At a quick dinner-table poll this evening, I found out that I’m going to have 16 grandchildren.
2 from Judah
4 from Wesley
4 from Malin
6 from Avery
Sounds good to me…
“The stars may lie, but the numbers never do (I feel lucky)”
fixtures in motion
When I was a kid, I had no reason to believe that light fixtures did anything other than hang out on the ceiling and provide light. It never even crossed my mind that one might come down for a reason other than a routine cleaning or lightbulb change.
I lived a sheltered life as a child.
Once upon a time, before my girls were born, I was reading bedtime books to Judah and Wesley when I heard a startling crash from next door – my bedroom, which no one was supposed to be in. When I went in to check it out, I found that the motion of our ceiling fan had slowly jiggled loose the screws that held the light globe on. It fell straight down onto the footboard of our bed and shattered into a million and one pieces.
And then there was that peaceful night at the beginning of last summer. Roger and I were sleeping soundly in our pale green room – same bed, different house – when there was an even louder, definitely more startling crash. This time it was because 10 months earlier, Roger had installed the ceiling fan (a new one) just a little bit incorrectly. There was something weird about the ceiling or something – it made it hard to install the fan the right way. This time around, the whole fan dropped out of the ceiling and landed on the floor beside our bed. We still use that fan. Roger had to glue one blade back together, but otherwise, it works just fine. (And it’s installed correctly now too.)
I’m not entirely comfortable sleeping under a ceiling fan anymore.
Tuesday evening we had some friends over. I was taking my friend Linda up to the 3rd floor of the main house and her 2-year-old Micah was following us. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, pointed up to the chandelier and said, “bad guy.” Poor little thing – he was scared to come up the stairs because of a light fixture. When he was really little, a light fixture fell onto the floor near him and scared him. Ever since, he’s been afraid of ceiling lights. He calls them “bad guys.”
I can sympathize.
Where do I put this?
I’ve managed to confuse myself by starting to use my xanga site again. I don’t know how many people keep up with both of them, and if I put something there, should I put it here too? Maybe I’ll just forget that one. I’ll start by reposting this here:
Scene
In the jigsaw puzzle on your basement table
(the one you started by candlelight last winter)
I’m the piece that belongs in the corner
over by the edge,
one in a myriad of
bits of cloudless sky blue.
If you notice me at all,
it’s because my cardboard layers
are slowly separating,
loosened by a toddler’s slobber,
nervous red fingernails, or
maybe the spreading condensation from a neglected glass of iced tea.
The first pieces placed are the obvious ones:
the horse’s face, the flashing scarlet of the woman’s dress,
the stable, solid lines of the edge.
And then the frustration of placing the commonplace:
using as a reference
uncertain, looping edges
that don’t complete an object
In my tumbled pile of blue i wait
for eyes perceptive enough
to make me fit.
If i could urge my paper fibers into motion
creep to the edge of this endless plateau of tableland
-wood grain showing conspicuously through the blue sky pure
in the hole that i leave-
and drop quietly to the
stains of the dusty second-hand carpet,
try out that existence for awhile…
Maybe then,
with the near-completion of a picture perfect scene
above me
Someone
might drop to their knees,
crawl around in the grime
and with searching fingers
…..find me.
9/09
she has the soul of a poet.
Yesterday Malin picked out a piece of watermelon to eat, looked at it and said, “Mom, look at this trampede of seeds!” Today I asked her if she knew what the word trampede meant. She thought a minute and said, “It’s like a whole bunch of people running right at you really fast!”
So she meant stampede. Either way, trampede or stampede, I was pretty impressed that she would take that word out of its typical context and apply it to seeds in a watermelon.
