Last weekend, we had to go out to Opry Mills to have a ring repaired. While there, we watched James Cameron’s latest Titanic documentary through 3D goggles that overwhelmed my head. And we ate dinner at the 50’s diner where the servers move in happy harmony sixteen behind a counter and come out and do a wonderful parody of disco whenever someone plays “Let’s Dance” on the jukebox. We sat at the counter because I didn’t care. For a while, the stools beside me were empty. Then, a couple climbed on. He looked exactly like the man in American Gothic, except four times as big and his suspenders covering a violent plaid shirt. She was dressed in what I can only call a party dress with elaborate, cheap Victorian necklace and earrings. She was dressed for a night out.

When our server, Colin, asked them in his happy voice what they’d have, the man said through his scowl lines: “Two iced teas!” As if he were ordering a squadron to advance. She had just picked up the menu. She kept on staring at it until he said, “You didn’t want anything else, did you?” She must have said something quietly because when Colin returned, her husband barked, “All right, we’ll have an order of onion rings, but that’s all!” I could see the tears in her eyes as he ate most of the rings, as he bullied Colin for free refills and for more ice.

I cannot understand why anyone needs to be so mean; it is not accidental that we’ve taken that Anglo-Saxon word as a synonym for extreme frugality. I’m not indicting men; women can be holy horrors in so many ways. But it made me wish for a moment that no one ever married, so that no one ever found herself trapped, demeaned like that, for a single moment of a life. Partly for that woman, I wrote this poem.


kamikaze

In living moments of free fall, hand on explosive, foot on
accelerator,
for all those who give their lives for greater-goods,
chosen images perhaps are not of ones of glory, of virgins, of
insurance checks,
the smile lit on der fuehrer’s face

Perhaps instead, straight on, they strike a match in their
minds, light the
darkness to come with one cry, one silent chalice
held tight, one pretext whispered in several tongues
universal:
free, at last I am blameless and free

posted by Sandy at 10:19 AM

When I was small, Easter was a wonderful and meager time, or so it seemed then. My church would have allowed no mention of the holiday, except for the perceived necessity to preach to those who filled the pews that Sunday, those who came to church only once a year, about why it is wrong to celebrate Easter as a religious holiday. The plain building was bright, all the same, with Easter finery and corsages. I never knew anyone to worry much about consistency. My mother too let us buy our summer shoes in time for Easter and usually made embroidered dresses with net--stiff and scratchy--to make them stand straight out from my knobby knees. My sister and I would pose on the top of the front step in those dresses (always different, never matching). Perhaps we always looked into the sun; in the photos, I see ducked heads and frown lines. Once, I remember, I somehow had an Easter purse as well, the bottom round, reinforced organdy ending at a ruffle, then gathered together at the top to be carried by strings. I can remember standing on the sidewalk in front of the church with that purse hung over my arm, knowing that everyone admired it.

After church, we'd go to my grandmother's, hiding in a corner of the bedroom to change our clothes. All the aunts and uncles and cousins would be there. The women crowded in the kitchen and dining room, gossiping or putting the last touches on our lunch. After the first few years, my mother refused to come, would not set foot in the house, and we always felt guilty about leaving her at home--but managed to forget fairly quickly. The men flopped in the living room in front the TV. We kids spent most of our time, as I recall, tearing through the house, as unlikely as it seems, although there were two doors opening out from the living room. Sometime later, we would hunt for real colored eggs in the thousand hiding places a farm afforded. And that was when the envy kicked in. On her usual frugality kick, my mother believed in the same basket year after year, the recycled "grass" found in the morning dotted with a few jelly beans. As I look back on it now, it seems good. But then, when my cousins pulled out those store-bought baskets half as tall as they were, filled with Cadbury cream eggs and stuffed bunnies and coloring books, we enjoyed feeling sorry for ourselves. My first Easter away from home (since I'd married to get away from home), I couldn't afford one of those baskets, but I managed to get the most important part. I gave him a basket of various eggs wrapped in the most wonderful purple cellophane you've ever seen. Of course, he didn't deserve it.

Gifts. My church taught that the "spiritual gifts" spoken of in the New Testament were only temporary, only for a very brief time until "the scriptures were written down." I'll not go into that now, but I will say I always wondered about the gift of discernment, exactly what kind of gift that might have been. If discernment means what I think it does, I know someone who has it. The very first time I met Marlei, she knew how to read half my heart with no hints whatsoever. And today she gave me a gift I'll not soon forget. After all the days of the holy week, it began to look as if I could not make it for the Easter service. Eventually I did, late, swollen-eyed, only to find that, of course, the chapel was filled to the rafters with people. Newcomers were filling spaces behind the choir, so I thought I'd just get out of the way and be grateful that I could take communion. I went off on my own into a corner of the fellowhsip room since I couldn't see or hear, and began to write down lines for a poem. Then Marlei came and called to me. She gave me her seat, not only her seat, but her seat beside Anne in the rhirrd row. She sat on the floor. The service was everything an Easter service should be; I wouldn't have known how to count what I would have lost.

It was more than that: an antidote that I needed urgently against poison without and within. How Marlei discerned that need, I don't know. . . or I do. Our God of love, of Gethsemane and Golgotha, gave it to her so that she could give it me, so that Easter could be real to me for probably the first time in my life.

Praise be to Christ. Alleluia! Alleluia!
posted by Sandy at 1:48 PM