Old Friends

 

 

 

OLD FRIENDS

We’ve become brittled bone,

creeping afraid to fall.

Our mouths move with caution

for word wounds need casts too.

 

Like Cassat ladies we sip tea,

search for safe subjects,

yearn for yesterday’s laughter

 

when nothing was taboo.

Stonewalls

 

Before Covid struck us, Rick and I drove around Lexington and Concord, half my heritage and my old stomping ground. 

I loved the old Colonial homes with the dates over the entry -- from 1750 on. We passed the houses of Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thorough (cabin), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I'd read their essays, books and poems.

I loved the Transcendentalism philosophy, but that was when I still believed in the American myth.

There were the stonewalls everywhere. Growing up on 14 acres of land, our property was surrounded by a stone wall, that probably had been there from before the house was built in the early 1900s. One section was in front of a blueberry patch. Many of the blueberries ended up in homemade ice cream. We picked the blueberries with an eye on the wall. More than once we'd seen a snake peek from the rocks or bask in the sun. Is that analogy of current life?

Lately, as I watch the destruction of my birth country, the myth that I knew was a myth moves away from ever becoming a possibility shoveled under the dirt of hate, lies, power-hungry individuals and ignorance, I wish I could build a stonewall around myself keeping inside the transcendentalists beliefs of goodness and the simplicity I seek in my life. 

I'd let in friends and family, good food, books, art, creativity, people who don't lie and cheat. I'd shut out all the bad that is happening.

Of course, that is impossible. It is necessary to accept the world as it is.

Maybe it's age. I no longer have the strength to fight as I used to. I would have loved to be at the demonstration in front of the NRA meeting in Houston, but an overseas flight is too much. I still send copies of my Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles to pro-life people, but there is an ever-growing sense no matter what I do, what the good guys do, knowing it is useless. As an Ex-American I can no longer call congressmen and women and say "I'm an expat and I vote."

So I alternate between watching the collapse of the country whose dream was beautiful into a nightmare reality and trying to shut out the events by concentrating on the good things around me and sealing them behind a stonewall. And then I realize, stonewalls aren't that high. They don't make good neighbors no matter what the poem says.

Mending Wall

By Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Guns

 

Supreme Court Justice Alito was right when he said the right to abortion wasn't in the Constitution. 

The second amendment says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Okay -- how many gun owners in the U.S. belong to well regulated Militia?

Okay, the Supreme Court ignored the militia stuff in the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, when it held that the "Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home." They didn't mention it was okay to kill people with one in schools, churches, movies, stores, but what the hell? A detail.

Now let's ask? What did the founding fathers consider an arm.

Aha! The Brown Bess and other guns of its ilk were really popular when the Second Amendment was written. It allowed one shot before reloading and it had the added feature that a saber could be attached to the end.

But if that was the arm the founding fathers were talking about, wouldn't that eliminate any gun or weapon created after the second amendment was ratified in 1791. Following Alito's logic, that would make even the Colt 45 introduced around 1860 illegal never mind the AR models of today.

Replace the 400 million guns in the U.S. with a Brown Bess.

Problem solved.

 

 

The disappearing mamies

 

 

 In the late 80s when I was visiting Argelès, I used to watch the mamies, as I called the old women of the village. They were probably in their 60-80s.

They would bring their chairs out on the street and chat in Catalan. They wore house dresses and might snap beans or peel potatoes as they talked. Sometimes their grandchildren would be in their care and would play near them. There was warmth and camaraderie in their faces and body language.

Once I learned French, we could talk, although more than once they said it would be nice when I learned Catalan. I was still battling with French verbs so Catalan was not going to happen.

They had lived in Argelès all their lives, had had various feuds over the years, remembered when goats and chickens wandered the streets. Some lived in houses owned by their many times great grandparents lived.  They were not sure of how many generations. They would speak of people they lost, parents, a husband, a son who committed suicide in one of their living rooms.

Sometimes they would go and sit on a bench in the center of the village. Another bench was reserved for the old men, the senators as we called them, who were probably swept out of their homes each morning by their wives who didn't want them underfoot all day.

Over the decades the mamies disappeared one by one. The church bells would chime their dirges, the condolence table would be outside the church door for friends and neighbors to sign.

And then there was one, our neighbor. One day she was gone. I saw her daughter turning the key to the front door. 

I asked. 

"My mother is having heart surgery tomorrow," she told me.

Then there was nothing for months. Finally I wrote a note asking about her mother.

Nothing.

The daughter reappeared last week and said she'd just left a note in my mailbox. It was from Rosemary, saying she was fine and living with her daughter in the mountains. 

Whew.

The streets are now mamieless. I am probably older than many of those mamies were when I was the newby in the village. 

The demographics have changed. Older retirees from Paris and other places in Europe have settled in the village to take advantage of the sun, sea and mountains. The locals whom have reached mamie age were from the 50s and 60s not the world wars. Their lives are different.

As lovely as some of the changes in the village are, the new main street, there is a sliver of loss for the old days. The freshly painted houses, that are hundreds of years old, have been refurbished inside too. Seldom do the mamies, or anyone, go to the washing shed by the river where once they gathered to wash their clothes, although those without dryers, they might use the drying lines next to the building.

Still, one can go to the green grocer, the butcher and the baker for the daily meal.  Some evenings in summer tables and chairs are placed on the street as neighbors gather to talk, share an apèro or even a meal. Sometimes the new people join in and French is more often heard than Catalan or it is until the newcomers head home. 

I think I've lived in two French villages that occupy the same ground.

 

Carpe Diem is hard

  

On my Facebook page, I often write Carpe Diem/Happiness and list all the small things that bring me joy. The photo of my dog asleep in my husband's armpit before we start our day would be an example.

I feel as if I'm living in a bubble where I keep things as simple as possible and am surrounded by people I love, like and share with.

I know how lucky I am living in Southern France and Geneva, Switzerland, beautiful places with my soul mate, a kind, generous, intelligent, well educated man who as a fringe benefit is also a writer.

We have everything we need, more income than outgo and are debt free.

Our problems are the normal day to day things: a lost key, a bank error, mold on something in the frigo.

Our disagreements are few, more on the ridiculous: my neat idiosyncrasies, his food finickiness.

As much as I try and preserve my feeling of peace, the outside world intrudes.

I long ago learned that the America presented to me was nothing but a myth with some bits of good, enough good bits to keep the myth alive. I suppose it is my fault for having read too much history, biography and (gulp) even economics to see a realistic past.

From the 60s on and in various amounts of activity I've been political: demonstrations, writing congress. Even after moving overseas I would call on important issues and say, "I'm an expat and I vote."

Now, I've never felt so hopeless for my birth country. I see hatred, lies, cruelty, inequality. I see the alleged leaders destroying not just the country but the planet. I see pain and deaths that should never have happened. I see people saying things that have no basis in reality. I see capitalism gone amok until the only guideline is the amount of profit let all else be damned.

The wars, not just the Ukraine, but those in other parts of the world seep into my consciousness.  I wake up, grateful no bombs fell on me last nigh even if the chance was remote.

I see my birth country armed beyond all reasonableness. I see deaths of children who should have lived to grow up. 

I wish I could shut those things out and concentrate on those I love, things that are beautiful, friends, family. Sometimes it works for a short time.

My husband has a dueling blog at https://lovinglifeineurope.blogspot.com/2022/05/this-is-america-2022.html

I hope we are wrong about a civil war. 

 

Junior, the Goldfish

 

GOLDFISH

 

 FROM AGE EIGHT Anne-Marie sought refuge from her parents’ loft in the tranquility of Sacre Coeur. The odor of incense and candles was better than the smell of oil paints. The choir was sweet unlike the raucous debates at home.

“She’s the white sheep of the family,” Anne-Marie’s mother claimed.

“Must be your side.” Her father referred to his wife’s brother, a priest.

Anne-Marie watched from her mattress as her mother gave a face shrug, pursing his lips, lifting her eyebrows pushing her chin forward.

The child touched the triptych of the Blessed Mother her uncle had sent Anne-Marie for her birthday.

“We’ll hide it from your father in this box,” her mother said when it had arrived. She arranged the screen providing limited privacy for the girl in the studio that doubled as a home and studio.

 

Despite her begging, Anne-Marie’s parents refused to send her to convent school. They did pay for a secretarial course after she’d passed her bac. By then they had given up trying to interest her in painting.

*

For her first job at France Telecom, Anne-Marie bought a blue suit and several scarves. The clothes didn’t make her half as happy as the chance to fill pristine paper with neat words and numbers. She lined up pencils like a marching band and arranged paper clips on the square magnetic holder she’d bought on sale at Mono Prix. Sliding the top drawer open, she stuffed the divisions with letterhead, second sheets, forms and envelopes.

Intrigued by her computer, she asked Jean-Claude from data processing to borrow manuals. She studied them page by page. After that, anyone asking for help was told to ask Anne-Marie. Although she knew which buttons to press for the results she wanted why they worked. After praying for courage, she asked Jean-Claude.

“Take a programming course,” he said. Three days later he brought her a sheet announcing an evening course.

She enrolled. When there was an opening in data processing, she applied and was selected. No problem was too complicated for her.

She and Jean-Claude ate together almost all the time. “I wanted to be a nun,” she said.

“Why don’t you now?” he asked.

“My parents.”

She noticed he had lost weight. One night when they worked late, he started crying.

“What’s wrong?”

When he told her, she made a decision.

After Anne-Marie’s parents met him, her mother said, “He’s translucent.”

“He looks sick,” her father said.

Anne-Marie said nothing.

“We never thought you’d marry,” her father said.

Still, Anne-Marie said nothing, but moved to his apartment.

 *

They didn’t share a marriage bed. Jean-Claude slept in a hospital bed decorated with intravenous bottles and an oxygen tank. The paraphernalia rested in the center of the living room.

France Telecom allowed Anne-Marie to work at home. She changed sheets, washed sores and sent her last program through her modem. The only reasons she left the apartment were errands and to go to church.

He rallied so often the pattern of crisis and recovery no longer aroused hope. During the good times they drank tea from bowls, listened to music or talked. Although she wasn’t interested in politics, she repeated comments she’d heard from her childhood. Jean-Claude would nod in agreement.

His former lover died of the same disease. Anne-Marie held her husband while he cried. She wondered how much more time he had. It took him six more months.

She kept his apartment. Each night she returned from work, she walked around the hospital bed that was no longer there. The shelf that had held his medicines now held laundry detergent, bleach Monsieur Propre, furniture wax and lipstick.

 *

Her parents invited her to dinner on the first month anniversary of Jean-Claude’s death. When she arrived, they were so caught up in their painting that they’d forgotten to cook. Her mother threw a stew together. They dipped spoons into the pot. Her father had used the last soup bowls for palettes.

“Want to sleep over?” her mother asked.

Anne-Marie glanced at her old mattress piled with her father’s canvases and paint supplies. The screen had disappeared long ago.

“You’re alone too much,” her father said.

“I’m getting a pet.” Until that moment the idea had never entered her head. She written to an abbey in Limoux but wanted to give herself time to adjust to Jean Claude’s passing before making any life decisions. “Maybe a bird that sings.”

 *

Walking through the pet store to buy a bird, a flash of gold caught her eye. A fish, one of fifty or so, pressed his nose to the glass. “Fish don’t need much care,” the salesgirl said. She started to scoop another out, but Anne-Marie insisted on the one that had caught her attention.

She put his/her bowl on the divider separating the living and dining areas. Two floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on a small park.

“What shall I name you?” A photo of Jean-Claude when he was healthy stood on her desk next to a geode. As Anne-Marie looked through the bowl, the reflection of the light and movement of the water made it look as if her late husband was walking out of an amethyst cave. “Jean-Claude, Junior. She reduced the name to Junior and figured by the time the fish died, she would be ready to enter a convent.

 

Three years passed. Junior needed three replacement bowls, each one larger than before. The last dominated the divider.

Her routine pleased her. She went to mass mornings before work. Her neighbors, an elderly couple, invited her to dinner on Wednesdays. She watered their plants when they visited their daughter in London. They offered to feed Junior if she wanted to take a holiday.

Most nights she arrived home by eight. Junior watched her set the table. She never ate from a pan but used china and cloth napkins. When she finished, she would get Junior’s fish flakes.

One night as she dawdled over her herb tea, she heard a tapping. Junior batted his head against his/her bowl. It must be my imagination, she thought but fed him anyway. After she poured the flakes into his bowl, he swam in two circles before eating.

The next night Anne-Marie delayed feeding to Junior to see what would happen. He tapped. She responded. “You’re welcome,” she said as the fish swam in two circles before eating.

She started chatting with him.

“I’ll be home before eight. Be good.”

“Today is Saturday, I’ll be home all day.”

“I’ll iron in here to keep you company.”

“There’s a Depardieu movie on France2 tonight or we can watch Sacre Soirée.”

When Anne-Marie added a plant to his tank, he started playing peek-a-boo with her. She always felt he won, but she wasn’t sure of the rules. Maybe he cheated.

 *

“You need to get out more,” her mother said on one weekly visit. At work, Anne-Marie’s female colleagues complained their mothers would visit and straighten things. Anne-Marie’s mother always left a mess.

“It’s not healthy only working and living with a fish. There’s a new artist your father met and…” her mother said.

“Mother.” Anne-Marie’s tone said the last thing she needed was another artist in her life.

“My mother actually tried to play matchmaker,” she complained to her colleague Elisabeth.

“Mothers are like that,” Elisabeth said.

Anne-Marie invited Elisabeth to dinner. On the Metro, she told her about Junior.

After dinner, Anne-Marie waited for Junior to tap. Nothing happened. After Elisabeth left she flicked her wrist dropping his food in the water. Junior tapped and circled.

“Brat.” Anne Marie turned out the light and went to bed.

 *

Anne-Marie’s parents came to dinner the third Thursday of each month. In July, the fourth year after Jean-Claude died, Anne-Marie served rabbit in wine sauce and potatoes seasoned with sage. Her parents had given up complaining how the flowers, tablecloth and china all matched.

Before they ate, Anne-Marie moved the yellow roses, which she’d bought in Motte-Piquet Metro station, from the center of the table to the mantle. The reflection in the mirror doubled the the bouquet.

“C’est bon.” Her father kissed his fingertips then wiped the last bit of sauce from his plated with bread. “You’re an angel of a cook.”

Anne-Marie blushed.

Her parents were dressed in their usual paint-splattered jeans and sweatshirts. Her mother’s hair, salt and pepper wild curls, hid most of her back.

Her father was now egg-shell bald.

As he raged against the Paris mayor, her mother arranged cheeses: brebis, Roquefort, chevre and a gouda cumin with her father’s uncorked burgundy. Each person broke of a portion of breads, which less than four hours before had been in a baker’s oven. A sampling of cheese, a bit of bread, a sip of wine fueled a communion cleansing.

“I’ll never understand you,” her father said. Junior paced up and down the side of his latest enlarged tank.

“You don’t have to Papa. Think of me as a black and white minimalist. For the first time, she felt at ease with her parents.

Her mother smiled at her daughter. “That’s almost poetic.”

Junior tapped twice.

After her parents left, Anne-Marie found a Bach Sonata on YouTube.

Before going to bed, she said her rosary. In the middle of the night, she woke and decided to go on retreat at St. Hilaire Abbey in Limoux. Junior would just have to do his antics for the couple upstairs.

 *

The cot with crucifix on the opposite wall, the rough dress and scarf holding back her hair, the sisters walking without speaking, the silence broken only by birds and footsteps were all as Anne-Marie had imagined. The quiet let mind careen between childhood memories and programming problems rather than the prayers she was supposed to be concentrating on.

After lunch on the seventh day of her two-week stay, she slipped into the gray-stone chapel. It was narrow and buttressed in a medieval style. Despite the heat outside, the stones felt cold on her knees.

She began her rosary. Halfway through the third Ave Maria, she looked up. Two plastic round lights hung from the ceiling. So out of place.

The next day, she left the convent, bought a bottle of local white wine for her parents and another to thank Junior’s fish sitters.

Check out www.dlnelsonwriter.com.

The bridal shower

 

My father and stepmom said my cousins, aunt and uncle were going with us to Blimstrub's nightclub in Boston. I was excited. I'd always wanted to go.

I was living with my father and stepmom while waiting to join my bridegroom in Germany where he was in the 77th Army band.

I was just getting to know my father and stepmom. Because of my parents' divorce my father had not been apart of my life. Only when my mother tried to prevent my marriage did we reestablish a relationship.

My father explained on how Saturdays he made a big breakfast and the whole family cleaned the house. He also was making food, for a neighbor's party he said. He said neighbors helped each other out. A neighbor "returned" a 32-cup coffee pot. 

I was introduced to my aunt, uncle and two cousins, whom I'd not seen since I was in Kindergarten. I do remember picking blueberries with Marilyn, who announced that she needed to take a bath and preceded to set up for a lengthy stay in the bathroom. My aunt knocked on the door more than once, saying we should be leaving for Boston.

Then the doorbell started ringing, and suddenly aunts, uncles and more cousins filled the house --  people I'd never met. My father came from a big family who did lots of things together.

Marilyn had been marking time until there were more arrivals.

They had come to meet me via a bridal shower.

A ship to represent the U.S.S. America, on which I was scheduled to sail the following week, was covered with envelopes. All had congratulation cards and money.

For me, the money was a fortune.

In a way it was embarrassing. I would say "Thanks Butch and Agnes" and look around hoping I could identify them. The cousins gave smaller gifts. Later I realized I had missed lots of adventures with them as we grew as they tried to catch me up of 17 years of missed family life.

My mother had always called my father's family ignorant foreigners. The had moved to the states before the depression from Nova Scotia,. They had lived the American dream and made life even better for the next generation. I only wish I had captured their stories while they were still alive.

They were loving, funny, practical, and so many other positive things and they treated me as if I'd been with them throughout my life. By the night's end, I had names and faces together. I was swept into the warm relationships that I had missed. This was as as good if not a better than the money.

The neighbor's coffee maker was used. The food my father had prepared for the "neighbor" was eaten.  

I never did get to Blimstrub's. It burned down while I was in Germany and that's okay.