Memory

 

May 30, 2022

 Greetings from the cenotaphs,

 Mom gets the little box out of the top drawer, the drawer we never are supposed to look in but me and Elliot look in there when she is at work, and Mrs. Guerra is watching us, but mostly she watches her stories.  So we look in there.

 Elliot is only three and I am five so I remember better.  When we went to the summertarry last year Mom had to push Elliot in the folding stroller, and it took forever because the one wheel is broken and Mom can’t get a new one because of the goddam government.

 I know it’s Memory Day, because everyone has American flags on their stoops and Mom gets off early at the Kwik Trip and goes in the other room where the top drawer is.

 She told me yesterday there was going to be a parade and we had to wash good in the tub, and not just fart around.  And she laid out the clothes for us and used the iron, which she hates and never uses because it makes the lights go out in the kitchen.

 And Elliot hates being in the tub, but I used the scrub rag on him and we horsed around a little, until Mrs. Guerra told us to knock it off before she came in there and gave us what for, and so we knocked it off.  The water was cold anyway, and it was kind of dirty.

 We were supposed to be getting our pajamas on and instead we tiptoed into the other room, but Elliot doesn’t tiptoe very good.  It didn’t matter because Mrs. Guerra had the TV turned up so loud. Mom says she’s deffasapost.

 So we stood on a basket and we slid open the top drawer and looked in there. There’s envelopes that look boring and some coins in a dish and some chocolate and a pack of cigarettes with one already smoked a little and stuck in the plastic wrapper.

 And the little box.  I take it out and we sit on the floor and open it up and I tell Elliot not to touch it but he always does.  It’s purple and he likes the color, and he touches the ribbon part, and the little metal heart is purple too, and it has an old-fashioned man’s face on it.

 I tell him it’s Dad’s and he doesn’t understand, and he thinks that the old-fashioned man is Dad, because he doesn’t know what Dad looked like.  We put the little box back in the top drawer.

 In the morning we didn’t get up the first time Mom called us and so she was mad and so Elliott cried a little bit.  We had Rice Krispies and because it was Memory Day we got Pop Tarts.  Except at Kwik Pick they are ‘Toasterlicious’.  It was a variety pack and Elliot got chocolate and I got cinnamon. 

 They taste like biscuits Mrs. Guerra makes and they were so dry I had to pick some of it off the roof of my mouth with my spoon.  Elliot was grossed out but he laughed so hard that he sprayed milk and Rice Krispies on the table and Mom told us to cut the crap, and Elliot cried a little.

 Mom says if we are good we can go to the parade and I wipe Elliot’s face and tell her we are going to be super good.  I am so excited I can feel bumblebees zooming around in my tummy.  We brush our teeth and don’t horse around and don’t hardly get toothpaste on our ironed shirts. 

 If we go to the parade there will be fire trucks and clowns that throw candy.  Elliot hates the loud fire trucks and clowns scare him, but all I tell him is there will be candy.  He forgot the other stuff from last year’s Memory Day parade.

Elliot doesn’t have hardly any memory because he’s only three.  I have memory but I have to practice all the time, or some things go away.  Like Dad.  I have to practice Dad.

 Mom tells us to sit in the davenport and we run in there and we both jump on the cushions and make dust float in the sun beams. I want to be good, but mostly I want to go to the parade, but we have to remember and we have to go to the summertarry.   Mrs. Guerra brought flowers for Mom to take and when she saw them her eyes watered and she said she wasn’t crying it was because she had goddam hayfever from the flowers.

 Me and Elliot sit on the davenport and I put my arm around his neck and tell him to be good, and stop kicking his feet.  He wants to go to the parade and get candy but I tell him we have to remember and then we can go.  He says he doesn’t want to remember and he cries a little.  And then we wait, and we are super good.

 Mom gets the little box out of the top drawer.

 

 Hope this finds you remembering,

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Welcome

 

May 23, 2022

 Greetings from the happy wanderer,

 Each week a cloud of words gathers here and showers me with drops of inspiration.  Sometimes I just get wet, and sometimes a few words gather in my palm and form something worth sharing.  Sometimes it is a single tear from above that stays clear from the cloudburst.

 This morning it is ‘Bothy’.

 For as long as there have been places to explore, people have tramped paths in the earth to get there, and by their own footsteps created the way for the next traveler.  In some places, a nearly secret arrangement of refuge formed, rudimentary lodgings for a weary wanderer to rest out of the weather.

 A bothy is a simple nest, a small hut that is left unlocked for travelers to use.  Some are one room, perhaps once a shelter for a shepherd or even for the flock.  There is a place for a fire, perhaps a table, sometimes a bed.

 For generations, these huts have become a place where strangers traveling through could stay the night, be warm and dry.  Most are made of stones found in the place they were built, with wooden roof, a basic door, sometimes a window.

 The bothy was accepted by the landowners as a necessity, perhaps first for people working the land, but it evolved into this other idea.  This is a common thing in the Scottish Highlands, but the same tradition formed in the remote places in the Alps, in New Zealand and Finland.  They are called different things, but the purpose is the same.      

 Now there is a network of bothies for hikers to use as they make their adventures in the blustery highlands.  There is nothing luxurious about them, you need to bring your own food and firewood and whatever you will sleep in.  It is the most fundamental sort of hostel, and it costs nothing to stay there. 

 There is an expected conduct among those who use the bothy.  The bothy code is fairly simple; Respect others, the land, the bothy.  Leave it like you would like to find it.  This code, like the principle of the bothy, is based on a trust, the understanding among people in need that binds them together. 

 Part of this code is the understanding that the door is always open, there are no reservations, so you may end up sleeping with strangers.  The agreement, mostly in the invisible space between us, is that we need each other in these strata of the world, and so it’s best to honor the code. 

Travelers bring what they can, share what they have, and some nights new friendships are born.

It’s interesting to me that in such primitive situations we find such noble ideas as honor, respect, compassion, fellowship.  I have never been inside a bothy, but since the moment I read about them I was drawn to the idea.  This morning I realized why.

 The bothy is an extension of us, it is an idea made real in the form of simple shelter.  The unlocked door is the symbol of an open heart, a welcoming expression of one human for another.  It’s often the simplest things that are so enduring, so powerful.

 I have been a traveler, in many forms, and I have been given shelter, offered someone else’s food, the company of a stranger who would be a friend.  I know how that changes you for the better. 

 Any of us can make this possible for other travelers.  A kind word, a few dollars, maybe even a place to stay.  It doesn’t have to be limited to remote trails in misty highlands.  We can all be the bothy. 

 

Hope this finds you with an open heart,

 

David

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Graduating

 

May 16, 2022

 Greetings from where I commence,

 For over four decades I have been diligent in what I do to earn a living, and it has been satisfying and I have been successful and what I’ve done has mattered.  I’m proud to be at this place in life and I am looking forward to making the most of it.  Including this jumping off place.

 Over a year ago I set in place a plan to move to the next part of life, and the transition is something called ‘retirement’.  I’ll be honest, I don’t like the word, in fact I resent it.

 Some may say it’s natural to feel unsettled during this kind of a change, and I won’t argue that, but from the first time I considered it, I frowned at the word retirement.  Sure, ‘retire’ is literally defined as ‘To conclude one’s professional career.’  And if that’s all the baggage it carried, I wouldn’t think twice.

 It’s the rest of the language that bugs me.  Retire; To go to bed. To withdraw.  To retreat.  Resign.  It may seem silly to focus such attention to this, but it took me a while to realize that I resented the implications of retirement, the cliches and the assumptions.  None of it fit with my image of my future.

 Thankfully my sister Jennifer saved me.  She called me up and gave me a different word, and as soon as I heard it, I liked it.  I liked it more every day since.  The word is ‘Graduate’. 

 This time of year, I have a lot of company using this word, and I don’t want to stand in their spotlight.  But I’m not going to be shy about joining the celebration.

 Graduation has a perfect inference that matches with completing a career.  Imagine that after you put in your time, instead of a gold watch you were given a diploma, and encouraged to take your place in the world, heal it, make it better.  And enjoy it.  Take what you learned, find out what to do with it.    

 This last week I have been watching commencement speeches.  It’s a simple thing, but, my friend, if you want to be filled up, if you want to think about how your life can be more, spend a little time listening to what is said to the next generation of us.  It’s fantastic.

 There is a sort of limitless horizon at a commencement, which doesn’t automatically feel present at my stage of life.  I believe that’s correctable by making choices, starting with the words I think and speak.

 Commencement.  I love this celebration of commencement, the partner verb of graduating.  The act of going forward, of beginning.  I love the passion of the commencement speakers, telling us to look around and thank everyone who made this moment possible.  Telling us to be curious, be present, be brave, be the light, love, follow your dream, be the best you that waits in the next moment.

 As young people commence, they are given life lessons to consider.  It is a crossroads, a pinnacle of achievement, a time of choice.  Just writing those things and fitting them into my season of life gives me goosebumps. 

 Everyone who has gone through retirement has their own thoughts on it, and each will handle the transition in a unique way.  But for all of us, I think perhaps it’s worth raising our hand and saying to the world that we are not resigning, not going to bed, not shrinking our world.  We are graduating. 

 I won’t be finished with work for a couple of weeks, and I am not making rigid plans for the days that follow.  But I want to fill this liminal space with words that inspire adventure, potential, growth. 

 I’ve enjoyed my career, I’m proud of my accomplishments, and I intend to honor that by not trading it in for something that feels like a cliché.  I am not unhappy to have this new adventure,  I only want a better way of saying how I feel about what comes next.  I choose to graduate, to commence into a new future that is filled with possible.

  

Hope this finds you finding your way,

 

David

  

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

Not Catching

 

May 9, 2022

 Greetings from the top of the food chain,

 If you think about it, we have a very strange relationship with animals. If we had to explain it to Martians it would sound hilarious.

 Us: See, these animals we ride, those are for pulling things but not riding, these animals are for eating.  Some animals we keep in cages to look at, and some we keep in cages to eat their young.  But these animals over here, we don’t eat.

Martians: Why not?

Us: These are pets, we don’t eat our pets.  We feed them and spend outrageous amounts of money to care for them, and when they poop in public, we pick it up and carry it.  Often, we will push them in pet perambulators, so they don’t have to walk.  They are like royalty.

Martians: We are going to take over now.

 In my house we are executing ants. Technically they are not animals, so you may see it as off- topic, but I want to mention this because I hope our reputation gets out and other ants will think twice about walking around on our kitchen counter.  Anyway, as my Mom would say when she wanted to change the subject, animals.

 I live at the edge of a forest, which brings me in close contact with animals daily.  Lots of birds, a few snakes, a bazillion squirrels, some chipmunks.  I have never seen a koala here or a feral shoat, although the woods are lovely, dark and deep, and they easily could hide both.    

 Sometimes the animals try to come into our house.  Birds often crash into the windows, some kind of protest about the quality of food we give them, I think.  We have had bats in our belfry, and mice will sometimes find shelter in warm nooks and crannies here, where they are not welcome.  I have dealt with these invaders in the same way ants are dispatched, and with only slightly less regard.  Woodpeckers occasionally put holes in the house, which up until now I have forgiven, because they are pretty, and too hard to catch.  You might sense an uneven scale of justice emerging.

 Every day there are deer in the yard.  Deer are welcome, except when they eat things we planted not to be eaten, a sort of Eden irony.  These delightful fragrant plants, which are delicious but not to be tasted, we must spray with noxious potions in the futile hope that it will spoil the appetite of the deer.  But deer are so pretty and graceful, and they don’t attempt to come in the house, so it’s hard to be angry at them.

 Easier to be angry at are groundhogs, also known as woodchucks (from that rhetorical math poem) and my favorite appellation, ‘whistle pigs’.

 We are being harassed by a terrorist whistle pig, which is the first time in history those words were put in that order in a sentence.  This wily marmot has been digging caves around the foundation of our house, which is not only unsightly, but it also sets a bad precedent for other varmints.  And it’s unsightly.  Does anyone ever say something is ‘sightly’?

 We decided to humanely trap the whistle pig and have him/her/them taken gently to some other woods where justice is tilted to allow whistle pigs, whatever their gender preference, to live out their natural span.  We hired an expert, which I will say here is the second year we have hired him, who has proven to be cheerfully willing, but woefully inept.  He puts an ear of corn and some cabbage leaves in the trap, which rumor has it is the whistle pig’s Happy Meal.

 I check the traps every time I walk past the window, which is too often.  Immediately the traps were sprung and we found we had caught some sticks.  Another time a trap was sprung, perhaps by the wily feral koala, and something ate the corn right through the cage.  So I guess we caught cabbage leaves.

 Then we caught a raccoon.  This might have been kind of a victory, except for the look the raccoon gave me, which seem to say “Can you believe this?  Even a whistle pig doesn’t fall for a trick so rudimentary.”  You know that look.  I had to avert my gaze.

 Then we caught a possum.  Also a false victory, although possums are very unattractive, so I was glad he got relocated. I know it’s not fair, but I feel like he was bringing down the average of the yard, looks wise.  I think I can be that prejudiced if I begin the sentence with ‘I know it’s not fair…’

 It feels like the whistle pig is toying with us, spreading false Happy Meal rumors, daring other varmints to explore the cages, predicting Spring with no basis in meteorology.  I’m tempted to give up, but I have promises to keep. 

 The spectrum of our relationships with animals is erratic and irrational and it’s better not to try to explain it to Martians, as if they would bother to ask.  They are likely much more curious about WWE, disc golf, and meaningless memes about mean Twitter texts.  Anyway.  I can’t worry about what Martians think when there is so many other fabricated concerns to keep me awake. And miles to go before I sleep. 

 I just checked the traps for the tenth time this morning, which if you are following along is precisely the number of times I went by the window, and also the precise number of times we have not captured a whistle pig.  I am sure if I’m consistently obsessive eventually we will catch something besides everything else other than a whistle pig, but I have other fish to fry.  And miles to go before I sleep.

 Hope this finds you stopping by woods,

 

David

 

 

Copyright © 2022  David Smith

May

 

May 2, 2022

Greetings from where we may,

Where I live it is sometimes hard to rely on the seasons to behave in a predictable fashion.  In the throes of spring’s promise, we are given snow and ice.  The flowers and buds, confident in their passion, perhaps encouraged by a mild March day, or the lyrical April showers, shudder in shock.

Perhaps it’s this way where you live, where you know better than to plan things outside because nature can be as petulant as a two year old.  There are a lot of ‘can’t’ conversations this time of year.

And then arrives my friend, the one who introduces me to ‘possible’.  I will admit I have to be reminded how much I value this friendship.  

There was a day, not long ago, that I ran in deep snow, shredded by winds so fierce I resigned myself to never describe them.  Even wearing all the gear I own, I arrived home after a dozen miles numb and discouraged.  Honestly, I can still feel that ache this morning.

In all of our days there will be something or other that will speak to our fears or our disillusionment or the frustrations.  They want to remind us of what we cannot, may not, will not do.  Some days it is a bitter winter wind, but it can be a harsh word, a war, a cost.  On those days it’s hard to remember the promise of May.

If you read the definition of the word ‘may’, which I predict none of you have, you will find the first use is: ‘Expressing possibility: ‘That may be true.’  And then: ‘Expressing permission.  Expressing a wish or hope.’

How could I have not known all this before now?  This little word, labeled an ‘auxiliary verb’, is barely worth a turn in Scrabble, and we use it in nearly every conversation.  May.

And now we are joined by May, the month of possible.  The gateway to June, where summer waits.  A time of blossoming, of purpose, and for us, a path to what we choose.  Permission.  It says, in its name, ‘You May…’  It allows you to act on your thoughts; Yes, you may run in shorts, go to the beach, graduate.  You may plant things without reservation.  You may hope.

We are affected by what nature offers.  I have learned, after too many years of not learning, that when I embrace that, make friends with what comes, the happier I will be.  Not every day in every season has an obvious gift, it is still our work to find what we are offered.

But in May, perhaps, we see the answer more easily, a reprieve from the effort required in more stark seasons.   It is the month poems are written, because it’s so possible, because we may.  Dew does not freeze or burn off, it is there in its fullness until the ladybug sips her fill.

I wish I could have a picnic, take a walk in the evening.  I want to sit in the sun in the yard and have coffee. I want to take my time in the woods. If only I could go for a long run in only my shorts and a smile.

May answers these thoughts.  You may.  May does not promise everything, it simply offers the possibilities, and it is up to us to go see what we can make of them.

Hope this finds you finding what you may,

David

Copyright © 2022  David Smith