The Daily Post Photo Challenge this week is titled ‘ORDER’. It didn’t speak to me at all until I took a walk with a friend and noticed that sneaky theme had secretly tagged along. It had attached itself to a friendly picturesque porch and wagged its wooden finger
at the uniformed symmetry waiting for us just around the bend, Continue reading
You know the question. We’ve all heard it. We’ve all asked it. Whether we’re chatting with our neighbor sitting next to us in the window seat, standing serpentine in a line at the grocery store, or sipping cocktails at the hippest place in town, me? yeah right! ninety-nine point nine percent of the time someone asks, “So, what do you do?”
When I was a Stay-At-Home-Mom the guilt over not having an ‘outside’ job in addition to my familial responsibilities left me sputtering like a dying carburetor. Out loud, I’d hem and haw about how my adventures with the frantic four left little time for anything else, but inside I was asking myself how the focacchia did my mom-peers find the time to be welders, bio-chemists, lawyers, and artists between changing diapers and cleaning up barf? And why was I feeling like I should be keeping up with them?
I get it though. Heck, before I had children, I too used to wonder what a mother did at home all day without going insane. How many times could she blow on a boo-boo, clean a toilet, or fill the washing machine?
For years, I felt like a slacker. I could see that same thought reflecting back at me in people’s eyes, too. Or at least I thought I did. Thankfully, that did change when a now, dear friend innocently asked that loaded question, only this time ending it with “all day.” Armed with an answer that had been stockpiling for years, I shot back, “Well, typically, once the children have been taken to school, I change into turn of the 20th century lounge wear, grab a good book -preferably one with little or no plot- drape myself across a plush divan, Continue reading
…and the faery known as Thrill-Seeker, the only one of her sort to attend this type of celebration since the Sleeping Beauty debacle, first soared to the rafters of the modest nursery, stopped short, reached into her pouch of post-natal best wishes and sprinkled the babe in a soft shower of aromatic flower petals. “This,” she whispered, “is the inoculation against even the most minimal bouts of hodophobia you may experience in your lifetime.”
The pixie then dove off her perch and plummeted to within an inch of the slumbering infant’s feet where she hovered and drew a long, deep breath into her pocket-sized fluorescent frame. Ever so slowly, she exhaled one half of it in a focused stream of destinations upon the wee soles of the newborn’s feet
She weeps. She wails.
She sighs,
hopeful
that one day her children will learn to use their knowledge wisely.
Sermerssuaq
The Big Ice.
Caribbean-blue melt-water pools
the size of small countries
spread upon Mother Earth’s once pristine pate.
Creaking, cracking
she moans,
under their weight…
Continue reading
“Umimmar?”
Taken aback by the sudden question, Christian, Uli, and I nodded. Clearly, the man had overheard our conversation.
His dark eyes shifted from the front of the store to the back. Stepping closer, he first cleared his throat, then whispered, “18:05 in front of the church.”
This time, we nodded in unison.
Before turning back around he added, “Cash only,” then continued stocking the near bare shelf with red cardboard tubes of Pringles.
It was April 2016 and that was the only chip still available in Ittoqqortoormiit’s Pilersuisoq until the August arrival of the first of only two ships per year that supply the tiny Greenlandic village with anything that cannot be hunted or fished. That’s everything, people; everything from paint to potatoes, diapers to diesel oil, bread to bathroom tissue. But umimmar? That is Continue reading
It’s the question no one asked when they heard I’d be camping in the arctic in the summer of 2009.
Last April, seven years later, the same topic lay fallow on the fringe of conversations concerning my dogsled trip in Ittoqqortoormiit, East Greenland. It was barely alluded to, and never expressed in words, until now…
Q: Sooooo, what do you do when duty calls in the wild, high atop the world?
A: You answer it. Otherwise, the whites of your eyeballs will turn yellow and 1, 2, 3 you’ll burst like a water balloon when it misses its mark and hits the pavement after being tossed from a five-story window, leaving itty-bitty pieces of yourself to be fill in the blank (’cause if I do, you’ll deem me a wack-a-doodle).
In all seriousness, the dogsled trip was very different from my first time in Greenland. Continue reading
One homemade heart
trimmed in frilly,
white lace,
One arrow,
one promise
of a sweet,
warm embrace…
Once it’s notched,
drawn,
and trained
on his chosen bullseye,
Cupid first
blows a kiss,
and then
lets
it
~~~ fly ~~~
Alice Wetherby Pimms knew it was in the library. The beautifully scripted note written in her dead mother’s hand said so. The child had checked all the obvious locations, though, and found nothing – places like inside her father’s green felt-lined desk drawer, the one he’d hidden the tarnished brass key to inside a book titled, THE KEY TO REBECCA.
You’re probably thinking how conspicuous that might seem, rather like a toad wearing a hot pink béret on a sunny day, Continue reading
Words fail
to make the leap from grey matter
to tapping finger tips on keys
they say
“It’s because of Mercury”
they say
“the planet is retrograde”
they say
“that makes it a poor time for all forms of communication”
WHEW
thank the planetary gods
it’s NOT my muse gone mute Continue reading
As the sun sets behind this stretch of the Pacific Coast Ranges, a mountain chain that stretches from Alaska to central Mexico, I not only wonder,
but marvel at Continue reading
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