Category: Family

Golden Slippers, Suitable for Mucking Stables and Dancing With Diplomats

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On her eighteenth birthday, her mother presented the princess with golden slippers, shiny, with sensible heels and a square toe, perfect for adventuring. The princess tried them on. They fit perfectly. 

“They always will,” her mother said. “They cost a pretty penny, but they’re worth it.”

Her mother’s last adventure had been to the place where pretty pennies are mined. “We’ll travel. We’ll have such fun. You can’t imagine.”

The princess looked at her mother’s feet, but they were shod in ordinary leather. “Those are your Adventure shoes?”

“They change to suit the occasion. They’re quite useful.”

“I can imagine.”

After Wandering

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They’ve built the Sukkot sukkah to remember wandering for forty years in the desert. Vegetables and fruits cover the grass mat where they will eat supper. 

The sky is quiet now, but the two year old refuses to come out from under her bed where she feels safe. It’s been this way for weeks, months. It’s worse when planes are flying. If Bubbie brings food to her, she can lure the toddler into the open. 

The child comes, but will not eat, as if she could control the planes this way, by waiting for peace before she breaks her fast.

An Elegy to Everydayness- a Pantoum

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Death disrupts life’s everydayness. 
Ends the companionship of eating together,
Evening walks and midnight talks
With friends and family.

Ends the companionship of eating together,
Thoughts shared, words and deeds. These bring us close
With friends and family,
Confer death its sting through everyday loss.

Thoughts shared, words and deeds, these bring us close.
Long before we die these precious threads loosen, 
Confer death its sting through everyday loss.
Everyday loss creeps up, settles in softly

Long before we die these precious threads loosen,
Evening walks and midnight talks.
Everyday loss creeps up, settles in softly.
Death disrupts life’s everydayness.

Three Times a Charm


Steve Ford Elliott, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By the third attempted murder, I was onto my stepmother. It was the almond smell that gave her away.  When she showed up at the door, I cheeked the apple and did a fake faint. Overconfident, she left without checking my breathing. That evening, the dwarves and I made a plan.

Doc certified the death certificate and the dwarves laid me in a glass coffin. Sleepy’s in a narcolepsy group with a few royal types. Before you could say Prince Charming, I was in another kingdom. At the wedding, Grumpy wrestled Mommie Dearest into iron shoes;  Happy lit the fire

Mold From Outer Space is Growing in Her Bathroom

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It started as a small patch of mold in the corner of the shower. She meant to clean it before she went to Chicago on business, but then the trip was moved up and her toddler had an ear infection. So many things to do and so little sleep.

On the plane she remembered the mold. She called her husband, but he didn’t pick up. Her phone overflowed with messages when she landed. Her family had fled. The paper published above the fold pictures of infected mold and space aliens. She was completely amazed. She’d never had a green thumb.

Chekhov’s Gun Meets Occam’s Razor

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Mary’s gone crackers. It’s her husband’s fault. Occam thinks the world is an orderly place. He believes in simple, direct solutions.

Mary disagrees, she believes in Chekhovian twists and turns. What’s more, she expects that if there is a gun, it will go off in the end. She is correct.

Mary bought a gun safe for the pistol that belonged to Occam’s grandfather. For months, she nagged Occam to lock it up. She pleaded, she threatened. The simplest solution was to stow it herself. She looked everywhere for the gun, only to find Occam out shooting at zigzagging jack rabbits.

Secret Hoards

Adam73, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I couldn’t find the dog’s bowl. I’d looked in the normal places, sorted through jam-packed cupboards filled with paperware, ceramic plates, cardboard boxes from blenders and other appliances. It had to be somewhere. We never threw anything away. I had no choice but to go into the archives.

In a room stacked floor to ceiling with broken chairs, science projects, NYT and Safeway circulars from 1974 to present, and countless historical documents, I found the bowl. The dog must have dragged it into his secret hiding place because there it was, between his paws, cradling his head while he slept.

Elemental

Photo by Monica McHenney

Solstice has come and gone. The days are waning now. Invite the neighbors in for summer watermelon and ice cream sundaes. See out the sunset together. Recall an evening savored for its late fading light, light that illuminates gatherings on porches where people jawbone until after dark.

Remember when kids played keep away on a night like this? Or they brought their mitts out to catch and throw across the street? They’d stop to let a car pass. Maybe you were in that car. On the way home. Maybe someone on the porch hailed you. “Come up, bring the family.”

To Hell and Gone

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Graduation night, Demeter made punch. Her daughter, Persephone, washed glasses and when they got to the auditorium, she set them out on a table where a senior class picture was displayed. Persephone was in the center of it all because spring was her season. 

But spring turned to fall, then winter when Persephone’s boyfriend texted. Was he in on it? When she stepped outside, there was that hellhound from the shooting range who was always trying to get into her pants.

Blame it on the punch; she followed him.  

When they returned, her mother sent him to hell and back.

Some Things I Remember

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There are things you tell me before you die. Hurricane fears, the way rain scares you, bad dreams. You regret giving up your apartment. You miss seeing dolphins from your window on the bay. The view in assisted living is more limited.

But you have memories. Paris, London, Istanbul, Beijing. You toured the Galapagos. A birthday treat from Richard. Doesn’t he need you in the apartment? Sadly no, I say.

Some things survive. You remember a sweet sixteen necklace from your father. The jewelry that was your mother’s. Richard’s mobiles and guitars. Mexican crockery. Still, some things you don’t recall.