Category: Nonfiction (Page 7 of 11)

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The Leavings

17 January 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Susan Reese

I feel the days of parenthood creeping by, distant and unfulfilled. I hear the ticking of my children’s childhood clocks as that time passes forever by. Without a present and without a memory. These are feelings which fill my days and flood my heart with longing, the pain of separation and the melancholy of despair.
Lou Reese, #52760-080, 1992

You called late one night. You called every night, but it was unusual for you to call so late. After the kids were already asleep.

I was in our bed, exhausted from the day, finishing my tea and reading for a few minutes before turning out the light. That first year with you away in prison, it was hard to fall asleep.

We chatted about this and that. You had a new cellmate. Just arrived today. How was I holding up? Pretty good I guess. How was Beau’s sleepover with Orion last night? Fun. Uneventful.

I could tell there was another reason for the late-night call.

I closed my book and placed it on the bedside table. I turned off the lamp and lay on my back in the dark, holding only the phone, pretending you were lying next to me.

There was an awkward silence before you cleared your throat, lowered your voice, and said, “Susan, do you think it would be easier for the kids if you all stopped visiting me? Let them stay home, concentrate on school, their friends and having fun? Let them just pretend I’m away on a long business trip?”

My impulse was to comfort you, to say whatever I had to say to make you feel better, but my anger rose as I recognized your selfishness. I sat up and switched the light back on. Maybe that would be better for the kids, you’d said. My heart was racing as my eyes adjusted to the light. I was wide awake now.

How could you imagine our children not seeing you for three years? Hearing your voice from 800 miles away without seeing your face, or you theirs. Katie needing you for every precarious step from thirteen to sixteen. You were the most important male in her life. Beau needing you for the things I felt ill-equipped to handle. Sports, competition and before long, girls. And McKenzie—the baby. Needing you to be proud of her successes and your reassurance that she was not being disloyal having surrogate fathers for the first grade, father-daughter pancake breakfast and her first under the lights soccer game.

And me, needing you to be strong, to somehow manage to thrive. With the addition of everything else, were you willing to hand me the entire weight of parenthood for three years?

The longer we talked into the night, the easier it was for you to tell me the truth. I relaxed back into our bed and listened to you, my faraway husband.

“I don’t know if I can handle this, Susan. I’m ashamed, and I hate the kids seeing me this way.” Ashamed to be in the visiting room filled with strangers. The f***ing guards on red alert watching for a forbidden kiss between us. Ashamed of the count, having the kids watch as you line up subserviently with tattooed, long-haired inmates. Ashamed. “Every time you all come to see me, I don’t think I can stand it. When you all leave, I’m a total mess.”

Yes, the leavings hurt the most. Watching us walk away from you—off to the Comfort Inn as you head back to your dorm to climb up on your tiny top bunk, put your t-shirt over your face, and cry yourself to sleep. It would be easier for you to do your time on your own. Sure, probably. But at what cost to our kids? Not a price I was willing to have them pay.

Susan Reese is writing a book length manuscript dealing with the experience she and her family had when her husband, Lou, was incarcerated for three years. Writings include poems and essays written by Lou (the insider) and Susan (the outsider), reflecting the fact that the whole family was incarcerated.

The Rock Garden

10 January 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Ron Theel

This time, I need a rock, not just any rock, but the right shape and size rock to finish the stone bench I’m making for my backyard. Usually, I find rocks easily. I forage the edges of farmers’ fields. I scavenge the curbs of newer-home neighborhoods, tracking my quarry, old stone leftovers from rebuilt patios and walkways. I bring these home like well-deserved trophies.

I’ve always appreciated stone, its beauty and durability. Things made from stone have simple lines and natural elegance. Stone endures without maintenance. No painting, staining, or waterproofing is required. I spent college summers working for a small company specializing in “stonescaping.” I learned how to use rocks and stones to beautify backyard landscapes by creating features such as waterless ponds and dry streambeds.

Today, I need Craigslist for help with the hunt. I scour headings like “free stuff” and “gardening.” That’s how I met Ilka. I saw her post, “landscaping rocks for sale, $20 each, your choice.” An email and text exchange later, I have the address and drive up to a small ranch-style home painted Easter-egg purple, nestled on top of a hill. Rocks surround her home and front yard. Tons of granite, sandstone, limestone, and more. Stacks of rocks line both sides of the driveway. The backyard is an overgrown field dotted with clusters of rocks like wild grapes waiting to be picked.

As I walk up the driveway, a woman approaches. She’s statuesque with timeless natural beauty: a tanned face framed by long, slightly graying, blonde hair, chiseled, high cheekbones, and turquoise eyes. She speaks in a deep voice, “I’m Ilka. I grow rocks in my yard. All kinds of them. They just pop through the ground like mushrooms after a spring shower. Let me know if you need help.”

I know where the rocks really come from. Ilka’s property rests upon drumlins, small hills of rocks and gravel deposited millions of years ago by receding glaciers. The alternate freezing and thawing of the ground during winter pushes new rocks to the surface every spring. I say nothing of this to Ilka. I’m sure she secretly knows that rocks cannot be grown.

It does not take long for me to find the perfect rock for the bench. It’s a large slab of limestone, beautifully imprinted with tiny seashells and fossils. Ilka helps me hoist the rock into the back of my SUV. “Come back in spring,” she calls. “I’ll have many more rocks.”

That night, I dream of Ilka, the Druid Queen. Ilka, the Earth Mother. I see her dancing and leaping across the yard, beneath a frosty autumn moon, weaving in and out of the rock piles. I hear her chanting an ancient runic rhyme, calling forth next year’s crop.

Ron Theel is an educator, mixed media artist, and freelance writer. His work has appeared in Lake Life and in the November 2022 issue of The Bluebird Word.

Faculty Recital

4 January 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Pama Lee Bennett

The college students straggle in, wearing shorts and graphic T-shirts. They no longer wear protective masks, nor do I. A teacher in jeans and a faded top posts a “quick response” code on the wall, and students crowd in to scan their attendance with their smart phones. I take a seat alone in the recital hall, on the aisle in the left section, where I will be able to see not only the featured flutist, but also my pianist friend’s hands as she accompanies her. The flutist, pretty, dark-haired, and unadorned in a black blouse and black trousers, enters the stage, followed by my blonde friend in a black, long-sleeved dress. They begin, and I lean forward slightly, listening, appreciative of the tone and skill of the flutist. It is my first concert in two years.

I enjoy the first several numbers: the “Andante Pastorale et Scherzettino,” by Taffanel; “Les Folies d’Espagne,” by Marias; the “Aria” by Dohnányi. The audience is still and attentive, the flute and my friend’s virtuoso piano filling the once-empty air. Even the unfamiliar tones of the Chinese variations, by Chen Yi, interest me. And then the flutist exchanges her soprano instrument for an alto flute, and they begin playing Arvo Pärt’s, “Spiegel im Spiegel,” and the low, slow, sustained notes reach deep into my being and bring me to tears. Missing pieces of my soul silently enter the room and tentatively float to where I am seated and hover above me, pieces that had left me behind when life became distanced and isolated.

Later, backstage, I hug my friend, and I am introduced to the flutist. I say how moved I was by “Spiegel im Spiegel.” She asks if I’ve ever heard an alto flute before. I say yes, once, at a master class given by the British flutist Trevor Wye. She exclaims, “I bought this flute from him!” I stare at her, then we smile. My missing pieces begin to fall gently back into place.

Pama Lee Bennett is a speech pathologist living in Sioux City, IA. She plays in a Renaissance recorder ensemble. She has taught at summer English language camps in Poland, and at a school there in 2019. Her poems have appeared in Bogg, Evening Street Review, Dash, and Tipton Poetry Journal.

The Gift

2 January 2023 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Cindy Jones

The brunch dishes lingered on the dining table. Clothes half-out of overnight bags and pillows lined the walls. Someone had cleared away last night’s wine glasses from the coffee table. Aaron Neville quietly sang “Please Come Home for Christmas.” I nudged two friends from their private patio conversation that it was time to come in.

He sat crossed-legged on the floor next to the tree, wavy hair the color of sunlit wheat and strawberries, locks falling into his eyes, wearing a too-small Santa hat and the softest red shirt, not bright enough to be crimson, not brown enough to be burgundy, it was carmine I think. I loved him in that shirt. He made jokes, called out names and passed gifts across the room to our daughter and friends, our hearts filled with laughter and the warmth of belonging.

That might have been our 15th Christmas or our 25th, they are a jumble in my head.

My hands moved the yarn over with the hook, and under and then pulled up a loop. I worked quickly through the simple repetitive motions, counting stitches as I sat alone in the radiation waiting room or rested in bed for months at home. The evidence of my obsession was a pile of crocheted scarves and wraps that threatened to collapse when I tossed on the latest one.

My daughter laid the old camping blanket down and slid the Douglas fir across the back seat. Through my rearview, its tip leaned out the open window, bending in the wind. I dreaded dragging up the ornaments from the garage and recounting the stories that went with each one. Christmas had abandoned me in a new house in a new town. What remained were gamma rays cooking me from the inside, my daughter leaving for her father’s house and me wandering the deserted hallways of my past, tripping over the shattered dreams and broken trust.

I walked down my dark hallway, pulled a new skein of yarn randomly from my basket and got back in bed.

“I made it safely Mom,” she texted, “I’ll miss you for Christmas.”

I pulled the covers higher and reached for my hook and yarn. Long lengths of gray drifted from light shades to dark, morphing into sections of carmine, and pops of yellow, warm as Christmas lights. I began to work, quickly and mindlessly at first and then the movements became slower and slower, and more deliberate.

The sensation wafted stealthily through my bedroom window, open even in December, settling in the middle of my chest before I could stop it, blanketing me like a newly fallen snow over the rage and devastation that festered inside.

I stilled my hands from the over-under, closed my eyes to the colors, quieted my mind from the counting, inhaled the sweet belonging that lived in me, and tasted the unexpected gift of grace.

Dear Louis, Today I am filled with the spirit of Christmas. I thought of you when I saw these colors.

After I wrapped the scarf in tissue paper and placed it in a small shipping box, I imagined his hand reaching in to lift it out, my note falling to the floor. I saw him raise his arms and slide it around his neck, brushing across his stubble to the small fine hairs on the back, as my lips used to do.

Cindy Jones is currently living her best life in Mazatlán, Mexico while navigating Stage IV cancer. She spends her days walking on the beach, enjoying live music, writing creative nonfiction and photographing the external world in ways that reveal our inner landscapes.

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Mount Kenashi

29 December 2022 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Victoria Clayton

Dear Mount Kenashi,

Our journey together started years before I first met you in the winter of ‘16. It was our first-time being introduced and to be honest, I wasn’t particularly enamored by you. You seemed cold and aloof, mysterious, and strange. To get to know you seemed rather arduous. Other things sparked my interest more, the warm embrace of hot spring waters, easy on the eyes snow-covered landscapes and sweet tasting fruits – all much more charming and needing less effort on my part.

For a few days we brushed shoulders, caught on the edges of one another’s existence. To be honest, I thought you were slightly brash and coupled with my inexperience I found myself constantly tripping over myself around you. However, I will admit, we did have a few good runs together but nothing like how others gushed of you. After that brief encounter we parted ways, said our pleasant goodbyes and despite my best intentions I never really expected to see you again. It wasn’t love at first sight, or ride. And I left you, with some fond memories and large indifference; but still, I did promise to call you again, someday.

Years passed by and my desire to see you grew further from my mind. Then this summer, I met some people who knew you. They spoke of your wonder, your warmth, and I knew I had to see you again. Five years later, to the day I found myself in the exact same spot, but this time round, I decided that I would try and get to know you.

It started like any dream would with snowy skies and easy rides. Green fueled adrenaline rushed through my being, and I couldn’t get enough of you. I rose early every morning to come and be with you until the last hours of daylight slipped below the horizon. For a short while the smooth, effortless gliding through the uncomplicated terrain of a new love as light as the morning’s freshly fallen snow was all I needed.

That was, until we hit our first challenge. Everyone who witnessed our whirlwind thought we were ready. Oh, how wrong they were. Ill-prepared for this first confrontation, we ended free-falling down the side of a slippery slope with nothing under our feet to grip on to. The honeymoon had hardened, and your colder side was revealed. Feeling humiliated and hurt I stumbled back into the arms of an old companion and warmed my weary body in healing waters. The next day, persuaded to reconcile, we tried again to find a solution, but neither of us had changed. I walked away tired and bruised; I needed a break.

In our time apart, I dreamt of you every night, your softness, your serenity. In waking hours, I tried to distract myself from thinking of you yet always found myself back, lost daydreaming in old albums. Determined to make it work I came back to see you. This time there was no blizzard or storm just blue skies propping up the illusion of harmony. I still dared not to reapproach the path of where we both got lost. I just wanted to have fun with you again. So, we did, all while ignoring the elephant in the room or rather the tanuki on the mountain.

Victoria Clayton is an artist, writer and wanderer living and working in western Japan.

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Parting Gift

27 December 2022 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Marianne Lonsdale

I cooked dinner for Dad in early December, warming up canned baked beans, cut up hot dogs and a little ketchup in a pot. The television news blared from the family room accompanied by Dad’s hacking cough. Dad took up smoking again after Mom, his wife of 62 years, died four years earlier. I pushed open a window to diffuse the constant stream of second-hand smoke but worried the cold air would chill him.

I’d given up on cooking anything other than dishes with hot dogs or ground beef—Dad considered pretty much everything else an extravagance. Individual bowls of iceberg lettuce served as my attempt at something healthy and green. I whipped up his favorite salad dressing, equal parts mayonnaise and ketchup.

I put our plates on the table and we took the same spots that we’d been sitting in since we’d moved to this house when I was five years old. Dad at the head, and me to his right. We missed having my mom at the other end and being surrounded by my sister and six brothers.

He spooned the goopy dressing over the beans mix and the salad, ate quickly and handed me his plate.

“Is there more?” he asked.

He’d weighed in at just 130 pounds at his last doctor’s visit. I wasn’t sure what he ate on the nights that I or one of my siblings were not at the house, and it made me happy to see him with an appetite and eating with gusto.

“Thank you for cooking,” he said. “I really like seeing you. I appreciate your coming.”

Dad said the same few sentences to me on each visit and not much else. His world had shrunk to the walls of his house and his memories of his wife, my mother.

Mom’s death disoriented him; he still cried every time I visited. He was so lonely but had little tolerance for visitors. He was even ready for me to leave after about 90 minutes, usually heading up the few stairs to his bedroom without saying goodnight.

He objected to any help. We’d forced a housecleaner on him and he refused to pay her. He sometimes smelled. He’d just begun using a walker after several falls, including one getting out of the sports car he’d bought at age 86, and he lay on the street as cars sped by until some man eventually stopped and helped him up. But every now and then he’d perk up.

“What’s that bird?” Dad asked after he’d taken his last bite of beans. I took a few steps to the freezer, hoping he’d enjoy the vanilla ice cream I’d brought.

What the heck was he talking about? I stared at him; even his eyes, deep brown with hazel highlights, seemed to have faded, filmy and dull.

“The one that people think brings babies?”

“A stork?” I asked and brought two bowls of ice cream to the table. “Do you mean a stork?”

“That’s it! I knew you’d know.” Dad beamed.

“When you were born, the nurse brought me to the nursery in the hospital. All these babies were in clear plastic boxes, lined up. On the wall behind them was a painting of this huge stork—that bird had the most incredible brown eyes. So big and warm and beautiful. The nurse pointed you out to me and I just stared. My girl had the same eyes. So beautiful. Do you remember me calling you Birdseye? Do you remember that nickname?”

I’d hated that nickname. My sister was Princess and I was Birdseye. The name was ugly. I was jealous of Princess. I wondered why my Dad called me Birdseye but never asked why. Questions weren’t much tolerated in our household.

This story had never been told. I was near 60 years old and Dad was 89. He shared this memory with so much love. He said so little these days, like every thought was difficult to pull out.

His story surprised me. I’d never considered that the name might be one of affection. Dad had an unpredictable temper and I’d often assumed that he found humor in being mean and teasing. And I’d shut down, cutting him out of many events of my life, and not sharing how I felt with him. Now I wonder how many times he and I misunderstood each other, blocking so much love that we might have shared.

I didn’t know that would be our last dinner together, or that hospice care would start for Dad in a couple of weeks, and that he’d die on December 27th. I am so grateful that this parting gift, the truth of the nickname, flew from him to me and I better know how much he loved me, right from the start.

Marianne Lonsdale writes personal essays, fiction, and literary interviews. Her work has been published in Literary Mama, Grown and Flown, Pulse and has aired on public radio. She lives in Oakland, California.

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Snow Days

18 December 2022 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Crystal McQueen

It’s been a long week with snow and ice imprisoning families in their homes. My teenagers lie abed as I trudge down the stairs on my lunch break. They should be the ones to shovel the snow, but I don’t wake them. I let them sleep.

Outside, the air is crisp against my face, and my breath puffs like tiny clouds. Basking in the joy of closed schools, half a dozen children take advantage of the slick street with their sleds. My kids haven’t used their sleds in years. They sit in the garage, gathering dust, but I don’t have the heart to give them away.

I smile at the little faces from behind my bundled layers, but they do not see me. Shrieks and laughter serenade me as I work. Ice has hardened beneath the powdery snow and sweat pours down my back long before the top layer of snow is cleared from my porch. I have to stop to stretch my back.

Other mothers sip their coffees, overseeing the raucous play as they chat and giggle. Envy tugs at me. Their kids are still young, and most of them are stay-at-home moms while I still have half a day of remote work left for me after I clear these steps. If I can clear these steps. The ice seems determined to thwart me.

My kids have to work tomorrow. If it isn’t done now, it will be waiting for me when it’s getting dark. Leaving the driveway under a sheet of ice isn’t an option. My kids won’t call off work. They don’t even like to request time off to do things they enjoy like vacations, parties and dates. I like that. It shows reliability, responsibility. Yet, here I am, shoveling while they sleep. The irony is not lost on me.

My neighbor, a firefighter, also chips at the ice on his driveway. He probably needs to work tomorrow too. The rest of the street remains dormant, willing to wait out the weather.

The firefighter’s wife, a mother of a girl and twin boys, calls to me.

“Hey, want to hear a funny story?”

I should get back to work. I need a shower, but I don’t want to be rude.

“Sure.”

“Is that your office up there?” She points to a second-story window facing her home. The children have stopped their play to listen, already giggling.

I frown and wonder where this is going. “Yes, it is.”

“Last night, I was giving the boys a bath, and my kid saw you through the window. He said, ‘Mom, look who’s Googling and drinking wine!’”

The kids burst into fits of laughter. The other moms smile at me with knowing nods.

I play along and give them a chuckle, even though I’m embarrassed. Somehow, a six- year-old boy caught a glimpse of me in a writing workshop, a search for who I might become in the next stage of my life, with a rare glass of wine. I seldom drink. The wine has to be really sweet, and the extra calories aren’t worth it.

I explain none of this as the moms cluster back in their circle, and the kids resume their play, grins still stretched across their rosy faces. Back inside, as I shed sweaty, snow-covered clothes in a pile by the door, I wonder if drinking and shopping online is what those kids think the strange lady-who-doesn’t-hang-out-with-their-moms does all day.

From my office window, I see the little ones surrender to the cold, one-by-one tromping back inside to the warmth of their homes until all that remains are the impressions of sled paths and tiny feet.

Hours later, my boys are well-rested and dressed. Even with their young, strong arms, we spend hours de-icing the driveway, scraping and shoveling until we feel like our backs might break. We are alone, toiling in the fading light, our clothes soaked in sweat.

We get takeout for dinner.

A week passes, and the soreness fades. I spend the day purging the papers in my office. For hours, I shred stacks of papers. Useless medical bills and bank statements, packets of elementary school report cards and quarterly attendance awards. Some go back two decades. My boys each peek into my office, their curiosity drawing them in. For a while, they sit on the floor next to me, folding their long legs into cross-cross-apple-sauce, as I work.

I treasure the time they choose to be with me and discuss their day with their deep baritone voices that are new and unfamiliar, but that I would recognize anywhere. This occurs less and less as the years pass. I try not to think about when they won’t be home anymore, but the thoughts press in anyway. It will happen gradually as if it might escape my notice. No more walks across the hall. Phone calls with occasional visits from college. Then, just birthdays and Christmases. Each passing day drawing them further into their own person. Into their own life. And, I will be there, encouraging them, supporting them where I can. But I won’t be there, all day, every day, watching, guiding, protecting. That won’t be my job anymore.

It is nearly dark when I cart three garbage bags filled with paper shavings across the lawn and into the trash barrel, and I wonder if the neighborhood children see this. I hope they do. Give their little voices something else to talk about. Maybe they will think I am a master criminal or a super spy. Let them imagine a more interesting grown-up life than late night intoxicated shopping. Let them enjoy crafting stories about mysterious adults while they are still safe in their little beds, and their moms watch over them.

Crystal McQueen lives in Northern Kentucky with her husband and two teenaged boys. Crystal attends EKU’s Bluegrass Writer’s Studio, pursuing her MFA and has work in The Writing Disorder and borrowed solace. A passion for adventure and love for her family acts as her inspiration. For more information, visit crystalmcqueen.com.

Nourish

12 December 2022 / Editor

Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue

Nonfiction by Becky A. Benson

I still have the tiny baking set my mom bought for me from the Tupperware catalog
in the early eighties. The mixing bowls, various and hideous colors of burnt orange, sungold yellow, and dirt brown, (although today I suppose they would call it espresso) were a 1970s left over influence that looked like the color palette had been borrowed from a bag of Reese’s Pieces. The rolling pin is a free spinning wood tool with red painted handles, and of course, the bake ware is metal. Impossibly small sheet pans, muffin tins, loaf pans and even a pie plate.

My stay-at-home-mother made everything from scratch. Everything. And I would
sidle right up next to her in a chair pushed to the edge of the counter and mime along with the baking. My favorite was when she allotted me the extra pie crust to roll out because the extra would always be baked with cinnamon and sugar. It was one of my favorite treats. It still is.

Baking along with my mom was an act of love, one I still practice today. I loved
spending that time with her. Her mother’s recipe for southern chocolate pudding pie is our family’s all-time favorite dessert, and holiday staple. Propelled by both nostalgia and hope for the future, I had the recipe printed on tea towels as a gift for everyone in the family. My eighteen-year-old daughter is now the fourth generation to make this holiday and family gathering staple. Her first job was as a baker at a local bakery and she came home beaming with pride every time she expertly crafted a new treat.

This last Thanksgiving my brother looked on intently as we began making the pie.
Calculating and reprogramming our movements in his mind, filing them into a folder he could open at a later date, and asked my mom and me to describe, in detail every step of the pie making process as we stood at my mom’s stove and did just that.

“You have to temper the eggs,” I told him. “It’s a very important for creating the
custard in your pie and getting it to set up correctly without having scrambled eggs end up throughout the chocolate pudding. Wisk the eggs in a separate bowl, then add some of the chocolate mixture a little at a time, mixing as you go. Next, return the egg mixture to the pot with the rest of the chocolate mixture and stir until it’s nice and bubbly.”

After returning home he promptly and proudly sent us a picture of his very first
homemade pie. It was perfect.

As I knead the dough that has risen in my kitchen next to the warmth of the oven, I
think of the process of creation. Bread making teaches patience with its often, multiple intervals of rising. A science unto itself, baking relies on the correct proportions, of mixing and combining ingredients to create a new chemical compound. A flavorful chemistry experiment. I smell the yeasty scent wafting up to meet my nose as I pull and shape the ball of dough on my counter. I think of the nourishment it will bring my family, the joy over the comfort of it, and the relishing of the taste it provides.

It’s taken many years to become a skilled bread maker, and it’s a skill I’m proud of.
A fresh loaf of warm bread is always a welcomed offering. Creating these devourable masterpieces feels a lot like offering my love. The process is also an act of self-care for me in many ways. It accomplishes the necessary task of providing food, but it’s also a creative outlet where I can dream up new concoctions and combine them in a way to delight the senses.

In the kitchen I can tune out the world. I can focus on the task at hand because it
requires every ounce of my attention to be successful. Here I can leave the worries of my day behind and add a little goodness back into my immediate world. The meals and memories shared in the kitchen have the power to stick with us throughout our lives.

My confident, self-sufficient, enterprising young woman of a daughter once
famously told me, when I sarcastically quipped that she, “apparently didn’t need me for anything,” that she still needed me to make dinner. Then capped it off with, “I’m just a kid. I can’t use the stove.” She was five at the time and happily reports (often) that she’s able to use the stove these days. Moreover, she prefers to do it all on her own now. Sometimes I’ll come home to the most delightful treats I had nothing to do with. I couldn’t be prouder.

I wish I could have spent all these years baking with both my girls, laughing together and dusting their noses with powdered sugar as they tried to sneak a lick off the spoon. The memories we were never afforded the opportunity to make wash over me in a flood. Who would my youngest daughter be had she not died of Tay-Sachs disease at the age of three years old? Would she love chocolate pie as much as the rest of us? Would she, now at should-be-fourteen, also use the stove all on her own? I’ll never know.

My nine-year-old son stands in my doorway as I type and sheepishly asks if maybe
we can make something together today. As a child who spent the entirety of his short life in an unfortunate, harmful, and unstable placement in the foster care system before coming to us just a week shy of his seventh birthday, he relishes in any time we spend simply doing things with and including him. Finding his voice to speak up for even these small requests has been a big step in learning his own agency, as well as connection, and support.

Of course, we can make something together today. I know just the thing. After all,
who doesn’t love chocolate pie?

Becky A. Benson‘s work has appeared in print, online, and various television and podcast outlets. Becky serves as a public speaker, holds a degree in psychology, and works for the National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association serving families of terminally ill children as the organization’s Family Services Manager.

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Feed

29 November 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Natalli Amato

It’s the good summer. Connor and I are out on the dock, beholding the St. Lawrence. There are more lily pads right here, right now, than there are lily pads I have stumbled upon in my lifetime before this point. Some of them flower. Some of them are just green. There are geese milling about on the lawn near the shoreline. We talk out loud about how much we love them.

We also talk about the seaweed we see, how Maxine wants to get rid of it all; it clogs up the boat. She thinks she can get the fish to do the excavation work for us. Connor explains her methods: the fish will uproot the seaweed, even eat the seaweed, if we lure them there by tossing scoops of corn feed into the river. This is why there is a stout metal tin at the end of the dock, full of pounds and pounds of corn feed. Connor opens the tin, scoops a good scoop, and throws the kernels. Repeat the process. Offers me a turn.

I look into the corn feed tin. The fish are not the only ones being directed towards something they would otherwise not pay a visit. There is also me, a human girl, following kernels to a different place: burlap sacks in the log garage, the cabin house, Plank Road. Nowhere near this river. Forest.

I can see the line where our property met the forest. I can see where I spread the corn feed down on the pine needled ground before the forest’s feet. I can see, too, how small I am. Four-year-old hands. So who carried the burlap bag? Who opened the burlap bag and showed me how to scoop and where to pour? I know I am here for a purpose – I am here to feed the deer. But who has taught me this? Who has told me we are people for whom the deer matter? I open my eyes as wide as I can in this vision. Someone else must be here. I see only, though, myself.

My buck shooting father. He is this someone, here but not.

I know this because of a card I found cleaning out my mother’s desk – a card he sent her from such and such recovery center, the post script note reading, Ask Natalli what a deer says.

Connor is scooping corn feed into the St. Lawrence. I am walking the forest line on Plank Road. He does not see me leave.

One fish swims to the weeds and its cousin is not far behind. One deer lowers its head to eat and its cousin is not far behind. Memories are like this, too.

Connor and I are in 113 Brady. Our apartment. I am not sure the time of day. I am fairly sure of the season, fall, because Connor is studying for exams and the good summer has already happened but the murderous spring has not.

I’ve returned from the grocery store. I’m sitting on the couch reading a magazine, Cosmo. I took the long way from the grocery store back to 113 Brady so that I could speak out loud to my father. I do that when I am alone in my car. I am alone in my car less often now that I love Connor and Connor loves me.

My conversation goes something like this:

I’m sorry I told mom to tell you I didn’t want to read the letter you’d written me that one year you were probably in AA or something because why else would you write me a letter but now I want to take it back now I want to have the chance to forgive you and have you know it now I want to know if you like country music now I want to thank you for my life now I wish I could have a beer with you even though its all those beers that killed you and I wish it could have been different and when I see the blood moon hanging low over black ontario and it is so mystifying that my heart aches instead of smiles which seems to be the more logical response to beauty – I think that has something to do with you or at least I inherited it from you or maybe I didn’t and I’m just checking in because maybe you can hear me.

When I speak out loud to my father I also cry. Not too hard but enough. Enough that Connor notices my eyes look off when he emerges from the study to give me a squeeze and remind ourselves that we are here, together. Connor asks me what’s wrong and I do the degrading thing –

I say, what are you talking about?

I say what are you talking about to the person who loves me and I love best. I say what are you talking about when he notices my suffering. I exclude him – this man I will one day break my own world over, so bereft I will be when he leaves me. I turn away and assume I will always have this option.

How far have I traveled from this? Far, far, far. And also not at all. I exist as a girl and I exist as a hungry ghost with unfinished business. It is for this reason I return here.

What’s wrong?

The corn feed, say it, the corn feed, the corn feed, my own dried kernel heart.

Natalli Amato is a poet, fiction writer, and journalist. Read her work at www.natalliamato.com

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The Holding Tank

20 November 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Ron Theel

It was one of those old hotel restaurants. The kind that lets you select your “fresh seafood” from aquariums grouped near the entranceway. I went past it daily on my morning walk but never considered eating there.

Today I stopped. A large fish was swimming erratically near the surface of a small, rectangular tank. I needed to have a closer look. Growing up, I always had aquariums. I liked the challenge of creating and maintaining my own aquatic world: balancing predators with scavengers, separating egg-layers from live-bearers, maintaining the correct pH and temperature levels of the water.

This aquatic world offered a refuge from my father’s athletic world. He played high school football and enjoyed participating in boxer fighting while in the army. “You have to play a sport,” he demanded. “All high school boys play sports.” My pleasure came from the chess club and the debate team. My father’s world remained unexplored.

I recognized the large fish as a sturgeon. For a fish fanatic, the signs would be hard to miss.

An elongated, torpedo shaped body with lines of bony, armor-like “plates” that stretched along smooth, scaleless skin. And that distinctive, rounded nose punctuated with two tiny barbell whiskers to help locate food.

The tank was too small for the sturgeon. Too short as well as too narrow. The fish was too large to turn around by simply swimming in the opposite direction. The top of a sturgeon’s tail fin is longer than the bottom. This distinctive feature enabled the fish to flip itself over by using the top of its tail, enabling it to swim in the opposite direction. It was the only way to reverse direction since the width of the tank was so narrow. Swim about two body lengths, bump the end wall of the tank, flip, and change direction. The motion reminded me of the technique a freestyle swimmer uses to turn around when arriving at the wall of a pool.

Over the next two weeks, I frequently paused at the fish tank. The sturgeon always followed the same turning pattern. Bump the end-wall of the tank. Flip. Reverse. I felt an overwhelming sadness. There was no choice for the sturgeon whose life had to follow this endless, compulsive pattern.

I wished that the fish would somehow disappear. Go belly-up. Be plated-up. Perhaps a miraculous rescue by an animal rights activist. But there was no such drama.

I’ve come up against walls many times. Learning how to live with epilepsy. Bump, flip, change direction. A broken marriage. Bump, flip, change direction. A bankrupt business. Bump, flip, change direction. There are often bumps along any journey. But I’ve been fortunate. People were always there to hold the net for me, to help me change direction and get on with my life: family, friends, therapists, doctors, nurses, and many others. I thank God for all of them.

One morning, I decided not to watch the sturgeon. I’d seen enough. That evening, I returned to the place where I thought I would never eat, the place I came to know as the “fish tank restaurant.” I looked straight ahead as I entered and seated myself. There was no need to read the laminated menu resting in front of me. The waiter approached and asked, “Are you ready to order, sir?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I’ll have the sturgeon, please.”

Ron Theel is an educator, mixed media artist, and freelance writer living in Central New York. His work has been published in Lake Life and Rustling Leaves Anthology.

Category: Nonfiction (Page 7 of 11)

The Leavings

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