The Washcloth Resolution

When I was little, I made the same single resolution every year, writing it on a small piece of paper which I'd fold and put somewhere. "I will wash my face with a washcloth every day."  That was it. No promises of better diet or behavior, no hopes to do or see more. Yet despite how simple a plan it appeared to be, it remained unresolved, and was put back on that childish grand To Do list every New Year's Eve.

As I look back, I should have stuck to the ease of the washcloth promise. Eventually, I'm sure I could have succeeded, or decided it was not important to wash with a washcloth despite the or elses of my mother. Instead, at the end of every adult year, I lay the template of my life before me, and I make great plans to embellish.

This year, my plans loom larger than ever. With no children to raise, no job to attend,  I've thought through and suggested and tried out a myriad of ideas, where I want to go, how I want to be, imagining the rich fabric of days ahead.  And while I might not be known as a great planner, often more impulsive than thoughtful, I've spent hours and days pinning thoughts and wishes to the year to come.

In early December, I spent a half an hour in front of the calendars and journals and planners at Marshall's. I was looking for the one that would make sure I don't just write down dentist and hair appointments but that helps me draw long lines through days, setting them aside for myself. The calendar had to be monthly, with room to write. Not too big of a calendar because I want to carry it in my purse. No kittens or pictures of Milan, but also no Staples logo in the corner or any semblance of office calendar. No passages from the Bible or pointed fingers to be my best self and live each day.

On that first of two visits to  Marshall's, I found it. It said 2016 on it and was a simple, well-sized calendar with golden dates and card stock pages.  Nothing else.  And it was only $7.99. I held it, wandered through the housewares and clothing aisles, all while thinking about which pen I'd use in it and how I'd be sure to not clutter it up with mundane appointments, reserving it for Eat Pray Love level of ideas, and then I put it down and left. What did I need a calendar for?  I'd vowed I was going to just use my phone for a calendar this year, and last year I'd purchased a similar calendar only to fill it with people's birthdays and the upcoming dentist appointment, and then I'd abandoned it two weeks into the year.  But my phone calendar is flawed.  Up come work reminders that are interspersed with home ones, the "Send out Accounts Receivable emails" mixed in with "Dog to vet" ones, and they don't announce themselves and they aren't pretty. I can't buy just the right pen to fill in the dates. I like pens. And paper,

So I returned to Marshall's to get that calendar I'd abandoned too quickly, and it was gone. I searched through the Dream Big ones and the kittens, and couldn't find it.  Instead, I bought a colorful card stock calendar for the fridge where he could write "Tennis" on every Wednesday and I could write the occasional "Dentist."  I succumbed to the only one left that wasn't full of animals or bible verses, but was unfortunately one of the bossy ones. While it met the requirements of months I could write in and fitting into my purse, it shouted Do it, damn you! commands so popular these days as if we've all forgotten how to be.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

Live the life you have imagined.

Live Love Laugh.

Just shut the hell up. The end of the year and the beginning of the next is always fraught with a terrifying mix of promise and failure.  This year in particular, I've spent months anticipating the coming year, how I will leave my job, and how for the first time in my life I will craft my days and explore my wishes. I'm sure there are cracks in my plan. Yet here I am,  that perfect moment when the clock strikes the new year and glittering, glorious promise is laid before me.

January 1st.  I have coffee, I am sitting in my favorite spot, the birds visit the feeder out of the corner of my eye, and I step onto the fragile plan of my life moving forward, hoping it holds me.

Dear Prudence

Our home phone only receives calls from robots
and my mother,
plus the occasional call from my alma mater to ask for money, and for some reason from people thinking they've reached WalMart as they ask for help
in hardware.

Lately a lonely man has started leaving messages.
I've come home from work to his voice on our machine,
the hello this is our house with our name message,
ignored,
more than a hint he's got the wrong number.

Hi, Prudence,we met at a meeting a while back and I'm just wondering if you'd like to go with me to a meeting or meet there or

Hi, Prudence, I've called before and I haven't heard back but you left me your number to call and we met at a meeting at the shelter and I'm thinking of going to one this

Hi Prudence, I'm calling again. Why won't you call me back? You said to call and I am but you

One day I came home as he was leaving his voice in my kitchen,
as I set down my purse and hugged my dog as she climbed up my legs,
happy to see me after the day apart.

Hi Prudence.  I'm calling you.  Are you not calling because you think I was drinking? I wasn't. It was just soda in my mouth. I was swallowing when I left that message I wasn't drunk.  You said I should call. Why won't you talk to me? Please.  I just want to go to a meeting. I

I reached for the phone. Hello, this isn't Prudence. Prudence isn't at this number.

Really? Really? He doesn't believe me.

Really. This isn't Prudence. You've dialed the wrong number.

Oh. OK.  I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

I felt then that I'd abandoned this lonely man,
leaving him with nothing but a piece of worn paper
with Prudence's number smudged,
or written wrong
on purpose.

I should have said I'd go.

New

I feel it now, the door opening.

Today I'm sitting in a coffee shop with my daughter, Christmas carols play over the speaker.
She is finishing her school work and I am surrounded by latte I never order, my notebook of plans, and a book we're reading together waits in my bag.

I am so happy.

I have no plans. I have a thousand plans.

I'll write each day
I'll walk each day
I'll take time to be in nature.
I'll not do just the to dos.
I'll try the new,
I'll take time.
I'll do more than catch up.
I'll plan my garden.
I'll spend an afternoon and dig and move plants.
I'll be in touch with friends.
I'll be with friends.
I'll travel.
I'll cook and bake.
I'll live for a month in Paris, in Boston, in London.
I'll eat from markets and cafes.
I'll spend time by the sea in a cottage and will walk along the beach every day. September would be fine.
I'll spend time by the lake listening to the loons.
I'll take music history classes.
I'll learn sign language.
I won't learn sign language.
I'll speak French better.
I'll preserve and share my father's photos.
I'll take my daughters on trips. Art retreats. Overseas. Overnights.

I'll drive in a convertible with my husband along the California coast.

I'll knit.

I'll read. 

"Open you the east door and let the new year in!"

Two Days Apart

We'd call him today on his birthday, two days before mine.
I don't know what I found to say all those years ago
to a man I saw for 3 weeks a year
who lived 14 states away,
who was 66 years older than I,
but we'd turn over the egg timer and we'd call.
Happy Birthday!
Thank you, dear, he'd say,
dee-ah he'd say,
then nothing I remember,
then my parents would talk
and then he'd say
In two days it will be my turn to call you.

He'd call.
We'd chuckle over the fact we'd just spoken
two days before.
Happy Birthday, dee-ah,
Thank you, Grandpa,
and then nothing I remember.

I remember more as we grew older together.
There was more than just the yearly trip to the country general store
where he'd buy me stationery or pens.
I'd helped him move from his apartment where he'd lived with my grandmother
into a new one, the first place he every decorated on his own.
He knew my young children. He stayed in my house
when we had a heat wave and the fans whirred in the living room.
We played gin and he let me win. We wrote letters.
I brought him to the hospital when he'd come to visit and my parents
had gone to dinner.
I flew to be with him when he died.

Today they pin poppies to lapels,
and put flags on headstones.
Today, I just think of him
and imagine he'll call.

Trespass

No dogs allowed but I brought her
and we walked past all the Our Town people
Merrill Walker Smith Morse Peabody
here lies with his wife
and the babies who lived for just months
with small angels with
tilted heads beside them.
The school bus drove past,
and leaves softly fell,
and we shuffled through.
The sun set beyond the yellow maples
and the man played golf on the other side
of the headstones,
hitting the ball and walking slowly
on the low lawn.

I found someone I knew.
She was who I would want to be,
generous and respected with only kind words
and gifts and an easy smile given to anyone.
I met her when I was just married,
at a seasonal museum
where a very old docent and I would sit and wait for cars to pull up,
for them to ask about the family,
the mother and husband,
the boy who was shot, or shot the mother.
I don't remember.

She came to the house to organize a tag sale
for the Colonial Dames.
I'd never heard of Colonial Dames
or a tag sale.
Women who had families
who had been on the Mayflower
brought antiques.
Not musty clothes from their basements or Avon cologne bottles shaped like cars or
record albums like Petula Clark or the Bee Gees. These were
ink wells and trivets and andirons and willow ware and tapestries.

She gave me
a china cup so thin I could see my fingers through it
and a candy dish from France
and an emerald green marble desk set she said
I was to give to my husband for our anniversary.

She'd lost her grandson to AIDS
when it was new and he was young,
and she made a home for young men dying.
And she wore a feather boa
And she invited me to her house for tea.

I walked past her today
where she lies with her husband,
and school children ride by,
and dogs chase squirrels,
and the sun lowers itself
into the ground.

Picking a Fight

She’d invited me to go apple picking so I picked her up between our houses in a lot by the highway and we drove the sideroads to an orchard we’d been to with our own children and had come to from different ways but not this.  She changed into sneakers from her dress shoes as I drove and she struggled to lace and bend while belted into her seat and we talked about later that day how she had plans to meet with friends and I had to be home to do something I don’t remember since I don’t really think I had plans. We had our windows down half way to let crisp air in that smelled of fires and cider. Our hair whirled and tangled and my nose began to run and I wasn’t sure I knew how to get to the orchard from the lot in a town that wasn’t mine and she had no idea how to help since she had no sense of direction.  A handpainted finger pointed us down toward Hansel’s abutting the dirt road which we followed and pulled into a spot that wasn’t a parking spot the rest of the year but just a place with grass and few rocks and apple trees all around. The woman asked how much we planned to pick and we chose a peck since the apples looked just about ready but not quite. Then we walked down an aisle of trees and we each plucked an apple or two to plunk into the basket we’d set between us on the ground. Plunk. Plunk plunk. Gentle with apples, they bruise.

A smattering of families passed by us on their way to the trees they imagined held riper redder juicier fruit. We stopped near a tree so laden with fruit that the branches sagged close to the ground. We each found an apple to pick that was mostly green with a brushstroke of red from where it looked up to the sun. We stood by the basket. We bit into our apples. Warm. Sharp.

Leaves rustling in the wind.

Bite.

I don’t understand why you said, how we let, we had promised we’d never but I haven’t seen you in months. I never meant why did you? Well it sure seemed so to me at least that’s what I heard whether you meant to or not. I would never do that but you did and we said we would never and now we’re no better than her since we promised we’d never get here. Then you said and it hurt and I’d never say that to our daughters so why? I thought when you said, no I didn’t mean it that way but that’s how it came across. And we’re here. Bite. Quiet. Bite.

We were getting chilled. There weren’t enough red ones to fill our basket. We were done looking. We split them into two plastic bags I had in my trunk. got back in the car and drove back to her car, down the bumpy dirt road.

Yiskor

They all died in the fall.
Was it the thought and worry of winter and the dark mornings,
the quiet of birds gone, or is that just in poetry?

All those people who loved me and who loved us
and who lived days and jobs and kept
homes and summer places
and gardened and took care
of people
and ate cornflakes and
spaghetti and meatballs
and borscht
and called friends and golfed and cooled
off in the lake and smelled of
tobacco and maple
and gardenia and cologne
and could build and comfort and play gin
and bake and sing old songs
and they held my children and
took care of my children
and never saw my children
grow.

We give their names to our children
and teach them remnants of stories and songs
and tell them how loved they'd be.

I remember them so sweetly today.

Grandma: 9/10/82
Grandpa: 10/8/94
Dad: 9/4/03
Ray: 9/15/07
Margie: 9/24/14