I Know Too Little of Life. I Know Too Much of Life.

I know too little of life. I know too much of life.

What I don’t know:

I don’t know why sometimes love doesn’t last. I don’t know where the age spots on my hands came from.  I don’t know why women wear thongs.  I don’t know what happens after we die. I don’t know why people hate. I don’t know why children have to grow up so fast.  I don’t know why people say “I understand” when they don’t. I don’t know how tornadoes form. I don’t know how to surf or ski. I don’t know how a child’s face can get dirty two minutes after it’s washed. I don’t know how the internet works. I don’t know why I sometimes cry when I’m happy. I don’t know why puppies have puppy breath. I don’t know how three quarters of my life has passed by so quickly.

What I do know:

I know that a heart can be broken. I know that a cup of hot tea can make a bad day seem not so bad. I know that a child giggling will make me giggle. I know that sneaking candy into a movie theater is an art form. I know that good dogs die far too soon and that gardenia blooms never last long enough. I know that love can change and that people can hurt others unintentionally. I know that winters can be too long and summers too short. I know that music can heal and that war can destroy. I know that sometimes the only thing I need is a hug. I know that friendship lasts forever even after one of the friends has gone. I know I cry at sad movies. I know a heart can be healed. I know that there’s a lot I don’t know.

The Zen of Baking Cookies

There’s something infinitely soothing about baking a batch of homemade cookies late at night while the world sleeps. I sift, measure, add, and stir, and each step of the process slows the beating of my heart and gives me a sense of control over an oftentimes uncontrollable world. I shift the flour, baking powder, and salt in one bowl and then slowly and methodically cream the eggs and butter with the sugars in another. Then I blend both batches together and mix and mix until my wrist is aching from the exertion- no electric mixer for me; that’s cheating. 

            Next I knead in the chocolate chips, like small raw pearls, into the dough. The heat of the oven escapes as I open it. I place the pan of raw cookies inside like an offering to a god. Do your magic, God-of-the-Oven, turn these chunks of raw dough into cookies as golden as a summer morning.

             When the cookies turn the soft tan of a tabby cat, all crisp on the edges and gooey warm in the middle, a small quiet victory pushes all my thoughts away from politics, death, taxes, bills, and hurt. There is just this moment and the cookies, soft and hot from the oven, the sweet sugared chocolate melting over my tongue like a prize.

Who Says You Can't Buy Love?

My fifteen-year-old Maltese dog, Truman, passed away last month at the ripe old age (in dog years) of fifteen. An aunt of mine bought Truman when he was just six weeks old from a breeder and shortly thereafter she discovered that he was much more trouble and work than she had bargained for. He was virtually ignored until the day I went to her house to visit and she asked if I wanted the dog. She gave him to me. A six-hundred dollar dog with papers was just given to me for free. I took Truman home, changed his name (I refuse to utter his Before Me name) and lopped off his tangled Bob Marley fur to reveal a black nosed, black eyed dog who would be my friend for many years through the empty nest saga as my kids left home one by one, my new marriage at the age of forty-seven, the death of my father, and the loss of my teaching career due to a chronic illness. Through it all my True Man was there. 

            On April 6^th 2019 after fourteen years of love and in-sickness-and-health with Truman, a relationship more committed than some of my relationships with humans, I knew the end was close for my furry friend. Over a three month period I had watched helplessly as his health had rapidly deteriorated. We had made several vet visits, one of which was to have his eye removed due to an ulcer.  Then his herniated disc in his neck started acting up again and this time it wasn’t getting better. I had stayed up three nights straight while Truman whined in pain and fought to find a position in which he could find comfort. He could no longer climb up and down the steps to go outside to use the bathroom in the backyard, so I would wrap his dog bed around him to cushion his aching body while I carried him gently down the steps and placed him on the grass in the yard, but he still yelped out in pain every time I touched him. The last day of his life, his one remaining milky black marble eye looked up at me with a trust so raw that it made the blood in my veins almost freeze with the weight of responsibility. I owed the little dog nothing less than a graceful, painless exit from this world; this world in which he had been my friend and my champion. He had loved me unconditionally and in return I owed him this one last gift. To say that letting Truman go was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done would be an understatement.

            The drive to the vet took forty-five minutes and I held Truman the whole way as my husband drove.  Once inside the sterile office the vet inserted an I.V in Truman’s front leg. The vet gave me time to say goodbye and I held Truman against my heart and thanked him for being part of my life. I cradled Truman in my arms and when I nodded to the vet she injected the killing combination into the I.V. First the medication to relax him. Truman gazed at me with complete trust and then closed his eyes. Then the vet injected the medication that stopped his heart. A second later Truman’s head lolled back in my arms and he was gone. My little Truman had completed his earth’s task; to be the best dog in the world. 

            At home I felt as lost as Gretel in the woods with no breadcrumbs to follow. No more looking under my feet to see where my friend was so I wouldn’t step on him, no more scooping him in my arms at night to place him on his dog bed that stayed beside my queen sized bed, no more running when he barked for me because his failing eyesight made it difficult for him to locate me anymore. His blue bone patterned dog bed now lay empty and his food dish sat undisturbed on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t bear to put them away. His ashes arrived from the pet crematorium and I placed them on my study bookcase with his dog collar looped over the plain white plastic container. I placed a photo of Truman beside his ashes. I found my eyes straying to this mini-memorial several times a day as I attempted to write. I found it hard to write without my Truman curled beside me. My fingers would freeze on the keyboard. For fourteen years Truman had been by my side. He had been my friend long before I even met my husband, Jim. After Truman died, Jim started telling people that he didn’t know if he could stay with me now because when he had met me I had been a complete package: me and Truman.  Now I am half of a package. I knew that Jim was only half joking. He missed Truman as much as I did.

            Two weeks after Truman dies I find myself scouring pet rescue websites. I keep telling myself, “I’m only looking, not being disloyal to Truman.” Not long after, on a Saturday, I stop in at PetSmart when I know they are having their pet rescue adoption day. Just inside the doors ten varying sizes of dog crates line the front perimeter of the store. The dogs are big, small, long haired, short haired, old, young, brown, black, skinny, husky, napping, awake. Some pace their crates, others look out at the people inspecting them with curiosity, and some gaze out in trepidation. Some even seem to be trying to ignore their surroundings.  There are three Dachshund looking dogs in one crate: two young, yippy, energetic short-haired light brown ones that I dismiss as too active for a long-past middle-aged woman like myself and one quiet one curled up in a ball of black silky fur. I kneel down and the ball of fur raises his head, unwinds his body, and stares motionless at me. Soft brown eyes peer into my blue ones. The dog is small with squat stubby legs and he has dashes of gold above his eyes like perfectly formed eyebrows. I ask the rescue lady if I can hold the dog and she identifies him as a long haired Dachshund mix. The minute the lady opens the cage the dog pushes his nose out and cautiously, with his tail between his legs, approaches me as the crate door is closed behind him. He slowly crawls into my lap while I hold my breath. He places his head on my chest as a sigh escapes his little body. I exhale too. Ten minutes and two-hundred dollars later I am holding the squirming  dog while I try to fill out paperwork that will ensure that we belong to one another forever.

            Now Duncan-  named after the often overlooked king in the Shakespeare play Macbeth- sleeps at my feet while I write this. He inherited Truman’s dog bed and his bowl. Duncan is a young two years old and when we go outside he likes to dash around the yard in every expanding circles until his tongue lolls and he is panting with exertion, yet he never lets me out of his sight. He runs so fast sometimes that his legs outrun his body and he tumbles head-over-tail across the grass, but it doesn’t slow him down.  If Jim and I go away for a few hours I put Duncan in his crate with his stuffed squirrel, otherwise he scratches the paint off my study door in a panic. When we arrive back home Jim has to go into the house and let Duncan out of his crate while I wait outside. Jim opens the back door and Duncan barrels out looking for me. When he spies me he lands at my feet, rolls over onto his back, and gushes a stream of urine into the air in a perfectly formed arc of joy. That’s the reason I stand outside, but Duncan and I are working on solving that problem. At night Duncan creeps into my bed and sneaks over Jim’s snoring body and curls on the pillow above my head like a cat. I pretend not to notice. When I walk out of the room Duncan’s little feet pad behind me, he buries toys under couch cushions, and dances on his hind legs like a performing bear in a circus when he sees me putting his food in his dish. He snuggles on my lap and demands my undivided attention, which I give willingly.

            Would Truman mind this new dog in my life? Would he be hurt because I have replaced him, so to speak? Knowing Truman I don’t think he’d like Duncan much merely because Truman never tolerated any dog, but I do think Truman would approve that another unwanted dog in the world is now very much loved and wanted. So, I will love Duncan just as I loved Truman. They are two different dogs and Duncan will inhabit a different era of my life than Truman did.  There will be new memories and new challenges. There will be times when Duncan’s fur will be wet with my tears and times when I will laugh at his silly dog antics. There will be trails to walk together and games of tug-of-war and catch to play. Maybe he will outlive me. Who knows? I only know that if I am still around when Duncan is old and ready to go home, I will be there to help him on his journey as painlessly as possible and with as much love as possible, just as I did for Truman because that is what dogs have taught me: how to be a better human being.

To My Great-Great-Granddaughter, Whoever You Are.

Every now and then I pull out crinkled family photographs of people I never knew or only knew slightly for a brief time.  Scalloped-edged black and white photographs that are fading into sepia tones. Photographs of my great-grandmother, a great-great aunt, or women whose names are forgotten to time. Women in long shirtwaist dresses and wide brimmed hats.  Women holding a child by the hand or laughing beside a handsome young man. Women frozen in a moment- one moment spliced out of an entirety. Women who lived their lives during a time that was in some ways simpler, but also a time when women, especially the women of the rural south where my fore-mothers were born and lived, had very little control over their lives. Those women seldom went to college, in fact they rarely even graduated high school and they sure didn’t ponder aspirations of becoming engineers, writers, or scientists.

            

             My maternal grandmother quit school after sixth grade to work in a cotton mill. My paternal grandmother never got past third grade. Women of that time and place didn’t have access to birth control or other reproductive health care, they were stymied when it came to buying a house or car in their own name, they would never have dreamed of going off for a weekend with their friends without their husbands and children. Their political opinions mirrored their husbands’ opinions. They served their husband’s dinner and then they ate. They existed on the periphery of racism and homophobia and xenophobia.  They knew little of sex when they married. My paternal grandmother told me that she had two children before she understood how she was getting pregnant. She was thirteen when she married my eighteen-year-old grandfather. Today an eighteen -year-old man marrying a thirteen-year-old child is illegal, and rightly so.  Neither of my grandmothers ever drove a car.

            My maternal grandmother, Ma, died in 2003 after a short illness, She was eighty-four. My paternal grandmother, Mamaw, the thirteen-year-old bride, passed away just two years ago. She was ninety-four-years old. I often wish my granddaughters, now that they are getting older, could talk to my grandmothers.  I wish I could talk to them. There are so many questions I didn’t ask, so many stories I didn’t hear, so many memories that left the earth with them. There are no letters, only a few birthday cards with their scrawled signatures. There are no diaries. There are no videos. There is nothing but memories, and after I die and my cousins die there will not even be those.

            We rail about the evils of social media and the internet. I know I do, but still I am an active participate. My social media footprint is large: Twitter, Facebook, a blog, posts on news comments sections of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. I ponder this: what if my grandmothers had had access to something like social media? How many of their thoughts and fears and hopes would be preserved for my granddaughters to read in their adulthood? Imagine going online and Googling your great-grandmother and reading the thoughts she had of her children, her life, her fears, and her dreams. Was she scared when war broke out? How did she feel about becoming a mother for the first time? What were her favorite meals to prepare? Who were her closet friends? What jokes made her laugh? What tore at her heart strings? What books did she enjoy reading? All of that is lost to my generation and the ones before me. I will never have access to any of that information because it died with my grandmothers and my great-grandmothers.  But many many years after I am long gone my granddaughters, great-granddaughters, and great-great-granddaughters will, for better or worse, be able to dig into my social media presence. and in a way get to know me. 

            They will discover that I cussed like a sailor at times, that one of my favorite books was Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse, that I believed in a woman’s right to her own reproductive decisions, that I thought everyone should read Voltaire’s Candide at least once, that I loved the color blue but that most of my clothing consisted of black, that I found the movie Pulp Fiction riveting, that I mourned deeply when my father was dying of Alzheimer’s, that social justice mattered a great deal to me, that I traveled as often as possible, that music was like oxygen in my life, that I loved my country but didn’t always agree with my government, that the notion of a supreme god made no sense to me and I was comfortable with that, that I could be unreasonable and opinionated and kind and good and shortsighted and stubborn and funny and scared and loving. In other words, I was a human being. In a hundred years my great-great-granddaughter could read this very blog entry and think, “We aren’t so different after all.” No, sweetheart we aren’t. Now go conquer your world.

Short story: Moving Day

Moving Day

“Wrap those frames tight in plastic and tape ‘em shut before you pack them. I don’t want to lose the pictures of my great-grandmother! Melvin-John come here and get those boxes on the truck. We only got it for another two hours. We got to get moving! And label the boxes if you want to see your things again.”

            Big Granny is rushing around yelling and stomping and giving orders like an old time police officer, back when police officers were still human and not cop-drones. I know how real cops used to yell and kill because Big Granny told me how they used to just shoot people for no reason. Just shoot them dead.  When she was a little girl her father was shot and killed by a human cop. Big Granny said human cops used to scream and get all nervous. Pop, Big Granny’s father, was going out to his car one morning to go to work and a cop responding to a break-in saw Pop and thought he fit the description, even though the description was for a forty year old short black man wearing a white jacket and Pop was a young, tall black man wearing a dark blue electrician’s uniform. Pop had a screwdriver in his hand that he had found by the front stoop. Uncle Bobby must have left it there. Big Granny said when Uncle Bobby was a little boy he was always getting into Pop’s tools and forgetting to put them back. Pop was probably running late for work and didn’t want to go back inside, so he had the screwdriver in his hand. The cop saw the screwdriver and later swore he thought it was a gun. He shot Pop dead in the driveway. Big Granny said the cop-drones they use now are better because they can scan for a weapon and tell the difference between a harmless tool, phone, or other object from a gun. No one is ever cop-killed on accident anymore, but you also know you're always being watched. Some of my friends had gotten to where they’d build their own drones and battle the cop drones and knock them out of the sky. Then they’d run like hell. Marcus had fifty-one downs to his name. He was hot shit at school. But I suspect he’s going to end up in a youth work camp if he ever gets caught and then he won’t be hot shit no more. 

            But I won’t be seeing Marcus or anyone else in school for that matter for maybe forever. The entire town is packing up and moving inland to camps in the Mid-West and Texas. We applied for residence in three of the towns and now we just have to wait to be approved.  Some people in the camps have been waiting for a couple of years. But we have to leave. There’s no choice anymore. The waters are already lapping over the sea wall and have eroded most of land down by the river. At least they’re letting families stay together. I heard that when Miami was drowned out that they just shoved people in trucks and lots of families got separated. But that was twenty-five years ago and the government has gotten better at relocation. It’s just the poor being relocated now though. The rich left long time ago. Government bought their land out and they had the money to leave and start over. Us poor people who rent houses or live in government houses don’t have nothing to sell to get a stake to start over. 

            Granny comes over and pops me on the head with her finger. “Girl, what are you doing? Get a move on. That truck ain’t gonna wait forever. Remember to pack a backpack to take with you and one big suitcase. Only one, but pack well. We won’t be seeing that stuff in the truck for a long damn time.” 

             An hour later everything is packed. The truck with our furniture leaves with all the other moving trucks and we wait in the front yard for the relocation buses. Uncle Bobby’s grandson, Kendall, plays in the dirt with his plastic toy drones. I sit on my government issue suitcase and read the e-reader the school gave us last week. They loaded all kinds of books on the readers for us and it’s solar powered so I won’t have to recharge it. Uncle Bobby is in his wheelchair under the front porch awning. He has to be kept in the shade because the hot sun makes him sicker. Uncle Bobby is always talking about how cold it used to get in winter. I’ve read about how cold it used to get in north Florida, sometimes in the 40s, but I don’t believe it. I don’t think I’d like it anyway, if it were true. I wonder if it’ll be cold where were going. It’s a long, long way. Might take us days to get to where we’re going, wherever that is. That’s why Big Granny packed a lot of sandwiches, apples, cornbread, crackers, and water. All they serve on the buses are those gooey energy packs that taste like dog shit, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. 

            When we were told we had to leave three months ago, the government man gave Big Granny a pamphlet with a listing of the relocation camps. There’s two in Iowa, three in Montana, two in South Dakota, three in Wyoming, and one in East Texas. We don’t know which one we’re going to. I hope it’s not the East Texas one. I heard water is hard to get there.  But Iowa gets so cold in winter that you can’t go outside for two months out of the year or you’ll freeze like a popsicle within minutes.

            The camps are big. The pamphlet said that at least 200,000 people live in every one. There’s barracks to live in and schools and parks and jobs. The jobs are ones like keeping the camp clean, cooking food, painting, fixing stuff, but it pays script money. Real script money that we can use in the camp stores. They don’t let the residents leave camp. I don’t know why. I heard it might because the people who live in the towns close by don’t really like Flooding refugees. They call us Flooders. That’s okay, though. I don’t think I’d feel safe in a town full of rich strangers anyways.

            I look up from my e-reader and see that Big Granny is holding onto one of the pillars of the porch. Her hand is caressing the paint flaked pillar like it’s a soft kitten,. She’s lived here for fifty years.  The roof is sagging in places and the bathtub needs replacing. There are only three bedrooms for the six of us and the back door stoop is about ready to cave in, but this is Big Granny’s home. Mine too, I guess. The only one I’ve ever known anyway, but I’m glad to be leaving. Big Granny ain’t so happy. There’s fat tears falling off her face into the dirt.  I close my e-reader and put it in my backpack. I go over to Big Granny and lean into her soft body. Her hand snakes into my braids and pulls me close.

            “It’ll be an adventure Big Granny. A really big adventure,” I say, trying to comfort her.

            “I’m too old for big adventures, Girl, but I reckon I’m too old to swim too. That water will be up in the yard in just a year or so. I got to get y’all to safety. I told your Mama I would.  I sure am going to miss this old place though, and I never thought I’d say that.”

            Kendall sees us and stands up. His mama, Trayler, brushes the dirt from the seat of his pants and says something to him. Kendall walks over all solemn, the way only a four year old can. He goes right up to Big Granny and stares at her, his brow all wrinkled like a little old man. “You okay?” he asks.

            “Oh, yes. Lil one. Big Granny is okay,” she says, “Why don’t you go see if your Granddaddy Bobby needs a drink of water? Go along.”

            Kendall stares up at Big Granny for another second or two like he’s trying to figure out if she’s lying to him, before walking away.

            Big Granny pulls a piece of cloth out of her pocket and wipes her eyes. “No more crying, Girl.”

            Trayler is on her cell phone using up all her minutes talking to that Odum man that she’s been seeing. Since they aren’t family, they can’t go in the same bus or even the same place, and Trayler has been moping around for weeks. If he’d marry her it’d be okay, but he won’t. I heard her talking to Big Granny one night about running away, but Big Granny set her straight real quick. Big Granny told her that she had a child and where in the hell was she going to run with a child? How was she going to live and feed Kendell? After that night all the light went out in Trayler’s eyes.

            I hear a rumbling and look up to see a caravan of dark blue government buses round the corner kicking up dust in their wake. They split off and a few go off towards Burgundy Street and Law Street, while four screech to a halt in front of our complex. People start picking up suitcases and the bus doors open. A line of semi-trucks pull up behind the bus and seventy-two military men and women with guns get out of one. I know there’s seventy-two because I count each and every one of then as they climb down from the truck. Another semi-truck pulls up and out spills more uniformed men and women, but they don’t have guns. I don’t bother to try and count them. A booming voice comes over a loudspeaker that’s perched on one of the trucks. The voice tells us to get our suitcases to the curb. The men come and tag out suitcases with our wristband I.D numbers and then stack the suitcases by the buses. They let us keep our backpacks for the bus trip. I get scared thinking I might never see my suitcase again and I pull my backpack tighter over my shoulder and pat my pocket to make sure I have my cell phone. There’s only 120 minutes loaded on it so I can’t watch Youtube anymore. Big Granny told me I had to save the minutes in case of an emergency.

            Suddenly I’m scared. I look around and see my friends getting onto buses with their families. I rotate and try to take it all in. The housing complex looks like a ghost town. Someone’s dog is howling. I hear what sounds like firecrackers and then the dog is silent. We were told that animals wouldn’t be allowed in the camps. Trayler took Big Granny’s yappy Chihuahua to the animal control last month and Big Granny cried for days.  Mr. Nelson two streets over drowned all his cats in a big metal barrel full of water rather than take them to animal control. He said he did that because that’s the way nature would have killed them with the rising water anyway.

            I look for Big Granny. She has her arm around Kendall. Trayler is pushing Uncle Bobby’s wheelchair to the handicapped bus behind us. Uncle Bobby will have to ride without his family.  We’ve been told that they will be sure he goes to the same camp as the rest of his family, but now I’m not so sure any of this is right or that anyone is telling us the truth. But I can’t do much about it. There’s too many trucks and men with guns. And, where would I go if I ran? I’d be alone. There are uniformed people holding tablets running through lists and lining us up beside the buses. I make sure to stay with my family. Trayler takes my hand. Melvin-John has his arm around Big Granny. Kendall leaves Big Granny and slides up and pushes his face into my leg.

            I climb into the bus clutching Kendell’s hand and for a minute I can’t see anything but shadows while my eyes adjust to the dimness. We stand in line while a green uniformed lady asks my name and I give it. She checks my name off on her tablet then hands me a small plastic pouch and instructs me to move back, keep moving back. I slide into a dark blue upholstered seat and Kendall slips into the seat beside me. Big Granny and Melvin-John are seated in front of me, and across the aisle Trayler is seated with an old fat lady in a red dress. The blue fabric covered armrests are dark with grime and oil. Stale air is circulating in the bus, and the smell of bodies and fear and uncertainty perfume the bus. Everyone is dead silent. Not a whimper. Not a sound, except for shuffling feet as people find their seat.

            The bus doors close and the grind of gears lurch the bus forward. I open the plastic pack that the uniformed lady pushed into my hand. I find a small bag of Kleenex, three silvery drink pouches with straws attached by a thin piece of clear tape, three energy bars, a bag of chips, a Hershey candy bar, a miniature plastic bottle of hand lotion, a pad of yellow Post It Notes, and an ink pen with the words U.S Government embossed deep into the black plastic.

            Unexpected tears slide down my face as the bus passes by my old school. Kendall reaches up and brushes his fingers across my cheeks to dry them, and then he pushes his plastic toy drones across the back of the seat in front of us as the miles start to slip away.