Foster Child Visits Real Mom

           

by Carolyn Cecil

 

                            Above North Avenue,

summer sweat on once

scrubbed marble steps,

90 degrees dripping.

Upstairs, plastic covered couch,

lead-paint chipped windows,

grimy halls, mystery stench,

exterminator toxins.

Poverty's perfume.

Ponytailed six year old,

quietly distressed, best

dress on; awaits decision.

Legs sticking to the couch,

what does she think of

the monolithic question.

Who gets to live with whom?

A frenzied social worker,

blindly guides.  Chooses.

Stuck on rewind decades

later; prickly doubts loom.

To Poughkeepsie and Back

by June T. Bassemir

  [Po-KIPP-see– a city in upper state New York... one and a half hours from my home on Long Island.]

I knew the assignment wouldn’t be easy when I volunteered to take care of my three grandchildren; eight, six and three in Poughkeepsie, while their parents flew to Texas to buy a house....but how hard could it be?  Didn’t we raise four children?  Was it such a hard job?  I didn’t think so, but then this was different.  I didn’t count on the fact that I had little power of my own to call on and that the older boy would invoke his absent father’s rules to suit his own purpose.  Nor did I count on a 21 inch blizzard to cancel school putting the two oldest boys in close proximity to each other’s throats.  Fortunately, the three year old granddaughter was recently trained but it took two days for me to figure out that her softly spoken one word, “havtustoyet” was a directive that meant, “I have to use the toilet.”  It took a wet bed for the boys to translate the meaning of that one word. Whatever happened to that other word.....“tinkle”?    

Their parents left on Tuesday with rules in place for me regarding what to pack in the lunch boxes; when and what snacks they could have; what and how much TV they could watch, the inspection of teeth and my re brushing of all three sets; baths and head washing EVERY NIGHT and all toys and clothes pricked up before bedtime.  On Wednesday, I threw out my daughter-in-law’s rules and made up ten of my own – (Me and Moses).

  1.  There will be no fighting or bickering.

  2.  Eat what is put before you without complaining.

  3.  If you think you don’t like a food, at least try it.

  4.  Be kind and loving to one another with no pushing or shoving at the bus stop.

  5.  No snacking 2 hours before meals.

  6.  Learn the Children’s Prayer and say it at bedtime.

  7.  Tell the truth at all times.

  8.  Brush your teeth without adult aid.

  9.  No sneaking food from the closet.

  10. Be grateful you are not “Home Alone”.

Very few of “Grandma’s Rules” stuck except for #6 which the middle grandson took to heart, kneeling down at the bedside with his hands clasped each night.  The older boy only learned it for a badge for the Cub Scouts. Rule number One was the hardest to enforce and I truly expected the mirror would show a full head of white hair at the end of the week.  By Thursday I began “X” ing the days on the calendar.  That was the day the boys broke the hinge on their mother’s beloved antique buffet, while I was tending to their sister’s toilet.  “Never mind, I will unbend the hinge; fill in the enlarged screw holes and re attach the door...but just don’t go near that furniture again.”  

The last screw was going in when the boy standing next to me shook his can of yellow dried up Play Dough, with the loose lid and millions of pieces went all over the rug.  (How many more days did I have to go???)  Friday came and that meant a swimming lesson for #2 grandson at 6:30 pm... A great opportunity to eat out.  But....

“I don’t want Burger King, I want McDonalds”.

“I don’t want McDonalds”, I want Burger King.”

“What about Chinese?” I said, trying to find a middle ground.  They weren’t sure where such a restaurant was so we made up another one of Grandma’s Rules...”Everyone has to agree with the place I pick out or we don’t eat.  Is that clear?”

Thank Goodness Colonel Sanders decided to build one of his KFC’s about two miles from the heated pool at the YMCA...  It was our most pleasant meal.  Coming home was another story as we exited the restaurant onto a different street.  “Which way do I turn?” I asked aloud.  “Right”, said the swimmer.”  “Left” said his older brother.  (Were they just being contrary again?)  The right turn was made but it only took a minute to discover that it should have been left.  Mile after mile we traveled looking for a break in the metal median strip but none appeared.  Suddenly there was a chorus from the back seat.  “Grandma, don’t go over the Mid-Hudson Bridge..it’s $2.50”. “Well, I have no intention of doing THAT.”, I replied trying to keep panic from my voice.  When the first exit appeared I took it, only to find out that I was indeed headed for the Bridge but from a different direction.  The kids groaned and yelled “We’ll never get home.”  At any moment I expected to hear the “h” word from little Casey.

At the toll plaza we found a kind collector who listened to....“I’m driving my son’s van for the first time; I’m hopelessly lost and I have my three young grandkids in the car...Can you help me?”  He called the police for directions and for a brief moment I though we were going to have a police escort which would have been quite exciting for all of us to remember.  Instead, I was given good directions which enabled us to pull into the right driveway twenty minutes later.

Sometime Friday night the predicted snow began to fall and the TV warning of a blizzard looked real. It continued snowing all day and the children were delighted to sleigh ride and make a snowman.  If they squabbled over whose sled it was, I didn’t have to hear it!  They were outside.

Sunday morning came with bright sunshine and a temperature of 2 degrees below zero.  A kind neighbor brought over some sugary cereal that the kids experienced for the first time. Their usual breakfast consisted of a sugarless kind - round balls that resembled Styrofoam.  Naturally, with all that snow, school was canceled on Monday but by then I had only one more “X” left on the calendar and my trip home was closer.

 

Unfortunately, the airline carrying their parents back from TX and their maternal grandmother coming from IN, was each delayed by six hours but eventually I was headed back home to Long Island.  Driving in the dark, I didn’t have to hear...”Derek hit me with the shovel”...”Kyle put that stick away”....”No, I don’t want to...” “Leave the hall light on”....”No, put the hall light out.”...”Can I have a snack?... “Derek shoved me at the bus stop.”...“Why can’t I eat in the family room...Daddy does”...”I don’t HAVE any homework.” etc. etc.

“Ahhhh...peace.... just listen to that car stereo music.... how sweet it is.

.. written in 1992 or thereabouts.

copyright 2012, June T. Bassemir 

June Tuthill Bassemir is the widowed mother of four and grandmother of 10.  An artist and writer, she  volunteers as a docent in a 1765 farm house.   June loves old cars and antiques, and has also enjoyed furniture stripping and rug hooking.  "I used to say I was a stripper and hooker.but with so many trips around the sun, no one raises an eyebrow anymore. They only laugh."  June has given up furniture stripping, but is still an avid rug hooker.

Butterfly Bush

 by Carolyn Cecil

 

Forget the squabbles,

the mothering you did,

the cat who died.  

 

Your goldfish confidante,

finally found

floating on his side.

 

Forget the lost look

of childhood, Dad leaving,

sad nights awake.

 

You grew yourself 

from tattered seed to 

blossom like a

 

butterfly bush in spring,

inviting a flutter 

of praise.

copyright 2012,  Carolyn Cecil 

 Carolyn Cecil has been writing poetry for ten years.  She participates in a monthly 
poetry critique group where she is based in Baltimore.  Her poetry has 
been published in The Broadkill Review, Poet's Ink, More Stories 
Website, Loyalhanna Review and The Gunpowder Review.  She will read from
 her work on March 21, 2013 at Third Thursday, Takoma Park Community 
Center, Takoma Park, Md.  

Christmas, 1942

by Charles Langley
 

It was Christmas at Fort Dix. It hadn’t snowed and there were no twinkling lights ordecorated Christmas trees, but there was a nip in the air and it was Christmas. And I was alone.

There were seven thousand troops scattered around me, but I was alone.    I came off guard duty at two o’clock, showered, changed into olive drab and was free until reveille the next morning.

Well meaning civil authorities had decreed that military personnel without emergency passes could not use public transportation over the holiday. The hard working defense workers needed all the space. Those few soldiers who had their own cars, and ration stamps for enough gasoline to fuel them, were packing their vehicles with paying passengers for the trip home. For the rest of us, it was hitchhike or stay put.

Cpl. Al Walters and I stood by the road to New York and waited. Not a car passed in half an hour. My chances of seeing my wife for the holiday became very slim. We saw a lone car coming from the opposite direction and  changed our minds, crossed the road, and  got a lift to Philadelphia. We didn’t know a soul in the city, and it was foolish to go there, but it was Christmas. Philadelphia at its best is not a bright, fun loving town.  On Christmas in wartime it was really a drag.

We made our way to the Salvation Army Canteen. We were too late. The last of the food had been eaten, and the only ones there were four weary women who had spent the day feeding hungry soldiers.

They eyed with dismay the mountain of dirty dishes in the sinks, and the smeared pots and pans on every sinktop. But they were game and were ready to go forth into the fray when Al and I intervened.
 
KP in the army is a dreaded task. Elbow deep in hot soapy water scraping the stubborn grime from the bottom of a cooking pot is not a proper job for a first class fighting man. It isn’t even a fit task for untried dogfaces such as we, but we tied on aprons and dived in. The ladies,tired as they were, argued against our endeavor, but we persisted. We washed, dried and stacked the dishes, shined the pots so they gleamed like a shavetail’s boots, and then tackled the floor.

The ladies somewhere found two pieces of pumpkin pie and made fresh coffee. They sipped coffee with us while we pigged out on the home-made pie. I hoped that their sons, where ever they were, had such caring people near.

They gave us each a hug and a hand-knitted O.D. Sweater, and we were on our way. We had taken a chance of getting back to the camp late and missing reveille, but luck was with us and we got a ride almost immediately. The car radio was playing Christmas music.

"I’ll be home for Christmas, you can count on me."

I wished it were true.

"Please have snow and mistletoe, and presents on the tree."

 Not this year.

It had started to drizzle, but the moisture on my cheek wasn’t rain.   The barracks was silent and dark. I hit the sack, hoping to get a few hours sleep before the five o’clock reveille call. I said my prayers and hoped that my wife wasn't as lonely as I was.

God was in His Heaven. All was well. It was Christmas, and I was alone.

                                         copyright 2012, Charles Langley


Charles Langley  returned to writing after a long hiatus.  He has written over two hundred stories, articles or poems for anthologies, magazines, and ezines. Gannet newspapers featured Charles with  full page coverage of his work at the Bruno Richard Hauptmann trial in Flemington, NJ in 1935.

Two Poems

by William D. Cecil, Sr.

              (1929) 

Black birches bulging between boulders
straightened by time
into trees sublime.

Seedlings once - heaving for light and air
who could know such power
in growth, that shower

and sun would force a young half-buried thing
to lift its heart
in gnarled splendor.



I like to think

of a brittle sassafras
extending itself
to the full height

of a precipice-
trusting blindly
in its strength.

Yet slowly dying
beaten by wind
into sharpened rock.

 William D. Cecil, Sr. was born in 1906 and lived 
for 96 years.  He was a lifelong educator, people person, 
and believer in nature.  He spent time recuperating 
from an illness in the late 1920s and thirties.  He used 
this time to write poetry and to heal.  He was a member 
of the Shakespeare Symposium in Lewiston, NY and 
wrote biographical material on an artist known for his 
depictions of Niagara Falls (Amos Sangster).
 
 
copyright 2012, Carolyn Cecil 

Marks On Paper

by Greg Shattenberg

Marks, my father’s carved blocks leave marks. Marks on paper. Stare at them and search for meaning. Search for a meaning that speaks to life. The blocks are not perfect. They leave imperfect marks. That can be fixed. Make a perfect context. Purchase a perfect context. Then the marks are all right. What do they need to speak of in this perfect world? They can convey the unspoken, they can talk of liberation. Demonstrate the boundless.

These crooked lines call to be touched. Smudged. Rubbed and felt. Senses as restrained now as they always have been. How is another touched. There is nothing to be fixed. Nice neutral paper. Stacked in a pile. The neutrality is a relief. All senses can be invested in the blocks, in the paper, making something containing a content, triggering a content, more than it is. More than a piece of paper. More than ever was there between my father and me. We keep our constraint. Maybe it is contentment. Knowing that something is there is enough. Everything does not need to be saturated with passion.

So the blocks sit and the papers sit. Tools. Objects to be manipulated. An arbitrary deck of given pictures. Not demanding anything, but irresistible in how much can be thrown into them. There is really little to fathom. A step up from arbitrary.

I now want art. Not knowing how to make it, it will have to be stolen. A bit of license, a bit of larceny and off to the races. Separate enough to be manipulated. Close enough to sense some risk. A bit unpredictable and the formula is in place. And no one is there to take back pieces which may not have been given. It is a search for order. Take and give. Hope for cumulative sense. Hope that the relief felt is not cumulative meaninglessness. Relief because it is a place which will not have to be revisited.

The press gets adjusted. The senses are recurring. Variations in paper thickness can be felt. Sometimes the ink lies down perfectly. Sometimes, without thinking, each part goes together as exactly as can be expected, and the colors talk to each other. The ink is saying yes, and the block prints. Little investments in thought staring back invisibly, being cumulative. A bit of language becomes a voice. My own voice is interjected. As imperfect as the blocks and something is heard. No, it is seen. No, it is felt and hopefully there is a song.

                      
 

                            copyright 2009 by Greg Shattenberg

 Greg Shattenberg is an artist residing in West Paris, Maine.

Before a Storm Breaks in Midsummer

 by William D. Cecil, Sr.

              (1929) 

Out swings a limb

 brushed by the wind.

Out slips a bird,

 hardly disturbed

by sharp swishing

 of leaves, wishing

their time had come-

 their flight begun.

William D. Cecil, Sr. was born in 1906 and lived 

for 96 years.  He was a lifelong educator, people person, 

and believer in nature.  He spent time recuperating 

from an illness in the late 1920s and thirties.  He used 

this time to write poetry and to heal.  He was a member 

of the Shakespeare Symposium in Lewiston, NY and 

wrote biographical material on an artist known for his 
depictions of Niagara Falls (Amos Sangster).

copyright 2012, Carolyn Cecil