middle-age

Post #47: The Cartographer of Malleable Memory

Cindy Frank memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy, Uncategorized , , ,

IMG_1854I scribbed and scrawed and scratched and scroobed. At first with those thick lavender elementary school trainer pencils, sometimes with a nothing more than a nubble of broken crayon. In flowing royal blue fountain pen ink or a smudgy stub of pencil. I dreamed of typing in a tree house but instead I scribbled in backseats or on busses, while wedged behind a fliptop schoolhouse desk or hunched over a sticky kitchen table.

Like Livingston on a lifelong safari, I am off to capture the prize.

My middle finger is marked by a callous from gripping the pencil so earnestly, even desperately, my hands are forever stained with ink. Scraps of paper, half finished notebooks, missives tucked into books. Tantalizing clues and ciphers and keys! All for me.

The cartographer of malleable memory, I am making a map.

***

BRAVE: Oak Park Boulevard

Ah ha! Nobody is watching. My moment has come. I kick my tennis shoes off into the summer grass and gingerly ease my feet onto the hot sidewalk. I am expecting a sizzle but it doesn’t happen. Step by step by step. I can do it! Like the firewalkers that boldly skitter over hot coals I am brave enough to walk the fiery pavements of Oak Park Boulevard with my bare feet! But even so I make certain to step carefully over every single crack. Because I love my mother very much.

***

AWAY: Hudson’s Department Store

Like a moveable steel Everest it loomed imploringly before me.   Each step rising up and up and up and then somehow folding away into some mysterious and inviting heavenly realm. Where did it go, where did it lead? I had no idea. All it took was just one tiny step and I was on my way, lofted upwards on a moveable stairway to adventure! As my mother turns I wave and then, in an instant, I am out of sight.

***

BEAUTY: The Beauty Parlor near Coolidge

It’s Friday and all the ladies are there ready to be made behived and beautiful. With enough hairspray the hairdo will last for the whole week. Each lady swathed in a plastic apron, they face their mirrors without ever making faces, and they sit in chairs that spin without ever spinning wildly. How do they do it? The air is thick with chatter and cumulous clouds of hairspray. But if we are quiet, there is a quarter for each of us.

In the corner, in the back is the Soda Machine! My sisters and I stand transfixed. Red Pop or Orange or Rock n Rye?

I am the oldest so I already know which is best. Without hesitation I drop in my quarter and twist the dial. In a moment a tall bottle of Faygo Grape is in my hand.

I swig right from the bottle and I think maybe that being made beautiful just might be worth it.

***

VICTORY: Camp Walden, Girls 9

High noon on a sunny day. We are inside, of course. That’s where the real action is. The floors are hard and swept and smooth.   You could bounce a quarter off my hospital-cornered bunk. I know. I tried. I am toe to toe with my halter-topped, feathered-haired adversary. I’ve got this. Then with one practiced hand I knock the jacks into a perfect arc and with the other I flourish the ball in the air. My left hand sweeps through the maze and in a flash it’s all over.   I am the official jacks champion of Girls 9.

***

WELCOME: Kingswood

The Oldsmobile pulls around the circle. I get out and the car pulls away. I am here. Knee socks and loafers, pale blue blouse and a brown jumper with pockets. I desperately need the pockets, where else can I put my nervous hands? I walk up the steps and pull open the doors. I am in the Green Lobby, a simple name for a space so exquisitely beautiful no fancy words could hope to ever do it justice. My heart skips a beat and then it almost explodes from my chest. How can this be?  How can you come home to a place you’ve never been to before? But I have. At that moment I know part of me will never leave. Or perhaps it is that this wonderful place will never really leave me.

***

BELONG: Carnegie Deli, New York City

Sunday morning, 8 AM, Seventh Avenue. The doors of Carnegie Deli are unlocked before my eyes. Where are the crowds? I cannot figure out where everyone is. Don’t all real New Yorkers rush out at pre dawn hours on Sunday mornings?

I sit uncomfortably on a bentwood chairs at one of the long tables and I wrestle with a menu that is as massive as the Ruben’s Triptych.   Pen and pad in hand the bow-tied, black-jacketed waiter is waiting. And waiting.

I panic. So I order the first things that come into my head.

In a few moments he places a warm baked apple and hunk of Russian Coffee Cake in front of me.   I take a few bites and I start to relax at last. It is very good.

When I look up to pay my bill three other people have ordered exactly the same thing.

I have done it. I belong.

***

SEALED: Haagen-Dazs, The Upper West Side

We stood there together, our noses pressed against the glass case. I hardly knew him. So will it be chocolate or mint chip or strawberry or mango? Rum raisin or butterscotch or fudge Ripple or plain vanilla? Cup or a cone? Sprinkles or sauce? Can an ice cream choice define you? Of course it can.

“I’d like an egg cream,” I said. His eyes, behind his round tortoise shell glasses, were wide.   “That’s amazing,” he said. “Me too.”   The kiss, and the life together that follows, is especially sweet.

***

JOY: Riverdale, 16th floor

The identical little people in identical pajamas were so small they couldn’t stand for more than a few seconds without toppling over onto each other. That didn’t matter. They fell down they got up, they fell down they got up again. And they laughed, a rich and rollicking and rolling laugh that blended into a jazz trumpet duet that would have knocked Old Satchmo, Louis Armstrong himself, back on his heels. My oh my!

We never got the joke. Just the joy.

***

MEMORY LANE: Around the corner

He traveled that route like a tiny King in a Yankee cap. Perched proudly in his green wagon he had the presence and bearing of Caesar himself. I pulled the wagon. Down the street, around the corner and a curve through a cave of trees, back and forth day after day to take his brothers to  elementary school. It was my job, but small as he was, he was certain it was his.

Then when he was old enough, for a time he walked with them. And then, older still and the only brother left, he walked Memory Lane alone.

Except for this last time. It was his last day on this beloved path at this beloved school. He asked me to walk with him. No wagon necessary. I did. We walked the path together one more time.

And in front of everyone he held my hand.

***

For me memory isn’t solid at all but truly more like shimmery green jello. I love jello. It shifts in the light. It wobbles. It changes. Memory I think is meant to be stretched, sometimes reshuffled or perhaps rolled like dice from a cup to continuously recreate the treasure map of a happy life. Follow the dots wherever they lead again and again on a zig zagged path to happiness.

.

 

Post #46: Windows

Cindy Frank memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy , ,

IMG_3637Early Morning: Michigan

Up the stairs, first room to the right. You’re there.  A perfect little shoebox of a room. So small you can stand in the middle and almost touch all four walls. A tousled bed, the floor a comfy nest of sweaters and board games and books. Harriet the Spy and Eloise always invitingly on the top layer.

Little Miss No Name, with her ragged dress and removable tear, sits reproachfully in a corner. I whisked her away from the commercial where she was barefoot in the snow and selling matches, but I can’t love her.

TV Guide has been thoroughly scanned and circled in excited anticipation of a Sunday afternoon or late night rendezvous with Bette Davis, Fred Astaire or Judy Garland.

It’s still dark. I wedge myself in the tiny space between the bureau and the wall and wait. Gold-rimmed glasses crooked on my nose, my eyes are just level with the windowsill. I look out and there it is.   With a wave of warmth, the sunlight rolls into the sky.

***

Morning: Queens, New York

The plane banks steeply and all of a sudden there it is! Like a platter of delicious canapés, the buildings are close to enough to reach out and grab. I want them so badly, I want them all. Lorenz Hart’s “Isle of joy” spilling out into my arms as I reach for my suitcase.

I’m finally here.

On the taxi ride in I make note of all the dry cleaners on 2nd Avenue. Just in case.

First day, first job, The Random House building at Third Avenue and 50th Street. Terrified of being late, I am instead, hours early. I creep around the corner and anchor myself at a coffee shop counter for an unwanted second breakfast. Finally it’s almost time to go. But as I attempt to fold The New York Times like a native, the stool spins and suddenly my half finished bagel sprouts wings, only to crash land buttered side down in the middle of my lap.

With twenty minutes to go, no dry cleaner in the world can save me now. But I am in New York, home of magic and dreams! One hundred and eighty degree turn and I land in the opulent, lilac scented Waldorf Astoria ladies room, fully armed with a newly purchased can of K2R Spot Remover.

Moments before 9 am I am ready, peering anxiously through the glass windows of one of the most storied publishing houses of all.

I am so afraid. But I’ve arrived.

***

Lunchtime: Manhattan

There are no windows on the 8th floor where I work, glamorously huddled before my typewriter tapping out Knopf’s royal blue labels and serious correspondence on thick, buttery sheets of paper. The Xerox machine and I are on very intimate terms. The halls are filled with nervous heroes: Julia Child, Placido Domingo,  Joseph Heller. We never knew who those elevator doors would part to reveal.  But their well-known faces are uniformly anxious: all confidence rests completely with their quirky and self-possessed red-pen wielding editors. Everyone knows true immortality rests on the printed page.

Alone, I squeeze in for a concrete seat in a vest pocket park, and unwrap a sandwich. Talk swarms through the air, clouding the tiny space but none of it comes from me. There is no one to talk to. Doesn’t matter. I have a plan! Later I will swing through the revolving doors with a forward P and a backward P and enter the “lobby which is enormously large with marble pillars and ladies in it.” I will go everywhere and do everything because, as Eloise intones, “Oh my Lord, there is so much to do. Tomorrow I think I’ll pour a pitcher of water down the mail chute.”

Oh I wish I could!

As I slowly return to my cubicle I can just see the sun reflecting from the windows, cutting through the buildings.

***

Late Afternoon: Riverdale, The Bronx

If you lean in tight and crane your neck just so you can almost see the edge of my Broadway Boogie Woogie in the distance, as it continues to percolate through the jungle gym of Manhattan. But I know it’s far away. Every day it feels so much further. As if we are now on another planet.

Pay attention! The better view is straight across through the vast open windows of the sixteenth floor. The Hudson churns by and over on the other side New Jersey actually looks welcoming and green, just like they always promise.

Laundry Mountain has been ascended, Sesame Street is over, the scooter race down the hall completed, the pile of books have been read and read and read once more. Night is coming.   I pluck the two tiny boys from their spinning Dizzy Discs. And together we look out the big window.

“Ah,” they point and sigh and sing, “The moon! The moooooon! The mooooooooon!”

It shines through the window on all of us. Our faces glow.

***

Early Evening: Westchester

Determinedly I grip the wheel, eyes on the road. I drive hither and thither, catapulting from parking structure to parking lot, picking up, dropping off, driving this way and that. Queen of the Roads, I have a personal parking spot everywhere I go: Middle School to the Mall, Trader Joe’s to Target.

The backseat is layered like a bean and guacamole cheese dip with Lego boxes and Pokémon cards, comic books and Crazy Bones. We are ready! We have everything we need.  Now there are three little boys.

Through the window, my strong left arm is burnished a deep, dark brown.  I don’t have time to look out, but it doesn’t matter. I can still feel the sun.

**

Evening: Westchester

A beloved and happy place, all duct taped together, all full of love. Our house.  Day after day I ping pong my way through the rooms with scarcely a glance at the walls or a look out the windows. All the boys are home, safe and happy. It’s them I want to see. Let the cats commandeer the windows. They are bravely keeping watch.

Then, no matter how much I’ve prepared, when I least expect it, they have gone again. It’s quiet here. Alone, I gently take a soft cloth to the slightly smeary windows. I rub gently and peer outside. The sun is still there. I can still feel the warmth. I need it.

Through all of my windows, I look out to look in.

 

 

 

 

 

Post #45: Sfumato

Cindy Frank middle-age, musings, nature, personal philosophy, Uncategorized , ,

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I fell in love with a book. And through that book, I fell in love with the world.

It was a gentle summer city night. City dark isn’t really dark at all but actually more of a sfumato, mysterious, entrancing, and lit by the soft buzzy glow of streetlamps. The Strand, that warm and inviting forest of books, beckoned and as always I was enraptured and ensnared.

It was in the relative gloom of the subterranean levels that I found it.

The cover, pedestrian. The title, bland. The book, heavy and ponderous.

The Green Treasury

I wanted it.  And so I bought it.

***

I live in a lovely, idealized checkerboard world, each precision piece in place. No moves without proper consideration.   Squared up, spruced up lawns all mowed to a brush cut precision. Color-coordinated flowers and precise, paint by the number backyards. Double jumping is frowned upon.

What is there wild and wondrous to see here? Nothing, I am certain. So I curl up inside and allow the pages of my book to cleave open a view to magnificent, pulsing worlds, from the rainforests of Peru to the gardens of Japan, from the mountains of the Sierra to the marshes of England.

*John Muir clings to a branch to ride out a windstorm in the forests of California.

*William Henry Hudson dreams of thistle down on the South American Pampas.

*Richard Jeffries wanders the still wild natural world at the doorstep of London.

*Gilbert White listens to the sound of crickets in Hampshire.

*Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher hears the calls of the wolves in remote British Columbia.

I want it. I want it all. I want it desperately. But there is nothing to see here.

***

On Sunday afternoon I glance out the kitchen window and spot a dense and ponderous sky above. At last! I pry myself out of the house, and wedge myself in a corner of the porch. Glass of wine in hand, I am ready for the show.

The air is moist and anticipatory and the charcoal clouds are thick and wooly, so low I feel as if I could hold them, squeeze them. If I did, would it open a deluge, a spray or spill?

Nothing is moving. Or is it? The wind is coming in gulps and sighs, shaking the branches and the leaves like row after row of beaded curtains, like a hula dancer’s hips, like so many maracas in a mariachi band.

The branches jitter and twitch, anticipating the thrum of the rainfall to come.

But not yet! The clouds bend and curl through the sky, a long twist of old movie film, a wordless soliloquy, coiling above. Suddenly, the wind exults and breaks free like a mass of children released from a day of school, with a power that makes ripples through the grass and re-parts my hair.

It’s time! I am so ready for the rain; eyes squeezed shut, face turned upward. But it doesn’t happen. Instead I feel warmth on my cheeks. Instead, the sun cleaved through he cloud cover. The blast of wind is now a mere breeze.

I catch my breath.

I sit very still, here, in the place I was certain there was nothing of interest to see, nothing to feel, nothing to experience. I am wrong. Here it is. The sky has come to me. Or perhaps I’m just ready to see it.

“There is no need for a faraway fairyland, for the earth is a mystery before us.”

–William T. Davis

But of course.

And at last I too am caught up and embraced by the sfumato of the clouds, right here, right outside my own doorway.

 

Post #44: For Safekeeping

Cindy Frank memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy , , ,

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I should have done it ages ago. But I wouldn’t and I couldn’t. Tattered copies of Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy World crammed between Mrs. Dalloway and The Aenid. The lumpy lovingly handmade paper mache cat perched next to a Nambe bowl. A bubble wand safely stored with the Wedgewood. The Kindergarten art elementary art show winner displayed with the same pride as the Audubon print. My world is swirled with touch points of memory wherever I look. I’ve kept it all very close.

We tend to think of memory as a snapshot in time, don’t we? We tell ourselves the same soothing, wonderful stories again and again. We need them, we need them so badly as every day we’re carried further and further way from points in time.

With rising panic we keep reaching back and back, our vision blurring into the distance. We could forget! What if we forget? And then what?

*a flattened box of Maizecorn tucked into the bookshelf from the first game at The Big House we attended all together.

*Three individual copies of Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs (one for each), a book read so many times that the two of us were certain the text was stamped into our being for all eternity.

*a very small pair of thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles, for one who was squinty and bookish even in third grade.

*The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, Hot Wheels version.

*A gallon-sized jug of green Tabasco Sauce, long finished.

*a golden bowl, filled to the brim with yellowing paper fortunes.

On a whim, I dig all the way to the bottom. And they are still there.

***

On Sunday night we are all together at a Chinese restaurant like days of old. Plates of steamed dumplings, sizzling platters of exotic vegetables, mound after mound of white rice. Everything but fortune cookies.

When they were very small it was a conceit of mine that whatever they would ask for I would be able to pull magician like from my bag, as If I were always ready to be an audience member for Let’s Make a Deal. Playing cards, tiny cars, bagels, you name it. I was always prepared.

Once more, for the sake of memory. From my bag I brought out their very first fortune cookie fortunes, decades old, carefully marked with their names and the year.

If I think back in time I can no longer remember what they were wearing or what the weather was like or what was on TV the nights they first opened those cookies. But I wonder, what if memory is meant to be malleable, less like a snapshot and more like a Cezanne, the image diffuse and changeable and endlessly lovely?

I can’t remember back clearly so many years. But do know the looks of surprise and love on their faces when they each slipped those old fortunes into their wallets. For safe keeping, of course.

 

 

 

 

Post #43: The Pulse of Souls

Cindy Frank memory, middle-age, musings, nature, personal philosophy, Uncategorized , ,

IMG_2105Long ago

The streets and sidewalks were still damp and puddly from the nighttime rain. I edge out of the house and gingerly step down the drive. The street is shiny and wet.    I don’t look around. I look down. The milky, early morning sun is warm. It’s going to be hot. I have plenty of time to get to school. It doesn’t matter. I am going to be late.

I’m going to save them all.

And I try. Over and over I bend over to scoop their slithery, writhing little selves off the quickly drying pavement and onto the cool grass so they can burrow back into the earth. I can’t make heads or tails of them!  But I don’t feel triumphant as they slide off my fingers into safety. I fuss and I worry. Am I putting them back in the right place so they can find their families?

***

Last Week

Anxious, overwhelmed, fussed, I am way in the back, slumped in a seat, shrinking away from the crowd that surrounds me.   They are all looking up. I should be looking up. I should be but I just can’t. Instead I look down. A tiny speck.  A solitary ant, boldly and stealthily making his way across the floor. The brave advance guard! All alone.

Like the self-important Florence Nightingale of the insect world, I turn to rummage for a scrap of paper intent on scooping the tiny thing up and winging him to safety and freedom out into the sunlight.

But when I turn he’s been crushed. As am I.

***

In Between

There is a lot of in between here. I wonder, moving so fast for so long, what other small marvels have I arrogantly and short-sightedly overlooked? How much have I missed?

 

***

Last Night

I flit by here all the time. A quick glance out the car window, a heartbeat’s worth of appreciation, and my eyes are back firmly on the road, I’m zooming on my way. But tonight is different. Tonight I stop. Slowly I make my way down to the pond. And I sit.

I tap my foot nervously. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! I jitter and sneak glances at my watch.  What am I waiting for exactly? To be instantly embraced by the rhythms of nature? To have all secrets revealed?

The pond, surrounded by delicate trees and brushed by soft flowers, is down a gentle slope next to the library. It’s bordered by roads and as I sit I’m enveloped not by the spark of nature but buffeted by the whoosh of the engines as cars careen wildly around the corners. I can’t think.

If the steely-eyed drivers bother to glance out their windows as they roar past, they will see me sitting there. A tiny speck. Alone. I shift uncomfortably.

I won’t stay. Instead I make my way back up the path and to the library. The great indoors: my own Elysium. I enter and I am at once embraced by a cloud of quiet.

It’s here that I feel safe. Blanketed by thought, soothed by words, I find the peace that I’m longing for. It’s here that I can, for a few moments at least, just allow thought to wash over me like a salve.  Here, if I listen very closely, I can even feel the pulse of souls, both large and small.

And it is here, finally, that by myself I chide myself gently for what I have for so long forgotten to notice. And it’s here that I can too remind myself that there is always so much to see if I make the effort

to look up

and around

and always down.

 

“Your One Wild and Precious Life”

Cindy Frank connection, food and cooking, memory, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy , , ,

FullSizeRender (3)It was really no big deal. Except it was. One heavy, sluggish afternoon I was at home. Alone in the empty kitchen. Alone in the house. Alone. Like an aproned conductor poised on the podium I really knew this melody to my very soul, I’ve played it so many times before. I pulled ingredients from the cupboards, pots and pans from the shelves. Oh please! I could do this with my eyes closed. But I didn’t. When I was finished things were different. There was a plate full of cookies. But not the usual blondie squares. Not the standard oatmeal chocolate chip. Not the ubiquitous rice crispie treats.   I had made poppy seed cookies. No one’s favorite. Except mine.

.***

Before I was born my Great-grandmother Rachel Leah made taiglach, hot honeyed pastry mounded into tiny hills, my mother’s memory so powerful that decades later even I could taste the sweetness on my tongue.

***

With the pride and bearing of a queen, my Grandma “Anne with an e” presided over her kingdom. Her edible coffers emptied upon the white tablecloth and spread before us with the glory of a cornucopia, should a cornucopia be filled with platters of sliced meats and bowls of whipped potatoes. At the end we were awarded tins crammed full of Mandelbrot. Chocolate chip for us. Walnut for her boy, my Dad.

***

“It’s nothing,” my little Gram demurred, “it’s not even baking really!” but still she would casually toss ingredients up into to a bowl. Then with the coiled strength of a Billie Jean King backhand she would use her whisk to serve up perfect Lemon Meringue pies. Love all.

***

Every Sunday morning The Egg Master reverently unwrapped his iron skillet. Do you want your eggs scrambled or boiled, stuffed or shirred? Guaranteed delicious, guaranteed perfectly done, guaranteed done exactly the way he wants them for you.

Later he would pile everyone into the car for a long ride for big scoops of ice cream. We could never finish. And no matter the flavor, be it Bubble Gum or Butter Crunch or Blue Moon, The Egg Master would manfully lick down the excess, no complaints.

***

Tureens of soup from my mother, thick with vegetables and anchored with chunks of flanken bobbing like buoys in a thick pea green ocean. Endless bowls from a never-ending tureen of serve yourself. Full of warmth.

***

My husband is stretched like a long pull of salt-water taffy, all six feet of him. When we walk together he holds my hand and I am practically horizontal as I’m pulled along. Like Miss Clavel rushing to Madeleine, I run fast faster fastest to keep up, my legs in a whirl.

But when I walk by myself I can move more slowly, keep my feet right on the ground. Then there is time then to see. Then there is time to think. So I do.

As I walk, Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” floats into my mind. That last imploring line sticks fast: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I barely take a breath before I blurt out “anything I want!”

Then I realize that is precisely what I’m doing. That’s just what all the others did. Caring for those they love most. I hope too, like me, they learned to sometimes make their own kind of poppy seed cookies and care for themselves as well. Because the combination, mixed up all  together, is simply sublime.

 

 

POST#41: A SLICE (OR TWO) OF CAKE

Cindy Frank birthdays, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy , , , ,

IMG_1680There they all are, lined up on the banquet table of my life, in the sumptuous buffet of memory. Carefully placed, one after the other, row after delicious row. Cake after cake after cake.

The endearingly homely homemade ones, baked with love, meant to be mashed by jubilant infant fists.

The years of “the best idea ever” Baskin & Robbins ice cream cakes, Mint Chocolate Chip or Jamoca Almond Fudge or Pralines n’ Cream wrapped by a roll of chocolate cake. Sweet gooey slices melting on the plate.

Fancy bakery cakes, festooned with butter cream roses, dotted with sugared violets, scattered with piped green ivy, more longed for, and sometimes more fought for, than the slightly stale layers of the cakes themselves.

A birthday masquerade on the cake stand: cinnamon or chocolate coffee cakes. They perch there uncomfortably and rather ridiculously, porcupined full of candles. Everyone is holding out their plates, dutifully waiting for their slices, silently wishing for chocolate layer or maybe a nice strawberry butter cream instead.

For years a succession of earnest and sprouty carrot cakes were demanded and dutifully served up.   Some were beguiled with their vague notions of healthfulness. Others quietly revolted and later opted for Carvel cones.

Finally, befitting the dignity of the passing years, comes the succession of the stately lemon cocoanuts, ethereal as the clouds themselves, the taste a perfect blend of the sweetness and tang of life itself.

I can see them all, lining the long tables of my memory. All candles blazing, anticipation and hope emitting from each and every cake.

I come from a place where birthday cake is always served for breakfast. That way there is also time for cake for lunch and hopefully, cake for dinner. Candles are spent and then tucked under pillows to make certain wishes will come true. They almost always do.

It’s so simple! Cake is just wonderful. But cake, especially birthday cake, is not just meant to be eaten. It’s meant to be shared. And that’s the plan.

So here is my birthday wish for each of you:

Think of someone you love who’s far away. Think of someone you’ve perhaps loved and lost. Eat cake. But eat that slice of cake in their honor. You can pick their favorite cake or yours. It doesn’t matter. The sweet taste of cake and tang of happy times will linger on your tongue.

A slice of cake to feed the body. A sliver of memory to feed the soul.

Many happy returns to you all!

 

 

A SLOW, VISCOUS SIP

Cindy Frank connection, inspiration, language, middle-age, musings, Uncategorized , ,

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I can feel them rolling slowly over my tongue like the first slow, viscous sips of The Famous Grouse. (Katharine Hepburn’s favorite tipple.) A pause and then they melt away to a pleasant tingle.

Some caress with the warmth of a beloved companion. Others pelt with the rata tat insistence of a torrent of hail. Either way, I greedily gather them up and hold them close. I want them. Knitted together like a riotous, crazy quilt that’s remade again and again.

Treated honorably and placed with care a single one can remake the world.

They are all mine. My gems, my jewels my Kingdom. But I have been known to share. Some of us do. Everyone should, albeit carefully. Handle lovingly and with care. They are so very powerful.

I know you know what I’m talking about. . A marvelous jumble, a never-ending torrent, a luxuriant cascade of what is arguably our most valuable commodity. Fill your head and your heart and your soul with them.

Words.

They don’t have to be fancy. They just have to be the right ones at the right time.

They deserve to be used for the right reasons: to reach out, to connect, to communicate.

If they are used to obfuscate, then at least let the message behind the mask be honest and kind. Some of us have our reasons.

Long ago at school we memorized list after list of them. Daunting for sure but we were not being handed an arsenal with which to go forth into battle. Instead we were being given the keys to an overflowing treasure chest to constantly draw from and replenish for always.

“Enter to learn. Go forth to serve.”

They are my joy and my path to everything: my understanding of the world, my loves, and my whole life.

There is no greater honor than finding the right one at the right time for the right person.

They are there for the taking and they are there for all of us. They are meant to be savored and they are meant to be used

wisely.

***

Note: This post is dedicated with the greatest humility and deepest thanks to the great La Rouchefoucauld, author of MAXIMS. He spoke volumes with mere handfuls of words.

A Slow, Viscous Sip

Cindy Frank middle-age, musings, personal philosophy, words , , , ,

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I can feel them rolling slowly over my tongue like the first slow, viscous sips of The Famous Grouse. (Katharine Hepburn’s favorite tipple.) A pause and then they melt away to a pleasant tingle.

Some caress with the warmth of a beloved companion. Others pelt with the rata tat insistence of a torrent of hail. Either way, I greedily gather them up and hold them close. I want them. Knitted together like a riotous, crazy quilt that’s remade again and again.

Treated honorably and placed with care a single one can remake the world.

They are all mine. My gems, my jewels my Kingdom. But I have been known to share. Some of us do. Everyone should, albeit carefully. Handle lovingly and with care. They are so very powerful.

I know you know what I’m talking about. A marvelous jumble, a never-ending torrent, a luxuriant cascade of what is arguably our most valuable commodity. Fill your head and your heart and your soul with them.

Words.

They don’t have to be fancy. They just have to be the right ones at the right time.

They deserve to be used for the right reasons: to reach out, to connect, to communicate.

If they are used to obfuscate, then at least let the message behind the mask be honest and kind. Some of us have our reasons.

Long ago at school we memorized list after list of them. Daunting for sure but we were not being handed an arsenal with which to go forth into battle. Instead we were being given the keys to an overflowing treasure chest to constantly draw from and replenish for always.

“Enter to learn. Go forth to serve.”

They are my joy and my path to everything: my understanding of the world, my loves, and my whole life.

There is no greater honor than finding the right one at the right time for the right person.

They are there for the taking and they are there for all of us. They are meant to be savored and they are meant to be used

wisely.

***

Note: This post is dedicated with the greatest humility and deepest thanks to the great La Rouchefoucauld, author of MAXIMS. He spoke volumes with mere handfuls of words.

 

POST #39: WHAT WE DO. WHO WE ARE.

Cindy Frank kindness, middle-age, musings, personal philosophy , , ,

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 Lazar, Detroit, 1920

Really, no one could figure out how he did it. He was the marvel of the neighborhood. Quick and confident and proud, he never made a mistake.

He was a tiny, compact little man, wrapped in an apron. Standing tall behind the counter of his grocery store. He added every figure in his head. Every account, every transaction was there, etched clearly in his precise and ordered mind.

A very smart man. A grocery man.

A man who selflessly extended credit to his neighbors so they could bring food home to their families when times were hard.

A kind person.

***

David, Oswiecim, Poland, 1939

There he is, his chin jutting out proudly, his arm draped casually around the shoulders of his childhood friends, a bold, almost insolent grin on his face. A yellow star is crudely stitched onto his breast pocket.

Famous for his jokes (who else would have shoved the goat through the door when it opened for Elijah?) he knew the prayer book so thoroughly his hands made grip marks on the leather.

He will run away soon. They will catch him. They will hold him for five long years. The horrors were unspeakable. So he never spoke of them.

A new country and a new start.   Bent now from his suffering, but still powerfully strong, he works first as a bellhop. Then he stands for decades at a machine in a factory.

We knew he was never the same but we never knew who he’d been.

He was so very tired. But let a small child catch his eye? Radiance would spread over him that could warm the sun itself.

A kind person.

***

Erv, Chicago, 1960

No question about it, he is the coolest guy in the room. Hair brushed back, perfectly dressed. No double creases ever.

Nothing handed to him on a silver platter either. No silver spoons touch his lips. He’s been working since forever. Proud of it.

This guy truly knows how to be a friend. He’s got your back. Wait, Better than that. He’s figured out how to help everyone avoid making mistakes. He is beloved.

Don’t be fooled by the posing though. He knows how to turn a phrase. He can write poetry too.

Falsely accused, he refuses to capitulate to a bullying professor. He is denied graduation for a year. But he stands firm. He is right.

He is vindicated.

An eye doctor: he goes on to become one of the finest and most caring healthcare practitioners anywhere. Now he’s got everyone’s back.

A kind person.

***

Me, Bloomfield Hills, 1975

“She’s the smartest girl I’ve ever met. “

It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. The person who made this declaration really was smart—brilliant even. What on earth could I have said that afternoon?

I really don’t remember.

I do remember sitting and talking to him though. I didn’t know enough to make pronouncements about anything at all. If I had, I’m certain I wouldn’t have been right.

I remember talking to him. I remember listening to him. I remember a gentle and generous conversation. He was nice.

That’s all. It wasn’t hard to be kind.

And at that time, for that boy, that might have been just enough.

I’m glad.

 

Above photo by Croze, Blessing and others: from The Saarinen Door,  published by Cranbrook Academy of Art and Printed by the Cranbrook Press c 1963.