. Spinning .

Obviously, my mind is focused on some pretty heavy duty thoughts right now, but I do need to get my mind off things a bit and lighten up while everything’s in limbo. So, while I haven’t been writing at all, I’ve scribbled down a couple thoughts that passed through and that I hope to be scribbling down here in Spinning shortly. It almost seems obscene how life goes along to follow a routine despite enormous blips that send it in a different direction. But we adjust, and that is what I meant below by how the grotesque becomes normal. If I could trade places with either of two women who are very dear to me and who are going through some bad times, I would. I can’t. I’m only capable of going on as me, and I guess that’ll have to do.

I hear his squeaky complaints from the peach trees, and so am not taken by surprise to bat the air when suddenly I am buzzed by the male hummingbird as I sit with coffee on the back step. He hovers for a few seconds, sizing up the large green satin bird with ruby collar, decides to forego the challenge and hums away as quickly as he came. I am 16,000 times his weight, 20 times his height; he feels he has no chance against me. He is wrong. Today, he is the stronger of the two.

Update: Not the best news, but livable, I think; and that’s the best we can hope for right now.

Sometimes it’s just too difficult to write here about something personal, but I want to thank those who have been praying and sending hope and wishes. It’s not for me, because somehow we find the strength in our family to face up to the bigger blows in life, but for my niece, because even with good genes for emotional strength, the physical reality of a brain tumor is threatening her right now. We all do understand and appreciate the power of mental energy, and I thank you once again for what you’re sending our way.

Say a prayer, light a candle, spin three times and kiss the ground. Cross your fingers, wish on stars, say your own name backwards.

Whatever gets you through, do it once for me, please.

I need good news right now.

Thanks,

Susan

The morning is pink and wet, newborn with last night’s rain. Dewdrops of tears dry on green cheeks of leaves that droop from the weight of the storm. Stone souls still darkened with what they absorbed in the night, their color intense and alive. Waiting, waiting for the warm morning sun.

Of course I publish the good as well as the bad, and this is from the University of Pennsylvania Museum, so who am I to argue? Thank’s, J-Walk for this one: Who Were you in Your Past Life?

Susan
in your past life you were known as
“S.U.S.A.N. the Shamelessly Uninhibited Spartan Atheist from Nubia “

I’m thinking of grandmothers today, mine both long gone, only one I knew as a child. She was my father’s mother, and they lived downstairs from us, her and my grandfather, and her daughter’s family all together. She babysat for us, of course, and I remember most some Sunday mornings playing at her metal topped kitchen table. It was a perfect town, mottled grey with white lines running through for streets that cut the town into blocks where different people lived. And where tin and plastic people walked or rode in little cars.

The only prose she told us was in her native language. We understood them only because my mother told these stories too sometimes. I almost still can repeat in staggered Polish, the tale of the three little kittens and their sadly missed mittens.

My sisters and I were brought up on Golden Books, often Santa leaving two or three apiece beneath our tree, before we started asking for Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys–I was into mystery even way back then. A rocking chair, a lap, a lilting and intrigueing voice that made each story more enthralling, even when retold many times. My mother read it one way, complete with building tension and surprise; my dad would read, and pause between each page, seemingly scanning the story first to get into the mood. I still hear their voices if I close my eyes and listen, and I still feel the ache of reaching that last page.

My husband also had the benefit of living close with and later, just a few doors down from his paternal grandparents when he was small. His grandfather was the type of man to take him everywhere, or for a ride at naptime, or for an ice cream soda. His grandmother was a softie only with her grandchildren, and even then, her choice of bedtime stories were, it would seem, a little odd. This then, that he still remembers:

One dark day, in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back, they faced each other
Pulled out knives and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
and clubbed to death the two dead boys.

I can happily report that this did nothing to warp him in later life.

Feeling better, ultraviolet penetrating to the soul. Then…

Young couple, with a boy step into my frameshop, the woman holds a glass vase of flowers, pink roses, a couple white ones, blue delphinium and Queen Anne’s lace. And a card, she hands it to me, I listen while I stare into the face of a young woman, the man’s sister, age 35. Died suddenly, he says.

They were sent to me to frame the flowers, around the photo of the smiling young woman on the memorial card. It’s for her boys, the woman tells me. They’ll appreciate it some day.