Shuffling Couches - Goodbye Nora Ephron - Helene's Soup Bowl

Brrrring! I was asleep having a great dream about my friend Helene when the phone knocked me into consciousness.

"Your sofas will be delivered before 10 a.m.," she said.

The living room was a mess, but gimme a deadline and I'm psyched. I cleaned off the two old couches which Impact Thrift will pick up next week.

Booty under the cushions: 30 pens, biz cards, and two items I'm smashing down b/c they're creased.

How intrusive: Google.com just asked me if I wanna share this post with them. SMASH YOU DOWN.

Jose knocked on the front door and assessed the situation. I could not wait to be united with my two new couches. It took two months for the new deep red upholstery to be put on.

The couches are even better than I expected.

Jose remembered my new sofa-bed that's upstairs in Sarah's old room. These were well-wrapped in toilet paper, as were the huge cushions I ordered to go with the couch.

Oh, I'm so distraught. One of the great women of letters - Nora Ephron - just died at age 71. There's only one reason, I said to myself, she would die: cancer.  Sure enuf, she had leukemia and died from pneumonia. Read more in the Times.

I loved her piece on the aging neck. 

 Nora Ephron 1941-2012.

Here's my friend Russell Eisenman.  I put him here to cheer us up. He's Nora's age exactly but still breathing. He gets rave teaching reviews at his college. He was my first BF after I left my husband and we're still friends.

I have been sitting on my new red couch most of the day cuz it's my new desk. My laptop sits atop a TV table I found on the curb.

 I also tested it out as a Napper. I like it better than my bed. After I finished my work this a.m., I began watching WW2 documentaries - profiles of Goering, Goebbels, and the capture of Adolf Eichmann.

Oh, darn! I left my iced coffee in the kitchen. Looks like I'll have to get up and bring in here.

Am doing an experiment. Last nite I drank iced decaf and my blood sugar was almost normal in the morning. As you know, I'm a person w diabetes.

We'll see how it is in the morning. Perhaps I can finish my dream about my friend Helene who has just moved into Rydal Park from the horrific Artman Home for the Brain-dead.

THE SOUP BOWL

Whose bowl is this?

Surely not mine with its

delicate traceries, as delicate

as the woman I got it from

a small gift on the occasion of

her confinement

forever in a Lutheran nursing home

though she is Jewish

and has become a

reluctant octogenarian

I sip the fine Harrod’s tea

she gave me from a tin

though the taste has long gone

like some of the finer

workings of her mind

an early obituary causing

the shutting down of many corners,

a panic and hysteria that her home

on Bauman Drive

is missing her terribly

I took one succulent plant but

my windowsill is crowded with my

own nest and pine cones and feathers

Greeting my arrival in the Lutheran home

was a quick order from the attractive Gestapo

behind the desk

Sign in and wear a stick-on Visitor’s Badge

More Nazis on the second floor she now

calls home

Fake smiling, bowing aides who accompany

me down the hall, my steps watched lest I

inject the dementia patients with enough

morphine to kill them all

these Busby Berkeley babes

with wild white hair

and frumpy housedresses

these once vibrant bathing beauties

who made love with a passion

and now sit deadpan in a circle

eyes vacant as a dead dog’s eyes

We can’t let you die Helene

Writer, sculptor, woman with a camera

your photograph of my Sarah hangs in

my study, she was only fourteen, you

measured my children

on your kitchen wall, a swipe of a pencil

and - voila - they’re all grown up

We shall keep you alive though the

grilled cheese is rubbery

We shall keep you alive though your

lime-green Olds has been taken from you and

the husband you once loved is

failing fast in another building,

an untended bedsore on his heel

- who is watching who? –

You’ve got your phone and your computer

and you’ve got me, too, eating peanuts

and raisins from that stunning bowl that

shall help mold me into a more delicate

and thoughtful woman

as I lick my fingers from my

late-night snack and view the bowl

a reminder of my own future

doom-filled days.