Snippets.

Sometime long ago in the hot summer …exhausted from playing in the water of our Lake Michigan, I would flop down on my stomach at the water’s edge. Laying my cheek on the hot sand I would look through the water droplets resting on my eye lashes and see the rainbow world. Then I was a mermaid. I’m walking out there now. The Rainbow Beach. 🌈🏖

So I felt better, a bit like I had jet lag. All those vivid dreams! Went to yoga, thank you Mr. Logan. On the way there I had a serendipity. Wanna hear it? Okay, so, I’m driving along on LSD when I start thinking about, what was Michael Jordan’s jersey number? Total brain fart. Was it the same when he played for the White Sox? These are things I should know. Right? Anyway, I just cannot remember. Then around Buckingham Fountain a car merges in front of me and we’re all just sitting there waiting for the light to change and I notice the license number of said car. It’s Q something 2323. Seriously! Now I’m trying make make some homemade horchata. I will definitely keep you posted. ☮️💫🦋

I love the smell of that Maja soap! My mother used to wear the powder. I can remember being fascinated by the Spanish dancer on the box. She wore a red and black Flamenco dress with a tall lacy hair comb. I’m sure that staring at that box as a very small child made me want to be a dancer.

Just a few minutes ago there was still a thin sliver of light touching the tippy tops of the trees out to the south of me…oh, and the steeple of St. Michael’s. A midwest summer is sublime. All those tall weedy plants, mustard and queen ann’s lace, milkweed and countless others mingle into a particular perfume that stirs my heart. I heard a cricket and soon there will be fireflies…gratitude.

From my notes on the residual effect of being raped. “Here’s the thing that happened to me, I became terrified of being attractive.”

Every piece of furniture in my apartment came from “the side of the road” with my mother driving and making me get out of the car to “hold it up” for her to examine to determine if we should take it home. My Aunt Izie used to tell a story about my mother coming over all excited with a trunk full of brand new shoes that she found behind a store. When they started looking at the shoes they soon realized that ALL the shoes were lefts. There were no rights! 🙄

….lone surfer in the water at 57th street beach. There he was… sitting on his board facing the twilight horizon. I’m not sure if he was waiting for the next big wave or just enjoying the rolling surf. Anyway, the light turned green.

When I worked as The Catering Sales Manager @ The UC, got on the service elevator & Gene Siskel & Jack Nickelson were on there already. Looking sort of lost, I escorted them to their destination.

There was a period of time some years ago where I found myself driving past a high school during the exact time the kids were getting off for the day. At a stop light looking over at the bus shelter there were always a few couples, teenagers, kind of making out, kissing and holding hands, laughing ….girls acting mad, boys trying out their persuasion techniques. It always gave me such a deep sigh of nostalgia.

…if you come home from work and decide to go down to get the mail and there’s a wild bird trapped in the hallway trying desperately to get out through the skylight and it’s flapping it’s wings and flying from one spot to another and wearing itself out and worrying you to no end, if this happens you can go downstairs and open both doors and stick the rug underneath one so it won’t close and hold the other one and call softly, little bird, little bird and if nothing happens you can go back upstairs and decide that the best thing to do is open your apartment door and all of the windows and screens and the back door and put some seed down in a little dish by the front door first, I forgot that part…anyway…the bird might come in your apartment and hang on the curtain for a minute and you can say good bird good bird and the bird just might fly out of the window which it did and whew! Saved a bird!!! Love. Gratitude.

I love this weather! The sky was spectacular over the lake. The water a deep steel blue with a strong horizon line giving way to bright too blue blue set off by billowing clouds of white and gray all moving at a furious pace casting shadows on the water that made it hard for me to look away.

My mother who worked a swing shift at USSteel from the time before I was born, knew all the fish, chicken and bbq shacks surrounding the mills. We used to go to taverns for fish fries on Friday nights. We would walk through the bar to the back room where dinner was served! The tables were covered with oil cloth and the cutlery was rolled into a paper napkin. A relish tray would come first. It included cottage cheese, pickled beets, celery and carrot stalks and canned California black olives and homemade German potato salad. I can so clearly remember the smell of those taverns, a little sour and smoke filled. The floors were warped and wooden. There was a particular sound shoes would make walking through. It was kind of soft and muffled. I loved the Hamm’s beer sign on the back bar. It had bouncing colored lights on water to demonstrate the clear blue waters of Wisconsin.

One of my favorite childhood memories is of peeling apples with my grandfather. My grandparents had a Granny Smith apple tree. Early in the morning my grandfather would gather the fallen apples then set up a sort of peeling station in the basement. It consisted of two stools facing each other, a big steel bucket with water and the apples in another bucket with newspaper on the ground in between. He gave me a small paring knife and we sat face to face peeling, coring and cutting apples together! He didn’t talk much but he was wonderful. He also taught me to play gin rummy & backgammon! My grandmother always complained about how much work there was to do something with those apples! She made pies and canned sauce. We ate a million apples. Worms didn’t bother us at all. I mean we, my cousins and I. Very soon after my grandfather died she went out there and had that tree cut down. That ended that. I think she was really just mad that he was gone.

Summer night, 8-19-2018

8:32….dark out. Our sublime summer is closing its light. Still the air is so sexy with its slight breeze. There’s the sound of car radios out in the street & motorcycles roaring by leaving the steady hum of crickets in their wake. Far off fireworks and I imagine tourists on the waterfront. I prefer my quiet place out of the fray. Away from the “action” I can remember who I am. I can feel my heart beat and let myself rest. 💫🦋