A Story Poem

April 3, 2011 By

 

The Family left to right. First row: cousin John, cousin Tom, Zed. Middle row: cousin Jane, me, mom. Back Row: Dziadzio, Babcia, Aunt Polly, Dad with Reid. Circa 1954.

It’s National Poetry Month and here is one of my story poems to celebrate words and the images they create.  Just to fill you in, Babcia is the Polish word for Grandmother and Zed and Reid are my brothers.

Five Finger Exercise

1

Roast pork Sunday dinner.                                                                                                                 Babcia hems skirts, replaces                                                                                                             buttons.  Speaking in broken English                                                                                          implores us to eat one more bite.                                                                                                     Sings skinny no good, plumpy is healthy.                                                                                       Warns of the wolf in the pump house                                                                                             who feeds on underfed children.

2

Thanksgiving in New Jersey.                                                                                                             Smoke stacks belching blueblack vapor.                                                                                         Hateful boy cousins tease, torment,                                                                                                 look up my skirt.                                                                                                                                 My uncle shows me middle C.

3

A black baby grand.                                                                                                                             Glossy red John Thompson books.                                                                                                   A metronome beating the air.                                                                                                           Mrs. Miller sits too close,                                                                                                                   pushes and prods.                                                                                                                                 I try to keep up, forgetting                                                                                                               lines in a recital.

4

My brother Zed squeezes                                                                                                                   his accordion, seeking approval.                                                                                                       Eyes bandaged, we feed him                                                                                                               canned yellow peaches,                                                                                                                     calling them slimy goldfish, raw eggs                                                                                             to be swallowed whole.

5

Winter blows an icy dirge.                                                                                                                 My father fumbling farewells                                                                                                           but honestly trying,                                                                                                                             asks Reid to build him                                                                                                                       a plain pine box.

 

I will be away for a week.  This time to visit my daughter and grandkids,  spend time with a dear friend and to go on retreat for a couple of days.  My sweet man will stay home to hold down the fort, keep the dogs company and water the garden.

We had our first lettuce of the season a few days ago, the carrots are just beginning to show tiny green sprouts in their dark, rich soil and broccoli and spinach will be ready for the table in about a month.

When I return, I’ll plant more words right here.  Have a wonderful week!

Filed Under: Poetry, stories

About the Bus

March 29, 2011 By

 

 

When the history books are written in the future somebody will have to say there lived a race of people, a black people, fleecy locks and black complexion, a people who had moral courage to stand up for their rights, and thereby they injected a new meaning in the veins of history.

Rosa Parks

After we saw the film Freedom Riders, and considered joining Julian Bond’s civil rights tour of the south, I thought long and hard about the required travel by bus. I wondered if I could  manage sitting in one place for long stretches of time without encouraging lots of aches and pains which set in when I am not moving about.  Bill and I needed to make a decision quickly because there were only “a few seats left” and it was going to be the “last trip” Julian would lead.  So, I decided that I’d trust the Universe and just get on with it. It seemed like an important trip to make to further my understanding of the world as well as myself.

I have always considered myself a student. I’m curious and like to know how most things work and why.  My school experience ended when I graduated from college with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Elementary Education.  Since that time I’ve found that learning by experiencing was the way for me to go.  Why sit in a classroom and read a book if an opportunity to see the world, near or far arose? When traveling to places where people don’t speak my language, are culturally unlike me or are in situations I’ve never known, I gain a new understanding of the world, who I am and where I fit in.

But back to the bus.  It was an image that stayed with me throughout my preparation for this trip.  As the day of our departure drew nearer, the bus became a symbol that haunted me as we traveled. Back in the early days of segregation, buses were one of the easiest and sometimes the only way to travel.  Not everyone had a car.  I thought again of  those courageous freedom riders, who risked their lives in the process of trying to end segregation.  I thought of Rosa Parks, who one day in 1955, simply got tired of being humiliated and doing the things white people ordered her to do.  She refused to move from her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when the driver told her to move further to the back to make room for a white man, even though there were other seats available to him.

Mrs. Parks was arrested and the next day black citizens of the city and county met in mass meetings at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (where Martin Luther King Jr., was pastor at the time), and in other churches throughout the city.   After a one day boycott, the people came together again and agreed to continue with the boycott until the city  agreed to desegregate the bus service. Blacks and some whites found other ways to get to their jobs. People who owned cars drove others to their destinations free of charge. They walked, rode bikes and helped each other out.  The city bus company started losing money and they gave in to the demands of the black community.

With that in mind, I decided that to travel by bus was the only way to make this journey.  It was the only way to get as close to history as possible. It was a way of sitting with the ghosts of those who had forged the way to freedom. They were humiliated, beaten, and sometimes killed, but in the long run, they won the right to sit where ever they wanted, to eat in any restaurant they wanted to and ultimately to become voters. Yes, I was uncomfortable at times. Yes, I wasn’t getting the exercise I normally get.  But my aches and pains never came close to what those ghosts had suffered.  I was happy to listen to their stories and the pain they experienced as we rode the bus through the land where slavery had been a way of life for too many years.

Filed Under: stories, Travels, Uncategorized

Civil Rights Tour, Part 2

March 23, 2011 By

The old Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. and his father were co-pastors

Listening to Ray Charles and Dr. John this morning as I worked out on the cross-trainer, I found myself eager to get back to writing more about our trip. The first afternoon with the group I was not really with it. I forgot to bring my camera along  to the places we visited. Plus it always takes me time to get settled in terms of being with people I don’t know and to remind myself to have few expectations of a journey such as this one. For me it is better to simply experience what is happening and then make meaning from it.

Our first afternoon together we boarded the bus and headed out to Auburn Avenue, once the center of the black community where businesses thrived and the small child, Martin Luther King Jr. was born. A section of Auburn Avenue is now the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service. Within the site is the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Heritage Sanctuary which celebrated its 125th anniversary this past weekend. We were unable to visit the church as it was in the last stages of a major restoration. It was here that Dr. King’s grandfather and Martin Luther King, Sr. (called Daddy King), served as pastors. Dr. King, Jr. became co-pastor with his father during the 1960s. It is where his mother was killed by a gunman in 1974.

In the same block is the King Center where an eternal flame burns near the tombs of Dr. and Mrs. King. A block or so away is Dr.King’s birth home, where he entered the world on January 15, 1929, and spent the first 12 years of his life.

Later we had dinner at Paschals, a black owned restaurant that was once a meeting place for civil rights activities. The food was good, especially the appetizers. We of course had fried chicken and collard greens. Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta and Diplomat to the United Nations was our guest speaker. He spoke of the civil rights movement and the work that still needs doing as we enter further into the global community. He no longer encourages young people to become attorneys. He feels that the economy is driving the world today and recommends the field of economics for those who about to enter college.

The New Ebenezer Baptist Church

But it was Sunday morning at the New Ebenezer Baptist Church where the trip started to click for me. As we walked into the sanctuary an alto sax was warming up. I was lost … a goner. I love the alto sax and if you just play for me I will do almost anything for you!

But it was not just the saxophone that clicked for me. It was the warmth and joy of the black members who welcomed us. It was the interpreters signing for the deaf that seemed to be almost ballet. It was the sermon about being hijacked by God to bring troubled souls into a place where all can be mended. It was the fact that other white people were visiting from Germany and other corners of the world,  just to be in a place where one can easily imagine that Martin Luther King is speaking to you and to remember the long road that he and so many others blazed for the world. It was the music, both choral and instrumental. It was the community of people who came together to worship a loving God who will not beat you up because you make mistakes. I am more Buddhist than anything else, but if I lived in Atlanta, I’d be there often to experience the joy and a community of beautiful people living their lives as they move forward.

After the service we boarded the bus for Albany, located in the southwestern corner of the state. The afternoon was sunny and I watched the greening Georgia landscape emerging from winter’s cold. It was in Albany, in the fall of 1961, that Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon, field secretaries for SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,) came to set up a base. They came because it seemed a be a fairly quiet community, moderate in racial attitudes, with blacks representing 40 percent of the population, home to Albany State College, a black institution, and surrounded by counties with a majority population of blacks, known as places of malicious intolerance.

A few weeks later nine students from the community arrived at the Continental Trailways bus station, attempting to sit down in the white waiting room. They did leave when asked to but on November 22, three high school student from the NAACP Youth Council returned to the bus station. They refused to leave the dining room and were arrested. Thus started a string of protests challenging segregation. After an integrated group from Atlanta arrived and were arrested, over four hundred high school students were arrested as they marched through the town. In December, Martin Luther King arrived at the invitation of a classmate from Morehouse College in Atlanta and that night he addressed a huge mass meeting at the Shiloh Baptist Church. Because the crowds were so large, he later spoke to another group at the Mount Zion Baptist Church just across the street. The night was filled with music and song, giving rise to the Freedom Singers, who toured the country with their songs encouraging everyone to overcome segregation.

That evening we were privileged to hear an astounding performance of some of the original freedom singers, led by Rutha Harris, in the Mount Zion Baptist Church, now part of the Albany Civil Rights Museum. They had driven from Montgomery just for our small group, picking up a speeding ticket on the way. I shiver at the thought of a car filled with black people, speeding through the night during the early days of the movement and can only imagine what their fate might have been.  

My hunger for music sated, I crash into bed after checking in at our hotel.  Next time:  About The Bus.

Filed Under: stories, Travels

Cat House

February 27, 2011 By

In the fall of 2005, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer.  Hannah, one of my best

Sweet Hannah

kitty friends died in mid December of a stroke brought on by congestive heart failure.  Her death was expected but none-the-less, it was very difficult.  January arrived and the household was bereft.  My mother was dying, my cat was gone and winter weather loomed on the horizon.  We were living in a catless house, except for Cleo, my mom’s cat who hid anytime we got near.  Bill and I decided we’d remain without another cat.   We did have two dogs after all.

My beloved muse left me, tired of waiting for me to show up. I was too depressed for writing or painting. I needed something different, on a more happy note, to do with my time.  I struggled until I figured I could get some cat-time and extra love by volunteering to help out at the local SPCA.  They assigned me to the area’s Pet Smart, where half a dozen cats are housed ready for adoption.  I was to arrive at 9 AM on Mondays, before the store opened; feed the kitties, clean the cages, let them run about in the tiny room.  Then I’d sit there with one or two in my lap for two hours waiting for people who longed to take home a sweet, furry creature.

I did my job. For the first month not one cat was adopted when I was there.  I think it was because of my early hours.  Most people didn’t show up until well after I left and another volunteer arrived.   I tried to switch shifts, but no one said, “I’m dying to be there earlier in the day.” So I hung in there accompanied by two constant  companions.

There was the tuxedo kitty, who was about 6 months old.  Every time I passed her cell

Lily at rest.

cage, she’d push a paw through the bars and hook her claws on my shirt, trying to pull me near.  When I’d let her out to play, she’d rub up against me, then bounce off the walls hoping for freedom.  She had been picked up on the street and seemed to be missing her former life.

Miss Pepper

Peppermint a quiet, ginger colored lady, had been in this facility for at least 3 months if not longer.  She was an adult and had been rescued from a home where a hoarder had housed some 35 cats.  She slept and occasionally played with a ball she had in her cage.  Whenever I came close she’d start purring and looking up at me with huge yellow eyes set in a moon-round face.

I started talking cats at home.  Bill knew what was coming.  He sat there smiling as I chattered on and on about one cat or another.  I hung in at Pet Smart for another month.  I was getting more depressed by the minute.  My mother was still dying, no cats were being adopted on my watch and I hated seeing them being confined to those tiny cages. I began to think that this SPCA volunteer thing just wasn’t for me.

After several more weeks, I  gave notice that I was quitting.  There was lots of trying to talk me out of it.  “The cats need you.  You need to get out of the house more.  Volunteers are so hard to find.” I told Bill I’d like to adopt the tuxedo kitten.  He smiled and nodded.  Lily, short for Lilliput, came home.

During my last shift, a couple with several rowdy children came in.  They wanted to play with all of the cats.  The kids wanted to squeeze and chase and when it came time for Peppermint to let them handle her, she was afraid, tried to hide.  I piped up and said, “I almost forgot!  She’s already spoken for.” I just couldn’t stand the idea of her going home with those people.  They went home without a cat and suddenly I had two.

Both cats are still with us and are delightful companions.  Lily hunts big-time and I’ve had to take all of the bird feeders down.  She is definitely Bill’s girl.  She sleeps on his shoulder in the evening when he watches tv.  Pepper, who loves to follow me everywhere is known to steal pens and pencils from desks and tabletops.  She sometimes walks around with one hanging out of her mouth like a dangling cigarette.

Cleo, in the garden.

Cleo joined the family when my mom died.  After several years of hiding out in strange places and barely eating, she now spends time in my lap or curled up next to me.   She is 15 years old and is in the early stages of kidney failure.  She is happy though and doing well.  She plays in the middle of the night, tearing around the house often chased by one of the other cats, sometimes both.  Between these ladies and our two dogs there is never a dull moment.  I know what it must be like to run a day care center.

I’m sure the SPCA had me pegged all along.  My file must read:  Big heart.  Will do almost anything to keep kitties happy, maybe even take one or two home.

Just for the record, I rarely go to the SPCA now. I recognize that I already have too many pets.  I do however take a bag or two of dry cat or dog food in as a donation once in a while.  I drop it off then hurry out to my car before my heart-strings are tugged.

Filed Under: Animals I Love, Navigating Through Life, stories

Spring Break

February 19, 2011 By

Witch Hazel, blooming now!

It’s still February but it is in the low 70’s in my back yard.  I sit in the warm sun, eyes closed feeling a light breeze play through my hair.  A crow caws, warning its companions of a cat or dog wandering too near. A few cars rumble by in the distance.  In my mind’s eye, I see the Zinnias, Purple Cone Flowers, Lilies, Rosemary, Lemon Verbena, Calendula and more I will plant in the garden at this new home, where I have never gardened before.  I’m anxious to get my hands in the dirt.  Gardening is one of my all time favorite things to do; I consider it a way of praying, of speaking to the earth, of doing what I can to help keep this beautiful blue orb we live on, spinning.

So much is happening around the world.  Revolution is rife in the Middle East and I send loving kindness to those who are in the thick of it, on all sides.  I am still trying to get my head around what the Egyptian people managed to accomplish without doing violence.  I was glued to CNN and MSNBC, and got very little else done for several days while it was happening. It still seems to me, miraculous.  Is this the beginning of the shift that so many have predicted?  I believe it is.  I also believe that it will be a very difficult time to stay grounded, to stay sane, to believe that everything we will see, despite its ugliness, may in fact make our world more beautiful than ever. I want to be a witness to it.

Next month my husband and I will join a group of 50 other people on a trip called CIVIL RIGHTS SOUTH: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE MOVEMENT,  a revolution that happened right under our noses.

We will begin the journey in Atlanta, under the guidance of Julian Bond,  past Chairman of the National Board of the NAACP and President Emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center.  We will travel by bus, along many of the roadways that civil rights activists took during the ‘60s to bring attention to the intolerance that prevailed in our country,  ” the land of the free.”   We’ll visit Albany, Tuskegee, Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham.  We will stop at the New Ebenezer Baptist Church, the George Washington Carver Museum,  the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, the Rosa Parks Museum, the Marchers Memorial and Interpretive Center and the National Voting Rights Museum, among others.  We will attend a concert of the original Freedom Singers and visit a gallery of primitive southern art.

Our inspiration??  Several weeks ago we had the privilege of previewing the film, Freedom Riders, which will premier on PBS’ American Experience, in May.  It is the compelling story of the college students, white and black, male and female, who boarded Greyhound and Trailways buses in 1961. They rode through the south, integrating bus stations, restrooms and restaurants on their way to New Orleans.  It is a story of heroes willing to risk death, intent on challenging those who would keep the south lily-white.

However late, we want to bear witness to what was happening while we were sleepily beginning our adult lives way up north in New England, where diversity was a word that we thought little about at the time.  And so we will leave behind our comfortable home, my lovely garden-to-be to try to understand what happened here, in our own country so we may better understand what is happening in the world we live in now.  I will try to keep copious notes while I travel to let you know what I learn.

Please visit Sacred Circle to read grandson Noah’s letter to the President.  He and his sister, Zoe, are part of the future of this country. I’m thrilled to see this young man stand up and speak for what he believes in.  No one talked him into writing his letter.  It was his own idea.

Filed Under: stories, Travels
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