Linz, Austria (http://www.sternwarte.at) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6756468
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Down With the Bad
More than a month since a back injury left her housebound, she’s better enough now to walk through the door and down the steps into the driveway where her car is parked. Cautiously lingering at the threshold, she tries to remember the mnemonic her physical therapist suggested during an appointment the other day. “Up with the good, down with the bad.” she says aloud to herself, hand on the railing, preparing to descend the stairs. The weaker leg extends onto the first step, then the stronger one joins it, and this repeats until she is out in open air once more. -
Thistle
Soft down, spikes that blister fingers – I did not expect thistle sprigs in a vase with vintage roses, yet it does make a kind of sense: horticulture mixed with wildness to remind us about the thorn bred from the stem centuries ago. This floral contrast intrigues me, between variegated petals - delicate swirls of cream or pink - and that bristling stalk, solid green, its calyx splayed like a star pointing the surest way it can back to the field where it was plucked.
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Lifetime Brakes
When grandpa and I took his car for a spin, he often boasted to me about the good deal he got by paying the shop for a lifetime guarantee on his brakes. But one day we came flying down Skyline Drive off the Blue Ridge Mountains and I felt the brake pedal depress under my foot like a worn-out cushion. Something was wrong. “I think you might need to get your brakes checked.” I said, as the car barely responded to my frantic effort at slowing us. “Lifetime Brakes!” He shouted emphatically. “Grandpa,” I pleaded. “I’m not sure that means they’re going to last the rest of your life.” -
Sunday Dinner
Always polite, though not genteel, my grandma has deep regard for Southern codes of propriety – a comportment that unsettles me when she describes how her mother would prepare fried squirrel brains as a treat for the family after their Sunday dinner: cutting off the heads with a knife, boiling them to remove the skin, cracking open their little skulls by using the back of a spoon, scooping out the flesh, dusting it with flour and salt, then into a skillet with melted butter. She presented this delicacy in a little wicker basket lined with a doily, and served it to her loved ones with pride.
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Fortune Cookie
An adage on a paper strip, no more than a flimsy wisp hidden within a confection, pliant dough like an envelope folded in a satchel around it then baked to perfect crispness. The message is universal – caution, advice, or boon – whose import is meant to last, yet how quickly you toss it out once the crunch is done and the sweet has been consumed, its auspice already dismissed.
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Monterey Aquarium
Feeding Time at the Monterey Bay Aquarium From the top of an enormous tank, a diver drops into the kelp forest carrying a mesh bag filled with squid chum. Moments later, many fish surround him: bright orange garibaldi and sheephead, rockfish, grouper, sardines, and leopard sharks. It is a diversity of species rarely seen so densely packed in the wild, yet such was once this part of the ocean. Meanwhile, on the other side of the glass, a crowd of people has gathered to watch: school kids and their chaperones, families, wheelchairs and strollers line the aisle - everyone squeezes toward the docent in front who explains what is going on. An elderly man with a gentle voice, he talks about marine ecology and how our consumption affects it: which seafood we choose at the market, how we get rid of waste, where boats can go. It is daunting to make the connections between our activity and the health of life in the sea, the damage we did in the past. And right as I begin to feel hungry for a piece of good news, the docent kindly says that even through modest efforts, we have made progress helping to restore the bay’s habitat.
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Over the Fence
My three-year-old drop-kicks his ball over the tall vertical slats of the fence surrounding our yard. To him, it simply disappears. He saddens, tantrum imminent. We hurry through a gate to where it landed in the neighbors’ driveway. “You kicked your ball over the fence!” I say, not anticipating this will be a revelation. Boundaries define his world – they seldom break or expand so abruptly: routines from morning through evening, rules of play for inside our home. His face attains a far-off look. He sits on his blue rubber ball and repeats for several minutes while gazing at the horizon: “Over the fence, over the fence…” The sun goes down. I take his hand. We head in the house for dinner. Still, he chants this new mantra, amazed to discover how a ball can be so launched into the waiting frontier. It’s uncharted territory for both of us. He is my first and only child. By the time I draw a map for parenting, his needs shift; paths that led us through are no longer passable. Plans are best made, then abandoned. Aren’t rules, in essence, arbitrary? I want him to go through life kicking one ball after the next over fences, then finding his way around them to learn what lies beyond the familiar.
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Vaseline
Which puzzle piece was she putting away, which plastic ball and rattle, which toy car – each one tidily returned to its home, books back on the shelf, clothes in the dresser, getting ready to head out the door – when her baby in his play pen somehow found a jar of Vaseline, removed its lid, and started frosting everything in reach with its contents: dollops applied to his arms, feet, and cheeks; gobs of it between pages of a book; jelly in clumps all over a stuffed bear; a gooey rivulet smeared on his pants? Greasy work ensues, cleaning slicked limbs with one damp washcloth, then another – soiled laundry amasses on the bathroom floor – gentle coaxing somewhat assuages the slippery willfulness of an uncooperative tyke who struggles, hands at face, against her efforts to wipe down all that misapplied unguent. And she knows there will be more after they return home; there is a schedule to keep, errands to run, and scant moments at hand to address the full swath of mess. Time dilates. Minutes expand. A glance at the clock shows a half hour gone, though it only seems an eye-blink later. Sponged off well enough for now, putting him into the car, she notices a purple puzzle piece gripped between his little fingers, without a clue how he might have grabbed it, and chuckles, recognizing the outspread wing of a butterfly.
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Waken
May you waken to the world as if sleeping in on a weekend when morning light steadily brightens your bedroom window with its rice-paper shade dappled by leaf-shadow from the stand of birch outside whose slim branches sway a little in the breeze, and may such a mellow dawning rouse you unalarmed coaxing open your drowsy eyes how a water lily unfolds its bloom on the surface of a calm pond – ready to receive what gifts the sun may bring, the tidings arriving by wind.
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Dollars per Gallon
Zero-to-sixty became expensive. The price per g of acceleration quickly went up to luxury status after Putin’s tanks invaded Ukraine. Drivers in their cars on the road think twice about how hard they press that gas pedal. Opening up the throttle will cost you – are the moments trimmed off a trip worth it? Distilled crude oil, essential for engines, now feels more than ever an indulgence. Buy an electric vehicle, maybe… but a shame to lose the pistons’ chatter: their timed cycle, exquisite, of intake and explosion, increasing speed tenfold.
From the Firefly Galaxy 