You know, that’s a good question. I’m the oldest. My sister is two and a half years younger. We had little in common when we were kids, didn’t play much together, and have little in common now. In fact, last night, on my uncle’s porch during happy hour, my sister said “we have nothing in common!” — and I said (’cause I’m the older sister and have to show her!) — “our parents!” We both laughed.

My sister and I might not have a relationship you can write a great story about, but I bet we'd both read that book!

But it’s a good question. What do we have in common? Besides biology, which hasn’t given us many obvious commonalities, a brother, parents, and a connection to the other people we’re related to?

Here’s what I’ve come up with.

1. Love of books.
2. Love of Maine.
3. Distaste for arguments and politics and noise.
4. Appreciation for music to listen to, sing or play (and for musicals).
5. Preference for color and beauty and flowing things.
6. Belief that our parents did the best they could with us, which was pretty good.
7. Brown hair that was once browner than it is now.
8. Divorces we recovered from just fine, thank you very much.
9. A mother with a chronic illness that didn’t keep her from being a great mom.
10. Delight in pretty earrings.
11. High school but not much about the experience.
12. A father with a deep love of science that we have each inherited but in different ways.
13. A brother who loves books.
14. Pleasure in yellow t-shirts.
15. Pleasure in big windows and high ceilings.
16. Need for (a lot) of alone time, which only one of us gets enough of.
17. Appreciation for Skype and texting so you can plan to talk but you don’t have to interrupt someone who’s not in the mood.
18. Love of Agatha Christie.
19. A requirement for comfortable shoes.
20. Love for each other.

I think that’s enough things. We weren’t born in the same state, didn’t go to the same colleges, didn’t (and don’t) excel at the same things, don’t have the same fears. We don’t live in the same place now, and I don’t expect we will. But she shared the world with me for many years, when we were vulnerable and trying to figure out who we were. Now that we’re in our fifties, it’s nice to have a person I can talk to who won’t judge me when I confess that I still feel vulnerable sometimes and am still trying to figure out who I am (although I do have a better idea these days….).

Our sisterhood may not look like one you can find in movies, but it’s ours. Hers and mine. And that’s the best thing we have in common, the fact of each other.

I graduated from high school in 1977. The world already looked so different than it did for you, Betsy – we were closer to the 80s than the 60s by then – and in California we could be pretty sure it wouldn’t rain on graduation day.

I remember the fact that I wasn't chosen to give a speech at my own graduation through the lens of my mother's indignation.

I recall that our school’s system for choosing who got to speak at graduation was also based on grades. Kids with the best GPAs gave the speeches. Now they do it differently – anyone can write and submit a speech and winners are chosen on the basis of merit – content, humor, reflection on the high school years, good grammar. But kids with the best GPAs still call the roll during the (endless) procession of students crossing the stage to shake hands and get their diplomas.

I remember the fact that I wasn’t chosen to give a speech at my own graduation through the lens of my mother’s indignation. In spite of my perfect academic record (a physics prize, California Regents Scholarship, National Honor Society) I had received a “B” in one of my required P.E. classes as a freshman or sophomore. That meant my GPA wasn’t perfect. One of my best friends, let’s call her “Molly” of the golden hair, the perfect soprano voice, the soulful eyes – boyfriend thief that she was, I still loved her – “Molly” had dropped one of her science classes before getting a poor grade which meant her GPA was perfect. Or at least that’s the story (rumor?) that infuriated my mother. Mom railed against the unfairness of this system: I was clearly the more academically proficient student, so of course, I should be one of the four valedictorians. (The school chose two girls and two boys, I have no idea how they did it, as there were likely more kids with 4.0 GPAs in those days, there certainly are now.) I don’t remember much else about graduation except that “Molly” was lovely, soft-spoken but commanding, and nobody could take their eyes off her. It was sunny, we wore our white robes, the boys wore their purple robes, it was all over.

We didn’t have a school-sponsored all-night party (at least not that I went to) but I’m pretty sure plenty of people got drunk. I wasn’t one of them, and that’s another story!

By the time I graduated from college, I was married and living far away from home. I’d finished my coursework and honors projects and officially graduated at the end of fall quarter my senior year. I wasn’t even planning on walking the following June, until the letters started coming from the university and my college about the honors and awards I’d won (such old news, but we remember our young pride so stubbornly). Who can pass up a chance to shake the hand of the founder of the college? My mother had a 2-year old to take care of at home to take, and my parents never planned to come to the graduation ceremony (remember, neither had I). In the end, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t asked to give a speech (thank God!) and I still shook Roger Revelle’s hand happily in the very hot San Diego sun. And to celebrate my induction into Phi Beta Kappa, my mother sent me the biggest bouquet of flowers I had ever seen. That is something I will never forget.

I did eventually give a valedictorian speech of sorts when I graduated from Nursing School. But that is another post!

I voted in my first presidential election in 1980. I was still in college and mostly hanging out with my boyfriend at the beach. This is a photo of my son, who’ll be going to my alma mater in the fall: same beach, better hair.

The point of all this sad history is to reflect on what happened this weekend, when my 20-year old son asked me to help him with his ballot, and I said "sure."

I was old enough to vote, there was an election, what did I know? I called up my father, dutiful daughter that I was, and asked, “who should I vote for?”  My dad, dear man, fiscal conservative and social liberal that he was (as only those raised poor who moved to Northern California in the 1960s can be) said, “vote for Ronald Reagan.” And so I did.

Recognize the slogan?

We will pause now so all my Reagan-hating friends can calm down and catch their breath. My husband (chief among the Reagan haters, since about the time Ronny signed his Cal diploma in the early ’70s) has long forgiven me and loves me to this day.

A protester faces down California’s National Guard in May 1969. AP (see more here.)

What did I know about voting? I knew to call on someone I trusted and not to ask too many questions. I knew that I didn’t really care. (Yeah, I know, talk about your naive middle class educated white privilege college kid — and take a couple of deep breaths, if you need another moment to calm down.) As soon as I got into the world, started working, paying rent, etc. etc., I changed my tune. I confess I don’t remember if I voted for Mondale in 1984 (I’m sorry, I’m a slow learner), but I know for sure I was a Dukakis supporter in 1988.

Poor Dukakis.

The point of all this sad history is to reflect on what happened this weekend, when my 20-year old son asked me to help him with his ballot, and I said “sure.”

We sat at the kitchen table, spread out the mail-in ballot and talked about the choices for about 45 minutes. I explained to him the history of the US Senate seats in California, and how this year is a big deal since Barbara Boxer is retiring after so long. We talked about Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez and what a great thing it is to have two women of color as the best options. We tried to figure out what Prop 50 is about and didn’t get very far with that. I sent him to the internet. We talked about Mike Honda and Ro Khanna and discovered that my husband and I have canceled each other’s votes this year — I went for one and he for the other (not telling). We pulled the awful negative ads against Nora Campos and Jim Beall out of the recycling bin and tried to decide if we could make an informed decision amidst all that yelling and ugly-face pulling. I told him how great I think it is that the current mayor of Cupertino, Barry Chang, who is running for state assembly, has printed his poetry on his campaign flyers! English and Chinese!

The one thing we didn’t talk about is who my son will choose for president. I already know. We’ve been talking about it at the dinner table for months. And months. He and his sister are big Bernie fans. Feel the Bern! Bring on the revolution! My husband and I are staunch Hillary supporters.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, speak during the CNN Democratic presidential debate Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

But I don’t mind. He should vote his conscience and his heart. I don’t have to worry that he’s not informed, and I don’t have to worry that he’s just taking my word for anything. I’m very proud of him. And I think my father would be, too.

We used to go camping when I was a child. Mom and Dad had a big canvas tent, the kind you could stand up in. My sister and I slept on green cotton canvas cots, that stacked up to make bunk beds. Our sleeping bags were dark green with green plaid flannel inside. Mom and Dad had a double bed-sized air mattress on the floor of the tent. Their sleeping bags were red, with black and red plaid inside, and they zipped together. There was a Coleman gas lantern hanging from the center of the tent poles inside the roof. I loved the white mantle inside the lantern; it reminded me of a sock puppet. Daddy turned the knob until the flame burned smoothly, without sputtering.

Camping was fun when I was a kid. Fire was exciting and extinguished too soon.

We had funny cotton bags my mother sewed for us, with blue and white flowered stripes and cotton cord drawstrings and our names printed on them in big letters with Magic Marker. They were about the size of small pumpkins, and we kept our toothbrushes in them, and probably our socks and underwear. Mom called them “ditty bags” — which is apparently a real name for a small canvas bag in which a sailor keeps his needles, thread, small tools, and other toiletries. (Today I learned that a ditty bag was also sometimes called a “housewife.” Thank goodness for the internet.) I probably kept my Secret Roll-On Deodorant in mine a few years later.

One weekend we camped at Huddart Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We had put up our tent, stacked up our cot bunks, taken a hike, eaten dinner (cooked on Coleman gas stove) – probably hot dogs or soup and sandwiches, with milk or Kool-Aid. Right before bed – we’d been brushing our teeth and spitting our toothpastey water into the bushes – a fire erupted at a neighboring campsite. Probably their stove, or maybe a grill. At any rate, it was suddenly much brighter than it had been – a redwood forest is very dark – and my mother, who had been washing our supper dishes in a plastic basin full of soapy water, ran across the campsite and tossed her dishwater on the neighbors fire! Easily the most exciting thing we’d seen in a year.

Unfortunately, the fire was gas, and the soapy water simply spread the flames further. My memory is fuzzy after that – probably my Dad grabbed the fire extinguisher we kept under the seat of our Plymouth station wagon and eventually the rangers came. The fire must have been pretty small to start with, and was soon just some smoky mud puddles in the once again quiet dark. My sister and I were packed away in our sleeping bags in our cots, the tent flap tied shut.

The photo above is from August, 1967.

When I was a child, Easter was primarily about church and a pretty dress. This photo helps explain why. I’m the older girl. My mom has a great hat, don’t you think? I’m pretty sure she made the white tulle flowers herself. My little sister is not a fan of this project, and in another photo, she can be seen with her skirt up and her (probably) rubber pants front and center. I wonder who took this photo of us, in May 1965, my sister barely two, me not quite five. What’s amazing to me when I look at this photo is that my parents were still both in their twenties. We are on our way to Grace Episcopal Church in Newton, Massachusetts.

Faith takes the form of Easter hats, nursing uniforms, Bach and carrot soup.

When I was in my twenties, Easter was mostly about eating dinner with someone’s parents. My folks, my first-husband’s folks. Someone’s grandparents. If I went to church it was to sing with my parents at their church. Or, I might have been working: as a nurse’s aid, a nursing student, or later as a newly-minted nurse. That involved a different kind of dressing up in a different kind of church. This awesome photo is from the De Anza College Nursing Pinning Ceremony in 2010. Mine was in 1987. Those photos are lost (which might be a good thing).

This photo is from a church directory, approximately 1989. My parents and my brother. No more hats, but my dad’s still in a tie.

Now my kids are in their twenties. This year, my husband and I woke up to an empty house — our daughter at work, our son at his girlfriend’s place. We listened to Bach’s Cantata “Christ Lag in Todes Banden” (here’s an amazing performance by John Eliot Gardner), baked sourdough cinnamon buns, and then I did the ironing while Bob worked in the garden. No chocolate. No baskets. No egg hunt. No church, except the one we have made ourselves from love, music, and the California sunshine. My dogwood tree is bursting with pale yellow flowers in the front yard, one purple iris is ready to open under the young apple tree. Getting dressed for Easter will mean showering before dinner: carrot soup and salad from the garden.

Faith for me is something that humans “do” – we get dressed up, we hang out with family, we cook and eat together. We do it when we don’t want to, when we are sad, when life is full of ugliness and pain. For me, there is the extra bonus of music and poetry and art to practice and have faith in. I have faith that I am loved and that I love. As my friend Ellen said, in her Facebook post this morning, Jesus would probably have liked this.

John and Stella

John thought about Stella the whole way. It took the whole day to ride the train from the city where he lived to the town on the coast where his grandmother would meet him. As he scanned the platform for his grandmother’s canvas hat, John wondered how big Stella would be. He wondered what color she would be painted, and if her name, Stella, was already there on her stern in big curving letters.

A story about a boy, his grandmother, and a boat.

When John shook his grandmother’s hand they way she liked him to, he barely noticed that it seemed smaller and bonier than last year. And when she called him John, instead of Junior the way everyone else did, he didn’t mind. He was getting older after all, maybe she was right, it suited him, John. It sounded like the name of a boy who was old enough to have his own boat, not just a little kid anymore.

They walked together through the shady lanes of the town, down to the dock, but John wasn’t listening to the way her voice sounded rough and tired, how it skipped a little when she talked, like stones skip over the slow water in the cove before the tide turns. John was thinking about Stella and he couldn’t wait to get to the island to see her.

Grandmother had lived alone on her farm for almost as long as John could remember. He knew the stories about Grandfather, how he had built the porch for her to sit on in the evenings, how he had planted the berry bushes along the edge of the field when they were first married. But John didn’t remember his grandfather very well. He had been a very small boy the last time Grandfather rowed him around the island in the dinghy. Grandfather had pointed out an osprey nest on the top of a tree by the ferry. John remembered the great blue herons that leapt up out of the reeds when they rowed close to shore, but he couldn’t remember his grandfather’s face. It had been a long time ago.

Now John was almost grown up. This summer he was coming to the island all by himself, because Grandmother needed his help. Every summer of his life he had visited the island with his family, for a week or two, and sometimes in December they came to cut a Christmas tree from her woods. But this year John had come alone, and, as his grandmother had promised in her letter, starting tomorrow he would have his very own boat, with a real outboard motor, the Stella. As John and his grandmother bumped across the water on the last ferry, he fell asleep on his bench and dreamed of racing across the water, salty spray like a fountain behind, sparkling in the sun.

By the next week, John had begun to notice more changes in his grandmother. She seemed shorter, and she walked like her knees hurt when they went down to the shore. She got tired after only a little time in the garden, and she sometimes fell asleep on the porch after lunch. John wasn’t sure if he was supposed to worry about her, and he was so busy that he didn’t have time to ask questions.

John got up early each day and fed the chickens. His grandmother expected him to pick blackberries and raspberries from the huge, overgrown bushes in the back field, which scratched his arms even through the old long-sleeved shirt she gave him. He went alone into the woods to find mushrooms, picking them carefully so they wouldn’t break. John struggled to climb up over the granite ledge behind the barn and pick the blueberries that grew wild there, scraping his knees. His grandmother also needed him to help her in the garden, pulling up weeds, picking carrots, onions, baby beets, and beans, and washing everything carefully in icy water he pulled up from the well himself. All week long he worked in the garden, by his grandmother’s side, listening to her breath whistle softly. He was waiting for Saturday.

Saturday was John’s day with Stella. At first he had been surprised by how old and ugly the boat was. There had been no motor, just a couple of wobbly oar locks and some seats that gave him splinters right through his shorts. John had worked very hard, listening carefully to his grandmother’s instructions, sometimes getting frustrated at the slow job of fixing her up. He was so eager to put Stella in the water and go! But gradually, all by himself, he turned her into a beautiful little dinghy.

He scraped away the old paint, and repainted her light blue and white, and he replaced the rusty oar locks with the shiny new ones waiting in a paper bag in the kitchen. John sanded the seats and painted them with three coats. He threw out the moldy lines and cut new ones from sturdy white rope for the bow and stern. Grandmother showed him how to make special knots that would keep the boat securely at the dock but still let it move up and down with the tide.

When everything was perfect, John painted the big curly letters of her name with dark red paint on the stern. Grandmother told him that Grandfather had named the old dinghy for his first sweetheart, and John found his old stencil behind some old cans of nails in the barn. John fit the stencil carefully in place and held his breath as the beautifully shaped letters appeared at the end of the brush. Stella was a beautiful boat now, and with the smart new outboard motor they had driven to Robinhood Marina to buy, she could race across the river. John kept the old oars tucked inside the boat for emergencies. They were pale gray and the wood was smooth from all the times his grandfather had held them in his hands, but the motor was splendid, and John felt like he could fly in that boat.

The most important job John did for his grandmother was to sell the vegetables she grew and the berries and mushrooms he picked to the summer people who lived up and down the coast. Many of these people lived on tiny islands without a bridge or even a ferry, and they counted on the fresh things that John and Stella brought them. He made many stops each Saturday, pulling Stella quickly up to the deep water docks, tying her fast, and hollering up to the house. Sometimes he would put up the motor and row into a little beach for nap in the shade, but he could never rest for long. There were dozens of white and yellow houses with dark green shutters and flags fluttering and the summer people expecting him every week.

One Saturday, toward the end of summer, John was especially tired. There was so much to do on the farm now, his baskets were overflowing with vegetables and Stella rode low in the water as they set out early over the calm water. After all his stops, he pulled Stella into the cove on the back of Shelf Island, tied her to a big piece of driftwood, and lay down in the shade of the stumpy pines. The afternoon was hot and still. John ate his sandwich, drank his bottle of milk, still cold from dragging in the water, and fell asleep with his head on his canvas life jacket.

John dreamed of the sky over the ocean, first empty and wide, then filling with clouds, black and coming inland fast. He dreamed he was trapped on the island, the tide up and Stella tossing furiously at her mooring. In his dream he heard a voice, soft and raspy, a voice that was familiar but far away. He realized that Stella was calling to him, telling him something important. He didn’t think it strange that Stella could speak, because he always talked to her while they made their rounds. And he knew the many sounds she made, the way her floorboards creaked and scolded him if he stepped too close to the side, a noise like a cat whose tail’s been stepped on. Her oar locks chirped happily rowing around the cove and rattled resentfully when he forgot to stow the oars. He knew the impatient slapping sound of her bow line against the dock, telling him to hurry with his baskets. And how he loved the humming of her little motor! It was a song that buzzed through his body as they sped across the water together.

But in this dream, Stella was using words, telling him that something was very wrong. He could tell by the sound of her voice it was bad, but he couldn’t understand her meaning no matter how hard he strained. Suddenly there was a great flapping of wings, and John woke up with a start. An enormous heron was standing on the beach, her wings outstretched. The heron looked at John with black and yellow eyes and then rose off the beach in a whoosh. John watched the bird rise up and saw the sky rapidly darkening with the oncoming storm. Stella was right where he had left her, tied to a log, quiet and empty.

John jumped into the boat, freed the lines, pushed off and started the motor. Stella leapt to her job, racing across the waves ahead of the rain. John was frightened, the sky was so heavy, it was going to be a huge storm, but Stella was fast. They were soon home.

The farm was filled with a silver light, the trees tossing, the garden gate banging against the fence. John ran to the house and found his grandmother asleep on the porch. Her head lolled to one side, her arms were outstretched, resting on the gray wood of the chair. John felt the little hairs stand up on the back of his neck, and he felt like crying.  The storm was coming and his grandmother was asleep!

After a moment she opened her eyes. She smiled and righted herself slowly in her chair. Together John and his grandmother looked over the river for a few minutes, watching the white edges of the waves hurling themselves up into the wind. Then Grandmother stood up and told John to check the windows upstairs. She went into the kitchen to make them supper and find the candles in case the power went out. John could hear her humming as he secured the house. He wasn’t sure what was going to come with the storm, but he knew his grandmother would know what to do, and he was sure he would be able to help her. He smiled as he looked out at Stella fastened tightly to her mooring, her trim jaunty bow turned bravely into the wind.

My mom loves to tell a certain set of stories about me over and over. This is one of them: on my first day of first grade I came home from school and drew a diagram of the classroom. My mother already knew I was the smartest kid in California, but this was honest to God proof.

What do you think?

Frankly I’m more impressed by my ability to imagine my whole family in ballet costumes. I’m pretty sure my mother didn’t have a tutu. Thankfully I didn’t give my dad one. Poor Alice, no arms.

Both of these items were pasted into my scrapbook, together with my first grade teacher’s bio. My mother was nothing if not thorough. Please note the M.A. from Stanford. Palo Alto has been proud of its great teachers for generations. I remember Mrs. Clark vaguely but fondly.

I bet if I look I can find more photos. Wouldn’t that be scary?

I grew up in a three-story apartment building in Palo Alto, California – a rectangular concrete building that still stands at the corner of Grant Avenue and Ash Street. Today, that part of town is crammed full of chic restaurants and expensive condos, but in the 1960s and 70s it was just a little neighborhood, tucked into a sleepy college town.

When I lived at this address the stucco walls of the building were a dark salmon pink. Imitation brick color.

The school bus stopped at the corner, alongside the church parking lot. We were a raggedy bunch of kids, all elementary school ages, all white. Girls wore dresses, boys wore short pants. There were plenty of black kids in Palo Alto, but not on our block. My elementary school, Escondido (still standing on the edge of Stanford campus), was overflowing with kids from all over the world, their parents students at the university. I had friends from Finland and Iran, as well as the son of George Schultz, then Secretary of Labor for President Nixon. (That’s a story my mom always told when she wanted to impress people. I bet he doesn’t remember me, if it’s true. I don’t remember him.)

I remember standing in line at that bus stop, small kids first, bigger kids at the back. I remember other kids riding their bikes around the church parking lot; they must have been too young for school, so why were they on bikes? I remember some serious beehive hairdos and plaid coats, some moms with curlers in their hair under big scarves. I wonder, in all honesty, what I really remember and what’s just a dream.

The bus was huge. A hundred kids could fit in it. Green vinyl bench seats, rough and tacky. Big heavy glass windows that opened from the top. I think I fell asleep on a school bus one time, returning from a field trip, and talked out loud in my sleep. Other kids laughed at me. Can that be true? It makes another good story.

I’m pretty sure the bus was real. Nothing that big could ever be forgotten. Today you couldn’t find a school bus in Palo Alto if you offered a million dollars. That’s a shame. They were the great dinosaurs of my youth.

Stock school bus photo.

Author’s Note: The photo at the top was taken in September 1966, on my first day of first grade, and that bus was taking us to Garland Elementary, not Escondido. My memories of that vacant lot paved over as a parking lot must be from later. And clearly, it was the big kids at the front of the line, not us little squirts. That’s me, short brown hair, light green coat, looking over my shoulder at the photographer. I think that’s Lisa O.’s mom with the camera; with her back to the sun, she’s clearly a more experienced photographer than (probably) my mother, taking this picture facing directly East. It was my mother, however, who printed this from the slide and gave it to me the day I graduated from college.

People are always talking about how smells can take you right back in time to a powerful memory. It’s never worked for me. Maybe years of allergies or smog have broken my smeller, but I’m not a person who swoons at the memories smells evoke. With the possible exception of mildew, which I think smells like Maine, the only smell that has ever evoked a powerful response in me is Estee Lauder Youth Dew Eau de Parfum, the scent my grandmother wore.

Grammy Brown taught me how to file my fingernails with an emery board. She made peach pie. She always smelled just a tiny bit sweet, just a tiny bit cinnamony, just a tiny bit powdery. If soft had a smell, it was Estee Lauder.

This photo (found on Pinterest) resembles most closely the little brown bottle I used to have knocking around in my bathroom drawer with the toothpaste, dental floss, ear plugs and empty pill bottles. (If I find it again, I’ll take a photo for documentation!) The little bottle belonged to my Grammy Brown, my father’s mom, wearing the pink dress on the left above. I no longer remember when I acquired it, and I’m rather distressed to think it’s misplaced.

Grammy took care of me when I was a newborn. My mother had to return to the hospital and Grammy flew from Indiana to Southern California to take care of me and my dad for a few weeks. When I was seven, she came again, another time my mother was hospitalized. Maybe it was the smell of safety I associated with her, of rescue.

Grammy Brown taught me how to file my fingernails with an emery board. She made peach pie. She was very soft and warm and hugged you in a way that made it hard to breathe. She had a curious false breast, as big as a loaf of bread, that she wore inside her white satiny brassiere (itself inside a white silky slip) inside all her dresses. Grammy lived with Grampy Brown, who was large and firm and alarming in many ways, and talked about something called “The Gold Standard” at breakfast while innocent children were trying to eat their Cheerios. Grammy liked to play cards and she had a collection of tiny tea cups that didn’t match next to a green velvet chair in later years in Cleveland. She always smelled just a tiny bit sweet, just a tiny bit cinnamony, just a tiny bit powdery. If soft had a smell, it was Estee Lauder.

It’s hard to remember the chronology of all the memories I have of Grammy Brown. At some point I learned the name of the perfume she wore. At some point I understood that she’d had a mastectomy before she married by grandfather. Eventually I learned she was my father’s step-mother, and that my own mother had been hospitalized for manic-depression the two times Grammy came to California and took over. Grammy died when I was 18 and living out of the country; I will always remember how shocked and far away I felt when I learned the news in a letter from home.

I kept that little bottle close at hand for many many years. The smell was still powerful, and even now, all I have to do is think of it to remember so many details about her. If the bottle is gone at last what will I do? I wonder if a new bottle of the perfume would smell the same.

Voices from Maine 

Sensory images congealing into a poem about my Grandmother's Maine

Notes for a poem

being on an island, an island being
Grammy’s porch, sitting looking in                           (kneeling, peering)
at grownups at their lobsters
Nana’s porch, her grandchildren my own
son and daughter, asleep in her beds,
my knees pulled up against her table

in Ken’s kitchen, my curly hair, my first marriage
in Ken’s dining room, a blue table, the 1972 Olympic massacre
, the royal wedding
, the little black radio
, my pink thank-you tile

falling asleep in the moldy rooms
pink, rain-stained wall paper and the slanted attic
blue, first in the sun, for sons the better beds
yellow, narrow with scary closet
my mother’s childhood
never the best, now mine

this is a child’s summer vacation in Maine
rain through open screens
the strangeness of night insect noise

bringing my children now
naming my mother their grandmother
my own grandmother’s dust in mothballs and sandwiches

this is the voices poem
carrying across the river
the wide salty river
what exactly are they carrying –
the voices