Category Archives: Beloved

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kitchen window with cat

In the early morning before dawn
the orchids keep me company
cat and computer as I sit and write

I tried a desk but the sky doesn’t lighten
windows on three sides, the orchids and I
await the sun, cat now on my lap

this table was my grandmother’s
my mother loved flowers
my daughter says “The laptop’s in the way.”

Thank you orchids, cat and table
Thank you laptop, teacup, dawn
Thank you grandmother, mother, daughter

kitchen window blessing


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A portrait of Boa Black

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: pet.

This is Miss Boa Black. I am not sure if she is my pet or I am hers.

My daughter picked a kitten from the pound 15 years ago. A few days later I took my son there and handed him Boa. She was tiny, feather soft, and purred the instant we picked her up. The other cat is gone, but Boa is still here. She is really a one person cat and the person is me. She hates it when I pull suitcases out and lately she has been tucking me in at night. She does love the kids but disapproved strongly when they went off to college and only visit erratically.

She still has the softest fur.

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Kitchen skills

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: cook.

I really do like to cook. Eating is a pleasure too and I am blessed with children, now young adults, who always liked to eat. No fussy eaters in our house! I wouldn’t allow sodas in the house and when we went to restaurants, they could choose soda as a dessert or a dessert but not both. I harped on the evils of sugar and television, at least, too much of either. We did and do eat chocolate.

This is my cousin’s cabin, at Lake Matinenda, from 2012. The earliest cabin is from the late 1930s and they all have pretty basic kitchens. We filter the lake water now but used to drink it straight from the lake. My family stayed in a tent mostly and my parents, mostly my mother, cooked on a single burner camp stove. Bless her! A lot of work! We all took part in the cabin work. Trash taken out by boat, filling water buckets, working with hand tools and cooking on burners. The propane refrigerator is much better than trying to function out of a cooler! It taught all of us good camping kitchen skills and we have family recipes for the lake stay.

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all blue

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chores.

I am not blue about chores. Not at all. I like chores. Being an independent stubborn woman, I don’t do them in the order or way that society currently seems to think we should do them. I do them in the order I think is important.

I was divorced in 2007, with a 14 year old and a 9 year old. My Ex promptly left town. He stayed in very close touch with the kids, calling about 5 out of 7 days, but did not see them for a year. I was working full time and had over night call.

My goal was that the kids would both know how to do lots of basic chores by the time they left home. Vacuum. Sweep. Clean the bathroom. Do laundry. Replace lightbulbs. Cook. Grocery shop. Plan a meal. Change a tire. Check the oil in each of our cars. We have a 1986 Honda Civic 5 speed, so include drive a clutch. Avoid debt and some basic money handling. Discuss insurance: car insurance, health insurance, others. I started turning over the responsibility for their own health care, dental, vision as well. I want them to know the family medical history and we discussed addictive substances and politics and justice. When my son was in college they asked for cell phones for Christmas. I asked them to research phones and a family plan and said, yes, I would do that. They did a great job bringing me the information. I wanted them to disagree with me as well. If they wanted to do something, they could argue their case and might convince me. I did not hire someone to do our household chores because running a household is work, honorable work, undervalued, and underappreciated. And expensive if you hire people to do all of it.

Both of my kids are much neater than me. Less packrat. At least, they are now… I think it’s a late expressing gene….

I took the photograph two days ago, on a walk in the evening. All blue.

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pink shard

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: shard.

I photographed our local mosaic sculptures and I can’t find the pictures. I just went through 3 years of photographs and it’s making me too sad. Yesterday a patient said, “How are you?” I replied, “Mostly happy with occasional grumpiness.” Sorrow too. So here is a mostly blue photograph with a little pink. Maybe the happiness is the pink in which case I said it backwards.

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mermaid

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: quest.

mermaid

when I was born, they took my skin

i had no skin
i was frightened
i wept

a witch came
she studied me
i turned my head from the spoon

“Good,” she said, “You may refuse it if you want.”

She gave me the gift of anger

it was the only defense I had

but over the years
I studied and thought
and I found my tears
and I found my fears

i made my skin of tears
this took me many years
one tear for each scale

at last it is done
my skin
is complete

i smile at the sky
as i don it

i slip into the water
and i am gone

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reminder

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: timely.

My mother died in 2000 and my father in 2013 and my house is full of art. My mother was a prolific artist and I am working on placing, gifting, cataloging her art. There is rather more than I’d seen. Watercolors and etchings were her most loved, I think, though she did woodcuts, silk screen, oils, pottery and all sorts of crafts.

She did tiny etchings, often 2 by 2 or 2 by 3 inches of fantasy creatures.


Etching of Winged Hare, by Helen Ottaway
Winged Hare by H. Ottaway
etching: Dolphin, by Helen Ottaway
Dolphin, by H. Ottaway