Stories

The Unraveling from Hotel Oblivion — collection of short stories (2011) “Dreams are like water…colourless, dangerous” Prologue: Every now and then, things unravel. Your world turns topsy-turvy. The forces that hold objects in place turn liquid then evaporate. Laws of gravity are suspended and objects dislodge themselves all around you and spiral out of control, crashing into walls and disintegrating into a billion pieces. You hold the broken pieces in your hands and realize that they will never fit together the same again. This is the unraveling.

***

He was a man who always fancied greener pastures, inclined to reinventing himself from time to time. What he lacked in stability, he more than made up for in imagination. He dreamed of dancing in the rain and jumping out of airplanes with new lovers. If nothing else, his close friends found him entertaining — mostly laughing alongside him (and not at him).

He came to look at his life in segments, categorized by the woman with whom he was in love or coast upon which he happened to reside. He was Don Quixote chasing windmills. He still thought the secrets of the moon could be revealed in the deep, dark eyes of his lover.

A contradiction, he vacillated between being deeply responsible and wildly erratic. His coffee pot was pre-programmed to begin its brewing at precisely 6 AM each morning. After it finished brewing, a faint beep and a hint of Hazelnut would waft upstairs and into his unconsciousness and serve as a reliable wake-up call. Just before bed each evening, he carefully measured out six scoops of coffee beans which he ground furiously. He then poured exactly 12 ounces of cool water into the pot…

There was something oddly gratifying about this ritual and something oddly peaceful in the

violence of grinding the beans to smithereens… And such was his routine each evening year after year after year. In between the first sip of coffee in the morning and the grinding of the beans in the evening, however, all bets were off as to how the day would unfold, a fact both disconcerting and compelling to him. Just when you thought you had him all figured out…there he’d go… jumping in the swimming pool with his clothes on and you’d be left shrugging your shoulders and scratching your head.

A deeply introspective man, he worked hard to not take himself too seriously. He appreciated shock value and figured people were going to be talking about someone… it might as well be him. But, he’d grown impatient and suspicious. He came to think monogamy over-rated and marriage a contrived political institution. At once, a romantic and a cynic. What drew lovers to him eventually drove them away. The older he got, the more he experienced the world in shades of gray. But when he loved, he loved wholly. He would jump off tall buildings for the women he loved…an addict in love, he was. But when love was over, he was no good at pretending (otherwise he was a very good liar).

***

“Deep down,” he said, “You must know that I still love you.”

“Ultimately, love is what you do, not what you say,” she responded. “Love is not a theoretical construct. It’s a practical application. Love is an action verb.”

And for once, he was struck silent because he knew that she was right.

***

Love dies. That part wasn’t surprising. They both had been around the block enough to know that if you throw yourself off a cliff in love, you have equal chances of crashing on the rocky surface below as you do sprouting wings and soaring. They had done both.

What was surprising, however, was the rapid rate of disintegration. Previous loves decayed

from atrophy, they rotted from the inside out due to lack of oxygen and sunlight. It was different this time. One day, they woke up and simply didn’t recognize the person lying on the other side of the bed.

One day, he was her anchorage, her respite from all life’s uncertainties and disappointments. The next day, that’s exactly how she described him. *** She just wanted to be healed; he just wanted to be understood. In time, they failed each other in both regards.

In his eyes, her gashes were too deep, her reservoir too depleted to fill. He thought love could mend her, but it couldn’t. Not his love, anyway. She poured all of her misery into the marriage.

And for her, his walls were simply impenetrable. He shut her out and retreated into his own dark shadows and hidden alleyways.

Words and wounds and gashes and scars and ghosts and misery and skeletons and alleys and walls. ***

He always brought work to do on the plane. Reports to review, budgets to analyze. But he never did them. There was something about the hum of the engines and the otherworldliness of being 30,000 feet in the air that put him in a near trance-like state. He couldn’t work. He could only think.

He remembered, as a boy, thinking that once he was an adult, his life would be perfect. He would have the means to eradicate all imperfections. Money to fix all that was broken, power to exert his will, freedom to do as he pleased. Brave and daring and successful and charming and magnanimous he would be. He also thought it unfair that just as his wildest dreams would begin to be realized, old age would creep up his spine. Just as he was seeing the world in all its splendor, his eyes would start to fail him. It was a race against time.

But that was when he was a boy. It was different now. At fortysomething, he longed for someone to embrace his vulnerabilities… to look straight on at his imperfections and love him nevertheless. He was tired of pretending, tired of wearing masks. He needed to unravel.

And so it was, thinking deeply, as he gazed out the window, crossing the country, high above the twinkling lights of some city below, on the red eye to meet up with a girl (and that’s how he still thought of her, a girl) he hadn’t seen in 25 years, to rekindle the magic (perhaps) that was so long ago prematurely (in his mind, anyway) aborted.

He had considered driving. Three days at least, maybe four. Something so impractical would never have been considered a few months ago. But now he was free. To pick up whatever he wanted from the market without scrutiny, to buy a new tie without considering her opinion.

And to take a week off to drive across the country to meet up with an old friend.

There were many downsides to the marriage ending. Freedom was the upside. He intended to make the most of it. It would be an adventure. Rules: no Interstates, no chain restaurants or hotels, no major cities… he would only listen to local AM radio stations and would plan on (intentionally) getting lost at least once per day… and each day he would be well on his way by sunrise.

He had considered driving, but he decided to fly. If he drove, she would be reduced to just another item on the itinerary… “something” to do on day four. If he flew, he knew that she would be the itinerary. And with the purpose of the getaway in mind, flying seemed to be the right choice.

She would pick him up at the airport (no need for both of them to rent a car) and take him straight to the hotel she’d picked out for their rendezvous.

He was free to decide. He chose to fly.

He was relieved to be free. He also suspected that freedom would be his undoing.

***

He doodled on a yellow legal pad on the tray in front of him; he loved punctuation and grammar and was driven by a desire to reduce complicated concepts into tightly woven sentences. Once he dreamed of writing a great novel; now he just dreamed of writing the perfect sentence. He loved the feel of a freshly sharpened number two-lead wooden pencil between his fingers; he loved spiral-bound notebooks and yellow legal pads too. He had dozens stashed in drawers in his office, some with only a few pages written upon them. Once a page or two would get smudged or bent or corner torn, it just wasn’t the same; so he would get a new one.

The world outside his window was waking up. He saw puffs of white clouds slowly appear at dawn. He wrote: “Clouds are cheeks of angels” and tucked the notebook in the pouch in front of him.

He nodded off for a moment and woke up to thoughts of the woman he was to meet. He wondered if their reunion would be awkward. He thought of her soft lips and flowing black hair and deep, mysterious brown eyes.

He remembered their last kiss (maybe it was their only kiss…. some details were lost through the years) … a swimming pool on a very late summer night… they hop a fence to get in…. clothes are strewn… they swim and kiss… intoxicated by a passion that seems almost overwhelming… then a siren… blue and red flashing lights… they hold hands as they run… retrieving pieces of clothing as they go… finally safe in his car… they’re laughing hysterically. They hold onto each other tightly knowing full well that the light of day would put an end to the adventure and to them: her fiancée would be returning soon. She would move away with him. He would move on.

The plane landed with a jolt on the runway and as he stood in the line to disembark while passengers in front of him retrieved belongings from overhead bins, he changed his mind about the rental car. He had arrived earlier than expected and thought it would be nice to explore the city for a while before meeting her. He should stop by the corner market and pick up some sunflowers, which he thought he remembered were her favorites. He wouldn’t want to show up empty-handed. Maybe a bottle of wine would be a nice touch. He suspected that she would

prefer red over white.

But as he left the car rental agency in his perfectly clean mid-sized, maroon-colored sedan, his next move surprised even him.

***

It took four full days to get home. He meandered from small town to small town, avoiding Interstates and listening to local AM radio stations and making frequent stops along the way at roadside diners for coffee and small town conversation. By the third day, her voice mail messages on his cell phone were less frantic and less frequent. The first one: “Where are you? I’m worried. Call me.” The last one simply: “Screw you.”

And as he pulled the rental car into his garage and turned off the engine, he fumbled for the notepad inside his briefcase upon which he wrote: “What if is better than what is.” He then tucked the notepad back into his briefcase and headed inside to the kitchen where he furiously ground 6 scoops of Hazelnut coffee beans and added 12 cups of cool water into the pot and walked upstairs for bed, Maria Callas’ “Un ballo in maschera” blaring in his mind, each step along the way a new reminder of her and them and what was and further evidence that the pieces would never fit together the same again.

Clouds are not cheeks of angels, he thought as he walked. They’re just clouds.

The Woodland Phlox On a gray November morning in a town in the northernmost edge of New England, my daughter and I make our way to the station. She has a train to catch. We wait under a shelter made of cast iron and glass. The blustery rain skews sideways. Scarlet-coated transit workers walk up and down checking timetables and directing passengers.

“Do you have your ticket?” I ask, trying not to sound anxious.

“Yes,” she answers. Her black hair shines under the lights. Her eyes are large and they also shine.

“Do you have your phone? Did you remember to charge it?”

“Yes, I have it. It’s charged,” she answers calmly.

She holds her book bag tighter and turns to me.

“Dad,” she says, “I’ll be fine.”

I look at my daughter and I think of the woodland phlox, which likes sun to partial shade, soil moist but not too moist, and blossoms in late spring.

It was just last week that she announced: “I think I’ll live with Mom now.” I touched her cheek. I expected this day would come, but not now, not this soon. “Will you mind?” she asked. And, with that, plans were made for my only offspring -not quite a woman and not quite a child -to return to Georgia and the woman I once loved and she still does and to whom she bears such striking resemblance and to most of what she defines as normal — my grand experiment to head the botany department at a tiny college in Maine to escape the ghosts that walk the streets and

alleyways and canals of Thomas Square with my side-kick along for the ride, seeming less grand to me now.

A light touch on my arm brings me back to the moment.

“When will I get to where I’m going?” my daughter asks. My mind whirls. “I don’t know,” I say hesitantly. “How can anyone ever really know? You’ve already come so far, and I know your mom and I haven’t made things easy, and…”

The look on her face makes me understand that I have mistaken the point of her question. I backtrack quickly and do the math in my head again and considering the two-hour layover at Penn Station and the switching trains in Baltimore, I announce that she should make Savannah in a little more than 15 hours. I try to sound confident. I want her to believe I am.

The train we were waiting for pulls into the bay. My daughter tells me, “Goodbye, Daddy,” and “I’ll be fine,” and “Don’t worry.” She joins the line of passengers and enters the cabin and does not look back. In a matter of moments, the train has departed, southbound.

The rain pauses as it often does here this time of year, providing false hope to unsuspecting visitors. All around me people hurry along or wait patiently. Above the iron and glass ceiling of the station, seagulls struggle against a stiff gale. We are all on our way somewhere. Far above the heavy northern clouds, I know the sky is still blue, and the sun still warms some part of the world. A patch of yellow light winks down through the gloom, momentarily illuminating a direction sign. The rain begins again. It is time for me to go.

The cars of the Amtrak train are shiny and damp. Somewhere between here and the next town, my daughter rides one into her future. A little rain won’t make much difference to her now. With any luck, she’ll get there before midnight.

The woodland phlox has a deep, blue flower, grows 12–18 inches tall, and likes to be planted a foot apart.

All Kinds of Blue All I want is to remember her smell. That’s all. It’s her smell that I miss most. I can’t forget anything else, though. The labor pains, the nurse wiping my forehead with a damp cloth and calling me sweetie and reminding me to breathe. And then the doctor saying she saw her head peeking out. And then almost like magic, the sight of her wet, squirming, new body. But I can’t remember her smell. That smell from the next day. After her first bath. She had trouble feeding.

Didn’t want to take my milk. They’d give it a few times before giving up. The nurse said sweetie, that happens sometimes. But she knew it didn’t matter. So I tried to coax her. I directed her little mouth to my nipple, cooing to her: drink baby girl, you gotta drink to get strong and meet the world. And I’d put my lips on her hair and breathe in her freshly-washed smell. My baby’s smell. But it’s been too long since that time. And all I want is to remember her smell.

My daddy said it was for the best. She’d have a better chance with a family who could feed her, give her a good home, a proper upbringing. He said that when he and mama got married, they were out of high school. And he had a good job. That’s the way you’re supposed to do it, my daddy said. Finish school. Then get married. To a man with a good job. Why couldn’t you wait, mija? I never could answer my daddy. I was in love, though. That’s something. Right? That’s something, all right. No one can tell me different.

Greenie. That’s what Marco called me. Because when he first saw me sitting in Mr. Huggins’ biology class, I was wearing a green T-shirt and a green skirt. And it wasn’t even St. Patrick’s Day. So I was Greenie to Marco from then on.

Casey. That’s what I would have named her. There are no Caseys in my family. One of the reasons I like the name. And it’s a strong name, too. Because a girl needs to be strong. Right?

Stronger than a guy. That’s what I think. I wonder what they called her. Wouldn’t it be amazing like a movie if they named her Casey? And I used to think that one day we’d meet and I’d tell her I would’ve called her Casey, too. And she’d know we always had a connection. But I don’t think that anymore. No reason to.

Blue is what they call people who get sad. It’s weird, though. Blue makes me happy. And there are all kinds of blue. The sky in the morning. The sky in the afternoon. Marco’s eyes. How he got blue eyes no one ever figured out. Those eyes made me fall for him. A blue so clear they made you blink and wonder if they were contacts or something. But no. They were real. Blue like you’ve never seen. Blue that can’t be described. Blue that isn’t sad at all.

California became home for my family. Encinitas, Visalia, Benicia, Modesto, Chico. Up and down the state. Mama’s family came from Mexico and settled into Los Angeles about forty years ago.

But daddy’s family, when they crossed the border, they scattered. They’re the ones in those other places. He jokes that the Moreno blood must run in my veins because I’m not afraid to wander.

Nine cities in seven years. But I always call home. They always know where I am. I’m not running away. I’m just seeing California. That’s all.

This flight tonight to Phoenix wasn’t too expensive. Mama and Daddy helped me with it, anyway. I just couldn’t drive. Too tired. But I had to go. Wouldn’t you? I got the call last week.

They had tried my parents first. And then Daddy called me where I’m living now. Vallejo. He was gentle. With the news. I don’t know why they wanted me to know. Maybe they knew that I’ve been trying to remember what she smelled like. Maybe they knew I always thought of her. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. At least they called.

I look down from the plane and see only clouds. Mama is down there. Said she didn’t want me to have to go through this alone. And soon I’ll be near my baby. But she’s not a baby anymore.

She’s a girl. Or was. But at least I’ll be able to see her. And her parents. And I’ll be able to thank them for giving her a good home. That’s what I’ll say. Because it’s true. I’m sure.

The last time I saw Marco was at high school graduation. He didn’t come to my house for the party. But he came up to me right after the ceremony while I was trying to find my parents in the crowd. It was so hot and all I wanted to do was get out of the robe and stupid cap and drink something cold. But he came up to me and said happy graduation, Greenie. And I said, happy graduation. He touched my arm and gave me his blue eyes. Said he was leaving the next day.

For Oklahoma City. I said, there’s no Mexicans in Oklahoma City. He laughed and his eyes got bluer. I wonder if he’s still in Oklahoma City. I wish I could tell him, though. About my trip to Phoenix. To see my girl. Our girl. They told Daddy about it. About the pool gate opening when it shouldn’t have. How it happened during the party and no one noticed until hours later when people were beginning to leave. But it was a night party so it was kind of dark. And they told Daddy about how they tried to make her breathe again. But I know she had a good home. With lots of love. Lots of toys. Thank you, I’ll say. Thank you for taking care of my baby.

The Swimsuit Mama and I are in the dressing room at National’s trying on swimsuits. It’s the end of summer, and all the swimwear is 50 percent off. We won’t buy anything, because we have very little cash.

We just spent our last twenty dollars on a big plate of ribs and slaw at Bedford’s. But there’s no harm in looking, as they say.

“Oh, Darlene, look at this one!” she says as she stands in front of the full-length mirror in the ladies’ dressing room.

Mama is standing slightly on her tiptoes, and she is turning side-to-side, moving first one hip up, then the other. The cobalt blue swimsuit has a built-in underwire bra that enhances her cleavage.

Its color matches the deep blue shade of her eyes. Even if she is approaching 40, Mama still looks like a million bucks.

I do a little wolf whistle. “Too bad Bud isn’t with us,” I say. “He’d buy you that swimsuit and anything else you wanted if he saw you in it.”

Bud is the latest of my mother’s boyfriends. He owns the unfinished furniture store out on Highway 41. He is 60-ish, bald, has a paunch, and is about four inches shorter than Mama. He does, however, always have a wad of twenties in his pocket, and he is generous with them.

I try on my first swimsuit, a red two-piece — the kind that rides up your butt and leaves nothing to the imagination. I stand in front of the mirror. I look ridiculous. Each buttock pops out like a giant dimpled grapefruit. Mama looks at me and covers her mouth so she won’t laugh out loud.

My body looks nothing like my mother’s.

My chest is flat as a board, and my butt is out of proportion to the rest of my body.

Mama says it’s not as bad as I think, but I feel like I’m walking around with a giant pincushion

for an ass. My face is as plain as day. No wonder nobody ever asks me out. I must look totally like my father’s side of the family. Even though I’ve never known my father, when I look in the mirror, I imagine the women on his side of the family, a grandmother or a few aunts, all with huge, cellulite-ridden backsides and plain as day faces.

“Thanks a lot!” I say to Mama, more than a little hurt.

She hands me another swimsuit, one that was just hanging on the back of one of the dressing room doors.

“Here, try this one,” she says. It’s one of those utilitarian, one-piece Speedo numbers, in black.

It’s probably a size 14. It’s ugly as hell.

“Mama, I swear, you treat me like a preacher’s wife sometimes,” I answer. The fun mood is broken, and I’m ready to leave.

I get dressed and snatch up all the swimsuits I was going to try on and head back out to the store. “I’m goin’ to look at shoes,” I shout to her on my way out. I want to go to the car, but I don’t have the keys, and it’s too hot to sit out there and wait for her. Mama can shop for hours, even when she’s broke.

I get mad about the way we live sometimes. We’ve never owned anything like a house or a car, always behind on payments. And we’ve lived boyfriend to boyfriend since I was born. My father abandoned us when I was a baby, so it’s always just been Mama and me. She has a mother and two sisters down near Montgomery, but she won’t have anything to do with them. She grew up dirt poor on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

“They’re just trash,” she says of her family. “If we had anything to do with them, they’d just try to steal the clothes off our backs.”

Mama’s a waitress, and she refuses to do anything else. I am always showing her the want ads in

the paper, hoping she’ll consider another more respectable line of work, maybe in a factory or grocery store.

“What am I going to do, go back to school at my age?” Mama asks. She left high school at 16. I tell her about the G.E.D., but she refuses that, too. “Forget it. I make more in tips than those secretaries make who come in here, and I don’t have to sit behind a desk all day.”

Most of Mama’s boyfriends have been married. Mama and I are pretty sure Bud is married. He won’t say, and Mama won’t ask. The telltale signs are there, though. He’s secretive about his personal life, and he won’t take Mama out anywhere respectable.

Mama and I speculate about why Bud is stepping out on his wife. Maybe she hates sex. She may be mean or crazy. Maybe he is unfaithful just because he wants the status of having a secret mistress.

Mama has hinted that Bud is not a good lover. He’s a true sugar daddy. I’m relieved about that.

Then she doesn’t have to worry about falling in love with him and getting her heart broken.

That’s happened a few times with other men, and when they broke up, it’s taken Mama months and months to get her nerve back to find someone else. Those were the times when we couldn’t pay the electric bill or had to eat restaurant leftovers for weeks on end.

The worst boyfriend Mama ever had was Randy. He was an engineer at the Air Force base who came in every day for lunch where Mama was working. You’d think with his fancy degree and his big job he’d have treated Mama better, but after a few months, he started slapping her around. He’d been drinking. He was mad at Mama for not returning his phone call earlier that day.

“You think you’re too busy to call me back?” he hollered at her, hitting her on the side of her head and then shoving her against the sink.

He called her a whore and a bitch. I was in the sixth grade, and those were big, bad words to me.

I was just starting to learn about boys. I hated Randy. I wanted him to die. I screamed, and Mama yelled at me to go to the neighbor’s. By the time the police got there, Randy was gone.

Mama was beaten up pretty bad. He gave her a concussion and broke her arm and some ribs, and she spent a couple of days in the hospital. We’re still paying off that hospital bill. Mama never would file charges against Randy because she was afraid he’d come after her — or me — again.

Mama felt real guilty about Randy. She cried a lot and told me she was sorry over and over. She made me sleep with her in her bed. After Randy, I wanted her to stop with the boyfriends and get married. That made her mad. “Do you really think any man is going to want to marry a broken-down waitress with a kid?” she asked.

Later, she sat me down and explained that we couldn’t afford to live without the boyfriends.

“Sugar, we’re stuck with this way of life unless we win the lottery,” she told me.

“But I promise you there will never be another one like Randy.”

She was true to her word. The next boyfriends were good to Mama. There was even one, Bill, who wasn’t married. We had cookouts and went camping and he taught me how to fish. Once, he even took us skiing in North Carolina. He seemed to really care about Mama, and he would do things like buy her flowers and take her out dancing. But Bill got transferred out west with his job. He called a few times after that, but we never saw him again.

Now we’ve got Bud. He’s not so bad, really. He treats Mama with respect. I hope he stays around awhile, because he’s helping put me through my freshman year of college. Bud gives Mama money and says, “Get yourself a little somethin’ for the apartment, darlin.” Sometimes it’s hundreds of dollars. Mama takes that money and puts it in the bank and that’s what we use to pay for my college. I have some scholarship money, but it doesn’t begin to pay for everything. I wonder why Bud never asks what we do with the money. Why there’s no new furniture. Why we are still using the same old beat-up vacuum cleaner.

In National’s, I notice Mama looking at lingerie while I’m trying on sandals in the shoe department. I know she is thinking how much Bud would like a sheer black peignoir she is holding up. Leave it to Mama to find the one risqué piece of sleepwear in the lingerie department. All I see over there are racks of terry bathrobes and polyester pajamas.

I approach her as she heads for the dressing room with the peignoir and another sheer nightgown slung over her shoulder. “Mama, I gotta go study,” I protest, trying to move her along.

“Just a minute, Sugar,” she says. “If one of these fits, I may just put it on layaway.”

I roll my eyes. Mama has put more merchandise on layaway and never retrieved it than anyone else on earth. It’s a total waste of time. Some months we barely have enough money to put gas in the car, and she’s got nightgowns and shoes and bras on layaway all over town.

Later, as we’re driving home, she says to me “Darlene, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings back there about the swimsuit,” she says. “It’s just …”

“I guess some things are best left to the imagination,” I finish her sentence for her.

“No, that’s not what I was going to say at all.” She turns the key in the ignition and starts the air conditioning. I can tell she’s getting ready to deliver her lecture, the one about her impoverished childhood. How she’s depended on her looks all her life to get where she is, and look where she is — nowhere. How she wants something better for me. I know it all by heart. I could lip-sync the words with her.

She will also say what a curse it is to be beautiful, and how I should thank my lucky stars that I have brains. Yeah, that’s some curse, being beautiful. What Mama doesn’t know is, if I was pretty, I’d date every good-looking guy I could get my hands on.

Being smart with no looks isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“Darlene, you know I never had anything growing up,” she starts in.

“Stop!” I yell at her. “I don’t want to hear this story anymore! I’m tired of it!”

I’ve never done that before. I’ve always just listened to the story and let the resentment build up in me like a fire, holding it in until I thought I would burst.

I cross my arms across my washboard chest and stare out the window. I feel tears welling up, but I refuse to cry. We pass the old airport landing strip. Hardly any planes land there anymore.

The asphalt is full of cracks from the drought and scraggly weeds are growing up through them.

I hate where we live. I hope we can move somewhere nicer when I get out of college.

Mama sighs and moves her head down so she can give me a cold stare over the top of her designer sunglasses. “You got it, Missy,” she says in a clipped voice. I can tell she is mad, because she hates it when I talk back to her.

We don’t speak much the rest of the day. That evening, I am sitting at the kitchen table with my books spread out, studying. Mama is at the sink, humming quietly, slowly washing dishes, one leg propped up on the inside of her other leg, balanced like a stork.

With her back to me, I watch her. She could be 12 years old, a girl washing dishes for her allowance. She has loosely braided her fine-textured brown hair, and the plait falls down between her narrow shoulders. She wears a faded, sleeveless shift, its floral pattern worn soft as an impressionist painting. Her arms seem very thin.

I am filled with longing and sadness, but for what, I don’t know. I go over and put my arms around her and she leans against me.

“Love you, baby,” she murmurs.

“Love you too,” I reply.

The next day, when I get home from class, there is a crimson swimsuit draped on the foot of my bed, the tags still on it. On top of the suit is a note from Mama: “For my beautiful girl.” How she afforded it, and how she delivered it during a busy shift at the restaurant, is beyond me.

It is a one-piece suit, expensive-looking and shiny, woven out of thousands of Spandex threads. I try it on, and it fits perfectly, like a second skin. When I model it in front of the mirror, turning this way and that, I decide that I look like a graceful diver. I hold my arms over my head in a perfect “V,” imagining that I’m plunging headfirst off the diving board into a sparkling pool. It is a perfect dive. I cleanly slice the water, my sleek, dark hair cascading down my back like rain.

A Halloween Story On a rainy night like this, I remember how the paint burst like blisters and oozed to the floor.

The bare walls pleaded but held on, waited to catch a glimpse of my back before the door shut behind me, and sealed their fate. Then the roof gave and I felt the gust of my house’s last breath and I didn’t need to turn around.

I knew what remained of the red door, the windows, the staircase, my bedroom — a pile of black and streams of gray rising high above it. I didn’t need to turn around to know what the sounds and the smells already told me. The house and the fire that destroyed it crackled and smoldered in the rain.

Under a different roof now, I listen and wonder when it will succumb to the beating water. A rainy night turned restless. What once lulled me to sleep, now awakens the pieces of me that I thought burned to ash.

I think now of how safe I once felt beneath shingles, between cuts of hewn wood jointed by flimsy bits of metal.

Surrounding my house was a forest: a thousand trees breathing, pulsing with the life of a million creatures all moving and slithering within it. I wonder now what kept them there for so long, what secret held them within the trees.

Before the burning, I can’t say that I ever thought of it. How the red door that I closed every night was thinner than the width of a woman’s back. How the key, a bit of metal small enough to place on my fingertip, made that door and everything behind it seem safe. And how peacefully I lived and slept behind it. Especially on rainy nights — nights that watered and expanded that forest inch by inch, brought it and all that it contained closer and closer while I rested. I never noticed how the space between it and my house was ever-shrinking.

It was on a night like this that brought the mystery of the forest to my doorstep, past my red door, up my staircase, and into my room.

If I were to describe it to you — the way it spread its breath over me while I lay, how it filled the air with its stink, how the floor barely creaked beneath its weight- you would understand why I had no choice but to burn it down.

This roof is no match for the rain, nor is the blanket wrapped tightly over my head, nor is the bone of my skull that binds my mind’s thoughts.

I listen as it beats a violent song into the metal, then parts it away like the unholiest water. This rain drenches my blanket, then drips into the fractures it’s made in the bone.

And there is my brain, memory-soaked, shivering, and exposed to the night.

I have not rested. What is left of the night belongs to the storm and the lone two stars visible between the clouds. A pair positioned perfectly in my line of vision. And there are its eyes floating above my own, burning inside of a body concealed by darkness.

There is nowhere to hide now. We are a set of eyes, staring into each other in a room pitch black as the night. I cannot see its body, but it has brought with it the foulness of the entire forest: the smell of things molding in the warm sludge of the newly-birthed, and the decomposing.

My Christmas Story “You know Santa Claus isn’t real, don’t you?” my older brother asked me, somewhat exasperated at my naiveté.

“Yes,” I replied matter-of-factly, with my eyes rolling slightly.

In actuality, it was the first time I’d even considered the possibility. Now, I just felt stupid. Like I was the oldest kid in the world who still believed in Santa.

I asked my mama.

“Tommy said Santa Claus isn’t real. Is that true?”

“He’s real if you want him to be, son,” Mama said.

Maybe deep down I’d known for some time, but I wasn’t ready to let it go. Maybe I knew that, if I did, Christmas would never feel the same again and in the deep recesses of my mind I wanted to hold onto this little piece of childhood just a little while longer.

But things started to make better sense. Like when Mama told me not to expect too much for Christmas this year, times were tough. I knew times were tough but that didn’t really seem to matter when it came to being naughty or nice. Now I get it.

To say times were tough is an understatement.

The coal mine closed down and Daddy hadn’t worked in almost a year. We had food on the table but not much else. Daddy was gone a lot, I remember. It wasn’t until many years later that I came to learn that he spent most nights coon hunting and most days drinking moonshine from a

still he had hidden in the woods behind the house. It’s hard on a man when he loses the only work he’s ever known. I remember my mama crying a lot and being awakened in the middle of the night to the sounds of the two of them fighting.

Besides, it didn’t much feel like Christmas anyway. Most winters are mild in the deep south, but this year was even warmer than usual. All the trees were still covered with leaves until a vicious thunderstorm roared through and blew them all to the ground, just a couple days before Christmas. It hadn’t snowed in three or four years. I’d never experienced a white Christmas before and wanted one more than just about anything. Every night I prayed for snow.

I fell asleep early on Christmas Eve, but was jolted awake just after midnight when I heard loud clanking and banging coming from somewhere. I was thinking that maybe another storm had come through and blown tree limbs onto the tin roof. I got up to investigate and that’s when I saw him, standing in front of the Christmas tree beside the fireplace. A man with a flowing white beard and red coat and black boots. It was Santa Claus.

Santa glanced at me and smiled a smile that danced across his entire face and called me over to him to give me a big hug.

“You are real, Santa,” I said.

“Of course I am,” he said. “Now where are my cookies, boy? Every year you leave me oatmeal cookies and a tall glass of milk.”

I ran as fast as I could to the kitchen and came back with cookies and milk for Santa and some for me too. His crystal blue eyes lit up when he saw them.

“I’m sorry for all the commotion. The reindeer got a little reckless landing on your roof tonight.”

We both laughed.

Santa asked me if I could hold the bag open for him while he got out the presents, which were many more than I could have ever dreamed of — a bicycle for me, a basketball for my brother, a radio for my sister, a coat for Daddy and gloves for Mama… and so much more. The presents just kept coming until they were spilling out from under the tree and into the dining room.

Finally, after all the presents were put out and all the cookies eaten, Santa told me it was time for me to go back to bed and time for him to head to the next house, as he caressed my face with his gloved hand.

“But I have one more present for you,” he said. “Go look out the window.”

From the window, I watched Santa and his sleigh disappear into the black Winter sky then noticed the first flakes of snow begin to fall. It snowed the rest of the night and all of Christmas Day and most of the days leading up to New Year’s Eve. There’s no telling how many snowmen my brothers and sisters and I built or how many snowball fights we had in our back yard. We’d never laughed so hard in our entire lives.

The next Spring my daddy got a job in another town and we moved away. Mama and Daddy quit fighting and life got back to being normal. Many Christmas’s have come and gone since then, but that’s the one I remember the most. I guess you can say it’s the best Christmas I ever had. It’s the one and only time I ever saw Santa Claus, but I’ve never since questioned his existence.

Now, when my children ask me if Santa Claus is really real, I always say “Yes, he is.”

He’s real if you want him to be.

Yampertown Lake Ours was the last house on the first paved road into Yampertown from the main one, Highway 73. The big white one with the newly painted black shutters, wraparound porch, and the big dying oak tree next to the gravel driveway was ours.

Yampertown had a gas station, a welding shop, a Baptist church, a post office, and two bootleggers. The rest of it was a hodgepodge of houses that — with each passing year — became more cluttered and looked less alive. Bird droppings accumulated on cars for what looked like years, the cars becoming so covered in white and brown spots one might think the owner had paid for it to be that way. The population was 203.

Our house was the one with the permanent “Free Kitten” sign attached to our mailbox and the red pump outside that we sometimes had to use to wash our feet before being let back inside.

Our yard was crawling with cats and kittens, all colors and sizes of them, some named, some not. A precious two or three were allowed inside some nights. “Go Home” was my favorite, a big yellow male stray named for the only two words my daddy ever said to him.

My mama and sisters and I were still upset at the loss of Midnight, our oldest and favorite cat.

She’d play surrogate mother for all of the blind abandoned kittens left behind by some irresponsible mother that was probably out trying to get pregnant again.

Midnight had been shot by one of the Willis boys next door, all of whom I despised. TJ, the oldest, seemed the likeliest suspect, though Eli or Bennie were equally good guesses.

Bennie’s nose was always running; his sleeve never dry, damp with the snot and drool he wiped away during the day. Eli’s hair was buzzed short and he had a diamond stud in his right ear.

They all cussed a lot and either tried to push us off our bikes or run us down. They’d knock us over and beat me up and kiss my sisters.

They put dead Midnight in a paper bag and set her on our front porch.

One time Eli kicked me off my bike and made my nose bleed. I wished he was dead.

The Willis’ home looked like it had once been a beautiful farmhouse, the biggest and whitest for miles. By the time we moved next door, the paint was peeling badly, the shutters barely clinging on, the yard a wreck of boys and weeds, and was guarded by a loud and agitated pit bull named Moonshine.

Aside from all this, though, my sisters and I loved where we lived. Some nights, especially after a big rain, we would run around in the field next to our house with flashlights, overturning rocks and pulling out huge earthworms until my mom called us inside for Wheel of Fortune. The enormous worms in our field could well be mistaken for baby copperheads in the dark nights after a big rain.

There was a creek next to the church, about a ten-minute bike ride from where we lived. We’d take off our shoes and dip our toes into its cold sludgy bottom, waving away water bugs and silently hunting frogs and crawdads or whatever else we could find.

Along the way, my oldest sister liked to rummage through Neighbor’s garden. Neighbor was an old man who lived about halfway between our house and the creek. Nobody knew Neighbor’s real name. Everybody just called him Neighbor. My sister walked through the garden as if it were her own, picking strawberries and tomatoes and biting right into them as she stood between his vegetables.

She convinced me once that banana peppers did in fact taste like bananas and that I wouldn’t believe how sweet they were, just a tiny bit different, a little peppery-er. That wasn’t even as bad as the time she convinced me that June bugs tasted like chocolate, and I believed her… I believed her, until my mom caught me outside one day eating them.

“What on earth are you chewing on, boy?” she asked me while she took a sheet down from the

line in the backyard.

“June bugs,” I replied, still munching.

“Jolene!” My mama yelled, stomping inside to deal with my sister.

Once in a great while we went to the lake, which is really only a few miles away but my mom hated it so much — she said it carried diseases, which could easily be true — that we only went when we had visitors.

That time it was my Aunt Gladys and weird older cousin Whitey.

We woke up early and instead of clothes my sisters put on their bathing suits, and I just wore my cut-off jeans which is what I imagine I would have worn anyway. When I got downstairs Mama and Aunt Gladys were already bickering while they made sandwiches.

It was a bright, hot day outside and Whitey and I immediately took off our t-shirts and flip flops, stepped over goose crap and tenderly entered the murky brown water.

That’s about when all the commotion started. TJ Willis was standing twenty feet or so from us, deeper in the water but only to his waist. He starts to yelling and waving his arms and diving under the water and coming back up, looking for his brother. He was wearing a baseball cap, but it must have fallen off in the water.

It’s the day Eli Willis drowns in Yampertown Lake.

It’s also the day I came to know that I could make my wishes come true. And I’d be lying if I told you it was the last time I ever wished somebody would die.

The Beautiful Butterfly and the Man with a Net Once upon a time, there was a plump and dowdy caterpillar who transformed into a beautiful butterfly. The very next day, the beautiful butterfly became entangled in a spider’s web, where she stayed for a long, long time.

Finally, one day when the spider was not looking, the beautiful butterfly escaped, which made the spider very angry — for he had planned to someday have the beautiful butterfly for lunch.

The beautiful butterfly spread her wings and flew freely among the meadow. But right away she was spotted by a man with a net. Now, this was the most beautiful butterfly the man had ever seen — in all his days of collecting butterflies.

“I’ve got to have that one for my collection,” said the man with a net.

So, he chased after the butterfly day and night but could not catch her. You see, having spent so much time captive in the spider’s web — and at last disentangled — the beautiful butterfly was determined to be free. The more elusive the butterfly, the more bent on capturing her was the man with a net — for he had never had such trouble catching a butterfly before!

Then one day the man with a net asked himself, “Just what would I do with this beautiful butterfly if I were to catch her? She’s too lovely to just go alongside all the others.” He thought about it for a while and said, “Aha, I will pin and mount her onto Styrofoam that I will decorate with glitter and jewels and I will take her with me wherever I travel and I will hold her up to the light and admire her beauty one thousand times a day and she will not fly away.”

And off he went, net in hand, resolved once more to catching the elusive, beautiful butterfly.

But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that this plan was all wrong. He knew that the butterfly was most beautiful as she fluttered freely against the crimson sky.

“Besides,” he thought, “I usually break the wings of the butterflies I love most.”

So the man stepped into the meadow and lay the net down by his side and bargained with the butterfly, calling out to her: “Beautiful butterfly, come to me and allow me to hold you in my hand for just a while; I promise I mean you no harm,” he said.

To which she responded from just beyond the man’s reach: “There is a reason butterflies have wings.” And she flew away.

Summerfling Sophie had grown skeptical about love, such an elusive entity, one she wasn’t sure even existed.

She’d heard about it plenty; some people never shut up about it. But whenever she tried to capture it for herself, it always escaped her. Everyone said she was trying too hard. You couldn’t force it or will it into being, it was just supposed to happen, usually when you weren’t expecting it, usually when you stopped looking for it. But that hadn’t worked, either. Nothing in life ever just happened. Nothing worthwhile, anyway. You always had to work for the good stuff.

But then, just as they said, it did happen, when she had just about given up entirely. As sure as the melting snow, the lengthening of days, the return of the robins to their messy little nests, Spring swept in with the promise of something new. It arrived in the breath of a tropical breeze, sun-kissed highlights, and orange citrus scent. Sophie sat in the park outside her office on the first warm day suggesting Summer, eating her lunch on a blanket in the grassy knoll and hoping to clear her head of the abysmal daily grind. The wind rustled through the leaves of the trees, and she looked up from her avocado on toast, her vegetable soup, and there was Jack.

Jack was a typhoon, a churning burst of energy and light that floated by untethered. No. Not floating; he was falling, attempting to catch an errant Frisbee. “I got it, I got it!” he called out, shifting, shifting, and then finally making the grab for the battered orange disc, unaware of the unsuspecting Sophie right in the way.

In the blink of an eye, she had spilled half of her soup on the man suddenly in her lap where her sandwich used to be. Fleetingly, Sophie was furious, but as soon as Jack started to laugh, Sophie laughed, too, shaken by the absurdity of the situation.

“I’m so sorry.” Jack scrambled to his feet, brushing crumbs off his shorts, holding out his soupdampened shirt. “Looks like lunch is on me. Let me make it up to you.”

Sophie thought he was joking, accepting the apology with a chorus of, “No, it’s fine, it’s okay, really.”

But Jack was adamant, not allowing Sophie to leave until arrangements for retribution had been made. Sophie allowed it only because she didn’t have time to argue; a quick glance at her watch told her she needed to head back to work. But a curious churning grew in her stomach as she rode the elevator up to her floor, not gnawing hunger from her interrupted lunch, but something else. The feeling grew worse as their Saturday lunch loomed closer. Was it anticipation, or had she simply caught a springtime bug? Could it be excitement or was it just indigestion?

During that first lunch, Jack was able to unravel all of Sophie’s tightly held reservations with the ease of his smile. She couldn’t remember the last time she could talk so openly with another person or when someone’s company was so pleasant. Jack oozed summertime sweetness, melting away Sophie’s naturally cold disposition. She worried that their personalities would eventually start to clash, but they complemented each other and Sophie was enthralled by their differences, among many other things.

The blossoming of Spring mirrored their relationship, smoothing out into something comfortable and lazy by the heat of Summer. But Summer eventually faded, too, and the new feeling in Sophie’s stomach was unpleasant and empty. No more warm light slipping through her windows, no more spilled watercolor landscapes of the setting sun. The song of laughter and lawnmowers and ice cream trucks was coming to its end, no more charcoal in the air or sweat on the glasses of late afternoon beer. Even with everything that made Summer so sweet and succulent, shucking corn and that first juicy bite of watermelon, what she missed most was how the sun kissed Jack’s cheeks, making his freckles pop out like stars across the sky, how everything made him sleepy, and how they’d cuddle together despite the damp, humid stickiness of their bodies.

Fall was not without its merits, though, casting everything in bronze and gold, the same shades of Jack’s wild curly hair. Sophie tried to hold on as the weather began to cool, as crisp Autumn marched relentlessly toward an unforgiving Winter, but no matter how tightly she gripped, the

ice crept up and spread, blanketing the world in soft angel dust. Jack turned as cold as the bitter air, restless with the endless lack of color. Nothing seemed to make him laugh anymore; he drifted away when Sophie reached out. White on the ground, white in the sky. White, white, white. Jack said it made him feel crazy, so he escaped to warmer climates, tropical, distant, alone.

Just like that, as swiftly as he’d come in, Jack was gone, taking Summer with him, as well as the person Sophie thought she’d met that bright and sunny day. Sophie had taken that first bite of love, but all that remained was an odious, bitter aftertaste. When the weather started to warm again, she’d catch the faint scent of oranges or hear the giggling of strangers tossing Frisbee in the field beside her office, and her stomach would churn with nauseating distaste. Fair-weather, fickle love that fled at the first brush of cold. She no longer questioned the existence of love but sometimes felt that she preferred her previous oblivion.

Until a whiff of coconut oil and a lightly strummed guitar turned her head. She dropped a few coins into the busker’s hat when she got up, returning to work, back to the grind, and he smiled at her. It made her shiver despite the sweat clinging to her back, and the door that love had just tightly closed cracked slightly open again, letting in that same summer breeze that invaded all her sense and reason. She hesitated, and then she smiled and asked the singer for the name of his song.

Autumn Love is rare, life is strange, nothing lasts, seasons change….

(One) It’s Autumn now, so I pull down boxes of sweaters and coats from the top shelf in the bedroom closet. It’s still too warm to wear any of them, but it’s good to be prepared. It will happen soon enough, I know: a chill will return to the morning air. I won’t be caught off guard this time.

I rummage through pockets, an old habit, not sure what I’m expecting to find: a treasure, perhaps. Something that I’ve lost.

I slip on my father’s old coat that my mother gave me after he died, before she did. It’s too big for me (of course) but it feels good, and it’s as if I’m a child, playing — pretending to be a grownup.

It’s been a few years since the divorce, but opening boxes makes me sad for some reason. It’s just that there’s been a lot of packing and unpacking since then, which can make one feel a little… anchor-less.

Most of the clothes in the boxes she bought for me. I guess you could say she understood my style. All the pockets are empty.

(Two) Autumn came early this year. It has a way of sneaking up on you in the mountains. Maple leaves are already beginning their annual rite of passage from green to russet roan to fiery red. He knew more than she just how quickly they’d all be gone. In the blink of an eye, shivering skeleton trees would blanket the Appalachian mountainside.

We have time, she tells him, for apples. And football games on Saturdays.

But what if we don’t, he thinks, always the impatient one. The pragmatic one.

So he tells her, “I love you.” Just to be safe.

(Three) She was over him by Autumn. He needed her for Winter.

My Grandmother By the Sea Evening falls across the mountainside; a cool breeze blows gently from the sea. Soon an ebony sky will shroud the village, as the clank and clamor of a long, hard day of labor succumbs to a solemn hum of slumber. Night birds sing; it’s somewhere between dark and almost dark.

My name is Isobel. I am a young girl. I live in the village with my family. My Grandmother has walked the village for a century. Now sadness has descended here because Grandmother has grown frail and her days among us are growing few.

Everyone in the village loves Grandmother for she has brightened everything she has touched.

The children in the village bring her sunflowers and pomegranates and goat’s milk in large bowls. And she drinks the goat’s milk and eats the pomegranates and places the sunflowers in her hair. She dances barefoot upon the warm sand as the children laugh and clap for her.

Grownups seek Grandmother for counsel during times of trouble because she is wise.

I look for Grandmother and find her alone near the sea roasting chestnuts above a fire. I kneel down beside her and she pulls me tightly to her bosom. Her thin white hair pours across her delicate shoulders. Day becomes night.

The fire settles and the winds calm and when the chestnuts are eaten my grandmother holds me and rocks me gently to the rhythm of the sea beside us and she begins to speak:

“The crops have been bountiful and the fish plentiful in your lifetime, Isobel. But there will be times of peril for you as there were for me, because life has its valleys to go along with its peaks.

This is no cause for sadness, for without darkness there can be no light. No Spring without Winter. Know that every storm passes; just when you think the night is its blackest, the light of day will come. Embrace the hard times, my sweet girl; they will test your will and your character and your faith and make you strong. Above all else have faith. The opposite of faith is fear. Fear

distorts. Fear paralyzes. Fear tells lies. As I look back now, Isobel, I know that it was during times of great adversity — of floods and droughts and famines — that I became a strong and gentle woman. Though I do not wish hard times upon you, I do hope for strength within you when they do come alas. And when they come, hold yourself up even when others beside you are falling down, not out of pride but out of humility. When bitterness and hatred is all around you, remember what I’m telling you tonight, my dear.”

“In the end, love prevails. Love wins,” she continues. “A stronger person holds true to love and a weaker one gives in to hate. An angry person and a dagger can be the ruin of an entire village.

But that’s not all, Isobel. So can an angry person with a bitter tongue. So, during the hard times and the easy times, choose your words carefully. Wounds heal. Broken bones mend. But words remain. You cannot take them back. Harsh words sting like an arrow piercing the skin and they linger in the soul for all time. They fester like a cancer. There is harshness aplenty, even in our small village, Isobel. Let your tongue be an instrument of peace and tranquility and comfort and truth. Let it sing songs of harmony and joy. Let the music of your words awaken the withered spirit of those whose heartaches have wilted their beleaguered souls. Words can repair, replenish. And they can destroy. Remember this.”

There is a long pause, then Grandmother begins again:

“Life is not always easy, Isobel. You will be harmed. Whether pricked by a sword or stung by lies and deceit, you cannot escape injustice and insult in this life. It will be your instinct to return the harm to the one who harmed you. But you must resist this temptation, Isobel. You must be the bigger one and allow the cycle of harm to end with you. By giving in to vengeance, you inflict more harm to yourself than to your enemy. How can you act out of anger without becoming an angry person? How can you tap into the hatred that lies within you without become hate-ful? You cannot. When you give in to revenge, your enemy wins, for he has changed you. I know this because I have seen many good men and women grow bitter with age.

Bitterness multiplies; anger spreads like disease. Turn away from your enemies and you will be the better one for it. Let the bitterness float away.”

The sky fills with a million stars. Grandmother and I breathe in deeply the smells of the village: the salty ocean air mingles with the smell of eucalyptus and of bread baking somewhere.

Grandmother talks quietly, barely above a whisper, and I listen closely.

“Many times I walk to the mountain top and look down on our village,” she says. “I see so many people rushing, tarrying and scurrying about. Yes, there is much work to be done. But slow down sometimes, Isobel. Take time. Listen to your own breathing. Listen to your own heart beating. Listen to the wind. Find quiet places within yourself. Everyone can see the beauty in the sunset. Look harder to find the beauty in everyday things: the birth of a butterfly, like the birth of a child, is magic. Within each blade of grass lie a thousand miracles. Delight in the miracles of life. They are all around you.”

“The day will come when you will be old like me, Isobel. I hope that when you reflect on your life, as I am now, you will look back without regret, as I do. I know that I have lived each day to the fullest. I have laughed and danced and sang merry songs. I’ve drunk deep from the fountain of life and eaten feasts fit for queens. Oh, I’ve done my share of labor. I’ve toiled and tarried and worried. My heart has been broken many times. I’ve ached and prayed for mercy. But, in the end, it is the small joys I remember most: morning glories in the morning, the kindness of a stranger, the gentle kiss of Autumn sun and holding you, my sweet dear, in my arms when you were first born — gazing into your beautiful face while you slept in quiet, deep, peaceful sleep.

These are the things I remember most.”

Grandmother holds me tightly as the evening air grows cool. She brushes the hair from my forehead and gazes deeply into my eyes.

“You are such a sweet girl, Isobel,” she says. “When I look into your face I see hope for all humankind. You walk into the dark room and it illuminates because you have a glow that emanates from you, an aura of peaceful light and energy that enshrouds you. I can see it, and others can too. It is love. Never let the light dim, my darling. Be the light!”

My grandmother talks and I listen. I stave off sleep until I can’t any longer. I doze and when I

awaken, Grandmother is gone. Dawn breaks. A lazy orange sun peeks over the horizon; it’s somewhere between light and almost light. Morning birds sing. I stretch and yawn and begin to walk toward home. And as I walk I know that Grandmother is walking alongside me; she is not here but she is here, and that it will remain this way forever. I know now that she is everywhere — in the morning glories dancing in the wind, in the blade of grass beside the road, in the butterfly fluttering alongside me and in everything she has touched. And so it is with us all. We leave our imprint on everything and everyone with which we come in contact.

This is what Grandmother has taught me. And this I will never forget.

347 Days She woke up with the alarm at half past five. The duvet on the bed was carelessly thrown from the space next to her. The emptiness there was cold. In the darkness of the rising dawn, she could hear the patter of the shower running in their bathroom.

The wife rubbed her eyes with her hands. The day she had been dreading had finally arrived.

Her husband’s packed suitcases stood by the door like gravestones, sealing her fate. She missed him already. She sat up in bed and tucked her knees against her chest. Icy despair curled in the pit of her stomach, and the wife pulled the duvet up and around her shoulders.

In the next room, the water shut off. There was the sound of slippery stepping, of teeth being brushed, of a man clearing his throat. He stepped out of the bathroom in a cloud of warm mist that smelled like his shampoo. A white towel was securely wrapped around his waist.

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” the husband said.

“I had to be up anyways,” his wife answered.

He nodded. He walked to the bed and sat beside her. She felt his damp warmth against her shoulder, and settled into it. He kissed her temple. He hadn’t shaved yet, and the prickles of a new beard tickled her skin.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said. Morning light was spilling over the windowsill and into their North London flat. It was a thin, watery light, the kind that follows days of endless rain and shows the first sign of a clear day.

He ran a hand down the length of her hair. Her hair flowed down her back and curled at the ends, just at her waist. “I don’t want to go, either.” The husband ducked his head and kissed her shoulder. “You know I have to.”

She did. The American branch of his company had a position open for only a year, to help with a deal that would seal the success of the company for years to come. The position had been offered to him. If the deal went through, the husband would get a huge promotion at work, and the couple would never again have to worry about financial security.

She turned towards him. “I don’t think I can handle not having you with me for a full year.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “We will have Christmas, and you can visit me on holidays.”

She nodded a silent yes, but they both knew that the strict hours at the law firm wouldn’t allow for much vacation time.

“I know what will make you feel better,” he said, nuzzling her hair. “Let’s get dressed and go to that coffee shop that you like.”

“Alright,” she said. She glanced at him. His eyes were already a thousand miles away.

They took the Tube to the heart of the city. The wife paused at the exit to the station. She always had to take a breath when she walked into the busyness of the London street, even though she had been living in the city through the two years of their marriage. The mix of ancient brick and new steel was daunting to her. She stared at one of the buildings that rose in the distance, flanked by a church and a pub. Sensing her hesitation, he shifted his suitcase and took her hand.

There was very little traffic. He pulled her across the road, towards the little coffee shop. There was no line inside. They both ordered black coffees and croissants, and settled into a small table.

Their coffees were delivered. She watched his face as he picked his coffee up and took a careful sip. He grimaced slightly, as he always did when drinking black coffee. He hated the taste of coffee, but always ordered it. She never understood why. “I’ve heard that they drink coffee every day in New York City. Sometimes even multiple times a day.”

He nodded. He was running the tip of his pointer finger along the rim of his coffee cup. “I can get used to it.”

She shifted her gaze to the window. Most of the people passing at this time were businessmen and women, dressed in dark suits with ties, with their Nokias and Sonys pressed to their ears.

These people came in all colors, shapes, and sizes, yet were united in perfect harmony as they barked into their small cellphones and checked their watches on the street corners while waiting to cross. Stocks were the great equalizer.

“How do you think it will feel, being so high in the air?” she asked. She scanned the skyline.

None of the buildings here compared to the North Tower, where he was going.

He shrugged. “It’s high, but sturdy. I shouldn’t feel anything different, I suppose.”

Across from her, her husband was also checking his watch. “We should go soon. I don’t want to miss my flight, love.”

She left her croissant half-eaten on the table with his full cup of coffee.

They waited at his gate at Heathrow. She spent the time split between memorizing the lines of his face and watching the planes touch down, dreading the moment that his be called to board.

He was reading the newspaper. His hands were fidgety. She picked up his left hand and traced his wedding ring. Was it sensible for a couple to be separated for so long, so early in their marriage?

The speakers crackled, and the attendant called his flight.

Panic settled in her heart. The pages of his newspaper rustled as he folded it and placed it in the seat next to him. They stood up together.

She brushed her hair off his shoulder. “At this time on September 29th, 2001… just one year from today… I will be right here again, waiting for you.” She would count the days.

She squeezed his hand as tightly as possible. The wife searched his face, wondering if he was trying to memorize her face as hard as she was trying to memorize his. From her pocket, she pulled a packet — a small clipping of a studio photograph she had had done for him to put on his desk.

“I don’t want you to forget,” she said between tears.

He carefully placed it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “I could never forget.”

The call for boarding came. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, the tip of her nose. “I’ll call you when I land,” he said before he kissed her lips.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

She stood at the gate for a long time, even after the plane pulled away from the airport and took off into the gloomy sky.

Delmo Hammontree Delmo Hammontree used to turn green in the winter. Not a bright green, more like a dull, mossy green, but green, nevertheless.

“Hey look, it must me gettin’ close to Christmas. Delmo’s turning green,” we’d say.

Nobody knew for sure why he turned green. Some people said it was because of all the green apples he ate. I rarely saw him eat anything else. Some people said that turning green ran in his family and that his ancestors were even greener and were sometimes hired by frontiersmen to scare away the Indians.

“Ok class, quit teasing Delmo. And stop drawing pictures of him,” Ms. Harper would say.

But, truth be told, I think Delmo liked the attention. Plus, for a few short months, he was the only boy in elementary school who could walk fearless of the class bully, Cindy Little, who was just a little bit freaked out by Delmo when he was green, although she never admitted it.

“I’ll whup him twice when he turns back to regular color,” she’d say. And she always did.

Cindy Little was smart and pretty and the toughest person I’ve ever known. I’d climb trees so high my nose would bleed to avoid her on the playground.

Some parents thought Delmo’s condition might be contagious and wouldn’t let their kids go near him when he was green, although mine always told me to treat him just like I’d treat anybody else… that God’s children come in all shapes and sizes and colors. Even green. I once even had Delmo over to spend the night when he was green, but that didn’t go so well. Trixie, our German Shepherd, surely didn’t know what to make of Delmo’s odd coloring and howled

at him half the night. Plus, Delmo seemed to glow brighter and brighter as the night went on. I didn’t sleep a wink.

All in all, though, most of us got used to Delmo being green and didn’t think much of it after a few days. He was a good short-stop and was always one of the first kids picked when we chose teams for softball at recess, whichever color he was at the time.

Delmo and his family moved to another town when we were in junior high and I never saw him or heard from him again. But I think about him often, especially in early spring, as the birds start to chirp and the snow melts. It was always about this time of the year when Delmo would return to his natural alabaster complexion, and life would get back to being normal.

I wonder if he has any children.

Shirelle When Shirelle was a little girl she liked to look at maps. She spent hours contemplating the various shapes and sizes of states and small countries and the straight and winding blue and red lines that connect cities to one another inside the covers of a road atlas her mother bought for her at Dollar General. One would think by this early fascination, Shirelle might one day end up a cartographer or navigator or perhaps at least a travel agent or truck driver.

Shirelle didn’t end up doing anything, in fact. By the time she reached womanhood she had long since dropped out of school, her drug addiction had left her depleted of any ray of hope that young children instinctively possess and the string of pregnancies (two abortions, one miscarriage, one stillborn), random beatings and other acts of violence inflicted upon her left her body and spirit worn out and ugly.

You hear stories of how some people find the resolve to escape their fates in life, to overcome life’s obstacles and succeed against seemingly impossible odds. This is not one of them. Like her mother before her, Shirelle fell victim to the horrors that sometimes entangle the poor, disempowered, disenfranchised, downtrodden residents of US inner-city slums.

Shirelle also liked to play with coins. Her grandfather, old and dilapidated already by Shirelle’s first memory of him, would often come to stay with her for long periods of time. Her grandfather had an impressive collection of old and foreign coins and one shiny silver dollar for every year of his life. He started collecting coins when he was in the Navy in World War II and kept them in a White Owl cigar box. Come January every year he would take the city bus to First Union and swap out a paper dollar for a newly minted silver one. He instructed Shirelle, his only grandchild, that she would someday own the coins if she promised to continue the tradition and then hand down the collection to one of her grandchildren. Shirelle spent hours at a time cleaning and polishing the coins, fantasizing about the day they would all be hers; her favorites were the ones from faraway lands. Shirelle’s grandfather died on his birthday and she used the coins to buy crack on the street corner that same afternoon.

As a young woman, Shirelle moved out of her mother’s house and into an apartment in the same housing project. She and her mother had some sort of falling out and they rarely talked. Shirelle was always getting evicted for one reason or another and when she exhausted all other resources she ended up spending most of her days walking around town and most nights sleeping on park benches.

She sometimes stayed at the various shelters but for the most part didn’t like their rules and chose the streets instead. One bitterly cold January day as she walked about town she glanced up and became startled and saddened by the reflection she saw of herself in a storefront window on Tryon Street. She looked terrible: thin as a rail, her clothes and hair tattered and in disarray, her two front teeth missing, both arms pocked with needle marks and swollen with infection.

She pondered how things had gotten to this point, this out of hand. Then a gentleman in a fine navy pinstriped suit came out of the downtown library and noticed Shirelle sitting on the sidewalk with tears streaming down her face. With great disgust he mumbled something to her while avoiding eye contact and emptied his pockets into the paper cup she held out, in which she noticed a shiny new silver dollar. She picked up the coin and held it between her thumb and fore finger, fondling the edges and admiring the way the silver sparkled when the sun’s rays caught it just right. She noted the date and thought to herself that it was brand new.

Perhaps Shirelle saw the coin symbolic of an opportunity to fulfill the promise she made to her grandfather years before, to start anew; perhaps it somehow, in some strange way, proved to be the impetus she needed to kick the drug habit and get her life together. Maybe she saved some money and bought a new road map and took a grey hound bus to a faraway place where she could start a new life. Or, perhaps she used the dollar coin as down payment on her next binge.

Who knows? No one has seen her since that day.

Trying to Wrap My Mind Around Death Lately, I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around the idea of death.

To be honest, I’ve never really been afraid of death. I’m not eager to hasten its arrival, by any means, don’t get me wrong; but my curious nature has always allowed me to think on death mostly in terms of the next adventure, where answers to great mysteries of the universe may be revealed.

I’d like to believe the afterlife will include some sort of reunification among souls of loved ones gone on before me. There are questions I never got around to asking my father in this lifetime and am hoping for another chance in the next one. And I’d sure like to see my sweet Mama’s crystal blue eyes again.

I’m inclined to believe I have an eternal soul. I like the idea of reincarnation, which seems as plausible as any other theory. I’m banking on coming back as a rock star in my next life, by the way. Hopefully, not a cockroach. Karma’s a bitch, they say. Some religions contend that we are put on this earth to learn important lessons and if we don’t learn them, we’re destined to return again and again until we do. I’ve honed in on what it is exactly I'm supposed to master in this life, but can only truthfully claim I’ve been marginally successful. If that’s really how it works, I expect I’ll still be trying to get it right again next time. Wish me luck.

The romantic in me embraces the notion of soulmates. The universe seems to inexplicably put people in my path that I feel I’m “supposed” to know for some reason, and I always try to pay attention, always try to be open to the universe’s subtle and not-so-subtle cues, always curious about these feelings of deja vu.

When I looked into my oldest daughter’s eyes when she was first born, I felt like I’d known her for a thousand years. All the old Indian ladies who visited her as a newborn swore she was an Indigo child and an old soul. She’s been wise beyond her years her entire life. And a little clairvoyant. I honestly believe this isn’t her first go-round. If she goes on to find a cure for cancer or something, chalk it up to fate and destiny.

Not long after our marriage ended and still trying to make some sense of it all, my ex-wife visited a psychic in San Francisco. The psychic told her that she and I have danced this dance many times before, that we keep finding each other in various forms. Once, in a previous life, we were married to each other and we lost a child. Although it wasn’t her fault, the baby was in her care when it happened and I never forgave her for it. Our souls made a vow that we would find each other and parent together again in another life. Our marriage was doomed to fail. We were incompatible from the very beginning but drawn to each other for some reason. We got pregnant early in the relationship. Otherwise, we probably would have had a torrid and tumultuous affair and then gone our separate ways. But with a baby on the way, and her very conservative Hindu parents and my very conservative Christian parents putting pressure on us, we decided to get married. Our divorce was inevitable, but perhaps we fulfilled the vow we made to each other many lives ago. By most accounts, I’d say we’ve been successful at co-parenting our children.

What the psychic told us was reaffirming and comforting to us both. I have reasons to believe it’s all true. The psychic knew details about me that no one knows.

But every now and then the idea creeps up on me that, just maybe, there’s really nothing more to us than flesh and bones and that what awaits us in the afterlife is nothing but vast void. And that can be quite unsettling, especially during my regularly-scheduled 3 o’clock bouts of insomnia.

The idea of “nothingness” causes me angst. Are humans really just another element in the material world that got lucky enough in the evolutionary process to develop a highly advanced nervous system which allows for us to ponder such grandiose things, but, in the end, we’re no different than a gnat that gets swatted or a daffodil that falls to a late freeze? Maybe these feelings of deja vu are just my mind playing tricks on me.

Deep peaceful sleep, complete darkness… that’s as close as I can get to conjuring “nothing,” but both of those are most certainly “something.” I can’t wrap my mind around what “nothing” is. A total lack of awareness, a lack of being. A lack of place. That scares me.

You hear about people who’ve had near-death experiences and most of them describe a light in a tunnel. Sometimes they talk about beautiful gardens and music and serenity. But scientists are quick to explain these transcendent phenomenon as the result of the brain’s neurochemical responses to trauma and give them no more credence than alien abductions. Science can be a real bummer.

Despite my Baptist upbringing, with its fear-mongering Sunday morning fire-and-brimstone sermons, I long ago denounced the idea of a punishing god. Some of my Alabama relatives would probably tell me I’m in for a rude awakening. I believe in a Creator, in feminine energy, in the God that existed before the patriarchy re-created Him in their image to justify what they needed justifying and to control behavior of the masses. I believe God is Love. And that God is Nature. And that God’s love is manifested through compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, gentleness, humility, peacefulness, creativity… all incongruent with a judging, vengeful, masculine god. I believe there are things to learn and things to dismiss in all the world’s religions. Let’s say Truth is as expansive as the Milky Way. Whatever canons and scriptures and prophets you hold dear, I expect we could collect everything we all think we know about God or Allah or Krishna or Jehovah or Yahweh or Mother Goddess and the meaning of life and our purpose on earth and the afterlife and all of it would fit on a speck of dust in the wind, by comparison. Tell me what you believe and I will gladly tell you that you may be right. I will also tell you that you may be wrong.

It’s not that I’m driven to know what will happen to me when I die. I’m fine with the “unknown.” I appreciate a good mystery. I’m just hoping that it’s something other than nothing.

So I’ll choose to believe that some sort of next dimension awaits me when it’s all said and done here, a metamorphosis, renaissance. And try to flick antagonizing thoughts of “nothingness” away when they pop into my brain in the sleepless hours before dawn.

I expect that if civilization survives long enough, we’ll eventually gain a better understanding of such things as souls and life-after-death and what our purpose is while we’re here, even if that seems far-fetched now. It hasn’t been so long ago that we thought the earth was flat, remember.

Humans are pretty good about figuring stuff out. How crazy do you think the Internet would have sounded a thousand years ago? Lord knows we don’t need any more gadgets, so give us another thousand years and maybe a wave of big discoveries and inventions will lead to a New Age of Enlightenment when our understanding of the afterlife will be no more mysterious than gravity is now. When the Truth is known, I bet rationales for all these holy wars we’ve been fighting and divisiveness and border walls will seem as preposterous as the reasons we burned witches at the stake back in Salem do now. Cue up “… one tin soldier rides away.”

Maybe I’ll be around in some form or another at that time. Look for me. Hopefully, I’ll be the lead singer. But go gentle on the cockroaches too. Just in case.

Earliest Childhood Memory I call it my earliest childhood memory, but to be honest I have no means to prove it. I say I’m three and my sister, Renee, is seven, but those ages were arbitrarily attached sometime later.

Perhaps we were older.

It’s 1968 I believe. The place is my grandmother’s house in Eight Mile, Alabama, just outside of Mobile on the sandy, humid Gulf Coast – which is in equal parts antebellum aristocracy and impoverished backwoods.

We’re outside playing. It must be summer. Renee’s skinny suntanned legs are poking out from blue jeans cut off to make shorts. Her hair is almost white. We are searchers – hunters for roly polies and caterpillars and centipedes. We turn up brick and concrete slabs and look under garbage can lids for our prey. We hold them captive for a while in an empty Folger’s can Grandmother gave us, and then let them all go free.

The images are gray and grainy, like fading black and white photographs. But the memory of the cool, moist Alabama earth between my fingers is clear. Black dirt under fingernails.

Curiosity emerges as we carefully pass a snail back and forth between little hands, its slimy body retreating into a delicate shell. Renee instructs me on bits and pieces of knowledge she has gained during her one year of elementary school and lifetime of exploration. Everything she tells me is indisputably truthful, as in my mind her wisdom is unquestionable.

Dusk settles in. Lightning bugs and bats fill the sky. Aunt Clista and Uncle Fred in their tiny house across the street call out our names. There is a smell of frying chicken in the muggy air, which mingles with a perfume-sweet fragrance – honeysuckle maybe, or mimosa. There’s another man. Who is that man? His face I see, but time has taken his name from me forever.

Gospel music plays from a white box on Aunt Clista’s kitchen table.

I’ve wondered why this memory stuck. What characteristics of this typical afternoon experience

caused it to be etched into my brain for so many decades, while other more significant events have fallen into the vast void of lost memory?

Perhaps that’s just the random nature of the human brain. I would like to believe, though, that somewhere in my subconscious I recognized this moment as special. And chose to store it away as representative of a boy’s first wanderings outside the close guard of his parent’s eyes – tasting freedom in the front yard of his grandmother’s house, yet secure within the parameters of his family’s call and older sister’s guidance. Knowing that it might somehow come in handy, as I try to figure out who I am and where I come from.

Observations of an August Day in Hackleburg, AL (originally published 8–22–2011) I’m pumping gas at the Shell station alongside Hwy 43 in tornado-ravaged Hackleburg, a small town tucked among the hills and hollows of Northwest Alabama, not far from where I spent much of my childhood and where my mother now lives.

I’m hearing the lone sound coming from a shirtless man atop his tarp-draped roof as he rhythmically, methodically hammers in the hot August sun. The tornado cleared out the thickets of pine trees which would have muffled such sounds that now drift unimpeded to me, a subtle hint of the storm’s effect among many more obvious ones.

It’s been a few months since the late April twister obliterated Hackleburg.

My mother’s neighborhood was spared, but not much else was. The school, the one grocery store, the pharmacy, the bank, the dollar store, and dozens of homes reduced to rubble in a matter of furious moments.

I’m struck by the silence. I guess I thought it would be different. I expected the town to be a hubbub of activity. I envisioned teams of volunteers here helping victims pick up the pieces, big trucks with FEMA plastered on the sides rolling down the road. I’m realizing that recovery is a slow process, one hammer and one nail at a time. Now there’s a chain saw buzzing far away in the distance.

This would make for a better story if I could describe Hackleburg as a quaint and charming town, but it’s not. In fact, most of the buildings downtown here have been empty and

deteriorating for many years. It would be hard for an outsider to distinguish which structures were destroyed by the tornado from the ones destroyed from a generation of neglect. I’m thinking most owners of these buildings will be more likely to pocket whatever insurance money they can collect than rebuild and that no one would blame them if they did.

The good news is that the Wrangler plant announced it would rebuild. That’s been the chatter among locals the last few days. The factory was by far the largest employer in town and the news was welcome indeed and makes it much more likely that the Piggly Wiggly and the hardware store will rebuild too.

Earlier in the day, I drove down to the place I claim as my childhood home. Time is a funny thing. Is it really true that I only lived here six years, I think to myself and redo the math in my head. Six years fly by in leaps and bounds now but back then they inched along at a snail’s pace.

I was antsy to escape the woods and childhood, now I long for both. My best and worst memories reside there: learning to drive and to shave and falling in love for the first time and getting my heart broken and being terrified by the ghosts that lived inside the house which would eventually burn to the ground not long after we moved away.

The patch of land where my daddy planted rows of peas and corn has been overcome by pine trees and kudzu. The pond where I used to walk to is gone too, the result of one too many summer droughts I suppose. We always said that pond was haunted and I prefer to believe that evil spirits just decided to make it disappear one Harvest moon midnight.

I realize for the first time that I’ve lived long enough to notice a significant change in landscape.

And I’m not sure what to make of that. I realize that the world changes: nature she has her way and that it doesn’t take a bulldozer to alter the scenery, that the world is an organic, fluid, evolving thing.

No matter what one does to try to slow things down, time marches on. And time changes things.

Back at my mom’s house, it’s her 86th birthday and my two little girls are here with me, making decorations and presents for her. Mother’s tired eyes sparkle when my girls bound into the room. I catch her staring at them and I speculate that her mind has wandered off to the days of her own childhood and I wonder if she’s thinking to herself, “my, how the time has flown by” and I wonder if it’s comforting to her to think that the day is soon coming when she’ll be reunited with my daddy in heaven and I think of a thousand other things in a blink of an eye but mostly I’m just thankful that circumstances have allowed me to be here for this moment in time with the most important people in the world.

Outside, the August sun settles in the west and the familiar smells of honeysuckle and mimosa and chicken houses mingle with the sounds of hammering and a chainsaw across the hollow.

Hummingbirds from Oh Dad! blog (May, 2014)

My eight-year-old daughter, Anika, and I got a hummingbird feeder on Saturday and hung it up on our patio. We’ve been talking about getting one for a long time. Hummingbirds remind Anika of her Grandma, my mother, who passed away a couple years ago, just before Anika turned six. Anika’s memories of Grandma are fading. But Grandma’s hummingbirds she remembers clearly. Grandma always had hummingbird feeders on her back porch, where Anika spent many summer days rocking in rocking chairs, talking to her Grandma and watching hummingbirds swarm in for sips of the sweet nectar Grandma made for them.

Hummingbirds are amazing creatures… they can flap their wings up to 200 times per second … they’re the only birds that can fly backwards… they weigh about the same as a penny.

The man at the bird store told us that we shouldn’t have any trouble attracting hummingbirds.

We have a half-dozen or so flowering azalea bushes next to the patio and a patch of woods just past the back yard. But, still, I was nervous. What if no hummingbirds came? I know my daughter well enough to know that she would take it in stride. It was a fun afternoon activity, after all. We tried.

But I wanted hummingbirds. I know it sounds silly. I also want there to be a rainbow after every thunderstorm and the goldfish to live and to really be able to make boo-boos go away with a kiss and to push the clouds away… but sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing and I’ve lived in the city for so long I can’t really claim to be a country boy anymore and what do I know about birds anyway and what do I know about raising a little girl?

But, it didn’t take long after we mixed the combination of sugar and warm water and hung the feeder on the ceiling of the patio for the first hummingbird to come take a sip. Anika spotted him before I did. Whew… what a relief! She and I did a little celebratory dance. In the few short days

since then, there have been many more hummingbirds come visit us - each time equally as thrilling.

I’m not exactly sure how things work in heaven, but a part of me would like to believe that the hummingbirds were sent down from Anika’s Grandma herself… as her way of saying hello to us down here and to check in on her grandbaby. And, just maybe, to remind her youngest boy that he’s doing an okay job.

The Farm Where Donald Lives Note: It’s hard to believe it’s been more than 30 years since I first stepped foot onto the farm where Donald lives, but it has. In March, 1987 I was an undergrad psychology student and was hired by the Lackeys to help run the Center for Living and Learning, a new residential treatment facility located just south of Nashville. It was my first job in the field. I worked at the Center for nearly three years before moving to North Carolina. My experiences at the farm, and specifically with Donald, had a profound impact on my career and life. I stumbled upon this essay tucked among some other old papers at my Mom’s house recently. It was written not long after I left the Center, circa 1990. Three-plus decades years later, the Center is thriving. Donald still lives there and is doing great!

“Time it was, And what a time it was, It was….

A time of innocence A time of confidences Long ago… it must be…

I have a photograph.

Preserve your memories, They’re all that’s left you.”

-from Bookend’s Theme

by Paul Simon Three autumns I witnessed magic sprinkle hues of orange across the farm where Donald lives.

Falls there are spectacular. In Fall, farmland stands boldly and boasts: “It’s harvest, labor’s reward.”

Arrangements were being made to turn six acres behind the house in preparation for next spring’s planting. The gourds were all gutted, the martin’s descended, harvest moon had come and gone, and I had decided to go. One final time, though, I paused to marvel at God’s handiwork in the fields. And inside the house where Donald lives.

Inside the farmhouse, situated on 30 acres of lush Dixie soil, Donald has just rendered a water color portrait, a conglomeration of facial semblances the artist reveals as a friend once known well, now rarely remembered. For hours, the newly retrieved soul mate of long ago is the topic of conversation: Tommy Adair played shortstop, Tommy Adair spat watermelon seeds on the girls at Vacation Bible School. Within the thick brush strokes of abstract blues and greens lie an intimation to the beauty of this man’s soul.

Donald has schizophrenia. The illness which has been a part of his life for over two decades doesn’t usually interfere with his daily farm chores or activities, although a severe case of tardive dyskinesia, a muscular disorder resulting from psychotropic drugs prescribed several years ago, often turns his muscles to knots and causes his limbs to contort in pain. A good rubdown helps. Yet, at times the pain is unbearable and he’ll scream out into the Tennessee wood.

There were times we wondered whether God still heard his cries.

Fortunately, Donald has benefitted from Clozapine, an experimental drug which is proving effective in the treatment of patients suffering from severe mental illnesses, although it is likely to be years before the medicine is readily available to the masses in need.

Life at the farm these past few years has helped Donald, as well. When the pain subsides, Donald tends to his rows of snow peas and his cries are replaced by some song he bellows like a pubescent choir boy. I’ve accused him of being the only person in Nashville who sings more offkey than I do. Together, we’re like a pair of hound dogs serenading the neighborhood. But I swear the man has memorized the lyrics to every song recorded since the 1950’s even though he couldn’t tell you where he put his shoe strings ten minutes ago. And we go on pretending we’re Simon and Garfunkel for audiences with fingers plugging their ears.

Like a lot of people with schizophrenia, Donald was stricken with the illness at the onset of adulthood, an above average college student and decent tennis player at the University of Tennessee. The illness eventually ended his college career and sent him on a journey to a string of psychiatric facilities throughout the country for the better part of 20 years - including the past 10 years at the Ann Sippy Clinic in Los Angeles.

Finally, his family recognized his health deteriorating and his chances for recovery growing nil.

The Lackeys, a prominent Nashville family, banded together and bought a serene farm just south of the city for their brother, then proceeded to invite others with mental illnesses to join him. The founding board of directors included a number of prominent celebrities and politicians such as UT football coach Johnny Majors, former Governor Winfield Dunn, Grand Ole Opry star Minnie Pearl (Sarah Cannon), who is a family friend, and Dr. William Lawson, renowned for his research on the topic at Vanderbilt University.

In the meantime, interest was arousing among professionals in the mid-state area dedicated to the treatment of mental illness. Thus, the Center for Living and Learning was born.

A young psychology student, I responded to a classified ad in the Nashville Banner and jumped at the opportunity for free room and board. For the first six months, only Donald and I lived at the Center – on the cusp of growth and progress.

Three years later, the Center has become an important cog in the mental health community, thanks largely to the directorship of Donald’s youngest sister Fran, a dedicated staff, and hundreds of others who have contributed in significant ways.

The annual celebrity golf tournament was a huge success this year and is expected to fund several new projects, including a six-acre pick-your-own garden located on the premises scheduled to be in operation next Fall that will feature pumpkins and strawberries. The brunt of the labor will be performed by the residents, which is congruent with one of the Center’s most basic philosophies: that work – in whatever form in may take – is both generative and reintegrative. Profits will go toward reducing admission fees paid by the client’s families. And benefits of the daily interaction among the general public could prove enormous in each resident developing the self-confidence, interpersonal skills and practical tools necessary to integrate back into mainstream society, the Center’s loftiest goal for each resident.

The twenty-minute drive from my Nashville apartment each day is a spiritual experience, as I meander beyond the city through sprawling horse farms, antebellum estates, crape myrtle, and

finally to the doorsteps at the Center. If I’m early enough, I’ll catch sight of the Barbar’s milk truck which stumbles down the laneway. Once more, Donald has cajoled the milk man out of a quart carton of chocolate milk which he slyly consumes before anyone notices. The smells of country morning ooze from the kitchen throughout the dew-wet yards in vapors of black coffee and scrambled eggs.

John greets me first. He’s en route to the mailbox to retrieve the newspaper, his morning chore which you could set your clock by. John is a classical guitarist. He plays in solitude for hours each day on a six-string which echoes the magic of Northeastern concert halls he once knew. He was once of Carnegie Hall caliber, claim his parents, who live in Maryland. He misses them, at times dearly. And in quiet moments, I believe he and his instrument speak to each other in piquant communication that those of us who don’t know heartache on a first-name basis can understand. In my wildest dreams, I cannot fondle the nape and neck of a guitar as swiftly and gracefully as John.

Despite being wildly delusional (he sees the dog move his bone telepathically across the back yard and swears aliens visit him regularly at night), John is a scholar of Greek philosophy, literature and culinary. His family owns a Greek restaurant in Annapolis. We often beg John to cook for us which he sometimes does and is always delicious.

There’s Jules. A while back, my girlfriend and I had had Jules over to our place for dinner.

Afterward, topics of conversation over strong coffee ranged from Tolstoy to the Boston Red Sox to the American Rural South. Jules is a gentle man from a family of academia whose failings at Vanderbilt still gnaw at him ten years later. Jules represents the most frustrating of patients for care-takers of the mentally ill: he is so often lucid and capable of maintaining appropriate behavior that his moments of occasional regression are always surprising. And violent. Soon, surely, we believe some combination of drugs and therapy will boost Jules just over that imaginary line of sanity to the wife and children he so longs for.

Alison was a young and pretty equestrian and the most tormented person I’ve ever known. The demons of her sickness danced in her mind like savage nightmares night and day until they

were quieted forever when she overdosed on anti-psychotic drugs. God himself, I believe, smiled quietly the day Alison’s suffering ended.

Bobby thought he was Jesus and insisted on laying his hands on any woman he thought might be pregnant; Robert was a poet; Michael could whip anyone at ping pong and cried at night for his mother. Others came and went, some successfully, some not; all have provided this disciple of psychology a wealth of experiences I shall forever cherish.

My role at the Center evolved. I tended to research and development and public relations in the end, most of my time spent on the telephone or in meetings alongside professionals in the field, instead of the corn field. College behind me, opportunities I couldn't deny awaited me in another state. So I left.

But, as Autumns wiggle in and reminiscence calls back memories tucked tidily away, I know that I will recall my first few months with Donald with longing and childlike fondness. The times Donald and I waded the Harpeth River with blue jeans rolled up past our calves or baked our shoulders in the summer sun waiting for just one fish to test its fate on the other end of the line. Much laughter and many tears we shared. I re-taught him to shave his face and he taught me about life. I quickly learned the meaning within what at first appeared a language unintelligible and found there much wisdom as we floated down the river in his sister’s canoe or rambled shirtless about the farm like little boys. I’ll remember the glimmer in his pale blue eyes when he witnessed the first gracious cardinal waddle onto the patio to accept the bread crumbs he left for it. And the time we ran through the lit streets of downtown Nashville laughing freely during the Summer Light’s Festival. With bands beating cadence boldly on both sides of us – our hearts mocked the pounding.

Oh, what a time it was, Donald Lackey, my dear friend.

This Father’s Day will be Mix of Joy and Sadness from Durham Herald-Sun (June, 2007)

Father’s Day is coming up soon. If I know my daughters, I can expect a day full of hand-painted cards, tasty treats hot out of the Easy Bake Oven and hundreds of unsolicited hugs. By the end of the day, I will have been adequately reminded that I am the luckiest man in the world.

But it will be bittersweet. My dad passed away last November and this is the first Father’s Day without him. How odd it will be to stroll by the card section at the bookstore and not browse for the perfect card for him. Or to go the entire day without calling him on the telephone to wish him happy Father’s Day.

My father and I represent quite possibly the widest generation gap in history. He remembered life without electricity and running water. Where he grew up in the rural south, the sighting of an automobile was rare. He was a little boy during the Great Depression and as young man he sailed the South Pacific Ocean during World War II. I am the youngest of his seven children.

Forty years of important American history separate us.

I was born at the tail end of the baby boom on the cusp of Generation X which ushered in the age of technology and came of age alongside MTV. I never plowed a garden or picked cotton.

And he couldn’t have told you the first thing about text messaging or iPods or Google searches.

Nevertheless, we remained close. We connected around things that really mattered. The same things I hope to instill in my children: the importance of family, the value of reaching out a helping hand to a stranger in need, a love and respect for nature. My father and I didn’t always see eye to eye on politics. How unimportant that seems now.

I miss my father. Enough time has passed that the sting has faded some but what remains is a persistent sense of loss. Christmas and his birthday and a granddaughter’s wedding have come and gone since he passed away. And now Father’s Day. The world moves on.

As hard as it has been for me and my brothers and sisters, I know that the pain pales in comparison to what my mother is going through. After 62 years of marriage, the man that she loves is gone. She’s left with constant reminders of him: letters that come in the mail still addressed to him, his dress shirts still hanging in the bedroom closet. I wonder if she talks to him when no one else is around.

My dad’s voice still greets callers on the answering machine. My mother is a pragmatic woman.

No need to erase a perfectly good message. But I wonder if she plays it sometimes -- just to hear his voice. I admit that I’ve called when I knew no one was home.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a father. My life has changed in ways that I couldn’t have imagined since the arrival of my daughters. I know I grew closer to my own dad as a result. And other dads. There’s a certain sense of affiliation and fraternity among we fathers. Whatever else may divide us, certain things bind us: the joy, the honor of fatherhood, and the weight of the responsibility that rests on us. You can see it in our faces. The truth of the matter is that it’s not easy being a father.

One of the saddest parts of my father passing away for me is that my children will grow up without him in their lives. My oldest daughter was just crazy about him. My youngest daughter won’t remember him at all. But there are pieces of him that exist in me that I’ll pass on to my daughters. That’s comforting to me. That’s the cycle of life that I could never truly appreciate until now.

So, as Father’s Day approaches, I encourage everyone to celebrate fathers -- the fathers you can call on the phone, the father you strive to be yourself and the fathers who have gone on before us. If you’re one of the lucky ones whose father is close by, put aside whatever petty differences may seem like a barrier and go give him a big hug. I sure wish I could.

Grandmother Stowe (September, 1991) My grandmother died last week. I returned to the piney rolling hills of my childhood to be with her during the final days of her life. For five days, a collection of close and distant relatives and I huddled about the sterile hospital room – assembled there to witness my grandmother sinking closer to death each moment, each of us solemnly awaiting the inevitable.

“Grandmother, how are you?” I said, road-weary from an eight-hour drive. She mumbled something unintelligible. I held her hand loosely. I think she recognized me. I wasn’t prepared for what I was seeing. Grandmother’s arms were swollen like too-full hot water bottles and were hues of deep brown and purple. The doctor said her heart had swollen across her chest.

She spoke in gibberish. She sewed imaginarily into the air as if she had returned to some far earlier time when made clothes for her children and quilts for the bed.

“She’s a tough woman,” the doctor said, “to hold on as long as she has.” They stopped feeding her intravenously because her veins were too brittle to accept an IV needle, yet her strong body fought instinctively to survive. Farm women have to be strong. We wait.

Relationships with distant cousins were rekindled during the week, brothers and sisters caught up on the latest events of significance in our lives as we took turns trying to stay awake in uncomfortable vinyl chairs in the tiny hospital room. It is in moments of pre-dawn in situations as these that the mind and soul oscillate from the absurd to the sublime: now laughing giddily (enough to warrant scolding glances from the nurses in the nearby station) at the telling of a story from the past, re-told for the one thousandth time; now there is silence, fighting the invasion of sleep, the sound of a heart monitor drones in the background, silence echoes.

Grandmother in deep, silent, peaceful sleep.

My mind whirls, emotions soar: fright - when I look into the face of my dying grandmother and see there the face of my own mother; humility - at the graciousness of a grand god who allows

you a good long life then gently transforms you to a different place when your worn out body has outlived its usefulness. And you consider what irony is life’s cycle: how you enter this world wholly dependent on caregivers to satisfy your most basic needs and how you leave the world in much the same manner. And you’re forced to examine, in fact, take a good close look at your own mortality. Death comes, no vain image in a mirror can deny it. I think of Tolstoy’s Ivan Illych, the story of one man’s anguished confrontation with mortality, “My God! My God! I’m dying… No, I don’t want to….” And I think of Ecclesiastes, “For every thing there is a season.”

Morning comes and in the lobby of the hospital plays my four-year-old niece Haley, the angel with the long blonde hair and the juice-stained lips, so full of life, whose memory of her greatgrandmother will be faint at best. To her the hallways of the hospital must seem enormous; to me they have shrunk to unbelievable smallness since the days of my own childhood when I was a patient here myself.

In the lobby of the hospital I also see Reverend Trellis Mayhall, pastor of Free Waters Baptist Church, where in the summer of 1975 I sat faithfully in the first pew each occasion the church doors opened, a young boy starved for answers to life’s great questions. We talk small talk briefly, I and this man who baptized me in the name of The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost twenty years before. Maybe he is taken aback by my earring and unshaven face (he had thought I would be a preacher) and maybe I am viewing him through the eyes of an adult for the first time. He seems different. Not holy. Whatever the reasons, we have very little to say to each other.

On September 29, my grandmother, Essie Wilson Stowe, died at the age of 89.

I will remember: lazy Summer afternoons at Grandmother’s house sprawled on the front porch swing, the rickety, rhythmic sounds made by the rusty chain which suspended me in mid-air lulling me to sleep as adults talked in hushed tones inside, my belly swollen from too many green apples and red plums from the trees in the back yard; hunting colored eggs on Easter Sunday and running, racing freely, wildly on sawdust floors down long chicken houses with

my cousin Mark who usually won because he was a year older and a good foot taller; Sunday dinners in the middle of the day: fried chicken and red-eye gravy and new potatoes in the spring and sweet corn in the fall and black-eyed peas and cornbread and sweet tea… cold bacon on the stove left over from breakfast and homemade apple pies…I’ll remember outdated pictures of grandchildren strewn on the walls throughout the house and cats, always cats, nameless untamed cats who roamed the farm, cats that Grandmother fed scraps to and kept stray dogs from with the swat of a broom…I’ll remember catching lightning bugs with my sisters as day faded to night and keeping them captive in quart mason jars that Grandmother would find underneath her kitchen sink – she would punch air holes in the lid with a sharp knife and the intermittent incandescence would provide a natural night light for the bedroom all night long…I’ll remember the old barn where I searched for treasures among the tractor parts and old broken bicycles, more often than not finding an angry swarm of hornets instead…I’ll remember spending the night at Grandmother’s house, lying restlessly awake in still black plaintive dark, a screech owl screaming across the hollow and my imagination soaring, listening to the thump-thump of my heart pounding, certain the light of day would reveal the brutal murder of one of the widow women who lived close-by and being grateful at the coming of dawn; the smell of old quilts and tobacco and coal burning; giving Grandmother chocolate candy on Mother’s Day and how she would pretend to be surprised then share them with everyone…I’ll remember how strong Grandmother was when Granddaddy passed away a few years earlier. He sure loved all you grandchildren, she said when I hugged her neck as she lay down to sleep the day he died… I know, I said… And I’ll remember her gentleness, a gentleness inherited by my mother and my mother’s daughters.

I choose to remember Grandmother not with swollen arms and a feeble mind but as the smiling, waving, embodiment of the Old South farm wife, legacy of a much simpler period of time, forever gone, a link to my ancestry and as the strong and gentle matriarch of the farm where she presided her entire life, up on the ridge where my mother drew her first breath and where my father would come to steal a glimpse of my mother’s beauty when their love was young, and where I chased lightning bugs with my sisters. It is here, in the gentle rural south of my

childhood, this elemental place of safety and innocence and carefree boyhood wonder that I so long to return.

RIP Muhammad Ali Originally published on June 3, 2016

Another icon from my childhood, Muhammad Ali, has died. I heard the sad news this morning and have been thinking about him all day. The sport of boxing was different back when Ali was in his prime and I was in elementary school. The big title fights between he and Frazier and Foreman were each like the Super Bowl. They dominated conversations among my buddies and I on the playground at recess for weeks leading up to them. And as a young boy growing up during tumultuous times, Ali was more than a champion fighter for me. He represented my first sampling of a generational gap, the first time I realized that it was even possible to take a different position than my parents (and that it really was okay), the foreshadowing of a rebelliousness awakening in me, mostly kept in check out of fear and love and respect for my parents and the customs that accompanied the 1970s in the Heart of Dixie.

I lived a sheltered life as a young boy and knew little of the turbulent goings-on as opposition to the Viet Nam War and racial tension escalated around me. But when I listened to Merv Griffin or Dick Cavett or Howard Cosell interviewing Muhammad Ali, I instinctively knew that hidden behind his rhymes and grandiosity, something important was being said and that I needed to know about it.

My father considered “Cassius Clay” (as he always referred to him) a “draft dodger” which was despicable in his eyes, as two of his sons — my older brothers — were drafted into the Army to serve during the same war to which Ali was conscientiously objecting. It was a bitter pill for my father, himself a sailor in the Navy during WWII. My father had little tolerance for Ali’s swaggering bravado and antics inside the ring, either; humility being among my father’s most valued character traits.

Meanwhile, I led “Ali, Ali” chants on the bus ride home from school on the day of the “Thrilla in Manilla” and laid down two-to-one odds with lunch money, guaranteeing an Ali victory, in the

same way Joe Namath guaranteed a win for the Jets in the Super Bowl a few years earlier. But I kept my mouth shut in the living room as we watched the fight on our black and white TV and practiced my version of the “rope-a-dope” in my bedroom in between rounds behind closed doors. At 10, I surely knew who held the power in my home.

By the time Ali lit the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996, some fifteen years after his last fight and weakened by Parkinson’s Disease, I expect he was seen by most as a less polarizing figure — as one of the greatest athletes of all time and a respected spokesperson for civil rights. But I don’t think my dad’s opinion of him changed much.

These are two men for whom I have tremendous respect, for very different reasons. I’d like to think they’ll have an opportunity to work out their differences now.

“My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some other darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father…. Shoot them for what? How do I go to shoot down them poor little black people, little babies, children and women? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.” — Muhammad Ali (1967), on why he refused to fight in Vietnam.

Tooth Fairy Dilemma (from Oh Dad! Blog, February, 2013)

I’m conflicted about the Tooth Fairy.

As the father of two elementary school aged daughters, teeth are flying left and right.

One problem is that their grandma set a precedent of $10 per tooth a while back. If you’re anywhere near my age, that’s shocking. We got dimes and nickels. Even when adjusted for inflation, ten bucks is still an outrageous rate.

And it’s not like I can always predict when the Tooth Fairy’s services will be needed.

Spoiler alert: I’m the Tooth Fairy. Well, not THE Tooth Fairy, but I am the Tooth Fairy in my household. And when not in character, I pay bills on-line and I use plastic cards for most other purchases. I don’t always have cash lying around the house every time said Tooth Fairy’s services are unexpectedly needed. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life.

But, it’s not just about the money.

It’s getting harder and harder for me to perpetuate such an outlandish ruse. While teaching my children the scientific method and to be reasonable and logical, at the same time I’m also encouraging them to believe a fairy comes down from somewhere and swaps out a bloody tooth for dough while they sleep. Really?

I lose all credibility when I then try to convince them that it’s absurd to think an ogre lives in the woods behind the house.

For some reason, I’m ok with Santa Claus.

Santa represents joy and goodness and magic and we know a lot about him from all the TV shows he’s in every year.

“He’s real if you want him to be” is what my mom told me when I asked her about jolly ol’ Saint Nick when I was a kid; that works for me still.

Plus, the old “…he knows if you’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake” routine gets me at least a few months of excellent behavior.

When my girls confront me someday about all the lies, I think I’ll be able to spin Santa. But the Tooth Fairy? My 6-year-old asks what the Tooth Fairy does with all those teeth and I got nothing.

I can’t even conjure a consistent image in my mind of what the Tooth Fairy looks like.

But here’s the thing: I love the unadulterated joy and silliness and wild-eyed wonder of my girls at this age. Childhood is fleeting. The day is soon coming when they no longer jump in every mud puddle or think of me as a super hero.

The sparkle in their eyes when they see the first star bright to wish upon at dusk or sheer delight in catching lightning bugs in the back yard is always tonic aplenty for whatever might be ailing this tired old soul. I know it won’t be long before cynicism will creep into their lives and more grown-up realities will take hold.

So, conflicted as I may be, I guess the Tooth Fairy can be real if they want her to be for a little while longer. Good thing there’s an ATM close by.

But don’t get me started on the Easter Bunny.

Stephen Raburn / Durham, NC / stephenraburn@gmail.com February, 2021