Diagnosis

This is not my writing....but I heard it on this morning's "Writer's Almanac" and LOVED it...
 
Diagnosis

by Sharon Olds

By the time I was six months old, she knew something
was wrong with me. I got looks on my face
she had not seen on any child
in the family, or the extended family,
or the neighborhood. My mother took me in
to the pediatrician with the kind hands,
a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:
Hub Long. My mom did not tell him
what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.
It was just these strange looks on my face—
he held me, and conversed with me,
chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother
said, She's doing it now! Look!
She's doing it now! and the doctor said,
What your daughter has
is called a sense
of humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me
back to the house where that sense would be tested
and found to be incurable.

Zombie Dream

Last night, I dreamed I was being chased by zombies.  The early part of the dream involved lots of running, chasing, barricading myself in rooms with rickety doors (by wedging a chair under the doorknob), and approaching people I knew only to realize that they were zombies.  You could tell if they were zombies because they would stare at you without blinking and then when they opened their mouths, you could see their grey and rotted teeth.

Eventually, fate caught up with me and I was bitten on the arm by Brock Rittenhouse, an old high school friend [that I haven't seen in 30 years].  I turned to my companions and began repeating over and over again, “I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!”

We all sat down to wait for the change—of me, into a zombie.  We did various things—read, cleaned….I was sewing.  Then suddenly, a fogginess enveloped me and I went limp.  I shouted to those around me, “Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!”

Now I’m sure those of you who are reading this are sure that it’s an allegory for what’s happening in my life right now.  I would be inclined to agree with that, too, but this dream has a punchline.  Read on….

After the fogginess passed, I went back to sewing, the only thing having changed was that I was now officially a zombie.  I sat and sewed…and sewed and sewed and sewed.  And then I said, “Wow.  My attention span is a lot longer now that I’m a zombie.”   

End of dream.  I woke up.

Burning Tower

Sometimes
You think you've wounded me
You've only made me smile
I know you're in there
I see you in there
behind
the layers and layers of ice and cement
 slabs of sheet metal
Your fortress of bitterness

I offer myself up
like a lamb to the slaughter
to the countless slings and arrows
the jabs and the sucker punches
the poison
the venom you spit my way--
in hopes that
you are one step closer
to burning down
your angry tower
that Barad-dur you've built for yourself--
is one step closer
to burning down
and one step closer
to home.

Death Grip

She keeps a death grip
on that sparse bouquet of holy moments
that never fail to bring a smile 

Brisk youthful footfalls advancing across a wooden floor  
A countenance like the sun in the door frame
Glance before outrageous laughter  
Breaking even with convenience store wagers

But time, persistent healer of all wounds
Time, that Thief, pries at her fingers
loosening the hold
she has on those hopeful and petal-less stems.

Their fragrance long staled, now cloyed with rot
Their color unremarkable greyish-green
Crunchy with age, dust with a touch
Clutched yet in a grimy, resistant palm.
Holding on for dear life. 

A silence in the wires
A sliver moon rises over a dry and barren desert
She listens carefully, looks intently, waits
For a message in the spider's web
An alignment of the stars
What god wants her to know


A perfect stillness.
All quiet.
No crickets.  No ticking clock.
The house settles in silence.
And then, as soft as a sigh, but more like a prayer
Breathing in, breathing out.
"No...." she says.

Addicted to Museums

Scott Robinson, an employee of the Indianapolis Children's Museum, just posted an article naming the Indianapolis Children's
Museum one of the ten best museums for children. 


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39270215/ns/travel-destination_travel


I totally agree.  We Schaefers are coast-to-coast travelers and we have not been to a children's museum that comes close to rivaling the one in our own back yard.  However,  I was surprised to note that we had not been to ANY of the other nine. 


My children were raised on museums (members of the Children's Museum until just recently) and LOVE them.  One of our summer trips included visits to more than 15 Civil War battlefield sites and no matter the size of the museum--three floors of Confederate history or a scant display of artifacts found on the grounds, it was always nearly impossible to drag
them away and on to the tour.  With that in mind, here is OUR list of top ten favorites...

1)    Children’s Museum (Indianapolis, IN)
2)    Will Rogers Museum (Cleremore, OK)
3)    Spam Museum (Austin, MN)
4)    Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (Tucson, AZ)
5)    Buffalo Bill Historical Center (Cody, WY)
6)    Museum of the Rockies (Bozeman, MT)
7)    Museum of Cowboy and Western Heritage (Oklahoma City, OK)
8)    Museum of the Confederacy (Richmond, VA)
9)    Mystic Seaport (Mystic, CT)
10)   Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, (Cleveland, OH)


Of course I have strong memories of CoSi in Columbus, the museum complex in Cincinnati, museums in Boston, DC, Denver, Fort Clatsop in Washington State, and all those fabulous Route #66 museums in Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico....!  And the Eiteljorg, and the Sioux Indian Museum in Rapid City, SD...and...oh, Greenfield Village in Dearborn, and the Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, MI.... 


Yep, we're addicted.  I see a 10-year vacation plan in the future where we visit each of the 9 listed in the article.  That ought to keep us busy for awhile.  ;-)

Buried Importance

Two Dreams...

1) In the first dream, my husband and I went to the restaurant. You know the one. It was much larger than it really is in this dream. It was crowded and busy. And I saw someone I knew across the room in the crowd. I saw him, but I don't know that he saw me. I tried to catch his eye, but he was busily engaged in witty repartee. And I was sad. I couldn't eat. I couldn't converse. He hadn't e-mailed, texted or bothered to call to let me know he was in town. And I understood again my true value and knew that I had no place in the new world order.

2) The second dream was much longer. I was in a show. I believe it was "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever"--which is not the show I'm REALLY in--and we were performing it as part of a Sunday morning church service. It was our last performance and I was desperate to get ahold of him to come and see it, come and see it. Please, please. But my phone wasn't working right. I went out to my car to get my old red phone, but I remembered when I saw it that it was in pieces. I thought about borrowing somebody's phone to text him, but then I remembered that his number was on my iPhone and it wasn't working right. And my mom was mad at me the whole time because I was busy trying to make my phone work and I wasn't paying attention to her. Then the service started and it was too late.

3) Then, as if to lighten things up a bit, I actually had a third dream. I dreamed that John and I were on one of our long driving vacations. We were looking for a town called Sheep. I was watching road signs, but I never saw a sign or a turn off for Sheep. We stopped at some lost-in-time gas station where I went in to get something to eat and try to get some idea of where we were and where we were supposed to be going. I didn't want to ask directions, but I looked all around the gas station for clues of where we might be. There were none. I had absently picked up two different packages of generic oreos and had opened them and eaten several cookies from each pack. They weren't good, but I had opened them and then I had to pay for them. Grr.

Lone Shoe

Lone shoe by the side of the road
how came you to be abandoned,
alone,
crying on a paved and gravelly shoulder?
What carelessness, what tomfoolery
what rash, random act
created your solitude?

Your demise hastened by brutal summer sun
midwestern monsoons
deadening exhaust and crushing of tires.

Do you yearn to be a pair,
to dance a proper dance for two
to run at a lope and not a limp?
To hip-hop up stairs with an even gait?
To share the weight equally?

Where now travels your other half
on the highway of destiny?
Where now is your symmetrical twin?
Neither of you to ever be reunited
and worn by mirror imaged feet...

But like the steadfast tin soldier
in Anderson's tragedy
your heart a leaden lump
a lonely vigil you keep
you wait silently immobile
and weep.