Kelly Garriott Waite's Blog, page 11

The Fourth Spoon

"Who's got the fourth spoon?" I demand, looking at each of the three girls in turn. They all deny having it. But I am certain that one of them has smuggled it upstairs, warming in a mug of tea or perhaps stuck in the forth bowl--a bowl overflowing with cereal or cottage cheese or some other sort of comfort food that will help get them through the stress of these last few weeks of school.

I stir my coffee with a knife and resolve to find the fourth spoon later.

Since my husband left me, exactly one week ago, Orange Cat (the blind one) hasn't been the same: He walks about the house, mewing loudly and bumping into walls; running to the basement to hide when visitors come, emerging an hour or so later, strands of dust and cobwebs dangling from his whiskers in an undignified way no self-respecting cat ought to tolerate.

I know this fact only because my son reported it to me: When he left, my husband took with him Orange Cat (the blind one), Gray Cat (the outdoor one), two bowls, two spoons, and one dog (the frightened one, not the Seeing Eye dog, and, before you can even ask, no: The Seeing Eye dog is not for Orange Cat).

My husband took our son, too.

But our separation is temporary: My husband and son moved with the pets to our new house while my daughters finish up school here. And it's strange, this process: As I empty the house, tucking away dishes and sheets and books, my husband and son live in a house mainly empty: The only furniture is a card table upon which they dine (Orange Cat naps upon it during the day) and one inflatable king-sized mattress because I was too cheap to buy two.

Two houses is too much work.

My husband emails me his debit expenditures.

I pay his electric bill.

He packs school lunches.

I arrange for a prescription refills.

My husband deals my son's allergies.

I purchase a washing machine on-line.

Each of us is overworked and overstressed. Each of us feels we're doing too much. Each of us likely suspects we're doing a just a little bit more than the other.

We don't state that overtly, of course, but in brief texted comments we make throughout the day, snippy snippets of faux-conversation:

Did you ever unload the attic? Me. Accusatory. I know darn well he didn't unload the attic and I'm not looking forward to doing it myself.

Still at the pharmacy. Haven't had dinner yet. Him. Sympathy-seeking.

I cleaned the entire basement today Me. "Send me a medal."

Raked the front lawn and mowed all day. Him, loosely translated as, "I'm working, too."

Up to 150 boxes packed! Me. "Another medal, please. And, yo, your work is more fun than mine. You're settling, I'm unsettling."

Orange Cat is sick. He's having poo problems. Him. "See everything I have to deal with?"

The girls' car is broken again. Me. "That's nothing. Try dealing with a car that has a blocked vapor line. That's some serious gas problems, dude."

I have to patch the blow-up bed. Him.

It was here that I interrupt with wait, what?

We switch to email. It seems that the night before, the mattress was punctured by the claws of Orange Cat, still too traumatized by the move to sleep alone in the dark. My husband and son woke to a slow and steady hiss of air as they felt the hard floor get closer...closer...closer...thunk.

My husband and I switch to phone to share a much-needed laugh.

And I realize, then, that this move should be more about cooperation than competition. I realize, too, that it's time for a walk, time to clear the crabbiness from my mind.

Two miles in, I settle into a steady rhythm. I notice that the dandelions have already turned, their once-yellow faces now fat puffs of white. The cherry trees, heavy with pink blossoms, remind me of clusters of grapes hanging from the vine. The wind picks up and dashes hundreds of dogwood petals from the trees, whirly-gigging street eddies of purple and pink.

I wrap around for another two miles.

I'll find the blasted fourth spoon later.

Throne of Moss

Once upon a time, humans understood the words spoken by the forest. They could easily slip from their native tongues into, say, the language of the grasses, which, outside of a few dialectic differences, is mainly the same. Humans could speak with the trees and the orchids, even the bees, who, naturally, spoke several languages, the bees' main employ being the hand-delivery of messages to the forest vegetation.

It came to pass, as these things do, that the humans believed they no longer needed the forest: They began to shape it to their desires.

Whole languages disappeared as the forest constricted. Lilies hung their heads. The bees stopped Sunday deliveries. Maples toed underground pipes.

Eventually the humans stopped speaking entirely to the forest, all except Willheim, the last remaining woodsman.

And so it was the bees who brought the news of the birth of Edmunda to the woods. Edmunda: daughter of Tatjana, granddaughter of Alois. The blood of royalty coursed through the child's veins: She was destined to sit upon a throne of gold.

But the blood of the woodfolk ran through Edmunda as well, a simple misstep in Tatjana's judgement, according to the servants, who gossiped like bees while they polished the silver and plucked the goose for dinner. Suddenly intoxicated by the scent of wild roses, scent being a language all its own, Tatjana had taken up with Willheim.

Tatjana's mother was furious: Royalty does not mix with men of the forest. Willheim was dragged into the executioner's chambers, Tatjana sobbing on the other side of the oaken door, while the maple planted outside, in a token nod to the forest, looked on in silent sorrow.

The months passed. Spring turned to summer and then fall.

Tatjana gave birth.

The tree whispered a message to the bees, who flew low, carrying the word to each blade of grass: A new woodchild had been born.

The child's throne would not be gold, they decided.

Edmunda would sit upon a throne of moss.

On Broad Street

We caught the six-o-five to Philly. For the entire ride, the conductor groused about the way the train had three extra cars for him to tend by himself and that next weekend, thanks to Race for the Cure, it would be the same story.

Mainly, he was ignored: Despite the hour, everyone was in a festive mood.

We were headed to the Broad Street Run, a ten mile race with an expected forty thousand runners and countless spectators.

I hate the city.

I hate crowds.

I hate noise.

I hate traffic and sirens and white pavement that seems to cover everything.

Most of all I hate having to worry about my children getting hurt.


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Mended

"I don't care if is door. Or a window. It's nothing but a thin sliver of chance." Momma perched on the edge of her green recliner, the gaps in the vinyl mended with duct tape. She was always fixing things that way, mending arguments and things broken with patches or kisses floated through the air upon a ring of smoke.

I pushed aside the tarp covering the cabin's entrance and stepped into cool mountain air. The tips of the pine needles birthed fat drops of rain. The birdsong was tentative and cautionary.

"You leave me now, you ain't never seeing me again, you hear?"


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Earl Grey

Broken-hearted lovers. Wedgewood china. Every moment a play with lines to memorize.

He steps out of character. "I want a divorce."

She drops her cup, watches the stain creep across the Persian rug.

Good Fortune

"Learn Chinese," Caroline Nickleback read. "Plum:" She frowned and scratched her head. There followed an incomprehensible and unpronounceable series of letters. She studied the pronunciation guide and tried to wrap her lips around the word, spitting out a tiny crumb of fortune cookie as she did so.

Julian laughed and took a sip of his tea, running a thumb up the smooth side of the tiny white mug that was really more suited to shots than oolong.

"Lucky numbers," she continued. "40, 44, 41, 46, 30, 2." She looked at her husband, shiny and new. "Should we buy a lottery ticket?"

He grinned. "You believe in that?"

"Nah. But my mother is a firm believe in astrology." Caroline leaned forward. "Says we're never going to last."


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A Century of Moments

The pendulum wiped away seconds like raindrops, a century of wasted moments smeared and thinned and dissolved back into time which will charge them again with purpose and good intention before they're lost to elements unnecessary.


This was written for this weekend's Trifecta Writing Challenge:


"This weekend we're asking for exactly 33 of your own words plus the following three words:
charge
century
lost
So 33 of yours plus 3 of ours means that everyone will have a 36 word response this time around."

I like the idea of century as a collection of one hundred as well as a marker of time.

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Twenty Candles

Well my eldest turned nineteen yesterday, so that meant twenty candles on her birthday cake. I don't know if mine is the only family to add "one to grow on" but we do. As my mother would say, my daughter is now in her twentieth year.

Despite the fact that she and her sister wouldn't get home until nine o'clock, the birthday girl insisted we wait to have dinner. It was her special day, after all. I suggested perhaps having the celebratory dinner on another evening, so we could eat when normal people do. But she'd have none of it: Birthdays are to be celebrated on the correct day, after all. And so we agreed: Dinner was to be served (in the form of takeout pizza) at nine, followed immediately by the cheesecake I'd baked the night before.

At eight forty-five, my husband and son went for pizza. I went to the kitchen, stomach growling, and began peeling carrots for the next day's school lunches.

A car pulled into the driveway. The dog barked. The garage door opened. An idea crept into my head: I set the peeler and the knife on the counter. I got down onto my knees. Then I sprawled face-down on the floor and closed my eyes. And as I lay there, waiting for the girls to come in, the thought occurred to me that perhaps this wasn't a good idea. Scaring one's offspring half to death never is.



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Adventure

Dani run her hand against the grain of the old dining room table she inherited from her grandmother, a table that has shrunk progressively every year as she and Cecil removed leaves and pushed the ends together. Years ago, it had been the opposite: As the children were born they'd wrestled the old table open, each of them tugging at either side until there was a gap sufficient to accommodate first one leaf, then two, then, finally, three.

Dani sighs deeply. Cecil doesn't appear to notice: He's reading the newspaper, breathing heavily through his mouth, his elbows holding down the corners of the paper so that the fan blowing hot air behind him doesn't rustle the pages. Cecil's elbows perpetually hold two triangles of smudged ink. Yesterday, the number twenty-seven was inked on Cecil's left elbow. All day, as she waxed a spotless floor and wiped down counters already clean, she thought on that number. As she tried to assign meaning to a random number stamped on her husband's elbow, she realized something. "I'm bored, Cecil."


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With Apologies to New York

If a place can be said to have complexion, New York City has a color all its own. There's a complexity to New York that perhaps only natives can understand. The city is full of nuances, unspoken rules and contradiction.

On our last trip before leaving the East Coast, we emerged from Penn Station and headed towards Times Square. Elmo was there. Cookie Monster, too. Mario...Mickey Mouse...even the Statue of Liberty greeted us, posing for a picture before requesting a tip.

On Fifth Avenue, a man leaned against the side of a building, a cardboard placard in his hands. There was a supporting length of twine knotted at either end of his sign, giving his arms occasional respite: Why lie? Need money for weed.


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