Ocular Allusions

What it is about the seasons lately, failing to meet my expectations by, one might say—at least here in New England—continually failing to season, has ignited in me a nagging sense of loss and, well, just plain glumness. (Nagging because it's a rare Day that performs as it should within the framework of its given season; Day has become defiant, belligerent—refusing to comply, he turns away and knocks Expectation on its head. He rebels! I nag!) This is the glum loss about which I am writing in a series of poems, a poetic sequence, for a poetry class that I'm currently taking with Catherine Imbriglio at Brown Continuing Studies.

There are twelve of us, poets (though I'd hardly plunk myself in this particular category, but I will fake it for the duration of the six weeks), casting a sequence of poems linked, for the most part, by either form or theme. And I will fake it further because I need to believe that this can be done. Six poems, or more, linked by this glum/loss theme. Belligerent Days that become belligerent Seasons that become belligerent Years!

The good news: my eyesight is improving. It's true! Maybe it's the changing light of our seasons. Maybe I really AM growing younger! When my ophthalmologist had me sit behind what she called, and what I could not then spell, a phoroptor—a word I couldn't release from my mind, what I heard as and what I quietly recited so I'd not forget: FROPPER,  FROPPER, FROPPER! (what a strange name for an instrument) (as it turns out FROPPER is a social networking site specializing in Indian dating)—she found that, within the past year, I was minus (or is it plus in phoroptor language?) .50 from the prior year's examination. That puts me at -3.25! Which means that maybe I won't need readers in the supermarket. Heh. And wasn't I happy for the phoroptor, even if I couldn't spell it, but now that I can the image in my mind has turned to a beast—a highly photogenic (and perhaps Vietnamese) dinosaur.  PHOROPTOR!

That was this morning. When I left my ophthalmologist's office I was so happy to be at positive (or is it negative?) phoroptation I decided to take a little walk so as to let it all sink in. And there, to the left, to where I turned my rejuvenated oculi, was this magnificent, versicolor (word of the day) tableau and I quick-grabbed (because Day, like a smart-mouthed teenager, can turn on me at any moment) my iPhone and shot what was, what is, undoubtedly, Day behaving like Fall! Compliant FALL!

(This is not good for my poetic sequence—which might very well be titled Ocular Delusions. And which now seems as old as a dinosaur.)

And because my disposition has shifted widely from glum to blithe and I cannot, at this very moment, be too disappointed in Day (even if he still knocks Expectation sideways), I'm going to sign out by offering one last poem (not one of mine) from yet another former U.S. Poet Laureate, which shall also serve to top off the grand callithump parade that is to come (believe what I say—it will!). 

Introducing Philip Levine (in a video of much better quality than that of which I was able to capture), all the way from Brooklyn, NY, giving us a little lesson and believing everything he says:

Black Wine

Have you ever drunk the black wine - vino negro -

of Alicante?  The English dubbed it Red Biddy

and consumed oceans of it for a pence a flagon.

Knowing nothing - then or now - about wine,

I would buy a litre for 8 pesetas - 12 cents -

and fry my brains.  Being a happy drunk,

I lived a second time as a common laborer

toiling all night over the classic strophes

I burned in the morning, literally burned,

in an oil barrel outside the Palacio Guell,

one of the earliest and ugliest of Gaudi's

monuments to modernismo.  Five mornings

a week the foreman, Antonio, an Andalusian,

with a voice of stone raked over corrugated tin,

questioned the wisdom of playing with fire.

He'd read Edgar Allen Poe in the translations

of Valle-Inclan and believed the poets

of the new world were madmen.  He claimed an affair

with Gabriella Mistral was the low point

of his adolescence.  As the weeks passed

into spring and the plane trees in the courtyard

of the ancient hospital burst into new green,

I decided one morning to test sobriety,

to waken at dawn to sparrow chirp and dark clouds

blowing seaward from the Bultaco factory,

to inhale the particulates and write nothing,

to face the world as it was.  Everything

was actual, my utterances drab, my lies

formulary and unimaginative.

For the first time in my life I believed

everything I said.  Think of it: simple words

in English or Spanish or Yiddish, words

that speak the truth and no more, hour after

hour, day after day without end, a life

in the kingdom of candor, without fire or wine.

Friday Night Frolic – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Shaving

We've reached a milestone here. And isn't he a sport to have permitted his mother to capture the whole ceremonious first slice of silver across the creamy, pale skin of his face? She won't, however, post the video.

This Friday's Frolic is going to be highly abridged as the Suburban Soliloquist has been strapped to her chair all week, working on a feature article (what is that anyway?) which she may or may not post on this blog, depending upon how it all unravels. (At the moment, it is way too long for a blog post.) For some reason, as apolitical as she is, she's been inexplicably drawn to a major controversy that has cast national attention on the city in which she grew up. And it's not the fact that the city is near bankrupt.

In any event, she hasn't been on the internet much, other than for research reasons, but hopes to return early next week for a proper posting and jaunt around the blogging community.

In the meantime, a little video sent by friend-of-the-shut-in:

For more information on the talented harpist Frédéric Yonnet visit his website, or listen to his interview over at NPR.

Have a beautiful weekend. Maybe the sun will come out tomorrow?

(Is that really her baby?)

Art by Max

Friday Night Frolic - Cold, Cold Ground

Then came the ice birds, through the bleeding sky, over the undulating, aqua field.  The white forest, frozen in dream, did not hear their trumpeting, nor the crunching upon the crisp ocean as a gaggle landed on its crystal beads. 

One eye open and one eye shut, they rested uneasy, gulping the heaving field's abundant air—until impatient and hungry grew the gosling, who cried!

Mother goose took the lead, dew-tipped tails waddled behind, the bleached horizon in the distance pined. 

Where the red sky meets the blue plain, dusk and dawn are the very same. 

A poem, at times, must be scrutinized, to uncover certain clues—this is what the schoolmaster uttered, his tapered pointer a dancing muse.

Ice birds fixed on the cold, cold ground of the ivory shore as they shuffled in cedilla form 
(unlike their innate, accent circonflexe arrays in ruby heavens).

The silver gander considered the graze, and advanced along the inversion, his broad crown alert to what might fill the gizzard. 

Somewhere in the sea of brush: berries, sedge and root. (Had he expected fish?) Then came the ice birds, mandibles wide and serrated, pulled up all the grasses, swam along the scrub, filled their bellies with white forest and frozen dream.

* * *

TOM WAITS

                                                         

No one writes more imaginative story/songs/poems (especially the scruffy, down-and-out sort)  than Tom Waits. Loss, lies, love, lowlife, liquor, loners and lullabies, he covers a lot of ground with a mean growl. Only Bukowski (whose influence on Waits is palpable) growled more prolifically. But Waits is the master of pairing poetic story with melody. And his ballads are beautiful.

From Franks Wild Years (1987)

From his 2006 album, Orphans:

From Mule Variations (1999):

From Alice (2002):

Waits's most recent album, Bad As Me, was released in 2011after a seven year absence in the studio. On Bad As Me he's back like the geese, mandible wide and serrated. You can read (or listen—highly worth the 45 minutes) more about the release on this October, 2011, NPR Fresh Air interview with Waits. 

____________________________________

The geese, as they were this morning (minus inverted color), in the undulating field.

Friday Night Frolic — Building Roads Beneath the Full Moon

[Source]

What she'd like to do is sit down in her little striped beach chair, late, late afternoon by berylline ocean waters and watch pools of frothy tide swish to and fro the shore, as it happens, until the amber sun fades into the sea's violaceous horizon, and the sky illuminates with the shimmery light of this Friday's milky floret of a moon.

The full moon calls.

But that scene is an hour away, and driving is still somewhat restricted (perils of pain medication), so she is here at home, late afternoon, trying to forge a Frolic, feeling anxious and overwhelmed and wanting to be by the beach. She's not happy.

The large framed second story east facing window will have to do. From there, she can almost pluck a low moon from the dark sky.

And then she reads this, from Jan Spiller (whom she's never consulted):

There is an opportunity for insight and progress inherent in the FULL MOON. People often react emotionally during the days of the Full Moon due to a feeling of helplessness.  They become aware of the distance between the way they want their life to be, and the way it currently is.  Often, when they see this gap, they become upset.

Haha, she says, laughing like a madwoman. It's not my ailments, it's the moon!

She pulls the liner notes from Building a Road by Spottiswoode and His Enemies and sips on her damn green tea. There will be no wine tonight. But there will be the full moon. (Unless she fails to finish this Frolic.)

There are no liner notes, really, just perfunctory thank yous and  lists of Special Friends and Archenemies, and one Bete Noire. She cannot imagine that Spottiswoode, the frontman, guitarist and harp player for his rock and soul and cabaret avant garde  band—who reminds her of a young Leonard Cohen (with whom she has frolicked) and Harry Nilsson (with whom she'd like to frolic, lime in de coconut and all)—would have adversaries.

Yet Spottiswoode is drawn to the dark, where foes lurk.

And it is under Stygian skies that she finds a few specters Building a Road:



(She is frustrated that she does not know how to build an MP3 sample.)

And others, far from the Road, at play, building scenes like this:



And this:



And then she flips through the Farmers' Almanac to find that today is the beginning of some of the best days of the year:

According to Farmers' Almanac tradition, when the moon is in the appropriate phase and place in the zodiac, it's widely believed that activities will be more fruitful or lead to improved results. The period between the new and full moon (first and second quarters) is considered as the best time to perform tasks that require strength, fertility and growth...

Who knew! Perhaps it's not all bad, she thinks. Surely there's something that can be done here in the burbs. Ah, a tall iced tea, chilled cherries, the setting sun from the west facing dappled deck accompanied by Spottiswoode. And a stroll down the street. That'll do. Who knows where it may lead...

(Maybe she'll find more goblins along the road. Maybe she will conquer some demons.)

* * * 

You can find Spottiswoode's whole show, starting with scene 1, Live @ Joe's Pub in New York City here.

His latest album is Wild Goosechase Expedition, about the doomed course of a touring rock band. The second track is Beautiful Monday:



Beautiful music.

"Friday Night Frolic" - On Becoming a Freshman

 

Max--with 'lil sis-- his first day of 1st grade.

He slept in late this morning

this, the first of long summer days

that sit between the afternoon’s high heat and high school.

He wheeled off on his dad’s old Santa Cruz

moments after Mama bandaged the scrapes on his elbow,

from the fall at the edge of the sloping driveway.

He, resisting iced peas as aid,

stepped back on the narrow board,

and tacked atop the hot, cracked pavement.

Out of Mama’s sight,

to the club across Nate Whipple Highway
where the pool had just opened.

She wondered if she should have driven him.

Last week, the pediatrician’s standard inquiry: you like girls?

the boy grinned an affirmative answer,

conceding his broadening affections.

They hadn’t had the sex talk.

Or had they? It was time. 

It was not. It couldn't be.

Sketch pad and kneaded eraser tossed on the table,

trilobites, igneous rock, northern Pangaea,

participles, exponents, realism a closed chapter.

Middle school books to be returned to the town,
(seems yesterday they were just covered)

a tattered grey lunch bag and chewed pens to replace.

The sky receded with indigo clouds,

a growling acceleration of a squally evening. 

He’d left on four wheels screwed to a wooden board’s bottom.

She hadn't mentioned the hour to return
when he appeared at the door, sweaty, flushed, puffing,
thinly beating the rain spew, white hot vectors, the air collapsing in on itself. 

The green of the grass deepened as the storm rolled over,

lights flickered around the house,

Dirty Harry flashed from the TV screen.

Six feet tall, shirtless, shoulders that had bolted 

it seemed, overnight, unwinding on the leather couch

he looked casually at his summer reading list: Dickens and Dumas.

How wide the space had grown 

between the little boy of first grade, Dr. Seuss, crayons,
and the charcoal prints he brought home yesterday.

There's a slow, woody nightshade unfettering,
scrambling over the trellis, a liberation,
ever so rooted in that vessel called home.

* * *

Peter Wolf, former lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band (I still have their old vinyl "Blow Your Face Out"), has released seven solo albums since leaving the band in 1983. His latest, Midnight Souvenirs, was released in 2010.

"Friday Night Frolic" - On Becoming a Freshman

 

Max--with 'lil sis-- his first day of 1st grade.

He slept in late this morning

this, the first of long summer days

that sit between the afternoon’s high heat and high school.

He wheeled off on his dad’s old Santa Cruz

moments after Mama bandaged the scrapes on his elbow,

from the fall at the edge of the sloping driveway.

He, resisting iced peas as aid,

stepped back on the narrow board,

and tacked atop the hot, cracked pavement.

Out of Mama’s sight,

to the club across Nate Whipple Highway
where the pool had just opened.

She wondered if she should have driven him.

Last week, the pediatrician’s standard inquiry: you like girls?

the boy grinned an affirmative answer,

conceding his broadening affections.

They hadn’t had the sex talk.

Or had they? It was time. 

It was not. It couldn't be.

Sketch pad and kneaded eraser tossed on the table,

trilobites, igneous rock, northern Pangaea,

participles, exponents, realism a closed chapter.

Middle school books to be returned to the town,
(seems yesterday they were just covered)

a tattered grey lunch bag and chewed pens to replace.

The sky receded with indigo clouds,

a growling acceleration of a squally evening. 

He’d left on four wheels screwed to a wooden board’s bottom.

She hadn't mentioned the hour to return
when he appeared at the door, sweaty, flushed, puffing,
thinly beating the rain spew, white hot vectors, the air collapsing in on itself. 

The green of the grass deepened as the storm rolled over,

lights flickered around the house,

Dirty Harry flashed from the TV screen.

Six feet tall, shirtless, shoulders that had bolted 

it seemed, overnight, unwinding on the leather couch

he looked casually at his summer reading list: Dickens and Dumas.

How wide the space had grown 

between the little boy of first grade, Dr. Seuss, crayons,
and the charcoal prints he brought home yesterday.

There's a slow, woody nightshade unfettering,
scrambling over the trellis, a liberation,
ever so rooted in that vessel called home.

* * *

Peter Wolf, former lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band (I still have their old vinyl "Blow Your Face Out"), has released seven solo albums since leaving the band in 1983. His latest, Midnight Souvenirs, was released in 2010.

"Friday Night Frolic" - On Becoming a Freshman

 

Max--with 'lil sis-- his first day of 1st grade.

He slept in late this morning

this, the first of long summer days

that sit between the afternoon’s high heat and high school.

He wheeled off on his dad’s old Santa Cruz

moments after Mama bandaged the scrapes on his elbow,

from the fall at the edge of the sloping driveway.

He, resisting iced peas as aid,

stepped back on the narrow board,

and tacked atop the hot, cracked pavement.

Out of Mama’s sight,

to the club across Nate Whipple Highway
where the pool had just opened.

She wondered if she should have driven him.

Last week, the pediatrician’s standard inquiry: you like girls?

the boy grinned an affirmative answer,

conceding his broadening affections.

They hadn’t had the sex talk.

Or had they? It was time. 

It was not. It couldn't be.

Sketch pad and kneaded eraser tossed on the table,

trilobites, igneous rock, northern Pangaea,

participles, exponents, realism a closed chapter.

Middle school books to be returned to the town,
(seems yesterday they were just covered)

a tattered grey lunch bag and chewed pens to replace.

The sky receded with indigo clouds,

a growling acceleration of a squally evening. 

He’d left on four wheels screwed to a wooden board’s bottom.

She hadn't mentioned the hour to return
when he appeared at the door, sweaty, flushed, puffing,
thinly beating the rain spew, white hot vectors, the air collapsing in on itself. 

The green of the grass deepened as the storm rolled over,

lights flickered around the house,

Dirty Harry flashed from the TV screen.

Six feet tall, shirtless, shoulders that had bolted 

it seemed, overnight, unwinding on the leather couch

he looked casually at his summer reading list: Dickens and Dumas.

How wide the space had grown 

between the little boy of first grade, Dr. Seuss, crayons,
and the charcoal prints he brought home yesterday.

There's a slow, woody nightshade unfettering,
scrambling over the trellis, a liberation,
ever so rooted in that vessel called home.

* * *

Peter Wolf, former lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band (I still have their old vinyl "Blow Your Face Out"), has released seven solo albums since leaving the band in 1983. His latest, Midnight Souvenirs, was released in 2010.

"Friday Night Frolic" - On Becoming a Freshman

 

Max--with 'lil sis-- his first day of 1st grade.

He slept in late this morning

this, the first of long summer days

that sit between the afternoon’s high heat and high school.

He wheeled off on his dad’s old Santa Cruz

moments after Mama bandaged the scrapes on his elbow,

from the fall at the edge of the sloping driveway.

He, resisting iced peas as aid,

stepped back on the narrow board,

and tacked atop the hot, cracked pavement.

Out of Mama’s sight,

to the club across Nate Whipple Highway
where the pool had just opened.

She wondered if she should have driven him.

Last week, the pediatrician’s standard inquiry: you like girls?

the boy grinned an affirmative answer,

conceding his broadening affections.

They hadn’t had the sex talk.

Or had they? It was time. 

It was not. It couldn't be.

Sketch pad and kneaded eraser tossed on the table,

trilobites, igneous rock, northern Pangaea,

participles, exponents, realism a closed chapter.

Middle school books to be returned to the town,
(seems yesterday they were just covered)

a tattered grey lunch bag and chewed pens to replace.

The sky receded with indigo clouds,

a growling acceleration of a squally evening. 

He’d left on four wheels screwed to a wooden board’s bottom.

She hadn't mentioned the hour to return
when he appeared at the door, sweaty, flushed, puffing,
thinly beating the rain spew, white hot vectors, the air collapsing in on itself. 

The green of the grass deepened as the storm rolled over,

lights flickered around the house,

Dirty Harry flashed from the TV screen.

Six feet tall, shirtless, shoulders that had bolted 

it seemed, overnight, unwinding on the leather couch

he looked casually at his summer reading list: Dickens and Dumas.

How wide the space had grown 

between the little boy of first grade, Dr. Seuss, crayons,
and the charcoal prints he brought home yesterday.

There's a slow, woody nightshade unfettering,
scrambling over the trellis, a liberation,
ever so rooted in that vessel called home.

* * *

Peter Wolf, former lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band (I still have their old vinyl "Blow Your Face Out"), has released seven solo albums since leaving the band in 1983. His latest, Midnight Souvenirs, was released in 2010.

"Friday Night Frolic" - Canonical Babbling in Beantown

Operating Room Manager screen at Tufts Medical Center

Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over 

to the enemy of our imagination. 

~Christian Nevell Bovee

I  know. I haven't been writing or making rounds. I've been AWOL. (Anxious Woman Of Late) See, my imagination tends to grab me by the neck and shove me toward worse case scenarios. Especially when it comes to health. Some years ago, I saw an ENT specialist who began our session by asking about my family medical history. I told him that there had been migraines, high blood pressure, heart disease and cancer. I told him my father had just died. Humph, the doctor said as he needled a scope through my nostril, you never know what's going to happen, you could get out of this chair, walk out the door and have a pulmonary embolism. That happened to a friend of mine about six months ago.

This is not welcome news to a pathophobiac.

And so a couple of days ago, when Little Miss Lulu—whose fear sensors are spindly stubs next to my yard long bobbing antennae—went into surgery for the very first time in her young life, I was in panic mode. What worried me wasn't so much the surgery as the anesthesia. She'd never had general anesthesia, and in my anxious mind, this is where potential waits for just about anything to go wrong. (Of course it's not the only opportunity for things to go awry—it can go topsy-turvy at any time, anywhere. Oh so horribly wrong!) Surgery is like slicing a wedge of Brie cheese, but anesthesia? That's more like baking a cheese souffle, it's a potent cocktail of carefully measured ingredients that requires close monitoring and a tender touch.

Above, on that nifty waiting room flat screen monitor, in forest green is my daughter—patient number 35628—in OR 03 at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center. The screen is updated in real time through pre-op, surgery start, estimated finish, and recovery, including the location of each procedure. Sitting before that monitor I felt as if I were in a train terminal watching the split-flap display of arrivals and departures. Boarding track 6. Departing track 11. On time. Delayed.

We were just a few blocks away from Boston's South Station, and as that thought crossed along the troubled tracks of my my mind, I heard the whistle and chug of a passing train, and recalled the many times Lu and I had taken the commuter rail into Beantown. Appointments with a pediatric OB/GYN. Meetings with the Chief of urology. Listening, with earplugs inserted, to the clanging and buzzing of a the great MRI machine that seemed to swallow my daughter whole. (And for reasons less ominous, as well, like seeing Blue Man Group at the Charles Playhouse, roaming through the masterpiece-lined corridors of the MFA, shopping along Newbury, traveling through simulated space and sea at the Museum of Science.)

And then, an announcement: Attention residents. Instead of the ordinary Wednesday rounds meeting, all residents will meet in the Chapel to mourn and memorialize the loss of all the children who've passed.

Omens loom in the boat shaped hospital that fits snuggly in the maze that is Tufts.

I took notes. I scribbled down the only question Lu asked the surgeon before being wheeled away. When can I eat again after surgery? I noted how the surgeon had answered our queries, and how Lu had watched the anesthesiologist carefully insert the IV, and tape it down against her skinny arm. And how my imagination had abruptly taken me hostage. There! There's the culprit! IVs gone bad. Cellulitis. Infection. Sepsis. Air bubble. Embolism!

The girl was calm as a conductor. I stroked her hair, and fought to keep my fears invisible. But inside, I was Woody-Allen-neurotic. Pacing, and scratching my head, and talking nonsense. Here, a list of all the things that can go wrong. Review the list. Worry.

And even though I'm fully aware of the risks as being slight (my daughter generally in excellent health), I am fully aware of the risks. I've signed the paperwork. I'm also, for the most part, reasonable, but I've known cases in which ordinary procedures proved catastrophic. It's a benign cyst, the doctor says with authority. It's a textbook procedure. The norm is that she goes in and comes out perfectly fine. Better, in fact. The norm.

I wish I could be as blissfully ignorant as my eleven year old daughter who hasn't yet been acquainted with medical complications.

I love you, Mama, she said as they whisked her away to a sterile, well-lit theatre for which I had no ticket. I wouldn't hear the music or the actor's scripted lines. I wouldn't see the curtain open or close. I didn't know which scene was being played out. All I knew was that patient 35628 was in OR 03. Had she been anesthetized correctly? Was she tolerating it well? Were they ad-libbing? Had she been shivved and sewed up? How loud was the music and how funny were the jokes? 

I took more notes. And though my daughter's malady was not nearly as grave as others, I was beginning to feel like the mother in Lorrie Moore's startling "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" (scroll past intro for full text).

Everything will be just fine. A textbook case.

The medical personnel at Tufts are sweet, attentive and empathetic, but I still wanted to get out of the building that housed the theatre.

When Lu woke in recovery the first thing she asked of the nurse was, Can you wheel me down to the Cafeteria?

No matter where we travel it's all about the food. We like to ramble off the worn tourist's path for the true flavor of a place. During each trip to the city, we took advantage of Tufts locale at the edge of Chinatown, and had some fine dim sum and barbecue duck in Chinatown's restaurants, pomelos and mangosteens from street vendors, and dense, bean-paste Mooncakes from the pastry shop.

Now, in the hospital's PACU, Lulu was ready for toast. That was a good sign.

A few hours later, I helped Lu into a wheelchair and slowly strolled her out of post-op. Pausing at the nurses station where an OR Manager monitor glowed in the shadows of early evening, I looked up and saw that number 35628 was off the board. Off the board! I shifted the wheelchair toward the exit and slid out the heavy double doors with Lulu.

The show was over. No ad-libbing. My girl was cyst-free and safe, and the enemy had let me loose.

And then, a fleeting thought: the children who hadn't made it. This was Children's Floating Hospital at Tufts, after all. Not all the children leave on wheelchairs, and I felt a pall of cloudy sadness as I pushed Lu into the wide elevator. But I was so grateful that my little girl was on her way home. A textbook case. The norm. Just as the doctor had said.

Now what was all that worry about?



The Tallest Man on Earth is Swedish singer/songwriter Kristian Matsson, who has a habit of sweeping away uneasiness.

"Friday Night Frolic" - Paper Moons and Cardboard Seas

In honor of National Women's History Month, today's Frolic is dedicated to the late, great Ms. Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Song.

Internet source unknown

It is a breezy spring afternoon in 1952, Mama walks across the Court Street bridge, her pleated skirt ruffling in the wind. Daddy pulls up to her by the curb, in his orange MG roadster, and offers Mama a ride home. She doesn't know him except for the fact that he and his family live in the neighborhood. She's heard he's smart, and she thinks he's good looking. He attends the public high school, and Mama goes to a private girl's school. Daddy is gregarious and confident. He's the President of his senior class, and the Captain of his baseball team. Mama is quiet, and reserved, and prudent, but she accepts his offer, and hops in the convertible, two-seater. 

And Ella croons smooth, easy, jazzy notes.

It is 1954 and Daddy leaves Mama with a diamond on her finger, flies out to Korea and Japan. Two years later, he returns with colorful kimonos, wooden Geta sandals, a black lacquered jewelry box, and a pearl ring for Mama. They dance every Friday night at Rhodes on the river. They jitterbug into the moonlit night, until the dance hall locks its doors.

On a hot summer day in 1957 Mama and Daddy are married. They live in a small apartment in the city. Daddy goes to college on the GI bill and Mama writes curvy, longhand characters for the businessman. Daddy drives their only car to class and Mama takes the bus to work. 

And Ella taps and scats—doo-wap-dee-do-do, sham-dingly-dee-da, shabu-dee-do. 

It's January 1963 and a pregnant Mama changes the cloth diapers of three bare-bottomed babies. She pins clean white sheets at their hips and returns to the stove top where a stew simmers in the Dutch oven, and glass bottles sterilize in a pot of boiling water.  She stirs their dinner with a wooden spoon and dreams about slow dancing, and a jitterbug, across the dining room floor. 

Daddy teaches History and English at an elementary school and in the evening drives to college, in a bigger city, to study for his Master's. Before he leaves work he calls Mama at home, in the new colonial, to see if there's anything she needs from the market. Mama no longer works in the businessman's office. She is bloated with baby, and tired, and stays home with the clamorous children. She keeps mixing up their names. She turns on the Hi-Fi and tries to smile.

And Ella swings and sweeps and tisks—so-lo-wee, no-no.

It is June, 1968 and five scruffy children set up a carnival in the backyard. Scrap boards from Daddy’s workshop are hammered together, holes dug in the sand, and croquet balls lined up for tossing games. Daddy's jostling his push reel mower around the azalea bushes at the edge of the lot. Mama comes out of the colonial and yells into the yard, "It's time!" Daddy stops pushing his mower, leans it against the wood fence panel, and runs to Mama. They go inside and then come out again with a pink suitcase. Daddy helps Mama into the long, white Buick and they drive quickly down the street and across town to the hospital, where she delivers her last child.  

When Mama returns the next day, the house is clean and Grammy has made pork pies for lunch. Mama walks in with the baby boy, and Daddy steps in behind her, carrying her suitcase. They spend the afternoon setting up a swingy seat that sounds like a metal noisemaker when cranked, and a woven bassinet in their bedroom. They take a long nap with baby. They are too tired to jitterbug. For dinner, Daddy serves green beans from the can and a ham Grammy had basted all day. They make beds and bathe the little ones. The eldest helps dry her youngest sister. The children pinch and poke the sleepy, golden-haired baby boy.

And Ella sways and hushes.

It is Christmas, 1993. All the children have graduated from college, moved out of the colonial, and are working. Some are married. There's no longer the patter of little ones toddling through the house. Daddy's retired from teaching high school English and his part-time job at the bank. The six children—spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends—are home for the holidays. Turkey roasts in the oven and wine is poured in cut crystal goblets. They visit relatives and unwrap too many gifts. 

When the grown children leave, the house is quiet and feels too big for Mama. Daddy and Mama go to the movies, and out to dinner with friends. They take island trips and Daddy builds a lakeside summer home. They marry off a few more children, and hope grandchildren are not far behind. They smile and sing the oldies, and fly off to Europe. They jitterbug and twist, and rock slowly, closely, along the dining room floor.  

And Ella hums and lilts and floats.

It is the Millennium. Mama and the children bury Daddy. They gather together at the old colonial. They cry and write poems, collect pictures and choose songs for the choir. They remember Daddy's smile and the way he hit the ball with a wooden bat, and how he danced the jitterbug. They remember dinnertime jokes and tales, and the sound of the table saw in the basement. They can still smell the sawdust. They remember years of grading papers and banging nails, working multiple jobs. They recall family vacations that were more like school field trips, because Daddy was always teaching. They compose, or imagine—because they cannot write, they cannot speak—a eulogy. 

They watch the casket lowered into the dark ground and the tumbling, trailing roses gathering in a heap upon the coffin.

And Ella sings the blues.

And everybody knows Daddy would have liked that. He would have liked it very much.