Sunday, April 9, 2017

That Old Gang of Mine #AtoZChallenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2017
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?
Blogging every day.  It starts on April First with a topic themed on something beginning with the letter A, then every day in April, (with the exception of Sundays)  another topic continuing through the alphabet ending with, of course the letter Z.
I really don’t have a theme.  Some will be fiction.   Mostly whatever strikes my fancy.


That Old Gang of Mine

We all belong to one, don’t we?  As we move through life, we may move in and out of our old gangs and find new ones along the way.
When I was a kid my brother, sister, and I lived with our parents in a housing complex which was built specifically for returning WWII soldiers and their families.  The complex was referred to as “The Barracks”.   Even though I was very young, I think about 7 or 8 years old, I have strong memories of living in “The Barracks”.
The members of my gang were the kids from other ex-military families.
I don’t remember any of their names, but I do remember hanging out with them, playing tag and hide-and-seek around the culdesac.
When I was 9 we moved into a brand new house in a town about 30 miles south of where the barracks were.
There were many kids in the new neighborhood.
After all it was baby boom time.  Our family multiplied from 3 kids to eventually 6.
The Shebel’s across the street had 9 kids and two houses down lived the Creed's with 6 kids.  We all played in the street after school until 5:00 when the mother’s would yell for their kids to come home for supper.
As we became teenagers and our interests became less common and more individual, some of us separated from the neighborhood gang.
Personality types, social status, sports prowess, beauty, brains and the way you dressed now became the determining factor for which gang you would gravitate towards.
I’ve been in gangs where I worked,  gangs of stay at home Mom’s, and then “back to work” again gangs.  Right now I belong to the “active adult community” gang.
When I look back over my life, that’s a lot of gangs.

My forever gang,  the one which is and always has been consistent, loyal, and whose members I can always count on  is my “La Famiglia” gang.


Friday, April 7, 2017

Fran, The Fingerless Gloves and The Fisherman Part III #AtoZChallenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2017
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?
Blogging every day.  It starts on April First with a topic themed on something beginning with the letter A, then every day in April, (with the exception of Sundays)  another topic continuing through the alphabet ending with, of course the letter Z.
I really don’t have a theme.  Some will be fiction.   Mostly whatever strikes my fancy.


Another visit with Fran who first made two appearances as the F and K posts in last’s years AtoZ challenge.

April 7, 2016
Fran, The Fingerless Gloves and The Fisherman
On a chilly, early spring morning, Fran sat on a freshly painted, dark green bench and looked out at the ocean.  The bench was anchored onto a wooden deck set high up on the man-made dunes.   Normally she would have walked along the water, picking up shells, but the beach was terribly eroded from destructive winter storms and there was a ten-foot drop down onto the shoreline.
 
She closed her eyes and let the ocean breeze caress her face.
Her hands snuggled in the warmth of the wool of her well-worn fingerless gloves, her bare fingers wrapped around a white Styrofoam cup of steaming hot tea.
 
The gloves, cherry red when they were new, had now faded into a rusty shade of their former brightness.
She reflected on how much her life had changed since the day Gina gave her the gloves.
"Ah, Gina," she sighed and looked at her watch.
 
Fran finished the last of her tea.  She better hurry, she thought.  She did not want to be late.  Today was Gina's last day.  They were going to surprise her with a cake and presents.
Of course, Fran suspected that Gina wouldn't be all that surprised.  After 25 years at the halfway house, it was hard to pull the wool over her eyes.
She stood up and noticed a man coming down the beach.  He was bent over, carrying an army green tackle box and fishing pole in one hand and dragging along a large blue cooler with the other.
He spotted her and began to wave.
 
As she turned to leave, she carelessly waved back.
 
Fran began to walk down the wooden ramp when she thought she heard her name being called.
She stopped to listen.

Fran, The Fingerless Gloves and The Fisherman Part II - A to Z Challenge - The Letter K for Knitting
April 13, 2016
"Frankie, Frankie, wait!”
Startled, she froze.  There was only one person who ever called her Frankie. 
"Frankie, wait!"
She tried to reassure herself.  No, it couldn't be she thought.
Fran slowly turned around and saw the fisherman struggling to climb up the steep sand dune.
As he got closer, she squinted and raised her hand up to shade her eyes from the bright sun, trying to see if it
 was he.
But by then she already knew that it was.  It was Tom.  He was the only one who ever called her Frankie.
She wanted to run.  Run as fast as she could, down the planked path to the parking lot.
But she was frozen and like a deer caught in the headlights, she couldn't move.
Two years ago was the last time she had seen him.
As she waited for him to make his way towards her she thought about the day they first met.
January 14.   She would never forget it.
It had been a cold dank morning with a smoky gray snow sky.  She could still recall shivering as she waited outside of the rehab.  Gina was to pick her up to bring her to the halfway house.
When she and Gina got to the residential facility called “Gina’s Way”, Tom was the one who had greeted them at the front door.
Now as she reflected back on that day, she remembered that she had barely noticed him. 
She had been too nervous and afraid.  She didn't want to be left there. She didn't want Gina to leave.
"I'll come by tomorrow," promised Gina.
"Can't you stay?  Just a little longer?"  Fran begged.
"Listen, Fran, you're going to be fine.  I just know it."
"Besides, I have the group waiting for me.  You know we are going to be finishing up our gloves tonight," Gina said.
She shook her head back and forth, as if the movement would chase the memory from her mind.  
Slowly looking up she saw that Tom was now on the wooden deck at the top of the dunes, just a few yards from her.
Fran clutched her hands together; her bare fingers peeked out of the faded red fingerless gloves.
Gina had given the gloves to Fran.
"They're beautiful," exclaimed Fran.
 "I knit them just for you, Fran," said Gina.
"Do you think I can learn to do that?" asked Fran.
Gina assured Fran, “Of course you can,” she said.
At first, Fran could hardly keep her shaky hands still enough to hold onto the wooden needles.
But Gina would put her hands over Fran's to guide her through the stitches.
"First, make an X with the needles, like this," Gina said, demonstrating.
"You see, the needle in your right hand goes into the loop on the left needle.  That's it, place the right needle behind the left."
"No, no, it has to go behind the one in your left, like an X," Gina patiently explained.
"Here's an easy way to remember," said Gina.
In a sing-song voice, Gina chanted,
"In through the front door,
Run around the back,
Hop through the window,
Off jumps Jack."
"That's it!"  You've got it!" exclaimed Gina when Fran completed her first stitch.
She remembered the very first thing she made. It was a garter stitch scarf in scratchy blue wool.
By the time she finished it, the scarf was full of holes where she'd dropped stitches and one side was uneven.
Gina made a fuss over it, though, praising Fran for not giving up.
Finishing that scarf gave Fran hope that this time she might also be able to stick with the program.
Gina and knitting.  The were now the tightly interwoven threads of Fran's complex life.
"Hi, Frankie."
He stood in front of her.
She lifted her eyes to look up at him.
He was wearing the blue scarf.

Fran, The Fingerless Gloves and The Fisherman Part III - A to Z Challenge - The Letter F for Frankie
April 7, 2017
Her heart began to thump rapidly in her chest.  She grabbed onto the handrail to steady herself.  
Her mind was racing. Her emotions were like a ball in an arcade game ping ponging all over the place.
Anger hit the jackpot.  Bing, bing, bing!
Without thinking she reached up and punched him in the arm.
She stammered.  “How could you…where…why?”
She could not seem to organize her scattered thoughts into a coherent sentence.
“Frankie,” he said softly. 
He gently placed his hands on her arms pulling her towards him.
Fran wriggled out of his arms and pushed him away.
She felt a searing pain, deep in her being, as the wound she had so carefully tended to began to rip open.
“Please, Frankie,” he pleaded. 
“I’ve got to go!” Fran turned and ran down the ramp.
Tom stayed at the top of the deck.  He did not call after her.  He did not follow.
When Fran got to her car she turned, half expecting Tom to be right there. 
She knew she would have to face him sooner or later, but tonight belonged to Gina.
As she drove the 20 miles back to “Gina House”, she thought about the last night she and Tom spent together.   She was so happy.   She thought he was happy too.  
He told her he was.  
They had sat on the front porch of  “Gina House” and planned an early breakfast the next morning.  Then they were going to begin their apartment search. 
He told her he had some things to take care of so he would have to call it an early night.
“Don’t forget, Frankie, bright and early tomorrow.”
“Nine-thirty, right?”  She teased.
“Frankie!”
Fran giggled.
“Urgh!”  She growled out loud.
She didn’t want to think about those times.  She especially did not ant to think about that night, that last night.
It had taken Fran months to trust him.  But, slowly she began to open up to him.
He knew about her father and the hurt. 
It was after that time, the time she told him about her father that Tom began call her Frankie. 
“Fran is the little hurt girl”, he said.
“Frankie is my wonderfully strong woman.  That’s who you will always be to me,” he said.”
She even began to think of herself as Frankie. 
The day he left her, waiting for him on the front porch, she became Fran again, fragile as a hurt little girl.

I sure hope we don’t have to wait another whole year for Fran to make an appearance, right?

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Essential #AtoZChallenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2017
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?
Blogging every day.  It starts on April First with a topic themed on something beginning with the letter A, then every day in April, (with the exception of Sundays)  another topic continuing through the alphabet ending with, of course the letter Z.
I really don’t have a theme.  Some will be fiction.   Mostly whatever strikes my fancy.


Essential

es·sen·tial
əˈsen(t)SHəl/
adjective
  1. 1
    absolutely necessary; extremely important.

On September 11, 2001,  I was employed by the Wall Street Journal.  My position was not a glamorous one.  I wasn’t a reporter or an editor.  In fact I didn’t even work on Wall Street.  I was ensconced in a cubical on the basement level of a corporate center in Central New Jersey.
I worked in the IT department as an e-mail administrator.  Our group’s job was to maintain the inter-company email system.
Working as an IT support person meant carrying a Blackberry 24/7.  Yes, that’s what we carried back then.   My co-workers and I had a rotating on-call schedule.    By 2001, after 20 years of that grind, I was experiencing burn-out.
That day, the day of the attack, I remember watching the news on one of the break-room TV’s as the horror unfolded right in front of our eyes.
I remember being terrified.
I also remember the only thing I wanted to do that day was go home to be with my family.
The New York headquarters building for the Wall Street Journal was across the street from the World Trade Center.   The group of newspeople who managed to get out of the building and out of the city made their way down to Central New Jersey, where I worked.
It was pretty much chaos in our center as we scrambled to get the reporters up and running to be able to write their stories.  The newspaper had never missed a single day of publication.
A directive came down from the head of IT that no one was to leave.  We were to stay all night if necessary to support the reporter's technical needs.
Our group was considered essential.
Frankly, I remember thinking that getting the scoop on this story and making sure that the production of the paper was not to be interrupted, did not seem very important that day.   At least it wasn’t to me.
What was essential to me was to be home with Ross and to make sure my children were safe.
I stayed that night until the wee hours.
But that day was also the day I decided to retire.  I have never regretted my decision because since the day I am the one who decides what is essential for my life.


I Have A Daughter #AtoZChallenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2017
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?
Blogging every day.  It starts on April First with a topic themed on something beginning with the letter A, then every day in April, (with the exception of Sundays)  another topic continuing through the alphabet ending with, of course the letter Z.
I really don’t have a theme.  Some will be fiction.   Mostly whatever strikes my fancy.



I Have A Daughter

Mothers and daughters share a bond that is not the same as mothers and sons or fathers and daughters.
I believe it goes beyond gender empathy.  For  I don’t think that fathers and sons share the same level of understanding that mothers and daughters do.
When our daughters are born we nod our heads and whisper in their tiny ears, “Ahh, yes,” finally understanding the melancholic concert of joy and sadness passed on to us by our own mothers.

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Crying Over You #AtoZChallenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2017
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?
Blogging every day.  It starts on April First with a topic themed on something beginning with the letter A, then every day in April, (with the exception of Sundays)  another topic continuing through the alphabet ending with, of course the letter Z.
I really don’t have a theme.  Some will be fiction.   Mostly whatever strikes my fancy.



Crying Over You

I was awakened early this morning.  It was 4:34.  Perhaps a bad dream.   The song “Crying” by Roy Orbison was ear worming in my brain.

"I was all right for a while, I could smile for a while
But I saw you last night, you held my hand so tight
As you stopped to say "Hello"
Aw you wished me well, you couldn't tell
That I'd been crying over you, crying over you
Then you said "so long". left me standing all alone
Alone and crying, crying, crying crying
It's hard to understand but the touch of your hand
Can start me crying…”

The most intimate moments in my life occurred when I gave birth to each of my three children.
For each of the times, my child and I shared something together that would be like no other time in our lives.
Although, at the moment of their first breath of life, we may have physically separated, the tightly wound knot that bound us together during the months before, left a deep and everlasting imprint in my heart and soul.
I have had many joyous moments in my life.   But none as heady and breathtaking as giving birth and holding my baby for the first time.  Each time, I was so full of happiness that I cried.

Today, in the early pre dawn of this very day, I am immersed in a memory of the birth of my son, Joe.  I close my eyes and vividly recall the experience.  I feel the weight of him cradled in my arms.   I am filled with joy and wonderment as I look down at his tiny face.   I feel his softness as I trace his baby skin with my fingertips.  He seeks nourishment from me as his little mouth opens and closes.
Me and my Joe, just the two of us, sharing the most intimately tender moment of our lives.
I want to stay here in the moment of that memory.  It’s gauzy and dreamy and delicious.

Forty-two years ago on this day,  Joe and I shared one of the most intimate moments of our lives, like no other.

Today, I am so filled with sadness that I cried.

Monday, April 3, 2017

If I Had Been Born A Bronte #AtoZChallenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2017
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?
Blogging every day.  It starts on April First with a topic themed on something beginning with the letter A, then every day in April, (with the exception of Sundays)  another topic continuing through the alphabet ending with, of course the letter Z.
I really don’t have a theme.  Some will be fiction.   Mostly whatever strikes my fancy. 





If I Had Been Born a Bronte

I recently watched a two hour PBS* Masterpiece drama film called “To Walk Invisible”.   The film takes place during a three year period of the famous Bronte family’s life.

As the piece unfolded, I became intrigued by these three sisters.  I gained insight into where, why and how the stories and characters of their novels evolved.
I thought it was so interesting that their imaginations were able to expand far beyond their small isolated world.

By the end of the film, I began to wonder how it was that not only did each of the sisters share a passionate love of writing, but how extraordinary it was that individually each sister was able to produce literary masterpieces of their own.

That made me think of my own interest in writing.  Comparatively speaking, it is far from passionate.
I would consider it to be more of an outlet for emotional expression than a passion.  And since I am not always in an extreme emotional state,  writing for me is not all consuming.
I can’t help but wonder, though,  if my interest might have developed into a passion if it had been nurtured in the same way that the Bronte’s was nurtured.

Eeven though I was inspired by my high school English teacher Clarence Jolly Jr. to think that I might be able to pursue writing in some professional way, my parents more practical idea of secretarial work and marriage were apparently the more influential.

I have to say my blog has renewed my interest in writing and at times I might even admit to passion.

By the way, I highly recommend “To Walk Invisible”.  It was well done.

Hey, did you notice me in the photo? :)

*PBS is an independently operated non-profit organization and is the most prominent provider of television programming to public television stations in the United States.





Saturday, April 1, 2017

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore #AtoZChallenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2017
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?
Blogging every day.  It starts on April First with a topic themed on something beginning with the letter A, then every day in April, (with the exception of Sundays)  another topic continuing through the alphabet ending with, of course the letter Z.
I really don’t have a theme.  Some will be fiction.   Mostly whatever strikes my fancy. 



Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Alice stood motionless at the now bare window.  Puzzled, she wondered why the curtains were not on the window.    That’s right, she remembered now.  It was spring cleaning time.  She always hand washed her kitchen curtains. They must be soaking in the tub, she thought.
She remembered how she had walked up and down aisles of bolts of cotton and linen, stopping now and then to pull one out.   She must have walked around the fabric store for thirty minutes.   She covered her mouth and giggled.
“No, Alice, it was more like 4 hours.”
David Sr. would always correct her whenever she would tell the story of the curtains.  

She knew exactly what she had been looking for, though.  Crisp white linen with bunches of cherries all over.
“I’ll take seven yards, please,” she told the lady behind the cutting table.
Hypnotized by the back and forth movement of the rusty blue bird feeder as it moved in time with the light breeze of new spring, she quietly watched, hoping for a glimpse of twittering red feathers hoping between the tree branches.  Her mouth curled into a weak smile as she recalled the rush of excitement she would feel whenever she was lucky enough to spot the cardinal among the brooding fingers of mossy green pine needles.
“Mom?  Mom.  Mom!”
Startled, Alice turned towards the voice which had broken her out of her reverie.
“Do you remember where I put the bird seed?”  she asked.
Sadly, David shook his head and gently put his arm around his mothers frail shoulders, leading her towards the door.
“Mom, come on now it’s time to go.”