I'm returning it, I said, it's defective.
You don't know how to work it, he insisted.
My sister Ellen was here today to help me make coffee. It came out the same as usual - as hot water - for some unfathomable reason, the coffee grounds refused to drip down.
It was used. I got it from Amazon, where the review said "Like New."
Then there's the story of my new bike.
Outside I can't get on or off the damn thing easily, so, now that the nice weather is here, I want an easier-to-ride bike.
Off we went to Wheelwright In Abington, where owner Miko assisted us. Home we went, but I still had trouble getting on and off.
Miko had showed me how to do it. Tip the bike toward myself and grasp the brakes, so the bike don't move.
Still I had trouble, so Scott loaded it into his hatchbook and off we went.
This time one of the long-haired guys who worked there figured out how to lower the seat.
BTW, I've gotta finish this blog by 12:30 am cuz there's something on PBS I wanna watch. Can't remember what it is.
The lit journal Hippocampus posed a question. Write a lil essay about "I regretted immediately putting it in my mouth."
I wrote my response but TWO DAYS AFTER the deadline.
It got in anyway. Scroll down.
22 minutes to go.
*
My mother/law Margie Smith Deming died a couple of days ago at age 94. Here's her obit. She was extraordinarily active and made the world a better place by her deep involvement.
Here she is with my son Dan at Mom's house when Dan was a teenager.So I wrote a poem about her upon her death and sent it to her son David Ball Deming. But I had used the wrong middle name for my ex, Millard "Mike" Deming.
But my unconscious knew I'd made a mistake. While driving, I realized my mistake and I sent the corrected poem to David.
Margie had three sons:
Millard Grove Deming, who passed away several years ago
Joseph Chevalier Deming
David Ball Deming
A WOMAN TO LOVE
Joe
fell for her
her
jaw firm as
a
prizefighter’s
her
laugh made
him
think of spawning
fine
sons and he, Joe,
would
rise to the top, like
cream
from the moo-cows
on
her Daddy’s farm
in
Crockett.
Her
firm Daddy ruled,
“Don’t
touch the bottle, now,”
this,
the Bible Belt in
Texas, if only Daddy
knew
what
became of his
oldest
daughter,
married
to the
town
drunk. He knew.
Everyone
knew. When
she
knew, she took
the
boys and left.
When
Joe came to
visit
me and his son
Millard
one summer
driving
up from Arkansas
in
that green Studebaker
that
puffed like
a
worn-out pair of lungs
I
listened to his endless
stories,
repeated
like
a stuck record,
his
mind already going
from
something as easy
as
beer. Recited Josephus,
Herodotus,
too, as
we
sat in the kitchen of our
row
house where
he’d
come in when the bars
closed
at midnight, singing.
With
her steel-gray hair
she
did the laundry on the
day
her son Joseph was wed.
I’ll
always remember her
butterscotch
brownies,
chews,
she called them,
and
that Chicken Divan
with
curry powder kept
alive
by my mom.
The
last of the dynasty:
Bonnie
was the first to go, her
kind
and portly diabetic sister
Van,
who found wristwatches
while
driving, also passed. His
wife
drove a schoolbus and
had
a man’s voice. Aunt Mae
sewed
a yellow quilt for my daughter’s
birth,
gone holey with
time,
but I peek at it
sometimes
in the
dark
closet.
There
were six of them,
she
and her 94 years of
history
and good deeds
and
faith in God swept
off
the earth forever
like
a dust-bunny under
the
bed.
Who
will be there to mourn?
Are
any of her friends left?
Ruth
White’s gone, how about
Eddie,
her chum from school?
When
she sails into Kingdom
Come,
her daddy David Millard
Smith
and her oldest son
that
blue-eyed Millard
Grove
Deming will swarm like
honeybees
flying
toward
their beloved.
-Ruth
Zali Deming
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