Category Archives: family

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Purple weather

Walt Kelly was the master of bargleflooping and he could play with language in such fabulous ways! Once Howland Owl and Churchy were trying to make an A-bomb. They had a yew tree and a geranium and crossed them — by them falling over, two small plants in pots, to make Yew-ranium! Which did not explode, thankfully!

My sister and I grew up reading Pogo comics, old books at my grandparents, and memorizing bits and pieces. I still notice when Friday the thirteenth falls on a different day. This poem is one of my favorite bits.

Many happy returns

Once you were two,
dear birthday friend.
In spite of purple weather:

But now you are three
And near the end
As we grew some together.

How fourthful thou,
forsooth for you
For soon you will be more!

But — ‘fore one can be three
be two;
Before be five be four!

_________________________ by Walt Kelly

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: barglefloop. Walt Kelly already is bargleflooping the internet, because I did not remember the correct name of this poem and found it by searching purple weather!

I took the photograph from Marrowstone Island. It’s a bunch of terns enjoying the tern towards purple weather.

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Not weird

This is not weird in Port Townsend during the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race. This is normal. It’s coming in nine weeks, get your feathers and costumes and bright colors, build your sculpture and practice the mud bog and the water race! Most mediocre wins! Check your breaks, load a teddy bear, bribes for the judges and practice your moves for the Kinetic Ball.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: weird.

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Keeper

Here is my lovely momento.

I write a poem called “In my parents’ house”.

In 1995 my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, makes teapots with the poem on the pot. She gives me one for Christmas.

She dies of cancer in 2000. My sister chooses my poem to read at her memorial.

A friend then reads the poem at my sister’s memorial in 2012 (also cancer), because I missed the California memorial. I was sick at home with pneumonia #2.

After she dies, I am sent a box of a few things from her house. Yarn and a second teapot. My sister had one.

I give the teapot to my niece, my sister’s daughter, telling her her grandmother made it.

My mother signed things with an H inside an O.

Here is the poem:

In my parents’ house
love is dispensed in teacups

When they notice you
Pacing in some empty mood
Or with that blank deserted face
Eyes shutters into an empty mind
They say, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

The warmth of the cup in your hands
And the hot liquid, sweet and milky
On your tongue works wonders
And binds your soul to your body

When my sister is twelve
She embroiders a patch for a quilt
In yellow flosses, a cup
with steam curling upwards
And the words, “Such a comfort. TEA.”

____________________

I think my maternal family still has the quilt, with jeans patches. My grandmother Katy B handed out squares to everyone at the cabins in Ontario and we all made squares. She and my cousin sewed them together and tied the quilt.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: momento.

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Daily Evil: Z is for Zzzzz

Sleep is not evil. Nor is snoring, though you might think someone is evil at 2 am if their snoring is keeping you up.

This is a small watercolor, 9 by 6 inches. Again, no date, but it is a view near my parent’s house in Chimacum. They loved that house and the views. They moved there in 1996 and my mother was diagnosed with cancer a year later. I want to end with this painting because they were so happy there, even with the cancer. They had wanted to move to the northwest for years, but waited until my grandmother died. She was in her 90s and they were afraid to move her. After she died, it took three years to find a place and sort things and move.

So let’s end with them sleeping and waking to morning and the sun coming over the mountains and the farms around them and the views.

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After the bear

I visited an old friend in Europe last March. I talked about the Olympic Peninsula and he was impressed with the cougars and orcas and bears. “We don’t have any large predators here.” Well, only humans.

They used to, though. This is from a local museum: a bear skeleton from about 7000 BC from the country. A very big bear fossil. There were other fossil predators including a wolf like creature.

So this is the succession where he lives: humans living after the bears.

What comes next?

________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: succession.

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Daily Evil: S is for Sneaky

Sneaky. One thing that I think really is evil is gossip. Talking about someone behind their back and spreading rumors and never speaking to the person themselves. But I do not need to punish anyone. The gossip will eat them from the inside, like a cancer, and they will look like fools when they are proven wrong. Curling churlishly with guilt.

I look at the sea and I let it all go.

This watercolor by Helen Burling Ottaway does not have a date. I love the whitecaps using the paper. Tricky to do that, I have tried. My daughter also draws horizons and seascapes, over and over. This is 11 by 15. I suspect it is from the late 1970s or early 1980s, because there is a watercolor of my sister on the beach, similar to this. My paternal grandparents lived on Topsail Island in North Carolina and that is the most likely location.

S is for sneaky and snarky and sea. Here is a snarky song.

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Keep

The older we get, the more we learn
which bridges to cross, which bridges to burn.

What shall I keep?
And shall I burn that bridge before I cross it
or after?
I did not know that was a bridge
I would burn
And I grieve as a I learn
But the sledgehammers and bombs
loosed by the family
have left a bridge
that is all but falling
Into an abyss.
It is stone and old.
It won’t burn, but it barely holds together.
One heavy rock, thrown in the middle
and it will fall
down down down.
What shall I keep?
What shall I let go?

I wonder what my parents think
and grandparents
and sister.
Do they think at all
or do they let go with death
and let joy overcome them
in reunion with the Beloved.
I hope where they are is joy.
It is ok, loves.
It did not turn out well
but people make their choices.
I can’t rebuild the bridge alone
and on the other side they prepare new IEDs to blow me up
if I attempt to rebuild
or cross.

I keep my children away
from the web of triangulation
and so they are not attached to the land
nor do they play the family games.
I am so glad.
I am still attached to the land
and my dead.
Not the living but the dead.
My sister, my mother, my father
grandparents, uncles, aunt.
All the dead.
Forgive me, but I can’t keep the bridge
going
and I will let the land go.
My children and I will be dead
to those living.
We have family and friends
who are loving and not hating
and not cruel.

I still love my dead
and even though the place reminds me of them,
they are not there.
They are in my heart.
I keep them safe
and let the bridge
and the land
go.

____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: keep.

My sister is paddling the canoe. I took the photograph, in about 1980.

And here is music: