night’s blooms
au pair
story #6 in my “23 stories for a fried chicken sandwich” project.
there is a small backyard field. it’s full of yellow flowers. there is a blonde baby in a too-long dress. the flowers come up to her waist. she’s pointing up at the sky.
i’m in charge of this sweet blonde baby, but she is not my baby. these are not my flowers. this is not even my city, not my country either. we go for a lot of walks to push the days along. we visit the sweet brown horse down the street to the left. walk the long pebbly lane up and to the right, visit dogs, chickens, roosters, cats, beautiful flowers, grape vines and listen to dogs, chickens, roosters, cats, voices speaking Italian but not to us. it’s a real bitch to push the stroller along the gravel road.
i miss everything about home, but i’m so glad to be away, living a new life, surrounding myself in things and places and certain types of breads and yogurts i will miss everything about later when i go home. i know i’ll never get a chance to do this again. live so far away, in another country, away from my own life and in some ways, away from a certain self.
i hope there’s a whole life waiting for me when i get back, but i’m content to keep things slow and go here for a little while longer, living inside dozens of books, inside my mind, inside my tiny journal, in the eyes of this baby.
even in the moments of desperate loneliness, i feel free.
hover
story #5 in my “23 stories for a fried chicken sandwich” project.
today one bushtit in a small troop of bushtits fell behind, lost step, got the hiccups, or momentarily reconsidered everything about the life he’s been living thus far.
he lifted off the bare-branched pomegranate tree, just like all the others, in a perfectly choreographed swish against the backdrop of the silvery blue sky. but by the time the group passed in front of my window, the perfect lines of their group dance broke. or he broke. i held my breath and watched him hover middair in a shockingly long delay while the others soared on.
i thought sure he’d fall, drop out of the air in a hard, fast plunk onto the pavement down below. it could happen before my very eyes. his frolic in this world could just end. stop. disappear. there was even enough time for me to imagine the invisible thread hanged down from the sky, slip-knotted tightly to his wings. a thread so strong that he had an impossibly long moment to will himself skyward again. reconsider. breathe. dream bigger.
and just like that, up and away he went again without a single flap of his wings.
i ran to the next window to watch the birds’ continued path to the elm two houses down. by the time i pressed my hand to the glass, i couldn’t tell that one bushtit’s grace from the next.
calico
story #4 in my “23 stories for a fried chicken sandwich” project.
all day, i was preparing to write something genius tonight. more genius and beautiful than ever before. but then leo found something odd on my cat’s mouth.
my calico celie is 17 years old, will be 18 in august. i stole her away from her stray mother who lived under the fence from me and my best friend K’s Melrose place apartment building (U-shaped with a pool in the middle; whacky neighbors we could spy on without barely trying). i wanted to keep Celie’s black and white brother, but she’s the one who kept squeezing under the fence to sit by me. i was 21 years old then. seems like a lifetime or maybe lifetimes ago.
her health has been deteriorating. she can’t clean or groom her whole self so well any more. but it isn’t all bad. although she’s always been an indoor car, for a few years now, she has spent hours in the backyard sun each day.
you really don’t know how you’re going to feel until it happens. i’m still holding very still.
the mass on her lip is pretty large. from what i can see, there are problems i can’t even begin to diagnose going on inside her mouth too. her eye is swollen, almost closed. my poor old girl.
i have loved this cat and, i admit, largely taken her presence for granted, especially since the boys came into our lives. but we do still share our small moments of bliss. i’ll call the vet tomorrow. tonight, i brushed her in long, long strokes for 20 minutes, and she purred and purred and threw her head back in thanks.
today is pretty 