Meg Sefton's Blog, page 56

pumpkin

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Photo by Xan Griffin on Unsplash

I remember the year my sister made the pumpkin dump cake. It was the year we had Thanksgiving at St. George’s. It was the year sunsets hung in the moist air. The year we didn’t want to stress Mom. The year the surf was a disintegrating bridal veil.

prepare

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Sutter by Patrick Maloney, flickr

I always had to prepare for Dan’s visits. His golden smashed the Waterford and peed on my Europlush mattress. I skipped our last date, my little white dog and I making a quiet exit out the back to the beach while Dan and his “blond” waited on the stoop.

cinnamon

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Red Shoes by Paul Bence, flickr

She wore a red dress to the bank. When she was young the doctor said of the  cinnamon candy stain on her tongue: “Now she will grow outward.” He and her mother had laughed. She would not get the loan. In the bathroom mirror she noticed the fraying neckline.

smoke

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cigarettes in a theatre, megan, flickr

I started to smoke when I was thirty eight and away at graduate school. It was the exact opposite of my world. I accepted hand rolled cigarettes from a man not my then husband. When I see someone else making these seemingly innocuous decisions, I want to tell them: Don’t.

lash

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Two Palms, Michel Curi, flickr

Hurricane winds lashed our tract home. But it fared well, being new and concrete. All the family fled to our house because we kept power. We had meals and ghost stories. Yet we moved not long after and divorced. You wanted to live by water, to court uncertainty.

broom

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Mummy by Jamie, flickr

It was a popular thing among the wealthy, mid 19th century to the turn of, to purchase a mummy to unwrap at parties. “No respect,” said my great grandmother’s maid remembering my family’s capers. She said there were still flecks of the dead in great great grandmama’s broom.

the rose room

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casual, comfy pink living area by catnipbones, flickr

There is a place you can go when you are feeling tired and sad. It’s a place for people struggling with cancer. But, really, we welcome anyone. The only requirement is that you are feeling a bit on the downward slope of life and you just need a place of rest.

There is no struggle here, for anything. No struggle to talk, to look good. You don’t have to smile or say encouraging things. If you don’t want to read or meditate, you don’t have to, but if you want to, that’s ok too. You don’t have to sign up for support groups or wear a ribbon.

Come, sit down on a sofa or lounge. Walls are a deep rose, there are no sharp edges. You may simply stare at the middle distance or close your eyes and listen to silence. Or if you want to smile at someone, you can, or walk the grounds and breathe deep the air.

If you want to bring a book or eat a cookie, it’s ok. We just thought everyone might want to be together like this, existing in the same space as humans, no one talking necessarily, and not doing much, not having a goal necessarily, but feeling the sense of others living a similar reality.

There is no religion here, only if you want to express something to yourself.

We are not dead. Yet. But sometimes we are not quite alive. Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe you want to be with people like that. We want you to know it’s ok. And we want you to know there is a place for you and that you are not alone.

Come here anytime in your mind and sit with me. I love these massive floor pillows but I’m afraid the drugs see my knees a bit creaky so that I can’t get down there on the floor, or even if I did manage to get down there I am not getting up again. Maybe we should put the floor pillows in our laps.

Let’s hold hands over our pillows and close our eyes. Let’s imagine something deep and real between us – a friendship, a romance – but something we’ve lost the energy to act upon. It’s enough now just to imagine it.

Come back here anytime and hold my hand. I’ll be here, waiting for you, in the rose room.

 

leaves

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Underwater Thanksgiving at Rainbow Springs, FL, Florida Memory, flickr

I will miss Aunt Maureen’s Thanksgiving oilcloths, wreaths of fake fall leaves, tablescapes of pilgrims and Indians sitting down to carve a huge, disproportionate, anachronistic cranberry jelly complete with the rings of the can. She forgot to wear a bra last year and we had to resort to plan b.

dust

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Bipolar, Durant Weston, flickr

How do you keep the fire when you feel your embers die, when you feel you could become dust with the ash and disappear into the canyon? Do you ever feel yourself becoming your biological past, your mother, wanting to find the Hopi medicine woman before it ends?

fire

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Cowboy boots by Kulani Odum, flickr

I had no truck with Granny’s warning fairy tale of the red shoes. I insisted on wearing the fire red cowgirl boots to church, danced in the narthex, stood up when the congregation sat down, rolled up my bulletin and pretended to smoke. Daddy preached while Mama ’bout died.