giving thanks*

*tough titties, ima rant too, but you gotta go deep in to a very long post to get to the rant part I suppose

1. no, I will not recommend or push gratitude or the practice thereof on anyone
2. way I figure it is you have to be ready and you have to feel it
3. but I also know about “fake it ’til you make it,” with which I’ve had limited success in my life
4. I’d say that more than faking it, cultivation is key
5. I love my mamma
6. so much
7. The sky was incredible tonight as we were driving home on I-90 from Boston. Intense orange to the south, beautifully contrasted with gray bands of clouds, but covered by trees most of the time. Heading west, however, as we were, the sky was sherbet-striped: yellow, pink, purple, orange. No lime (whew! ’cause you know a green sky means a tornado!). A friend took this photo on her iPhone (no effects, no filters!) in Amherst, same time we were driving home. Thank you, Cathie!  
8.  exactly out of what did they make the sherbet-of-our-childhood? (long before “sorbet” became the norm)
9. this salad
10. every single green and vegetable in the above salad is local and I had the good fortune to pick some of the greens at the farm on Tuesday and it was almost full dark by 4pm when I picked and the next day it poured buckets so I really was lucky to get to harvest a bag of tiny, beautiful, sweet lettuces in mid-November in the low-lying valley where I live in New England
11. The salad bowl I purchased at The Hartsbrook School’s Holiday Fair. I have had my eye on these types of bowls for a long time because Hubby and I now eat a salad alone, just the 2 of us. Tossing a salad in the larger bowl (which sits atop the fridge and unassumingly houses chips and pretzels, et al bagged snacks) is too cumbersome and means the snacks have no where to go when we eat a salad, OMG! 
12. SPELTED MAPLE, OMG!!!
13. don’t tell someone with cancer that they are doing it wrong (or at least, don’t tell me)
14. because you don’t know
15. and you don’t want to know
16. maybe for that you can be grateful
17. and maybe, ultimately, even though it sometimes seems like there’s no second chances with a blood cancer like multiple myeloma and with toxic, harsh, intense, side-effect ridden treatments, there are second chances for someone like me at this stage in the game
18. and right now, for that, I am grateful
19. if you think you know how to cure multiple myleloma, and I do mean cure it, without toxins or chemotherapy or drugs, please, get multiple myeloma and cure yourself
20. the only person I ever really figure deserves mm is Dick Cheney and his ilk and even that seems….like a strange and twisted, but completely understandable, fantasy
21. hubris, I hate you
22. and I mean my own [hubris]
23. These words, which I encountered at the Dutch painting exhibit at the mfa today:  syndic  levade  pilaster  prunt  
24. that the Dutch word for falcon is valk 
25. spirit
26. I am grateful for my intense, vibrant, returning spirit which was buried and murdered in me for most of last year and a lot of this year and can you believe that spirit can emerge in the dark, in November, during chemo, and out of a body that houses cancer cells?
27. this Vermeer which I love tremendously 
28. my life, myself, my life, my children, my life, my Hubby, my life, my mother, my life, my dog, my life, my friends, my life, words, writing, family, art, air, breath, yoga, wood, dirt, water, quiet, peace, quiet and peace, pain-free minutes, Sanskrit, mantras, Sanskrit mantras, prayers and whispers for cures and pleas for help, pain-free hours, sleep, lack of pain, a clear mind, my mind when I am not on chemo, my self before cancer, but finding a way to live with the reality of these rogue cells, clean houses, non-smelly houses and dogs (my dog is smelly!), clean everything, my house when it’s clean, organized drawers, dejunking, my bones before cancer, my bones that remain my own damaged as they may be, hiking, food, the ocean, Provincetown, chocolate, salad, soup, bread, acupuncture, colors, museums, artists, jewelry, Bakelite bangles, really good shearling slippers, healing substances, healing, stones, rocks, heart-shaped rocks, singing, singing loud, Shape Note singing, passion, sunshine, peaceful interactions, anger, music, funny shit, my very own accurate bullshit detector, rage, my Hubby (again, always), my daughters (again, always), women, girls, intensity, inclusion, men, good leather bags, good socks, good knives, damask cotton, my mother’s laundry and the way she taught me to wash it, iron it, fold it, clean dishes, a clean kitchen, a clean bathtub, the painting at the exhibit today that depicted a linen cupboard and explained that it was often the most expensive piece of furniture in a house and how important and labor-intensive and time-consuming and highly-skilled and prized this female-only undertaking was, houseplants, excellent salad dressing, beautiful everything, beauty, bicycling and swimming if I’m lucky enough to be able to because I’m in the right place at the right time and my body is cooperating, sexy things, sexy people, sexy time, bodies, flesh, my life, intelligence, beautiful writing, my body, my mind, my spirit

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starry crown

what if I woke up with a lotus on my head

filled with golden sun

and I could even type it with my eyes closed

and all the world made sense

my children whole and filled with golden light (they are you know)

the dark places and spaces, splaces if you like, filled with golden light (funny bits are welcome and are sometimes hard to summon in a person with cancer)

the light of god? not if you don’t believe in god, but it doesn’t matter because all are filled with light (no, I know, there are sick and damaged people beyond, seemingly beyond, the help even of their parents, beyond us….yesterday’s news and that father talking about his son and the sickness in our country, and I whisper in my head may it never be my children, never, and then, never any of my friends’ children and then any child I know and then anyone, let it not be anyone. WE ARE ALL CONNECTED. My network of helping friends is greater than those whose names I know. But this violence happens to someone we know, it is always one of us. We are kin.)

When I am filled in this way, I can forget

the house I haven’t adored or enjoyed for 14 years (too long) and maybe the house is metaphor for my own body and my own being and it’s tragic but true

so now if I don’t love my house, it’s okay; I still I have to love my body and my self, fully. I have to make do and not hate my house yes, hope and work for a better house, but make peace with myself and allow light

I have to Wake Up

we live in the darkness of bustling cars and news and the internet it is wonderfully connecting but we are not well in it we are on overload

My body is filled with chemicals so I have to take other chemicals to counter them, to live

sending the light—did you? because last night, after 2 am, I woke up bathed in it, filled with it, smiling, soft and peaceful, warm and content, feeling whole

I would not wish my diagnosis on anyone; there is no one to blame, so the alternative is to get mad. I haven’t gotten there yet. I need to see my anger and touch it and chew it to bits because I want to be free from it. I know it’s here when I ask “why me?” and when I can’t connect the person who I thought I would become (one who would always be free from cancer) to the one who I am, who has cancer in my body right now. Is it the power of the word cancer, from its history in my life, from the way it swirls around us as if it only happens to other people, takes ones we love, or is it something more?  The power of the word must diminish and it will diminish, but it may take a while. There will be better healing medicines and approaches. I believe every year there is progress and maybe a leap every 3 years, every 5, every 7, every 10.

Maybe I can reframe the meaning of the word. I want to hear it differently in my mind. cancer. multiple myeloma. treatment, recurrence. All the scary words. Can you help me? I want to face them first with a brave warrior stance and then let them lose their power so they are words I can allow to exist without me cringing in fear.

♥

I want to show you my daughters. How mysterious their lives are when I see the photos of them when they were little and simply young; and now, in their lives as they separate away from me and Paul. The mystery of birthing them, nursing them, raising them, but they grow anyway and have a force within. They have to leave and it’s a good thing. It is what we want for them, to thrive and make their own lives with their own, new people.

Cleaving. To split.

Yes, give me a new house where I can be freer and have quiet from the road and constant cars, where the bedrooms are not next to the kitchen, where the ceilings are high and air and light crosses through the rooms. People say you don’t need a bigger house because my kids will leave soon, but that is beside the point. Not much bigger, just better laid out and off a busy road. And who doesn’t expect them to need places to come home to for many years nowadays? It takes a while.

I can feel the empty nest on the horizon and that’s not a mixed metaphor because that is how I can explain to you my experience of its approach.

I will have a new house. I will go into remission from multiple myeloma by god by hook or by crook by the golden light, by gum, as best I can making the best choices I can at the moment with the best information and help and friends doing research on the scary bits. I want it gone for a long while and then I want better options should it peak in again. I want to live. To wear a starry crown, but not a way over yonder like the hymn says; here on earth. To wear a starry crown. I woke up with one, so why not?

Thanks for your food, your prayers, your help, the beautiful flowers; your sending of light and visualizing all sorts of places inside of me, intimate spaces you never thought you’d know in yourself let alone in me. The interior of my bones, my perfect ribs, curving and white. We have little space in our bodies, our bodies are filled with cells and molecules and atoms. Fill mine with healing light. Calm blue waters. Do the same for yourself. Whatever colors work for you. Then receive some light and vibration from someone far away. You leave yourself alone, you sit still, even for a split second, and you receive the light of the universe coming to you. Don’t even try to be perfect, because in this practice, you already are. Leave yourself alone!

We are the light of the universe, how can the light fit into our very tightly-packed cells? Because we alone can conceive it and see it and make it so. It is a thought, a fantasy, a creation of the mind, but it imbues the body. It is a wish. You feel this when you meditate. It is mysterious but real, like not being able to put my finger on the passage of time.

I know, this is out there and sappy for me, but I woke up like this and I don’t give a shit right now. All the signals are telling me to re-read it, to hold it until morning, to wait, to judge. You know what happens when I judge myself? Yes, you are right, I become a better writer. But that’s wrong, that’s only judging something I produced. I can judge my work and make it better and I do and I want to and I should.

I’m going to let this silly sappy piece go

hold it in my hand and blow on it from my lips, right out into the world

all you have to do is receive

kiss the spark that is in you, the same spark that started the universe

there are rogue cells, there are bad chemicals in our air and water, I know. I have known for a long time because I was born in the sixties.

Say with me that these rogue cells must turn off the dirty work they started in my body. no party for them. off, be off with ya.

 

shoo fly, don’t bother me, for I’m in love with somebody

my beautiful daughters, summer 2013

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I’m here. It’s me. LOVE.

In my 50th year, I got a cancer diagnosis

Medical waste. You have no idea. If you’ve spent any time in a hospital, then again, you do.

If the way we live is making us sicker (though through advances in science, we have longer lifespans), we need to change it. We are stuck.

Cars, plastic, disposable everything. Cars, plastic, disposables. Single-use. Not biodegradable. Not safe. Medicines flowing from our bodies into the water supply and into the ground and into everything else.

Did you know you can take your own cups and bottles to take-out or fast food places? Sometimes they will refill your insulated coffee cup. Sometimes they will refill your giant, heavy-duty plastic cup. I have 2 of these and we have 3 thermal, hot beverage cups. Just peer into any garbage can outside of any strip mall in America on a Saturday or Sunday and see if you might not like to try. Have a plan. You can take your own re-usable utensils places; this is harder to remember. You might feel queer. But you might inspire others. You can put paper napkins in your compost. You can put paper bags in the recycling. You can take your own bags for fuck’s sake don’t tell me you still use the store’s plastic bags when you grocery shop. Save that for times you really couldn’t attend to this small commitment. You don’t have to be perfect, but we all have to WAKE UP. Do what you can that’s easy. Baby steps. You can do this. It matters. Oh, and don’t idle your car.

I feel less sad. I had fun yesterday. I was exhausted all day, but I had fun.

I feel a little happy this morning, I’m tired.

I’m self-absorbed. How long?

I feel the light of the universe flowing through me.

I shaved my head because Violet and a friend of hers shaved their heads and I thought FUCK IT, it’s time. I waited so long for a haircut that my hair was unruly and unflattering, but since my hair will fall out from the chemo (Cytoxan) I got yesterday, this was a great option. In about 3 weeks, my hair (what little is left) will fall out. I am not afraid or upset about this. HAIR GROWS BACK.

The problem is my face looks very raggedy to me. That part is harder. Our hair becomes attention, a focus, beauty.

Violet decided to shave off her hair separate from my situation; still it’s kind of strange, but only in my mind in a way that I wonder what other people might think. Do they think she did it for/because of me? She didn’t. Her friend goes through many hair manifestations and so does Violet. Fun. It grows back. Don’t be afraid of changing your hair!

I picture my bones white, so white. Vibrant and healthy. Calm. After all these months of picturing them in this way, not every day, but enough, it is easy to see them this way.

Calming the marrow. Stopping the proliferating rogue cells. That’s a little harder. Let’s have at it. I will have at it.

I slept well last night, but am mildly nauseous (Cytoxan does this). I’m still tired so will probably go back to sleep. It’s morning.

When I say I shaved my head, I don’t mean bald. There’s a nice, soft stubble. It’s soft to run my hand across. You’d like it. It’s a pleasant sensation.

Don’t forget to sing. I forget. My friend who drove me to Boston and stayed with me Thursday night so we could be at Dana Farber at 7 am Friday morning, reminded me to sing, to recite poems we knew from when we were young. Play is not unique to humans, but it is essential for happiness. I’ve been forgetting. That makes me sad; but I have every day of my life to choose to play.

Teenagers play in different ways than when they were little kids. Adults, too. Slowly, we forget unless we are immersed. Stay immersed in play. Do this. Remind me, too.

Love, send healing light whenever you can. Sing. Chant. Drum. Stomp. Recite. Play. Kiss your children and your friends, male and female. Kiss your family. Kiss.

I am greater than this cancer. I am bigger than this cancer. I am bigger than what it or the meds can do to me. I am strong. I am determined to be free of it for good.*

2 mantras:

There is no room in my body for multiple myeloma (or any cancer)

There is only room for healing light and love

Can you see that? I can. Sometimes, and at least more often than before.

*but it scares me to think this. I hope I get better at it. When I can’t pull for myself, I am so incredibly grateful for your help. I know without a shred of doubt that there are hundreds of people pulling for me, some praying, some visualizing, some singing, all sending love and hope. Some helping in the most concrete ways: food, rides, goodies.

I am grateful. Thank you.

Here I am right before the buzz cut. I’m not sure I am brave enough to show you after. In time, when my face is more rested. EVERYTHING shows when you are almost bald!

Bursting with love, Katherine

love and kisses to you all!

 

 

 

 

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how you know you were in heaven

The hard truth of bone

embryonic cells swirling

differentiating into

nuclei

osteoblasts

blood

♥

Dear readers:

As you well know, I have been struggling with pain in my upper body since April 2013 and before that with a couple of rib injuries in 2012.

Last December, things got worse—more pain and a sudden, painful protrusion on my L clavicle.

I started to feel really crappy, said to Hubby, “I am not myself; something’s wrong.”

I have been seeking help and answers the whole time—blood tests, lyme tests, RA tests, lupus tests. X rays; physical therapy, acupuncture, doctors. Everything I had been tested for came back negative—I’m strong and healthy by all appearances.

In January, I had a CT scan because of a concern my doctor had. Lo and behold, my ribs, sternum, clavicles, and spine are full of tiny fractures, ones that never showed up on 3 different x-rays over the last 2 years. These indicate multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood.

More markers have come back which show certain proteins in my blood, further narrowing it down to multiple myeloma.

I need to use my blog again. Perhaps I will start slowly, perhaps I won’t use it much, but I need to refill my creative outlet here. I am steeping myself in a helpful, loving community and I ask for healing thoughts and visualizations and meditations. I ask you to see my ribcage and bones in white light, in liquid gold, healing, healed. Maybe you see violet, maybe you see the cool blue of water. Anything healing that you see when you think of me, send it.

Not only do I believe that my bones will be cleared of this after chemo, but I want the faulty signals causing the cells to have the wrong kind of party to be reconfigured so the right messages are sent to the marrow.

I ask you to chant and meditate and breathe for me and my family, for peace, for calm. It is hard for me to ask for these things, but I am learning, humbling. I know that quieting the mind and lighting up the chakras works, the visualizations help tremendously. I hope they help us all, givers and receivers alike.

I am on a healing journey and I am using the full force of what Western medicine has to offer. My adjuncts will be my acupuncture and my imagination and any healing thoughts and incantations you can send. I am smart and I will be with some of the best doctors around who treat mm. A world-class specialist at Dana Farber in Boston will likely coordinate with my local oncologist and I can still get chemo and day-to-day care locally.

♦

I will allow comments here, but I may shut them down if I find it too difficult to field and manage input.

I do not want information that you have from the internet. I do not want questions. I do not need new information about alternate therapies at this time.

On the other hand, if you have a delicious recipe for a high-protein smoothie, I say AMEN!

In other support places, I am emphasizing being honest with my emotions, not matter how yucky they may be, but also I’m trying to remain positive and open. The use of my blog, my writing, may be slightly different. This is my space. You are guests.

My blog is sacred to me and I will be using it as a creative outlet and force, a place where I will allow myself to go into the dark if my soul needs it. If you judge me for this, I will block you from my blog.

That is all for now. Send love and light and thoughts of calm sleep and freedom from fear.

Peace.

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Jack is in his corset, Jane is in her vest: RIP Lou Reed

As I age, the legions of celebrities who shaped the popular culture into which I was born will continue to die. Their deaths will increase in number and rapidity.

I never had the slightest idea that Lou Reed would be on this list. Yes, not even a foggy notion.

♦

I probably came late to worship at the altar of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, but I don’t really remember. I don’t have any monumental story to tell you about the first time I heard the album Loaded or anything.

When I was in high school, I didn’t know about cross-dressing or what a transvestite was. Take a Walk on the Wild Side was a radio standby throughout those years, nothing radical about it.

I wasn’t raised Catholic where you dress up and attend funerals on a regular basis; in fact, I was purposely shielded from death by my parents who believed that it was appropriate to do so and it would keep me safe. I never saw a dead body until my own father died when I was 23. My first viewing of an open casket was several years later.

After John Lennon was shot (I was a mere 17), the possibility of any of the other Beatles’ dying became real. Lennon’s death was hard, but we had each other, we had the legions turning out in Central Park singing Imagine to help us through, and, like I say, I was 17, on the cusp of the wildness ahead of me and full of disdain for the adult world I was about to enter into in some small measure. I was woefully unaware of the process I now know as “aging.” Not only that, but the Beatles’ zeitgeist jumped generations and genres of music. There was so much to love about them—who even remembers that they pushed boundaries and people’s buttons? Their music’s universal appeal wiped out the shock of their long hair; the bed-in; the Jesus statement (which was willfully and ignorantly taken out-of-context anyway). 

Lou Reed and the VU captured the sound that was still alive when I was a student at Kent State University in the early ’80s. Attending any art opening had the grit and recklessness the VU sang about in the ’60s. There were drugs, fags, lesbians, cross-dressers, punk bands, hair dye, glam, 1950s vintage; and we were all sexy, every last one of us; all of this before Grunge hit the scene. By the ’90s, I had gotten sober, bought a house, started to settle into my life with my man.

♦

I remember one particular thesis show where the artist had created huge, found-metal musical instruments and everyone who went through the exhibit spent the next 3 or 4 hours demolishing the sculptures by “playing” them with the flat, rusted metal strips left around on the floor next to each one.

I went to as many art openings as I could. I went for the free booze and the food and the scent of sex, but also to be on the edge of all of those real artists. I was an English major and didn’t have the stomach for that much radicalism or creativity. What I hear when I listen to the Velvet Underground is the sound of that time.

♦

I knew a guy, a friend of another guy, who said if you looked up the word cool in the dictionary, there would be a little picture of Lou Reed next to it. That’s how cool Lou Reed was. I always loved that.

♥

Lou Reed, your death belongs to my generation, too. Thanks for the trippy guitar, the sex and the drugs and the grit, the psychedelia, the poetry, your rich and soulful voice.

You were a light in the darkness because you didn’t deny the darkness and from that place you were one of its true voices.

Now if I could pick my favorite song, I’d post it for you right here. I’m dancing and singing along and you should be, too.

Beautiful, just beautiful:

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arts town weekend

Every March in Northampton, Massachusetts is the Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Convention (this link is always available over in the right column of my blog, under “Music”).

You are warmly invited to the 2013 Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp Singing Convention. We look forward to welcoming singers from near and far, reuniting with old friends, and making new ones.

March 9th and 10th
9:30 am – 3:30 pm
(Daylight Savings Time begins on Sunday)

Dinner on the grounds at noon
Saturday evening social nearby

I missed last year’s Convention. I don’t usually make it for the whole weekend anyway, but this year I will be present for a couple of hours on Saturday morning. Come see me at the Welcome Table. I’ll draw a design on your name sticker if you want (and if I have time in all the hustle and bustle)!

After that, I’ll come home and probably schlep my kids around. Then, I will go to an Alexander Technique refresher course at my school. Saturday night, I will be seeing some funny at The Arts Block in Greenfield. Hubby has written some sketch comedy (though he and I are not in the performances that night) and the fabulous Ha-Ha’s will be performing as well.

Sunday afternoon at The Academy of Music, I will be attending Screen Test 2—a fundraiser for The Amherst Cinema.

You can go to youtube and look for videos of our Convention and yes, I could simply share one of those with you now. Instead, here I am again, singing my heart out. Because I love you.

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Happy Birthday little bug!

Happy Birthday to my little bug!

Seventeen! Unbelievable

So glad I’m here with you

XO, Mom

(ginger molasses cupcakes with whipped cream frosting courtesy of the 14 year-old)

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valentine love, love valentine

♥

I would title the post Love, but it looked and felt wrong. My next thought for a title? LOVE. Then, love. You can see what I finally chose.

Love is a kind of choosing, isn’t it? Even when we’ve been taken by love without our consent. Like the photos of adoptable dogs I pore over or the way I feel when I see my friend’s 3-year old son. That love comes without effort, question, or want.

I suppose Valentine’s Day is the most fun of all holidays if it is not taken too seriously. For if you take it too seriously, you will find something in which to be disappointed: I have no boyfriend/girlfriend; my beau didn’t get me flowers, or enough or the right color; my beau didn’t propose to me today; my love didn’t give me chocolate, a dinner out, a blowjob. Single people could be bummed out and feel less than; paired off people could find fault; so why not take it with a grain of salt? There is enough love of many kinds to go around.

All the years with children have made it fun indeed. Decorating cards to hand out in school when they were little, decorating the breakfast table, cutting food into heart-shapes. Chocolates and flowers some years, some not.

I finally got excited for Valentine’s Day at about 4 in the afternoon yesterday and went on a chocolate-buying spree and made plans in my head for the girls’ breakfast. At 4 am, I woke and paper-punched some tiny hearts all over the table, crawled back into bed and at 8:30 am (one day a month is late start day for the school), I made batter for waffles.

In the past, I would have used some sort of cut-out heart to sprinkle a heart pattern on top of their waffles, but I could not summon more motherly love than I already had. Sigh.

♥

I’ve always loved Rickie Lee Jones doing this, but Chet Baker comes in a close second. Be still my beating heart.

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snow day

My dad used to have a sign taped on the front of one of his tall, metal filing cabinets that said

Due to lack of interest, tomorrow has been cancelled

I guess he thought it was funny. The other sign was this and when I asked my mom about it once she said this is how he truly felt about his life. I don’t quite believe it, but he probably felt this way somewhat and he must have thought it was funny, too.

When my life is over
And my time has come to pass,
I hope they bury me upside-down,
So the world may kiss my ass

My dad was an atheist, but I can tell you that when he was dying of cancer, he told me that God got the aging and dying thing wrong—too much pain. God was something he referred to as a matter of course. It was a concept that we all grew up with, maybe him especially, having been a kid in a kosher household and all. When I’d talk to him about his childhood and religion and whether or not he believed in God, he would say he was an atheist, but he would tear up. I thought that meant he really did believe in God. It was a bit confusing, but also I was in awe. It was like God was right there with us when he talked about Hungary and his bar mitzvah and his mother and father, all his friends running around being bad young boys, his younger brother, his older sisters, the lumber business his father and uncle ran. When he ate pork at the age of 13 because he was curious and he didn’t believe the stuff he was taught anyway. He talked about the dishes and the milk and the meat and why. Having been brought up without religion, I listened with intent. Like if it made enough sense, I would understand something. He had his stories and I had the pictures from them. I loved my dad so much.

♥

Remember, you keepers of the truth, I want a banjo played at my funeral. I know there will be Shape Note singing, so that’s not a thing anyone needs to remember.

I like this song my kid turned me on to last year. The video is goofy and makes no sense. What’s the narrative here exactly? Nonetheless, 13 million hits don’t lie.

the fiddle and the banjo. Like the song Roseville Fair which I used to sing to my kids as a lullaby.

Rock me momma.

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love love love

All my life growing up, my father wrote letters to me.

I, too, was a great writer of letters from a very young age. I still have many of the correspondences from many of my friends. Some of the bundles of letters are fat; others thin with only a few letters or cards. Sometimes, only one letter from someone in high school or a person I met on a trip. Some curious person I don’t remember. Some friend of my parents who took to me when I was still a young girl. My inquisitive nature. My blue eyes. My youth.

My father would write to me a few times a week when I was away at summer camp. He wrote to me frequently when I was in college. He would write on a legal pad, often the yellow ones, sometimes white, always the 14″ pages, not the 11″. Or just a single piece of white typing paper enclosed in an envelope, business-size. Always one piece of paper, always a hand-scribbled bunch of words. His script was horrible, I think because he was a native Hungarian and the language was so different. He also had terrible eyesight, like all of the Glatters, as I understand it. He also must have studied Hebrew from a very young age. I can only theorize that he was confused. Handwriting is undoubtedly one of the most difficult coordinations we learn as children, so who really knows what the hell the reason.

He was a righty—my whole family is.

My father would enclose a piece of paper that had the following words:

Dearest Kath Kath,

XO

Love Love Love

Dad

I have not pulled the letters out at the time of this blog post, so perhaps I am embellishing. I will look at them soon, though. The box of letters is on my living room floor where much junk has been relocated in preparation for having new carpet installed at one end of the house. Once the carpet is in, we will reorganize a bunch of junked-up rooms and I will take some time to pull out some old letters.

Sometimes I like to sign my letters the way my father did for my own daughters or for others who I love in my life.

Love Love Love

or

love love love

Today I need to forgive myself for something I wrote on my blog Facebook* a little bit ago. I think of the way my father signed those letters. I do not think humans can give unconditional love to each other, no way, and my father’s love for me was no exception. But sometimes, if we are lucky, someone who is responsible for us gets it right.

Look what I found when I searched google images for legal yellow pad.

What a great idea. I am not writing much poetry lately (you may have noticed), but it’s refreshing to see how many different ways people approach the desire to write poems. I am heartened.

Love Love Love

XO

twinkly

*late-breaking anal-retentive/accuracy-nut update

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