Category Archives: mystery

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Birds

Rainshadow Chorale is going to sing like Shakespeare birds on November 5th and 6th. I think this will be another delightful and really fun concert. I tried out for a solo wearing a cowgirl hat. My hat got a solo. I got a small group part. I’m too jealous of my hat, of my hat.

Why a cowgirl hat for Shakespeare? You’ll have to come to the concert to find out! We have composers ranging from Purcell to modern, all using Shakespeare’s words.

Anyhow, mark your calendars. My father was one of the initial eight choral members in 1997 and I joined in 2000. Sing on!

Here is our website: Rainshadow Chorale.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: birds.

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Unexpected hero

When I first think about divorce, I call my sister.

I say, “I am thinking about a divorce.”

She replies, “YOU don’t want to be a single mom.”

I think, well, crap, that is true. Me: “I AM a single mom. It’s just that one of them is FIFTY.”

My sister proceeds to tell me how difficult it is to be a single mother.

I have to self examine my OWN prejudices against single mothers.

Then I wade in, to solo and couples counseling, for a year. My ex fires our couples counselor after a YEAR. He says the counselor is on my side. “We have been talking to him for a year!” I protest.

“I want a new one,” says my then husband.

I find a new one. I am filling out the paperwork. It asks, what is your goal?

That is the moment I decide: I write “Amicable divorce.”

The two years before that moment, I am not sure. I am trying very very hard to see if it can be fixed. But it takes two to tango and my then husband will not tango. Not one step.

We were each attracted to something specific in the other person. My then husband did not want to work at any sort of traditional job. His father would come home angry from work for years. I loved working, always.

I was a terribly serious child, growing up in an alcoholic family, and I have food insecurity. That is, at some deep level, I always worry about whether there will be food. When I meet my then husband he says that his goal is “To have fun every day.”

This slays me. Have fun? And he WAS fun. Biking, jitterbug dancing, he was a tennis and golf pro, he was smart, well read, divorced from a marriage of convenience to a lesbian to cover so she could be a small town librarian. Really? Yes, really. I demanded to see the divorce papers before we got married. My then husband thought I was very very funny and I thought he was too.

When we divorce, people tell me he will never pay child support. He won’t stay in contact with the kids. There are a lot of opinions.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. My ex returns to school, gets a “displaced homemaker scholarship” because he was a househusband (yeah, I said he was smart). He goes to nursing school and gets an RN. “You’ve yammered about medicine at me for fourteen years, I might as well.”

He gave me hell about us living in an “old person’s” town. Then in nursing school he calls. “Hey, I’m doing a rotation. Guess what it is.”

“Don’t know, what?”

“Nursing home.”

I laugh.

“I LOVE these OLD PEOPLE.” he says. And he DOES. He is wonderful with them. He works in a nursing home for years. He gives scholarships to the medical assistants when they leave for nursing school. He brings coffee to his medical assistants and the other staff. He drives by on his day off because one elderly woman will only take her medicine if he gives it to her. He gets pianos for the nursing homes. He does memory loss concerts, where he tries to engage memory loss folks. We store music as entire songs, or entire albums, so if someone starts a song, they can often go through the whole thing. He can sometimes get someone singing who no longer can string a sentence together. Families love it.

Early in covid he calls me. “I have covid.”

“Sh-t.” I say. “Are you ok?”

“Oh, yeah. Everyone at the facility has it. Two staff didn’t so we sent them home. We are working sick because there isn’t anyone else.”

“Holy crap.”

“Yeah, it’s a little depressing. My memory loss folks can look ok at the start of the shift and are dead by the end.”

A quarter of the patients die. This is before the vaccine. My ex sails through covid, says he doesn’t feel bad, for him it’s just a cold. He says, “I miss some of them.” Yeah, holy crap.

So another hero. And he paid the child support every single month and stayed in touch with his kids in his own odd way. “Mom, he tells me about his golf shots,” says my daughter. I laugh, “Yeah. Well, he loves you.” “I don’t care about golf.” she says. “I know, me either,” I say.

The photograph was taken with my camera by my friend Amelia in 2014, I think. It is me and my ex, seven years after the divorce was final.

I read this to my ex prior to posting. Posted with his approval.

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skulls

I took this on my trip in March 2022. So far no one has guessed where I was correctly. There is a wonderful Zoology and Science Museum. A mystery for you to consider, where was I?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: ancient.

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spring fur

A friend has a dog that sheds in the spring in great piles. On first glance the yard looks like rabbit murder, until you realize that it is dog fur.

And why would it be in my car? I’m not sure I want to say. It has something to do with rocks and eggshells and feathers and a project that is forming in my mind.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: allergy.

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Caduceus Hair

A physician says to me, “You might have had more friends and been more successful in your career if you had been put on medication a long time ago.”

I think, “You f—ing bitch.” Nothing shows on my face. The doctor face is pleasant on the surface and the stone face that guards my feelings is deeper. I could show you the snakes and you would turn to stone but I would go to jail.

Your words don’t go away. They fester, a deep deep wound. I ask my other doctor, “If my only symptom of pneumonia is my mood, no white count, no fever, how would I know if I had pneumonia if I were medicated?”

I think back. Age twenty five with belly pain, emergency room, CT scan and then a sigmoidoscopy. I couldn’t eat, it hurt so bad. The emergency room offers me valium. “No,” I say, “my father is an alcoholic. I won’t take that.” I am sent to counseling. The counselor, smug, blonde, polished, wants to send me to her husband, a psychiatrist, for drugs. “No,” I say, “my father is an alcoholic. I want talk therapy not drugs.” I am very very afraid.

Things get better.  I tell the counselor thank you. “You can’t stop now,” she says, “You must continue the counseling. Or you will have problems later on.” I go once more. She says I must keep coming. I speak to a family friend, a PhD psychologist, who encourages me to say no. I cancel. No regrets.

I am not an alcoholic. I don’t smoke. I don’t use pot nor CBD. I never tried cocaine or meth or opioids or crack. I can tell an addict by their charm: the sick people are not charming nor the people in for maintenance. The moment a person tries to charm me I wonder what they want.

The physician is wrong and cruel besides. Valium is addictive and is still overused. I could have taken the path of psychiatric medicine but I chose not to.

I will find another doctor who is less stupid and cruel. They do exist. I know, because I am one.

____________________________

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trap (version II)

why are you so afraid of being trapped?

and it’s attached to women
not to men

that is weird

but we are all weird

I have an explanation
That I won’t share here
Doesn’t matter
doesn’t matter if it is right or wrong

what matters is the pattern
and whether you can break it
and whether you can heal it
and whether you want to heal it
or just repeat it

over and over again

I do not know what you will do
whether you will see the pattern
whether you want to break it
whether you want to heal it

but the pattern is why you chose me
that is clear as glass, as ice, as air
on a very clear cold day

my pattern is that I don’t give up
as you said, I look at things from all sides
I am tolerant to a fault, you say

what matters is my pattern
whether I see the pattern
whether I can break the pattern
whether I want to heal the pattern

and yes I do

I see the pattern thanks to you
what matters is the pattern
I will break the pattern
I will heal the pattern

thank you, love

sometimes we must cut the abscess open
and drain the pus
or rebreak the bone that has healed wrong
or amputate the gangrenous fingers
to save the rest

I see the pattern
I change it
I heal

_______________

May 27, 2022