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“I see death’s door opening!”

That was my father’s greeting as I arrived at his room in Bryn Mawr Hospital after a frantic cross-country flight. My mother had tried to prepare me on the phone. She said, “The doctor says it’s kidney failure, and that it goes quickly. First, he’ll become euphoric, then disoriented, and then he’ll just … fall asleep.” 

So this must be euphoria, I thought. “What does it look like, Dad?” I asked. But he just stared at me with an unnaturally bright, unfocused gaze, as if to say, “It’s a good opening line – and it’s all I got.” 

That wasn’t unusual. Everyone knew that Jules Bogaev was a festival of one-liners. His explanation for why he, his brother and his father all became urologists: “Piss runs in the family.” His explanation for his infamously irascible bedside manner: “You know what? I hate people. But most of all, I hate sick people.” When patients called him at home he practically put them through a stand-up routine. “How’s your stream?” he’d yell down the line. “Did you void? Jesus Christ, I told you to void!” 

Somehow, he made it through the office hours, the endless rounds, the seasonal spawn of new medical students at Jefferson Hospital, by telling stories. We referred to his stories as the Ten Greatest Hits, including “The Nurse Washing the Dead Man’s Socks” and “The Thumb Through the Heart.”

“There we are, four hours into an operation to repair a ruptured kidney, and the patient goes into cardiac arrest. Russell and I look at each other, he’s the chief surgeon and I’m assisting, and we’re both thinking the same thing. See, this guy is old, he’s 76, and he’s not going to make it. It’s not worth taking extreme measures; he’s too weak. But just as we’re about to take off our gloves, the intern, Patek, a really nervous type, pushes us aside, grabs a retractor, uses it like a mallet to crack open the sternum, and reaches in with his hands to manually massage the heart back into rhythm. That’s how we did it back then. But you see, the tissue was so old and decrepit; it was rotted through… like wet paper. So before you know it, his thumb goes right through the guy’s heart. Russell and I just stand there, dumbstruck, looking at each other and then down at our patient, now deceased. And then I point at Patek and yell, “Murderer! You killed him!” 

My father would punctuate the last line by emphatically pointing his finger and stabbing the air, as if he were jabbing the invisible nervous intern in the chest. 

“Thumb Through the Heart” was a real crowd pleaser at cocktail parties. He said it slayed his audience every time. 

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In the hospital, weakened by diabetes, kidney and heart failure, my father didn’t have the energy for reprisals of the Greatest Hits, but his wit never left him. For hours he would lie in bed, asleep, or appearing to sleep, and then suddenly his eyes would pop open, he’d raise his head and look around the room, as if he were checking to see which side of death’s door he had landed on. Once, when his gaze arrived at me, sitting by the bed, I said with my usual genius for stating the obvious, “Hi. I’m still here.”   After a beat, he came back with, “The problem is, so am I.” 

One afternoon the podiatrist came in to check out my father’s gangrenous toes. He was a young guy, nervous, like the intern of “Thumb Through the Heart”. He prescribed dialysis, explaining that my father might be able to avoid amputation if he arrested the kidney failure. But my father had no intention of arresting anything. The podiatrist looked shaken as he argued that he had patients much older, much worse off, much less alert, who did fine with dialysis. He had tears in his eyes as he pleaded his case. He asked, “What do you want, anyway? It’s only going to get worse. You could stop it here. For God’s sake, where do you see yourself in two weeks?”

My father replied, “Where do I see myself in two weeks? I’ll tell you where I see myself. I see myself in the crematorium.” 

Damn, that was a good line.   

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On the fourth day of our bedside vigil, a nurse suggested that we offer our father something he really loved to eat, since it was likely he’d soon stop eating altogether. When my sister asked him what he’d like, he thought for a few moments, and then said, “I want a Dove Bar.” The diabetic wanted a Dove Bar. And my therapist sister, the former macrobiotic who lived for years on a diet of rice cakes and almond butter, grabbed her coat, dashed into a 7-Eleven for probably the first time in her life, and brought back the classic version, vanilla ice cream covered in rich, dark chocolate. 

When I returned from lunch I found my father delicately wielding the heaviest known ice cream novelty bar; his thumb and forefinger grasping the wooden stick and his pinkie finger aloft. Earlier that day he hadn’t had the strength to hold his plastic cup of ice; we’d been shaking the chips into his mouth. Now, not only did he eat nearly the whole thing, he ate it without getting a spot on him. He ate that bar with surgical precision, with complete control, even with a touch of dramatic flair.   Perhaps it crossed his mind that “The Dove Bar” might end up on another Top Ten list of family stories. After all, he hadn’t come out with any deathbed confessions, or any long-withheld revelations of any kind. Instead, the stories of “The Dove Bar” and “The Nervous Podiatrist” could be his legacy to us. 

He died two days later, in the middle of the night, alone.

After the hospital called, I thought about animals, how they go off and hide when they’re dying. But my father didn’t hide. I imagine for him it was more a matter of the rightness of things, of allowing himself to exit the stage only after the audience had left the theater, the lights had dimmed, and the cleaning crew had made its late night rounds.

The day of the Dove Bar incident, after my father had finished his last earthly meal, hand-delivered by his oldest daughter, and had then sunk back on the pillows to sleep off the glucose payload, I had the urge to leap up, point at my sister, and yell, “Murderer! You killed him!”

She wouldn’t have thought it was funny, so I didn’t do it. But I wish I had. I’m sure our father would have appreciated it. I’m sure, even in his deep, nearly final sleep, it would have cracked him up. I would have slayed with that one.

Barbara Bogaev is the host of "Soundprint," public radio’s national weekly documentary program. In more than twenty years in broadcasting, Bogaev has interviewed rock stars and war correspondents for NPR’s "Fresh Air with Terry Gross," talked with poet laureates and conscientious objectors for American Public Media’s "Weekend America," and hosted and produced science, news and arts programming for NPR member-stations WHYY and WXPN. A Philadelphia native, she began her radio career as the producer of the award-winning talk show, "Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane." She blogs at alwaysmorequestions.com.

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When I look at my nine year- old son, I see my husband’s face. His square jaw, his chiseled cheekbones, his light brown hair, his delicate, perfectly
proportioned nose. When my son turns to the side, however, I see myself.
He has my ears. I have big ears. My father has big ears. Our ears don’t
stick out from the sides of our heads, they are not malformed, but they
are big.

I wonder if this physical trait is shared among us because we are all musicians: my father, a music teacher for 30 years, plays the saxophone, clarinet and flute; I teach the violin and piano; and my son has been dutifully taking piano lessons for four years now. It makes sense that for musicians, large ears would be an asset.

I think back to the first time I saw his oversized ears. Nine years ago I wasn’t concerned about piano lessons, I was just praying he’d survive. That’s because he was born prematurely, weighing only one pound, three ounces. I was just over five months pregnant when I was put on strict bed rest at Lankenau Hospital because of pre-term labor. After three weeks, the contractions couldn’t be stopped and my son came into the world sixteen weeks before he was due. I’d never seen a human being so small. It amazed me that his whole tiny body was already formed, from the wisps of hair on his head to his fragile little fingers and toes. Oh, and those precious ears.

Because he had arrived so early, my husband and I did not have a name ready for him. After four days the neonatologists were getting impatient. "We need a name for this baby," they told us. "The nurses can’t keep calling him ‘Baby Boy Number Seven’ when they talk to him through the incubator."

My husband and I scrambled. I’d been reading the Bible for solace and comfort during my weeks on bed rest, so we consulted the greatest story ever told to come up with a name.

"What about ‘Simon’?" my husband said, popping his head up from the Book of Acts. "There are a lot of ‘Simons’ in the Bible."

"It’s a good name." I said. "Simon was the man who helped Jesus carry the cross. Let’s go with that."

We proudly reported our son’s name to the head neonatologist.

"Simon says!" he answered, teasing us with a smile.

I hadn’t thought of that, but then again, in the game, Simon Says, Simon is always the boss. I wasn’t concerned about the potential teasing. I was glad to have a name to call my little guy who was so delicate yet strong.

"You’re gonna be OK, Simon," I whispered into the portholes on the sides of the incubator. "You’re doing a great job, little guy, just keep growing." Even then, when he was one pound, those ears must have been listening.

Soon after naming him, we researched the name ‘Simon’: "He Heard," from Hebrew. I wondered how this meaning would pertain to my son in his future. I found out a few months later. The doctors and nurses had warned us about the rollercoaster ride that was the life of a micro preemie; the medical staff was encouraging (and bordering on saintly), but they did not give us any false hope. My husband and I sighed with relief when Simon seemed to dodge each potential illness that the hospital staff anticipated: no brain bleeds, no chronic infections, and no life-threatening heart issues. We celebrated each milestone that Simon achieved: breathing without the ventilator, graduating from a feeding tube to a baby bottle, and the most visible accomplishment– gaining weight. After two and a half months, Simon was no longer dependent on oxygen to breathe and he had grown to five pounds. Then, one evening as we left the house for our nighttime NICU visit, the nurse on duty called us to say that the pediatric ophthalmologist would meet us there when we arrived. The eye doctor explained that, earlier that day, Simon’s eyes had been routinely checked for a condition called Retinopathy of Prematurity. The results were not good. Simon’s retinas had completely detached. He would be blind.

My husband and I felt the sharp dip of the roller coaster that we thought we had eluded. We insisted on a second opinion, and on this occasion my parents were present for the results. The doctor came to the same conclusion-that our little fighter would never see. My mother asked if she could donate her eyes to Simon. The doctor solemnly shook his head. Again, we scrambled. We scoured the Internet for information and we eventually found an extremely gifted retina surgeon in Detroit, Michigan. We were told that people came from all over the world to see this doctor. Once Simon came out of the NICU, we flew to Detroit every two weeks for surgeries and subsequent check-ups. After three surgeries, Simon was able to see light. This may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but in the blind world, being able to see light means a lot: it means that you can distinguish daytime from nighttime; that your circadian rhythm of sleeping and waking is not disturbed; and that light can be used to orient the space around you, whether it’s the light from windows in a room or fluorescent ceiling lights to guide you down a hallway.

Simon is now a healthy, chatty nine year- old with a sharp wit and long pianist’s fingers. He reads Braille and walks with a cane. He attends Saint Lucy Day School for Children with Visual Impairments in Juniata Park where he is mainstreamed with sighted students. And he’s still got those big ears. Those ears that my father gave to me and that I gave to Simon. Those ears that help him to distinguish the voices of his favorite radio sportscasters on 610 AM WIP. Those ears that detect the smallest sound when I think I’m silently gesturing to my husband. Those ears that fill my heart with joy when Simon tells me that he doesn’t need to see my face because he can hear me smile. I know that those big ears will serve him well throughout his life. He sees with those ears and I’m proud to share them with him. 

Maria Ceferatti was raised in South Philadelphia and now lives in
Delaware County. She teaches private violin and piano lessons, instructs
classroom music at Saint Lucy Day School for Children with Visual
Impairments, and is the music director of Acting Without Boundaries, a
theater group for young performers with physical disabilities. Her short
story "Olga’s Vision" will be published in the forthcoming issue of
Apiary Magazine.

I watched my old man’s face, hoping he wouldn’t notice my chubby fingers creeping toward the volume knob.

From the driver’s seat came a grunt that sounded like “No.” He hadn’t even taken his eyes off the road.

I backed off, realizing I wouldn’t win – this time, or maybe ever.

It was a game we played every time I rode shotgun in his old Ford Ranger – light green body with a forest green cap over the bed.

He listened to what he called his “hillbilly music” – cassettes by Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Tammy Wynette and other honky-tonk heroes, and I did my best to seize control of the stereo.

The picture is a little hazy – maybe it was all that secondhand smoke – but most of the details are still as clear and crisp as Loretta’s sweet voice.

I fought it for years, but now I realize my father handed down to me a love of country music. 

A forced inheritance at first, but now it’s one I’m keeping in the family.

My father had bought the truck from an old high-school friend who owned a used car lot in our hometown of Vineland, N.J., a city that’s equal parts green farm fields and shadowy urban areas, halfway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

The Ford’s engine always seemed to be coughing, spitting or just plain dying. Frequent, wallet busting trips to the mechanic left my father, a hard-nosed police detective, cursing the buddy who’d given him such a great “as is” deal. The most dependable parts of this green lemon seemed to be the cassette player and the tinny speakers – there was never a time when my father, also named Tim, wasn’t listening to music in the truck.

To this day, my old man is a hillbilly at heart, even though South Jersey is flat as a prairie and the only real time he ever spent in the South was during basic training at an Air Force base in Texas.

I blamed Elvis for my father’s musical tastes.

My father swore he could listen to Presley’s music all day, and he often did. My parents bickered constantly, but there was one thing they could agree on: The King.
Whenever Elvis’ music was on the stereo, there was détente in our house.
He could soothe people, even from beyond the grave.

Elvis’ own hillbilly bent led my father to seek out the mainstream country music that was popular in the late 1970s, a few years before the genre gussied itself up, “Urban Cowboy” style. 

I was nine or 10 years old, a chunky kid with straight blond hair hanging in my eyes, and a love of rock ’n’ roll inherited from my mother.

My father’s music seemed hokey to me, as old-fashioned and corny as the “Hee-Haw” episodes that seemed to be on whenever we visited my mother’s parents.
If I’d had veto power, the soundtrack for all those hours I rode in his truck would have been The Who, The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix.

My younger brother, my cousin and I used to throw the Stones’ “Some Girls” LP on the stereo in my parents’ wood-paneled basement and play furious air guitar. We fought over which one of us was Keith Richards. No one wanted to be Mick. We were weird kids. And it was no coincidence that we’d always skip the one country song on the album, “Far Away Eyes.”

“My truck, my music.” Sounds like ad copy, but this was my old man’s standard reply when I complained.

And then he’d turn up Charley Pride’s hit, “Just Between You and Me” like it was the first time he’d ever heard it.

Trying to extract even a small victory, I’d reach for the knob on the air conditioner. The grumbling rose from the driver’s seat: “The air wastes gas. Roll down your window.”

Fine, but you don’t get much of a cross-breeze going 25 miles an hour.

As I sweated through my Fonzie T-shirt, I swore that when I was old enough, country music would be banned from any vehicle or domicile I was in.

It was bad enough I had to endure these hicks singing about broken hearts and busted dreams, but what made things even worse were the cheap Garcia-Vega cigars my father puffed on in the truck.

A quarter apiece, the stogies smelled like they cost even less. I couldn’t decide which was more foul – the sounds or the smoke.

Eventually, my father quit smoking, and I took up country music.

Some of those songs had insinuated themselves in my head, no matter how hard I’d tried to hate them. I knew every word to “I Will Always Love You” long before Whitney Houston had a monster hit with the song in 1992. My father played Dolly Parton’s original – and superior – version all the time. And to this day, “He’ll Have to Go” grabs me the second Jim Reeves croons that sad-but-hopeful opening line: “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone ….”

When I was a senior in high school – taller and leaner now, but with my bangs still flopping in my eyes – my parents bought me my first stereo, at Macy’s. The speakers were so bulky they barely fit in the trunk of our ’76 Grand Prix – a slightly more reliable vehicle than the Ford Ranger.

I set up the equipment in my bedroom, underneath a poster of U2 in which Bono had a mullet as grand as his band’s sound.  

Finally, my own stereo, to play whatever records I wanted, whenever I wanted (more about the “whenever” part in a minute.) I thought about having a sign made to hang alongside Bono’s mullet:  NO COUNTRY ALLOWED.

Back then, the main supplier for my music fix was a grocery store. I worked after school as a bagger at the local ShopRite, which had a small display aisle of LPs, located, God knows why, near the meat counter. The LPs were leftovers; I never figured out if the pork loin was, too.

I’d spend a good chunk of my meager paycheck on albums by The Stones, Dire Straits, The Cars and AC/DC. Then I’d lie on the floor in my room and spin those records through the night, until the banging started. My father was on the other side of the wall, a critic expressing himself with his fist.

It was a game of attrition: I’d lower the volume a few notches; he’d stop pounding on the wall. I’d crank the volume back up when I thought he’d given up. But, then the banging started again. Eventually I invested in a set of headphones that cost me a week’s paycheck. A small price to pay to save the plaster on our walls.

On to college, and my tastes shifted again.

R.E.M and the Replacements might have been winking a little when they did it, but even they embraced country music, which seemed as incongruous for college-rock bands in the mid-’80s as wearing a plaid tie with a checkered suit (although that’s how the Replacements normally dressed.).

Were these bands – whose every move I followed well before the Internet made it possible to find out at any given moment what color socks they were wearing  – saying it was okay to like country even if you loved punk rock? Maybe honky-tonk had seeped into their heads the same way it had wormed itself into mine, from hearing those old records played over and over again.

I started to think I should give country a chance, maybe sit down and have a drink or two with it, listen to what it had to say.

It took a little while longer for that meeting to happen, and it finally took place thanks to Steve Earle.

In 1995, Earle, recently released from jail on drug charges but now sober and on the comeback trail, was playing the Philadelphia Folk Festival. A local paper ran a feature in advance of his appearance. I had no idea who this tough-looking guy with the long hair and beard was, but the article mentioned that in the mid ’80s, he’d played shows with the Replacements.

That was all I needed to know. I hustled to my favorite music store and bought a copy of Earle’s new, acoustic album, “Train A’ Comin’.”  I figured I’d just ignore the “country” parts.

Earle’s attitude, which was just as punk as anything I listened to, grabbed me immediately. A true music fan, he wasn’t afraid to let other genres seep into his own music. On “Train A’ Comin’” there’s a song by the Beatles and reggae, and they seemed to get along together pretty well.

What did this album teach me? Not to be a musical segregationist, because a good song is good song, whether it’s a country weeper or a sparkling, three-minute pop tune.

So maybe this country stuff wasn’t rotgut after all. Around this time, Johnny Cash had a career resurgence with a series of albums that introduced – or in my case, reintroduced – his music to a lot of people who didn’t know him from Johnny Paycheck.

Hearing Cash’s music with different, older ears led me back to his earlier albums, like “At Folsom Prison.”

Like Earle’s music, Cash’ deep, ominous baritone straddled the divide I’d created in my mind between punk and country.

Was it possible my old man had much better taste in music than I’d ever thought?

After digging a little deeper, I decided Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings were really rock ’n’ rollers in black cowboy hats.

This revelation was the end – or maybe it was the beginning – of a circuitous route, one started by my father. In that damned green truck, with the sour-smelling cigars.

“Daddy, play that ‘workin’ man’ song again.”

I almost had to ask my 7-year-old to repeat himself. On a road trip, we had been listening to Merle Haggard. When the song “Workin’ Man Blues” finished, Ryan, his blonde hair hanging in his eyes like mine used to, demanded an encore.

I’m not sure what made the song stick in his brain. It’s catchy for sure, and throughout the song, there’s repeated sound of a triangle, meant to replicate the clang of a laborer’s hammer.

It’s easy to connect with a song about blue-collar life when you’re an adult, but what does a kid know about drinking beer in taverns to wash away the memory of another hard shift at the factory?

Whatever it was, the song spoke to him in the same way Elvis’ music spoke to my father, and Steve Earle’s music spoke to me.

In the case of my father and I, Elvis and Earle’s songs spoke for us, with a confidence we couldn’t always muster on our own. After listening to Earle sing, “I wanna know what’s over that rainbow ….” for the thousandth time, I had to find out if there really was a world outside the place I grew up.

I’m still trying to figure that out. And now I have Waylon, Merle, Steve, and a bunch of their rowdy friends along for the ride.
Tim Zatzariny Jr., a lifelong resident of South Jersey, is a regional editor for Patch.com. He also teaches writing at his alma mater, Rowan University. His short story, "Nails," appears in the The Best of Philadelphia Stories: Volume 2. His fiction has also appeared in Thieves Jargon. Tim is at work on his first novel, set in his hometown of Vineland, N.J.

 

           "A ghost isn’t alive. Not in the way we think of something being alive." My son Evan stands in the middle of our kitchen as I rinse the dinner plates.

            "What’s it like then?" I ask. Our kitchen is small, and every trip to the stove, sink, or refrigerator requires sidestepping him. I slide a cellophane-wrapped bowl onto the fridge’s bottom shelf. Evan waits, planted in the room’s strategic center. His eyes are wide, his fingers twining. My knee complains when I stand up. "I mean if it’s not really alive but already dead, what is it?"

            "It’s more like an echo," he says. His fingers etch tremulous waves in the air. "An echo of the way the person was and what they did. But it’s an echo that moves and does things on its own."

            I return to the dishes. "Should I be scared if I see one?"

            "No. Most people are scared, but that’s just because they don’t understand."

            Another trip to the stove, but instead of brushing past, I pick up my son and sit him on the counter. He is eight, and sometimes I grow nostalgic for his toddler’s weight and our celling-scraping games of Superman. "So how are ghosts formed?" I ask.

            I return to the dishes. In the dark window above the sink, our faint reflections, mine close, my son’s over my shoulder. "Ghosts are born when you die." His sneakered heels tap the cabinet beneath. Evan raises his hands above his head. "And when you die, the chemicals in your brain fizzle out and make the ghost." He lowers his hands into his lap. "What do you think of that, Daddy?"

             The left behind. Few experiences approach its gut-punch intensity. Study the child not picked to play. Study the mother hugging the deploying soldier. Study the faces of the dying and those who love them. The left behind understand the weight of absence, an empty measure that defies physics but  burdens the heart. The water runs over the silverware clenched in my hand. I turn, and, from atop his counter perch, my son smiles expectantly Is his recent obsession with ghosts simply a boyish fascination with all things spooky and bizarre? Or is this his first grappling with the question of what happens when a soul is forsaken by its fleshy home?

            I turn off the water. "Daddy," he says, "do you think ghosts are real?"

            "I have my doubts." I dry my hands and pick up the day’s mail stack from the counter. "But I’m interested to hear what you think."

            I flip through the bills and catalogues until I come upon a letter for me. The[img_assist|nid=7831|title=Fall Hillside – Pennsylvania by B.J. Burton© 2011|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=250|height=335] past week has been a blur-work, my boy’s birthday party, Halloween shenanigans, hockey and karate practices-and only when I check the return address do I recall the awkward phone call that triggered the envelope’s arrival.

            I slide out the contents, a formal letter printed on hospital stationary and a pamphlet. On the pamphlet’s cover, a drawing of an oak branch, a ribbon tied at its base. I open the pamphlet and skim the details of what happens to a body donated to the hospital’s medical research program. My son launches into a monologue detailing the actions ghosts are and aren’t capable of.

*

            Evan and I sit on the living room floor. Before us, sheets of white paper, colorful sketches of planes and tanks, explosions rendered in dreamy hues. My knee momentarily locks as I reposition myself. "So how do ghosts behave?"

            His marker squeaks over his latest creation. "They behave like the people they were before. If you were a helpful person, your ghost will be helpful. If you were mean, your ghost will be mean."

            "Does everyone get a ghost?"

            "Only if they want." He examines the smeared colors on his fingers. "A ghost is a memorial your body gives itself." He shrugs and returns to his drawing, his nose inches from the paper. "At least that’s what I think."           

            I jog across the street to avoid the well-dressed crowd exiting a neighborhood church. Leaves skitter along the curb, the sky above gray. A cool mist hangs in the air. A few months ago, a doctor diagnosed my meniscus tear. Some days are better than others, but this morning, I’m hobbled, a choppy stride that mars what little grace I still possess. A young runner hustles by, and the gap between us quickly widens. I nod a pained hello to an old woman who clutches an umbrella in one hand and a bible in the other.

            The hospital’s signed forms wait on my desk. I could have mailed them yesterday or this morning, but I’ve hesitated. I always knew I didn’t want to be buried, the confinement of casket and grave as unsettling than death itself. Cremation, with its elements of fire and reduction, had always appealed to me on a practical and, more importantly, an aesthetic level. Breeze and water would carry my ashes, the carbon-laced flecks destined to mesh into the all and everything of this life. Then my father died, and I received a crash course in the business of dying. Cremation, even in its simplest form, cost thousands. Aesthetics yielded to practicality, and I could not justify wasting the manna of one life upon another.

            So I researched. I called. I filled out the necessary forms. Witnesses signed. Soon I will mail the letter; the notion has already achieved critical mass in my mind. I just need a day or two to make peace with the harvesting of my skin and eyes, with my ashes buried in a nameless plot. I think of my body-this sensual filter, the first-person frame for all I’ve known and been-laying gutted beneath harsh lights, a butchering by curious strangers, my bad knee poked over by tomorrow’s surgeons. It’s not so much these thoughts but their origins of vanity and possession and the fear of the left behind that vex me as I gimp to a stop in front of my house and catch my breath.

            "Do you believe in angels?" I ask.

            "No." My son strikes the pose of his latest karate kata. "I don’t believe in angels, devils, goblins, or elves." He executes his first gyrations of punches and blocks. "I’ve seen a ghost, you know."

            "Really? What was it like?"

            "It was tiny. Like a little white flare. It was in my room." Evan pivots and kicks. "I think it was a baby that didn’t get to be born."

*

            I’ve been reading the bible. I’m not a religious man, yet I desire to better understand what is important to so many. I’ve slogged my way through the archaic language, the detailed lineages, the Gospels’ redundancy. In return, I’ve been rewarded with an appreciation for both the book’s power and its status as a touchstone of literature. I feel for the plights of Pilate and Judas. My heart aches for Jesus’ sufferings and for his acceptance of what must be. I struggle with the raising of the dead, but I find solace in the metaphor of faith triumphant.

            Where I balk is with the notion of what follows one’s last breath. Paradise for the believer, the unquenchable fire for all others. If not believing is a sin, then I know which flock is mine. As one of the left behind, I will gaze upon the heaven-bound riding sunbeams into the sky. Despite my conviction that what awaits is, at best, beyond my comprehension, I experience the same hesitation I did picturing my picked-over carcass in a med school lab. When I die, I will be left behind in body, and if I am wrong about religion, also in spirit. Despite its logic-defying roots, this notion haunts me, leaving me with my own thoughts of ghosts and what may be.

            My wife helps dress our son. I don a sweatshirt, a knit cap. Cap gun in hand, my boy breaks free, a one-shoed romp to the kitchen and back. "Yippee!" he cries. The gun clicks with each trigger squeeze. My wife corrals him on his next pass, and Evan acquiesces to her demands to finish dressing.

            We set out for our nightly walk, a mile or so through hushed suburban streets. A few Halloween decorations remain, paper skeletons hanging on doors, pumpkins in various stages of rot. Stars shine above. From our mouths, the steam of warm air hitting cold. The envelope in hand, we navigate a slight deviation in our route, but the mailbox I’d expected is missing. For a moment, I question my memory; then I spot the four concrete footings in the grass. I wonder how long the box has been gone and why hadn’t I noticed before. Evan takes my hand. "Daddy, I’ve been thinking about ghosts again."

           

            My brother and I pick through our parents’ garage. On the way here, I finally mailed the letter, a journey that will put my name on a list, a plan of action that will remain dormant until my death. The day is bright and chilly. Outside the garage door leaves lift and swirl on a vortex of captured wind. Last night we turned back the clocks, and soon the early evening darkness, the beginning of the second winter since my father’s death.

            Three piles mark the oil-stained concrete-one for my brother, one for me, and by far the largest, the items destined to go. My father harbored a fondness for hardware and gadgets, and we come across lock deicers and circuit testers. Fuses in ancient tins. A floor jack. Assorted clamps. Pipe cutters. Sockets and light switches.

            I pick up a hand drill. The years have tarnished the metal, the wooden handle smoothed by my father’s grip. The drill fascinated me as a child. In our basement, I bored holes in scrap wood, pleased by the drill’s bite and the sawdust that scattered with a puff from my lips. I consider the drill a final time before dropping it in the scrap pile.

            Our mother appears. She offers us water and thanks us again. Earlier, she broached the subject of moving to a retirement community, and I imagine a near future where strangers will live in this house. Yes, we agree, sensing the loneliness she tries to suppress. She quietly dreads the approaching winter, the memories of last year’s blizzards and drifts still vivid. She misses my father in many ways, but perhaps none greater than as a sharer of burdens both mundane and overwhelming.

            Bundled in a hat and vest, my son joins us. I keep an eye on him, wary of the rusty razor blades that litter the shelves. Evan retrieves the hand drill. Kneeling, I explain how the tool works, the transfer of one type of motion to another. I open the chuck and allow him to insert a drill. His gyrations produce a creaky tune unsung all these years. By his side, I consider the shelves, the paint cans and spackling tubs, the tool kits unexplored. Too much has been left to sift through in one day. I picture the hour-long car ride ahead and the darkness that waits our return. I turn to my son. "Up for a game of kickball?"

            We’re joined by my wife and my brother, a playing field claimed in the leaf-speckled yard. Bases are fashioned with wrench-anchored plastic bags. The ball, red and rubbery, produces a happy twang with each kick. There are shouts, laughter, good-natured taunts. With only two to a side, the base paths become populated by imaginary runners, ghosts who help tally the score.

            I roll a pitch to my waiting son. I will never know what waits ahead; I will never know anything beyond the fact that one by one, we will leave each other. Evan kicks, and the ball sails into the air. My wife and brother cheer. Perhaps this is a taste of the believer’s heaven, a place of happiness, a place where one is surrounded by those he loves and is comfortable within his skin. I give chase to the ball, my knee’s pain a mere inconvenience today. My boy sprints by, whooping with joy, a blur upon the base path.

Curtis Smith is the author of the story collections Bad Monkey and The Species Crown and the novels Sound and Noise and Truth or Something Like It. His most recent book is Witness, a collection of essays.

[img_assist|nid=7423|title=Self-Contained by Suzanne Comer© 2011|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=250|height=321]“You guys are gonna be late,” Mom said as she cleared the dinner table. Neither Dad nor I answered even though we’d heard her just fine. We also knew our time constraints, just like we did for every Phillies home game. In all the years my dad and I had been going to games at the Vet, I don’t think we ever saw the first inning.

Instead, we always picked up the bass-drenched voice of Harry Kalas as we motored down Route 42 in one of the many assorted Ford Tauruses my dad drove as company cars over the years. We liked it that way.

I’d have my glove on my lap and we’d pop a couple pieces of Doublemint gum into our mouths and talk about how crappy Steve Jeltz had played the week before or how pathetic Steve Bedrosian looked coming out of the pen. We’d laugh as Whitey and Harry the “K” dropped playful banter over the airwaves. We’d plan our post-game festivities, usually a much-anticipated trip to Pop’s Water Ice where we’d double park along Oregon Avenue, me with a small chocolate and Dad with a cup of lemon (both of us munching on pretzel rods). And, we’d soak in the warmth of summer along with the last few drops of baseball for the evening.

At the park, we’d file in somewhere near the middle of the second inning and find our seats in section 325 next to my uncle. Then my father and uncle would teach me everything I ever wanted to know about the game. It was the most wonderful session of summer school you could imagine.

“See, Frank,” Dad would say. “Runner at the corners and no outs, the infield will play the corners in.”

“Corners in?” I’d ask quizzically, munching on peanuts and tossing the shells on the beer-stained pavement under our seats.

“Yep. That means the first and third basemen will play up and the middle infielders back.”

“How come?”

“Well, if it’s hit up the middle they’ll turn a double play. If it’s hit to the corners they’ll try to nab the guy at the plate.” I’d nod and stuff huge wads of blue cotton candy into my mouth. The lessons always sank in, whether I was busy eating or obsessing over catching foul balls.

On most occasions the entire game flew by without a foul ball coming anywhere near us. After all, our seats were pretty good. Right behind the plate, and in the lower level, which meant a pesky screen blocked just about any ball hit even remotely in our direction. Whatever did make it over the screen usually came in the form of a screaming line drive that was liable to take your head off. Dad found this out the hard way a few years prior when he stuck a bare hand in the path of one of those screamers and watched it ricochet a full fifteen rows in front of him as his paw ballooned to twice its normal size.

Regardless, I still found it necessary to bring my glove just in case the rare chance presented itself. One glorious night, my suspicions paid off. Darren Daulton was at the plate and we were lulled into comfort by the wondrous chatter inside Veteran’s Stadium –“You bum!”, “You guys suck!”– when an awkward crack of the bat brought us to our senses. A frozen rope shot back in our direction like a laser beam.

Nobody in our section had the presence of mind to react, except for a guy at the end of our row toting a six dollar beer. His presence of mind, however, may have been   stunted when it came to unhanding his brew.  The whizzing dart of a line drive slugged him directly in the beer mug. Suds splashed all over his shirt and the ball dashed down the row behind us with a few hollow thuds.

It camped under a cadre of old ladies who seemed afraid to react. Being the consummate gentleman, I did the only thing I could think of. I dove behind my seat and nabbed that baseball right out from under those geezers.  I held it up triumphantly as if I’d snagged the liner one-handed. Everyone cheered because I was a little kid and they thought my exuberance was cute. Otherwise they would have booed me right out of the stadium.

As I was enjoying my moment in the spotlight, a curious thing happened. I dropped the ball. It took one long bounce before it trickled two or three rows in front of me. I couldn’t believe it. I’d just ruined the first chance I’d ever had at a foul ball. Probably the only chance I’d ever have. Disgusted, I buried my face in my hands. I didn’t want to face the game or my father or my uncle or any of the fans in my section that I’d let down. But when I finally lifted my head from mourning, something even more amazing had occurred. There was Dad, smiling and holding the ball between his thumb and forefinger.

“You lose something?” he asked. 

That may have been the first time I dropped the ball, but it wasn’t the last time Dad was there to pick it up.

C.G. Morelli grew up in the Philadelphia area and now lives somewhere in the back woods of Carolina. His work has appeared in Highlights for Children (winner of a 2010 AEP Award), Chicken Soup for the Soul, Ghostlight Magazine, Land more. He is the author of a short story collection titled In the Pen (2007).

When I stepped outside this morning and smelled the cool air mixed with the mist off the Willamette, I knew we’d arrived, made it through another dismal Northwest winter. The feel of it took me back to the Southern Coast of New Jersey, where I worked as a commercial clammer in the middle seventies. The first thing I’d do each morning then, was to climb the stairs to an outside deck where I could catch a look at the bay, to see if there were any whitecaps visible, a sign that the wind was blowing hard and that working the bottom might be difficult that day. But as March rolled into April, the morning air would become softer, almost sweet. It was on those days that I felt filled with a quiet joy, a contentment that I’ve rarely felt since. The day on the water, working alone and working hard, stretched in front of me with a welcoming nod. I felt connected, without knowing exactly to what or why or even caring about giving it words. It was enough to be, to drink my coffee and walk on down to the boat. I hadn’t discovered meditation back then, but if I had I might have noted that how I felt was the state that those who meditate aspire to reach. But maybe if I had known, it would have ruined the whole thing.                      

 The object of clamming was to catch as many clams as possible in any given day, then haul them back, sorted by size into burlap bags, and drop them off at the clam buyer’s shed. Two hundred clams to a bag; five full bags made for a good day’s pay. Five cents per clam was the going rate,  but it could vary( mostly down) depending on the market.  Each bag weighed well over a hundred pounds, but I didn’t worry about that. It felt good to sling the heavy sacks off the deck of the boat onto the dock. By the time I drove my flat-bottomed wooden work boat back to where I kept it moored in the bay, unloaded my equipment, and walked  up 11th street to our little cottage, I was physically exhausted, but not beaten down. My back might ache, I might have cramps in my hands, but my head was clear. I was never too tired to take a late evening stroll on the beach with my wife and our baby daughter.           

A word about catching clams. Maybe harvesting is the more accurate word, but what I heard around the docks was “catching.” I didn’t argue. There are two basic methods for East Coast clamming: treading and raking. (There’s also tonging, but only a few old-timers still did that.) In treading, the clammer jumps over the side of the boat, wearing a wet suit, into shallow water (three or four feet deep) and treads backward along the bay bottom feeling for clams with his feet (I’d say his or her feet, but frankly I never came across a female clammer). When he feels one, a hard ridge in the muck, he dives down and picks it up. Some clammers have developed a technique of working the clam out of the mud and up their leg, so that they don’t have to dive each time. I found it easier and quicker to dive. Repeat this process over a thousand times a day and you’ve got a fairly decent catch and a head full of salt water.            

Raking is the method we switched over to once the water became too cold for treading. Even a wetsuit will only keep you so warm. The rake is used to pull along the bay bottom from the side of the boat. It has a head that’s about four feet across and long sharp teeth that sluice through the mud. Kind of a monster rake, the handle extends to over twelve feet in length. It takes a strong back to work that baby through the muck all day as the boat drifts through the shallows. Sometimes you can go hours pulling up nothing but mud, shells, and molting crabs; but then there are the times you find yourself over a rich bed. An experienced bayman can tell he’s on it, by the ticki-tick-tick of the rake teeth as they slide over the clam shells. On board the clammer smiles, grunts, and digs the rake even deeper. With a final heave, he pulls the rake head to the gunwales, shakes it a few times in the water to wash away the mud, and pulls his rake head full of dark cherrystones on to the deck. Nothing feels better.            

I had to give up clamming in 1976 when we moved to Seattle. My wife was tired of Long Beach Island, New Jersey, its cold winters and isolation. In many ways the life of a bayman had not changed for hundreds of years. Except for the outboard motors, the rhythms were the same. We lived by the tides and the seasons. One long day after the next. It wasn’t what Cathy had signed up for. She needed friends and a social life, wanted a place where people talked about things other than the next storm or when the bay would ice over. We had college friends in the Pacific Northwest. They told us it was lovely, that housing was cheap, that cool people were moving there in droves. I tried to hold out, tried to build a case for life on this six mile long island.  I couldn’t imagine selling my boat; I had just invested in a replacement motor, a spanking new 25 horsepower Johnson. But eventually I gave in. Seattle would be better for the children and C. was now pregnant with our second. I couldn’t be selfish, is what I thought. I feel trapped, is what I thought. Goddamn it all, is what I thought. I’ll tell you, I miss that boat to this day and think about it more often than seems natural.                 

In Seattle, I put my education to use and found work as a high school teacher. It was a good job, paid enough to support our family of four, and allowed us to buy a nice old house in the Wallingford neighborhood. But somehow over the years my life became more complicated. Teaching and writing did not provide the same sense of being at one with the seasons and the tides. I no longer felt like my own man. Everybody had a piece of me now – students, administrators, parents. Though more secure, pension and health insurance in place, I ended up feeling tense and worried.  The work life of a high school English teacher separated me from the throb of life by the sea, where the only imperative was to keep an eye on the horizon. And while the feeling at the end of a day on the bay was one of completion and exhausted satisfaction, the satisfactions, such as they were, of teaching were more nebulous. Who ever knew if you were doing the job correctly? It sometimes felt like steering without a tiller. Where were weall headed and how would we know when we arrived?                  

But there was no going back to the life of a clammer. That vocation was long behind me and, for the most part, had died away in my absence. It had been dying even back when I worked the bay. Near the end of my stay, more and more areas of Barnegat Bay and Little Egg Harbor were being closed to shellfishing because of pollution and the scarily named "Red Tide." My brother, who still lives in New Jersey, tells me that maybe a dozen old-timers still make a iving raking clams there. What’re you going to do? Time passes and spring brings sweet reminders on the winds of what once was: the ability to get up in the morning and go out on the water and earn a living with hard work and an untroubled soul.

Robert Freedman is a native (West) Philadelphian who now live in Portland, OR. Clamming — Changing Tide explains how her got there. After teaching at West Philadelphia High School, he and his wife and baby daughter escaped to Long Beach Island, where he became a commercial clammer on Barnegat Bay. He used to say, “I was the only clammer on the bay with a masters degree from Harvard, until I ran into a guy who showed me his doctorate.” He loved what he did in New Jersey, and misses that life to this day.

For years my mother, Sally, lied to me.  I always knew that she wasn’t truthful about her age, but until my father died I never knew the extent of her deception. Then I learned that my mother, who had long declared that she was many years younger than my father, was almost the same age.

Ironically, for most of his life, my father could have cared less about how old she was, but I can only imagine his wrath if, during their retirement, he had ever known the consequences of her vanity. In what were then leaner years for my parents, she did not claim her Social Security until years after she was eligible.

She’d always been much older than all of my friends’ mothers, but, to her credit, I could never tell. No one could.  Sally could, and did, pass as a much younger woman. She took great pride in her appearance, and the roots of that obsession were no mystery. She was born Sara Czernenka in Russia in 1914, and fled from pogroms there, arriving in Ellis Island with her mother and brother in 1922.  They moved to South Philly, where she grew up, and was immediately labeled a “greenie,” an immigrant fresh off the boat. She struggled to fit in. She didn’t know the language. She had few clothes.  She had no toys, not even one doll, and no bed of her own.  She grew up to the knowledge that for women, looks and youth were the path to belonging and success.

Yes, Sally was a stunner; her beauty a major asset.  When she dressed up, you might not be able to tell which movie star she looked like, but some famous actress’s name would be on the tip of your tongue.

In tribute to her beauty, an ex-boyfriend, a “mad man” who worked in the advertising industry, made her a professional looking Valentine lined with photos of the all the Hollywood femme fatales he thought she resembled. Printed across the top it read, “I see you everywhere I go.”

Sally saved that card in a box with all the letters and photos from her youth.  When I was a child playing with the old clothes in her closet, I stumbled on it.  How I loved that card! I was proud of and amused by my lively and alluring mother who, at one time, had been pursued by multiple suitors: Bill the muscle man, Barney the intellectual whose glasses were so thick she called him “The Blinde,” the blind one in Yiddish, and many others.

She wasn’t able to teach me how to be the man magnet she was, but she did teach me to care about my appearance.  Back in the late 60s, every season, my sister, mother and I went to the neighborhood high-fashion store for girls, “Gigi’s” in Overbrook Park, where I got to pick out a new wardrobe.  With the help of my mother and my older sister, I was the first girl in my class at Akiba Hebrew Academy, on the Main Line, to wear a mini skirt, bell bottoms or whatever else was in style. 

My mother tried, with less success, to imbue me with her precepts about age. Once I reached my twenties, a time when I was still excited about each year on my path to maturity, she urged me to start subtracting. “If you want people to believe you’re young, you have to start early.”  But I couldn’t be bothered with her calculated approach to aging.

As my role model, she was consistent with her carefully planned white lies.  But, as she grew older, and the very early signs of dementia began to appear, she had trouble keeping track. Suddenly she was four years younger than my father, rather than six.  Ironically, her accidental adjustments made her lies all the more believable, that is until 2001, when Ellis Island records were made public.

Since Sara Czernenka, nicknamed Sarushka, was born in Russia without a birth certificate, she’d always been free to lie. But with the advent of the Web, and the easy accessibility of the manifest of the ship that brought her family to the United States—the U.S.S. Gothland—the truth was finally exposed and immortalized.  She came to the U.S. when she was 8, not 3.  My mother gave birth to me when she was 39, not in her early 30s.

For my mother, uncle and grandmother, life in America was about reinventing themselves.  They intended to become what my great grandmother called “Yankee Doodles,” real Americans. So when they became citizens, Sara Czernenka turned into Sally Cherner, her brother Zelig became Sam, and my grandmother, Ryvka, became Rose. Since she had no birth certificate, Sally also changed her age.  Her citizenship papers said she was 26, but she must have been older by then.  Further refashioning her image, she even gave herself a new Russian home. No small town for Sally. She said she was from Odessa, the birthplace of Russian Jewish intellectuals, and the city where my grandparents had studied. But the shtetl she was from, Bilogorutka, was as far from Odessa as Poughkeepsie is from Chicago.

By the time of my Ellis Island discovery, my mother was in a Jewish nursing home just north of Trenton, suffering from dementia. At first, she held on to the essential aspects of her personality—her passion for grooming, her love of learning and Jewish culture, and her garrulousness. But, over time, her illness eroded her grounding in reality.  She began to disappear.

The first time I visited her after finding out her real age I blurted out, “I know how old you are. I saw the Ellis Island records.” I probably could have used more tact, but the truth amazed me.

Her face dropped. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” she asked. Being young was so important to her, that despite her confusion, she didn’t forget her deceit and never would.  Her manipulation of her age was burned into her brain.

“Aren’t you proud of how old you are?” I asked.  “You look great for your age.   Being older only makes you all the more impressive.”

“It doesn’t,” she answered. We were alone in her room, but she looked around afraid that someone might overhear.

She was forgetting so much about who she was, but not her commitment to deceit about her age.  Her defining traits, like her fixations with age and appearance, which had once annoyed me, now comforted me. They affirmed that I was talking to my mother.  Behind the confusion, my beloved Sarushka was really there.

She may have forgotten what ravioli were; she could no longer write beautiful notes as she once had; she couldn’t concentrate enough to read or even watch TV.  She talked about two husbands when she only ever had one and she sometimes thought she still had a baby.  But certain things were the same or almost the same.

Before she went to the nursing home dining room, she’d reapply her lipstick; and when I visited, she’d give me a big hug. Where once she was big busted and full-bodied, now I could feel her bony frame, but her enthusiasm was as large as ever.

“Lisa, Lisa!”  She’d light up.  “Lisa is here,” she called out to her aide whenever I walked into her room.  No one has ever been happier to see me. But, after my warm welcome, the first words out of her mouth would be, “Why don’t you move your hair away from your face?”

“It is,” I’d answer.

“You look so pretty, but it’s messy.  You should comb it.”

My long wavy hair contrasted with her short teased helmet, kept perfect by the nursing home beautician who gave her a weekly wash and set. Her hairstyle, even her hair color, was frozen in time.  At 91, she still dyed her hair and offered styling advice to the entire family, including my teenage niece.  My niece, she thought, should wear her hair like a Miss America contestant from the 1950s, with pin curls and finger waves. 

When I was younger, her constant attempts to control the way I looked irritated me.    But now her love was so palpable that her criticisms didn’t bother me.   I was so happy to find in them a glimmer of the mother I long loved, a woman whose memory was quickly changing so many things about her.

That glimmer remained until she died five and a half years ago.  Now my mother only exists in memory. On a day when my hair is messy I can hear her saying, “Brush your hair.”I carry round her lipstick case, and, just as she once did, I find myself reapplying my lipstick throughout the day.   I am different than my mother, but a piece of her remains embedded in my heart.  She was Sally, born Sara or “Sarushka.”  I am Lisa, once called “Lisenka” or “Zisa Lisa,” sweet Lisa in Yiddish, by my family.  I miss my mother, and as I get older I understand her better. At last I can relate to her reluctance to be judged by her age. When asked how old I am, I hesitate, but then I smile, and tell the truth, and think about my mother.

Lisa Z. Meritz lives in Philadelphia and works for Temple University. Her essays have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle,The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Bucks County Courier Times. She is grateful for the love and support of her husband Craig and her daughter Rebecca.

            In Necessary Turns, Liz Abrams-Morley offers her skillful and graceful take on the oft-poeticized subject of time:  its harms and[img_assist|nid=6852|title=Necessary Turns|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=101|height=150] balms.  In the interests of full disclosure, I freely admit that Liz Abrams-Morley was a professor of mine during my time in the MFA program at Rosemont College.  She advised my graduate thesis in poetry and has bought me several glasses of wine since that time.  I count Liz Abrams-Morley among the poets and teachers most responsible for the shape and direction of my own writing.  In re-reading the notes in the margins on some of my poems, I frequently mistake her handwriting for my own. 

            We were discussing my thesis project at a Queen Village coffee shop in 2008 when Liz told me about her book, Necessary Turns and its impending Spring 2010 release.  I had been familiar with some of the poems from readings Liz had given as well as from her chapbook, What Winter Reveals.  Familiar as I was, however, with Liz’s poetry, her stories, her character, I found Necessary Turns to be at once an affirmation of all that I know and love about Liz, and an additional, complicating layer that challenged me and revealed her relationship with poetry as well as poetry’s relationship to the rest of her life.

            A blurb from David Wojahn on the back of the book characterizes these as “poems of a writer of a certain age, one who has come to something akin to wisdom.”  This “something akin to wisdom” gleams from unexpected sources and subtly undermines myths of aging and motherhood.  The speaker of the title poem drives an adult son to a train station and sending him off “to his own life.”  Some readers might find in this poem a lament on an empty nest:  “he would travel great distances / and I would travel other distances.”  But this speaker dwells only long enough to see her son off safely before thinking “something about how / holding no ticket meant I / could be going anywhere now,” recognizing loss as prerequisite for opportunity.  Or rather, the moral of the story is: “Change is inevitable, so what are you going to do now?”  I don’t know the Latin, but in these poems, Liz reminds us that the day seizes us, so we might as well seize it back.  And this mutual seizing looks a lot like an embrace in the poems of Necessary Turns. 

            Liz’s persona in these poems comes pretty close to Liz-in-person.  The loss, grief, and frustration about which she writes are buoyed by sincere tenderness and humor.  The losses of parents and a (too-young) nephew — and the various shades of the attendant suffering — cut through the collection sharply, but organically.   She writes about gardens and weeds, pruning and digging, and the new growth that is only possible when spent blooms are removed.  The familiar metaphor is no less apt than it was for Robert Herrick, but while he urged young, unmarried women to “make the most of time” and succumb to sensual pleasures, Liz Abrams-Morley takes the tack suggested in the epigram by Linda Pastan:  “If death is everywhere we look, / at least let’s marry it to beauty.” 

            Complicating the autobiographical quality of these poems is the character of Rose Climbing.  Her real name is Wanda and Liz often jokes about her alter-ego having an alter-ego.  Her voice weaves through the rest of the collection:  “Rose / draws ruby blood streams / from inquisitive fingers, / paints her own dry lips / in salty crimson.”  Through this voice which “whatever the weather… bloom[s] again / and again,” Liz punches a hole in her own authorial façade, reminding the reader that voice is a creation, that poems are constructed. 

            Many of Liz’s poems grow out of her life and experience – I recognized moments recorded in poems that I had heard first in conversation.  Many poems even felt too personal, as though I were privy to a greater secret than I had earned.  Liz’s craft and care expose a deep truth and, yes, something very much like wisdom.  She sometimes lets us forget that we are reading poetry; we feel as though we had just caught up with the author over a bottle of wine and a fancy cheese plate.  Then, Rose Climbing, the tough, terse, alter-ego of the alter-ego, reaches out to prick us and remind us – this ease ain’t easy!  Liz Abrams-Morley’s Necessary Turns is carefully wrought from familiar—even universal—tragedies.  She employs familiar images and echoes sentiments with which every writer—possibly every person—grapples, but the fine detail of these poems and the presence of an authorial foil allow this collection to stretch a thin shoot beyond familiarity and into its own sun. 

Courtney Bambrick is the poetry editor of Philadelphia Stories

For ten weeks last spring, I drove my daughter Madeline down to Elmer, New Jersey, for Saturday morning art classes. I was irritated that my day of rest had been hijacked. So while Madeline drew at Appel Farm, I cruised around “the Small Town with the Big Welcome” to find a warm place to wait, and maybe grade a few essays. After all, what else was there to do in Elmer? The cultural distance between Elmer and my home in Mullica Hill seemed more like a three-day road trip than a bullet shot, twenty minutes south. Surrounded by defrosting soy and spinach fields, Elmer, at first, reminded me of a hamlet in Iowa that was forty funerals away from a ghost town.

In the middle of town, a derelict grain elevator rose defiantly in rusted sandstone. Nearby, a police car idled in a church lot with “no tolerance for speeders” signs posted along Main Street and Broadway. At noon the bank closed. Old homes maintained a dignified grace while awaiting repair.  Signs at three closed car dealerships directed buyers to visit the showrooms in Vineland. Of course I’d already heard that St. Anne’s was vanishing into the larger parish in Mullica Hill. Even the small Elmer library was closed.  Then  I found an open coffee shop on Main Street, no bigger than a Victorian bedroom. As soon as I entered, a girl with wavy, shoulder-length brown hair said, “Good morning, honey,” her voice  as warm as buttermilk. It was that ‘honey,’ I imagined, that made their coffee sweeter than Wawa’s.

Odd, though, that she called me honey since I was twice her age.

In front of the counter stood a stout, shaggy-haired middle-aged man, clothed in a heavy brown jacket, jeans, and steel-toed boots cracked with yesterday’s mud. He leaned over the counter, holding his cup of Green Mountain coffee, engaged in a lopsided flirtation.

On the left of the rusty-hinged door, in a set up resembling a pipe organ, twelve coffee blends in thin, black urns welcomed the weary.  I pumped my own hazelnut-decaf, added a dash of flavored creamer, and muttered a brief hello. The picked-over bagels and blueberry muffins didn’t tantalize me. In beautiful script, a board in pastel chalks advertised a decadent drink menu, but I rarely drink my calories. I picked up a Coffee Club customer card, and was embarrassed when I didn’t have cash; they didn’t take credit or debit. Smiling,  the girl told me not to worry and stamped my card. “You can pay when you come back,” she said, writing my name on a tablet. I didn’t know the honor system still worked in Jersey.

I sat at the lone wood table by the bay window, the window half-bathed in the early spring sun.  A corner curio shelf displayed teapots for sale and Keurig single-serving coffees. On the wall, watercolor prints of Victorian houses hung in oak frames. I checked the time on  a white enamel clock with pink roses; it was stuck at five after ten. Finding excuses not to grade essays from my high school English classes, I even checked out the local paper. But I couldn’t concentrate because,  soon, the counter guy’s entire family descended – like those flocks of white birds I’d seen here in the half-frozen fields. His wife, who looked 20 years older than her husband,  wore gray sweatpants. There were three daughters, the oldest probably a sophomore in high school, and a lanky, pre-teen son, who sat in the chair opposite me, silent, head down, bangs covering his eyes.

It took five minutes for everyone to order. The eldest grabbed a YooHoo. The middle girl ordered a Smoothie. The young girl asked for hot chocolate with whipped cream. But the boy just shrugged.  “Why is your son so shy?” the counter girl asked.

 “He thinks you’re so good-looking, he doesn’t know what to say,” the father said.

She chuckled, and I looked over my essays to register the poor kid’s reaction, but he just murmured, “I guess I’ll have a hot chocolate too.” I wanted to paraphrase Philip Larkin, that parents really ‘mess you up,’ but I was raised in the ‘mind your own business’ suburbs, so I just stuck to my business  of grading student papers.

After ten minutes, the gang left, and led their mother up Main Street. The father followed a few minutes later. Why didn’t he come and go with his family? Did it have anything to do with the twenty-year old girl? Could it be he was just being neighborly? Even though the wife complained about money, the outing must have been a ritualized Saturday morning scene. The order was almost twenty dollars. A six pack of Swiss Miss brewed at home would have cost $1.49 from the local Super Value.  But the outing wasn’t about hot chocolate. 

The girl shook her head, wiped the counter, and told me, “It’s nice to have quiet.” I nodded and smiled, even though I didn’t agree. I enjoyed the dialogue.

Soon, an older woman  entered. She was a head taller than the counter with talcum white hair covered with a yellow floral scarf. “Busy today, Jesse?”

“Earlier it was very busy,” Jesse replied.

“Nice day, innit?” she observed, unraveling her scarf. “Before you know it, the crocus will be out.”

Then the mayor  entered through the creaky door. It was still five minutes after ten o’clock. He was tall and stocky and full of warmth. The door slammed behind him.

“How have you been?” the mayor asked the lady.

“A little under the weather… Jo’s got sick for a couple of days…” She looked under the counter and complained rhetorically, “No poppy seed bagels left?”

The mayor volunteered as a Scout leader, I overheard. There were 2,000 packages of food donations coming in at the Presbyterian Church.  Just then, a fire truck wailed down Main Street. They all went outside to chart the route of the truck. In this town, every fire was personal.

Once back inside, the scarf lady approached me, holding her cup with both hands for warmth. On my right was a half-completed community puzzle on a rickety, green folding table – a picture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s pencils. I know that because the box was upside down. The lady glanced at me, half-grinned, and said, picking up a loose piece, “Oh, this one looks hard.” She examined the puzzle the way I had been examining the pieces of Elmer.

The price of my coffee was rent for the sunny table by my window to listen to small town America – to enjoy the gossip, banter, chitchat. During that Saturday, I heard an elderly man with a green hat confab as he collected unused copies of the Elmer Times; I heard the milk delivery guy, the reverend of the First Presbyterian Church, Peggy the School Teacher, the guy who sold farm equipment, and the advancing of armies of the aged with news of grandchildren, snow, medical conditions, future vacations; I heard the auto salvage guys in blue overalls gibe while leaving their huge flatbed running outside. As I was about to leave, Jesse asked me: “So what brings you to Elmer?”

“My daughter Madeline takes art lessons at Appel Farm,” I told her. “So I take an hour for myself and do some writing. But mostly I grade essays.”

Like any writer, I wanted her to ask me about my writing, but she didn’t and said simply that was great. “Nothing to write about down here,” she added. When she found out I was an English teacher, she said that was her worst subject.

Over ten Saturday mornings, I compiled fragments of Jesse’s story: she liked hunting for used car parts in junkyards with her mechanic boyfriend. Lately she was looking for a muffler for an old Mustang. She was in her first year at community college, but she wanted to transfer to Rowan for education. She also worked as a waitress in Vineland at Lone Star. Her red prom dress cost hundreds of dollars… the exact figure I recall stunned me. While on her cell phone, I overheard her tell her friend: “There ain’t nothing to do down here. I can’t wait to get the hell out of Elmer! No one who’s anyone stays around here.”

I wanted to tell her, “You can’t vanish, too. Don’t you know what you mean to these people?”

Leaving the café to pick up Madeline at Appel Farm, minding the speed traps, I realized I was looking forward to next Saturday morning. I’m naturally shy, but when I have a stage, I’m full of thud and thunder, and perhaps this café, over time, could have been another platform. And it would be sad to witness another venue vanish for those who wish not to be impersonalized in the void of the suburbs. If Elmer keeps losing three percent of its population, over time, it will vanish. With my ego, maybe I’d be happier in Elmer where everyone knew me. In Mullica Hill, I’m not sure my neighbors know my name. I’m just as much to blame. I’ve lived with wide borders and invisible fences, and without Jesse the Counter Girl. Perhaps I’m not civilized after all.

So many of us have lost the art of the chat. In my part of Jersey, coffee addicts whiz in and out of convenience stores, checking the time on Blackberries. We even scan our own groceries. But it wouldn’t be morning in Elmer without coffee and neighborly parlance with the charming, country counter girl. It wouldn’t be morning in America either.

One Sunday a month I go to prison, the Federal Detention Center (FDC) located a few blocks north and west of Independence Hall. The FDC is a stone fortress, built as much to keep people out as in.  It imprisons over 1,000 women and men.  I go to visit one of them, Marcela.

 I bring Marcela’s fourteen-year-old son, Orlando, to see her. When I arrive at his foster home in Montgomery County he flashes a big grin and small bills as he hops in my car, eager to see his mom and spend money at the vending machines.  Sunday morning traffic is light; we arrive in Center City quickly and park along Arch near Chinatown. 

Once inside the FDC, I slide my license through a slot to the guard sitting behind inch-thick Plexiglas.  He gives me a form to complete.  I write my name, address and Marcela’s name and prisoner number.  I check “no” to the questions asking whether I’m carrying contraband like drugs, weapons, or phones. I return the form, receive a padlock and lockup our belongings before heading to the metal detector.

Passing through security can be a challenge.  Once, the guard told Orlando to change his khaki shorts because they resembled inmate attire.  We grabbed a blanket from my car and wrapped it around his waist.  As soon as we reentered the prison, the guard shook his head from side to side. 

“How’s that different than a skirt?” I asked preemptively.

“It’s not a skirt,” he responded.

“How’s it any different?”

“If it was a skirt I wouldn’t allow it; it shows too much on the side. No slit skirts!”

We went to Rite Aid and bought pajama pants with pink teddy bears.  It was the best we could do at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. Orlando didn’t care; he just wanted to see his mom.

 

After the metal detector, visitors enter an atrium.  Pictures of President Obama, Attorney General Holder, the head of the Bureau of Prisons and FDC’s warden adorn the wall.  We sign-in and the word of the day is stamped on our left hands with ink that glows purple under black light.  We’re escorted to the monitoring station, flash our hands under the light and are permitted entry.  Metallic clicks unlock doors of thick glass and steel.  The door in front of us doesn’t open until the door behind us closes.

We enter the visitation room, which contains one hundred and sixty interlocking blue plastic chairs arranged in rows.  No more than twenty-five chairs are ever filled.  Consultation rooms for lawyers and their clients line the back wall.  There’s also a children’s room with butterflies, birds and a castle painted on the walls.  It has toys and books for imprisoned parents to read to their children.

We wait for Marcela, which can take as little as fifteen minutes or as long as forty-five.  When she arrives, she smiles broadly as her eyes fill. Orlando leaps from his seat and they wrap their arms around each other.  Marcela grabs his face, kisses him on the lips, on his cheeks, and on the lips again with a loud smack.  She then embraces me.

“Hermano Timoteo, gracias por venir.”  Brother Timothy, thank you for coming.

Marcela and Orlando sit next to each other, across from me.  She runs her hand over his belly.  His childhood chubbiness is thinning out over a lengthening frame.  Marcela pulls the top of his shirt looking for pubescent hair.  He giggles, pushing her hand away. Seeing her son only once a month, Marcela notices every change.

Mother and son hold hands, stroke each other’s faces and glow.  His sun-kissed skin is darker then hers, which is no longer touched by sun.  Her natural brown hair has slowly returned and pushed dyed blond further out from her scalp, marking time.   She’s done twenty months and has ten to go. 

I walk to the bathroom allowing Marcela and Orlando time alone.  When I return Orlando heads to the vending machines.  He returns with Doritos, one bag of cool ranch, one original and Cokes.  Marcela offers me a little of everything. I pass on the Coke, but accept some chips.

This hospitality reminds me of my time in El Salvador.  I worked in a small community much like the one Marcela left behind.  Whenever I visited a family, the señora would grab a prized plastic chair and swat dust from it with a rag as a child ran to the tienda to buy a bottle of Coke. 

“Está en su casa,” the señora would say. “You’re in your house.”

Marcela doesn’t use these words but the sentiment is the same.  The FDC is no home, but life still moves here.

Every visit we see a girl about Orlando’s age visiting her mom, who is Marcela’s friend. 

“Digale hola a tu suegra,” Marcela jokes. “Say hello to your mother-in-law.”  His pudgy brown cheeks turn red.  She tosses her head back laughing, happy to think about a day in the future, free. 

We pass a few hours enjoying each other, talking about girls, school and court dates. Too soon for Marcela and Orlando, it’s time to go.  She kisses and hugs him and blesses him twice, touching his forehead, heart, shoulder and shoulder. 

I glance around as they say goodbye and see other families refusing to become strangers.  One mother tearfully smiles, watching her baby boy taking unsteady steps.  A father scolds his inmate daughter.  Three girls in pink practice a cheer. 

Marcela hugs me and thanks me for bringing her son.  Then, once again, Orlando and I place our hands under the light; a lock clicks and the door slides open allowing us out.  Escorted, we pass through more doors, through the atrium, and the metal detector.  We collect our things, exchange the padlock for ID, and exit one last barred door out to the uncontrolled climate. We drive west on Arch past City Hall, and work our way to Walnut and the suburbs beyond.

Tim O’Connell lives in Drexel Hill, PA with his wife and two sons.  He works for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in Hispanic Ministry. His writing has appeared at www.literarymama.com and Maryknoll magazine.  Whenever possible he participates in the Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio.