A Consensus of Bouquets (for Sakineh)

In the garden a nunnery grows of sunflowers
in rows all nodding to themselves in solemn
agreement. They seem to be communing in
approval of an event unfolding, as yet unseen.

Under blossoms of gossiping jonquils are
clusters of belfries among others, early arrivals
in trembling anticipation of a jubilant union
of unanimous assent. Here, a mantis is poised

atop sun-stroked palm-smoothed ancient stones
stacked loosely, overlooking warmed earth-
bound cradles embedded deeply in the cultured
roots living below. On the cusp of indecision

are sanctions that lack sufficient intent surrounding
the wordless white rose of Iran, recently plucked.
Butterflies rising in swarms are hovering,
humming repeatedly, thrumming the spread

of good news near the temporal groundswell
of trees astir in celebration of the agreed upon
reprieve & we are beginning to hear the wings
of freedom beating. The unappeasable tender

of the plot is briefly assuaged by the pungent
scent of wild sage, content to be distracted from
the vacant nest of exotica. Earth-bound crow-clawed
jackdaws spring to the air, suddenly, as if sliced

from the ground by a saber or scythe, filling the sky
with darkness, while nearby a scaffold erected
to tie unruly tendrils down, stands aside with
slipknots withdrawn for awhile. Bowing

to a sighing wind are bleeding hearts united,
as a miniature cavalcade of bobbing lobelia
parade in blue sanctuaries of blooms growing
round rocks not thrown. Now the sun hangs low

& mayflies warn an early dusk in glowing columns
composed of twilight-dancers in fluttered demise
as night closes in on the end of their lives, unlike roses,
gifted with the fragrance of another day.

Aubade after a Midnight Bathing Scene

The following is a poem written in mester de clerecia, or cuaderna via (the way of the four,) a style of poetry used by 13th century intellectuals of Castile. This style of poetry consists of four-line stanzas of alexandrines. A conventional alexandrine consists of rhymed verses of six iambic feet. A more detailed research indicates that an alexandrine has seven iambic feet. To split the difference I chose to create a work with eight syllabic measures in the line prior to a caesura, followed with six syllables to the end the line.

Aubade after a Midnight Bathing Scene

Last night my garden must have been tossed in diamond dust,
lost it seemed beneath a sheen of glazed and frozen crust.
A sleepy palm of day had wiped the dark away unwrapping
sheets of freshly laundered sky that hung in folds and trapping

dawn. Through frosted windowpanes in dreams or half awake
the silence palpitates below the furrows of each drifting flake
that falls upon my still closed eyes. And thin blue flames of ice
are stars that fell and bloomed in my back yard or peonies twice

caught in nets of grass are but spilled clouds of pale and sifted
passing thoughts afloat and like some drunken angel drifted
off in slumber. In this stiff and shining air that hovers
just behind late evening's veil of slipping silver covers,

midnight's moon-swept bathing scene delights a crowded grove
bent low in iced anticipated glow. And roses move
in bundles blown in rings of rubies careless thrown about
the ground and watching too for morning's song to sprout

in warming leaves of daylight tucked and pressed away to stay
the night. As though they might by some sleeping vow allay
aged petals dropping in attendant garden rows of seams
portray a never ending wash of light between flawed dreams.

“Devolutions” from In an Ocean of Grass

The following is a poem written in mester de clerecia, or cuaderna via (the way of the four,) a style of poetry used by 13th century intellectuals of Castile. This style of poetry consists of four-line stanzas of alexandrines. A conventional alexandrine consists of rhymed verses of six iambic feet. A more detailed research indicates that an alexandrine has seven iambic feet. To split the difference I chose to create a work with eight syllabic measures in the line prior to a caesura, followed with six syllables to the end the line. “Devolutions” was inspired by an earlier poem of mine, “In an Ocean of Grass I,” & “In an Ocean of Grass II.”

Devolutions

In a skiff tethered gently to tall reeds & leathered sedge,
below the glowing Ibis wing just rising from the hedge,
I’m watching twisted beams descend in rosy sheets
across a sky piled high in clouds & crowned in feathered pleats.

Rainbows are dissolving in the rising mist of distant shores
& twilight is evolving through a purple rain that pours
high above the canopy & seeping through the leaves,
piercing wide the panoply & sloughing off the eaves.

Whispers of a sighing breeze are dying near Cape Sable Bay
where a blushing sun sets low, kissing horizons away &
while sketching the loss of a small devolving Cypress tree,
I’ve captured instead fragments of latent fragility.

In an Ocean of Grass I

In a skiff gently tethered to reeds and sedge,
while sketching dwarf cypress, heron, and ibis'
white downward slide, I saw rising from the edge
of Cape Sable's horizon, arching rainbow's iris

descend. Late August colors of rain switched on
in twisted bright shafts of beaming sun, lifting
whipped peaks to heaped heights of piled sky upon
sun's setting after glow, standing still. Sifting

pure rose covered mist through frosted-gray and blue-
white streamers adrift with scuffled blown tails
dragging silver bright tendrils of light through
sheets of snowy-white alto-cumulus veils.

Hammered bronze boundaries seemed roiling between
that panoply of pierced Gulf sky, with a trace,
too distant perhaps, or surreal to be seen,
of miniature shreds of ice-green outer space.

Clouds swollen with flame shut down by the rain
poured curtains of rainbows drained from under
curved clusters of molten glass, spreading the stain
across the forgotten sun. Crashing thunder

drummed out every sound, splitting columns of spray
into spirals of wind spilling from cracked veins
opened in scars of jagged lead. As pale gray
evening shades closed on liquid counterpanes

over rock and rim, flooding for eventide,
I seemed balanced between a pelagic sea
of grass and shadows cast alongside,
while passing through in preludes of lost memory.

Waiting Again for the Snow

In the hills above a river with the hunted,
undercover of the frozen bone marrow trees,
I see someone is checking on the traps below
the empty limbs of dripping lilac boughs.

He's tracking in the melting snow for scarlet
cracks and tufts of hair left on the ground,
for a leg or foot still quivering, caught between
the smell of rancid bait and winter's starving wind.

I'm haunted by the slaughter cast before my eyes
and huddle in the dust of my belongings, on the run
and wondering how long before my wounded
footprints show in the night of life and death.

Weapons of Choice (A Villanelle)

With paint to seal and onion skin
each artist draws a line
designed to hide the pain within

the heart of youth where scars begin
to either flame or grow benign.
With paint to seal and onion skin

an artist quells offensive din
& slander caused to undermine
designs that hide the pain within

the voice of reason is akin
to whom new discourse must align.
With paint to seal and onion skin

we’ve drawn historic links of thin
disguise to hide civility’s decline
designed to hide the pain within.

Each war an artist joins to win
unmasks a lie & helps combine
with paint to seal & onion skin
designs that hide the pain within.

From Dolphin to Whale & Back, Cont’d from November 27, 2009

The legacies left to a child of suicide (any parent will do) are an odd mélange of myths, legends & delusions, the most significant of which is the belief that life has an expiration date equal to the age & anniversary of the suicidal parent.

Too busy with crises, I hardly noticed when mine first expired. My friends & co-workers often called me “The Road Runner,” so swift & effortlessly were my tasks completed. Speedy Gonzales remained a favorite as well until this world became too PC. Never an elevator when the stairs were so much faster, most buildings in San Francisco were then under twenty floors & access more evenly distributed.

In spite of my father’s death-age limit looming over my head, I failed to register the information until my extension had at 38 elapsed, eclipsing my father’s death by three years. Yes, I actually turned 39 & stayed 39 for approximately three years before I realized it was too late for me to continue with the mantra of the 70s:

“Live hard, die young & leave a lovely corpse,” which was more than a philosophy, it was how I managed to survive long enough to raise & fully educate six children. If I had faced reality any earlier & acknowledged life as a series of decades each stacked with more misery than the present, I would have been too intolerant to last.

I would most certainly not have been courageous enough to divorce a misogynist & with six children under 10 years, earn a GED, commit to a double major at a local community college & earn a place on the dean’s list.

Nor would I have been brave enough to explore professional artistic opportunities in various disciplines, growing stronger with each success. I had somehow confused fate with my speed & outlived my father’s legacy. I then set a new expiration date for myself which coincided with the launching of the last child. I decided that my responsibilities as a caretaker would be considered complete & I could finally put an end to it all. Until then I sped through life in a blurry-eyed state of exhaustion from one job to another, some lasting only long enough to earn one paycheck.

Through the Rear-View Mirror of Morality: Like cigarettes, men should have a warning label attached.

On the cusp of an elapsed second chance, at 65 I paid a whole lot more attention & made drastic changes. On the re-set button: Time, no longer my enemy, is instead my best new friend.

Harmony

He carried his heart in a bag of brown leather,
stained, weather veined & worn close
to his chest, catching the earth out of tune.
A beggar in silk he arrived to arrange
in harmonious order, the hidden refrain
of chords found in pitch perfect symmetry.

He sought to unseal locked-in temple chimes
wrapped in silk silence in Bedouin tents
buried in chests of camphor and pine,
banned from the altars of royal events.

By magic or chance he uncovered a thrush
in covertures of dissonance, held
in the hush of a song-bird spell, until
played inside his case in an overture
of unequaled balance & grace.

He longed to recover lost tones of enrapture
captured within the stalemated air
in passages veiled in sostenutos exhaled
in vapors of sustaining suspense.
Searching for sonance he ached to embrace

crying white peacocks' midnight threnody, &
place it inside his pillaging sack of soniferous
sounds, silvery notes, & spilled desert smells.
On a sky borrowed he soared to perform
before nations resigned to discordant unrest.

In precious metals he flew on a saucer of night,
his heart latched in a satchel of fast descent,
past gravity's mass of mortal restraints,
exposing his soul to a chaotic race,
rendered deaf by the din of majority’s rule.

For whom could the music be played just then?
Caught in the seduction of clouds he prepared
for the next event while making friends
with angels who composed in sighing unison,
vespers for the unsung avatar

My Mother's Grave (A Sestina)

My mother's bones lie beneath the snow
below the frosty apron of a tree
in a wintergarden carved in stone
behind a skirt of locked iron gates
that protects an empty church from theft
by children left bereft of love.

Reservoirs sustain her blood-rich love
displayed across the face of snow
& betrays her restless heart the theft
of sleep beneath the roots of her adoptive tree
with spilled immortal energies that cling to gates
conformed outside her bed of stone.

Here, I can revive hibernal lips of stone
& rejoice within the echoes of her love
all through the night as rising gates
of dawn remain covered in a skin of snow
& winter fruit grows closer to the tree,
a vigil drawn against the early stain of theft.

Yet, while I slept in empty pews, death foretold the theft.
Behind closed eyes of dream I glimpsed a stone
pressed on the leaves shed by my mother's tree
that told the threat unveiled by her unending love
before new earth could dust the snow
or roots might grow beyond closed gates.

By chance a blossom strayed outside her gates,
restoring with the gift of faith, the right to see the theft
of trust that rests unseen buried in the snow.
Alone, I daily rend from lethargic stone
the dutiful constraints that are the death of love,
to tend in gracious sacrifice, the garden of her tree.

No leaf will fall unnoticed nor bloom drift from the tree
until the guiding eyes of age come stave the gates
in resigned devotion to the memory of immortal love
of those forgotten by the dreadful theft.
Sun lights the steps that led my mother to her bed of stone,
that I might lie immune beside her footprints in the snow.

Winter molds the tree of stone until spring’s theft of snow unlocks
its frozen gates and love returns each fallen blossom to the bough.

Gliding in Merced

When I allow remembering to spill beyond my will,
& press against the open hinge of memory’s door,
I think of how the face I held was changed;
vanished by a simple split of wind.
Landing on a distant hill you were alive
& dying, broken then and lying still;

paler than a wounded hand swathed in sifted ash
resting on a window sill. You had a habit in the past
of throwing back a final glance, as though your faith
was wearing thin inside your cockpit nest &
staying high was just another test, like landing
on one wheel or the promise of a kiss goodbye.

At noon you tried your very best and swore
the blast of followed air would hold you in
the folded sleeve that god rolls up to keep you there,
and wore the creases of a smile around your trusted
path as though the patch of land you fled
had lost the magic left to capture you.

On the eve of your ascent, we slept
in fields of swooning wheat and laughed
at crowds you held enrapt by your contempt for gravity.
You threw your life behind the words
of someone’s stranded prayers and like a bird
with broken wings the air let go of you.

Caught in the heat of a stalled afternoon
you lost your bet & met your sky-high affair
with death at last, then drifting in the crossing
winds of silent despair, dropped in a spiraled
descent of featherless bones & nameless parts,
down & down onto a golden plume of dust.

Equestrienne

On a boardwalk in Old San Juan I was drawn
through a glass darkened by dust lined shelves
piled high in a cluttered display, to a carousal tilted
by ancient enamel-stained horses embalmed, affixed
to its stage through decades of negligent disrepair.
One caught my eye & seemed alive somehow
as though beguiled, preserved perhaps in art,
a spirit lost in stasis, say, attached by circumstances
to the past; too alive to stay, too endangered
to depart. From a bankless reservoir of memories
sprang a place I knew, where clover-coifed
grasses grew in unrestrained abundance
& Mustangs ranged in painted vales undiminished
by a vanished paradise, a place to reunite with life,
surviving still, on a cusp of quickly sliding time.

Enchanted by his bold élan, I shed my skin of grief
& climbed astride his midnight hide & entered his
belief. Within the spell a trail began to curve into
a bend & through a lens I saw a way to end
my solitude. We raced in silhouette along torn spikes
of sedge traced in shadows of the shattered sun
& blazed through beams of broom-brush dust,
past blooms of bursting earth we swept a perfumed
path clean with our speed & sent leaves flying overhead.

Through fields of tall white stars we spread Night Jasmine
to the sea & struck high-tide broadside & broached
the waves in sprays of rainbow lights & clinging foam.
Seaweed ribbons trimmed the crown I plaited for the solemn
brow of my dead lover's guide. Our steps were slow
& muffled in the temple of the pines that arched above the hushed
grave site. Silver-edged boughs gathered in a wreath around
crushed shells & age-frayed debris marked the mound I chose
to sleep upon until my bones are bleached to winter white
& the golden cup that holds the stallion myth is lifted
in a tribute to its healing gift, whispering, I am more,
I am more, than just one.

Mistral's Sister

Fear defines the burrowed space
where I am calm & time stands still,
the way a desert sulks for summer’s sake
& waits in rapt attention for the rain.

As if that troubled tear I dropped
could grow a sister Mistral I might cause
to blow half-way around the earth
to search for ways to end the drought.

She might find the clouds off-shore,
where static air ignites the shape
of night in an erratic strafe from sky
to ground, brave before the thunder’s din,

& in her wild imagined state
could swing beyond the moon’s excited gape
& string the sweat from mountain brows
like pearls across the barren floor.

Why not send her wanton wind
& borrowed anxious axis-hips
while I grow into mine & claim
her midnight binges are just storms that cringe

before the sky turns in for morning prayers?
No shame can spring from this mirage
that floods the sand with waters gleaned
throughout her flight of bright illusions dreamed,

nor blame for her affairs that bring restoration
of reluctant pools to the surface of her arid
golden skin & nomadic layers of oases, granting
absolution in the transient seas of gratitude.

The "Bod Squad" Moves In

Of the daily challenges presented to a single mother of six children, none equal the time and energy expended in the perpetual search for money. A woman can either work two or three jobs at minimum wage or try to sell her body for a slightly higher scale of pay. With the relatively sexless body of a twelve-year old boy walking backward, I could not imagine anyone buying mine. Since I lacked promiscuity, education, a base of salient skills, and had six children under ten, the reality of my position became quite clear as I set out a few decades ago to find a job, become educated, and raise those kids alone.

In a set of strange circumstances due to a risky state of being both physically overstressed and emotionally overwhelmed, I began to recognize the presence of more than just my own brood. There began to appear on a daily basis metaphysical personifications that exhibited actual personalities, distinguishable by their behavioral patterns. I found it strangely satisfying to draw interesting parallels between the body of their activities and those of my children and began to refer to them as Nobody, Everybody, Somebody, and Anybody, AKA/”The Bod Squad.”

While learning their names and idiosyncratic proclivities I discovered that I actually liked Nobody. Nobody loved vegetables and Nobody ate them. Nobody completed homework and Nobody followed my organizational chart. Nobody remained polite and cheerful and Nobody washed dishes. Nobody picked up clothing from the floor and Nobody claimed ownership of the jeans thrown there. Clearly this one had potential.

Because of my extraordinarily reasonable and especially pleasant nature, I was surprised by the presence of the one I called Somebody whose specious behavior belied the positive nature of the others and the one I blamed for the loss of my cranberry sweater, misplaced Libra ring, removal of the covers and pillows from my bed, and in fact was a suspect in the loss of my favorite champagne flute, an elegant piece of crystal stem-ware I especially loved. I often envisioned a future world in which I might own two of them and regularly hid money in a sacrificial sugar bowl hoping to find a duplicate. The bowl, the money, and the flute were quite simply missing. The rhetoric went something like this:

"Somebody broke my champagne flute” I screamed, “ravished my sugar bowl, and absconded with $3.42!"

True, I was somewhat hysterical and while I demanded an immediate resolution, my eldest countered with her inherited ideological preference for non-biased accusations.

"Why blame Somebody when it could have been Anybody?”

Daughters two and three in nodding agreement argued vehemently for the defense, insisting that Everybody had access to the cupboard, Anybody could be guilty, and Nobody should be blamed.

"Nobody?" I was stunned. “How can Nobody be blamed?”

It was obvious to me that Somebody took these things because they were in fact gone, breaking perhaps the only remnant of my future fantasy life. For reasons beyond logic my children insisted that Anybody and Everybody should be held responsible which seemed somehow suspicious. I could however imagine such acts of egregious behavior by those unscrupulous ones since it was a well known fact as stated by my eldest, “Everybody hangs out at the mall, stays out late, smokes cigarettes, talks incessantly on the telephone, and uses bad words.” There were in fact dozens of their pilfering pals whose fingerprints I daily wiped away. One miscreant might just be Anybody, a mysteriously vague personification not entirely trustworthy. In the end however, after a thorough investigation, Nobody claimed responsibility and Nobody was punished. Since Nobody confessed and with the evidence removed, I concluded that when Nobody is to blame, nothing gets done. When I confronted them with this reasoning, my children accused me of bias against Everybody who was their current favorite among the iconoclastic representational bodies in residence.

"Since as you say, Everybody always behaves badly," daughter's two and three proclaimed, “and Anybody could be guilty as charged, Somebody might consider your conclusions slightly prejudicial."

The clarity of my argument took a mercurial drop as my children turned it against me and I seemed to have lost another battle. Nobody appeared interested in the issues, however with Nobody on my side the majority was sure to rule.

When the dog produced five puppies, Nobody came to my aid and Everybody hid behind Anybody with an alibi. Nobody verified the father of this error in judgment, which led me back to the ongoing, but unresolved argument of assessing ownership of jeans thrown disrespectfully to the floor. The girls all wore the same size which led me to begin an investigation into certain very specific worn spots accompanied by appliquéd butterflies, and various other relatively personalized creations and tell-tale indications of derelict ownership.

In a moment of unforeseen frustration, I ran yelling through the house in an unprofessional, albeit succinct, non-prejudicial rant.

"I'm throwing all of these jeans in the garbage!" I stated further that, "Persons owning these jeans and those who know the gender of the dog must be held liable for their actions."

Unbelievably, daughters, four and five engaged in a strategy that included youth and innocence as a viable defense against sexual knowledge, an argument I was not about to enter as Anybody would most certainly become confused and Everybody would claim a significant victory. As for the jeans at issue, Nobody claimed them and I laundered them in silence.

The dog, apparently a female, was named "Gretchen" as my children seemed to think she was a "Dutch Terrior," a previously undiscovered breed and bestowed upon her a fabricated pedigree. Gretchen, a dog with neurotic tendencies was terrified by the presence of the children and unknown to me, gave birth to and deposited all five of her puppies under my bed.

Also unknown to me was my latent allergy to puppy dander. Everybody blamed my extreme bronchial distress to the fact that I worked in a bar twelve hours a night, and spent eight hours a day in a "sick" office building. Somebody suggested I stay home, clean house and make cookies, an excellent but thoroughly impractical solution. After much discussion, Somebody then suggested the animals be removed, to which Everybody agreed. Anybody could see the logic of it and after Nobody’s objections the eldest was sent out on her bicycle with a small lunch, a wagon, and six "for-free" animals. I was miraculously cured, returned to work, and food appeared once again on the table.

When daughter number five began to exhibit bizarre episodes of limping, and doctors suggested to me that her behavior appeared to be a production of symptoms associated with a psychoneurosis motivated by my neglect of her, I wondered if this child was emulating her sister who had also lost her ability to walk for a period of time some years before. I pulled that one around in a wagon because she said, "I can't walk." That child was often found napping on the sidewalk by neighbors who actually believed her and considered me a nut. Because I worked three or four jobs and left my children to their imagination, I suspect the timely arrival of the personifications upon which we could foist unacceptable behavior absolved my children from the exacting consequences of parental authority and I was grateful to be let off the hook.

When the cat ran into a car, I was in another county, far away in a hospital attempting to manage the operation of daughter number four, a child who required screws in her thigh. The apparent theory for her slipping epiphysis was associated with a congenital factor however under sedation this child admitted to stomping aluminum cans into a kind of "shoe-heel" and clomped around on them daily for fun. Upon our arrival back home at last, we placed the crutches for my daughter at the bottom of the stairs. The cat, with a broken leg, and wearing a cast, sat quietly between them. Visiting children came with their mothers and were amazed by the size of the crutches for such a small cat.

Tutu, a rare "Chocolate-Point" Siamese was no doubt expensive in the past, but had fallen on hard times, landing on our doorstep and scooped up for play by daughter number five who dressed her in frilly doll's clothing and pushed her around in a wicker basket banging recklessly into the furnishings.

When the leg was healed and the cast removed, Tutu sprayed the sofa I designed and waited six months to receive. On the day I removed the plastic that cat not only dictated its territorial arena with a disgusting skunk-like odor, it rendered the sofa helpless by tearing to shreds, the arms, sides, and back of its frame. Nobody knew of course the cat was a male, and Nobody assisted me with its removal.

Tutu disappeared one day along with some turtles. The turtles were actually unintentionally ground up after they had become seriously strange looking, and were unidentifiable as a species. A Great Dane was then introduced to our family by daughter number five, a dog so large that I thought it must be a horse. I noticed it while painting the kitchen ceiling a special color. I thought tomato soup red would work quite nicely with the yellow shag rug I had kind of destroyed when I attempted to create a kinetic sculpture which exploded during an experiment. It had not occurred to me that adding one more drop of catalyst would produce such an effect in the resin.

I snipped the "shag" down with manicure scissors believing that I might manufacture a kind of "short shag," maybe something unusual, pulling the hardened acrylic shards which had burst into glass-like pieces. I believed there may be in existence the possibility of a "golf-link-like” short, grassy carpet. The tomato-soup ceiling was almost a success but had a "lumpy" appearance, the result of the hardened acrylic thrown by the blast. Additionally, while drying, pieces of pasta previously thrown had slipped a bit and created a bas-relief effect, a kind of Art Deco over-all arrangement, an interesting almost sunburst look, useful perhaps in Xanado.

One of my many jobs involved the completion of 8"x10" highly detailed ink renderings with copy, of fashions shown in local boutiques. I was paid $25 per each piece selected to be advertised in the fashion section of “The Detroit Free Press,” a paper considered at the time to be quite prestigious. I pinned the clothing to the tomato-soup walls of the dining room to achieve fluidity and often spent many sleepless nights engaged in the project. While working at an off-premises location, Somebody removed the seriously expensive dresses from the wall leaving me with nothing to render and nothing to return. I was sued of course, but with no redeemable resources, Nobody collected, reassuring me of the fact that Nobody would stand by me.

In the meantime and for reasons unknown to me, my children were adamant that the Great Dane should live with us, an absurd notion of course since there was no money for food. Happily, that animal left through the back door not long after he was dragged through the front. Somebody must have left the door open! I just knew Somebody would become an ally!

I began to look at these creatures as a happy accident, something like a solution to the extraordinary problems faced while raising six children. I liked them and remained positive in spite of the incredibly negative behavior attributed to them. In fact, I liked blaming them for inappropriate activities, and I especially liked having discussions about them. Because my children were collectively against anything I advocated, I used whatever measures were available to me to police them.

Not long after the arrival of the “Bodies,” an unexpected opportunity arose to move three thousand miles away from the nosy and often misunderstanding neighbors. The person I promised to marry in exchange for the opportunity to survive elected to force an ultimatum. I could either marry the guy or lose our home. Few decisions were made in less time. Not only did I sell every piece of furniture not nailed to the floor, I sold furnishings actually nailed to the floor, including every appliance that came with the semi-ownership of the condominium, including the bathroom fixtures. With a fist full of checks from an astounding number of accommodating neighbors, I found an agent of Cadillac who was happy to pay me to drive across the country in their stunning white, boat-like car, upon which I balanced two beautiful bicycles.

The trip to California with six children under ten was a bit of an illusion, surely something a responsible person would refer to as a fantasy. However in 1973 all things seemed possible, including a home for my children. Nobody led the way and we ended our travels at a comfy Ho-Jo’s in a northern-most nook and cranny of Marin County.

The really strange part of the process began the following day at the bank. My account was in effect frozen; an operational consequence of the deposited checks which were written by the persons for the sale of items that did not all belong to me. It was becoming increasing clear to me that I was about to become a criminal. To what degree remained unknown but I suspected Nobody would come to my aid and in the end I would require the assistance of Somebody or in fact Anybody with a legal background.

However, moving three thousand miles seemed to cool the professed ardor of my intended, and he was quietly assuaged with full ownership of my darling home, leaving me free to wander for which I was grateful.

Finding a home for six children and one adult in the 70's proved to be an enormous challenge. The one I chose to rent did not allow children, so I lied and said I had none. We moved in, all seven of us, along with three pillows and a coffee pot. The rent would of course become an issue due to the freeze on the account, and I was forced to return the fire-engine red sports car that did not start which was in fact a blessing. With no way to attach the money, the used car dealer was unable to manage the disposition and just picked it up.

In the meantime I found a waitress position which allowed me to "steal" food and toilet paper from the restaurant and feed my children. Nobody objected, and I continued to become a felon, a career objective that Somebody considered difficult to comprehend, and a course of action perceived by Everybody as unwise. With my first paycheck I reimbursed my employer, confessed, and begged to be forgiven. Nobody was, as usual, there for me and I was fired. My landlord, an unwilling participant in an ongoing lawsuit against him for allowing children to live in the complex, caved under the pressure and forced me to leave. By the time I returned home after being fired on Christmas Eve, the children were all sitting outside on the pillows while the eldest held the coffee pot.

If Somebody had an idea Nobody was discussing it and if Everybody thought we were beaten by this we looked toward Anybody with a positive solution. I decided to hide the children once again and find a home, this time with no money, a delicate task indeed, but not entirely impossible. While “bathing” in the rest-room of a gas station it occurred to me that the bank might have released the freeze on the checks written for the sold contraband. As amazing as it may seem, I was able to withdraw almost $3000, an astronomical amount of money which was after three months, finally ours.

We ate something other than tea and toast for the first time and after renting another room at out favorite motel for showers, clean sheets, and television, we snuggled into a discussion of room service. Somebody suggested that Everybody would benefit from a walk to the nearest fast-food joint, an option Nobody found satisfactory as it was concluded to be too thrift-oriented. In the end, the desire to eat actual food out-weighed all other practical options. The pleasure of raising a half-dozen kids is significant, but the immutable thrill of feeding them trumps all.

Sitting in the booth of a restaurant with a serious claim to the best seafood in the world, my darlings ordered hamburgers with cheese.

"We don't like fish," they proclaimed, "especially fish with bones."

Somebody suggested lobster as it has none, a fact Everybody agreed upon and Anybody could see the logic of such a choice. Nobody, once again came to my aid.

"Lobster it is," I declared, and lobster it was for our re-entry into the world of normalcy.

Albeit dinner blew a magnificent hole in our funds, it also produced a significant burst of energy and emotional well-being. We found a very simple home; an extremely rural cottage, the kind some might describe as "shack-like," available however to mothers with children. By padding my resume with outrageous lies, I found a job and bought a car that not only started on command, but had a functioning reverse gear, and joined other working moms dropping their kids off at school.

In the end it was a simple project: a task devoted to the ordinary notion of keeping six children alive; an idea developed while skirting them through negotiations with an exceptional parent and the evolution of an association with unrealistic and entirely imaginative personalities, all willing to support their creative endeavors, specific ideations, and loving pursuits. Through a prism of four decades past, I cannot see how it was done, but can only recall the joy of raising six children on my own.

The Price of Independence

Jamie parked and ran inside, breathless and shaking as she called her best friend.

"Alice, I got the car, I have it now, and it's parked out in front, right in front. I can see it from here." Jamie was near hysteria, "Yes, that's right," that's exactly what I said." Jamie continued, "I got the little red one."

"It's about time," said Alice, "when can I see it?"

"I'll be there in a flash," said Jamie. At that they both laughed.

"When were you ever anywhere in a flash?" Alice was still laughing. "You'd be three hours late if you left five hours early."

Jamie turned away from the window. "Who are you, the tardy police?" Geez, could Alice flip to the dark side or what? "O.K, O.K., I'll see you in a few minutes."

Jamie returned to the window, checking again for the presence of her almost brand new sports car as it sat there gleaming in the sunlight. It was red, chic, and shared with the bank. After all, it was the nineties, and this was Los Angeles. She had already racked up an impressive balance of debts via credit cards and student loans. Tacking an extra few thousand on for a good cause could hardly be called irresponsible.

At twenty-seven, Jamie was still a graduate student and shared an apartment with two roommates and had for the last six months saved every penny, nickel, and dime toward the down payment on her wheels of freedom, and was finally able to send into history the miles of pedaling, busing, hitching rides, and her dependence on Alice.

It wasn't always like this. Jamie's mother bought her a nice little car when she went away to undergraduate school at Santa Barbara, but she totaled it in a three-way fender bender. No one was really hurt, but she was on her way to the insurance office and just didn't make it. Naturally, the other drivers sued and she had to call her mother for help, and of course, her mother rarely failed any opportunity to revisit Jamie's lack of ability to "comprehend the consequences of her actions." Each retelling of the incident was cause for her mother to escalate the damages and attorney fees, gasping for air in between spouting the exponentially skyrocketing costs, hyperventilating into the telephone until forced to sit down for lack of air. Jamie had vowed to be more conscientious, and doubled her efforts to save, save, save until she could afford both insurance and a car. In the meantime, Alice was her only ticket to mobility. Independence appeared to be a very costly set of circumstances. Jamie and Alice met back home in high school and had been best friends all through college and now they lived only blocks from each other. Although they were the same age, Jamie had somehow managed to transfer her dependence on her mother to Alice. The substitution seemed to help Jamie pull away from her family, but the fact remained that Alice was her mentor.

Alice drove her everywhere and she dearly loved her, but she could be a little sarcastic about the whole thing. Oh well, that's all over now. Jamie wrapped her arms around herself, pirouetted into the bedroom, and flung wide open the shutters that kept her clothes from falling out. She stood in front of her closet, staring without focus, looking for something red. Bright red, racing-car red, no, Jamie needed ownership red. After a while, she collapsed on the floor and wandered through her things from the bottom up.

"OK, alright," gifted as she was with a kind of divine shoe intelligence, she muttered small loving phrases of encouragement to herself. Jamie pulled out the first of seven racks that held a minimum of five pair each on four rows, straddled it and began the process of choosing. "It's always better if the shoes are right." After she dug up the strappy red sandals, the matching sundress with a small cherry print was a simple matter. Jamie shoved everything back inside and kicked the door closed.

One of her roommates yelled after her, "You're looking really hot, what's up?"

Jamie twirled around and pointed in the direction of her car, "I'm on my way to Alice's." "We're going to the beach." Jamie smirked a little to herself, not once, not even once did one of these guys ever offer her a lift. The fact that her roommates were both in their late twenties, had significant others, and were rarely around, gave Jamie the illusion that she had the whole house to herself. That was a plus, along with her tiny rent. On the minus side, Jamie was responsible for most of the household management with no help from either of them. The car was a great equalizer.

Outside, Jamie approached the jaunty little automobile with valentines in her eyes. She caressed the bonnet and let her fingers drift over the windscreen. She opened the boot, threw her beach bag inside, and dug in her purse for the keys with the matching ceramic apple on the ring. As she positioned herself behind the wheel in proper sportscar fashion, the warmed leather and almost new carpet fragrance united to form a heady liaison. Jamie remained complacent and calm as she conformed anatomically to the sleekly designed bucket seats.

Top down, blond hair flying, Jamie drove the two blocks to pick up Alice.

"I told you she was a beauty," said Jamie, "I've decided to call her Gizela."

"This is not a German car." Alice was laughing. "You can call her Gertrude Stein for all I care, you know, a rose is a rose, etcetera."

Jamie lowered her black patent leather trimmed sunglasses to peer at Alice. "Is she a sexy Brit?"

Alice moved away from the car, pulling her bag in a kind of slow motion movement, as though the car might capture her. "I suspect you may call her anything that moves you from one place to the other."

"I know that," said Jamie, "she's British, and I should probably call her Elizabeth or Mary, or maybe she's a he." Jamie offered a solution, "How about Lord Nelson?"

Gizela protested all the way to the beach with popping, clangorous, clattery, rackety sounds. Alice seemed relieved and jumped out of the car as if she thought it might blow up. Jamie tried not to be apprehensive, but when she got out and closed the door, Gizela shuddered all over. She continued to clank for a while, and then emitted a long drawn out wheezing noise.

Alice stood there staring at the car with her arms folded, watching the car twitch and shiver, like something dying.

"Is she asthmatic?"

Jamie assured Alice that she would make an appointment next week for a tune up, "You know how idiosyncratic these foreign cars are, don't you?" Jamie looked again at her new dependent, and wondered just what kind of money she would need to support it.

Gizela did not start up for Jamie the next morning, but a neighbor was able to jump-start her with cables. She also did not start up in the evening, but AAA came to the rescue with dancing orange lights bouncing off twilight windows and they also had jumper cables. A pattern began to emerge consisting of AAA in the morning and evening and whenever she needed to actually start the car. The latent deficiencies of Jamie's charming little sportscar began to loom like an insidious disease, pernicious and debilitating. After the twenty-fifth recorded call, AAA canceled her membership and Jamie was left to seek other more creative devices to activate the moving parts of the newly and more appropriately named "Leech."

Jamie's social life took on new aspects as she stipulated ownership of jumper cables as prerequisites to any new relationships. Her dinner date conversations were directed toward the rehabilitation and mechanical modification of foreign cars. Jamie became educated to the "foot on the clutch, through the intersection," method of avoiding police detection, as the hole in the muffler allowed horrendous blasts of noise and noxious fumes to emit with each shift of the gears.

Shortly after the first payment, and the second rain, the inanimate object of Jamie's affection ceased to function. Even the casual dates she hustled were getting scarce. At that point, and from thereafter, rain, dew, or, a damp rag landing in the general vicinity, would be the cause of starting failures.

Jamie answered the phone hoping it was someone with car savvy. It was Alice. Jamie had not told Alice all of the symptoms of her sick car.

"Jamie, said Alice, "we're meeting at Chris and Bob's, be there at eight."

"Does anyone there know how to pop a clutch?"

"You're car is not working?" Alice's sarcasm had a slight edge.

"My car does work," said Jamie, "after I get it started."

"I don't believe you," said Alice. "It wasn't really working the day we went to the beach. I could hear strange noises and what's that popping all about."

"I took it to a garage," said Jamie. "The guy told me that the spark plugs don't ignite, the carburetor doesn't eject, and the fan belt doesn't propel."

"Oh." Alice sounded sympathetic, but Jamie couldn't tell for sure. Alice could be enigmatic.

"Alice, I'm begging you," said Jamie, "I'm on my knees. Jamie was close to tears. "Please come and get me. I'm being victimized by a malfunctioning, mechanical mistake."

"Jamie, you bought a parasitic accumulation of unreliable automotive parts," then Alice continued in a much less judgmental tone. "Are there any working pieces at all that could be salvaged, you know, at the junk yard?"

"No," said Jamie.

"Let's bury it and have a great funeral."

"I've lost my job," Jamie was trying not to be upset. "I need to find something where the requirements aren't so stringent, like attendance or being on time." She was miserable, embarrassed and broke. "I'm going through jobs with the velocity of sound." Jamie was on a roll. "We could sell tickets and make it an event." "How many of our friends have been invited to a wake for a car?"

"I've renamed it "The Leech." Jamie was not going to cry, not now anyway. Alice always made Jamie feel better, no matter what.

Every conceivable mishap occurred with alarming regularity, from a frozen gas tank cover, in LA yet, to the total obliteration of the electrical system. The latter was a sequence of chain reactions that also destroyed the recently purchased and installed battery, ignition and fan belt.

Jamie was on the freeway heading for home when she noticed smoke spewing from the hood. First the adapter blew up, creating a fire in the wiring system, which in turn caused the alternator to explode. As Jamie pulled over to the shoulder she was able to coast into a gas station to the consternation of the attendant who attacked the hood of "The Leech" with a fire extinguisher. The fire was finally out and as it was being towed away, a policeman handed Jamie her ninth moving violation.

Luckily, the scraping of the loose bumper against the pavement muted the clatter of the muffler falling to the street, or Jamie would have been hauled in for littering.

"Alice." Jamie was on the phone again. "Should I set fire to it, or leave it in the street for vandals?" Jamie begged her advice. "Should I put it in gear and shove it over a cliff?"

"Find some deranged person and sell it," said Alice. "There must be someone willing to buy a non-functional pile of debris."

By the middle of the following week, during which Jamie displayed previously hidden negotiating skills, she was once again employed and mobile.

"Actually, Alice, the job is perfect," Jamie said. "This time I found a neat little design office three blocks from home and they let me do my homework when I have free time." Jamie interrupted her call to Alice to transfer an incoming call, "I might even finish school before I start collecting Social Security.

"Is The Beast operating?" Alice asked.

"The Leech is parked right outside." Jamie had no intention of admitting to Alice that she had somehow lost the reverse gear and could only move in one direction, forward. Parking was a huge challenge and required serious planning. She could only put it into a "first in line parking place," which sometimes took an hour to locate and it always stuck out a little because she couldn't pull it back. She would usually just get out after parking and push it into place with a good kick. Jamie remembered the flashing hold lights and let Alice go.

Just when Jamie reached the bottom of her bankbook, and the Z's in her address book, her responsibility for "The Leech" came to an abrupt end. The car was not where she had parked it that morning. As she looked all over the campus parking lot, a bubble of joy ran through the tips of her fingers and toes.

Someone must have stolen it. It would have to be someone who was a car genius to get it started and drive it away. But it was definitely gone. Jamie reported the loss to the police and to her insurance agent and called Alice.

"Alice," said Jamie, "the most wonderful thing has happened at last. A car thief saved my life." Jamie was ecstatic.

"Can you come and get me?"

"I'm on my way," said Alice.