Fire and Ice

This poem was written in December of 2007, at the end of a year in which I had slipped several times on ice and injured myself, my house caught on fire and my mother had a massive stroke.
I recently re-discovered this poem on my computer.


Fire and Ice

To live is to be vulnerable.
I'm afraid of the ice.
I'm afraid of getting hurt.
I'm afraid.
My mother, once so strong and fearless, a lioness, a bitch,
lies wounded, helpless.
Frail, broken, she cries out
in desperation;
her sorrow shakes me
like a rag.
I huddle in bed, wrung out, hiding, slipping into deranged dreams. I wake
strung out on fear.
I am stripped of pretense, I am unclad.
The fire marked me first. I am a public property, a walking
receptacle for compassion, empathy, pity,
kind words.
I am filled to the brim
with good deeds;
I stagger under their weight.
I am unmasked.
I am humbled.
I am excruciatingly aware.
My mother's stroke felled me.
I scrabble for purchase.
The ice is so slippery,
and so hard;
and I am so vulnerable, wide-eyed,
afraid.

12/02/07

Not Fun in the Summertime

It has not been a fun summer for us. In addition to the usual whams and knocks that life flings at us, incompetence and not paying attention to details have come back to bite us in the butt.

My father has lung cancer. He is 90 years old and we know, we know, that people don't live forever, but still. He is going through treatment, because he is in otherwise excellent health (and looks and behaves like a man 20 years younger). But treatment for cancer can thoroughly destroy what health a person has left, and treatment for cancer has all but killed my mother, so we are cynical and bitter about this development.

We received a notice from the IRS stating that we made a mistake (I made a mistake) on our 2007 tax return and we have to pay back $1,090. I used the refund from my 2007 taxes to pay my 2007 property taxes. It's been a long time since I had more than $300 in the bank for more than 24 hours.
My paycheck comes in, my paycheck goes out. We will have to beg relatives for help.

Our fire damaged house is still not ready for us. I was so hoping that we would be able to move back into it and put our current dwelling up for sale, so we could get that time, energy and financial burden off our backs. But repair work moves slowly, so we have to scrape up (actually borrow from a relative) enough money to pay the property taxes on both houses.

We made the awful decision to put our beloved but psychologically damaged dog to sleep. Our heartbreak is complete, we miss him everyday and I live with almost constant regret.

Today we received a notice from the City of Grinnell that we are in violation of city code, that our property at our fire damaged house needs to be cleaned up. The yard is full of overgrown bushes and weeds and junk and a construction debris pile. Well, the house is under construction, and there have been piles of construction debris there off and on for about 9 months. They get piled up, they get removed, they get piled up, they get removed. And the yard, well we mow it every week and try to keep the brush chopped down, but Iowa in the summer is a jungle, and taking care of more than one yard and working full time, and taking care of family needs...well we let some things go.

The second notice stated that the car in our driveway hasn't moved in 30 days. I was surprised by this notice - I didn't know it was against city ordinances to have your own car parked in your own driveway, so that letter was quite a surprise. The car does need a new clutch, and my husband has been putting it off because this particular make and model requires a major amount of disassembly to install a new clutch. But still - citizens are required to drive their own cars at least once every 30 days or they're in violation of code?? Come on!

Okay, so those aren't insurmountable problems - we can deal with those. What bugs me is that those notices didn't come out of thin air - there are brushy weedy yards and cars sitting in driveways all over town and the city doesn't take action unless someone calls them to complain. This would be one of my fine, friendly Iowa neighbors and I am pretty sure I know who he is. Like last year and the year before, when my current neighbor called the police to complain about my dogs barking at him (this is the neighbor whose small and very cute daschund yaps continuously at my dogs), I don't understand why this other neighbor didn't approach us before he called the authorities. With the dog issue, that neighbor didn't know us, so maybe he feared a confrontation, though I doubt it. But the yard issue -- we lived in that neighborhood for 15 years and know all our neighbors there, they know us, they know we are friendly and polite and reasonable. They also know that our circumstances since the fire in our house have been less than great, and some of them have gone out of their way to help us. They also know that a church group has been working on the house and that construction debris will be there temporarily until the construction is finished.
So I don't get it. If my neighbor had come to me and said, "Look, your yard is really overgrown, it's bad for the neighborhood, could you please tidy it up?" I would have been mortified. I would have said, "what would you like me to get rid of first?" and then proceeded to take care of the problems immediately. I am sloppy and lazy, but I am not belligerent.

A simple plea: If you have a problem with your neighbor, go to your neighbor first and politely explain your problem. Be civil, be willing to listen to your neighbor, maybe there's a good reason for the situation that you find objectionable. Be willing to help your neighbor out, be willing to compromise. Most of the time you will be able to come to an agreement with your neighbor. If you find your neighbor to be surly, unreasonable or hostile, then call the authorities.

For a dancer

I dreamed about Jeff again last night. It's been a long time since I dreamed about him.

Jeff Sevcik was my first friend at college, San Francisco State University, in 1973. Tall, slender and graceful, with strawberry blond hair and a wide smile, he was friendly and charming and funny and charismatic. We went together to an orientation dance at the dining center, and he was all over that dance floor, long legs leaping, arms slicing through the air - me laughing with joy.

Jeff was a writer, a poet, an artist, a dancer. He was the most alive person I've ever known.
He signed up for piano classes, he'd never played before. I remember sitting with him in the tiny practice room in the basement of my dormitory. His 6 foot 4 frame crouched over a piano while he practiced his scales and smiled and laughed - "I'm playing piano, Bren!"

Jeff had come from McKee's Rocks, Pennsylvania, and he loved San Francisco, loved California. He learned his way around The City and then showed me his favorite places: Sam Woh's restaurant, the backstreets of Chinatown, North Beach. We rode a bus home at midnight, and Jeff entertained me with spot-on impressions of Joan Rivers, whom he resembled a little bit. I nearly wet my pants from laughing so hard.

One night out walking, he told me, he saw a dog scampering on the sidewalk in front of him.
"What a cute little dog," he thought. And then he realized it wasn't a dog. It was a rat. He raised his hands to show me how big, and started laughing, "I almost petted it!"

We rode across the Bay Bridge on a bus with a band of happy friends, bedecked in bright colors and dusted with fine glitter, to Berkeley to see Bette Midler in concert. Years later I was still finding sparkling dust on my skin and in my hair, and every glimmer reminded me of that magical night.

Alone in his dorm room, we listened to his records together, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Laura Nyro. One night we slow-danced together, tender and serious, gazing into each other's eyes. I felt like I was falling in love, but I knew it couldn't be the same for him. Even so, it was romantic and dear and intimate and sweet.

Over Christmas break he sent me a letter, typed as always: "I'm getting tired of tacos and gatorade, bren, what then?" That was all, one line, pure Jeff Sevcik, a private goofy message.
It made me smile.

The last time I saw Jeff, he said, "I won't say goodbye, because I know we'll see other again."
We both smiled, and knew it sounded corny, but felt sure it was true. I never saw him again.

In 1986 Jeff died of Kaposi's sarcoma/AIDS. He was 31 years old.

I began having dreams. Looking out my window, I would see him striding up my sidewalk with those long legs, waving his hand and grinning. When I rushed to open the front door, no one was there. The dreams stopped a few years ago.

And then last night, another dream. In an apartment in San Francisco I receive a letter with one typed line: "been trying to find you, i'm still here." My heart races. It's Jeff, I know it, he's still alive. I search, I keep losing things, losing clues, worrying, frantic, distracted, I have to find Jeff, where is he? Where is he?

One of the songs that Jeff and I listened to obsessively was "For a Dancer," by Jackson Browne.

I don't remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must have thought you'd always be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you're nowhere to be found

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
I can't help listening
And I can't help feeling stupid standing round
Crying as they ease you down
cause I know that you'd rather we were dancing
Dancing our sorrow away

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

I miss you Jeff.

God's Plan for You

Yesterday I saw a book with the title, "God's Plan For You". The author, judging from appearances, is a middle-aged, upper middle class, American white woman with big blonde hair and plenty of make-up and expensive clothes.

Not that any of that means anything - none of those characteristics is essentially wrong or bad or evil.

Still, it begs the question. How well off, well fed, safe, and free does a person need to be before he or she asks the question, "What is God's plan for me?"

Because I'm wondering, what is God's plan for that teenage girl in Pakistan who just got flogged by the Taliban? (And what is it with the Taliban - grown men beating up little girls????)

What is God's plan for the young Somali girl who is brutalized by ritual genital mutilation and then given in marriage to an old man?

What is God's plan for the children in India who are dying of starvation? Does God have a plan for each of them, the way he apparently has for well-nourished Americans?


Well, I could keep ranting, but you get the picture. In fact, I do think God has a plan for me, and for you, and for each of us. He told us so himself quite a long time ago, and somebody collected the details and put them in a book.

Feed the hungry.
Shelter the homeless.
Comfort the lonely.
Care for the sick.
Clothe the naked.
Be kind.
Be humble.
Have mercy.
Love one another.

24 - my way

I ordered an item from Amazon and forgot to check the shipping address. So the item sat around at the wrong address for five days while we fumed and fussed and wondered where it was.

I wanted to use a particular flannel board set for a storytime, but the set was not in the file, and I have not been able to find it.

Two patrons asked me for 1040 tax forms - but the government hasn't sent them yet, so I had to charge these people for copies I printed for them from the website.

I had to deliver Monday newspapers on Wednesday to two customers because we failed to leave papers at those addresses on Monday.

A group of pubescent boys ran around the library shrieking and hallooing and when I told them to settle down, they mocked me. They did not settle down.

We opened up a jar of newly purchased jam to find mold on the top.

I drove my van into the snow in my driveway and it stuck. I had to walk to work in the cold and I was late.

The Obama Gap

I don't know if this is a generational gap, a cultural gap, or a regional gap, but each of my parents has their own unique take on Barack Obama.

My father, a white, 90 year old career Marine, veteran of 3 wars, born and raised in Jacksonville Florida, and a lifelong Democrat could not bring himself to vote for Obama. "Look at all those countries in Africa," he pointed out, "What chaos, what a mess. Blacks can't govern."

Since the election, my father has said, "So, all the Blacks are happy about Obama being elected. I hope they remember that he is also half-white."

I don't discuss politics with my father anymore. I mean, what do you say? How can you respond (politely and respectfully to one's father) to those two ideas?


My mother, a white, 80 year old career woman, raised in abject poverty, the daughter of a sharecropper in Depression era East Texas, and a life long Democrat watched the inaugural balls with interest. "Did you see Mrs. Obama's dress?" she asked me. "It wasn't pretty. Plain old white thing. She's a beautiful woman, she should have lots of sequins and sparkles. And did you see them dance? They can't dance. But maybe they dance differently in Africa."

I covered the phone so I could laugh.

How cold is it?

It is so cold in Iowa today that when we scoop up the poop freshly deposited by our dog, we cradle the bag full of steaming dog poop in our hands to warm them up.

sinking into the hole of my own errors....

I have that nagging feeling again, what my daughter, Mary, calls "vuja de" : the sense that one is doing it wrong all over again.

Ditto for January 7.