confession

 

As I’m getting more “mature”
 I can admit to certain things

I lied about before – Like this –

I never learned to ride a bike.
In my young life I hid that fact,
Would make excuses not to go
On bicycle excursions.

I have the penmanship, not of a doctor, no,

Far worse – My writing’s not too unlike

A boy in the second grade, or third.
It is absurd when my offspring say
It’s my fault that they’re handicapped
By the hand they got from me.
I tell them, “Well, then, type.”

The worst I guess, I must confess

Is sometimes when I read a book
I read the ending first.

Our three kids are grownups now
With children of their own.
That doesn’t mean we’re less concerned
Than when those three of ours were new!

If truth be told, I must admit

It worries me we cannot read

The unlived pages of their lives.

Nor can we wrap the grandkids up
In bubble wrap so they won’t break
Their bones or hearts along the way.

Life's a book that can't be read

From back to front.

13 Ways of Looking at a Broken Leg

One
Ouch

Two
Six strong and strapping EMT's
Carry me down the outside steps
Welcome heroes and I owe them
Cookies, Station One and Station Three
When I am whole again.

Three
Two legs casted, sticking out
When they operated, couldn't they
Have done a pedicure?

Four
I am useless, I can't walk
Can't run out and get something,
Can't lean down, pick up something
I have to ask for help.

Five
I have a wheelchair, it's black
And scarey, too, says Blue the cat.
Five other folks came home with me.
That's scarey, too, says Blue.

Six
Two legs casted, sticking out
I can't make corners in our house.
Parking's never been my strength
I've got a lot to learn.

Seven
My chief caregiver's the best
The guy I married can never rest
He picks up this and gets me that
And don't forget to feed the cat
My poor Fred will celebrate
When my two cast legs ain't cast no more!

Eight
Two legs casted, sticking out
One is gray and wears a boot
(Although I'm told it can bear no weight
for another two months from now).
The other's red with matching toes
They are getting in my way.

Nine
Two legs casted, sticking out
Now and then bump into things
They sometimes seem to me
To be no part of me.

Ten
Two legs casted, sticking out
But if you take me knees to head
The rest of me is just the way
It always was, says Fred

Eleven
Inside my two well casted legs
If one could look inside,
Not flesh and bone, but screws and nails
And screens and plates in there.
My doctor is a carpenter.

Twelve
Two cast legs upon the bed
And one is gray, the other red
And each one weights 200 pounds
At least.

Thirteen
I should enjoy my two cast legs
They get me out of lots of stuff
How can I entertain Book Club
Or donate blood, or clean the house
With both my legs encased in casts?

Coming Home Broken
or An Update on Cleaning for the Cleaner

The best laid plans go awry. After I got my book printed, the next great project was cleaning my house enough to have a cleaning person do it. Instead, I fell on my front porch and broke the foot on one leg and the ankle bones (that's right, two bones) on the other.

Usually when you know you are going to have lots of visitors, Thanksgiving,Christmas, a party, you have days and days to prepare. When you break your legs all at once the game is over. People are coming to your house, wanting to help in any way they can, and I had no time to pretend to be the organized woman I'm not. Worse than that, we lowered our bed to make it wheelchair height, and that wonderful storage spot for boxes of out of season clothes and also often the storage place for a frightened cat, was gone. Not only that, all those other neat little storage places for souvenirs and junk we don't know what to do with in the bedroom were gone as well. The room had to be made wheelchair accessible, and I wasn't around to make it happen.

The big day arrived Saturday. Elizabeth and her husband, Gregory, and my neighbor, Ro, were here as we proudly drove up. They stood by and cheered as I gracefully skidded across the transfer board from car seat to wheelchair. Graceful could be an exaggeration. It is kind of a skid, a swivel, a lift, and grunt, and a lot of talking to myself, “lean forward, lean forward.” Greg and Fred wheeled me up the drive, across the lawn, down the dirt track beside the house, across the ditch newly dug by Matt, up the two ramps constructed by Fred and my son-in-law, Joe, onto the back deck and into the house.

Judy arrived with dinner, and she and Ro arranged the kitchen, Elizabeth and Gregory settled me inside, the across the street neighbors came to welcome me home, and I had had absolutely no time to clean for all those guests who, in fact, cleaned for me.

So here I am, home, with a lot of help from very many friends. And, guess what, I think I am as ready as I'll ever be for that house cleaner to come in.

I do not recommend this particular method of cleaning for the cleaner.

going home

Just to let everyone know I'm going home on Saturday.  For the next couple of months I will be sliding on a board and swivelling on my left heel, the only part of the lower me able to bear weight.  The plan is I shall become phenominally strongin my upper body, and my swivel movements will be of such grace that when I am repaired I will be a sensation on any dance floor.

But the house cleaning preparation that I talked about before got interrupted.  Alas poor Fred.  Lots of people I hope will be coming to see me, will notice - why  so many magazines?  I can't imagine why this is there - etc.    However, there is a good twist to everything.  My house when I get home will be filled with the wonderful cards and flowers I have received.  And there is hope - Claudia is coming Wednesday, ready  or not! 

And I have Blue to blame.  That cat!  When he isn't busy calling the SPCA because we've put him on an unwelcome diet, complaining about the neglect  since I broke my legs, he's been running around the house putting everything in the wrong place.  He has been opening drawers, spreading papers, hiding things.  We thought at least he could clean the kitchen, but no.  He didn't even do his own litter box!  Fred did that.  He offered to help with the laundry.  So Fred took it out of the dryer and Blue hopped right up and said he would do the folding later, but it was nap time.  Of course, because he'd been so busy messing things up.  That cat.  So how could Fred fold the warm laundry with a sleeping cat on top?  It is a good thing I'm coming home!

BROKEN

Walking down stones
Buried in cement
Wearing new rubber soled shoes
Walking down steps trod
Seven million
Six hundred sixty eight thousand
Nine hundred twenty four
Times before.
A slip, a slide, a twist
The rubber soled shoes held firm
On the hard concrete
When the feet
Inside the shoes
Did not.

Sirens alert the neighborhood
To tell the tale of feet that moved
When shoes did not
Two feet now encased in casts
No more shoes for the next two months
Shall I tell them when they ask -
I did it skateboarding?.

Cleaning by Kay

I had two projects I meant to do this month. The first was to put the things I’ve written into a book and sell it as a fund raiser for the church. I had a deadline. October 17 there is an auction. Yesterday I picked up the book – 100 copies – illustrated! – from the printer. Tomorrow is the auction.

The other project I outlined is much more difficult than writing and putting together a book. I wanted to clean my house sufficient to hire a housecleaner. My progress here has not been so fast. My excuse, working on the book. So I’ve been putting together deadlines. I work much better with a deadline. And I’ve been moving that deadline up.

The first deadline I tied together with the auction (see above!) We’re auctioning a St. Pat’s dinner – March 17. Surely I can clean my house in time for that. The problem with that is it gives me much too much time in which to procrastinate.


February we are hosts to a dinner party for ten people, some of whom I don’t know well, again from the church. That set the cleaning deadline up, but still it leaves way too much time for us to mess things up before we clean them up.


Christmas – well that’s progress but my suspicion is that Christmas won’t be here.

So I invited the children and their families for Thanksgiving. Now I’m getting a little nervous because Thanksgiving is just a little over a month away, and when the family comes there’s not a room I can leave out.

I moved the deadline up again, and invited the children for our anniversary, November 8. I feel I’m getting realistic, now.

Today I invited the knitting group to meet here in two weeks. I have the deadline I have craved. Now that the book is done I can really get to work.

I walk around my house with an advertisement that tells me what a cleaning service would do in every room. I use it as a “to do” list. They talk of cleaning things like blinds, moving furniture, doing the whole job up right. This may get exciting. I wonder what I’ll find that I never knew I lost.

Generations

A group of grown up, grey haired folk

Grizzled geezers, grandmoms and pops

Are gathered - grouped to cogitate –
They congregate to find a way
Of reaching modern youth.



These old folks sit in the youth group’s hall.
They read the writing on the walls.
Between the stenciled hands and feet
The kids have written names and dates:
“Karen, Class of Twenty Ten”
“Jethro, two thousand three.”

This room has odors all its own
Of sleeping bags, of old popped corn,
Honeysuckle by the door,
The summer scent of fresh cut grass.
The old folks, silent, contemplate
How their own youth had slipped away…

They seem to hear those drawn-on walls

Ghostlike, whisper whimsically –

“Your parents, too, despised your clothes,

Thought you outrageous, wild, and dumb –

Would not succeed in anything –

And look how far you’ve come!”