Ducks, Newburyport

by Lucy Ellmann

macrophages,

half the mammals on the planet will disappear by 2050, two hundred species a day or something like that, the fact that Ben says everybody on earth will soon be starving or suffocating or dying of SARS or Ebola or H5N1, the fact that H5N1 only has to mutate a few more times and we’re all goners, so maybe it was all for nothing, human achievement, but before that happens, we still have to do our taxes,

filigree,

chiffon

nasturtiums

the fact that I have led a lonely bereft life since Mommy died,

these are permanent sadnesses, the fact that I never liked the idea of anything being permanent, scars and wounds and such, chipped tooth, “never since the loss of her dear mother,”

I haven’t felt loved since Mommy got sick, well, apart from Leo, that is, and Abby, and maybe Phoebe and Ethan, but they’re far away, and Daddy, and Chuck maybe, and Nanya, I suppose, or Anat sometimes, and the chickens, the fact that at least the chickens really do love me, the fact that we kill fifty or sixty billion chickens a year, not me, other people, the fact that Mommy’s illness wrecked my life, the fact that it broke me, the fact that I am broken, heartbroken, heart operation, heart scar, broke,

reticule,

exeunt,

vestibule

that I get just about everything mixed up,

sometimes it’s not just each man for himself,

PCBs

Printed circuit board

slugabed,

abstemious,

haute cuisine,

High cookery

hors d’oeuvres

Outside thework

Irma Rombauer,

Joy of cooking

the fact that we’re broke because I had cancer, the fact that that broke us, it broke us, the fact that I shouldn’t say that, because here we are,

Iago,

Othelo

I’m always scared Leo will have a heart attack shoveling snow someday, as all good-hearted American men seem to, the fact that after Hoag died Abby’s neighbor took over the shoveling, until he had a heart attack trying to shovel out his own sidewalk after a snowfall, the fact that he survived, but he gave up the shoveling, fall forward, the fact that every time there’s a time change, heart attacks and car crashes briefly increase in number,

Gullah,

the fact that the best way to get through stuff you don’t want to do, I’ve decided, is to pretend it’s not really you doing it, like you’re just temporarily inside somebody else’s body that this is all happening to,

the fact that some people have more of a fondness for the past than I do, the fact that Elizabeth Bennet recommends only remembering things that please you, but that’s not so easy, the fact that I don’t remember much, and everything I do remember makes me sad,

my memory is so intermittent that sometimes I just tell people I’m living in the Now, man, but they don’t always fall for it,

the fact that secretly I think the real reason I have no memory is I find the past unbearable so I kind of blot it out, the fact that maybe everybody does,

my past’s probably not as bad as lots and lots of people’s, but I just can’t seem to think about it without getting upset, so I try not to think about it,

going through photos just makes me paralytically sad, and I don’t really have time to get frozen to the spot, weeping over old photos, most days anyway, the fact that anyway I think you can overdo remembering stuff,

he said people fetishize the past, in Ireland, the fact that he said the Irish were drunk on remembrance, like Hamlet and the ghost, the fact that I can’t understand people who want to go over and over old times, getting all nostalgic and stuff, the fact that I’m scared of old times, the fact that old times are soggy, saggy cradles of regret, about Mommy or Pepito, or even Pierre, or Dilly,

the fact that I was never in an avalanche or a war either, though I was in a bus accident, on Lake Shore Drive, snow banks, Lynn’s broken femur, but I didn’t get hurt, the fact that I’ve never been raped either, except almost, and when I had cancer they cured it, as far as I can tell, so all in all I don’t have much to regret or kvetch about,

just about every memory somehow takes me back to something I don’t much want to think about,

fact that Mommy was...

don’t know why, the fact that of course everybody remembers different things from childhood, the fact that that’s why you need siblings, to tell you what you forgot, or tell you what happened from their point of view, but I really seem to remember the least of any of us, “baby of the family,” so I’m no help at all,

when people question me about the past, I often have to either fudge it, fudge brownies, hot fudge sundaes at Macy’s, or change the subject, or just admit I don’t remember what everybody else remembers perfectly well, burnt toast, rusks, Pepito, the fact that with four kids there are only so many poignant moments a mom can keep track of,

cryptids,

Animals like the yeti

like teaching Local History to local people, who were all practically born here, the fact that what do I know about the Appalachian plateaus, Zadok Cramer, and the Wright brothers, and Gnadenhutten and all, Schoenbrunn Village, and Amish customs, and the last of the Wyandots, the fact that the Ohio history I taught is all water under the bridge now,

the fact that really all I do all day is try my darnedest to remain equable, the fact that equability’s my A1 priority, the fact that maybe it seems a pretty modest aim, as aims go, but it turns out to be quite a challenge,

I’m always inviting her down but who wants to stay in a house full of kids, the fact that she’s too busy and I’m too busy too, what with the pies and cakes, and the chickens, the fact that now where is the cardamom, the fact that I am wallowing in domesticity here

I always knew I wouldn’t make much of a mother, but I like babies so much,

indelibly

pique,

Mommy, the fact that I’m broken,

the fact that I was probably a lot more fun before I started worrying about absolutely everything, but I just can’t seem to help it,

promulgate,

Brief Encounter is one of the few movies besides Julie & Julia that’s about middle-aged people falling in love, the fact that they’re not really old, Trevor, Sheila, no, Celia, Celia Johnson, your johnson, but they’re not young either, the fact that they’ve both got their own families already, kids,

the fact that they’re on call twenty-four hours a day, scrolling down their phones and stuff, the fact that they look like they’re scratching at their phones actually, trying to get inside them somehow,

my whole life is a series of mistakes, large and small,

speaking up for my previous lemon drizzle cake efforts, which I thought were a total failure but actually were usually fine, the fact that he said it in a slightly hostile way though, like why the heck did I change my recipe, the fact that there was an edge to it, the fact that, as a result, I internalized something negative about my drizzle cakes and that’s what’s stuck, the fact that negative stuff sticks much better than positive stuff, for some reason, and it’s made me hate making lemon drizzle cakes, the new way or the old way, the fact that negative stuff cloys, like duct tape versus magic tape,

Mommy’s life in that duck pond,