An Afternoon with Mom and three sisters - Two poems: Two Aging Sisters - The Four Sisters

Grrr! Can't find my pink camera. Took lots of photos at mom's house.

Ah, just found it, guided by Donna, who spent the nite again. Twas in my pocketbook, which I'd checked three times.

For the tekkies among us, buy this chip to locate lost items.  Thanks Marcy!

Great news! My short story The Last Lawn Party was just published after half a dozen rejections. Loosely based on relatives in West Virginia.

Tomro I'll have a Letter to the Editor published in the Inquirer on World Bipolar Day. I've been conversing via email with the editor, name of Bill Reed.

Since Patty Duke died today at age 69 of sepsis from a ruptured intestine, I asked him to add a short graf about that. He used his own words, including that she'd won an Academy award.

Marcy sent me a link about Patty made by her actor son. Let's watch it now. Popcorn please!

Bill Reed, who I picture looking like Bill Nighy

added something to my Letter that I did not like at all.

He wrote that the date of March 30 as World Bipolar Day was chosen bc Vincent van Gogh suffered from bipolar disorder.

His diagnosis is complex.  General thinking is that he had temporal lobe epilepsy. I emailed this link to Bill Reed.

He removed the van Gogh part. I emailed him a thank-you.

***

Am watching a film on Netflix called The Way Back. Almost a dozen people escape from a hard labor camp in the wilds of Siberia. What a horrible place, where a gang of tattooed inmates run the place from the inside.

Makes it easier on the brutal guards.

I've got 23 minutes left.

***

Is there anything I might put on my camera so that when I misplace it I can find it? Maybe a very long string?

Yes, I think if I ever find it again, I will do dat!

Thanks for listening!

My sister Donna slept over last night. Great fun. I wasn't the only one in the house.

Photos please

 Donna adjusted the wabbit ears so she could get good reception on my TV. See them dangling from the dresser?

I kept coming into the bedroom and riding my bike cuz I'm eating all sorts of stuff that raises my blood sugar.

 We hung out in our jammies.

 Earlier this evening, I took my pitcher of garbage out to the compost heap and actually screamed softly when I saw someone coming through the same porch door as I was.

It was a reflection of myself.

Basically I'm very brave living alone and not being scared.

Hold on! What's that sound? 

TWO AGING SISTERS

Donna's friend Joyce
who died on the roof
said, I can just see us
two old ladies
knitting

Donna and I talk
on the red couch
Daddy is here and
so is God.

Words are often
forgotten, completed
by the other. She
brews hot coffee
and drips it on
her freckled chest

A beauty still, she
sits in lotus position
her feet bare
the Buddha on
the red couch.



THE FOUR SISTERS

Daddy was a risktaker
never played it safe
A man who rode on
the handlebars of
a blue bike
backwards, he
moved us into a
restricted neighborhood
in Shaker Heights.

"Kikes get out" they
wrote on the house
where the owner
of Sherwin's Bakery
of creme-filled
chocolate doughnuts
lived.

We frolicked in our
front yard and the
Turnocks next door
got their first look
at Jews, "Why, they
look like just like us,"
they reported to Jane
and Larry. We learned
to like "shaved ham"
from them. And keep
butter out year round.

We survived all sorts
of crises. Dad stopped
showing up at Passover
seders, left us mid-life, bald,
emaciated from the
cigarette-smoking
cancer that ate him
alive.

I've forgotten the
sound of his voice
or how it felt when
he put his hand
on my shoulder.

Duck duck goose
we played with the
neighbors in the
back yard. Put on
plays, built tree
forts, fell in love
heard on the evening
news of a neighbor boy
shot dead by a woman
with a Swiss cheese brain.

Tragedies sifted their
way into the elegant
restricted neighborhoods
where the Queen
in Alice in Wonderland
might have played
croquet on the
smooth green lawns.

Our tragedies
came with the morning
blizzards, and departed
after the thaw.

Embedded in the four
of us - Ellen, Donna,
Lynn and Ruthie -
and in mom, at the
head of table -
are silent reminders of
wounds so deep
they only come out
in dreams.

Mom's face at 93
is surprisingly beautiful
her network of wrinkles
like a road map of the United
States and Parris Island
where her beloved trained
to be a Marine.

His presence hovers above
his shadow trailing us
every moment of the day.