Sassafras, Ginger, My Grandmother's Porch: I Walk Through a Dream

A tale tonight of autumn roads invisible beneath golden leaves,

a summertime shadow still with me in a dream,

the white autumn sun as relentless as July's;

the shadow dancing before me as I walked

the white sandy road between my childhood home

and my grandmother's house,

falling into nothingness as I topped the hill

and evening awaited on the other side.

I wore cowboy boots

and my 3rd-grade brown checked gingham dress,

trimmed in ginger rickrack,

and when I reached the hilltop

the last of the sun's rays made that rickrack sparkle,

ginger & cinnamon & copper rays flashing behind me

the moon and stars ahead.

No leaves on this side of the hill,

just the sand of the road, lit by moonlight,

my grandmother's house halfway down, to the left.

The night was summer here and my boots too hot,

so off they came and I felt the heat of the sand under my feet,

the heat of the day released at last into the cool of the night.

The smell of sassafras,

the chinaberry tree looming dark behind her driveway,

the sound of her rocking chair on the screened-in porch.

The darkness of the night,

the path catty-cornered through her yard to the stairs.

The quiet of the night and it was autumn again,

the trees losing leaves in the sudden wind,

my grandmother's laughter, the ka-thump of her chair.

A chair for me also that I knew to be blue

though its color was hidden from view.

I rocked and watched the leaves.

she is watching

Where Will the Birds Dream?

See that hole?

A birdhole.

The image is not to scale -

the birdhole I photographed up close,

the wall back a bit.

I used to see it from my couch, that birdhole. This couch that looks out onto the neighborhood, that looks straight down Mary's driveway where she used to very badly back her car out over the curb and almost into the telephone pole and once tore the passenger side mirror off against the iron railing next to her porch - there were teeny mirrored pieces on the driveway for weeks and probably some still there if I closely looked. This couch looks down that straight-as-an-Oklahoma-highway driveway which separates her front yard from AC's backyard, and from this couch I watch AC's tulip tree bloom each spring, I watch the paperwhites and lilies make their way through the ground, and until last week I watched birds go in and out of that birdhole that AC didn't even know was there, on the way-back side wall of his house, until he had some boards replaced and the board with this hole came down. I sat here at lunch one day and watched the carpenter take it down, watched him toss the years and years of birds' nests out onto the ground and it was another sad change in a year full of sad changes and I walked over and asked if he would drill another hole for the birds, but no, no doing, and so a new board took its place and was painted, and I wonder what the birds will think when they show up to make their new home come spring and there is no way in.

Me no tengo home.

me sometimes too

Inside the Door

Inside my front door, which are double glass doors letting in tons of sunshine and northern light, there sits this table, this buffet, this thing, this piece of furniture which I stole from a place I rented years and years ago. It was the home of my dreams, and in fact, I dream about it still - an old, old house divided into 3 apartments, 10' ceilings, wooden floors, a fireplace in both the living room & bedroom, giant windows; I only made curtains for the bottom half of each window - they were 8 feet tall and the house was built high off the ground; those half curtains meant I could watch the stars from my couch. It had windows, windows, windows and a dining area perfect for a studio and I loved it dearly. I knew the instant I opened the old heavy door that it would be mine. It even had connections to my childhood - my family had lived 1/2 block away in my preschool years and the house used to have "garage sales" in the house. I'd remembered that my whole growing up life, could and can still see the dresses hanging in the hallway next to the staircase, that backlit soft light of old photographs making the dresses glow, their faded pastels the colors of dusty fairy tales. When I walked into the house for the first time as an adult, I knew it, knew the place I'd remembered was real, and then I opened the door to my soon-to-be apartment and knew I was home.

At the time a friend lived across the hall, a family upstairs, but in time they left and others moved in and eventually I had to leave, driven out by younger, ruder people whose daddies paid their bills and who left me no time to sleep, no time to think, no peace. My landlord was useless - never mind the fact that I'd been there 7 years, that I'd taken such wonderful care of the place, never mind all that. Good renters are under-appreciated. Always. So I found a place in the country with the closest neighbor a horse who stood at the fence and looked in my front door, but before I left I stole this piece of furniture which stood in the hallway, sad, neglected, empty. It was definitely not me - it has curly cues all over and was a horrible yellow, but I took it anyway and painted the outside white and inside all the drawers & cubbyholes I painted aqua. It looks like a big white wedding cake and it makes me smile. No one ever missed it and I always think of that wonderful place when I touch this whatever it is.

As I said, it sits right smack inside the front door and is the catchall for the day's goodies and I am pretty bad about clearing it off with any regularity. If you look close you will see a white floating candle shaped like a star, pink bling left over from Halloween, lip gloss, a candle inside a lime, a small handmade journal, the strap to my camera carrying purse (I hate camera bags), an LCD reader for reading in the dark and Lord knows what else that I'm just missing. Lots of loose change. But it also holds flowers and postcards from Italy and Bali and a stopped clock (the very best kind, don't you think?) and it is home and it is mine - I've had it for 20 years or so now. My old landlord apologized to me later, sad he'd not kept me and he died a few years later.

I think he was glad I took the table.

mr wright aka mr right

The Third Person

You never know who will be a part of your life, or maybe you do know- immediately - but you don't know when, but usually life is full of surprises and the redhead above was certainly one of those. Back last year I said I would introduce y'all to the people on my block, in my neighborhood, and I started and ended with Mary, and it was just too hard to go on, and besides, I kind of figured y'all knew the lovely, lovely Katie from the mentions she gets here and there, and certainly you've lived through the wedding drama with her, but here's what you don't know. Sunday night Maggie sat in her lap. Folks!!!! There should be fanfare, you should hear trumpets, angels should be flying overhead! This is uncharted territory for Maggie and Katie and me - I almost felt jealous - and it is that kind of territory for Maggie that, until now, was beyond here be monsters kind of territory. It was a moment, big enough that Katie even messaged her new hubby OMG!

Hers is the third lap Maggie has ever been in, and the second was only last week, and it was Michael's and Maggie's known him 17 years. For that matter, she's known me daily for 17 years and only began sitting in my lap recently. Katie took 5 years. She is the third person Maggie loves.

I know all kinds of things about her - Katie, that is, although I also know all kinds of things about Maggie. She is a high maintenance restaurant kind of gal - I'll have an extra bowl of black olives on the side, and only Romaine lettuce, and no cheese on the pizza - and I like that because it makes it easier for me to get what I want; I have always been a secret high maintenance restaurant kind of gal, but too shy to say anything. I know her colors - see that phone in her hand? - and the kinds of shoes she likes, and how happy she is to finally have her couch in to be reupholstered. I know how honest she is, what she wants for the future, her struggles with the present. I know how strong she is, both emotionally and physically, how little she suffers fools, how much she likes fairy lights strung about anywhere, how good she looks in hats. She owns her own business and just today her mother told her she had grown up smart.

I knew the instant she showed up, the moment she became part of Robert's life, that she would end up Mrs. Robert. They live upstairs (is she now Mrs. landlord?) and she passes my door several times a day, poking in her head to say hi sometimes, grabbing a glass of wine and settling in for a movie or a football game - yes, we are sometimes just 2 girls watching football, and I will say right here that we love Peyton Manning, but not Tom Brady, and that Tony Romo makes us nervous; she knows if my blinds are down that I need privacy and she gives it, but if they stay down too awfully long, she will text me to see if I'm okay. We are two circles intersecting, moving always, so that the intersection is smaller at times, bigger at other times, sometimes apart but circling, circling, like hula hoops (she is the sage-y green one, I am the baby blue); we will come back together again. It is not a static friendship, it grows and moves and grows and moves and grows some more.

She is much more a people person than me - I am fine with a friend or two and my cat and my house and books, but she is more extroverted, and has gently pushed me out into the world more, and for that I thank her. I also say a thank you on Maggie's behalf, who would say it if she could, and, in fact, did so the other night when she climbed onto Katie's lap. She (Katie) won't see this for a while, there is a political fund raiser thing scheduled for tonight (I've told y'all we are political people) and she won't read my blog for a bit, but I will tell her I saw her go by the door with something black to wear, and I suspect she has exchanged the new red coat for black. I expect she knows best, although the red looked like fun.

altitude