Let It Snow

Like snow drifting, life begins

Without a sense of harm and alarm

With a softness in personality and a pleasure from heart

When powdery, snow drifts with a current of loving air

Surfing and attaching along the happy slopes of hills

Leaving deep deposits of dreams and affections

Like avalanches, life accumulates

A heavy flow of emotions sliding rapidly

Down the steeper slopes of anger and frustration

Starting from the failing zone to deposit

And redeposit of pains carried by the wind

Traveling long distances along the flat valley bottoms of life

Like snowmelt, life finally thaws

Its layers of frozen tears during spring

To allow it streaming from the long lasting frozen heart

In easing the ache from somewhere deep within

Finding inner peace and mending the pieces of a broken heart

Skiing in curves on the path of life

Let it snow!

S.P. Ma

Jan. 2020

Staff of Life

Unexpected Gifts

On a cold, late October morning, I was heading for the first time from my home in Forest Hills to Port Jefferson by the Long Island Railroad.  I was filled with great anxiety, for I was rushing to my mother, who lay in an ICU unit of a small hospital there with an un-diagnosed condition.  Also, I was distressed, as I always am when traveling anywhere for the first time, about the possibility of  taking the wrong connecting train and thus landing up lost, as I did every night in my dreams.  But a stranger on the platform in Forest Hills eased my fear.

"Don't worry!" she said reassuringly.  "At Jamaica Station there's a lady who can direct you to the right train.  She sits inside a little booth at the end of one of the platforms.  Just find the Lady at Jamaica Station and you'll be fine! "

I did, and she looked as if she might be Mrs. Claus with her round, kindly face, dancing eyes and cheeks rouged apparently only by robust health and the cold.

"You want Track #10, dear, " she informed me with great cheer.   "But ...  you've got a 25-minute wait."  I shivered visibly and she quickly added, pointing, "There's a glass-enclosed seating area at the end of this platform."

 "Thanks!" I said with sincere gratitude.  I hadn't gone more than a few paces in the direction in which she'd pointed when her sonorous voice could be heard again, this time crying out for all Jamaica to hear: "Track #8 for Ronkonkoma ... ALL AB-OOOOOOOOARD!"

 It was the sustained utterance of the last two words that made me stop dead in my own tracks.  For at the sound of them I was hurtled back, back, back through the tunnel of Time until I was my four-year old self.  And it was not to one of the fabled railways of yesteryear that this phrase took me.  No, no, it was to Christmas morning of 1953, in the small apartment where we lived above the men's furnishings store that was the family business.

On the floor of the hallway, my  parents had managed during the magical preceding night to set up their holiday gift to my brother Steve: Lionel electric trains that sat upon a large loop of track that encircled The Station House -- the beginnings of what would evolve over the ensuing years into the miniature town of Plasticville, eventually growing to cover half the basement of new house.   By then there would be a hospital, post office, school, diner and other buildings, all under-lit by strategically placed miniscule light bulbs so that down in the basement on dark, wintry nights, the town would twinkle with imagined life.   Steve would be in control at the transformer causing the trains to zoom across bridges and through tunnels at electrifying speeds (there would be many derailments as my brother became a more zealous conductor).  But I took charge of the town's inner, emotional life, inventing dialogue and interior monologues for the pair of young skaters who glided across the real ice of the plastic pond (for I'd filled it with water and placed in our freezer well before the hour we descended to what I was beginning to think of our "real home"), for the elderly couple who sat in their long winter coats on a bench and watched the young skaters, indeed for all the plastic folk of Plasticville.  But all this was still in the imaginable future.

At this moment there is only a loop of track with a train encircling the town's centerpiece: The Station.  I stare in wonderment of what lies before me and then to the amused faces of my parents and Steve.  Steve's arrival was the first miracle of my young childhood, a startling and unexpected gift -- for I thought he'd been ordered for me -- who would soon become my best and boon companion.  My first sight of the Lionel trains affects me the way my first sight of Steve did.  For like him, they are an unimagined, unheralded miracle, full of heavenly promise.  Looking at Steve -- who it must now be said is only a year and a half old -- I think that he simply does not possess the mental preparedness to recognize this thing's qualities.  But I do.
 

Atop The Station is a green button that begs to be pressed. "Can I?" I ask, looking at my parents, my finger poised on the button.

Of course!" says my mother, her buttercup-yellow hair still long and curling round her beaming face.  I look to my dad, standing beside her, and he nods concurrence.

I press the green button and a male voice booms throughout the apartment: "Philadelphia, Newark and New York ... ALL AB-OOOOOOARD!"

I am transfixed, enchanted in that intense, all-consuming way that only poets and small children and the characters in fairy tales can be.  For it seems to my young ears that the voice uttering this phrase is filled with boundless enthusiasm for the journeys  to be taken my the invisible, hurrying passengers in our hallway.  Though he is not specifically saying so, he is also wishing them godspeed and wonderful adventures on their travels, inviting them to travel with a full heart, whatever their destination.  I pressed that button countless times over the succeeding years, and always this was the message I received.

I stood on the platform of Jamaica Station and lived again these long-forgotten moments.  And then over the next 25 minutes, I heard the open-sesame phrase again and again.  The voice of the Lady of Jamaica Station, like that of the mysterious, unseen man who dwelled inside the Plasticville Station House, was unvaryingly buoyant, and always she uttered those two words "ALL AB-OOOOOARD!"  with a special note of inspiriting gusto.

My time at Jamaica Station, which I had feared would be wasted with only dread for a companion, was intstead filled with that joyful sound, as it would be during my stopovers here in the weeks to come.

We lost my mother near Thanksgiving.  With her loss came an end to my pilgrimages by rail to eastern Long Island, and also an end to the world as I knew it for more than half a century.  The weeks surrounding her passing were one of the worst times in my life.  But isn't it a marvel that even the worst of times can bestow upon us unexpected gifts of their own?  For the gift of a brief respite from anxiety and fear, and for those glimpses of my family as they were in the days of my earliest memory, I thank the Lady of Jamaica Station, she with the dancing eyes and burnished cheeks who continually sings out her joyful benediction: "All AB-OOOORD!"  Thus may all of our life journeys be blessed!

Maxine F.

New Suit

           

The wedding was three weeks away, and the last day for procrastination had finally arrived, therefore it was time to drag my bones on a humiliating journey to the closet and check THE SUIT. This was the suit which had covered me for weddings, funerals and miscellaneous family gatherings for some time. I was never foppish by nature; it had served me well in less corpulent times. Not unlike Magellan’s journey, circumnavigation would be a challenge if the garment did not rip itself asunder long before that. As expected, the expedition was not successful and it was time to start shopping for a new suit.

Early the next morning I ushered out into the world, fully aware of the arduous task ahead. Pierre Cardin laughed in my face.

Perry Ellis would not make eye contact.

Barney was apologetic.

Vera simply threw her hands up, turning away in frustration, covering her face , and pointing towards the exit.

Paul Revlon said straight out, “there is nothing here for you!”

Joseph A Bank blocked the entrance to the store, waving his finger to and fro while exclaiming, “don’t waste your time!”

Michael Strahan diplomatically referred me to his old friend, so there I stood facing the

entrance to the SHAQUILLE O’NEILL BOUTIQUE. I pondered stepping over the saddle with reservations not knowing what my reception would be, possibly bounced out the door like a regulation NBA basketball.

A sudden flush of confidence or courage emboldened me to enter the store in spite of my past rejections. It was as if I was carried in by the well dressed spirits of Beau Brummell and Dapper Dan, lifting me up and through the massive wooden doorway of thick oak reinforced with strong cross bracing, making  one feel small and slight while entering into this sheltered safe haven from the cruel world of undernourished fashion icons, a bastion of comforting repose, protected from the gauntlet of polite, vain, affected, posturing, fashionable high society.

Inside, the walls were lined with tie and belt racks hanging down from seven feet aloft, their wares missing the floor. Dress shirts stood at attention on hangers to size 7XXXX, while dress shoes were moored like yachts in their cubbyholes. The carpets were of a plush magenta. Comfortable, wide, strong reinforced seats were dispersed throughout the store for those feeling fatigued. Well designed, the effect was that the men who entered here felt that they were part of a club, accepted  for who they were, not freaks, but normal people a few standard deviations from the mean, and packaged more generously.

Up ahead stood Shaquille O’Neill like a mountain, not unlike John Henry, The Steel Driving Man. His huge muscular chest, his bald head gleaming and shiny, he looked down on me as I gingerly entered the cavernous room. He smiled from ear to ear, indicative of his gregarious nature. Sensing my trepidation, he unfolded his hairy, tree trunk arms, opening them for a warm embrace, scooping me up as one would a small child. In a warm tone he bellowed, “welcome Jim, I have been waiting for you, and don’t worry there are no European cuts here!”

Shaquille deposited me in front of his squad of tailors who immediately went to work scaling short ladders measuring, chalking, tucking and pinning. I stood like Gulliver after his travels, tied up and tethered by this pit crew or the Scarecrow being  gussied up in The Emerald City. Next, the swarm disappeared to some hidden work area to do their magic, the  eventuality being a well fitted suit for a reasonable price. I thanked the tailors and Shaquille who shook my hand vigorously as it disappeared into his fist, my shoulder feeling as if it would dislodge from its socket.

Afterwards on returning home and hanging the suit in my closet, I noticed the label designating that at Shaquille’s Boutique, I was a Petite!

Everything is relative.

Jim L.

Jan. 2020

             

CALL ME AMBIDEXTROUS

It’s that time of year again. You know, the time that follows the most wonderful time of the year. A time I find my mind wandering aimlessly, searching for something meaningful, something interesting, something to write about. It’s that time of year when admittedly, I tend to experience a first class, bona fide case of writer’s block! In an effort to thwart this condition, I keep a small memo book with me at all times, allowing me to jot down thoughts or moments of brilliance should they choose some randomly inopportune moment to pop into my head. Brilliance however, has not really been the operative word of late.

Incoherent is more like it.

There is a tree in our backyard that is currently growing some type of red berries, but I have to crane my neck to see it.

That’s a perfect example right there, yet this very thought consumes me. Living at my new address for a little over three years now, one would think that I might have noticed this flora anomaly before. I can feel my neck getting stiff as I type, while simultaneously trying to gaze upon this vision of not quite beauty.

It’s really quite a sight.

No, not the tree.

Me.

Typing without looking at the screen.

Yet, isn’t that the way normal people do it anyway?

Not me.

I can’t type.

I love to write, have always loved to write, however I have never taken a typing lesson in my life. Why start now? I get by fine using only the index fingers of both hands…AT THE SAME TIME! I mean call me ambidextrous! Where would I be without the undo “Control Z” function on my PC?

Spending a lot of money on White-Out, that’s where.

Typing handicap aside, I must confess that a good deal of my writing does begin in a standard composition notebook. How’s that for old school? What can I say? I believe in tradition. Unfortunately, those old school values come with a price. You see, transferring my literary works from the written page to the computer is nearly an insurmountable hurdle.

I can’t read my own handwriting.

Neither can anyone else, which renders the aforementioned small memo book I keep by my side at all times relatively useless. In the rare moments that I do turn to the scribble housed within, I wind up scratching my head in complete confusion, wondering what any of it might mean. I don't know if it's in some sort of secret code or a newly developed Me version of shorthand, but I find that I lose more great ideas that way.

A theorist, philosopher, or my long departed grandmother would simply say, "If it's meant to be, it's meant to be."

I beg to differ.

"He's going to be a doctor," she often intoned, obviously referring to the unwritten rule that physicians are notorious for their handwriting.

I'm only realizing now as I type this why that rule is indeed unwritten.

            The first typewriter I owned – a vintage cast iron Royal from several centuries earlier long before the days of the sleek electric versions that had had been readily accessible in my youth – had been a hand me down. Only with the help of two able bodied moving men did it make it to my second floor bedroom where it teetered dangerously atop my already unsteady wooden desk; another antique from some other bygone era, I’m sure.

I come from a long line of hand me downs.

Had I been born, let’s say a century earlier, I would have been writing with a used quill, though I have a feeling that may have been a lot of fun. I can almost hear the sound of my mother’s voice berating me for the third time in nearly as many days having come home from school with ink all over my pants.

“Did you carry that quill in your pocket again? Look at this thing! Half of the feathers are missing. That throws it all off balance, mister. No wonder your handwriting is so atrocious.”

Had early society taken exception to those who were Penmanship challenged, doctors and writers alike would have been cave dwellers, relegated to a shameful life of isolation.

           Hieroglyphics would never have worked for me.

I can’t draw either.

Look at that, my mind has wandered again,

(what are those red berries?)

and I need to get back to writing.

(I wonder if they’re edible).

The flashing cursor upon the blank page speaks to me.

Well…go ahead. Write something, it silently scorns.

I sneer back, cracking my knuckles and flexing the index fingers on both of my hands.

Simultaneously!

I’m ambidextrous I tell you, and yes, it’s really quite a sight.

 Tom M.

January 2020