When the hypothetical takes over

In the middle of the conference call

about my father's financial future,

after the annuity options

and tax advantages were discussed,

my brother, asked "What if I die before my father?"

And the financial planner said,

"And your wife marries another man?"

It hit me like a brick in my belly.

Hypothetically, my brother was dead,

my father was old and dying,

my sister-in-law was with a strange man.

Time shrunk like a 100% cotton t-shirt,

and I felt squeezed by the day

not too far in the future, when I would

be tended to by a paid hospice worker.

Or placed in a state-funded home.

Hypothetically, for a fast and terrifying second,

I was alone today. All alone.

Mark gone, dad gone,

mom already released to her potato chip heaven.

But this is the truth of the 40's and 50's.

Not only can parents die,

but so can siblings, so can friends.

Women with lumps, men with tumors,

staph infections and sudden demise.

So, after the call was ended and as my brother and father

were saying good-bye to good man Wade,

I fled my house, determined to buy something living.

The Heights Garden Center

did not have hanging baskets,

but they had a big ceramic orange ball.

I scooped it up and bought it.

And even though my neighbor Bear thinks

it looks like a basketball

and Tavish wanted to flip it over

and roll it around my yard,

even though it could easily be perceived

as a tacky fake pumpkin in a quick drive by,

I think I like it. I think I need it.

What other color screams "Awake" than orange?

What other hue shouts "Now" than orange?

Can you think of a better way to stay

right here, and not crash into conjecture?

I placed an orange ball in my front garden today,

and no one is dead, no one is dying,

there is no inheritance to tax,

no IRA balance to divide.

There is just a ball. A bright orange ball.

Last night

Last night I dreamed of dead fish,

heads of decapitated ducks, flailing dolphins.

They were strewn all over Washington Road,

the main street in my childhood town.

No one else was on the road but me.

I wonder if my life will be a ghost town,

rotting remnants of careless decisions,

sinking ships and lost treasures.

Even the street names make me sad today:

Meadowbrook, Essex, Scarborough.

As if we live in a pleasant English village.

We do not. The window to the right is smudged.

The table is wobbling. The floor slants.

The sidewalks are hard, the road is hard.

My feet need to walk mile upon mile

over slow rising hills.

And yet, there is always an "and yet,"

the woman who just came through

the door smiled at me,

the man who clears the tables

just smiled at me,

a kid outside -- more pants and t-shirt than body-

just stopped listening to his friends

and met my gaze through the window.

As if we were the keepers of a small

old flame and, only through us,

the spark of compassion stays kindled.

Planting seeds

My mother knew every plant in the garden,

her mother knew even more still,

never guessing or approximating names.

I never saw her, Grammy,

in her seersucker skirt,

walking among the tall phlox,

nursing a withering columbine,

leaning down to touch

the earlobe leaves of the nasturtium.

I just know that what my mother knew

her mother knew before her.

Some knowledge multiplied in the transfer,

some divided, some slipped away

like other warm chested bourbon assurances.

Some snaked away like cigarette ash.

How do we chose what parts

of love we'll carry on?

When do we decide what gnat details

are worth preserving?

I am a woman without a mother,

a woman without her mother's mother.

A woman without a daughter.

But I have a garden on the side of my house

that I share with my neighbors and their children,

and this spring, the pincushion flowers sprouted,

in June, Asiatic lilies were added,

miniature snapdragons popped out July,

and now, in August, it's all in full bloom.

It's a messy garden, some tall plants in front of short,

a jungle of wildflowers lipping over the stone edge,

stretches where nothing has grown,

and the dirt lies fallow and hardening.

But I am there most afternoons,

and Sheridan finds me.

Then she crouches over the green, pointing.

I say zinnia, she says zinnia.

I say sunflower, she says sunflower.

I say weed, she says weed.

Then she lifts her head to mine and smiles,

just as I did to my mother when I was two,

and she did to her mother when she was two,

and she did to her mother and mother's mother

all the way back

to lands across the sea,

to plots of Scottish heather,

to hills of green upon green,

three hundred summers ago.