Passover

The first night of Passover and I'm here
without my family,
just the dog running around the table,
trying her best to entice me,
chewing on her stuffed animal,
looking at me all the while,
trying to make her game look fun
when I know it isn't.

The peepers are loud
and I have the window open to hear them
while my dog looks at me
with the plush, eyeless cat in her mouth,
look, look what I have,
come try to take it,
you'd like it.

My father lost his father on the first night of Passover
when he was ten years old.
He died in an accident,
when the Fuller Brush tower collapsed.
My father became a small boy every year
quietly remembering that night.

My family is far
with my daughter a long flight away
and my other daughter in Florida with my mother
eating BBQ at the mall
and my husband off at a cousin of an in-law's house
eating vegetarian.
I went to the movies.

Some of the frogs yip or yeep,
some whistle,
some sound like they're blowing bubbles through a straw
in glasses of milk.
All of it is loud,
their reptilian Seder,
the order of the year.

I got a burger
after the movie
and there was a band playing
so loudly
I had to shout my order.
The singers yelled something
like get me out! Let me out!
I had my burger wrapped to go

and came home to the peepers
and the trilling
and my dog
now sleeping in my arms.

All traditions have been broken tonight,
no blue flowered dishes and red wine glasses
and matzo ball praise,
no gefilte fish skidding around the parsley garnished plates.
No children find hidden matzo,
no endless songs where we only know a few of the words
and hum and stumble through them just the same.
I think of my father's quiet
and miss my own father,

Elijah, this is your chance.
Come have a glass of wine
before I close the window,
and go to bed.

Cuff links

We'd packed up all that had been
in his bedside table,
not taking the time,
tossing in photos and letters
and maps of Rome and Africa,
a pair of opera glasses he'd had
since The War,
cassette tapes of Rossini
and Scarlatti
and a small leather box
filled with tie tacks
and cuff links.

Today all this time later
I opened the box.
So intimate a collection
of pins,
thinking how each day he would open
this box
and choose.

I know no men now
who wear cuff links
or tie tacks
or pins
showing
their clubs and allegiances
as my father did.

I learned how to enamel at camp one summer
and made him cuff links
both brown and triangular,
one with a hole drilled into a corner,
both ugly.
He wore them until
thankfully one came unglued
from its cufflinking mechanism
and was never fixed.
But he saved them here
along with a tie tack I'd made
when I learned how to do silver at school one year.
A silver thread snaked
onto a silver base
with edges I filed into as much of an oval
as I could
until it got smooth,
and I decided it was ovular enough.

When no new idea came
for father's day
we bought cuff links
and tie tacks
from the mall.
He opted for Rotary cuff links
and American College of Dentists tie tacks,
but he saved our gifts.

There is a piece of shrapnel in the box
he kept
from Italy
when he was wounded.

There is a heart
my mother made for him
and he moved it from one jacket
to the next,
wearing it always.

There are small keys
and little screws
left from some project.

My father's last calendar
turned
from being the place where he wrote appointments to come,
to being the place where he recorded what he had done that day,
adding small details
in case he was asked.
He was no longer able to remember.

On the day of my parents' final anniversary
he wrote
Beautiful day,
really dressed up,
cuff links et al.

So much of what shaped him,
his days and meetings,
his hobbies and committees,
holidays and warfare,
is in there
untouched
since he left,
and now I can't let the box go.

Out of the office

That time at a desk
seems so necessary for people
who don't know me
to help them
think they do.

I'm learning not to need the desk
as a prop.

Sometimes I do.

Other times
in this new time

there are no have to things.

Life is easier for people we don't know
when told with rules
and lines
and formulas that equal,
and how we fit in them,
not rolled out like a meadow
with clouds shading
and sun revealing.

What do You Do questions
are easier
for everyone,
when we answer
with the firmness
of a spreadsheet.
I do this.
I do those things.
I am important because you can define me
and I have a place to go,
even if you have never heard of where I worked
or couldn't care less about the fact that I work there.
Oh! you say.
Oh, you smile with relief
that you can understand,
as can I.
It makes us both feel better.


Oh,
they say when I say I've left my desk.
Is that a good thing?
Yes, it's good.
But I do go to bed
worried about the supposed to part,
whatever that is.
Should is what guides a day.
Don't know is what I'm left with,
and it's frightening,
and it's wonderful .

In my office
my coworkers and I stared at computer screens.
Like the who dunnit was going to be revealed
at the very moment we'd look up.

And each morning,
it was how was your night? What did you do?
I don't remember, we always said, or it was good.
And now
sometimes I don't remember and it was good
and I tell no one.

But I have a friend who said she gets defensive
in this unoffice life
when her husband asks her at the end of the day
what did you do?
as if accusing her,
when really he's just interested.
Do we make things up? Do we say we read on the sofa
for three hours
and it wasn't even snowing or raining out?
And we made popcorn
and we read through old college yearbooks
and we wrote a letter to a friend
on stationery and mailed it in the real mail?
Or do we say
I did the taxes
and then I put on a new roof
and learned chemical engineering
and started a corporation
and found a job
with benefits?

What will make me sleep through every night
reminded of the reward
of this time,
remembering that the day is mine,
that life is a blink,
and that sitting with the grateful dog
on the wet grass and
pulling up new dandelions by hand is
what is
here
to do?