Tag: american short stories

Within Close Range: Flying

I dream of flying.

Lifting off the edge of the bluff

and rising quickly

toward the fat, lazy clouds

hovering over the great, grey lake.

Circling the nearby harbor

where scattered sailboats bob,

I swoop and dive

like the swallows nearby,

but seek out more familiar forms

hidden back among the trees,

just far enough

from the crumbling bluff

to put Dad’s mind at ease.

To the glowing kitchen window

and the figure of Mom

in her pink, plaid apron.

Ever regal.

Ever busy

in her blue and yellow kitchen.

I hover there,

in the cool lake air,

listening to the happy clinks and clanks

of pots and plates.

And try to imagine what’s cooking

by what’s wafting through the windows.

Until a strong breeze

lifts the aroma

and me

back over the lake.

Past the sunken, old pier

where giant carp spawn

year after year.

Past the rocky harbor walls

standing hard against the waves.

Until the house

and the cottage

and the beach

disappear,

and I begin to really soar

over endless stretches

of dark and deep.

Unhappy to find my bed

and solid ground

beneath me when I wake.

Within Close Range – Florida Days: the teen years

Driving from the airport

to a new winter retreat –

a 20 story high-rise in Pompano Beach –

it’s clear things aren’t as they have been.

Gone are the Mid-Century neighborhoods

with small, tidy bungalows

and pastel-colored apartment complexes.

Gone are the small, neat streets

crammed with big, American cars

and the quiet, inland canals

with their 90 degree curves.

Modern high-rises now loom along the coast,

casting long shadows over these old ghosts.

Smothered by “The Strip”,

a popular stretch of beach –

and the only way to their new place,-

Nonna and Papa are forced to face

nubile, bikini-clad, beer drinking youth

balanced precariously between child and adult

unkempt,

half-naked –

all god-forsaken.

But Gina and I crave this uncharted world,

which we’re slowly cruising past

in the back seat of a tightly sealed Cadillac,

filled with the sounds of Perry Como

and the smell of Jean Nate.

The closer we get to Nonnie and Papa’s,

the older the demographics begin to slant,

until beers and bikinis are soon replaced

by beer bellies and Platex bras.

The upside to the new zip code

is a bigger abode –

and a separate door to the outside world –

or at least to a corridor,

and an unused stairwell.

To Marlboro Lights

and poorly rolled joints,

and late night escapades with girls from New York.

Gone are our grandparents’ halcyon days

of minding their ways.

These are the carefree days of youth.

Of baby oil and B-52s.

Getting stoned in the sauna.

Drinking beers on the beach.

Somehow convincing Nonnie

to hand us the keys.

Of cranking up the radio

and rolling down the windows

to inhale the salty air

and the sweet smell

of being newly licensed.

Of boys on the beach noticing us

and Nonnie –

from high above –

noticing them, noticing us.

These are the Florida days

of pushing boundaries,

especially ones so poorly guarded.

Well past our very strict curfew.

Nonna is waiting and bleak.

She’s worked herself into such a state,

she’s lifted off her bunioned feet.

She cross-examines,

reprimands,

and threatens to send us home;

then leads us in to Papa

in the unlit living room,

Leaden and pacing.

My heart is breaking.

When all is said –

which isn’t much –

he turns his back

and sends us to bed.

The first thing we see in the morning

taped prominently to the fridge

is a newspaper clip with a giant headline,

“Girls Found Charred on Beach”,

and Nonnie,

with her back to us.

Sighing and tsk-ing,

but not saying anything.

Until behind closed bedroom doors,

on an all-day call with her sister, Rose,

we can hear her tell of all her woes;

heralded, at times, in a pitch so high,

dogs throughout the high-rise begin to cry.

This leads to quieter Florida days,

of shorter visits

and solo stays.

Now more observer than the observed;

studying Nonnie and Papa

in their Florida world.

In their well-aged routine of marital malaise.

Wondering if I know what a happy marriage is?

Hours of watching old ladies by the pool;

with their sun hats and cigarettes

and bad romance books;

their games of Canasta,

and over-tanned skin…

wondering if any

were ever really young?

When Papa leaves to tend to the store,

it’s hours of Gin Rummy,

and little more.

Alone with Nonnie,

playing round after round

on the windy, high-rise balcony,

sixteen floors from the ground.

Where 8-track cassettes

of Liberace and Lawrence Welk

teach me tolerance,

and the importance of a wickedly good game face.

Happy to see the rainy skies.

Happy to stay indoors

and in our nightgowns.

The condo is especially quiet.

No washing machine

or television

reminding us of other things.

Other lives.

No dinner out

or big meal in.

We barely move.

Rarely talk.

Occasionally, Nonnie disappears,

returning with something powdery and sweet

or cheesy and crusty

and hot from the oven.

Such deliciously quiet moments

of simply doing nothing.

Oh these my Florida days.

Within Close Range: Florida Days – the early years

It’s a small, but airy, two bedroom

built at the corner of an inland canal;

brightly decorated in yellows, greens, blues and whites,

and perpetually shaded from the Sunshine State.

A peculiar land of tropical scents

and strikingly unfamiliar sights.

Far removed from the only place I know at night,

home.

Put to bed too early,

I lie in the sitting room-turned-my-room,

tossing and turning on the lumpy sofa-bed

for what seems like hours and hours on end.

Listening intensely to the sounds of apartment living

made especially audible by the glass-vented door

opening onto the curved building’s exterior hall.

My slatted portals to an unknown world.

To the sounds of the apartment people

returning from the pool,

the shops,

the grocers,

dinner out.

Of doorbells ringing

and little feet skipping,

and hugs and kisses

and friendly greetings.

Of moist, briny winds

carrying the scents

of jasmine and orange blossoms,

and parking lot asphalt.

And the ladies’ perfumes

as they stroll past my door.

The echo of laughter in the nearby stairwell,

and their happy words

which disappear

with the sudden click of a heavy car door.

Murmurs from the living room TV

add to this strange symphony,

with familiar sounds

and flickering lights

that seep through the bottom of the door,

casting short, cryptic shadows

on the thickly carpeted,

recently vacuumed floor.

Comforting is the knowledge

that Papa is in the room next door.

Feet up,

arms folded high across his belly,

and a large RC Cola at his side.

Grinning at Clem Kadiddlehopper,

or growling at the Chicago Bears.

When Papa finally turns the television off

I lie in the still and unfamiliar dark.

The inland water’s slow, buoyant motion,

lulls me into a deep and scented slumber.

until the morn.

When I linger on the lumpy mattress

and listen to the apartment people

begin their days.

Wooed by the sounds of others stirring,

I stretch toward kitchen utensils clanking

and the smells of breakfast cooking

on the other side of the wall.

Oh these, my Florida days.

Of sand slipping away beneath my tiny feet,

and seashell hunts as the sun dips low;

of Nonnie’s curled and bunioned toes

and skinny, seagull legs

dipping into the foamy waves,

but never past her knees.

These early days of sunset walks

along a stretch of beach

that leads to a lighthouse

and a creaky, tottering wharf

where Papa likes to take a walk.

And I like to walk with him.

Where fishing boats have funny names

and a tiny gift shop,

in a weather-beaten shanty,

sells orange gum-balls

packed in little, wooden crates.

Which Papa buys for his little, Pie-Face.

Of bright, green lizards

skittering across pastel walls,

and pats on the head

by terrycloth clad men

playing cards in the shades of umbrellas.

Where suntanned women

with the giant bosoms

and ever-blooming swim caps

wade in the shallow end,

with big, dentured smiles

for the little one

visiting Lenore.

Oh these, my Florida days.

Within Close Range: Candied Abandon

Something scrumptious always simmering

in an old enamel pot.

Looks to have cooked a million meals

one hopes will never stop.

But as delectable to me as these savory delights,

Nonna and Papa’s home is a sweet-tooth paradise.

A candy-coated, chocolate-covered, fantasyland,

with countless confectionaries ever at hand.

Coffee candy, toffee bits.

Circus peanuts, caramel nips.

Cookie tins with crescents that melt on my tongue,

leaving powdered-sugar fingerprints wherever I’ve gone.

In nightstands, TV stands, and cabinets, wall-to-wall;

in boxes, and pockets, and purses in the hall.

I scan all the shelves for a glimmer of color

through crystal candy dishes in a glass-front cupboard.

On a table right next to the velvety green couch,

I find a lidded coffer that has gone untouched.

Chasing my greedy reflection over the mirrored table top,

I see no misgivings, as I reach for the box.

Those would come later,

when at the dinner table,

Nonna pressed me to eat,

but I simply wasn’t able.

Which is simply

not

done.

Within Close Range: Dinner at the Celanos’

Dinner means waiting.

It means setting the table

with placemats and napkins,

and neatly set silver,

pitchers of water

and plates for your salad;

and waiting and waiting,

as smells from the kitchen,

from sizzling pans and simmering pots,

waft through the house

like intoxicating fog.

Making it hard to concentrate

on anything but the the clock,

and the driveway,

where we turn our attentions

every few minutes,

hoping for headlights.

Stomachs gurgling.

Tempers shortening.

Dad finally showing

and ever so slowly…

shedding his suit.

Un-harried.

Unhurried

to get the meal going.

Though children are moaning.

Haven’t eaten in minutes.

But dinner begins

when Dad’s ready to sit.

And no sooner.

Within Close Range: The Double Date

Home from college,

my dance card empty,

Jean has ignored me

and arranged a double date.

Making my way toward the kitchen

to re-hydrate my bone-dry jitters,

I pass Dad in the den.

He’s sitting in the swivel chair,

with his back to the windows,

pretending he’s reading.

He’s also pretending not to see me.

Isn’t happy about this evening.

With boys ever at the heels of Mia and Chris,

he takes frequent comfort in my constant datelessness.

But really, is the The Garden Journal so utterly absorbing

that my noisy, high-heeled entrance, he’s utterly ignoring?

Not Dad.

Can’t suppress eye roll.

And what about Mom?

Still hovering in the kitchen,

without a purpose in sight.

Both acting like this was my very first date.

Not exactly soothing.

Just need to keep moving.

A difficult task in absurdly high heels

which already feel like burning coals.

Through my water glass,

I watch Dad rotate right

to face the new, oncoming lights

bouncing off the dimly lit walls.

A swivel slowly left,

he’s observing Jean and our dates.

The doorbell’s ringing,

but Dad’s not budging.

Instead, he’s whirled right back around

(that book might as well be upside down).

Can’t suppress eye roll.

I take a deep breath and open the door.

Jean’s smile is enormous.

I look to the floor –

I know she’s trying.

But there’s something she’s hiding –

like he being just about as happy as I am.

Reaching out a limp, wet hand

(What’s this poor guy’s name again?),

I hear swiveling.

Dad’s up and coming.

Then… passing,

without so much as a greeting.

(Eye roll mentally happening.)

And why is he stopping,

simulating a search for something?

Empty-handed, he’s returning.

I can almost hear the growling.

Keeping his fixed glare –

swiveling like the chair –

on both the boys,

until he quietly disappears.

I push my companions out the door,

hoping the night will hide my humiliation

and breath new life into this double date situation.

But I’m not counting on it,

and neither is Dad,

who’s peeking through the curtains,

shaking his head as he calls to the kitchen,

“She won’t be marrying THAT one.”

Can’t suppress eye roll.

Dad

The doctor’s last count was seven.

Each stroke leaving in its wake

a little less Dad.

Less motivation.

Less vision.

Less presence.

Then he lost his license.

So Dad just sat.

Eventually losing sight

of all that made him tick.

Gave him purpose.

He was good at.

I watched the frustration

when things weren’t clicking

in his once playful eyes,

in his quick and clever mind,

and quietly mourned

the lengthening shadow

that would smother such strong light;

turning weaknesses upon himself,

and others.

The shadow strengthened,

as the once powerful figure

could no longer focus.

Spent the days crying.

The nights wandering.

His underpants,

soiling.

Conversations were now repetitions,

driven by a series of questions

he’d ask again and again

and again.

Always about family,

living and dead.

No steering away

from this endless thread.

But it’s all that remained

as he struggled for thoughts.

For words.

For himself.

The bygone body, swaggering and bold,

began to weaken,

and wither,

and fold

from all those years of sitting.

Doing hours and hours of nothing.

While cherished faces,

and times and places,

steadily stepped into the dark.

Rare became the instants

during my brief, long-distance visits,

when I saw that certain twinkle in his eyes.

When he was pleased,

about to be silly –

or incredibly Dad.

But then

alas

it would pass

and entered this man, instead.

The only thing constant

was his wheezy, cartoon laughter

which he easily summoned

to the great relief of everyone

hovering uncomfortably in his small, sad room

scattered with pictures of loved ones –

now mostly strangers.

Rarest was hearing the voice of his past,

which sang in my ear

when he used my pet name.

Summoned forth in fugitive instants.

Clear and compelling.

Making me unexpectedly ache,

and anxious

to hear Dad speak again.

But Dad never did.

Yet in that flash,

in his strong, familiar voice,

he was my beacon,

my banker

my mentor,

my tormentor,

My father.

And everything felt right.

Then it didn’t.

And I cursed myself

for not plucking from the ether

that all-too-brief moment

to stuff deep within my pockets.

and help me remember

his long and strong hugs

of immeasurable comfort.

His powerful presence.

His stubborn dreaming.

His cocky, foolish, bridge-burning scheming.

The maestro of his successes

and Master of his failures.

But grateful for the moments

we spoke about nothing

and I apologized for everything.

Though he wouldn’t remember anything.

But love is in the giving.

In the times he heard,

I love you.

So, I told him different stories

about faraway lives,

and in between the questions

and his uncontrolled emotions,

I‘d try to fill the ether

with soon forgotten memories.

With love and laughter.

And strong hugs

of immeasurable comfort.

Within Close Range: Curfew

Every mile or so,

I glance to the clock.

Hoping time will stop.

Or that it’s not really five o’clock.

The final mile along the road,

I roll down the windows to air out the smell.

The woodland creatures are beginning to shift,

so once in the driveway, I turn the lights off

and roll slowly along, with the engine hushed.

Safe inside, it’s straight to the fridge.

Grabbing cold pasta, I start up to bed.

But a light from the den stops me instead.

And before I can step a tip to a toe,

Dad rumbles from the den,

strong and low.

And I have nowhere else to go.

Perched on his favorite, swivel chair,

he’s flanked by portraits of ungrateful heirs.

Grumbling at the empty driveway

and disappearing night,

he’s been swiveling there for hours

without a child in sight.

Staring at my bloodshot eyes,

he asks if I know the hour,

and things aren’t looking good

for this early morning flower.

“What could you be doing

until five in the morning?”

All at once, the truth pours forth

without a single warning.

I tell Dad how the day was spent

cooking with some friends,

then going to a drive-in

for a zombie marathon;

about the beautiful night

and the shoreline fire,

and the remarkable moonlight

as we waded in the water.

Baffled by my sudden truths,

Dad takes a moment to recompute.

“I’m just waiting for your sister.”

(as the final plot twister)

were the next

and last

words from his mouth.

Equally confounded,

I leave the scene ungrounded.

Looking from an upstairs window,

just above where Dad keeps vigil,

I see the dawn beginning to dance,

and know, poor Mia,

doesn’t stand

a

chance.

Within Close Range: Chief – in three parts

Part One:

Chief is an ornery Appaloosa,

short and fat,

with black spots on the rump of his dirty, white coat.

And the devil in his eyes.

Of little training and no past consequences,

he’s a 9th birthday present from Dad –

whose childhood pets were porcelain cats;

and mostly Mom,

a self-proclaimed Missouri farm girl,

with a steely, stubborn confidence over competence.

From the other side of the pasture fence,

she urges me to remount:

“Make him know who’s boss!”

I struggle to my feet

and limp toward the answer

now grazing on prairie grass and wildflowers.

In between greedy mouthfuls,

Chief raises his wild, blue eyes,

beneath poorly cut bangs –

which I do myself.

(No wonder he’s ornery.)

He’s quietly watching my pained approach

and just as I get within a few feet,

with a flick of his tail, he’s off –

bucking and snorting as he goes.

Mom’s words are unrecognizable

from the far end of the field.

But the tone is clear.

So I move toward my spotted nemesis,

expecting him to bolt at any moment.

But this time, he lets me mount.

It’s all too easy,

a voice inside warns.

But Mom’s is louder.

Barely settled in the saddle,

Chief lifts his head and pins his fuzzy ears

flat against his thick skull.

Grabbing the reins and the horn,

I know what’s coming.

Somehow still in the saddle at the canter,

annoys my little, four-hoofed devil,

who swerves from his path toward a cluster of pines.

Two, in particular.

Which stand a pony’s width apart.

I close my eyes and hold on tight.

Like yarn through an embroidery needle,

Chief threads us between the pines.

Scraped from their stirrups,

my little legs bounce off of the pony’s big rear-end

as we leave the trees for pasture

and gallop toward Mom;

who’s still lobbing impractical words over the fence.

I feel my grasp on the saddle-horn weaken,

as my resolve that I’ll soon be tasting earth,

grows.

And I let go.

Part Two:

Mom thinks a pal might keep Chief calmer.

So early one spring, in comes Billy Gold:

a blue ribbon, well-trained, Palomino,

which we trailered behind the wagon

from his Missouri home.

Chief dislikes the new arrival immediately.

I think he’s dreamy

with his white/blonde mane and ginger coat,

still winter thick and warm to the touch.

Feeding him a carrot,

his hot breath and fuzzy lips

tickle the palm of my cold, red hand.

Mark and Mia remain on the fence.

Watching.

Still unsure of whether Billy Gold –

like Chief –

is tarnished.

In my thickly lined hood,

tied tight against the cold, lake winds,

I don’t understand their warnings

until far too late.

Chief’s powerful teeth clamp down.

The pain in my butt is searing.

I’m howling.

Billy Gold bolts.

But Chief just stands there.

A nose length’s away.

Staring.

As I hop around the half-frozen earth,

swearing.

And rubbing the area already swelling.

My siblings’ shocked silence explodes into laughter,

followed by a closely contested race to the house

to see who’ll be the first to blather.

Meanwhile, a purple-red welt,

banded by marks of Chief’s big, front teeth,

grows and throbs with each step toward the house

where Mom greets me with an ice pack

and an ungoverned smile.

Part Three:

When Chief isn’t trying to shed us,

or eat us,

he’s on the lam.

Devilishly clever.

Expected and regular.

The phone rings.

Mom cringes.

Apologizes.

Then sounds the alarm.

Steering the station wagon straight toward town.

We found him in a graveyard once,

a foggy morning, one fall.

Striking terror in the old caretaker

who thought he’d seen it all.

Until galloping across the graves,

he saw a ghostly, pony-sized sight.

Bad bangs bouncing in the soupy light.

Pursued closely by a tall, beautiful, blonde

in flowing, full length, lime-green chiffon.

His hands still trembling

when we waved from the road,

as we slowly crept toward home

with our pony in tow.

But much of the time, Chief’s antics are close

and off I dash with grain and a rope;

tracking my pony’s sod-ripping route

through the blue-blood, buttoned-up neighborhood,

across disapproving neighbors’ pristine lawns.

From behind their glass houses,

shaking heads frown.

One rainy, spring day, while chasing the brat,

he stopped his bucking and turned in his tracks

to face me.

He pinned his ears, which put me on my guard.

Then that damn pony started to charge!

I was quite sure we were going to collide

When a voice –

loud and fed up –

called from inside.

I dropped the bucket of grain.

I dropped the pony’s halter.

I gathered all my courage.

My universe was itching to alter.

Setting my feet and standing my ground,

I watched him close the gap.

And just as he was an arm’s length away…

I gave him a great, big

SLAP

at the tip of his long, white snout.

Suddenly, all Chief’s piss and vinegar

done

run

OUT!

With a half-hearted snort,

he lowered his poorly banged head,

turning his devilish focus

on the grain bucket instead.

And with noses aligned,

we lingered toward home,

understanding more of each other

than we had ever known.

~from “Within Close Range: short stories of an American childhood”

@dogearedstories.com

Within Close Range: Bullies

Because our home’s so far away,

I’m the first picked up by the bus each day

and the very first stop after school –

which makes every student on our route

sit forty minutes more each afternoon

and me, an unwelcome sight.

Full of hormones and hate,

those in last few rows of the long, yellow bus

moan and groan

as soon as I climb on,

making me nervously skitter to the nearest seat

where I crouch and hide and wait.

The hardcore insults come later

and louder

cloaked in the anonymity of the rumbling and motion

of our rolling prison.

Deaf to what he hears,

the bus driver just stares ahead

and goes where he’s told.

United by the same neighborhood,

in the opposite direction,

they snarl and nip at the back of my neck –

piercing my thin skin.

It’s us versus them,

in every nasty word.

But the “them” they think I am

is absolutely absurd.

When their rabid, backseat words

have more than their usual bite,

I step from the bus

and race to the woods,

searching for a way to shake the hurt

in the thick, dim patches of unpeopled forest.

I disappear among the ember-colored leaves

which cap the many trees of Shoreacres

before the heavy freeze

steals the color from the land.

And there, I simply am.

Where I step to the sound of my breathing,

the movement of the clouds,

and to the busy hush of forest life about,

reminding me to go about my own;

and to heal my wounds

with the comforts of home.

Within Close Range: At the Edge of the Bluff

It’s an early spring day in the heartland.

Anemic, damp and miserable.

Clumps of stubborn snow and ice,

grey and grimy,

still dot the sidewalks and lawns.

Faces look pale and anxious for sun.

After the usual sermon of incense and absolution,

followed by stacks of pancakes and sausages,

we know something is up

when Dad drives past our neighborhood,

further and further from home.

by unfamiliar faces and unfamiliar towns,

until backseat boredom’s about to grow horns.

Passing a tiny town,

and a solid white, storybook farm,

Dad finally slows and signals a turn.

“Shoreacres Country Club, Members Only.”,

reads the uninviting sign.

Swallowed by the dark of the woods,

the wide, low wagon drifts silently down the road,

flanked by a small, trickling brook,

winding past towering trees

and long stretches of green.

Everything is covered in a fine, frigid gloom,

including another set of pretty, white buildings

silent and still on this dreary afternoon.

Passing a faded, old, green water tower,

headless and frightening in the fog,

our destination is finally divulged:

a new home.

I sink further into the wagon’s rear seat,

where the unfriendly neighborhood disappears

and I can see nothing but the thick, dark clouds.

The silence is broken only by the sound of gravel

crunching beneath the wheels of the wagon,

now weighted with disappointment.

We twist down a long driveway and stop.

So inching my way back up,

I survey at the house.

It’s dark and sullen.

Like the day.

And my mood.

Dad says, “We’ll just take a peek.”

But even I know what that means.

So, like prisoners into an exercise yard,

we file from the car,

and stand in an unhappy cluster in front of the house –

which isn’t yellow –

like ours.

Which has no sign of neighbors,

a school,

the Good Humor Man,

or a new treehouse –

like ours.

We’re coaxed to a long row of windows

which look through the cold, empty rooms,

and beyond,

where lies a huge expanse of lawn.

And water.

Racing to the rear of the house,

we stand the edge of the bluff,

looking out over the grand, Great Lake

right there at our toes.

The Windy City silhouette, 40 miles south.

Excitement now erupts for this strange, new place.

This decades-long breeder of unsupervised fun.

First beers.

First cigarettes

And, of course, first bongs.

Secret rendezvous for teenage loves.

Havens for fainthearted runaways

who soon long for home just a few feet away.

Follies of youth are such glorious days.

Until this world begins to erode.

To implode.

And all begin to scatter.

But, oh, what fertile earth it was

living life in the woods at the edge of the bluff.

Within Close Range: Clogs

Lake Forest High School’s West Campus

is a giant, brick and cinder block monstrosity,

designed with all the charm and comforts

of a state penitentiary.

Sterile,

uninviting,

uninspiring,

practically windowless, colorless,

and completely humorless.

Its warden roams the cinder block dungeons

in his plaid polyester sports coat,

smelling of cigarettes and body odor;

wielding his insignificant power

with more brawn than brain.

I’ve done everything I can to steer clear.

But best laid plans…

Still mocking an outdated documentary

on health, hygiene, and the hazards of smoking;

featuring mildly graphic surgery footage,

phony teens in dungarees,

and from a hole cut in his larynx,

a smiling man blowing smoke rings,

I start down the stairs to my next class

but never see past the very first step

because the clog on my right foot has chosen to go ahead –

getting only as far as the arch, instead –

landing my half-clogged foot on the step’s metal edge.

I plunge toward a stair-ful of surprised friends

and new enemies.

Twisting and hurtling through the innocent

and unsuspecting.

Coming down hard on my back.

With the grim, fluorescent lighting above

and the cold, cement floor below,

I am returned to the moment by the moans

of the stunned and wounded getting to their feet.

I attempt to do the same,

but am gently pushed back to the cold concrete.

“You can’t move.”

“I’m fine,” I sigh in response,

attempting to sit up again.

“No,” says our teacher,

as she pushes me back to the ground

(a little more firmly this time).

“I mean, I can’t let you move until the principal gets here.”

“I’M FINE!” explodes off the cinder block walls.

Faces grimace.

The class is soon sent on their way,

while like a one-shoed idiot, there I lay…

waiting…

imagining how the news of my nose dive

is already spreading.

Sprinting unnecessarily up the flight of stairs;

a figure is soon looming over me on the landing –

an oppressive cloud of Aqua Velva and brown plaid.

And now I’m truly wishing I was dead.

Finally ensuring my captors

There’ll be no need for an ambulance,

to lawyer up

– or even help up –

and hobble away,

bruised and humiliated.

Less than two weeks later,

fate becomes a hater –

as I tumble down another set of steps.

People are beginning to wonder.

Including the school nurse,

who meets me at the office door,

shaking her head.

Scrutinizing my footwear.

She hates clogs.

Thinks they should all be put in a big pile

and burned.

Just wait til she catches sight of my new Dr. Scholl’s.

Within Close Range: short stories of an American childhood – Annie, Annie, are you all right?

Everyone is anxious to be outside when spring comes to the Midwest.

And even though patches of mud-colored snow and ice still mar the school grounds, all I can see is sun and green because I’m sporting a new pair of white, Calvin Klein jeans, and red leather, Dr. Scholl’s sandals.

Making half-hearted attempts to throw a Frisbee to each other during lunch break, Jean, Megan and I are just happy to be breathing fresh air daily denied us in the newly constructed prison we call high school.

This semester, we’re in health class together being taught the basics of CPR. To help us, we have “Annie”, a training manikin in a spiffy red track suit, who inspires far more sexual asides than careers in the health care industry.

The first thing we’re taught when approaching the polyester-clad casualty is to ask:

“Annie, Annie, are you all right?”, while gentle shaking her shoulders; and if this fails to get the proper response – which it inevitably did – then it was time for cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

I think.

I haven’t really been paying attention.

None of us have.

So things don’t bode well when chasing the disk in my new, wooden, single-strap, Dr. School’s sandals, they hydroplane on the slippery, spring surface, sending me skimming across the old ice and new grass, into a cold, muddy puddle.

Slamming me hard against the half-frozen earth.

Searching for the wind knocked out of me, I bolt upright to see Jean and Megan racing my way. First to my arrive, Megan kneels by my side, and shaking me vigorously, asks:

“Annie, Annie, are you all right?!”

Then falls into a fit of laughter.

Jean isn’t laughing.

Grabbing me from behind with the strength of an Amazon, she lifts me off the ground and thrusts with all her might at my abdomen.

I don’t know whether to laugh, vomit, or pass out, but manage to signal, “That’s NOT it!”

and for Jean to release her hold.

Exhausted and humiliated, I slip to the ground – grateful to be alive but wishing I was dead.

Arm in arm, in the full day’s sun, we walk across the sparse spring lawn, revealing my grassy, mud-stained ass and “big girl” undies – now exposed – thanks to that lethal combination of white pants and puddles.

When Mrs. Waldeck, the School nurse, looks up from her desk,

it’s hard to tell whether her expression is anger, aggravation, or pity.

It certainly isn’t surprise.

Mumbling something about pinochle as a proper past time and a big bonfire for burning all clogs and sandals, she leads me to the back room where I can wash up; then offers the unsatisfactory suggestion that I slip on my gym shorts for the remainder of the day.

My face says it all, so she hands me the phone and suggests I call home.

Mom, as is the norm, is nowhere to be found.

Apparently, the day’s humiliation is far from over.

And this Annie is feeling anything but all right.

Within Close Range: an evening with officer gildemeister

Been sitting here for hours,

finding haunted, frightened faces

in the station floor’s contours.

Don’t know whether to be relieved

that the next person I see,

isn’t Dad.

But I was simply standing there

when someone gave me my first beer.

Just before all hell broke loose

in the parking lot of St. Mary’s Church and School.

Everyone saw the squad car.

Everyone but me –

and the boy who got busted with a bong –

but even he’s now free.

The scene’s a constant loop in my head:

beers flying,

friends fleeing,

voices shouting,

me freezing.

Blinded by flashing.

Too late to fling it.

Too late for dashing.

Why did I leave that stupid dance?

I just went to see the band.

Hoping to spark the lead guitar’s flame,

but the flame from a first crush never came.

“Is there someone else I can call?”

I can think of one name, that’s all.

“They have to be adults,” he sneers.

“Dr. and Mrs.” I mumble.

Of course, he knows the teenage sons.

and thinks they’re nothing but trouble.

Dirty, hippy, smartass punks

with long hair and ripped jeans;

thundering laughs and motorbikes,

and EVERYTHING that he dislikes.

At last, a fast-moving figure,

in a tousled wig of blonde,

darts through the doors

with a generous smile

to face the big man with the gun.

A lady of very small stature

she is nearly eclipsed by his size.

“Are you going to tell her why you’re here?”

she looks up to the man and she smiles,

“She doesn’t have to tell me a thing.”

was all she had to say,

stunning the big, little, speechless man

bringing joy to my miserable day.

I suppress the urge to hug her.

But she’ll get a tearful later.

And I’ll be forever grateful

to Inga, my saviour.

The Train

Staring at the corner of his small, shaded, shared room which smells of disinfectant, death and old wool, all that’s left of Jake’s life stands on the shelf before him: dusty, unframed photos (faded images of lost faces, youth and health) on a teetering pile of once comforting books, earmarked and yellowed, barely held together by their cracked and broken bindings.

Lifting them from their place would reveal a thick outline of their long neglect.

The books are now just painful reminders of his last stroke and the words are un-consoling strangers among the unclear images that come, and mostly go, of what’s come and all but gone in Jake’s long, lonely life of merely living long.

Yet there’s something on that meager shelf the old man will treasure forever.

It came to him one summer from his only uncle, Joe, a large, quiet man with the strength of a bull, who worked his whole life in the northern logging camps bringing down trees and building other men’s wealth.

Their meeting was brief (but the moment still strong) in a desperate childhood filled with hunger and want.

He’d come down from the highland forests the summer Jake turned six.

The air was stifling – thick – as was Joe’s large frame filling the door of the derelict cabin where the boy and his mom scratched out their living mending shirts, washing laundry, running errands.

Whatever work to be found up and down the great, green mountain.

The unexpected visit surprised Jake’s mom, who hadn’t seen her brother since they were young; sent off as soon as they could earn a living on their own.

She embraced the waist of the burly, bearded man, who returned the hug with one, massive, tree-trunk-of-an-arm, then turning to his only nephew with a wide, toothy grin, Joe revealed his hidden arm where two objects lay in his giant, calloused palm.

With fingers big as branches, using bits of paper, bark and wire, the woodsman had turned simple scraps he’d found around the camp into a logging train, with a smokestack engine coupled to a car fully loaded with tiny, timbered logs tied up with string.

“Ain’t much.”

But it was absolutely everything.

Sitting at the large, well-worn work table together, Jake’s uncle and mother searched for words to close the gap of so many years; while the boy rested his chin against his sinewy, tanned arms crossed atop the hard-scrubbed pine.

Staring eye-level at the train.

Hesitant to touch it for fear it would, like a fidgety spirit, fade away.

Or worse – break in his young, but hardened hands.

Just studying it – knowing it was his – was more than enough for the boy.

The brief visit would be the first and last time he would see his Uncle Joe, whose large, lumberjack’s frame had barely left the shadow of the shack before the grind of what would be Jake’s life had begun again.

Having that train in his sight each day – the one made just for him a lifetime away – made even the strangest places left behind and those ahead, endurable.

And Jake feel fairly human.

Within Close Range: Betsy’s Dad’s Den

Each time I lit the candle gifted me, a rich, earthy fragrance brought forward hazy memories.

Vague images which came briefly into view and then vanished amid so many forgotten days.

I’d light the candle and back they’d come.

Out of focus, but strong.

One day, with the faint but familiar fragrance still in the air, still teasing my will-menopause-ever-end-addled mind, I reached for the candle and turned it over, hoping the label would reveal something – anything – that might re-animate these mislaid memories.

There was my answer.

Pipe tobacco.

And Mr. Gould’s suddenly den came into focus.

Tucked in the corner of the Gould’s old, grey-green, two chimney, Colonial, which sat a short block from the edge of Lake Michigan.

You could find it by heading straight east down Scranton Avenue, the main street of Lake Bluff’s hardly-a-downtown business district.

The old house sat in a quiet spot amid tree-filled lots and winding ravines and looked as if it had been there almost as long as the trees which towered over it.

Stepping into the Gould’s house was like stepping out from the Way Back Machine with Mr. Peabody.

Everything – from its old plaster and uneven, wood floors, to its cozy nooks and small, sunlit rooms filled with old things – incited my imagination.

And oh, the kitchen – old bricks and beams – always smelling of fresh-baked bread.

Betsy and I would cut thick slices off a golden brown loaf cooling on the tall counter and sink our teeth into the still warm, chewy insides that hinted of honey and butter and left our fingers powdered with flour.

And my stomach hungry for more.

With the final crusts stuffed into our mouths, we’d climb the steep, narrow, crooked flight of stairs to Betsy’s room, straight ahead.

Two rooms, really. One being her bedroom, the other a small, summer, sleeping porch with northwest walls of old, paned windows; where generations of restless sleepers sought lake breezes during the dependably hot and humid Midwest summer nights.

Cots and cotton nightgowns. 

Late summer sun and the strident thrum of crickets. 

Another time still haunted the corners of this room.

Before the piles of fabric, patterns, and sewing stuff cluttered the small, bright space at the corner of the Gould’s old, grey-green, two chimney, Colonial near the lake.

We’d spread out across Betsy’s high bed and talk dreamily about our four favorite men: John, Paul, George and Ringo. Spinning their albums until daylight left and my ride home appeared at the front door.

The rest of the upstairs was a mystery to me, being two-thirds occupied by teen brothers, whose rare appearances and even rarer visits to Betsy’s room usually lasted briefly and annoyed her thoroughly.

It simply scared the shit out of me.

On occasion, when Betsy sought out her dad during my visits, we’d wander back down the creaky, old stairs, through the dark front entry hall (which no one ever seemed to enter) to the only place I ever recall seeing Betsy’s dad.

His den.

With a timid rap on the solid, old door, we’d hear his gentle voice give permission to enter this space.

His special place.

His sanctuary.

And it was here, as the door opened and I entered behind my best friend, that the smell of sweet and spicy, earthy and smoky, became a part of me.

As did the sight of Mr. Gould at his desk.

Smoking his pipe.

Sweatered, like the perfect professor.

Ever engaging his hands and his mind.

Creating. 

Drawing. 

Building dreams.

And ships in bottles.

Magnificent, masted vessels of extraordinary detail. Masterfully and meticulously constructed, painted and engineered within ridiculously constrained confines.

When finished, each ship would join the miniature armada that floated on a sea of books on wooden shelves, near paneled walls, and paned windows with mustard drapes; above a glass-topped coffee table filled with shells and sticky sand from spilled milks.

Each night (Betsy would tell me), without fail, her dad would close those long, mustard-colored curtains overlooking Scranton Avenue and sit at his desk to busy his hands and block out the world.

Yet each and every time a car drove past, she found it most mysterious that her dad would stop what he was doing, draw the drapes back – just enough to watch the car pass – and then close them again and return to his task.

And his deliciously fragrant pipe.

And his secret snacks – Pepsi and Fritos – hidden beneath his desk.

And there he’d stay, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, making beautiful things for make-believe worlds.

I could have sat in there for hours exploring the books, the shelves, the bottles, and the mind of a quiet, creative man.

All of which were out of reach.

Yet now reach out.

Calling me back to the old, grey-green, two-chimney, Colonial on Scranton Avenue.

To Betsy’s dad’s den.

To his ships and his pipe.

And the sweet aroma.

To fresh baked bread.

And lazy afternoons.

With best friends.

The Wind and the Owl

When the central highland winds howl through the valley and rattle the windows of our house on the hill, shaking and bending the juniper and pinion trees I see beyond the shuddering panes, my body and mind still brace for the only thing that comes of such blustery warnings to the Midwestern me.

The menacing advance of a fearsome storm.

Intense and unforgiving.

I feel my body – tense and taut – bracing for the worst with each swollen

Pacing through the house.

Anxious for it to stop.

Or me to move.

So my dogs and I head out for our walk, prepared for a fight against tempests and cold and I’m ever surprised to find the winds far more kind than I imagined.

Mellowed by the sun’s abiding strength.

Layers are shed at the start of our walk and the warm, constant breezes now push me, Frank and Nellie to the chapparal below, where I know the sweeping winds will blow much gentler music across the tall grass. And at my back, urge me forward toward to the far fence line where the pronghorn often graze.

But downwind today, well warned of our arrival, they’re likely to have scattered; prompting me to turn against the wind and start a circuitous loop back home.

Toward the scrub oak and junipers.

Shelter and shade.

And the shadowy scent of Mountain Lilac blossoming profusely in the wake of generous winter rains.

The gentle fragrance of this rugged bush, appears and disappears with the shifting winds, lifting my spirits with each sweet return, as I wander up and down the hills with my two, most joyful companions.

The world in their noses turned into the breezes.

Close to home, I see a Great Horned Owl take to the air just a few feet ahead.

I hear one, grand flap of his wings. And then nothing.

A familiar shadow among the neighborhood trees, I track his flight and see him perch again in a pine, up the hill and up ahead, and I follow with glee.

Silently.

Deliberately.

From tree to tree.

Hidden among the dark, green boughs of an old, domed Juniper, heavy with pollen, the owl waits. But just as we near, off he goes, higher up the hill and closer to home, past the scattered remains of a long dead tree which lay like a skeleton, gray and sunbleached, exactly where it fell.

Pursuing him again to yet another tree, it’s as if the owl is hunting me. For, there, in a clearing of branches, the great hunter sits.

Quietly watching us move up the hill.

Allowing me the perfect view of this very perfect predator.

Staring still, my eyes meet his, until he decides we’ve come close enough.

And that is that.

He spreads his wings and disappears, without a sound, among the pinion near the old pit mine.

I try to reconnect at a fourth tree ahead, but instead, meet a noisy grackle balanced at the top of the tree where I hoped the Great Horned Owl would be. But he has already continued on his way, up the hill, over a fenceline, and out of my sight.

Certain we’re not out of his, I scan the trees on the hill in vain.

Unleashing the dogs, Nellie’s off in a dash in her fruitless pursuit of chasing small reptile.

Zigging and zagging, but never succeeding.

I think she’s just teasing.

My call for her cuts through the wind and the white-noised silence.

Unsettling me.

Until the music of the wild winds in the scrub oaks and the pines, in the final footsteps home, help me find my peace and place again.

Within Close Range: The Youngest

We watch the station wagon back out of the driveway. Mom waves through the open window before slowly pulling away. It’s just a few errands, but Mark is inconsolable. Tries to follow her.

Chris sweeps him up, but he squirms with all of his might and wins the fight. Falling to his knees, and then to all fours, the youngest of five laments the loss by slamming his soft head on the hard blacktop.

Shocked by the scene, I race to the street, hoping Mom will see me wave and shift to reverse. But the station wagon turns the corner and disappears from sight.

Back in Chris’s arms, I can see Mark’s forehead is already swollen and bruised. Pockmarked from the pavement. Gravel still clinging to his brow.

Silently, the three of us turn toward the house, motherless and miserable.

Within Close Range: Tiny Terrors

I save every penny I can to buy things for my very first household: a two-story, six room, pale yellow Colonial with black shutters, rose-filled window boxes, and a square footage of about three.

Placing my tiny, new items in their tiny, proper places, house proud and satisfied, I head downstairs to the laundry room for dusting rags. I’m only gone a few minutes, but as I come around the front facade of my beautiful home – thinking of fake-watering my fake flowers – I’m shocked and horrified.

The tiny patriarch of my miniature clan is not where I left him, sitting on the living room sofa with a wee book in his lap.

Daughter is still at the piano where I left her, but slumped over. Arms splayed across the keys.

I find Father directly above, in the four poster bed, pant-less and laying rather indelicately on top of Mother; while in the bathroom, next door, Baby has been stuffed – diapers up – in the porcelain toilet with the long chain pull.


My fearful but transfixed eyes move to Grandmother’s room next door, slightly disappointed to find nothing – no one. Maybe Grandmother’s safe.

But the thought is fleeting when in the kitchen below, I find my sweet, old, grey-haired Grandmother, and her tiny bun I carefully brush with the tip of my finger, has been shoved in the oven of the cast iron stove. The soles of her sensible shoes searing into my memory.

But where’s Son? He’s not in the fridge, under the sofa, in the clawfoot tub. Searching both floors of the colonial, there’s only one place left…

Slowly raising the balsa-shingled roof of my pale yellow, Colonial house with black shutters and rose-filled windows boxes, (which Jim was forced to cut and glue as punishment for his last dollhouse infraction), I can’t see him anywhere.

Then I spy the tiny trunk in the corner…

Oh, the tiny horror.

Within Close Range: The Universe Upstairs

The adult-free upstairs is our universe, our private world of fun and games and funny voices, where Jim’s rolled up socks turn into stink bombs of such infamy that as soon as you see him take off a shoe, you run… as fast as your stockinged feet along a polished wood floor can take you.

It’s also where fuzzy, red carpeting turns to molten lava as chairs and tables become bridges, and the sofa, an island where captives and carpet monsters fight to the death in battle after battle.

In the universe upstairs, sloped-ceiling closets and dark crawlspaces (too-small-for-adults places) become hideaways where we can bring pillows and posters, flashlights and stuffed animals, and write secrets and swear words on the 2 x 4s and plaster board; as we listen to Mom in the kitchen below.

Until the heater switches on and the great metal shafts fill with air and fill our ears with rumbling.

At the very top of the back steps, behind a tiny door (not more than three feet square), Jim spent all day building a spaceship. Fabricated from old outlets and switches and a roll of duct tape.

With Mark as his co-pilot and imagination as his rocket fuel, he rallies us to climb into his crawlspace capsule. I sit back in the darkness, surrounded by boxes of memories – Mom’s heirloomed wedding dress at my elbow and Christmas decorations at my back – anxious for the countdown.

Excited for blast off.

For leaving the earth far behind.

Calling to his co-pilot to flick switches labelled with a big, black magic marker, then moving his hands up and down his own duct-taped controls, I hear the sputters and rumbles of Jim’s vocal-powered rockets.

Hugging my big, Pooh Bear, I watch our fearless pilot, in the beam of a dangling flashlight, lean back and call to his unlikely crew through the cup of his hand, “Hang on! Here we go! Ten… Nine… Eight…”

Jim’s rumbles begin to rise.

“Seven… Six… Five… Four…”

I feel the crawlspace shake and rattle.

“Three… Two… One… BLAST OFF!”

I squeeze that silly, old bear and close my eyes to see the fast-approaching cosmos…

And there I float in the infinite black. In the infinite stars. Until Jim shouts, “Meteors!” and all hell breaks loose in our top-of-the-stairs cockpit.

The hallway light suddenly cuts through the cracks and the dark – and the meteors – and the call of dinner brings us back to earth.

Within Close Range: Inspection

Mom and Dad’s bedroom is on the first floor of the house (at the southern end of everything) allowing them to frequently escape to its sunlit, coziness and away from the five, wild seeds they chose to sow.

This leaves the entire second floor almost entirely adult-free, except for the occasional laundry delivery from Mom and the much less occasional visit from Dad – more ceremonial than social – and usually the result of winter restlessness or weekend thunderstorms keeping him from the golf course.

We only know of his plans when we hear, “INSPECTION in ten minutes!” sound from below, at which point all present scatter from the upstair’s common room to our respective bedrooms, where we begin frenzied attempts to hide all clothing, toys, towels, glasses, plates, books and general shit we’ve left strewn everywhere.

Depending on his level of bother, Dad might only scan the surface of the bedrooms and bathrooms. It’s something each of us quietly prays for as he passes dressers, drawers, desks and closets, cluttered and crammed with quickly concealed crap.

If his heart really isn’t in it, he might demand some dusting and vacuuming, to be inspected later – which will likely not occur – and then disappear below. Knowing this, we’ll half-heartedly obey before returning to reruns, twitching on each other, and littering.

However, if Dad’s disposition is grim, he delves further, looking under beds and behind shower curtains, and, if he’s in a particularly foul mood, sliding open a closet door…

At which point, we’re positively doomed.

Within Close Range: Tornado Watch

The cement-floored, window-welled basement of the house is the biggest indoor space we have to spread out, but it comes at a price. My bare feet are regular magnets for misplaced thumb tacks; while misplaced gerbils, who disappear beneath appliances, leave the already dank underground smelling like fabric softener and tiny, rotting corpse.

It’s also the first place we head every spring when tornado season arrives and the local siren sounds, sending neighborhood kids scattering to their homes, and Mom shuffling everyone down below, where we wait for incoming reports.

With the TV and radio competing and other siblings playing, I stare out the small, ground-level window, half-hoping to see the funnel at the end of the our street, moving down its center, like a spinning top, whirling and powerless.

But I know a tornado isn’t powerless. It’s dangerous and threatening my world.

Comforting is the sight of Mom ironing; while through the grimy glass I wait for the mean, dark sky to lighten, the all-clear to sound, and life in the neighborhood to return to its routine.

Within Close Range: The Pressure of Writing

She moves up and down the rows of desks,

filled with tiny, crouched figures

hovering over lined paper and clutching #2 pencils.

Filling the aisle with her middle-age width and Avon perfume,

I feel the warmth of her body and breath as she leans over me

and sighs.

We’ve been here before.

I’m just not getting this pencil-holding thing.

I thought I was doing it right.

The letters on my paper look pretty much like everyone’s.

Pretty much.

But every time she stops at my desk, she firmly cups her hand over mine and squeezes hard

until she forces my tiny, anxious fingers

to curl around the long, yellow pencil with the well-worn pink eraser.

“A firm grasp is the key to proper penmanship, my dear,” she says, trying to sound patient about my substandard pencil etiquette.

Not wanting to disappoint her

again

I clench that pencil as if my very breathing depends upon it,

until my fingers cramp from it,

and the lead of the pencil presses so hard against the paper

that the letters bulge through the opposite side.

When she asks us to turn our papers over and sit quietly until everyone finishes,

I close my eyes and feel each raised letter with my fingertips.

Wondering whether any one else has to press that hard

work that hard

to squeeze out the letters and words, and sentences,

so very anxious to burst forth.

Within Close Range: The Phone at the End of the Hall

The phone at the end of the hall, right next to my room, comes to life in the middle of the night; its merciless metal bells clanging, resounding off the tall walls of the winding front steps, and down the long, carpet-less hallway.

Startled from my dreams and tormented by its unanswered ring, I crawl over whichever dog or cat is hogging most of the bed and quickly shuffle toward the noise, hoping to get to the phone before another blast of the bell pierces my brain.

Fumbling for the receiver – and words – I already know that the only kind of news that comes in the middle of the night is usually bad. Or at least not very good – and if I’m answering the phone, it means Mom and Dad didn’t, and I’m about to be made the reluctant messenger.

Sleepless in the hours that follow. Anxious to hear the garage door rumble. Hoping the yelling and the lecture happened during the ride home.

And that all the gory details will come over a bowl of cereal in the morning.

Happy everyone is back and in bed. And all is quiet at home again.

Within Close Range: The Nights There Are Fights

My bedroom is at the end of the second floor hallway.
Right above the living room and Mom and Dad’s bedroom suite.
I hear fights my siblings don’t – or at least don’t tell me.
A hard thing to bring to a game of H-O-R-S-E.
On the nights there are fights, I never feel more alone in this full house.
Sinking through the empty blackness of my room.
Drowning in the fury and the screaming and my pillow.
Desperate for it to stop, or for me to find the courage to make him stop.
Picturing the nearest item that will offer the hardest blow.
A cane from the stand, just down the stairs, and through the door below.
… If I hear it once more…
But I never find the courage, just anger and confusion,
and early recognition of a marriage in malfunction.
Making monsters in the madness and words into weapons.
And me into a quivering mess under my blankets in the dark of my room.
Praying for it to stop, or me to sleep.

Within Close Range: Speech Class

Walking hand in hand through the woods to Sherwood Elementary – just Mom and me – I stay in the playground, hanging by my knees against the cool, metal monkey bars; looking upside down at the grey, September sky, wondering what I’ve done to make Mrs. Paschua, my first grade teacher, want a meeting.

On our way home, Mom explains that they talked about the way I speak and why I might have troubles with certain sounds. Mrs. P. thought Mom might be the reason – perhaps a foreigner (with that foreign-sounding name). I giggle when Mom tells me how surprised my teacher was to discover that Mom – that we – are as alien as apple pie.

But I love the thought of someone thinking I’m different. It makes me feel special – a little exotic.

Sherwood Elementary thinks I’m special too. Enough to take me out of class each week to send me to speech therapy, where they work the entire year to make me sound just like everyone else.

Within Close Range: The Great Chicken Debate

Whether going out or eating in, food either consumes Nonnie’s thoughts or busies her hands for hours each day, managing laborious feats and four-course, Italian feasts – piping hot dishes of handmade manicotti or tender, breaded cutlets, garlicky vegetables, hot rolls, vinegary salads and sweet desserts.

Second helpings are always encouraged at Nonnie’s dinner table and praise for the cook, expected – as well as a little too vehemently rejected.

The three greatest mis-steps at this Italian table?

One: cutting spaghetti. Either twist it or prepare for a gentle cuff on the back of the head from Papa.

Two:  if all diners are not seated at the table while the food is still visibly steaming… Nonnie will burst several blood vessels.

And three:  never…EVER… say you’re not hungry. Utter blasphemy.

We like to rattle her with unexpected visits and ravenous appetites, watching her forage through the refrigerator and freezer, brimming with outwardly unidentifiable, but doubtlessly delicious leftovers, sealed inside ancient Tupperware and old Cool Whip containers. Happy to see us, but perceptibly agitated that she can only offer what she sees as barely acceptable fare, each serving is dished up with a generous dollop of misgiving.

I’ve never known anyone as good at cooking as Nonnie, who complained about it more.

So it’s little wonder that while visiting in Florida, the moment Papa announces we’re having dinner out, a palpable – near frenetic – excitement  electrifies the apartment.

Following the proclamation, Nonnie spends most of the day in her housecoat, in a walk-run, making sure everyone’s dress clothes are pressed precisely, her hair is maintaining its proper “do” beneath a sea-green hair net, snack intake is severely monitored, and her sisters, Camille and Rose, are consulted and updated (via long distance) on EVERYTHING.

For Nonnie, dining out is the equivalent to an audience with the Pope.

For me, such an event proves far more predictable than papal. More “Holy Cow” than Holy Spirit.

And it most definitely means Italian – old school – with its enticing smells and curtained nooks, smartly dressed waiters with thick accents, and an animated maitre d’ who greets everyone like family. It means trompe l’oeil walls of rural Tuscan scenes, rich, red fabrics draping doorways, and rolling dessert carts filled with cannoli and tiramisu.

From well below the mouthwatering chaos, I watch the loaded serving trays — piled high with pastas and soups, roasted chickens and fresh seafood — pass deftly overhead, with a “Scuza, Signorina!”, until a hand on my shoulder gently guides me out of the busy traffic and into a chair in front of a round table covered in linens and complex table settings.

A fast-moving figure from behind casts a well-aimed cascade of ice water into one of the two stemmed glasses set at eye-level before me.

Tempted and tormented by big baskets of breadsticks and freshly baked rolls, my hand’s gently spanked away from a second helping.

“You’ll spoil your dinner,” Nonnie scolds. (When what she secretly has in mind is a bakery heist for tomorrow’s breakfast.)

Excitement rises with the arrival of the menu which ignites imaginations and appetites.

Wherein the problem lies… with inexplicable regularity, when presented with an abundance of choices, Nonnie almost inevitably orders veal.

The choice seems harmless, but it’s enough to make family members cringe and Papa’s blood boil – not because baby cow meat is one of Nonnie’s favorite things to eat, but because every time she orders veal (whether Marsala or Picante, upscale joint or neighborhood favorite), she usually ends up taking only a couple of bites.

One for eternal optimism.

The other, raging cynicism.

Then raising her head from her plate and, wearing utter disappointment as a mourning veil, complains meekly but unmistakably.

“This isn’t veal… This is chicken… I’m sure this veal is chicken.”

And like clockwork, another battle in Nonnie’s tireless crusade to unmask poultry dressed in calves’ clothing begins, prompting children to slip lower in their seats and adults to start commenting about the day’s weather; while Papa bows his head and sighs with exasperated disbelief.

He and his wife then begin a short-lived, but emotionally escalating and frustrating exchange that will end with Papa vowing to never take Nonnie out to a restaurant again, and Nonnie looking self-righteous, misunderstood and miserable, as she rummages through her dinner-roll-filled-handbag looking for a tissue.

The drive home is what I imagine floating in space is like.

Silent. Solitary. Dark.

Except for the lights emanating from the dashboard (most particularly, the green turn signal arrow which Papa habitually leaves blinking) which let me know other life forms still exist.

A few days pass, then Papa announces we were going out to dinner.

Again. (Sigh.)

Nonnie’s excitement rises anew…

Until the waiter approaches her with his pen and pad in hand, and with all eyes anxiously upon her… she orders the veal.

And Papa ends up swearing that it’s the very last time he’ll ever take her out to dinner.

A vow he’ll repeat until the day he dies.

Nonnie, however, will work tirelessly in her quest for veal for decades more.

Within Close Range: The Car Ride

Much of my early views of Florida are seen above a sea of car upholstery, through rolled up windows, where the only things visible are the tops of Palm trees and passing trucks, condos and clouds, and Nonnie and Papa’s heads hovering over a wide expanse of leather stretched across the latest Cadillac’s cavernous front seat.

Here, conversations are muffled, and occasionally in broken Italian, so young ears can’t possibly understand; and elevator music-versions of Rock ’n Roll songs play softly; where Papa’s cautious, half-mile-to-execute lane change regularly causes the turn signal to remain blinking.

It must be an audio-visual black hole, oblivious as he is to both the flashing green light and the constant clicking for miles on end.The sound of it lulls me into a stupor, until Nonnie finally notices the signal of perpetual motion and snaps at Papa to turn it off.

A few miles pass and all is peaceful, until the car begins to fill with a terrible smell.

I turn to my cousin, John, who’s holding the backseat’s cigarette lighter, with a smug yet sorrowful look on his face, as the smell of flaming follicles slowly wafts through the well-sealed compartment.

“What’s burning?!” Nonnie shrieks, “Something’s burning! Jimmy, something’s on fire!”

Papa pitches the lumbering Caddy to an empty parking lot at the side of the road, unrolls the windows, and orders everyone out of the car. Nonnie stands there mumbling and grumbling and shaking her head while he makes absolutely sure nothing else has been set on fire.

Throwing John one, last incredulous look – Papa orders everyone back in the car before signaling his return to the road. Where, for the final miles to the restaurant, I lose myself in the smell of burnt hair and the click of the sedan’s left blinker.

Within Close Range: The Elevator

From the time the youngest of us is moving independently of a parent, Gina, Mary, Mia and I are seen as a small, drifting quartet of cousins at family gatherings. Two distinct gene pools, one common goal: to discover new spaces and unknown places, where no eyes and “No!”s could block our intentions.

Not to sit and behave, but explore the dark closets and dusted cabinets of quiet rooms far from grown-ups, though never far from mischievous brothers.

Gina usually rouses us to expand our adult-free borders; opening doors and waving us through – and when things don’t kill us – boldly stepping past us. Reassuming command.

And we follow.

Just as we do when she leads us out the door of Nonnie and Papa’s apartment and down a long, humdrum hallway of dubious hues, and thick, padded carpet that silences our patent leather footsteps and makes us whisper.

Without any wear on my new, leather soles, I slip and I slip as we pick up the pace of our great escape, past dark, numbered doors behind which come the murmurs of TVs and mumbled voices, and other people’s lives.

Our little flock focuses on the big, brown, metal door at the end of the hall which will lead us to uncharted worlds and unsupervised floors; to a quiet, pristine lobby where unsat-on furniture needs to be sat on, and plants are dusted; and the floor is so highly polished, it glitters and gleams like a magical, marble lake that I want to skate in my stockinged feet.

Mary presses the button with the arrow pointing down. The elevator hums and clicks and begins to move, and the newly learned numbers over the door blink in slow succession, until the lift stops and the door slides open.

In our reluctance to fully accept our independence, we hesitate and the door glides shut. But there’s an unspoken allegiance, so Mary re-presses the button, and back open it slides.

Pushing us into the small, room with dark wood panelling, Gina reaches for the lowest button, and off we go to the little known land of the lobby. I can see its floor before the door is fully open. It shimmers and shines and lures me from the safety of my flock and the moving box.

Gina follows.

Mary follows.

Mia doesn’t.

We watch her tiny body disappear behind the sliding, metal door.

Mary and Gina’s big, brown, Italian eyes go wide and I feel something – panic – suddenly rise. The elevator starts moving, the numbers start lighting, and Mia’s now off on her own adventure – without Captain or crew, or even a clue, as to where she’s going.

At a loss for what to do, we just stare at the door of the moving contraption which slowly ascends to the top floor and stops. Will she get off and try to find her way back to Nonnie and Papa’s? Does she even know what floor they live on?… Wait… Do we?

With this grim realization, the once strong lure of shiny floors and silky chairs is now replaced with powerful thoughts of Mia and Mom and home; of familiar faces, full plates of pasta, filled candy dishes.

And facing consequences.

Worried and wordless, we hear the elevator again click into motion and anxiously watch the numbers descend, kind of hoping when the door slides open, we see a familiar grown-up, or… Mia!

Standing in the exact same spot in center of the elevator where she’d been deserted, looking slightly startled, but happy to see us. Before losing her again, we jump in and watch the elusive lobby disappear behind the sliding door.

Now all we need to figure out is what button will lead us home.

Gina presses all of them.

When the elevator next stops, we hope to recognize something or someone, but nothing and no one is there. The next floor offers a replica of the last and I feel tears bubbling just below the surface. As the door opens to the third floor, it reveals a sight I thought I’d never be happy to see, Jim and John, sent out to search for their sisters and cousins.

“WE FOUND ‘EM!”, Jim hollers, as the boys race back down the brown and beige hall, to the front door of the apartment where Nonnie stands shushing… and waiting… with oven mitt and apron, and a look of consternation.

A scolding is at hand.

Gina smiles at each of us, then turns toward Nonnie.

And we follow.

Within Close Range: The Devil at Lake Forest Cemetery

There’s a grave in the corner of the Potter’s Field at Lake Forest Cemetery.
Rumors tell of devils and demons,
of curses and misfortune;
of strange things happening to graveside visitors.
But I’m curious.
And bored.
Finding two equally bored cohorts, we head out in my convertible.
Autumn whipping our hair.
The heater blasting on our legs as we wind along Sheridan Road,
beneath the red, yellow, orange and brown leaves
silently floating to the ground on the fishy lake breeze;
shrouding the lawns, the sidewalks, the forests, and the last season,
in moist, earthy layers.
Entering the cemetery beneath its great, grey gateway,
we haven’t a clue as to which way to go;
only away from the grand mausoleums and stone angels
that mark the graves of the rich and powerful.
We find the unmarked field down a short, dead-end lane
already twice passed.
A small, unkempt and inconspicuous patch.
No statues, flags, or flowers.
No benches or shade for mourners.
Just a sad stretch of grass, cornered by a chainlink fence,
choked with neglected vines and scraggly branches of struggling pines.
Phil and Betsy step into a small ravine separating us from the forgotten field.
Their feet, ankles and shins sink into a river of yellow and brown leaves
and I’m startled by the thought of them disappearing.
Swallowed by some, strange, autumnal underworld.
Eased only when both climb out on the other side.
Wandering up and down the quiet plot, we find nothing but nameless headstones. Unadorned and unnoticed.
So many stories untold.
Until we happen upon a half-buried cross at the very corner of the lot
where the wealthy suburb’s poor were given their unsung plot.
Barely legible, Damien, is scratched in a crudely made crucifix,
toppled by wandering roots of the towering, lakeside trees.
Smothered by overgrown grass and thick, green moss.
Who cared enough to mark a life among the many lost?
Hovering over the grave, we tell our own tales about death, the damned and Damien,
until the daylight suddenly disappears behind a dark cloud rolling in off the lake,
silent and mountainous, like a great, grey whale.
All at once, wicked gusts of wind turn the sky to twisting, twirling, whirling leaves.
Turning our backs to its unexpected violence, we race to the car,
laughing and swearing and shivering in our meager layers.
As the last roof latch clicks into place, the sky over us turns black and wild,
shaking the convertible.
I clutch the wheel and smile at my friends.
A seasonal storm… or something more sinister?
Best to ask later.
I turn the key, but nothing happens.
After a moment of startled looks and nervous laughter, I try again.
Not a sound, except the pounding rain and my impassioned pleas.
On the third try, the engine fires up and my shaking hands quickly shift the car into gear.
Phil and Betsy urge me forward a little too loudly.
Just as the cemetery gates appear in the rear view mirror, the violent storm ends,
and the sun, as quickly as it had abandoned the scene, reappears
as we hurry away from Damien’s grave
on this strange, but strangely perfect autumn day.

Within Close Range: The Dance

When the station wagon rolls away from the curbside, dark and swarming with youth, I begin hunting for familiar faces or voices amid the chatter and the laughter. Desperate not to be standing alone among the dimly lit clusters huddling on the church lawn, cowering, I weave toward the bright light of an open door where a line of my peers is slowly filing into the basement for the Friday night dance.

Plenty of familiar faces dot the scene, but not a friendly one in sight. Until there, at the bottom of the crowded stairs, flash the comfortable smiles of good friends, as happy as I am at the sighting.

Into the dim and din of the dance, we move in a small, giggling mass to areas of equal un-interest: the drinks table, the snack counter – then, to the sidelines surrounding the dance floor, where tiny gangs of nervous pre-teens and new teens twitch, taunt and tell tales.

A group of boys laugh and push and swat at each other as they glance across the floor at a particular ring of girls. Finally, the boy with red hair and distractingly long limbs plucks enough courage to cross the floor toward the girl he’d been dared to ask to dance.

But just as he’s making his way across the vast, sparsely populated stretch of beige and green-checkered linoleum, a popular song comes on which springs the crowd – and his targeted partner – into action.

The dance floor erupts with awkward motion.

The moment – and momentum – are lost.

But the darkness emboldens, and as the first slow song starts spinning conquests are won, as the line drawn between the opposite sexes begins to blur.

Now the dare proves not only daring, but profoundly stirring.

Alluring.

One song leads to another, and another, and another.

New couples on the dance floor encourage others across the hot and cramped basement.

And the boundaries blur further.

Are any eyes on us? On me?

Retreating to the easy obscurity of a dark corner, I watch the clock on the wall – and my friends – whose eyes now focus across the room.

Across the divide.

Within Close Range: The Being in Basements

Some are reached by steep, wooden steps,
only at the end of which,
is a switch,
and salvation from the dark;
where cold, cement floors sting bare feet
and we search for cousins playing hide and seek
beneath an old, pine table,
and in cupboards stuffed with moth balls and old lives.

Down other stairs, parents send rapidly sprouting offshoots
(and their weedy accomplices)
to remain mostly out of sight, sound and smell.
New worlds explored in sunless rooms of cinderblock;
where mismatched 13-year-olds kiss, and later tell,
and budding musicians, mid black lights and bong hits,
learn to shake and rattle the house;
while in the dark and in a lawn chair, I learn to hang out.

Some sunken spaces are like snapshots
kept on a shelf in an old shoebox.
Still lives of vinyl bars and swivel stools
and down-turned glasses on dusty shelves, long unused.
Moth-eaten scenes of what might have been.
A gathering place for friends and kin
where woes of the week were drowned deep in cocktails
and lost in card games – or a top twenty song – to which most sang along,
as the stereo spun its new-fangled, stereophonic sound.
Curious but comfortless, being long-deserted and people-less.
Apart from the ghosts in the room.

My favorite sunken places are worn, but happy spaces
in which my favorite female faces
grow leaps and bounds beside me,
unconstrained and nearly unimpeded by upstairs edicts.
Sharing cigarettes, dance moves, inside jokes
and cases of beer bought just over the border;
making evenings fuzzy, and hangovers a new, underworld reality.
Playing pool, the juke box, the fool;
while trying to play it cool
when faced with firsts and friends far more in the know
about nearly everything that happens down below.

Within Close Range: Streets of Saltine

It happens every few months or so.

There’s never any warning… except that it can happen at any time.

All it takes is a gathering – a restless mob brought together by the arrival of bags from the grocers, the disappearance of anything mildly amusing on television, and as the most logical response to the endlessly gray, listless, Midwestern days.

All it requires are two essentials: a box of saltine crackers pulled from the aforementioned grocery bags, and the disappearance of the herd boss to the back forty.

The challenge comes forth – hushed but fierce – with the flash of a sneer, a glint in the eye, a furtive glance to the cupboard, the challenger, then the cupboard once more.

The seasoned contestants: Jim (spurred into battle by a thirst for victory and an appetite for salt) and myself (the middle, misunderstood child), roused to competition by the absence of anything even slightly better to do.

With the doors leading out of the kitchen quietly closed, siblings crowd around the kitchen island, anxious for some mastication action.

The challengers sit facing each other across the well-worn, linoleum countertop the color of vanilla ice cream. With the large, rectangular box of Premium Saltines placed between us, brows knit with steely determination, as eyes focus on the cracker skyscraper growing higher and higher before them.

“Water!” Jim calls to his ever-faithful minion, Mark.

“Wimp!” I prod my already over-stimulated sibling.

“Ready when you are,” he whispers through a half-chewed plastic straw dangling from the corner of his smirk.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I swallow, feeling the moisture completely evaporate from the tip of my tongue to my tonsils.

The objective: to finish the pile of crackers and be the first to whistle.

The rules: no water during the match and the whistle (as judged by spectators) must be crisp and clear.

At the call of “Go!”, the briny bout begins; hands greedily grabbing cracker after cracker, shoving them into already crammed mouths. Crumb fragments fly across countertops and cupboards, striking innocent bystanders who instantly retreat to all corners of the red brick, kitchen floor.

Teeth are gnashing.

Siblings laughing.

Opponents are trying not to choke, or chuckle.The cardinal rule of the cracker eating contest: He who laughs least has the last laugh.

Sadly, this is my Achille’s heel. Watching my brother spew saltines always brings me to trouble-breathing-can’t-swallow-verge-of-choking-hysterics, rendering me hopeless.

Expelling a final barrage of crumbs, Jim spits forth the first whistle, followed closely by a victory lap around the kitchen, passing the defeated and the disgusted. Arms raised victoriously, he waves to the imaginary crowds and makes cheering noises.

A pain in the ass in victory, and a danger in defeat.

There have been times when I spewed forth the earliest whistle, winning the coveted prize of immunity from all post-competition clean-up, but, for me, the fun has always been in the unfettered indulgence of doing something utterly pointless.

Within Close Range: Stanley

Having had enough of Florida’s winter fun and sun for the. day, I’m sitting in front of the television in Nonnie and Papa’s 18th story living room, when the doorbell rings. Papa’s back at his store in Chicago and Nonnie’s in the kitchen making lunch, so I shuffle across the plush wall to wall, to the large double-doors.

And there, on the other side, stands a tall, slender figure with short, blonde hair and frosted highlights; impeccably dressed in a pastel pink shirt, a flowered, silk kerchief, and crisp, white linen pants.

The stranger asks if Lenore is in.

I turn toward the kitchen and holler, “Nonnie, there’s some lady here to see you!”, before scrambling back to the television.

It’s the first time I’ve met Stanley, Nonnie’s friend (and hairdresser), who also happens to live in the same building with his boyfriend, Roger. I would have felt embarrassed after learning of my gender mistake, but according to Nonnie, he was never more complimented.

Not only is Stanley Nonnie’s most colorful and lively Florida companion – by far – but he can make her giggle more than anyone (besides my great aunts) I’ve ever seen. Even more intriguing is that Nonnie astonishingly and unreservedly gives Stanley center stage. (It’s hard not to.)

In return for stepping back from the preferred spotlight, Stanley showers Nonnie with adulation for her fashion sense, culinary skills, and interior design flare.

It’s a match made in heaven. (Even though Nonnie has to whisper a lot when it comes to talking about her new friend.)

At Stanley’s invitation, we visit their little slice of beach-side paradise two floors up.

It has the same exact layout as Nonnie and Papa’s, in reverse. But that isn’t what disorients me.

It’s the feeling that I’ve just entered another dimension where Nonnie’s alter ego is given free rein. Where, with unimpaired power, her better dressed Doppelgänger has adorned every nook and cranny, every floor and piece of furniture, with textile and tactile expanses of purple.

With chintz and animal prints.

Golden cupids and satin pillows.

Velvet love-seats and silk bed sheets.

And endless yards of draped chiffon.

Where opulent silk flower arrangements sits on every gilded credenza and a colorful porcelain dog, cat, or bird resides around every corner.

As Stanley sweeps from room to room with measured grace and exaggerated ease, Roger – a dark, quiet man (who left a wife and kids, and a lie behind) – stands in the background, smiling contentedly. Proud of his plush and private paradise, where he and Stanley are completely free.

Even though, to me, Stanley seems as free as he can be; floating ahead of us into the newly wall-papered kitchen.

Stepping in behind Nonnie, I first think the effect of the sun streaking through the large bay window overlooking the Atlantic is playing tricks on my eyes, until I realize the walls are choked with make-believe flowers of reds and yellows, oranges, pinks and whites, splattered against a dark purple backdrop – as if the Spring, or perhaps the Easter Bunny, had exploded.

It’s absolutely glorious.

And so is Stanley.

Within Close Range: Sixteen Steps in Three Parts

Part One:

At the end of the front hall is a door leading to steps – sixteen in all – winding one-eighty to the upstairs hall; a four-paneled portal to the children’s domain, keeping first floor parents separate.

And sane.

It’s also vital for a game we play, set into motion by two things:  a large box arriving, and Mom and Dad leaving.

As soon as headlights disappear down the driveway, we begin grabbing every cushion and pillow from every sofa, chair and bedroom; and meeting at the top of the winding staircase, toss one after another over the railing until we’ve created a tottering stack of softness, penned in by the aforementioned door.

Flanked by wild smiles at the top of the stairs, Mark, in a Magic Marker race car (we secretly souped up earlier), is pushed down the steep, carpet-less track. But the dreaded hairpin turn half-way down, quickly ends the Cardboard Box Jockey’s run, just inches from where the ocean of cushions begins.

When the race car gets totaled and tossed aside, there’s still the pile of pillows.

We all agree.

Mark’ll jump first.

To make sure it’s safe.

And when he climbs from the pile unscathed, we each take turns taking the plunge, until failing to recognize Jim’s bored, half-crazed eyes, things take a turn and Mark suddenly finds himself dangling over the railing, as a Swanson’s T.V. Dinner threatens to reappear through fearless, but foolish, upside-down taunts.

Inverted arms defiantly crossed.

Jim slightly loosens his grip around the youngest’s ankles, and smiles like the devil.

But we know he’ll never let go… not intentionally.

Not specifically intentionally.

Part Two:

Changing Malibu Barbie’s outfit for her big date with Ken, I hear Jim making his way along the hallway, moving toward the curving, front staircase next to my bedroom.

As he passes the door and starts down the stairs, I’m suddenly, impulsively, spurred to action. (My future line of defense: Lack of Premeditation.)

Quietly reaching around the corner to the light switch at the top of the staircase, I-

Click.

Thump-bump-bump-HUMPF-thump-bam-thud.

Down Jim goes like an angry sack of potatoes.

“GOD DAMN IT! Who turned off the lights?!”

Tittering nervously, I creep away in the dark, feeling both revenged after years of big brother torment, and remorseful for my utter lack of foresight.

My ad-libbed evildoing results in a broken, big toe. And Jim’s thirst for my blood.

Damn my telltale tittering.

History soon has the gall to repeat itself when a few days later, there in my room – with no thoughts of wrongdoing, whatsoever – I hear familiar footsteps (now favoring one foot) heading down those cursed stairs.

Then something wicked this way come.

I tip-toe to the door, again, and quietly reach for the switch.

Click.
Thump…thump-thump-thump-bump-BAM-thud!

“ANNE! I’m going to kill you!”

With no parents home for refuge, I run for my life. Ducking and covering. Trying to avoid any siblings who might give me away. Which means ALL of them.

Finally hiding in the dark of the sauna, desperate for the familiar footsteps of a returning adult, I can hear Jim hobble and rage, screaming my name and vowing retaliation.

“I’ll plead temporary insanity.”

But un-consoling are the cedar walls surrounding me.

Guessing the worst is over (or a parent has returned) when the house goes quiet, I open the door to the outside world.

“Even if he’s still mad,” I reason aloud and unconvincingly, “he’ll never catch me with a broken toe.”

“Two broken toes!” growls a voice from behind the door.

Part Three:

With my bedroom right next door.

I know the comings and goings of all stairwell travelers.

I hear when Chris is breaking curfew

and Jim is looking for trouble;

when Mia is sleepwalking,

and Mark is shuffling downstairs for comfort.

From the bottom step, Mom’s “Sweet dreams”

gently rise into our bedrooms and into our dreams;

while Dad’s call for Inspection

bursts up the stairwell and down the hall,

like an air raid siren,

sending bodies scattering in all directions.

I listen for Mom and Dad’s footsteps below.

For Dad to toss his keys into the pewter bowl.

I listen for the sound of the staircase door opening.

Pleased to hear Mom’s high-heeled footsteps

slowly ascending the winding staircase,

to give good night kisses all the way down the hall.

Within Close Range: Runaway Days

My appointment card for our dentist, Dr. Van Hoozen showed up, which means getting to visit a really sweet man – who not only cares for people’s teeth, but the entire village of Hebron, Illinois, acting (at some point or another) as their president, fire chief and police chief.

However, it’s what takes place after the appointment that I’m most excited about: spending the day – alone – with Mom, wandering in and out of the small, rural towns at the northernmost tip of Illinois.

Mom always sees doctors’ appointments as day-long affairs away from household chores, homework givers, and other family members.

And I go along gleefully.

Quietly.

Watching her.

As she takes any turn she wants. Without a care as to where it will lead.

And there, between fields of crops, we discover chocolate shops, donuts stands, and greasy spoons, where lingering over plastic-coated menus, we truants smile at each other; then wander the narrow streets of farming towns, past century-old storefronts. Pausing, here and there, at the buildings needing care.

Checking to see that I’m trailing, Mom swiftly strides from one shop to the next, until disappearing through a large door of wood and glass.

And I give chase.

Soon blissfully lost amid rooms piled high with dusty shelves and dilapidated boxes, stacks of tables and towers of chairs – and books, filled with history and mystery and beauty.

Overwhelming my curiosity.

Here, she buys me an antique, tear-shaped compact of brass and rusty brown leather. Still inside, is its powder and flattened pink puff; under which I discover a tiny, brass hatch and remnants of bright, pink rouge.

Every now and then, as we meander home, I open my tear-shaped treasure to look at my reflection through its stained and smudged, tear-shaped mirror and wonder how many more reflections it has seen…

And what those faces might have been?

None happier than mine.

Spending the day running away with Mom.

Within Close Range: Rocky

You came to Dad as a hired thug,
but found a mentor and friend instead.
And a family who adopted you like so many strays –
the scarred, the scared, the castaways.
Giving you shelter and a place at our table,
away from the streets, the violence and struggle.
Into our home and into our hearts,
like each lovable loser, you’re family now.
Showing duty and reverence to Mom and Dad,
you become a different creature with just us kids;
when you shadow box and dance in an imaginary ring,
reciting poems of your strength, your knock-outs, your wins.
Filling our minds with fact and fiction,
which is which hardly matters when told with conviction.
We hang on every word from your kind, but battered face
and marvel when you flex your “guns” and chew on broken glass.
Your prized possession is a gold championship belt –
that you sometimes like to wear when doing work.
Yet something tells me you’d give the belt away
if you could simply sit and draw all day.
Freeing your imagination and your wonderful art;
which colors the brutal truth of your life
and what you did for the sake of the dollar,
for food for your dog and bread for the table.
With a smile ear to ear and a clue in your eyes,
I sense your words are mostly lies
to camouflage the things you’ve seen,
the things you’ve done.
Thrust into this world misaligned and alone.
Third grade over and you were gone.
Fighting to survive, then fighting on demand.
Forced to do that with your gentle heart and creative hands.
While the real you, the sweet, curious and tender you,
would prefer to make art of comfort and meaning.
A good reason for being.
In your white t-shirt and rolled-up jeans
above ankle-high army boots and a head shaved clean.
you lean on a rake, on a break from your chores,
spinning glorious tales to the curious, young horde.

Within Close Range: Racing the Dark

Mia has a complex relationship with the Night. She’s a creature of it – active and creative – and stays awake well into it (later than most in the house), yet also seems determined to shun it with the use of every light available.

And when Night finally acquiesces to Sleep, it does so half-heartedly with Mia, often leaving her restless and wandering between this world and slumber’s.

Rare is the night she goes to bed before me, so lying quietly in our shared bedroom, I’ve listened and become well acquainted with her almost nightly routine.

With the rest of the house long dark and quiet, it begins.

CLICK.

On go the back staircase lights, and then, footsteps – Mia’s – coming up the old, wooden staircase. Her movement, quick and skittish. Around the corner she scurries, to the main hall and –

CLICK.

Her target, two doors down, is illuminated.

Muffled by a thick, carpet runner, I know Mia reaches our door only when she flicks the switch, re-illuminating our brightly patterned wallpaper of orange, green and yellow flowers.

After making as much noise as possible (slamming drawers and sliding closet doors, testing her alarm clock, etc.) does she slip beneath her covers, leaving every light on her path from family room to bedroom, burning bright.

Just as dependable as this, is the dialogue which follows.

“Mia, turn off the lights.”

“You turn them off.”

“You were the last one in bed! AND YOU were the one who turned them on in the first place!”

“So?”

“So? So, it’s only fair that you turn them off.”

“No.”

“Dang it, Mia, you know I can’t sleep with the lights on!”

Well-stashed below her covers, “Too bad,” comes her muffled reply. “I can sleep just fine with them on.”

I always claim I’ll do the same, but in less than a minute, with the lights searing wholes through my eyelids, I climb from bed and shuffle just outside our door.

CLICK. CLICK.

Off the hall and staircase lights go.

CLICK.

Off our bedroom lights go.

“Brat,” I call through the dark, as I feel my way back to my bed at the other end of the room.

It’s gone on like this for years.

But now Chris is off to college and Mia’s been given her own room, and I can’t wait. Not only because I’m anxious to have my independence, but even more, I’m anxious to see how Mia will handle hers.

However, she keeps delaying the move, bringing her things into her new bedroom next door one article at a time – over days, which is now turning into weeks. I offer to help. She gets offended and disappears. Mom finally has to intervene.

Begrudgingly, Mia throws the last of her belongings into the heap already in the center of her new bedroom and, tonight, faces sleeping on her own for the first time in her life.

I lay in my darkened room and wait for the familiar sounds of Mia making her way upstairs, speculating over and over again how she’ll handle the lights with no one in the next bed to do it for her. Will she leave them on all night? Doubtful. Dad has a sixth sense about these things and will be demanding “Lights out!” before long. Will she have the gall to call through the walls for me to do it?

She wouldn’t dare….or would she?…

CLICK.

On go the back staircase lights. Creak, go the steps.

CLICK.

On go the hallway lights.

CLICK.

On go Mia’s bedroom lights.

I listen carefully. Tracking her footsteps. Picturing her every move. Anticipating her thoughts.

CLICK. CLICK.

Off goes the stair and hall lights from below, as Mom calls “Sweet dreams.” and Dad warns “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Minutes later, there’s only one light left on in the entire house.

“Come on, Mia,” I whisper into my pillow. “How’s it gonna be?”

Then it happens.

CLICK.

Off goes the light.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter—grumpf-creakity-creak-creak-cree.

And that’s the way it will be from this day forward. Night after night.

It’s a sound that never fails to bring a smile to my face.

CLICK.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter—grumpf-creakity-creak-creak-cree.

Mia running from light switch to bed. Fleeing the unknowns of the night.

Racing the dark.

Within Close Range: Strange Bedfellows

I once woke to find Mia tucked snugly beside me in my twin bed, with most of the covers and most of the space. When I tapped her on the shoulder to point this out, she rolled over (our noses nearly touching), blinked, and groaned, “Anne, what are you doing here?”

“You’re in MY room.”

Looking around briefly, she rolled over again (taking the remainder of the covers with her) and, giving me a swift backward kick, sent me to the floor; where I lay, bewildered, but slightly in awe of her sleep-walking pluck.

We never really know when or what to expect from Mia’s nocturnal wanderings.

And so, returning home late one night, noticing that the light is still on in the den…

“Crap,” I mumble into the open fridge, that must mean Dad’s waiting up.

I begin to formulate one-word responses to his inevitable interrogation. With munchies in hand and alibis at the tip of my tongue, I open the door to the den, only to find Mia on the pumpkin orange sofa, sitting up and staring at the paneled wall ahead.

“Hey.”

No reply.

“Meem, it’s late. Coming up to bed?”

Nothing. Not even a blink. So, I shrug and turn for the stairs.

“Where’s my friend?” I hear from behind.

Turning back around, I ask, ”What friend?”

“My FRIEND!” she replies sharply.

“What friend, Mia? I don’t who you’re talking about.”

“My FRIEND!” she repeats for the third time.

“Look, maybe if I knew what friend you’re talking ab-“

“Shut up, Anne.”

“All-righty, then,” I say as I head toward the stairs and bed.

Passing the boy’s room, I notice that the television is blaring and Mark is still lying on the sofa, face down, with a cat on his shirtless back and a dog at his feet. I turn the T.V. off and gently tap him on the shoulder.

“Kid, you should head to bed,” I whisper, and then start for my own.

Mark raises his head suddenly and calls out, “Anne-Anne-Anne… Would-you, would-you, would-you…open-the-open-the-open-the-open-the-“

Then nothing. He simply collapses back onto his belly and into his dreams.

“Open the WHAT?” I scream from the inside, fearing that if I turn around I’ll likely see Rod Serling, cigarette in hand, furrowing his thick, dark eyebrows as he begins to explain the strange tale of the my sudden plunge into madness.

“I’m way too stoned,” I mumble as I head to the comfort of my room.

Before I get there, however, I notice the lights on in Mia’s bedroom and feel compelled to investigate.

Damn you, Rod Serling.

I find Mia sitting on her bed, doused in light, with a drawing pad in her lap and a peculiar look on her face.

But what I find even more disconcerting is how quickly and stealthily she made her way from the den to her bedroom – up the creaky stairs and down the equally creaky hallway, just feet from where I was in the boys’ room – without my noticing.

I glance up to the mirror above Mia’s desk, where I find instant comfort in seeing both our reflections, and enough cool to ask Mia about her missing friend.

She looks up, but says nothing.

“Your friend,” I’m tortured to press. “The one you were looking for earlier?”

She scrunches her face and tilts her head, slightly.

“Where’s my pink purse?” are the next words out of Mia’s mouth.

I don’t know how to respond. We just glare at one another.

“What?!”

“My pink purse!” she repeats unhappily.

“Okay… now you’re looking for a friend whose name you don’t know AND a purse that’s pink… Am I getting this right?”

“Shut up, Anne.” is all she has to say. And all I can take for one night.

The following morning, both Mia and Mark deny any knowledge of the previous night’s events.

But we know the truth, don’t we, Rod?

Within Close Range: Midnight Swim

The house is quiet.
All are sleeping.
I strip down to nothing
and dive into the dark of the deep-end,
where unabashed, unheard and unseen,
I howl.
For as long as my breath will hold.
Unleashing my teenage discontent and crippling self-doubt.
I howl out the sadness.
I howl out the funk.
I howl until it hurts.
Then I float.
Facing the night sky
and the barely discernible stars
with my rather dysfunctional eyes.
There’s peace in the blur and the sound of my breath
and the occasional call of a neighboring owl
hidden somewhere in the silhouettes
of the tall trees surrounding me.
Shivering, I climb from the water
and into my bed.
The smell of chlorine drifting me into watery dreams.

Within Close Range: The Backyard Ogre

Seeing Dad unreel the hose and stretch it out across the yard from my bedroom window, I throw on my still damp swimsuit crumpled up in the corner and race down the upstairs hall, broadcasting the new development as I pass each bedroom door.

All five of us are soon suited up and scattered along the edges of the backyard lawn, freshly mown and striped like a big, green flag.

Bound by woodlands, lake and home, the Backyard Ogre’s grassy realm is small, but lush and coveted. And crossing it, irresistible.

Standing in the center of his sodded sovereignty, wielding his long, green, garden weapon, the ogre goes about the business of tending his land; well aware of the surrounding interlopers hiding behind large oaks, lawn furniture, and each other.

Taunting him to take aim, we leap and dance and cartwheel across the well-loved lawn, attacking en masse from the front and sneaking up, one by one, from behind. But the Backyard Ogre’s lengthy weapon, and cunning, and speed, make him fearless and formidable.

All are quickly drenched, but delighted by the cool of the spray in the hot summer sun, and by Dad’s massive grin and momentary focus.

Wearing shoes of fresh cut grass, we follow the Ogre, when he deems the backyard fun is over, and heads to the cool of the pool.

Diving in, always slightly aslant, Dad finds his first target, who, giggling and excited, braces themselves for the certain lift that will come from below and hoist them high with his powerful arms, for a glorious, airborne instant before the splash.

Each of us impatiently waiting our turn, of which there are never enough, before the ogre’s off… usually to golf… while we stay behind, water-logged and pruny, but confident the Ogre will soon be back to tend to his kingdom again.

Within Close Range: Laps

I look into Mia’s bloodshot eyes for the challenge.
And off we go.
Stroke for stroke. 
Lap after lap.
Ten, twenty, thirty.
Keeping an even pace.
No sign of the other’s weakness.
Forty, fifty, sixty. 
Tiring, but single-minded.
Who’ll be first to surrender?
Seventy, eighty, ninety.
I can hear, in my non-submerged ear, Mom calling.
But grumbling stomachs and dinner be damned.
Closing in on a hundred laps, Mom calls out again.
“Okay,” Mia gasps, “let’s stop at a hundred and four.”
Rejecting her offer, I push off once more.
And she follows.
Hundred and four. Hundred and five. Hundred and six.
Mark’s now standing poolside.
Tiny hands on tiny hips.
Dinner is getting cold and Dad is getting mad.
I call an immediate draw.
My opponent responds with a nod.
I climb out, expecting her to follow.
Instead, Mia slowly sinks back in the water.
And with an enormous grin,
pushes off the shallow end
for her victory lap.

Within Close Range: Spring

When wildflowers peek

through the damp, leafy, forest floor,

windows are flung wide open

welcoming in the cool, lake breezes

and the strong, long-awaited smells of spring

in the land’s reawakening.

The thawing corral is heavy

with sweet-smelling muck

flung here and there

by high-spirited ponies.

Impatient to walk barefoot

across the newly sprung lawn

still emerging from the cold ground,

I make tracks across the yard

to the edge of the bluff and back,

coating my toes in mud and early grass.

Spreading spring throughout the house.

Within Close Range: Spring Break

My siblings and I burst onto the season like the first, rowdy chorus of Spring Peepers rising from the woodlands and wetlands, from the new growth and leafy debris. Noisily ascending. Anxious and energized after many dormant days, we find instant succor in the newness, in the re-gathering community; bolstered by the constant influx of free-wheeling teens.

Arriving at the house with a brand new,1978 Chevy pick-up truck filled with boys bent on seeing “what this baby can do” Jim quickly talks his best friend, Phil, into letting him behind the wheel. Caught up in the excitement, Chris and I follow, piling into the truck bed with the others and heading to the one place where its off-road ability can be properly tested, the golf course.

Of course.

Entering on the service road, Jim’s exaggerated twists and turns along the winding, gravel road quickly bore him, so veering from the narrow lane, we’re soon bouncing along the edge of the fairways, heading toward the woods and the short, very steep, ravine hills.

Failing to do the science of what might happen when rear tires meet level ground from a near forty-five degree incline is Jim’s biggest mistake that day. As soon as he starts down one of the small, steep hills, we helpless, hapless, truck bed accomplices sense things aren’t going to end well.

They don’t.

As the rear tires hit the ground from practically perpendicular, the truck bounces – hard – sending all bodies in back aloft.

Arms and legs flail.

Looks of surprise, morph into alarm.

Trying to break the fall, my right hand contacts the metal truck bed first, followed painfully by all other parts. When the pick-up finally comes to a standstill, everyone begins righting themselves, rubbing their bruises, and screaming at Jim.

Everyone except me.

I’m looking down at my arm… and my hand… which is no longer at the end of my wrist where I normally find it.

While the others continue to berate the driver, I cradle my arm and speak.

“You guys. I think my wrist is broken.”

No response. So, I say it a little louder and with a lot more conviction.

“You guys, my wrist is broken.”

Still unnoticed amid the verbal thrashing Jim’s receiving, I finally scream as loud as I can, ”YOU GUYS, MY WRIST IS BROKEN!”

All goes quiet and everyone turns my way.

“Anne’s wrist is broken,” Chris suddenly screams, “and she’s bleeding all over the place!”

I’m not.

Jim and Phil leap from the front cab to find those in the back surrounding me, shuddering and exhaling, “Whoa!” and “Holy crap!”

It seems that on impact, the bones attaching my arm to my hand snapped cleanly in two, and my hand – now detached beneath unbroken skin – has been forced from its usual place and lay awkwardly on top of my wrist, like a slab of raw meat in a rubber, flesh-toned glove.

Finding any movement enough to inspire hysteria, no one’s able to convince me to relocate to the cushioned front seat of the pick-up, so a couple of the boys closely flank me as I sit cross-legged, still cradling my unrecognizable arm.

As Jim very slowly and very gently steers a course for home, I try to concentrate on something else – the leaves still unfolding overhead, the gentle, spring sun. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. Then another. Immersing, ever briefly, in the wonderful smell of new grass.

And teen boys.

Pulling up to the garage just as Mom happens to be walking by, Chris jumps from the truck and with the subtlety of a crow in a cornfield blurts out, “Anne broke her wrist!”

(So much for Jim easing her into the bad news, as agreed upon moments prior.)

“Oo-oo-oo!” Mom says, jumping in place, and then into action, as only a mother of five can.

Gingerly lifted from the back of the pick-up and placed into the car, I turn to see my off-roading co-horts all sheepishly waving and smiling, except Jim, who’s having a hard time looking at me and looks miserable.

Which makes me feel slightly better.

At the emergency entrance, Mom tries to get me out of the car and to my feet, but I won’t – I can’t – for fear the slightest movement will make the pain unbearable, or even worse, that I’ll lose hold of my arm and have to witness my detached hand dangle.

Approaching the car, a handsome stranger, with a sweet voice and a smile to match, asks Mom if he can help, and before I have a chance to refuse, he lifts me from the car with an effortless swoop and carries me inside, where he gently sets me in a wheelchair, smiles, and disappears.

“That’s Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears,” the nurse smiles, but I know exactly who it is.

Welcomed back again to the emergency room (puberty has not been kind), I’m x-rayed by a sadist, drugged, yanked, drugged again, and eventually yanked back into place by the two attending doctors – the process of which finally becomes too much for Mom, who’s led from the room in a faint.

“I feel jush-fiiiiiiine,” I giggle, all tucked in my bed back at home, as I casually wave the heavy, plaster, arm-length cast (the first of two I’ll be toting for the entire, interminably itchy, sidelined summer), not bothering to notice Mom and Jim’s faces alluding to the pain and discomfort that’s sure to follow once the double dose of painkiller wears off.

“Itsh-okay, Jim,” I slobber with a smile, oblivious to the drool trickling from the side of my mouth, “I’m not mad at you anymore.”

How could I be? Wracked with guilt about badly disfiguring me, he straightened my room, folded down my bed, and picked flowers for my bedside.

Unfortunately, like the pain meds, Jim’s sympathies and “too-injured-to-tease” policy won’t last through the night.

Within Close Range: Mutton Stew

I’m in the middle of the pine-paneled restaurant at Boyne Mountain Resort (somewhere at the top of Michigan’s mitt), sitting in a large, carved pine chair – twice as large as it needs to be. 

Looking around the big, round table, there are siblings to the left and siblings to the right, with Mom and Dad straight ahead; and everyone capable of reading the menu, is. Scanning mine for a third time, my eyes keep returning to the word “stew”, which conjures a mouthwatering picture in my head – big, chunks of tender meat in a rich, dark gravy.

“How different could mutton be from beef?” a voice in my head insists – repeatedly – drowning out all inner arguments and already placed orders.

It’s my turn.

“I’ll have the Mutton Stew, please.”

The waitress looks up from her pad, hesitates, and then looks to Mom and Dad.

“Oh, Annie, you won’t like that,” Mom gently suggests. “It has a very strong flavor.”

But I protest.

“Anne Elizabeth.”

“Please, Dad,” I plead, revving the perpetually high-powered motor that drives most eight-year-olds.

Mom urges, once more, to reconsider, but I remain unflappable. The lady is waiting and “The Troops” are hungry and restless. Dad raises his eyebrows, then nods to the waitress.

“All right then, Mutton Stew for the young lady.”

Triumphant, I can already taste the dark, rich gravy. Minutes seem like hours. The baskets of crackers and breadsticks and the pats of butter on small mountains of ice in the center of the big, round, constantly spinning, Lazy Susan are rapidly disappearing.

Beyond the large, glass windows overlooking the resort’s ski hills, the slopes are ablaze and white and dotted with skiers still eager to slip and slide down the gentle, rolling, Midwestern hills. It’s a wonderful sight, but the hungry voice in my head has recently enlisted my stomach, now rumbling, low and loud. Until the waitress returns with her overburdened tray, all I can think about is stew.

Burgers and fries pass by my eyes. Mom has soup and Dad’s given pasta. It takes two hands to carry the large, shallow bowl heading my way. I’m so excited, I can hardly keep still in my seat. My eyes eagerly follow the large, round bowl to the place setting in front of me and I look down to see…

… a sea of grayish-brownish goo; its foul smell already invading my nostrils.

Pungent.

Powerful.

Horrible.

My hunger instantly retreats, but all eyes at the table are on me. Even the waitress is loitering nearby, which means I can’t possibly back down before the first bite and so, with reluctance, I grab the smallest spoon and in it goes.

Releasing more stink from the bowl of brown-gray gloom.

I scoop up a small, dark morsel; highly doubtful about this dubious-scented mouthful.

It’s instant repulsion. Unbridled revulsion. A funky chunk of grisly meat that my tongue and teeth want to reject and my throat wants to eject into the clean, white napkin in my lap. But it’s swallow it, or my pride. 

The mutton punishes me all the way down.

Without a word, Mom and Dad turn their attention to their own plates. All follow.

While I’m left alone to stew.

Within Close Range: Family Vacation in Ten Small Helpings

In the early 1970s, Mom and Dad take us on a Christmas ski holiday to Park City, Utah.

 Airplanes

Seven eager faces.

Shiny new snow suits. 

Plane bound for Utah.

Minor complications.

 Airplane sickness.

Brothers’ twitchiness.

Three hour restlessness.

Homicidal stewardess.

Snow Bound?

Five anxious, young passengers 

press noses against windows 

as we climb the mountain in the rental sedan.

Looking for that wonderful white fluff. 

But all we see is brown and green stuff.

Dad keeps saying, “Just give it time.

The more snow you’ll see, the higher we climb.”

We have little reason to doubt him. 

Bloody Mess

Quietly miserable, swabbing her bruised, stitched and swollen gums, and wanting no part of the fight over first-night bedroom rights, Chris waits for things to settle, then drags a blanket, grabs a pillow, and collapses in tears on the sofa til morning.

Raising myself from a battle lost and the living room floor, I’m at the ready with my couch-envy unpleasantries as soon as I open my eyes. But my intentions are met by Chris’s very pale face pressed against her blood-soaked pillow and all that comes out is “MOOOOOOOOOOOOM!”

Arriving at the grisly scene, Mom keeps repeating the same strange thing:  “She’s hemorrhaging!” she screams, hopping in place, “She’s hemorrhaging!” But Chris insists she’s doing okay – with trembling words, blood-encrusted lips, and a heartbreaking smile – better everyday.

Insensitive commentary and contorting faces are nudged toward the kitchen, before she has a chance to think differently upon seeing her reflection.

10-point Dismount

“Ka-tonk, ka-tonk” echo the steps of our rigid boots off the neighboring condominiums and mountainside. Though the surrounding snow looks old and icy, the skies are cloudy and promising and our spirits are high. Even Chris (who barely has enough blood to raise color in her cheeks) manages to perk up. 

She and I board the first ski lift together, admiring the birds’ eye view of our alpine surroundings, paying little mind to the conditions below until we reach the top of the run, where we see attendants shoveling meager remnants of old snow onto the chairlift landing. 

Clearly groggy from blood loss, Chris readies herself by putting her hand firmly on my left leg, then pushing off my thigh, shakily slides forward at the designated mark, leaving me involuntarily planted in the seat and quickly heading toward the 180 degree turn that will take me back down the mountain. With lightning reaction, one of the attendants yanks my arm and whisks me off the chair and onto the ramp they’ve been trying to repack with snow. 

“Scraaaaaaaaaap-p-pe,” go my brand-new skis over the exposed gravel, and down I go, into a pile of hard, dirty, grey ice. 

Lifted from the ground by the fellow who launched me there, humiliated and bruised, I grimace and sidestep over to Chris, who smiles weakly, revealing her black and blue gums and blood-stained teeth.

“Sorry.” 

I want to kill her, but her oral surgeon seems to be doing the job for me.

Albeit very… very… slowly. 

Oh Christmas Tree

Snow-barren slopes concede to an afternoon of hot crepes, holiday displays, a Scotch Pine and rekindled spirits. 

But the yuletide log is soon doused by the grunts and frustrated grumblings

of father and eldest son unsuccessfully attempting to level and stand a 10 foot pine without the aid of a saw – or a tree stand. 

Trying bowls and buckets, waste baskets and garbage bins, tempers are fraying.

Shying away from the ill-fated scene, Mark heads to the television. Click – OUR PRICES ARE INSANE!! – Click – and the lord said unto Mos – Click – BLAH – click – RAH – click – click – click –

“LEAVE IT!”, Dad ROARs. (Had there been any snow on the mountain, we’d likely have just been buried by it.)

This startles Jim, who lets go of the tree, which crashes to the ground, mere inches from Dad, who suddenly decides to take a long, walk, where he’ll cool off, giving Mom time to devise a tree-standing plan, leaning but triumphant.

Out of Order

We all stare wildly at the television, newly kaput. 

Jim and Dad fiddle futilely with its back.

Mom turns on the radio hoping to lighten the mood.

But the only thing she can find is static. 

No music.

No television.

No snow. 

No skiing.  

No reason to go on, really. 

If Walls Could Talk

“Eeeek!!,” comes a scream from the downstairs bathroom. 

With absolutely nothing else to occupy the hours, everyone runs to where Mia is standing, wrapped in a towel, dripping with soap. 

“Who’s using the hot water?” she cries out, shampoo stinging her eyes. 

But all who can be blamed stand before her. 

“Mom, are you running the dishwasher?” 

“I would be IF it was working!” she snaps, finally showing signs of strain. 

With the news of no hot water for days, the cursed family lets out a collective sigh – as if the condo sprung a leak.

Which, at this point, seems entirely possible. 

From Here On Out

After three hours in the car, searching unsuccessfully for snowier resorts, the mood has dipped so low it’s nearly impossible to think of what else could go wrong.

It isn’t long before we have the answer.

Pulling up to the condo, the rental car begins to sputter and choke, and then… it dies. 

We remain still and silent in the back seat, exchanging frightened side glances, waiting for the explosion. 

Dad and Mom sit staring straight ahead through the frosty front windshield.

Neither moving. 

Or speaking.

Then, as if a sweet, tropical breeze blew in through the now dormant air vents, they turn to one another… and start laughing.

Loud. 

And hard. 

Causing a chain reaction.

Drop Kick to Victory

At the suggestion of Charades, family members begin frantically looking for ways out – fiddling with the dead TV and staticky radio, pretending to read, or to die, suddenly. 

And even though total indifference finally sits itself down for the game, it isn’t long before everyone – including Dad (who rarely participates in such things) is wise-cracking and happily taking their turn. 

Teammates are syncing like well-oiled, mind-reading machines. Pantomimes are performed with dexterity and artistry. Guesses are made with certainty.

I’m up. My clue: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” 

I begin by acting out the hand-cranked camera. 

“Movie!”, my partner, Mia, calls out. 

I tip one finger to my nose, then swiftly thrust forward a number of fingers.

“Six words!” she fires in succession.

I tap my nose and squeal with delight. My brain is reeling. 

Catching a glimpse of Dad out of the corner of my eye, his infamous intolerance and abhorrence for the family cats suddenly flashes before me. 

Meeting Mia’s eyes, I drop kick an invisible object, then point to Dad. 

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!” she screams, leaping from her seat to join me in a victory jig around the living room. 

Stunned by the veiled clue and breakneck victory, everyone is laughing. 

Everyone but Dad. He just looks confused.  

As One

Snowless.

TV-less.

Auto-less. 

No hot water or dishwasher.

No music or phone.

No one restless for change.

Just contented days together

in a world we,shape and shift 

with our individuality,

our familiarity,

our imaginations.

Within Close Range: Ms. O’Hara

She strides down the halls of Lake Bluff Junior High, with her shoulder length, ginger hair parting seventh and eight graders like the Red Sea. Always looking as if she’s ready to mount a spirited steed, wearing brown and beige tweed, and a steely, determined expression.

She tries to fill young minds with old tales of the rise and fall of nations and heroes, cultures and convictions; and her classroom walls, laden with maps and relics, attest to all she has invested in the cause.

Rarely standing still, the fiery, young teacher has a fiery will to make her students listen; marching up and down the crowded aisles, often wielding a rather persuasive attention-getting device, which comes down with a “CRACK!” on desktops of students attempting to nap.

NOT in Ms. O’Hara’s Social Studies class.

As she canters through the halls with her tousled, red hair, Ms. O’Hara seems fearless and confident and cool, loath to play any part the fool. No one dares question how tough she can be. But I can see.

I can see in those eyes often wild with frustration, an impish will and inclination, lurking in the quiet shadows of a stern reputation. And once in a while, a small, smirking smile, which she’s been hiding all the while, will arise; first in those eyes, then form upon her lips – hands on hips – and eventually she’ll soften, dissolving my inhibition to hang nearby and feed on her powerful presence.

Made even more formidable in her red, Camero convertible.

She likes to rev its engine and make the boys grin, revealing the mischievous side within. Then hitting the gas when all signs of the school are past, she vanishes amid the village trees, in her brown and beige tweeds.

Into the reds and yellows and browns of autumn, and into my earliest images of a strong, modern woman.

Within Close Range: Mr. Hastings

I don’t like science.

But I like Mr. Hastings, my 8th grade science teacher.

A tall, unlikely comrade with his horn-rimmed glasses, bow tie, and barely there, gray hair; with his starched, white, short-sleeved shirt – which never varies – but for the cardigan he wears when a chill is in the air.

Schooling restless, new teens hovering absent-mindedly over Bunsen burners and long braids, sharp scalpels, squeamish lab partners, and former frogs, must have its days.

Especially with the likes of me, barely squeaking out an apathetic C.

Yet Mr. Hastings rarely raises his voice. Rocking the cinder block walls with his frustration only once. Maybe twice.

Still I keep myself invisible behind students and books and beakers. Slipping in and out of class. Answering questions only when asked. Until I see some things on the science teacher’s desk.

Sitting on an old newspaper, near little, brown bottles, some brushes, and neatly folded rags, sit several pieces of small-scale dollhouse furniture, which somehow this giant-of-a-man created with his two giant hands, and a crippled right arm due to Polio.

Even though my female peers are now more interested in boys than theirs, there is little else that I adore more than my dollhouse.

Earned, gifted, and more than occasionally lifted from my Dad’s loose change I amass what cash I can to fill my two bedroom, one bath, pale yellow Colonial, with its newly shingled roof of hand-cut, balsa wood. (Jim’s community service for repeated dollhouse abuses.)

I inch my way closer to the old newspaper, longing to get a closer look at the tiny treasures which I normally have to view behind a locked, glass, display cabinet, guarded by a grumpy, old man, mistrustful of all youth.

Mr. Hastings notices. And there we begin – girl to man – sharing a common devotion.

Lifting a teeny-tiny chessboard into the palm of his illogically enormous hand, this towering 8th grade science-teacher-of-a-man describes with great care how he cut and varnished each itsy-bitsy square.

And I listen.

Ignited by his dedication.

Astonished by each delicate piece of miniature perfection.

I still don’t like science.

But I’ll always like Mr. Hastings, with his perfect bow tie, his pressed short-sleeved shirt and barely there, gray hair, and his remarkably gifted hands.

Within Close Range: Mr. Dieden

I hate P.E. and the sight of green once again spreading across the corner of Artesian Park across from school each spring.

The southeast corner, to be exact, where I suffer through the tortures of Physical Education with activities such as catching a first softball… with my nose… and the annually humiliating 400 yard dash, a quarter mile of side cramps and red-faced misery.

Nauseous and breathless.

Always one of the last to stumble over the finish line.

Destined, in Mr. Dieden’s eyes, to be stuck at the bottom of life’s climbing rope forever.

“Walk it off!” he likes to holler unsympathetically to us stragglers, scattered and collapsing at the side of the coned-in track, circling the corner patch of park grass.

Mr. Dieden, with his crisp, white, short-sleeved shirt and shiny, bald head.

Mr. Dieden, with an ever-present whistle around his neck and clipboard in hand.

Who makes me write: “I will never say ‘Shut Up’ in Mr. Dieden’s 6th period gym class again.”

1,973 times. (One sentence for each year.)

Didn’t even get the “up” out before his voice echoes off the old gymnasium walls, “Miss Celano. I’ll see you after class.”

Like he’s been waiting for it. Hoping for it.

Never a word to Jeff, on the other side of the net, about his “gold bricks and rich brats” remark.

Within Close Range: Megan’s 1959 Split-level Ranch

In Megan’s bedroom, half a flight up the 1959 Split-level Ranch with pink brick and putty colored paint, I fidget with a funky, multi-colored fiber optic lamp, while she plays records and introduces me to jazz, and we wait for her parents to leave and best friends to descend upon the many leveled house. 

We use the un-parented hours to nurture this hand-picked clan, filled with constantly morphing personalities birthed from overactive glands and imaginations, and recently recognized skills as poets, actors and musicians; as Pig Out Queens and Homecoming Queens, Make Out Queens and Dancing Queens. 

Never enough crowns for all those Queens. Never enough time to be all the things, but always enough room on the dance floor. Though all signs point to clumsy and shy, my pelvic-thrusting friends are determined to try to make me Hustle and shake my groove thing in the ground-level living room of metallic gold and green.

Sweating and spinning and dipping. Air Band greats ever in the making. Drinking and joking and choking with laughter. Using voices and faces to find inner traces of people and places. Writing truly foul lyrics to sweet Christmas carols – using every nasty word we can muster to repulse and to fluster.

Years of piano lessons color the scene, mixing Joplin, Pachelbel and Winston into the frenetic hours of being girls, and being teens. Ceasing only long enough to ransack the family’s world of snacks in the very lowest level of Megan’s Split-level Ranch. Like chubby, pubescent picnic-bound ants.

A fairytale kingdom of infinite munchies. Tupperware and tins and tightly sealed snacks of caramels and pretzels and cookies – wafers and Fudge Stripes, shortbreads and sugar. Enough to make teens, with all their snacking needs, merry and me, ecstatic, for all the food my Mom’s cupboards have never seen.

Megan’s kitchen is where I first try it, but Mom refuses to buy it, so I look for this Chef Boyardee diet on other kitchen shelves. I like my SpaghettiOs straight from the can, finding the same comfort in it as in my friendships and the many hours spent at the 1959 Split-level Ranch, being terribly saucy, truly effortless, full of crap, and distinctly gratifying.

Within Close Range: Sledding

The toboggan’s scarred and battered prow, with its narrow strips of varnished wood, scratched, warped and dinged, attests to its long history of snowy campaigns.

Trees and rocks eternal foes.

Its red, vinyl pad, cracked and beaten. Its plastic rope ties ever-untying.

It takes little prodding to initiate sledding on the golf course near our home. After a few phone calls, friends from town gather at our back door with a variety of apparatus, ranging from plastic school lunch trays to super-duper downhill racers.

Like a procession of well laden ants, we head down Shoreacres Road and into the heart of winter with spirits high. During the mile or so journey to the ravines, the boys can’t wait for the final destination before throwing themselves and their sleds at slopes of snow – even the dingy, frozen piles left by the plows.

Cheeks crimson, noses dripping, devilish smiles rising, and big boots trudging heavily, they jettison themselves, scraping briefly atop the icy, roadside heap.

Undeterred, the flatter, frozen road ahead spawns another attempt, and the unsuspecting walking there find themselves not indirectly in the path of another misguided trajectory.

Leaving victims strewn in the wake, shouting obscenities, in between fits of laughter.

Crossing thigh-high snowdrifts, pushing against the penetrating Lake Michigan winds, we know there’s reward in the shelter of the woods. In the rise and fall of the ravines just ahead.

By the time the last of the stragglers arrive, bodies are already hurtling down the small, steep hills – feet first and head first – as untouched, uncharted snow is quickly trampled smooth and slick.

So the boys and their sleds can go fast and faster toward the woods below, laughing like hyena, until the next sound is cracking plastic. Followed by moans, grunts, more laughter… and a few more well chosen profanities.

More than slightly apprehensive to sled in tandem with these boy rocketeers, I also know I’ll never gain the speed I crave when sledding solo. So I climb aboard, wrap my arms around their thick, damp, denim layers and look below, to a hand-packed jump designed to make you fly.

Pleading for caution, I know full well that caution is about to be damned.

Down we go, straight toward the jump and into the air. But the moment is fleeting before losing my hold, my pilot, a boot, and a glove. Yet gaining a face full of snow and a smile from ear to ear.

From a resting spot at the top of the hill, I watch the boys with their boundless bravado, attempt daredevil moves of surfing and spinning and bumper sleds. Determined to create one more spectacular crash before the snowy adventure can be considered a success.

By the time the sun begins its early descent, the dampness has sunk deep into our layers and it’s time to stumble home, iced-over and exhausted. The older boys taking turns pulling along the little ones with nothing left to give.

Each step energized by the thought of the warmth that will embrace us when we open the back door. Fueled by the knowledge that a crackling fire and hot chocolates wait at the other end.

Within Close Range – Papa’s Store

As buildings begin to replace trees along the Edens Expressway, I watch for familiar signs that we’re getting nearer Papa’s store.

Up ahead, on the right, stands Nickey (with a backward k), a giant, winking, smokestack of a man urging motorists to take the next exit for their very own, souped-up Chevrolet. The first downtown-bound sentry means twenty minutes more.

Further along the constantly changing horizon, the magnificent, cherry red, neon lips of Magikist – 80 ft. high and puckering up for passersby for years – appears on the left, dazzling and hypnotic. Garishly separating the suburbs from the city; the quiet and conventional, from the wonder and the chaos.

Fifteen more minutes.

At the very edge of the highway, around the next bend, looms the monster of a Morton Salt building and a great expanse of roof (almost level with the highway) painted with it’s iconic logo. I like to count how many seconds its takes to pass this massive, salt-filled warehouse.

And the girl in the yellow dress, with her big umbrella and box of Morton’s.

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand…

… until it disappears from the smudged rear window.

Ten minutes more.

Taking the next exit, we’re no longer speeding past the inner-city scenery. No longer isolated from the purposeful sprawl, but entering the industrial grime of Ohio Street’s massive warehouse district, desolate and dingy; where faded ads cling to crumbling brick walls and vast stretches of soot-stained windows lay dark and broken along shadowed streets, gray, cracked and worn from the Windy City’s daily grind.

I sink in my seat and cautiously scan the familiar but frightening streets for signs of trouble. My uneasiness arising from the barely discernible (except for the simultaneous “click” ), but habitual practice Mom has of locking the doors before the first red light.

Only after old brownstones and young professionals replace storehouses and seedy-looking characters, do I straighten up and welcome the city outside the window.

The constant beep of car horns trying to hurry along traffic below the tall buildings and shadowed streets. The constant movement of people of all types – not just well-off and white.

The dingy beads of water from the elevated tracks and platforms that plop, trickle and disappear down the window of the station wagon and tell me we’re very near.

Dressed in our Sunday best, fermenting with the pent up energy forty-five minutes in close quarters guarantees, our restless tribe is led in a disorderly row, through the perennially cold, dark, parking structure and onto the city streets.

One block down and around the corner, to Michigan Avenue, I know to look for the red and gold awning (between the fancy shoe store and even fancier department store). As soon as I spot it, I pick up my pace until reaching the revolving door of Papa’s store, Celano Custom Tailors.

Squeezing my way into the pie-shaped divisions and forced to spin a circle and a half – by a sibling pushing the rotating door too fast – I stumble onto a sea of cardinal red carpet.

Impeccably clean. Incredibly lush.

At the end of the long, narrow showroom, past smartly dressed salesmen and bolts of rich fabric, stands Papa.

Smiling quietly.

Waiting to give his warm, well-pressed, fragrant hugs to each of his progeny.

After which, he gently, but hastily, scoots all five of us to the back of the store. Away from the immaculate glass cabinet displays of silk ties, colorful ascots and men’s colognes. Away from the meticulously stacked cashmere sweaters, and roll after roll of expensive Italian wools, French cottons and Irish linens. Keeping us well clear of the handsome, silk robes neatly hung on racks with red, wood hangers, custom-stamped in gold.

Most of all, we are whisked away from his well-to-do clientele in their very expensive, custom suits, custom shirts and spit shine shoes.

But my interest lies down a narrow set of stairs, in the windowless world below; where little men, with measuring tapes hung around their necks and giant scissors in their hands, bend over large, long work tables, spread with dark wools and shimmering silks.

They always stop and smile, exclaiming how much we’ve all grown, but my attention is on what’s behind the glass partition where Papa’s bookkeeper works, and in the bottom drawer, at the side of her desk, piled high with ledgers.

As soon as I reach her side, she bends toward the drawer with her piled-high hair.

Casting a shadow over her bookkeeping.

And from it she takes out a full box of Turtles – chocolate and caramel and pecans in a gooey, luscious mound.

Papa’s favorite. And mine.

In our silent ritual, I smile and thank the bee-hived bookkeeper and choose a turtle from the box, before being pushed by an impatient sibling next in line.

Permitted back upstairs only after all hands have been inspected, we’re led to Papa’s office, where Jim plays boss with the many-buttoned telephone on the large, leather- topped desk. Until he dials the storefront and annoys the staff and Papa appears with playing cards and store stationary, and a gentle warning.

Stop fidgeting.

With Mom and Dad still shopping, we begin to take turns spying on the front of the store, watching the elegant dance of silent footsteps, hushed tones and controlled smiles in full-length mirrors. Making me feel as if I’m witnessing something sacred in the tending of well-to-do gentleman.

As if an ascension.

Until Jim discovers the stereo and starts pushing buttons.

Shattering the sober storefront with an unexpected symphony.

Instantly paroled from our conference room confinement, we race along the heavily padded, red carpeting, past the quiet clerks and perfect displays, and bolts and bolts, of dark, rich fabric.

Past Papa, who flinches when our many-footed exit shakes the cabinets.

And ruffles his clients.

Michigan Avenue is an eruption of motion and commotion, of which we’re swept up in, until we find ourselves among the tourists and the toilers at the base of the very new John Hancock Center.

Pressing my hands and body against its cool, black steel, I look skyward, trying to see the skyscraper’s top. Struggling to keeping my balance.

It makes me dizzy and suddenly anxious to see the red and gold awning.

And the thick, red carpeting.

And Papa’s outstretched arms, for one last hug, before returning north.

Past the giant girl in the yellow dress.

Past the giant, neon lips, now lighting the early evening skies with its rosy red glow.

Past the smokestack man disappearing in the dusk.

To the quiet woods.

To the dark skies.

To home.

Within Close Range – Shattered

It’s a new found freedom, riding a bike through my cousins’ neighborhood, unattended by an adult, or an older sibling.

The streets are busier and much bigger than what our secluded, little subdivision has to offer and Gina, Mary and I are headed, unattended, to Nonnie and Papa’s apartment a few miles away.

The furthest I’ve ever ridden my bike is two blocks over.

Hopped up on sweets (following multiple raids of Nonnie’s unrivaled candy stash) and the even sweeter taste of pedal-powered independence, it’s little wonder why, when Nonnie tells me she has something to give me for my birthday and shows me a beautiful, porcelain doll, I want to take possession of it.

Immediately.

Nonnie refuses, at first, insisting that she bring it to Aunt Ar and Uncle John’s when she and Papa come later.

But as an obvious and well-chosen favorite, my sugar-induced swagger wins her over and she wraps the doll in an old towel, puts it in a thick, white plastic bag.

Hesitating before handing it over.

With a frown.

She follows me out the apartment door. Her tiny, slippered feet shuffling at my heels all the way to the elevator. As the automatic door glides shut, I hug the plastic bag and lower my eyes, avoiding Nonnie’s last pleading look.

Seeing her watching from her living room window three stories up, I carefully place the reluctantly released gift into the metal basket of the bike I borrowed from John, grab the handlebar and, with an air of overplayed nonchalance, attempt to kick my leg OVER the center bar that boy’s have on their bikes for no apparent reason.

I fall short.

Brutally kicking the bike to its side.

Launching the fragile contents out of the basket and onto the cement sidewalk.

Mary and Gina, both straddling their bar-less bikes, each with a foot on a pedal and a look of fleeing in their eyes, are slack-jawed. Stunned silent. Like they’ve seen a terrible accident at the side of the road.

Neither can look away from the body in the bag.

Even though the sight of it is truly dreadful.

Yet nothing compared to what my eyes are about to search out: Nonnie, three floors up, bearing witness to it all.

Witness to my fall.

My failure.

Her eyes never once leaving me, refusing to budge from the window of her velvety world of gild and glass, of lacy figurines, candy-filled cabinets, and porcelain dolls.

Less one.

Of obvious favorites and grave disappointments.

Of which I’m now the latter.

With my sugar-buzz busted and my confidence shattered like the small, doll’s head, the procession home is silent and somber.

Nonnie never utters a word about it to me that evening.

(Helped by the fact that I avoid her like a tiny, Italian Plague.)

But her silence is deafening.

Within Close Range – Best Friends

We try to light it squatting beneath an old, planked bridge.

Like naughty, little trolls.

Laughing and cursing the unrelenting wind and an almost empty box of matches.

Coughing.

Giggling.

Coughing.

Startled by the snap of a twig.

Whispering and waiting for something in particular.

Not caring about anything in particular.

Until the tiny roach sticks to my mouth and I wince.

Pulling the burning paper from my lower lip.

Betsy laughs.

Which makes me laugh.

Even though it hurts like hell and my lip is already blistering.

Making me to worry about how I’m going to explain the burn to Mom and Dad –

who notice every pimple.

But then I stop caring.

Content to be beside my friend.

Standing firm against the bitter lake winds.

Feeling happy just to be,

we walk beside the tiny creek.

Sudden cravings hasten our final footsteps

down the deserted road of my secluded neighborhood.

Stepping over acorns and twigs fallen from late October trees.

Side by side.

Stoned.

Smiling in the comfortable silence of a very, best friend.

Within Close Range: Shoreacres

Everyone we know is growing up across the street, around the corner, or the next block over from each other. Daily building a collective experience which connects friends, parents of friends, neighbors and neighborhoods.

Where we live, nothing and no one we know is a couple blocks over, or right around the corner.

Edged with acres of Oak and Maple, Birchwood and Beechwood rooted at the edge of the bluff, our quiet road hides a scattering of courtly houses where forests make good fences and privately schooled children are seldom seen.

And never heard.

A lovely, but lonely, dead end road that winds a mile past manicured grass and unflappably white, club buildings; where quiet, unflappably, white club members and their very quiet staff, raise their heads at our regular din.

We’ve shaken up Shoreacres in seven different ways. A constant breach in its buttoned-up ways.

Directly to our east, rolling onto the beach at the bottom of the bluff eighty feet below, is Lake Michigan.

Dark and deep. Dependably cold and unfriendly.

Built at the turn of the century beside this vast and often brutal body of water, Naval Station Great Lakes, a recruit training camp, sits on over 1,500 acres due north. We can see its harbor from our backyard.

Right next door to this is North Chicago – whose ambitious name reflects more ambitious days, before the lifeblood of the city fed on the flesh of young sailors far from home.

Sailors, sex, booze and Abbott Labs.

That’s North Chicago, just to our north.

To the south, in between us and everyone we know, is Arden Shore, a longstanding fixture in helping troubled kids amid troubled homes.

Here and there, we’ll meet a stray wandering away from its classrooms and confines. Drifting along the edge of the waves, on the ever-shifting sand, or beneath the trees, wandering through the dark and the green and the silence.

We’ll smile and wave and he’ll smile back – kind of – then disappear behind sunken shoulders.

Back into the woods.

And his troubled thoughts.

And us to our troublemaking.

Past Arden Shore, stand two large, lakeside estates of meatpacking magnates and old money, and privileged lives – one defunct, the other very much alive.

Just south of here is where the village streets begin; where lives criss-cross and meet at corners.

And nearness compels strangers to become neighbors.

But north of here is where we live.

Along a lonely, lovely, dead-end road. Among the quiet privileged. Where forests make good fences.

Within Close Range: The Greenhouse

Defying the somber shades of dead in a Midwestern Winter,

hidden beneath thick, mean layers of snow and ice.

green was something you could see, smell and touch

in Mom’s greenhouse.

Stepping down into its steamy realm was like discovering a distant jungle.

Moist.

Pungent.

Earthy.

Exotic.

I’d sit on the cement stairs,

arms hanging over the metal railing moist from the humidity.

Galoshes and socks dangling precariously.

Watching Mom dig her hands into a soily concoction.

Inhaling strange, sweet smells of bone meal and blood meal.

Manure and lime.

And life.

Nurtured with the same intensity Mom tended her flock.

Passionate and determined all should flourish.

Cultivating her offspring with a unique and fertile mix of love and cynicism,

melancholy, curiosity and eccentricity.

Within Close Range: The Checkered Beacon

At the corner of Sheridan Road and Sheridan Place, right across from East Elementary and Lake Bluff Junior High School sits Artesian Park, two blocks of village green where every Fourth of July the grassy field turns to festival and carnival and fun and every winter, the sunken baseball diamond is flooded to make an ice-skating rink.

As soon as the temperature dips and the rink freezes solid, villagers swarm to the park, packing the small patch of ice with skaters of all ages, sizes and skills; with races of speed and games of Crack-the-Whip, hockey sticks slapping and half-hearted “Hamill Camels” spinning.

Huge smiles crowding pink cheeks.

The park’s field house is also opened, where a giant crackling fire in a giant stone hearth, hot drinks, long rubber mats and long, wooden benches, welcome skaters looking for secure footing and a temporary reprieve from the nippy wonders of winter.

Such happiness in hot cocoa and crackling fires.

In being a part of village life, instead of apart from it.

Layered, bundled, skated and packed into the station wagon, anxious to get to the rink and our friends, we watch Dad re-shovel the shoveled path by the garage. When Mom finally steps through the back door, all heads swivel toward the flash of candy apple red which has newly invaded the icy, grey scenery.

There stands Mom in an outfit the likes of which Lake Bluff villagers have never – nor will likely ever see again – a red and white checkered snow suit, with its belted jacket and matching knickers (Yes, that’s right, I said knickers.), red cable knit stockings, white knit gloves, and a matching, white knit, helmet-shaped cap with ear flaps and a large, snowball-sized pom-pom on top.

It’s something to be seen… and near impossible to miss.

She’s something to be seen.

But that’s usually Mom: statuesque, blonde, beautiful, incomparable. Ever the model. Not afraid to be individual, and always, always fashionable – even when that fashion might be questionable.

… at least from the viewpoint of her five, young impressionables.

But Mom is glowing.

Excited for the family outing. Eager to put her weatherproof, yet fashion savvy snow suit to the test.

But Mom is GLOWING.

Like a giant, checkered barber pole.

And everyone from Dad (whose briefly raised eyebrows are a dead giveaway) to Mark (who strains his tiny, bundled body to turn and stare wide-eyed at the walking tablecloth) – are stunned silent by the new outfit that speaks volumes.

As Dad winds the wagon toward town, whispers around the rear seats are exchanged. It’s agreed that the best course of action is evasive. A rapid, rear door exit will surely guarantee reaching the rink quickly and losing ourselves in the nameless, motherless crowd in moments.

As luck would have it, a parking space – one actually big enough to accommodate our Grand Safari station wagon – opens up right in front and above the bustling rink. There’s no more delaying the inevitable fashion statement that’s about to be thrust upon the unsuspecting citizens of Lake Bluff.

As soon as Dad docks the wagon and shifts into park, Jim and Chris leap from the center seat and never look back. In the very rear of the wagon, however,  Mia and I are at the mercy of Dad who needs to open our escape hatch from the outside (a major miscalculation), and who is leisurely lacing his own skates; while Mom struggles to wriggle a wiggly four-year-old into a pair of hand-me-down, oversized skates.

Dad finally releases us, and leaving Mia to fend for herself, I make fast, teetering tracks to the ice, losing myself in a swarm of bladed, unbounded activity.

From the anonymity of the crowd below I watch, – mortified – as Mom’s checkered ensemble appears around the rear of our wagon, moving very, very slowly over ice and snow toward the rink. Giving everyone within a three mile radius ample time to take it all in.

Radiating red against the endless, ashen clouds.

Unembarrassed. Unaffected. Unbelievable.

Forcing me deeper into the throng of villagers, into the sea of somber, Midwestern winter gear. Commonsensical clothes in practical colors blending together like the dark waters of a deep, churning lake.

Unsteadying me.

Disorienting me.

Drowning me in denim and down; in unfamiliar faces and forms, swirling and twirling and lawless.

I feel panic rise and tears swell and wish everyone would just… STOP!

Until a beautiful beacon appears.

A sudden flash of something dazzlingly bright shining through the drab-colored chaos.

The most wonderful sight I’ve ever seen. Giving instant comfort. Guiding me home.

To the arms of Mom.

To the warmth of her hug.

Wrapped tight in all her red and white checkered glory.

Within Close Range: Chief – in three parts

Chief is an ornery Appaloosa, short and fat,

with black spots on the rump of his dirty, white coat

and the devil in his eyes.

Of little training and no past consequences.

A 9th birthday present from Dad – whose childhood pets were porcelain cats and poodles – and mostly Mom, a Missouri farm girl with her grandfather’s gruff, Scottish sensibilities, and steely confidence the challenges will make me a good rider.

I’m confident they’ll kill me.

From the other side of the pasture fence, Mom urges me to remount. Make him know who’s boss.

I struggle to my feet and limp toward the answer, now grazing on prairie grass and wildflowers from which he loathes to be distracted.

In between greedy mouthfuls, Chief raises his wild, blue eyes, beneath poorly cut bangs – which I like to cut.

Straight across.

Stooge’s Style.

No wonder he’s ornery.

He’s quietly watching my crippled approach and just as I’m within a few feet, with a flick of his tail, he’s off, across the long, wide pasture. Adding even more insult to my physical and emotional injuries with each unruly buck and bolt.

Mom’s words are unrecognizable from the far end of the field, but the tone is clear. So I move toward my spotted nemesis, expecting him to bolt again as soon as I get too close.

His long nose buried in the succulent grass, Chief stands his ground, this time, and lets me mount. A voice inside my possibly fractured skull warns me, but Mom’s is louder.

Barely settled in the saddle, I see something I hoped I wouldn’t. Chief lifts his head and pins his fuzzy, white ears flat against his thick skull. I know what’s coming and grab the reins and the saddle horn just before we take off in an uncontrolled and uncontrollable canter.

Somehow I remain in my mount, which annoys my little, four-hoofed devil, who swerves off his trajectory of terror, straight for a cluster of pines.

Two in particular.

Which stand a pony’s width apart.

I close my eyes, hold on tight and hope for the best,,, as Chief. – like yarn through an embroidery needle – threads us between the two pines at top speed.

Scraped from their stirrups, my legs are now bouncing off of Chief’s round rear-end as we pass through the pines into the open pasture toward Mom, who’s still lobbing impractical words over the fence.

I feel my grasp on the saddle-horn weaken.

And a resolve that I’ll soon be tasting earth, grow.

And I let go.

________________

Mom thinks a pal might keep Chief calmer. So early one spring, when the corral is beginning to reveal a winter’s worth of muck, comes Billy Gold: a blue ribbon, well-trained Palomino, which we trailered back behind the station wagon from St. Joseph, Missouri.

Chief dislikes the new arrival immediately.

I think he’s dreamy, with his white/blonde mane and ginger coat, still thick and warm.

I find great joy in feeling his hot breath and fuzzy lips tickling the palm of my cold, red hand as I feed him a carrot.

Mark and Mia are sitting on top of the pine log fence, watching – still unsure of whether we just brought home Chief’s evil ally – when I hear them both scream.

In my thickly lined hood, tied tight against the cold, lake winds, I don’t recognize any words – only warnings – and far too late.

Chief’s powerful teeth clamp down hard.

The pain in my right butt cheek is searing.

I’m howling.

Billy Gold bolts to the other end of the half-frozen corral, but Chief just stands there – a nose length’s away… staring… as I hop up and down, rubbing the wound he’d just inflicted.

Mark and Mia’s shocked silence explodes into laughter, followed by a closely contested race to the house to see who’ll be the first to tell the uproarious tale. Meanwhile, a purple-red welt the size of a small apple, banded by red marks defining each of Chief’s big, front teeth, grows and throbs with each step toward the kitchen door.

Where Mom, greets me with an ice pack and empathy.

_____________

When Chief isn’t trying to shed or eat one of us,

he’s astounding us with his ability to escape.

Devilishly clever.

Very regular.

The phone rings. Mom cringes, apologizes, then sounds the alarm,

steering the station wagon straight toward town.

We found him in a graveyard once, a foggy morning, one fall.

Striking terror in the old caretaker who thought he’d seen it all.

Until galloping across the graves, he saw a ghostly, pony-sized spright –

bad bangs bouncing in the soupy light.

Followed closely by a tall, beautiful, blonde

in flowing, full length, lime-green chiffon.

His hands still trembling when we waved from the road

as we slowly crept toward home with pony in tow.

But much of the time, Chief’s antics are close

and off I dash with grain and a rope;

tracking the wild-eyed Appaloosa’s sod-ripping route

through the blue-blood, buttoned-up neighborhood,

across disapproving neighbors’ pristine lawns

– while from behind windows, I see shaking heads frown.

One rainy, spring day, while watching my pony buck and bolt,

(as if in his very own, god damn, Wild West Show),

leaving hoof-sized divots pocking each meticulous yard,

Chief stops and pin his ears, which puts me on my guard.

Forward the pony charges and I’m sure we’re about to collide

When a voice – loud and fed up – calls from deep inside:

Make him know who’s boss!

I drop the bucket of grain.

I drop my pony’s halter.

I gather all my courage.

The universe is about to alter.

I set my feet and stand my ground and watch him close the gap

and just as he’s within arm’s length, I reach out and I SLAP!

I swat him at the tip of his long, white snout.

Suddenly, all Chief’s piss and vinegar’s done – run – OUT!

With a half-hearted snort, he lowers his poorly banged head,

turning his devilish focus on the grain bucket, instead.

And with noses aligned, we linger toward home,

understanding more about each other than we’d ever known.

Within Close Range: Summers on the Edge

There us peace in the familiar sounds of summer at Shoreacres.

The Northwestern train keeping to its schedule.

Bank Swallows calling to their colony as they swoop to and from nests pockmarking the sandy bluff wall.

The harbor’s baritone foghorn warning boats buried in Lake Michigan’s mist.

Even the sailors at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center to the north chime in, drilling up and down the parade grounds.

Marching.

Grunting.

Singing and rhyming.

Voices hovering in the air like ancient tribal chants.

Laying on the lawn overlooking the lake, I close my eyes and ease into the familiar sound of the sailors’ strong, low voices.

And the marching band practicing its spirited battle hymns.

Miles away, but strong and clear.

Carried to my ears by the lake winds cutting through the thick, moist air that smells of fresh cut lawn and freshwater fish.

Sun-filled days of climbing up and down the bluff where the path used to be before the lake rose and stole chunks of land, leaving little but swallow holes and sand – and killer cool ledges for daring leaps by reckless kids who take to the skies, then aim for the beach, landing in the soft, thick sand below – hot on the surface, but damp and cool just inches beneath.

Wriggling my toes further into the moist earth, I try to recapture the wind knocked out of me in the landing, until voices from above goad me into action and I’m forced forward again, down the soft, crumbling bluff, to a rugged line of boulders Dad had dropped on the beach in his failed fight against this infamously wicked lake.

Then one by one, into the water and waves we wade, trying to dislodge sand from our swimsuits and butt cracks. Feeling the lake’s strong, cold undertow at our feet and the strong, hot sun on our heads.

Watching our Lab, Heather, joyously and tirelessly swim after a stick bobbing on the waves.

Silly dog.

Then up to the top we head to bound down again.

And again.

And again.

Long summer days invade the nights, inspiring late nights of Ghost in the Graveyard and Sardines and a world of hiding places scattered around our acres and outbuildings, where we squat amid the fireflies’ ambitious flickering and whisper above the crickets and cicadas charging the atmosphere with their measured, mesmerizing songs.

Reminding me that I am never really alone.

Standing at the edge of the bluff on the Fourth of July, with the comforts of home just steps away, we watch the fireworks displays from Chicago to Waukegan, “Ooohing” and “Ahhing”, mimicking the faraway crowds and slapping at mosquitoes determined to disturb our private celebration.

Mom unfreezes boxes of brats and burgers to feed a small army, which eventually arrives with empty stomachs and pockets full of bottle rockets, sparklers and Roman candles ample enough to light the skies and the lake, and disturb our quiet neighbors long after the distant festivities have ended.

But the best displays I witness from the brink are the summer thunderstorms rolling over the Great Lake, and the lightening exploding in sky-wide, silver-white bolts and bursts.

I feel fortunate.

And irrelevant.

On gentler nights when the moon is full and bright and we can see our way down the bluff to the beach, my siblings and I wade into the vast, still water.

First, up to our knees. Then our bellies. Then our chests.

Eventually emboldened by the bright moonlight and calm, glassy water, I swim further from the shore and my companions.

Through strange patches of warm in the perpetually cold, inland water.

Scanning the dark stretch of water in front of me and turning to see the sparsely lit shoreline now well behind me, the calm in my mind begins to churn and I begin to worry about what lurks just below my feet – and in those warm patches – and start paddling madly toward the beach and the nearest sibling.

Not stopping until I’m close enough to feel the sand below my feet, or see a smile in the moonlight.

Finding enormous comfort and calm in the motion of another’s treading water.

In their laughter.

In their teasing.

These are the endless days spent layered in sand and sun tan oil. Brown and blissful.

These are the days of sleeping well into the afternoon, or until the smell of breakfast cooking below wafts into my room…

or my class schedule arrives in the mail all too soon.

Within Close Range: Starting to Drown

I struggle when Mom tries to put on my water wings, promising that if she lets me go in without them, I’ll be super careful – stay shallow.

Eventually, she gives in and along the pool’s edge I shimmy until my toes no longer touch the smooth, white bottom and Mom is no longer hovering.

Holding tight to the edge with one hand, I dip below the surface and open my eyes in the clear, blue where I can see the bigger kids dunking and diving in every direction.

Wingless.

Fearless.

Floating and free.

The center of it all is now the place I most want to be, so feeling the rough, concrete surface of the pool deck pressing into the fingertips of one hand, I stretch the other toward the forbidden zone.

The fun.

My future.

And I let go, stretching my nostrils skyward and doggy-paddling furiously toward the deepest waters.

I set my sights on Chris, who’s in the center of the pool talking to Dad, standing at the edge of the shallow end, but half way to her suntanned back, my arms and legs suddenly betray me and before I know it, down I go, pool water filling my nose and mouth.

I scramble for the sun and the air.

For a voice.

For Chris.

But each time I break the surface, my pleas are instantly drowned and I’m still out of reach of that suntanned back.

In the instant before I go under again, I can hear Dad’s voice, but I can’t see him and he can’t see me because Chris is directly in line between us.

And with all the commotion.

Someone please see me.

But no one does and, once more, I sink.

This time, the thought of not reaching air again – or even worse, reaching it and losing it again – terrifies me. I claw for the murky surface, now light years away, but desperate thoughts weigh heavily on my tired legs.

And I want to stop trying.

Arms abruptly pull me to the surface, then to the side of the pool, where another strong and sure pair guides me to the warmth of the concrete deck, where I vomit up pool water and begin to cry.

Wisconsin Days: March

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Photo by ac frohna

The sun shines brightly through the bedroom window and beckons me to rise even before Eva begins her morning ritual of cooing me awake from the nursery next door. Stretching long and hard and hesitating before throwing the warm comforter aside I gaze out the window at the bright blue sky and bent, barren treetops. It has not been a very harsh winter, nevertheless it’s March and in the Midwest that means winter has already been two months too long.

Delaying the departure from my bed, I try to recall what the first days of spring smell like, instead of the stale odor of a house that hasn’t ushered in the outdoors for many months. Inhaling long and hard, I imagine the sweet smell of a newly mown lawn and the swelling winds just before a summer thunderstorm.

Closing my eyes and, rather than the same leafless branches I have seen since November, I picture the first tiny, bright green leaves about to unfurl all along the branches of the oaks, hickories, and maples in the neighborhood.

I even try to imagine a spring shower dampening my face and the cool moist dirt beneath my fingernails, and just as I am about to take a great, big, imaginary bite out of the freshly picked tomato, I hear my daughter gurgle and murmur and wrestle with her bunny. With a dreamy sigh, I toss back my covers expecting to be hit with a blast of winter cold, but much to my delight the late winter sun has filtered in and settled all around me. Climbing from bed, I make my way to the window and open it, hoping the day outside will be just as kind.

It takes no imagination to hear the enthusiastic morning warbles and cheeps, twitter and tweets of the birds already enjoying this happy hiatus from the cold. With a great big smile and an excited pang in my heart, I clap my hands and scurry to Eva’s room singing, “Spring is coming, Noodle, spring will soon be here. Let’s go outside and greet the day, for spring is very near!”

Rushing through our morning routines and happily neglecting my deadlines, I dress Eva and strap her to my chest, call for the dogs, and hurry outside to welcome the pleasant day. Although the cool winds still instantly summon thoughts of winter, there’s no mistaking a change of season is upon us.

I can feel it in my bones and smell it in the air.

As I wandered from one dormant garden to another, my excitement over the impending season is very powerful – so powerful that I feel as if I concentrate hard enough I can almost will the buds to spring from the earth before my eyes – and even find myself a little disappointed when nothing issues forth upon command.

Yet I know very well that life will soon stir without my urging.

As we slowly make our way over to the vegetable garden, I begin to make a lengthy mental list of all the things I’ll try to grow this summer and all that has to be done to prepare the beds for the coming harvests. I imagine Eva, now bundled up and bound to me, soon crawling across the sweet smelling earth and playing beneath the hot sun, taking her first steps across the dewy grass and chasing the summer-slim barn cats.

My smile grows even wider when I look ahead to the days when my daughter will have her own little garden patch where I will teach her the simple pleasures of digging in the dirt and making something grow.

With Timber and North at our heels, and Eva at my chest, I head across the prairie behind our home. Each time a blast of wind strikes our faces, I hear my daughter suck in the cold air and squeal with delight at being out of doors and out of our snowy asylum.

So on we continue, ignoring the remaining winter’s icy reminders.

Whispering in my daughter’s ear, I speak of spring; of swaying fields and stormy skies, of prairie grass and wild asparagus, of hillsides blanketed with wildflowers and woodlands scattered with secret patches of subtle flora, restrained and fleeting, of puddles of rain and fat, buzzing bees.

We walk and talk and throw sticks for the dogs all morning and in these hours, I, like the earth, stir toward reawakening.