Women

 I don't consider myself a poet, at best I'm a po... However, I've written a few poems in my life that have been published and this is one. Most of the women are gone now, but they will always live within me and have helped me be a better me.

THE WOMEN IN MY LIFE

 

Llara

My daughter is thirty. I tell people

we’ve had twenty-eight wonderful years.

Five and thirteen are best forgotten.

She was always independent,

insisting

on making her own decisions

which were almost always right

and certainly as good as mine.

She is nothing like me.

I am neat,

needing things in neurotic order.

She marks her territory

scattering her possessions

wherever she goes.

She is good at math

and can put furniture together.

I am good at words and

can put furniture together, but wrong

so she fixes it.

We lived in a small flat for nine months

agreeing our relationship

was more important than neat or messy,

making a lie of the saying that two women

can’t get along under the same roof.

 

Susan

She knows if I am well

By the way I walk through a room.

Maybe

because we walked in each other’s souls.

She saved my daughter’s life

and thus saved mine.

When we had a rough patch

I thought she was reading my journal

so I wrote in green ink.

“Susan I know you’re reading this.”

In blue ink, the next day I found

“No, I’m not. Just keep writing.”

A problem with old friends

is that they don’t let you fool yourself.

Each year we go on retreat,

one year in Argelès-sur-mer,

the next in Ocean Grove,

walk on the beach,

eat fresh corn

lick ice cream cones

listen to music

rent movies,

read to each other,

play Scrabble,

talk about men, my writing,

her teaching, women’s studies,

politics, history and art.

Freed from chores

it is a renewal of

all that is good

In our lives.

 

Mardy

A boy with beautiful blue eyes

dated Mardy and me at the same time.

At sixteen we decided

we liked each other better than him.

Tied by a telephone cord for hours

we told our dreams.

 

When I was getting divorced,

Mardy held the glue pot

as I pieced myself together.

When we walked in the woods

behind her parents’ Maine cabin,

we tasted wild blackberries

as we spoke of nightmares.

 

And now that we are happy,

she tells me that we are not just

foul-weather friends.

 

Norma

My father fell in love with my stepmom

when they were both married to other people.

She whirled across the dance floor

in a white gown embroidered with violets

and into his arms.

They never had her children

and his children.

       “We have our children,”

she always said in a tone

that let everyone know

there was no alternative.

 

When she visits,

we play cards.

She wipes me out

no dainty widow lady she.

We go to restaurants, laugh a lot,

share memories of my Dad

and build new ones of our own.

 

Lillian

They met in secretarial school

Lillian and my mother,

agreed on nothing for sixty years

stayed friends and fought

over every issue.

At eighty, Lillian

picketed the British consulate,

marched for pro-choice,

and told of a man in an

Irish pub who raved about her hair.

He suggested they sleep together.

“Did you?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“I was wearing a wig.

I didn’t want him to know.”

“And if you weren’t?”

She just smiled.

 

Dar

No one, least of all me, knows why

I called my grandmother Dar,

but soon the world followed,

Even her friends from childhood.

She never minded being

renamed in her fifties.

When she baked a cake,

she used all the batter,

but gave me the spoon to lick.

She read me the Bobbsey Twins and

made mudpies

that looked good enough to eat.

A high school dropout,

she prodded me through algebra,

tested my Latin verbs,

knew more history

than the substitute teacher.

Despite her thick glasses,

she told me I was beautiful.

She was a New England Yankee,

Right was right,

Wrong was wrong.

When she had eye surgery,

she didn’t tell the doctor

the anesthesia hadn’t worked,

thinking it should hurt.

When she lost two children,

she bore that hurt too.

Dar saw five wars,

Lillian only four.

Norma was a WAVE

in World War II

while Mardy, Susan and I

can touch names

on a long black wall in D.C.

Names of boys we played with

and will play no more.

Llara?

She knows war as a media event

As men with mikes talk on CNN.

These women’s lives span

the invention of electricity to e-mail.

Dar abandoned her horse and buggy,

was called The Woman with the Ford,

while the rest of us jump on planes

to change continents on whim.

 

No Stantons,

Steinems,

Sangers or

Curies

in this group.

They march through history

not make it.

No one will write books,

sing songs,

make movies

or sculpt statues for public places,

honoring their lives.

They honor themselves.

 

Looking Back at Telephones

 

Dorothy Sargent Boudreau, my mother born 1917, never followed convention unless she wanted to.

Over the lifetime she had many careers when women didn't, including a cottage industry doll making, selling women's fashions on a party plan and finally as a journalist. Even after retirement, she wrote a weekly column about being over 60 and the changes she'd seen, a combination of nostalgia, amazement and sometimes fun.

Here is a column she wrote in 1968 about changes in telephones over her life.

There had never been any reason for me to call anyone in Europe, and I expected this call to my granddaughter in Munich might be fraught with complexities and delays.

Not so! I dialed 13 digits and ZIP, she could have been standing next to me, so clear was the connection. No operator involved -- just high technology in good order.

Llara, in Germany for a school year, was homesick her mother had told me, and my grandmotherly-heart strings zinged.

Call her. Call her right now, I said to myself. I had the number but then the time differential struck me. It was three in the afternoon here, but what time would it be there? I called my daughter right back.

"It's nine o'clock there and a good time to call," she said. And I I did just that immediately. It seemed like seconds when Llara was on the other end of the line.

"I'm homesick," she said in a voice obviously bordering on tears, a voice that returned to normalcy by the end of the overseas chat. 

While amazed that no operator has intervened in the Munich call, I thought back to the days when they said, "Number please," "That line is busy" and sometimes "That line is out of order."

You gave the town or city you were calling followed by four digits and a letter (M and J come to mind if a party line was involved.)

Instruments that bear little resemblance to today's phones. There were two parts to hold, one to speak into and the receiver to hold close to the ear.  Awkward then, archaic now. But sometimes contact with local operators was helpful indeed.

Never will I forget the night I stuttered into the phone trying to get a doctor for my stricken father. Not one, but three local physicians converged in the driveway having been alerted by the operator.

It wasn't only emergencies that the local exchange assisted. I remember at an early age and in my mother's absence asking an operator how to scramble eggs. She told me.

Back to the present.

While I marvel at being able to have crystal clear chats with Llara thousands of miles away, I dread to think of my bill when this globetrotting granddaughter goes to school in Australia two years from now.

I would love to know what my mother would think of mobile phones, aps, the internet. I suspect she would embrace them, especially the internet where she could easily locate information. I know she would love being able to call Llara anywhere in the world without needing a second mortgage to pay for it. And she could look up the recipe for scrambled eggs without asking anyone.

Dorothy Sargent Boudreau

 

 

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse, Another Mantra

 

When most Republican people are being interviewed, I love to time how long it takes to say "waste, fraud, and abuse" usually followed by a version of "Biden did it." They are masters at answering questions that weren't asked and ignore those that were. Right now it is the "Waste, Fraud and Abuse" that's the in phrase along with blaming Biden somewhere in the conversation. 

 A sample:

Interviewer: Welcome Senator. Let's get right to it. What do you think the tariffs are doing to relations with our allies?

Senator: Blah, blah, waste, fraud, abuse, blah blah, Biden did it. They've been cheating us for years.

Interviewer: Do you think the tariffs are hurting local business?

Senator: Blah, blah, waste, fraud, abuse, blah blah, Biden did it.

Interviewer: The President is flipping on the amount of tariffs. They percentages go up and down and up and down. What does that do prices here at home? 

Senator: Blah, blah, waste,fraud, abuse, blah blah, Biden did it. They've been cheating us for years.

On and on and on. It doesn't matter who is being interviewed or what the questions are, the pet phrases are the same.

I wish the interviewer would come back with "That's not what I asked" and repeat the question or "Interesting, what is the evidence?"  

It gets depressing to watch the same blah blah over and over. Maybe I'll switch to a Netflix movie. At least those movies are more believable then some of the BS being spewed.

Note: Check out https://dlnelsonwriter.com to see D-L 18 books. 

My Creation

 

 I was created when my Dad came home for lunch.

According to my mother, there must have been a defect in the condom, and she must have not put the diaphragm in correctly while being mistaken with the date for a safe lunch-time treat.

Despite the obstacles there had to be one brave little feller that swam up to a welcoming egg.

As a much-loved child despite the attempts to stop my existence, I was mostly obedient. Obedient or not, part of me always had questions always wondering why. So many things I was told didn't seem right like that whole McCarthy thingie, what was so important about always being ladylike, and what's wrong with only eating egg whites and not the yolks? Why couldn't women be doctors? Why did women always have the station wagon and the men the good cars, although you couldn't eat ice cream in the good cars? Did you really have to cut your hair when you had children? Did washers and dryers come in any other colors than boring white?

One of my Dad's favorite saying was, "Show me, I'm from Missouri," even if he never set foot in that state. My grandfather, whom I called Puppy, sought the story behind the story. He is said to have said that the steel the U.S. sold to Japan prior to WWII would come back as weapons. 

It must have been their genes that were contained in that little feller looking for an egg. At the same time the genes in that egg had to be a reflection of my mother, who didn't follow convention if she didn't want to. She worked because she wanted to  - running first a cottage-industry cloth doll manufacturing business and later a clothing business where she sold fashions on a house-party plan.

I had dreamed of traveling the world not settling in my hometown. I dreamed of writing? I dreamed of books? I dreamed of not living the same life of people I grew up with even if they were nice.

It only became a reality in my 40s. I suspect that I'm one of the few graduates of Reading Memorial High School that permanently left my country, took up Swiss and Canadian nationality and gave up my American citizenship because of the draconian FATCA laws. I made a choice between my birth country and a bank account.

Did the egg that long ago day when my Dad came home for lunch, encourage that sperm? Did the stubbornness of that sperm make me stubborn, sending over 800+ CVs to find a job in Europeand mailing my first novel over and over despite the 40+ rejections? 

Now in the later part of my life, I realize, that the stubborn sperm and the come-hither egg created me probably part inheritance and part environment.  I never asked if my mother made lunch that day and if so, what did she make.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

Free Write In the words of Don Quioxte

 

Today's prompt was a quote: "Too much sanity may be madness" from Don Quixote. We wrote for ten minutes.

Rick's Free Write

It seems half the world has gone mad, both anger and insanity. Drunk with power and no apparent guardrails. And it’s driving the rest of us up the proverbial wall.

How can it be sane to bomb and starve people, non-combatants, mothers and children? How can it be sane to strip families and the elderly of vital medical support, then hand the ‘savings’ to billionaires who waste it by blowing up rocket ships? How can it be sane to detain and deport 2-year-olds undergoing cancer treatment?

Madness indeed.

Thank the lethal combination of ideology, racism and cowardice.

Don Quixote was on a futile quest, myopically battling inert windmills which he thought were the enemy. But he was harmless, except to himself. The zealots of today are a danger to everyone, both those they target for retribution and those in the blast zone.

We want to believe their phase will pass and the modern day Stalins and Hitlers will be relegated to the history books they try to burn. Let’s hope it happens sooner, rather than later, before we all driven sane beyond measure.

Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the top stories about the airline industry. He is the author of The Robot in the Simulator. AI in Aviation Training.  

D-L'S Free Write

Lia slammed her laptop shut.

Shit. So near and yet so far.

The end of her dissertation, the last period. She saw herself in her crimson robe. She saw the letters D and R in front of her name.

 Dr. Lia O'Malley

All she needed to do was to hit send to her advisor. That she could defend her thesis about Don Quixote, she had no doubt. Her research had taken her to Spain. She'd walked where the character had walked.

Was it worth it? Forcing herself into following all those rules of years and years while a little voice told her to do things differently

She'd tried to break out of the academic mold once by writing a shrink-type analysis of the poem "My Last Duchess." Oh, how she had felt for that woman. She'd received an F and was admonished to never do anything like that again.

How many stupid rules had she followed since kindergarten like not breaking out of line to pick sunshine-yellow flowers?

When she had her doctorate would she be able to leave the sane world rules behind and give in to her real mad self?

Yes? No? Maybe?

She hit send.

D-L is the author of 15 fiction and three non fiction books. Check out her website at: https://dlnelsonwriter.com Her 300 Unsung Women, bios of women who battled gender limitations, can be purchased  at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/300-unsung-women-d-l-nelson/1147305797?ean=9798990385504

Julia's Free Write

How many seconds are there in a lifetime?

How many minutes in one of our years of that same lifetime?

How many hours of joy, of pain, of sorrow, of boredom?

How many days of help to others, of others help to us?

How many weeks of labor, of pleasure, of relaxation, of stress?

How many years of being helped, how many years of helping?

A lifetime: how to measure it? How to account for it?

Who or what judges us in the end?

Our family, our friends, our community?

Perhaps we are our most important – or not – judges.

What brought on these reflections this particular morning?

A simple quote from Don Quixote : "Too much sanity may be madness”

Dealing with that subject has made me realize that sometimes we are all a bit mad! to tackle this quote for one!

 Julia has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fighting Gender Barriers

 The quote by Simone de Beauvoir, says it all. 

I wrote 300 Unsung Women to shine a light on women who fought against the gender barriers accomplishing as much or more than their male counterparts with or without recognition.

Originally, I thought I would do a calendar on the birth date of each woman, but then I found I had up to nine women for some dates and nothing for another. It was then I decided to feature 300 women. 

In the book, women made a difference in over 60 areas of life dominated by men. Many of the women worked in more than one area.

So many women friends, who supported my project, offered me names. 

The hardest part was condensing my research into 200 words or less and still capturing the essence of the woman. 

Here's a sample of the women you could meet in the pages and part of their bios: 

• Dorothy Irene Height was accepted at Barnard but not allowed to enroll. They already had their two-negro quota. She earned two degrees elsewhere. Although she helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, she wasn't invited to speak.
• Gabrielle Maria Petit served as a spy against the Germans for the British in WWII. She acted as underground mail service until she was caught and shot.
• Henrietta Leavitt was one of the women that "worked cheaper " than a man to count stars for astronomer Edward Pickering, The morality of women working at all was questioned. 
• Another astronomer Vera Cooper Rubin wasn't allowed to present a paper at American Astronomical Society when pregnant. She did some ground breaking research on dark matter, but was refused positions because she was a woman.
• Mary Ann Camberton Shadd Cary was the first black woman publisher in North America.
• Grace O'Malley was a pirate in Ireland. She met with Queen Elizabeth 1.

A woman was the founder of forensic science. Others were archivists. Women inventors of things like windshield wipers and dishwashers received neither credit nor money for their inventions.  

Some of the women were discouraged from anything but the womanly arts. One family locked a library so the girl couldn't read. 

Many, who were successful, had fathers who encouraged learning. One father, who encouraged his daughter, was happy she found work but would not let her take a salary. For those with supportive fathers, it was easier, but for those that were discouraged, they merely fought harder to do what they felt they had to do.

300 Unsung Women is available at Blackwell https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/300-Unsung-Women-by-D-L-Nelson/9798990385504 in the UK and in North America Barnes and Noble www.barnesandnoble.com/ 

Visit https://dlnelsonwriter.com to see D-L other publications.