Month: January 2019

 

The pain wakes me up.  I try to bend my middle finger, it is  throbbing and stiff. I shake my arm to get the blood circulating.   My middle finger, this  used to be my favorite finger the one I used to flip off the world. I close my eyes and try to forget the pain and then I remember.

  I am fifteen when my mother discovers my father is having an affair.  She takes to her bed, with her astrology magazines, chocolate Turtles and bottles of cheap red wine.

I am in charge being the eldest. There are four kids and 30 dogs in the back yard that need taking care of.  Doing laundry I go into my younger brothers room looking for

dirty clothes.  I open his closet and there on the floor are open tubes of airplane

glue.I look around the room, windows are closed, curtains are closed and no car

or airplane models.  My 10-year-old brother is hiding in his closet sniffing glue

while my mother hides in her room reading her horoscope.

I go to my parents’ room where my mother hides under the covers with the curtains drawn and tell her about what I have found, she doesn’t respond.  I go back to my brothers’ room to get the tubes out of his closet and he is there, when I ask him about the glue he gets angry and I see hate and fear in his young eyes.  He slams the door close and I try to stop him, the door crushes my finger.I’m screaming  “open the door” he doesn’t for a long time.  This is the only time I ever see him being cruel.

My finger stops throbbing.  I close my eyes and think of my brother one of my best friends, eighteen years dead.  Gone but still with me.

I went to our local Women’s March today. It was pink and wrapped in funny signs and Native Americans watched us march and thanked us for the good day.

And I still looked up to the roof to see if there were any snipers. Because you never forget once you have felt the threat from your own country.

Fifty years ago I walked in a march in Berkeley California protesting Provo Park and the Vietnam War. I think it was on a Saturday, I remember it being a nice day. I walked downtown from where I lived on the corner of Grove and Ashby to the park. I was 19 years old. Hundreds of young people discovered we were being watched  by snipers from rooftops as helicopters buzzed above us and the streets were blocked off. Trapped. Even my naive mind realized that if just one person freaked out we were all in danger from our government. As people placed flowers in the Guards rifles I prayed that peace was as powerful as I believed.

Fifty years later and here I am walking down the street with police on either end of the walk and I can’t help but look up to the roofs of this beautiful Victorian town and I don’t see one sniper and I don’t hear one helicopter circling above and I think to myself, that’s a good sign.

I spend my time finding and listening to music. Having been stuck in the 60’s I challenge myself to hear what is going on;  Now.  Music is poetry of our time, but you knew that.  And I am beginning to notice a beat; a heart beat in the music. And it gives me HOPE.

Rats in Washington playing hardball while children wait in detention camps surrounded by strangers. Talk about PTSD. Toxic shock lays on top of our beautiful land. Our oceans poisoned empty. I love the earth more then I love you, no wonder we can’t all get along. Regrets are as common as pot holes. Listening to Garrison Keillors read the Writers Almanac calms my morning jitters like Perry Mason once did. Loneliness is my best friend so I take it with me everywhere.

My word for 2019 is JOY.

I’m gonna spread it on you like peanut butter.