind of pizza that came in a small box - where you mixed up the dough and added the tiny can of tomato paste - it would have been unheard of back then to buy a frozen pizza.)

Breakfast was a big meal at our house too. All of us kids knew how to fry eggs, and that was a standard. Mom would make hot cereals, cooked on the stove. (The kind where you add hot water to oatmeal in a little pouch had not been invented yet. Or more correctly, it actually had been - it simply came in a bigger box, and you had to measure it out into the pan...) She would make sausage and gravy, bacon and pancakes. Or a giant pot of homemade hot chocolate. We couldn't have coffee, but we could have hot chocolate.

On weekdays, Dad got up long before we kids, so he could drive to his job in Brainerd. But on weekends when we were all there for breakfast, Dad would always let us dip our peanut butter toast into his cup of coffee. He ate his toast the same way.

It has recently occurred to me that his coffee cup must have been half full of soggy toast crumbs, not to mention the germs from the hands of all us grubby little children. He never said anything about it - and this was a man whose dresser drawers were sorted and arranged into neat sections of socks, handkerchiefs, t-shirts, etc. We were just always welcome to dip right in to that cup of coffee.

Over the years, Dad and Mom have had to adjust their eating, as health dictated, and age and weight, and those big home cooked meals don't happen all that often anymore.

And Dad's been eating hospital food for the past couple days. I suppose it's not too good, but I haven't heard him complain.

This afternoon, he's not feeling all that great. One of his major meds had accidentally slipped off the list, and as a consequence he's been having facial spasms, extremely painful. Between that, and some different meds they gave him to relax and eliminate some of the face pain, he's been very groggy, and shaky.

They also wouldn't give him anything to eat until someone looked at the ultrasound he had earlier, so when he could finally have something, he asked for peanut butter toast and coffee. The styrofoam coffee cup was full and he has to eat while inclined, and with a perilously shaky grip on the cup. Pat mentioned getting a lid for the cup, so it wouldn't spill so easily, but he either didn't hear her or didn't want one, as he didn't really respond to the suggestion. She went out and down the hall to the break-room and got one, and was just reaching across the bed tray to put it on the cup, when she saw why he didn't want one. He broke his peanut butter toast in half, reached up to the cup on the tray, and dipped it way down in.

Old habits sometimes just don't need breaking.

Road Trip

My family ends up in hospital waiting rooms quite often, as Mom has been dealing with health issues for many years. Sort of feels like home after you've been here awhile. The St Cloud hospital is one of the most professional and courteous I have experienced.

So here I am, with Pat, Barb, Julie and Mom, in one of the waiting areas in the hospital, doing some writing while Dad takes a nap. He just got a bath, clean bedding and a back rub from the nurses, so I'm thinking he'll be sleepin' like a baby for a while. He has a low grade fever today and will likely get a pacemaker implant tomorrow, provided the fever dissipates.

Usually Dad is on the waiting room end of these hospital visits, and I was remembering the time when Mom became extremely ill while they were on vacation a few summers ago. They'd gone to a family reunion in Sioux Falls, and Mom was in such bad shape that Dad called us to come down there. So 'the girls' (Pat, me, Barb and Julie) all crammed into Julie's little car, and headed out into the night. It seems that even if you have time to pack a bag, there are always a few things you forgot to bring, or ran out of while you're away. This is why a lot of our pajamas are from Walmart.

Anyway, because Dad packs for vacation like most men, with just the most minimal amount of clothes, by the time we got to the hospital in Sioux Falls, and it became obvious that Mom would be there for a while - he needed to get out to make some extra clothing purchases.

A small warning bell dinged off somewhere in the back of my brain, but I ignored it. Which is probably why - when we reached the mall, Barb and Julie made a hasty beeline off to the other end of the mall, (to look at shoes, naturally) leaving me to help Dad find the stuff he needed. Dad's not a big shopper, I guess Mom probably buys most of his clothes, and a feeling of dread and slight panic swept over me when Dad said, "Well, I guess I need some shirts. I like those T-shirt shirts, you know, with a pocket on the front. And stripes, this way." While motioning his arms to indicate horizontal stripes.

Wonder of wonders - and thank you Jesus - there happened to be a big table of such shirts at Kohl's. We picked out a few and Dad tried one on. In the store. Right next to the table. Then posed, pooching out his belly, and asked, "Does this look too small for me?" We had more stuff to get and needed to get back to the hospital in due time. I said they looked great.

Onward to socks. You'd think this would be an easy one, but he had a particular kind in mind, and more complexly - a certain calf height. Not too high and not too low. Those seem to have too tight elastic. Those have a grey toe and heel. Etcetera. Finally found some that fit the bill.

I was hoping he had brought enough underwear, because I really just didn't want to go there. Alas, to the underwear aisles we trod. This was the worst, because while I don't mind a quick grab and buy, I did not want to browse the men's undie aisle. With my dad. We looked at a lot of different styles, and although he seemed sure of what exact type he wanted (and I really had no inclination to learn what type of unterwasche he wore) we couldn't find the right ones. He finally found a package of underwear that *seemed* close to the right kind, judging from the photo on the front. But he was hesitant to choose them because they were labeled 'fitted knit boxers' and he knew his were called 'boxer-briefs.'

Our shopping was finally completed. It has always stuck in my mind though - how we were able to find all those items exactly like he what wanted. Maybe guardian angels cover more ground than we think. ;)

Just Another Date In Paradise

Yet another first date. I'd been emailing quite a lot and talking on the phone with this guy, and he seemed normal and kind of fun. There was something about him that was off-putting also, but I could never really put my finger on it - so I chalked it up to my imagination and just dismissed it. He really wanted to meet, and I ended up staying in the city for the weekend at the last minute, so although I knew he had a fairly full weekend, I said if he could roust up a couple spare hours we could have coffee or a cocktail and chat for a bit in person. He said he could after 830pm on Saturday.

I wore a summer dress and shiny wedge sandals, make-up, perfume and I did my hair in a fun curly style - I thought we might go out for the coffee, but he came to the door with a nice bottle of wine. He was wearing a real weird tank top (what guy wears a tank top on a date??) and some unflattering denim shorts that I've never seen the likes of before. Not in the past couple decades anyway. He sort of wanted me to open the wine, but since he'd just come from a neighborhood party where he'd had mixed citrus drinks, I asked if he would like something more along those lines and I poured him a lemon drop.

We chatted in the living room for a while, and were actually having a really good time. I knew from talking on the phone, that he isn't the world's greatest conversationalist, so I kept the conversation flowing and upbeat, asking him funny questions, and inquiring about his hobbies, interests, and family, etc. One question I asked was: What is the stupidest thing you've ever done? He replied, "In high school shop class I removed the guard on the table saw, and cut off two of my fingers." I thought he was kidding till he waved his finger-chopped hand at me. The pointer finger was completely gone and the "finger" finger was far too short to ever give the finger.

Well, you know me, I recover quickly from shock, and who am I to be all hoity-toity about a couple of missing digits? We keep talking. I was having fun, and he was too. He said he didn't really like his drink, so we went to the kitchen and opened the wine. I don't drink wine much at all, and red wine never, as the tannins give me a headache. But he had a couple glasses and the conversation was still going.

I don't get all lovey-dovey on a first date; I like to get to know the person first, but we decided to watch a concert on dvd, and as I was retrieving a disc from a basket on the floor right beside him - I was enjoying his company so much that I leaned in to give him a little kiss. Besides I like to kiss and I was wondering if he was much of a kisser. He looked at me in surprise and I said "I was just going to give you a kiss." He smiled, leaned back his head, closed his eyes, and opened his mouth about 2 inches, as if he was going to yawn. I kid you not. I didn't have time to register shock, as I was already on the down-swoop, so I elected to kiss just his top lip, not knowing how else to handle it. Fortunately, his jaw swung back upwards to an actual kiss position, so I could just give him a little peck, and back off. Wow. Awkward. I am seriously still wondering - is that actually the way he kisses? I surely want no part of it. Who doesn't know how to kiss? Isn't it an automatic thing?? A natural response??

Miss Vegas Kitty came in to say hello, and he pushed her away, telling me he really loves cats. He mentioned that he thinks his ex is probably a lesbian.
(I'm doubtful, because every guy I've dated has claimed their ex was either psychotic or a lesbian...) But if she was - I'm starting to see why she might have been driven to that side.

I asked him if he'd like some coffee, even though he's not finished with his second glass of wine. He said yes. I brought him a cup of hazelnut flavor decaf.

He's sitting on one end of the sofa and I'm sitting on the adjacent love seat, the corner nearest him. We're leaning toward each other, within touching distance, about a foot apart, so we can look at each other while we chat. He asked me why I'm not sitting on the couch next to him, cuddling, and I explain that I don't usually get all cuddly on the first date, and that it's also a little odd to talk while we're both looking directly ahead. He asks again, as if he hasn't heard me, and I politely say I like to get to know my dates first, before getting close physically. He asks again. I repeat, still nicely.

He asks again, and again, and again. He says I'm extremely controlling. In a five minute lecture. I say, "I think our date needs to be over." In my head I say, "How's that for controlling, you creepy toad." He contemplates about leaving while sipping his coffee. I get up and start bringing the glasses to the kitchen. He gets the message. When I turn around he is standing at the door, looking kind of defeated, one arm up and braced against the wall. I am momentarily distracted by the hairy rodent clinging to his armpit, but I recover quickly, recognizing it as just some out of control pit hair. He still wants a hug. I give him a brief hug, no kiss (no way) and I say, "I'm sorry our date was bad, but we're just not compatible. Good night." In my head I add, "Good riddance."

So far, internet dating has not resulted in my meeting anyone I would prefer to be with - more than I would prefer to be alone. Which is where I started, and where I still am. And I think that's just fine.

Ah... July

It's Sunday. Early. This is one of those perfect summer weekends where no one wants to let the day go, and we all stay up late into the night. This morning it's very quiet, even the birds are sleeping in. I can see from my bed, the sun rising over the lake, the mist is disappearing. Back in the day - John and I would be out in the boat now, listening to the loons, fishing for bass. In my case - northerns.

I woke up on Saturday at 4am in the city, packed the car and was heading up north at 430am. Got here about 730, and took a short nap. I went over to Mom and Dad's around noon. Dad was doing a whole lot better, and tinkered around with the little radio I bought him. He had shaved his head and Mom told him he looked like George Clooney. I think he looked better than George Clooney. He was listening to Click and Clack when I got there, and told me the previous caller was from Minnesota; a woman who said her husband checks the air pressure in the tires every time they go to Duluth and wants her to get out of the car when he does, and was it really necessary to. (They said not unless she weighs as much as the car.)

I mowed their lawn, and went back inside. Dad and I ate some lunch while Mom had a nap on the couch. The lunch was from canned cupboard food - chicken sandwiches, baked beans and chips, with root beer Mr Freezes for dessert. (By the way - as bad as canned chicken may sound - it was DELish compared to that actual farm-canned chicken in ball-jars that mom canned years ago and BROUGHT IT AS FOOD ON A VACATION WE TOOK WHEN WE WERE KIDS! On-vacation-food is fast food, restaurant food, and fun treats. It is not - and never will be - home-canned-soft-suspended there-basking in it's own juices-freaking-jar-canned-chicken. I can only remember one thing worse and that was a very large batch of home-made ketchup, which only tasted like ketchup in the slightest - oh wait- NOT AT ALL sense. It just made a hamburger feel sad...) Anyway, Dad hasn't eaten much for a week or so, and I was hungry from lawn mowing so it was more like a gourmet meal in our minds. I did up the few dishes and drove back to the cabin.

Suffice to say the weather was lovely, the kind of summer day you remember, you remember, in the bleak December. Ah... sighs and bliss and all that...

I am not a big Casino-r, but Mom was really wanting to get out, so after she got back from Mass (which is at 4pm in Hack, if anyone wants to fulfill their obligation before they get drunk on Saturday night, or whatever) she called me and asked if I wanted to go. She was going alone if I didn't want to - and the sad vision of that was about all the arm-twisting I needed. Showered, and ironed an outfit, and headed back out. The neighbors watched as they relaxed on their porch, they must wonder...

(Interruption in story - as I'm typing, I can hear some animal sound outside like a baby goat. I think it's unlikely there's a goat around, I'll have to check it out when I get up. Hmm...)

I went back over to Mom and Dad's and had dinner. Mom had made sloppy-joe's from Grandma's old recipe. They don't taste all that good, but the fun is in saying "This is Grandma's old sloppy-joe recipe from the root beer stand!" I also just like the name sloppy-joe. I wonder who came up with it? We could have just as easily been eating dribbly-bob's or messy-kens. Maybe I'll invent a recipe for the dribbly-bob. I'm kind of digging that name too.

Dad wasn't really up to going anywhere, so Mom and I drove off to the casino. Mom did the machine choosing, and I did the winning. Hah. It was fun. There was a powwow going on that I would have liked to check out more, but we didn't get a chance, what with meandering from one slot machine to another with a glazed look of temporary euphoria in our eyes.

We had fun. Everyone had fun. It was THAT kind of summer day.

Mary Ellen and the Horrible, Terrible, Very Bad Kidney Stone

I've felt like a bit of a walking wreck for a good part of this spring. I've had a few slammer headaches, a bombastic migraine, a horrid cold, and one of those seven week hack-up-a-lung coughs, which has finally turned into an annoying off and on wheeze-hack that busts loose generally when I'm in the middle of stating something very wise, or loving, or serious, effectively rendering my intended speech weakly pitiful and ridiculous sounding. So, you'd think, according to the rules of life, where things sort of even themselves out - I'd be in excellent health for the next couple of years. Right? Nope.

A few weeks ago I was quietly going about my usual work at the office, minding my own bizzness, designing plush bears or giraffes, or something along those lines, when I suddenly felt an overwhelming surge of nausea roll in, a big nasty wave. Took me by surprise. I wasn't feeling ill in any way, so I ignored it. About two minutes later it returned, not to be denied. Two words flashed by on the big-screen in my brain, as I hastily fled from my desk, through the warehouse, and out the back door, where I really, really needed to let some vomit fly. Kidney! Stone!

The cool outside air hit my clammy skin just enough to briefly calm the impending puke. And that was a good thing, because right where I was intending to spew, was, just my luck, some old dude trying to (illegally) dump his trunk load of trash into the dumpster. He was probably as dismayed to see me as I was to see him.

I caught my breath and tried to relax while I moseyed as casually as possible over to the other side of the building where my car was parked. I tried every way I could to reason with myself: you can’t be sick, you were feeling just fine a half hour ago! Calm down, you’re not going to throw up. Are you?

I opened my car door and crawled into the back seat. There’s no good way to describe the all-over pain a kidney stone comes with, but basically my whole BEING just felt wrong. But laying face down in the backseat was not helping, at any rate, so I heaved myself back into a sitting position and got back out. Very slowly.

A decision has been reached in my brain. Even though I have only been at work for an hour, I absolutely must get home as soon as possible. This is to avoid a potentially painful and embarrassing situation in which I am overcome with the highest level of kidney stone pain; an off the charts screamin’ meemie kind of pain, where one finds the only pain-enduring position that can be had in an office is on the floor on one’s knees, draped over the seat of one’s chair, unable to speak, or move otherwise, except in a whispered garble to one’s ex, on one’s tightly gripped cell phone, to PLEASE come and get me, which one’s ex does, to his great credit. If you think that sounds like I was just describing a memory, I was. The memory of kidney stone #2.

Yes folks, I said #2. Step right up, step right up, to see the lady who can pound out kidney stones one after another, every couple years, like clockwork.

I walk deliberately back to my desk, breathing shallowly, trying not to disturb the stone, at least till I get home. I must email some files to hit a deadline, which involves translating them into a low res format and cc’ing oh, about 8 people, cause that’s how we do where I work. This normally only takes a couple minutes but I could barely get through it, and when I clicked send on the last file, I grabbed a couple plastic bags, and left.

The ride home, usually about a half hour, was the longest trip home I've ever taken. Every crack in the street, every tiny bump - excruciating. The pain causes constant nausea, which I fought off as long as I could, until it was either cough it up while driving, which, because I puke long, loud and hard, was impossible, or pull over immediately. With a yank on the steering wheel I swerved over onto the nearest side street, a very private and lovely cul de sac in Edina, where I sort of rolled out of the car into a bent position, leaned against the car door, and heaved into a bag. Across from me, a nice gentleman was puttering about in his yard. I was careful not to make eye contact, hoping he would not come over to see if I needed any help, as I wasn't in a conversing frame of mind. He didn't. (His lovely home wasn't all that far from some dubious looking apartments on 66th Street, so maybe he just assumed I was a crack-mess or something.) Coffee-puke. Smelled vomit-ty bad, and I had all I could do to regain control of my stomach and get back into the car, bag knotted at the top, and set carefully on the floor.

I had to stop one more time to vomit before I made to my house. Finally. First thing you do is remove much of your clothing. It hurts to have anything touching your skin. I put on a soft, loose nightgown. This being my third kidney stone, I knew the ropes. When my body said the position of least pain was on my hands and knees on the floor, I did it. Fast forward through extreme pain, really unbelievable. In short, it's kind of like a constant mule kick in the kidney, which is also killer back pain. My kidney stone was on the move, so I also had horrible low abdomen pain at the same time. I fell asleep at some point, in a very strange position. Or perhaps I passed out from the pain, I don't really know. I felt a lot better when I woke up. I stayed in bed the remainder of the day, and was just fine from then on. I had no more pain, even when I finally passed it, about a week and a half later. (For those that are unsure - the stone comes out when you pee.)

It's a harrowing experience, no question. Miss Anti-drug (that's me) would gladly have taken pretty much any type of painkiller I could get. On the other hand, I got through it all right without any. Maybe I'll buy myself three big silver belt buckles, to commemorate, like bull riders get. My sisters had a couple of nice suggestions. One said maybe send out birth announcements for the little guy. One said I should have all three stones set into a ring. Yeah, yeah, eeeeveryone's a comedian.

Living Like Lucinda

Lately, lines of poetry had begun to cross her mind. A trail of typed, black letters on white banners, appearing here and there on illogical occasions. While she was trudging upstairs with a basketful of clean laundry to put away. She'd gone to the dances at Chandlerville and played snap-out at Winchester. Poetry she'd read many years ago, and embraced, was coming back to comfort her, like an arm around her shoulder. She made no acknowledgement or wonder of it.

Serving customers at the bar, late at night, her feet hurting. The last-to-leave patrons had nothing to go home to, cigarette breath whistling heavy past the scent of booze in their glasses, grinning yellowed teeth wheezing over the same old bad jokes. A spidery pile of pull-tabs, offering nothing, next to the half empty drinks. She had no reason to feel superior, and didn't. The poem waved, smiling. One time we changed partners, driving home in the moonlight of middle June, and then I found Davis.

A pervasive sadness enveloped her during the day, of a kind that she couldn't shake off. She did not allow her thoughts to stray to Avery. And because of this, when the workday duties became mind-numbingly rote, her mind filled with a headachy emptiness instead.

She fell exhausted into bed at night, curled into the warmth of the poem, living like Lucinda; enjoying, working, raising a family, keeping house, tending the garden, through the dark night. She awoke to the long fingers of the sun on the bedclothes, somehow sated and rested.

The words returned to her, fleeting, but strong, and she remembered walks over the fields and through woods, birdsong, and gathering shells by the river, picking flowers and weeds to arrange in a vase on the table. She recalled what it was like to live loud, shouting and singing, and knew she had not lived enough yet.

Mary Ellen Seidel


Lucinda Matlock
I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the midnight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed--
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you--
It takes life to love Life.

Edgar Lee Masters; Spoon River Anthology

The striking painting shown above is by Edward Hopper, one of my favorite artists.

That's what I thought...

Miss Domestic

Two and a half years after moving out of my house, after moving out of my life - guess what! It appears I've reached some kind of milestone. Hah! I bought some beautiful, chunky textured, chocolatey-colored dishes today, that caught my eye, and that I really love. Yep, plates, bowls, salad plates, cups; service for eight. Silly, yes, but who cares? It made me happy. For a couple of reasons. Let me backtrack here for a minute...

I think most people who've been divorced will know just what I'm talking about when I say one of the most depressing, energy-sucking, drudgeful tasks I encountered upon moving out of my home, was the first big trip to Target or Walmart for household necessities. And when I say necessities, I mean strictly the bare bones essentials to make one's house tick. Pots and pans, utensils, silverware, glasses, a dish drainer, laundry baskets. I clearly recall making those purchases; even though I was in a divorce-induced haze of horror at even having to do it.

When you have zero enthusiasm, you just walk the household aisles and load up your cart. You really don't give much of a damn what the drinking glasses look like, or what pattern the silverware is. This is survival shopping, baby. I know I was on auto-pilot filling that first cart. The newly divorced - you can spot us easily. We're the ones with the glazed look in our eyes, pale and hunched over, pushing the big cart slowly past the spatulas and corkscrews, in a sluggish state of bewilderment.

Shopping trips in general, for me, were pretty horrific. What was once kind of fun – my spouse and I picking out furniture, or a cool tv – turned into a dismal stomach-churning chore I didn’t want to do, once I was re-single.

Because I was drained, in a hundred ways, and tired in a hundred more, I also felt physically weak. I bought stuff that was light, and easy to carry. When you're single (as in, newly divorced after 25 years), you have to unload and carry all your stuff in yourself. Into a house where there's no one home but you. Then you unpack it, put it where it goes, deal with the cartons and wrappings and trash. Tiring, very tiring.

I bought the most light-weight dinner dishes I could find. Those Corelle ones; you know what I mean. You get the whole set for about $20. The ones you can't break, no matter what. In plain white, because looking at the patterned sets made me feel even more depressed and pathetic. I figured I would replace them with something nice, sometime when I was feeling better.

I just didn't know it would take this long.

This was also something that all the guys I dated during that time had in common. In each of their kitchens, inside the cabinets, was the obligatory set of cheap Corelle dishes. In white.

I've had a couple fun parties at my house in those two and a half years. And I've had some people over for dinner, but it always required huge amounts of focus and energy, or else it was just some thrown-together hodgepodge of weirdmeal. Once my sister came to spend the weekend with me and brought my nieces and their friend. After a long day of shopping, we found ourselves at home, with no energy left to go out to dinner. I got out some leftover pizza, chips and dip, cookies in a package, and a big bag of cheesecorn, without really considering I hadn’t covered the four food groups. Or even one of the four. The girls gathered around the table; they were little and really didn’t give a rip whether they were eating hot dogs or HoHo’s, so popcorn seemed normal dinner fare. My sister looked over the spread, held back some heavy duty giggling, and said... “I see you’ve outdone yourself, as usual.” Pretty much turned into a gigglefest after that.

So, today. Today is remarkable in that apparently some of my long-hibernating homemaking skills are reappearing. Remarkable in that I bought settings for eight. Hmm. I’m feeling the urge to rifle through a cookbook. I think I see a dinner party or two, on the horizon.

Baseball

Ah, the timeless sport of baseball. Eight kids at home all summer, we divided ourselves into groups; generally, but not always, age wise. The five on the top end tended to hang together, likewise the three younger ones formed a group of their own. Our cousins down the road did the same, and three of them were around our age. Plenty enough kids to play baseball all day long. My older siblings Pat and Mike, myself, two younger brothers Paul and Joe, cousins Mike, Bob and Jerilynn.

Baseball was a pretty big deal. We watched the Twins on TV on game nights, after racing home on our bikes from our own wins and losses. I had a hand-me-down glove, but my brothers' carefully hoarded money went toward purchasing baseballs, bats and gloves. We saved the baseball cards that came with the bubblegum we bought, and studied the stats on the backs, quizzed each other on them. Pat and Mike had it all down, and couldn't be stumped.

We started out playing at the Wilson town hall, which was a converted one room schoolhouse back in it's heyday, complete with still standing outhouse, out back. Home plate was the front entrance, and since the building sat at a diagonal on the lot, the shape was just naturally conducive to a baseball diamond. Second base being the corner where the north/south and east/west dirt roads crossed. The outfield was, well, anything past that. It was a good place to play, we thought.

One day someone cracked a pop-up foul, hard, up and arcing backwards just perfectly enough to smash through the transom window high above the door. Dang. When Dad got home from work, he said we'd have to call Curtis, who was on the town hall board (and by the way, was also the one who paid us for trapping gophers during the soft ground months), tell him we'd broken the window and would pay for the repair. We looked up his number in the phone book; there was some discussion over who would call, and some anxious conversation over how much it might cost to fix it. We hashed it over a bit - maybe $5? What if it's $20? We'd certainly all have to chip in, and gopher money only went so far. I've got to believe Curtis got a pretty good chuckle out of that phone call. My older brother Mike did the phoning duty, and then afterwards reported that Curtis didn't seem mad at all. In fact he said we wouldn't have to pay for it, and said he was glad we'd called and told him. Huh.

A couple years went by, and we graduated to a better ballpark. My brothers used our lawn mower to mow a ball field into the meadow across from our house. It was one of those things where if they'd asked Dad beforehand, he'd have said no, but since they went ahead and did it without asking, he got a chuckle out of it when he saw it, and it was fine after that. They made a darn fine backstop behind home plate, a fancy thing made of woven wire (readily available on a farm) and two by fours set upright into the ground, and they cut in all the base lines. It was a mighty nice play to play, almost professional like, with the real backstop and all. Wait - who is that stepping up to home plate? Is it...? Could it be...? Harmon Killebrew, just about to crack out another mile long home run? Nope, it's 11 year old Mary Ellen, leaning in to bang out a very bad, bobbling, bouncing double, and drive in a run. Yaaay!! The crowd roars...!

We played all summer, every summer, for a long time. I wonder when we played our last game, all those years ago. Whenever it was - I'm glad I didn't know it was our last.

Easter and Kites

Easter is one of my favorite holidays. Growing up, Easter was all about Lent, fish on Fridays, the Stations of The Cross, The Glorious Mysteries, the Resurrection; the religious aspects of the holiday, of course. That's what Easter IS about. But also, all the tie-ins: the deeper meanings commercialized - massive dozens of eggs for decorating, coconut covered bunny cakes, and hidden baskets heaped with candy. A big family Easter dinner. Kite flying, and if it was a warm Easter, maybe getting the bikes out. Lots of time spent outdoors after mass.

I got up early last Saturday, to drive north for the Easter weekend. The wind was strong, with a blue sky and a lot of sunshine, so I stopped in Baxter to pick up eight kites and some bubbles. Before I drove out to the lake, I went to my brother's place just west of Jenkins. It's right near where we grew up; the whole area has that familiar, comfortable feel of home.

The kids tore into their candy with great enthusiasm, the same way we'd have done when we were little. They surely have no idea how much fun they are. My brother suggested they not eat too much right away, as 1.) they'd not had candy for all of Lent, and 2.) they hadn't had lunch yet. No one seemed to hear this suggestion. The living room was a cacophony of speedy, layered conversations: Hey, I've had these before! Can you open this? Daddy can I eat the chocolate bunny? (No.) And from round faced, solemn Josiah, quietly sitting by me on the floor, plucking candy from his bag: Whut dis? An whut dis?

Luke gets up to demo his skill on the piano. He's new to playing, and taught himself. He plinks out Fur Elise. I repeat: they surely have no idea how delightful they are.

My brother Paul is visiting, and he mentions that we should all go kite flying over on the meadow by Ol Yeller. He called it Mary's Meadow. No sooner were the words spoken, and the room was empty - every kid ran to get a coat.

There's no turning back - eleven of us pile into Joe and Amber's bus-sized van. (Three rows of back seats, with room for two in the front...). Amber comes home with more kites just before we leave, and now we have more than enough for everyone.

It's the perfect amount of wind for kite flying. And blue sky and sunshine. Those white puffy clouds that look like imaginary anythings.

We fly kites and blow bubbles and explore the old sheds, till everyone's had enough, and pile back into the van to go home.

Before I leave, Anna and Rosie show me their bunkhouse in the backyard. There are two bunk beds for a sleepover, and a cool loft up above, and plenty of places to swing from and jump off. Although, as Rosie shows me a maneuver that propels her feet precariously from a shelf to awfully near a window, she tells me she's really not exactly supposed to be doing it. I ask them what's the 'worst' thing they did out here that they did not get in trouble for. They both thought about it for a minute and agreed that it was when they wanted to paint the outside of the bunkhouse pink and purple, got the paint and brushes and were just going to start painting when they were spotted by one of the boys. Plan foiled.

It does bear (continuous) repeating. They certainly have no idea how much fun they are.

Believe me, I'd like to stop writing about dating and single life too. You're probably thinking, why doesn't she just shut it, and move on. And I truly have moved on, and I'm happy. Really happy. Most of the time, in fact nearly ALL the time, I'm pretty much spouting sunshine and rainbows and chin-licking puppy dogs, butterflies and bluebirds. The works.

But I have the occasional downer day.

I mourn the loss of my marriage. I miss my ex. I miss my married life. Divorce is sad. And wrenching and hard.

I miss going to Home Depot/Menards/Builders Square with my spouse. He could build and remodel anything, expertly, and did. During the 25 years we were married we made lumberyard trips for a house remodel, three built-from-the-ground-up cabins, lake cabin renovations, and a lake home built-from-the-ground-up. Those were just the spare time weekend jobs, of places that were ours. That's a lot of trips to get stuff. I always liked those lumberyard-y hardware places. They smell nice and are full of all kinds of intriguing stuff. We had a good life together, my ex and I, both of us being the kind of people who can't wait to get up and start the day in the morning. Thrilled about life.

The other day I had an awesome day at the office, per usual really; I got a big project finished and off my slate and some interesting new ones stacked up and ready, and it was about 70 degrees outside; a crazy wonderful weather day. At the end of the day I walked out to my car, and across the parking lot I saw a vehicle loading up some windows or something from one of the bays in the building next door. And it hit me, took my breath away, brought to mind all those times my ex and I loaded up our truck with construction stuff, remodeling materials; all that fun stuff we used to do. I cried all the way home. Uncontrollably, hysterically, in the safe confines of my car.

I miss a million things we used to do together in the 26 or so years we spent with each other. I don't know how to deal with that vast hunk of space/time, 26 years that's disappeared from my life. I walk around it, bewildered and numb, this enormous hole, no apparent way to fill it. I will have to use the rest of my life to make the other side of this donut so substantial, so wide, and filled with life and living and love that eventually the hole in the middle becomes small by comparison. It will never be inconsequential, it was my life, but I have to believe it will be okay eventually.

I mourn the loss of a lot of things from those days.

But, more than that, I now look forward to the grace and peace and experience and excitement of each new day. Platitudinal? Perhaps, but true nonetheless. I'm excited to start the day when I wake up in the morning. I'm happy when I go to bed. I like my life a lot, it's interesting and full, and a whole lot of fun. I'm thrilled, for so many things. Again. And I'm thankful for that.

So. Spring. Smile. It's 8:24pm and I'm just back from a walk around the lake. It's a beautiful night; the moon is low, and textured gold, and so big it almost seems like a hand painted drop-down prop in some play. My kitty is glad to see me, my house is welcoming and bright, and I have everything I need.

I like the city a lot. It will be especially lovely soon, when the trees around the lakes and on the boulevards up and down the streets burst into blossom.

I've lived here, in this neighborhood, for 27 years. I don't know how many times I've walked around lakes Hiawatha and Nokomis, but it would be a very large number. I pass by the some of the same people when I walk every day. We don't know each other's names, but we nod to each other as we pass. A few seconds/years long camaraderie. I know the best places around the lake to gather fallen pine cones; the small bristly ones; and across the lake, the big open piney scented ones. Baked in an oven for a half hour, these make the house smell like Christmas, or maybe like camping in the middle of a giant stand of pines or something. I know where one is very likely to find a new tennis ball after one's dog has lost theirs. I know a great place to watch a huge spider build a showcase web, very creepy and right near the mortuary. I know that the corner where the roof lines come together on the park building is not a good place to stand under when we get one of those torrential summer downpours.

I listen to my iPod as I walk, I unwind, and most of all - I think.

I had let my daily walks sort of slide away from me for far too long. It feels good to be out there again.

The Iris Tender

He tends the irises,
kneeling crouched upon the grass.
Breathing deep, inhales
the earthy scent of soil
in which they lie.
Tall and waving hues of lavender,
a fragrant fence around the yard.
He works; his hands, calloused, scarred,
but tender now - to pluck a weed from here,
and here, smooth and sculpt the soil,
taking care. The rhizomes must be set,
just so, at proper depth for growing.

He breathes again, heady purple perfume
eases acrid smell of fires, charred
and blackened memories of homes
and health, and love,
and lives. This man,
his hands,
have searched through rooms
clogged thick with smoke,
to feel, to grope, and with seasoned
expertise, close in on
death, and gently cradle silent human form.

Quietly he walks along the violet scented rows,
spraying soft arc of water, grass squelching
underfoot.

Five bodies lost in the St. Croix river
on a hot July night. He leads
the search and rescue team. The silty,
churning waters make no allowance
for a flower tender.
He dives in darkness,
feels his way underwater,
big hands swimstroke through the murk.
He will not bring a life back to the surface,
but he will bring an end to a wait.
An end to a weight.

And tomorrow, again,
he will tend
his irises.

Mary Ellen Seidel

Last Meal

They troop in
from miles around,
I swear,
to these little
hole-in-the-wall diners,
eating like there's
no tomorrow.
File in, then file out.
Amazing how they return time after time,
the menus are so limited.
But they do. Can't get enough.

They walk by a huge billboard
on their way to dinner;
a bright orange background
with giant black letters:
TERRO ANT KILLER
and an enormous picture
of a dead ant.

Some of them look the
other way when they pass it,
but even so, how can they
possibly fail to notice,
in the center of each
paper covered table,
a huge, circular message,
maginified even further
by the crystal dome
of poisoned nectar
covering it:
Place TERRO here.

Mary Ellen Seidel

Migraine

Day 1: I wake up with a sinus-y band of tightness around my eyes. This is a sort of low-grade headache I get fairly often, and is usually curable with a couple hours of sleep in a dark, quiet room. I sometimes skip the cure, and go into the office anyway. Occasionally this works out fine, but more often it backfires and I wind up with a raging migraine. I get up, planning to go into the office, but before I'm finished eating, the dark throbbing around my eyes is enough to send me back to bed. I'm in bed all day, although I get up around 5:00pm and have a bowl of soup. I'm not really very hungry, and the soup has little taste. Those are some of the first signs of a migraine, for me.

The headache is consistent all day, a strap of pressure, circled around my skull, in a width from the top of my head to my upper cheek bones. By 8:00pm I am restless, trying to find a position that is the least painful for my head. I am hot and cold, by turns. Kicking off blankets, then pulling them up over me again. The curtains in the room are drawn, but are luminescently white from the moon and the streetlights outside. The whiteness is painful to my eyes, even when they're closed, and I block the window from my view with a pillow laid on it's side. The headache is relentless, a dull pounding, ceaseless and mind numbing, against which I have absolutely no control. I sleep fitfully, through the night, always with the thought at the edge of my mind... please let it be gone away by morning...

Day 2: Worse. The headache is more intense, shifting, painful; at times a thudding ache, suddenly changing to a piercing pain in the upper right part of my head and brain, then just as quickly morphing into a dull whack of pain across the eyes. Every thought hurts. In fact, thinking is slowed to a crawl: like I'm underwater, slogging. I basically try not to think at all. The headache is like a tornado wrapped around my head, face, skull, brain; constantly moving, a black creature.

I should add here that I am poly-modal synesthetic: I see words and numbers in color, all the time; as well as various other slightly different interpretations of thought processes. It's not terribly important, in this piece of writing, (or anywhere else, for that matter), except to say, when I see the creature as black, it is. Also in varying shades of greys, and moving textures. However, I'm not at all sure that other migraine sufferers don't see the headache in colors too, so I'm not sure the synesthesia is even worth mentioning. Take it as you will.

I sleep. Constantly. I twist and turn to find a position on a pillow, off a pillow, on a folded corner of a blanket, anywhere there is the slightest temporary respite from pain. If there is some solace on the exhale breath, I exhale as long as I can, before inhaling again. My body and brain go into a sort of altered state, a slowing. So I sleep, a white sleep, with suddenly crazy dreams, shocking circuses of color and riotous theatrical performances, vignettes of stress; at the end of each mini dream I am stressed and shouting, and wake with a jolt, head pounding ferociously.

I know I will need sustenance, and I softly, systematically, plan how I will achieve it, in my deliberately slow, submerged state of thinking. Each thought is carefully chosen, nothing too intense, tiptoeing around my own brain, so as not to disturb the black tempest any further. I contemplate what I have in the kitchen, what I may be successful at keeping down, what will not be too difficult to get. I know I will have to get up, out of bed, and slowly make my way downstairs to the kitchen. I can't hold my head upright, the pounding is too intense. I know if I choose to get some orange juice, I will have to raise my head up, twice. Once to get the juice from the top shelf of the refrigerator, and another time to get a glass from the cupboard. I know that pulling the cupboard door open will be a jolting experience. Orange juice is one of the few things I can conjure up enough interest in, to actually put all that planning into motion. Every movement creates a new wave of aching in my head. I hang onto the banister on the way down to the kitchen. One...step...at...a...time. I get the juice, very slowly. I take a yogurt from the fridge while I have the door open. I open the silverware drawer. Every creak from the drawer, every clang from the silverware is painfully magnified, echoing in a burst of blackening fireworks across my brain. Once back upstairs I lay down and lick tiny, tiny bites of yogurt from the spoon. Altogether I eat a couple tablespoons of yogurt. Quite a bit, actually. A minuscule sip or two of the orange juice is all I can manage. I sleep.

I wake. Head pounding, now nauseous too. I hope I won't vomit, because that's a fairly severe stage of migraine for me, and I know I will take longer to recover from it. No such luck - I'm going to vomit. I make it into the upstairs bathroom, drop a towel from the rack onto the cold tile floor to kneel on and heave out the contents of my stomach. There is a few minutes of grace after I vomit, where I feel somewhat better. I know it won't last. I get up, inch my way downstairs to the first floor, through the kitchen, down the basement stairs to the basement refrigerator where I know there is some 7-Up. This seems like a more comforting drink than the acidic orange juice I just threw up. Maybe because we were always given 7-Up when we were growing up and were sick. I get a clean glass from the cupboard, requiring another lift of the head; shuddering pain. I make it back upstairs, where I open the 7-Up in the darkness of the room. The 'sklitch' sound as I open the can is expected, I'm braced for it, and can clearly hear a drop of soda ping outward and land on the wall or floor beside my bed. I wonder, inanely, whether soda always sprays that far when opened, and also whether I will ever remember to clean it off.

I vomit two more times this day, the second time inhaling some, making my airway spasm closed. This has happened before, and although the initial reaction is panic, I force myself to relax, till I can breathe again. As I gasp for air, I see myself in the bathroom mirror. In a strange way, it's calming; almost like there's someone there with me. I live alone, and it occurs to me that I could easily die alone.

I feel I could keep some ice cream down, and I remember there are Buster Bars in the freezer. During the grace period after the third round of vomiting, I go downstairs, put one in a bowl and bring it up. I've forgotten to bring a fork or spoon, so I take a teeny nibble off the end. The room is dark, I'm lying on my side, with my head on a pillow - my taste buds are shot, but I think I just ate a peanut. I pray I won't throw up again, because I know a peanut won't be as pleasing coming up, as say, a few sips of 7-Up. I (more carefully) pry the chocolate/peanut/fudge end off and let it fall into the bowl. I do all this while laying down in the least uncomfortable position I can find, trying to think about nothing but the coolness of the food. The white ice milk is soothing and I eat maybe a half cup of it. I feel good that I'd made the effort to grab the plastic lid to the bowl also, so now that I've eaten what I can, I'm able to set the cover over the whole leftover mess, and not have to think about my kitty getting into it while I'm asleep. Which I am. On and off, all day. And all night. There is no room for rational thought, other than surviving the migraine. No room for inventive, creative, or any other kind of productive thinking. There is no tv. There is no computer. Although the occasional thought flits through that I'd like to check my email, I don't have the strength to open my laptop, and the light from the computer screen would send my eyes and brain into compounding explosions of horror. I sleep much the same as the previous night, except now in addition to the black spidery migraine, there is also another, more physical pain, where there is no place I can really lay my head down without it aching, pounding. This is also one of the more severe stages of a migraine for me. It feels as if the bones in my head, my skull, have been battered and bruised.

Day 3: Same. I pray for escape. At one point, someone outside, a neighbor, starts up a huge power sander or enormous wet vac or something evil and loud. It's almost more than I can take. I have heard it on previous days, and today I dream of slicing off the cord in secret and leaving the knife there beside it, just so the dolt will know someone was pissed. Doesn't this cacophony bother any of the other neighbors? Please, someone go tell this idiot it's too freaking loud. I utter a prayer in despair: please Lord, make him stop. The noise ceases instantly.

I have not thrown up since vomit #3, the previous day. Although the headache is still unrelenting, I know that is a good sign. I sleep. I wonder how a person can sleep this much. I sleep some more.

Around 6:00pm I am able to get up. I am hungry, a good sign. I'm dying for a hot bubble bath. And I'm exhausted; the meal prep will have to be something easy. I find some microwavable soup, a chicken noodle one that does not make my stomach lurch when I look at the picture on the label. I can barely open the simple snap-off lid, and I make certain to do it over the kitchen waste container in case I spill. I know there is no way I can clean anything off the floor. I heat it up, run a hot tub, pour in some bubble bath that has a light pleasant scent that will not make me nauseous. I take the heated soup right into the bathroom, and eat it while soaking in the tub. I sip the broth from a spoon: it is amazing, one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten. I'm starting to feel human again.

I make a point of not talking too much about my migraines, and I've never written about them before. I thought I would write this and never want to read it again, my feeling being I have already lost so many days in my life to migraines that when I'm feeling great, I have no desire to waste any more time thinking about one. However, as I reread this, I surprise myself by how strong I actually am, when up against this dark and bitter enemy of mine.

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." Nietzsche
Lord, I can only hope so.

At The Lake Pantoum

The little ones play in the shallows,
colored buckets filled with sand and shells,
splashing, summer shrieks and giggles.
The adults by the shoreline, all eyes lakeward.

Colored buckets filled with sand and shells,
pouring, patting, forming castles on the beach.
The adults by the shoreline, all eyes lakeward.
Empty canoe floats near the reeds across the bay.

Pouring, patting, forming castles on the beach
in this eden of their childhood summer.
Empty canoe floats near the reeds across the bay.
It's Sanders, I heard. They're looking for him now.

In this eden of their childhood summer,
all lake, and loons, and campfires, unaware.
It's Sanders, I heard. They're looking for him now.
Flashing lights of sheriff's car, a clutch of fear.

All lake, and loons, and campfires, unaware,
tonight they will dance with fireflies.
Flashing lights of sheriff's car, a clutch of fear.
A mourning rain sweeps across the water.

Tonight they will dance with fireflies,
splashing, summer shrieks and giggles.
A mourning rain sweeps across the water.
The little ones play in the shallows.

Mary Ellen Seidel
5/6/2002

The table knife is papa,
tall and serrated for the dangerous
job of cutting.
Mama fork twirls
her shiny-tined skirt
in do-si-dos through
the mashed potatoes
on the girl's plate.
Salad fork daughter keeps an eye
on baby spoon, round in infancy.

Well, the woman says,
you certainly are a quiet one.
The man clears his throat
and drinks wine, deep red.

The girl rolls her silverware
inside a linen napkin,
stacked together;
fathermotherdaughterbaby.

The man and woman exchange
a glance, while the girl, seated
on a velvet cushioned chair, legs
dangling, spells out a word
under the table,
over and over
with her patent leathered foot:
FAMILYFAMILYFAMILY

Mary Ellen Seidel
5/15/2002

You, who touch the wounds we hide,
with healing hands
and try to guide
the sorrows of our souls and minds.

You, who look beneath the bright
and laughing of our lives,
you might
endeavor to untie the binds.

You, who work with gentle touch
of hand or spoken word,
are trusted much
to lead us through a path that winds

along some other road, less known.
To take us back into the light,
to make us whole, to find our own,
intact, to wellness of all kinds.

You, who see beyond the gaze,
the fragileness behind our ways,
are truly blessed.
There is no way we can repay
for all the lives you've touched.
And saved.

Mary Ellen Seidel
8/30/2001

From Annie Proulx's book, Close Range, Wyoming Stories: A Lonely Coast:
"Josanna Skiles cooked at the Wig-Wag. She had two women friends, Palma Gratt and Ruth Wolf, both of them burning at a slower rate than Josanna, but in their own desperate ways also disintegrating into drifts of ash."
"They thought they were living then, drank, smoked, shouted to friends, and they didn't so much dance as straddle a man's thigh and lean in."
"There were times when I thought the Buckle was the best place in the world, but it could shift on you and then the whole dump seemed like a mess of twist-face losers, the women with eyebrows like crowbars, the men covered with bristly red hair, knuckles the size of new potatoes, showing the gene pool was small and the rivulets that once fed it had dried up. I think sometimes it hit Josanna that way too because one night she sat quiet and slumped at the bar watching the door, watching for Elk, and he didn't come in."
"This's a miserable place," she said. "My god it's miserable."

I've been immersed in Annie Proulx for a while. I'm staggered by her sharp writing. So much ragged raw life in so few pages. It's a tic on the depressing side for February reading in Minny, but it draws you in, deep.

I was the first, and perhaps only, one in our large Catholic family to get divorced. It was hard to break the news to my folks and family. Even harder, in many ways, to break it to my friends. Couples my soon-to-be-ex and I had known for so many years, and were close with, vacationed together, dinnered and drank, watched families grow, and parents pass; followed through life. I felt the stunned reactions like a wave of hard hurt. There is an anxiety before the telling, steeling yourself for the reaction, hoping you won't fall apart and dissolve into a heap of rumpled flesh, your bones all gone to mush from sadness, stress, and the panic that comes from starting down an unfamiliar dark road you never suspected you'd be on.

It took a lot out of me to tell my girl friends. Mostly I emailed. The letters I sent were brief, but heartfelt, and I needed the distance, couldn't trust my voice to carry me through on the phone. I cried, in private, when I read the responses.

Two of my closest girlfriends came and gathered me up, took me to dinner. It was a needed thing. We went to a Mexican place, back when the food was still good there. The topic hung in the air like a rotten corpse while we chatted about nothing. I braced for it, and when we'd cleared an obvious place in the conversation, like an empty stage for the story, I spoke, the briefest of conversations, the heaviest of words. It seems like I'm describing a death here, and it was. The passing of 25 years of a marriage and all the life and living that goes with it; done, dead, and buried six feet deep. With nothing to take it's place. With everything to take it's place.

My girlfriends had brought gifts: wine and bubble bath, essentials. One of them handed me a small bag in which something rattled. A knife, fork and spoon. From the Goodwill store. The dam burst; we laughed, about a lot of things. We cried. We talked a little trash.

I've done all right going down that new road. It's only dark at night, when it should be. It's familiar now, and comfortable. I kept the silverware. It reminds me of the many women in my life who have heart. And who know you will be okay after all, and know enough to say it with wine and bubble bath and a few pieces of old tableware, with no need for words.

Vornox

I'm not from here,
he tells the kids at his new school,
letting them think about it.

Nearly a year older,
he is the only boy there
who can leap over the sandbox
in a single bound.
Wins every race,
is bigger and stronger
than anyone else in
their small world.

He shows them odd-shaped stones
from his pocket, I get my powers from these.
Hands in his homework
written in strange squiggly symbols.
Reads his book report aloud
in a new language.
Miss Davis sighs,
Vernon, see me after school please.
He extends his arms upward in a V-shape.
My name is Vornox.
When school resumes in the fall
he is not there.

Mary Ellen Seidel
5/15/2002

Letter To My Friend

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a saying attributed to Freud, my good friend tells me yesterday. Or he's not sure - it may have been Roy Rogers commenting about Freud.

I checked, just briefly, online. Consensus is no one seems to know, and I'll go with that. Why? Because it's just not all that important. (I'm not writing about plagiarism here, so don't take it that way.)

I'm going to talk about my people here, my bohemian family of creatives. We're all touchy. We react; sincerely, passionately, icy cold, burning hot. We don't hold the market on these feelings, but we all tend to lean this way. This is good for us in many ways; it breeds creativity. And it's bad for us in many ways; it harbors hurt, festers anger.

I don't fault anyone I know for passionate emotions. I myself wallow daily. In order to survive in the world though, I occasionally need to regulate, dial down a bit, step back.

Step back. And take a look at the big picture, my friend. My very dear friend; whom I hope does not unravel away a friendship we've had for years. Tightly knit and impervious, so far, to the emotional passions we both bring to it. I'm not dismissing what happened (or didn't happen) on the weekend. I am saying, I am asking, I am hoping you will look at the bigger picture.

Always loved you.

Always will.

Bicycle Man

The bicycle man
rides slowly by.
Painted frame
of his chariot,
lime green today,
carries his slightness
and all the weight
of his unconvention.
Pedals and pulleys and
gravity and gears
work the rise and fall
of the wings,
one on each side,
fashioned of wire frame
and feathers.
Trumpeting Victrola rides
royally on the back;
pumping feet provide
the revolutions needed
to release the melody.
Handlebar horns
and bells, all kinds,
honk and ring
in a symphony
of clownsong.
While we watch
from behind
our draperied window,
he stands,
one leg on the seat,
the other
extended out behind him
in a bicycle ballet.
My mother says he's crazy.
But I have seen his smile
and I don't think so.

Mary Ellen Seidel
5/2/2002

I like me some Villanelle once in a while. Maybe more than once in a while. I have written a few of my own, but the one shown below was written by Dylan Thomas, and is a widely used example of the Villanelle form.

* In case you always wanted to know:
A villanelle has 19 lines, consisting of five tercets and a concluding quatrain.

The rhyme scheme is aba, with the same end-rhyme for every first and last line of each tercet and the final two lines of the quatrain.

Two of the lines are repeated:
The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and the fourth stanzas, and as the second-to-last line in the concluding quatrain.
The third line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the third and the fifth stanzas, and as the last line in the concluding quatrain.

I have always loved this by Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
There will eventually come a point in all of our lives when we're unable to do some of the things we were perfectly capable of in the past. I myself would like to skip that part of life and just keel over when I'm 99, healthy as a horse. But we don't get to make that choice.

Dad developed a condition called Trigeminal Neuralgia a couple years ago. It's a strange condition, that in his case, results in severe shock-type pains in his face. Because of this, he takes a great deal of medication. He's always been in relatively good health, so it's very hard to see him struggling with the effects of the meds; the main one being constant drowsiness, maybe lethargy. Beyond the actual drug effects I think he's simply depressed about it all, besides. He seems to have given up on life in a lot of ways. That is a very hard thing to watch your parent go through.

He used to go for walks, putter around with lawn and driveway chores on his lawn tractor, maintain his bird feeders, go fishing, read books... and every day, I mean EVERY day he would do the crossword from the paper.

He has given up most everything I listed above, now, except he does still get out to fill the bird feeders.

His driving skills are not what they used to be. He gets confused about meds, can't always remember if he's taken them or not. He's tired a lot, very tired, and sleeps much of the day sometimes. He told me last weekend he's given up the daily crossword puzzle. Of all these things, that struck me like a dagger to the heart. Because he sleeps all day, he often stays awake well into the night. He recently purchased something he saw on an info-mercial, late at night, with his credit card, and was taken advantage of by the sleazy-slick salesperson on the other end of the phone line, to the tune of a lot of money. He has never previously in his life made a credit card purchase from a tv info-mercial.

So, you're saying, it's a simple solution: he should not be driving, he should not have a credit card, blah blah.

I will disagree. There is a thing called dignity. Who would think there is a time in one's life when someone else can take that from you? My friend at work says when he's at the end of his life, he's going to sail off, far away, over the ocean and into a sea storm and let nature take it's course.

I would not like to mess with anyone's dignity. What I hope can happen is something more like this:
* We as a family should come up a plan to give my parents some help with the day to day stuff they might want a hand with; driving longer distances, yard chores, house chores. This could be as simple as each of us offering to help out, more than now and then - more like a scheduled volunteer time slot.
* I would hope that Dad, on his own, would conclude that while he can probably still drive to grocery/gas store near their house, maybe he should not be driving to Brainerd.
* I would also hope that he carefully considers whether or not he should be doing certain heavier yard chores and things like that, and ask for help if he needs it.
* I would hope that the family becomes more diligent about visiting mom and dad (and this includes me). They love company, they love to see the grandkids, there's no better time like the present. There's no better present than your time.

I love my Dad.
I do not want him to go gentle into that good night.
I will do everything I can to help him rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I spent part of my day wandering the Galleria, a favorite place of mine. I had to go look for a reference toy at an upscale toy shop there. The girl behind the counter said she'd never heard of a hobby horse, when I inquired whether they carried any, and looked at me as if I were a hundred. Impertinent snippit. I wanted to poke my cane into an already teetering display of electronic whoopee cushions (which makes me wonder - why mess with a good toy? let's leave well enough alone...) just so she would have something to do later. Instead I wandered around, and came across a rack of marbles. How cool is that? Another timeless toy.

Anyway, I had some time to kill, and wandered back to Barnes & Noble to do some browsing there. I can spend a lot of time in a book store. My niece Meghan called me while I was there so I asked her if she wanted me to pick up something for her and her sister. She said yes, she wanted a mystery, maybe with a murder in it, or something. Or, she asked, can you get me 'Dear John' and tells me who wrote it. She's only 12, but she reads a lot, and is JUST at the point of starting to read adult books, maybe. I tried hard to find some books I thought she'd like in the kids/teen section, but every time I read the story synopsis to her, she seemed not especially excited. I kept looking.

In the meanwhile, I heard someone in the phone background: my sister wants me to look for newest Dan Brown novel, but she wants the paperback. I make a mental note.

In the other meanwhile, Kaitlyn, who's 14, says she would like The Guinness Book of World Records 2010. lol... Okay! Now I have a list! hahah... (And I remember poring over the Guinness Book of Records when we were growing up - so I totally get it! Just like Whoopee cushions and marbles, some things never change.)

More searching leads me to decide to get the following for Meghan:
* The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
My niece has never heard of this book, but it looks intriguing, and it's a thick book that I think she'll like. And it was in the kids/teen section (yay!) which made me feel much better buying the other two for her from the regular adult section:
* Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
* The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
I was excited to think of the Lovely Bones because it's well written, a good story, with a murder, yes, and the sort of book that makes a great read for teens to adults.

I had to disappoint Julie, because Dan Brown's newest is not out in paperback yet.
And Kaitlyn wil have to wait till I find the new Guinness Book.

But all in all, a fun day at the bookstore. When is it not? :) The kids novels are usually only $6 to $8, and they can pass them on to their friends or cousins when they're finished reading. $24 I spent on my niece today encourages a continued lifetime of reading and learning. Need I say - priceless?

I've had a lot of action in my bedroom for the past few nights. Not the kind you were just thinking of.

While John is skiiing up on the Gunflint, I have Alf over here, as well as Miss Vegas Kitty. They both like to sleep in here with me, and although I don't let Alf up on the bed, Miss Vegas certainly has no qualms about sleeping where ever she damn well pleases, including sometimes on my head, where she's either pushed off gently or batted off not gently, depending on what phase of sleep/exasperation I'm in. Alf is allowed on most of the beds, among the households of my ex, me, and the cabin, but here he seems content enough to just lay on the floor beside the bed, on the rug.

My ex and I always had a dog. On one of our fist dates, John took me out to show me the log cabin he was building, and he spread out a blanket on the ground where we were going to sit and have some wine, and look at the gorgeous fall scenery. Tara, his new golden retriever puppy, promptly stepped up and peed all over the blanket, thus ruining the magic of the moment. Tara was a sweetheart, with a kind, gentle temperament. As she aged, she became grey around the eyes, and appeared to be wearing glasses, so we nicknamed her The Grandmother.

Our next dog was Cecil. She was brought to us very early one Saturday morning in the arms of a guy John worked with. He'd brought the puppy home, and his wife said either he or the puppy was not going to be residing there, his choice. Cecil was about the size and shape of a loaf of bread, waddling around, sniffing the corners of our kitchen. How do you say no to that? We had Cecil a long time, she was our baby, spoiled, fat and sassy, really sassy. She had a cat-like personality, rather disdainful toward others, but sweet and loving to John and me. We loved her dearly, as we had loved Tara. Cecil died unexpectedly and tragically, and while I don't want to write about it, suffice to say - when we were able to pull ourselves together enough to walk out of the Blue Cross Animal Hospital's surgical area - rumpled, in sorrow and in shock, every pet-loving face in the waiting room registered deep sympathy, empathy and understanding. Pet lovers know.

Then came Alf. We found him and adopted him from the AHS. He was brought to them by someone who discovered him, lost and injured. He had a mangled front leg and other injuries, and would have normally been put to sleep. However, they had a new doctor on duty that night, and she decided to amputate the bad leg. Then they kept him for about three months while he healed. He is Something. He's the kind of dog you meet and just want to take him home with you. If you've met him, you know what I'm saying. You know what a charmer he is.

The joy our pets have brought into our households is immeasurable. My ex and I share Alf; and Miss Vegas Kitty (aka social butterfly, the princess of snuggling) is welcomed at his house too, anytime. They both love to go to the lake of course. Did I just describe a three-ring circus? Maybe, but always - always, so worth it.

Our pets are pretty notoriously spoiled, but there is no way we can ever give them in return, all they give to us.

The Vow

In pastel cocoons of tulle
and lace we huddle
in the closet of my
mother's sister while
the ladies sip cocktails
by the pool. Our tiny room
is filled with elegant gowns.
My aunt has worn each,
once, as a bridesmaid.

Deenie, peering from her
cage of lavender lace,
is pale purple in the soft
arc of her flashlight. We
nibble on mints and drink
air champagne from
dance slippers.
I place aqua heels,
that match the frock
I'm crouching under,
onto my hands,
and tap tap out from under
the hem in pigeon-toed steps.
The dresses are faintly scented
from perfume, cigarette smoke,
excitement of parties
long ago.

My mother's white
bridal dress, packed in a
special carton from the
cleaners and smelling of
mothballs, does not seem
related to these costumes at all.
Mother is cold and
untouchable, while
Aunt Belle is all hugs
and laughter. We know
it is the dresses
that have made them this way,
and before we leave our lovely
ruffled abodes,
we cross arms, clasp hands,
and make a pact:
Never, never, never.

The gowns hang,
frivolous and free,
bright beckoning balloons,
as we close the closet door.

Mary Ellen Seidel
6/22/2002

Jesterton Parade

The mayor
of the town
is leading the big parade
on horseback.
It is a slow parade as he
has chosen to ride
his horse
backwards,
his mount stepping
forward
ass first.
Onlookers wave flags and
cheer loudly, in appreciation
of the lovely rounded
equine derriere.

Jesterton is the only
place on earth, where,
when you are called a horse's ass,
you have just been
paid a giant compliment.

Mary Ellen Seidel
5/20/2002