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I sat in the hospital waiting room and when my name was called, I followed the nurse into a small, painted-white box room. I thought the room had seen better days; the plaster was peeling off the walls, the floor tiles were faded, and a musty smell of old paper was emanating from cardboard files stacked in the corner.

The young nurse, who appeared to be the same age as I, shuffled uncomfortably in her seat adjacent to Dr. Stephens' beanstalk yet steadfast figure. I sat opposite them.

Dr. Stephens started with, "So the tests are back and I'm afraid you have…" I digested the most petrifying words I thought I would ever hear in my lifetime, and after that moment it was all, "blah, blah, blah." I had shifted to nowhere-land.

Like orchestral instruments tuning up before a concert, I heard the whistling of a flute as my wheezy breaths labored in and out. The deep, rhythmic pounding of my heart against my chest resembled the ominous sounding thumps of a base drum, whilst the throbbing, engorged vein at my left temple felt like a xylophone mallet was being repeatedly hammered.

I didn’t even flinch at the hot, wet sensation that had burst from my eyes and traveled down my cheeks like a channel of flowing, steaming lava.

I zoomed back into the room with a whoosh. My expression was quiescent until I nodded in agreement at the arrangements for D-day.

Jan M. – March 2019

The Thumbelina Doll

          My friend, Anna, always sends me packages jammed full of treasures.  Both of us are readers and we enjoy giving one another books.  A while ago she gave me a big book, called "The Book of Virtues."  It's a hefty, hard-bound tome and indeed very reminiscent of my childhood.  Arranged in sections, it has poetry and prose in a great variety of subject matter and stories that delight as well as instruct.

          Leafing through its many pages I happened upon a story by Hans Christian Andersen.  Whether or not I'd read it before I cannot say.  Neither did I read it just then.  

          The title arrested me and swooped me into such a long-lost moment of my childhood  I'd completely forgotten, or so it seemed until that second.  I closed the book and let it rest on my lap.

Doesn't a moment like this deserve to be savored?

          Suddenly I was in our living room playing with my Thumbelina doll.  She was lying on the couch.  Not just an ordinary couch was this.  Its bench was a violet shade of purple.  The back cushions were big, rectangular and had lots of abstract flowers.  It didn't have legs or arms but consisted of two pieces that formed the letter L. 

Thumbelina was on her back and I was standing over her.  She's my baby.  Am I cooing adoringly, changing her clothes or feeding her?  I only know she is a tiny, helpless infant and I am a big girl.

          How sweet that kind of playing was!  Lost in make believe and not a care about time or space - how marvelous it was.

Was it her size?  So tiny she was.  She allowed me to take care of her and love her.  Thumbelina needed me.

Now, I realize I needed her.

Yvonne A. - March 2019

STOPLIGHT

One of the few things worse than being in a cemetery is waiting for a traffic light in a cemetery. It feels like my coworker Gary and I have been here for eons, but actually it has probably not been more than two minutes. Similar to the watched pot that does not boil, the watched red traffic light never turns green! Usually when this light beckons, my mercurial driver slams the pedal to the floor as if we are at LeMans and I brace myself for the earthbound equivalent of reentry into the atmosphere at eight G’s on an Apollo Mission.

Today my coworker is in a somnambulist state having worked a double shift and as the light turns green he hesitates delaying our acceleration. A horrific noise is heard of a truck blowing its horn frantically warning of an impending crash. Moving across our trajectory at over sixty miles per hour is a monstrous Fire Red Tractor Trailer with its bright red paint and chrome gleaming in the sun, jet black shiny tires devouring the pavement, barreling headlong through the red light as if the Hounds of Hell are in hot pursuit. As it disappears into the distance a vacuum of air filled with dust, dried leaves and paper flutter and stream behind it like the tail of a comet.

“Oh shit,” I exclaim in shock.

“Oh Crap,” Gary retorts with equal eloquence. My friend is now wide awake and we stare at each other open mouthed realizing what has just happened. Air bags and seatbelts be damned, there’s no way that either of us would have survived this crash. This epiphany is nonverbal but each of us clearly understands it. The rest of our lives are an added supplement, a bonus, a gift of time to unwrap and enjoy.

Thank God for overtime and exhaustion

Jim - March 2019

The Magic of Revision (Cement Work)

                                            (Original Version - Summer 2016) 

I could not remember a greater feeling of peace upon waking the following morning in a complete state of the deepest relaxation I had known in a lifetime. The sheets that swaddled me felt of the finest silk, or maybe satin. I don’t know a thing about thread counts. Actually, I know nothing beyond the generic feel of hotel sheets. And speaking of hotel, the aroma of coffee that permeated the air came not from the unit in the bathroom – which is pretty disgusting, yet widely accepted and something I will never understand – but from the finest urn; its beans reserved only for royalty or the very wealthy. I could see this with my eyes still closed and hear the gentle ruffling of the curtains swaying to the music of the tropical breeze that moved them.

(Revised - Feb. 2019)

I awoke the following morning in the arms of a lover named tranquility. Now, I’m not one of these, coffee, I need coffee people, but one would think that waking up in my condition that coffee would be a must. The problem was, I didn’t have a condition. I did want coffee though. The aroma wafting through the room was overwhelming. This was no single-user coffeemaker in the bathroom mixed with the eau de toilette fragrance of assorted feminine hygiene and hair care products scent. And don’t get me started on the java in the lav thing.

There’s nothing distinct about the way hotel packet coffee smells during the drip cycle either. It’s pretty weak and you know it’s going to be disappointing, like listening to a symphony through tinny speakers. What resulted in olfactory overload was totally the opposite, it’s pungency as commanding as one of those ridiculous sub-woofer’s in the back of the car that pulls up alongside you at the traffic light pounding out bass hard enough to make your brain shake. This was powerful stuff. I sighed contentedly. Swaddled beneath a gently billowing sheet made of the finest silk (I mean it felt that way, but I don’t know a thing about thread counts), I luxuriated in the softest kisses of white dandelion fuzz sprinkling my body every time the breeze moved the fabric over me. I thought of myself as a child blowing the fragile wisps upon the winds and then as an adult wallowing in the feel of…well yeah, dead flora. The curtains ruffled softly, whispering my name, “Lacey, Lacey,” urging me gently into a new day. I eased peacefully into wakefulness sans awareness, slowly, ever so lightly opening my eyes with the finesse of someone trying to raise a tricky window shade without waking the baby. Beyond the footboard atop the posh walnut bureau sat a coffee urn that shined brightly. I have something similar at home, a hand me down from a generation or two ago. It shines too, but the one before me glistened with the precocious pride of a well-heeled BMW gliding out of the car wash while my equally burnished Toyota lags shamefully behind. The curtains called again, this time singing dreamily, “L-a-a-a-c-e-e-y-y, L-a-a-a-c-e-e-y-y.”

Playfully, I hummed along, my mind still adrift on a lingering dream where I languished on the French Riviera.

A rogue wind slapped the drape this time.

“L-A-C-E-Y!”

No alarm clock sleep button, nine-minute reprieve. This was mother angry and urgent at the bottom of the stairs demanding I get up now or I’ll miss the school bus.

TJM - Mar. 2019

Men Without Feet

“Mickey! Get out of the bathroom,” Aunt Mary would yell until Cousin Mickey finally joined us at the kitchen table.

Sometimes Mickey had cramps, other times she was blocked, but her life centered in the bathroom. With only one false eyelash and her hair still untamed, it was clear that she would soon be heading back to finish putting on her face. Two hours later, she would still be in her slip and with a kimono-style robe over it.

Cousin Mickey (then 20-something) had been married in the Catholic Church. Her wedding reception was flashy and her groom flamboyant. Too bad dancing effortlessly with someone doesn’t mean that you glide into wedded bliss. The marriage evaporated almost as quickly as the champagne fizzled. Now back in her parent’s home and single again she worked as a secretary and went out dancing on the weekends.

While Dad and Aunt Mary discussed people I didn’t know, I listened to my older cousin’s conversations. Once I heard her trying to decide which place to go to that night.

“No, not that place, the men there have no feet,” Mickey said.

That really amazed me. For a long time, I pictured men perched on barstools without any feet.
By ten o’clock Dad would say, “Time to go pick up your mother from work.”
 We’d say “good bye,” and my imagination would have fun while Dad drove. I always hated to leave without a chance to see how Mickey looked when she made her dramatic entrance.

Some years later, I finally got to see Mickey at her youngest sister’s wedding. She had on a cream color dress with a rhinestone studded belt. Her silver shoes were open-toed and glistened slightly in the light. Her thick, dark, shoulder-length wavy hair was up in a chignon. Never one for subtleties, her earrings reminded me of the ones fortune-tellers wore.

She complained she wasn’t feeling well during the ceremony at the church that afternoon. She even did the unheard of, and missed the cocktail hour at the reception! I saw her lingering in the powder room through most of it. It seemed quite natural for her to be holding court there while penciling in her eyebrows and straightening her stockings.

Once that dance floor opened up and the band began to play, Mickey emerged an entirely different person. Her face was radiant. She emanated grace and confidence as she moved cat-like on the dance floor the entire night. Her ankle looked so dainty when she pointed to sidestep or turn. She could dance cha-cha, rumba, samba, anything.

Fascinated and entertained that night, I watched her dance with men and women, young and old. Everyone in my family said Mickey was odd, peculiar and slow. Funny thing, though, that night they all wanted to dance with her.

I sat and watched her fully understanding why she would never be caught in a place where the men had no feet.

Yvonne A.

March 29019