Good Bye and Hello

Good-bye, and Hello.

Three of our nearest neighbours moved away in October.  Though they moved just a suburb away, to senior living, I would miss them, especially my next-door neighbour Sue, with whom I’d chat on the phone, visit, commiserate, pray,go for an outing, and/or walk several days a week over the last twenty years.  Who can replace a neighbour like that?

Three houses stood empty for two months as we wondered what kind of families would move in, and when. For Sale signs were posted Cars drove slowly by, appraising curb appeal and the neighbourhood, Sunday viewings were held. A few days before we departed for India for the winter, a SOLD sign went up in front of Sue’s house. We watched in vain for signs of the new occupants. Finally, as we left for the airport around noon on November twenty seventh, we saw a car in Sue’s driveway. We would have to wait until our midwinter return to meet our new neighbours.

Our MSP-CDG Delta/Air France flight was stellar, smooth, calmly and efficiently attended. Wheelchair service in Paris was prompt, and the extra-attentive attendant narrated details of the route and every little routine during the transfer to our next flight. At the entrance of the second terminal was a glut of wheelchairs and second-terminal attendants,talking excitedly, apparently at odds about how to proceed, causing everybody a delay. Perhaps it was their shift-change time?

As I teetered on legs stiffened by hours of sitting, one disgruntled attendant, a woman, abruptly jerked my arm, unceremoniously pushed me into a wheelchair, plopped my very heavy carry-on in my lap despite my protests, and, with a parting rejoinder to the others, set off without first placing the footrests, careening around corners and complaining loudly to another passing attendant who was pushing a chair in the same direction.

At the gate for our next flight, this attendant unnecessarily and awkwardly'transferred' me to a chair. What a relief! As I sat there, I enquired from a passing employee about a customer service desk, although I knew that I had neither the time nor the energy to pursue the matter. Within a minute, however, an intermediary appeared and hunkered at my feet, enquired gently about my welfare and the incident, and advised me to report it, if only for the sake of other frail  (frail? who's frail?) passengers needing wheelchair assistance in the future.  The disgruntled woman attendant later re-appeared, all smiles and cheer, to wheel me right up to the door of the JET Airways plane. She’d evidently gotten the message. (I filled in an e-report form Air France sent me later, but then promptly lost it into cyberspace.)

 The Jet Airways flight from Paris to Mumbai was less than stellar, understandably so, considering the almost completely full flight, inadequately restocked with meals and supplies, understaffed by a very young cabin crew, too inexperienced , undertrained and/or tired to handle it all. However, to their credit, they tried their best, on their feet the whole way.  Two Indian women pilots (there may have been more) navigated a smooth ride.

After an awkward exit, with no wheelchairs at all, and a lo-o-n-n-g  jetway,  we tired travellers hesitated at the unmarked corridor encircling the perimeter of the new Mumbai terminal, confused  over which way to turn. Most passengers eventually headed to the right. Thankfully, we old geezers could embark on a cart which miraculously made its toward us through the crowd. But, what is this: we hold our breath and/or murmur, when it heads to the left, the driver assuring a querulous old gent that we’ll eventually get to the right place.  (I mean, how far could you high jack an air terminal electric cart?) Scolding loudly, old gent struggles to get self, wife, and suitcase down off the cart, continuing his diatribe as they join the trend trudging  to the right.

Meanwhile a scroungy looking, tall white ‘trekkie’ brashes his way along through the crowd, trumpeting his excessively self confident self as being “not like the rest of you bastards.”

'Takes one to know one,' I murmur, as our cart sets off in the opposite direction, My fellow passengers in the cart are bemused.  Our cart cuts through the center of the building, and we find ourselves at the baggage carousel ahead of the walkers. Memory hazes over regarding the remainder of the Mumbai-Hyderabad terminal transfer and flight. Two long flights have taken their toll on intended alertness. We doze.

Upon our arrival, Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport appears busy but running smoothly. We barely have to pause with a porter to claim our luggage, and head for a quick shower and few hours’ nap in a tiny room of the airport’s tiny, dimly lit Plaza hotel.  Never mind that there’s barely room enough to maneuver between bed, bathroom and luggage, we have all the amenities you’d expect to find in a full size hotel. Who needs extra room when you're sleeping. And it’s squeaky clean.

Owing to the eleven and one half hour time difference between US and India, it is early morning on November twenty ninth. We’re the first to inaugurate the Plaza's Indian breakfast buffet, and eat our fill of upma and idli/sambar before calling Raghava, our driver, to bring the car around from the parking lot. A wide brass bowl full of fresh rose blossoms fronts the checkout counter as we depart.

We alternately doze and listen to current updates from Raghava during the five hour drive along an ever evolving national highway.  Oleander bushes line the median most of the way. We make brief  stops for tea and toilet at a small restaurant and gas station, a pause for a toll station, and a half-hour halt to say hello at the PUSHPA sewing center in Rajupalem, which is on our way, before finally segueing off the freeway and entering dusty, rush hour traffic on the edge of Guntur. We pass through the smog of a truck unloading area. Piles of rubble clutter the spaces in front of severed buildings in a neighborhood awaiting road-widening.  We gradually begin to recognize familiar streets and lanes.  One final turn brings us to the cream colored gate of Mary Shree, our familiar, cream color apartment building named after my motherinlaw, Mary Margaret Gummadi. 

Our watchman ambles out to open the gate that is already ajar, Raghava glides the car through, and we disembark at last, glad to stretch our aching bodies and limbs. We nod to the watchman and his watching family,  press the button, and pull open the double gates of our tiny elevator. A diminished but familiar, disembodied female voice greets us with her stern unfailing admonition, “Please shut the DOOR!”

As we rise to our fourth floor, we see, first, feet, then bodies, and finally the smiling faces of half a dozen family members and the housekeeper, waiting and ready to greet us with smiles, hugs, and a hot, late lunch. .It’s good to be at home again, in India.

NaPoWriMo 2017, Day Twenty Two: A Double Elevenie

You thought
I'd lost track of the time
my dear,
But I was just writing a rhyme.
It seemed
to be raining outside
or not,
but I was staying close to home.
Would it
make any difference
if I were as tall
as you?

You were
the compatible one,
the one
who
fulfilled all the requirements.

NaPoWriMo 2017 Day Twenty One: I hear things

Today's NaPoWriMo challenge is to  to write a poem that incorporates overheard speech. It could be something ... heard on the radio, ...remember(ed) from ..childhood, even ...overheard a coworker say...! Use the overheard speech as a springboard from which to launch (a)poem. (The) poem could comment ...on the overheard phrase or simply use it as illustration or tone-setting material.

OK, I heard, at a party, somebody describing a particular kind of party:  "It's all in fun. Everybody visits and plays games and somebody wins.  Nobody loses because they all get a turn. It's great fun."

Asking about the food:  "How do you make this?  I want to get the recipe.  I'll invite _________ over to make it and watch how she does it.


" Y ou've been here before? We're all seeing it for the first time."

"The Party"

It was great fun, she reported,
You really, really should have come.

But this poem had to be written,
the words had just started to come.

When you're hot with an idea,
there's no question of 'just begun.'

Inspiration has no recipe
to follow until it is done.

Invite inspiration over,
when she visits make her welcome,

Serve her food that she likes, play games.
Listen to her comments and then some.

Ask her whether she is comfortable,
and whether she'd like some iced tea.

Watching her reflection, I learned,
that my best inspiration is me.

NaPoWriMo 2017, Day Twenty It's Just a Game

Day twenty's challenge is  to "write a poem that incorporates the vocabulary and imagery of a specific sport or game. Your poem could invoke chess or baseball, hopscotch or canasta, Monopoly or jai alai."

I made my choice of a common sporting game and began to write.  As I go along, trying to create a poem, it seems to be unfolding as more riddle-like than relevant vocabulary laden. So I am following that lead. Here's the beginning--let's see where it takes me! (Can you guess yet what game is being described??)

When You Set Out

Start in the middle, always the middle, or as close to the center as you can.
If you're first to depart, take your time, and take heart
Remember, the journey, whether easy or hard, will only endure for a span.

Keep a pine cache before you, just so, that its treasures enchant only you.
Though your choices may be moot, sometimes it's a hoot
and a holler to discover the unexpected and, thankfully, true.

...to be continued off line

NaPoWriMo 2017 Day Nineteen: A Neo Creation Myth: A Beginning...tbd

That's the writing challenge on day nineteen.  Something absolutely new, or fictional, or experience, re-imagined...I'll try my hand at mythologizing a story that has its  real place in my memoirs.

How the Sweet Tooth Came to Be, by Shirley Smith Franklin

Actually, the tooth was there from the beginning.  

And the child, a girl child, somewhat fragile, content to spend early childhood days shadowing her mother at home whenever she was't reading a book held in one hand, eating an apple held in the other, she was there too or, failing an apple, sucking on her thumb..
It was such an ingrained habit, that sucking of the thumb.  At first it had seemed a good and valid way to avoid over-eating.  But when she became  seven mother said it was time for that sort of habit to stop.
It was post-war (doesn't really matter which war, every war  has its contingencies), so understandably there were some tightenings of the belt, limitations on the family budget, and extra work required in order to create, at home, flour-sack clothes, knitted mittens, and canned produce from the victory garden. A night out for the parents was always as modest as visiting friends, attending a church choir practice, or community square dancing.
And what did the girl child do when parents were away? If you paid attention before, you will have guessed reading.  Which is only partly true.  Read she did, in the attic where nobody would disturb her, and thus the story, on days when it was fair and warm.  Not too hot because that would be insufferable among the stuffy rafters, clothing and decorations stored until their season came due; not too cold, because after a sweater became not enough, a winter coat was too clumsy to wear up the narrow and twisty stairway and amidst the boxes, besides being not enough still to prevent the chill of a Northern Minnesota winter a way into the bones.
Night times in the attic were out, because the one feeble light over the twisty stairway was not sufficient with which to read, at any time of year.  And after all, who would want to be so far away from the world on a night when mommy and daddy weren't even around to know where you were.
No, at night she read in her room, or, strangely comfortably, sitting in a straight chair, at the dining room table.
Now the dining room,my dear, next to the kitchen, may not seem one's first choice for reading. Unless, of course, one has strong associations with food. Strong associations, nay longings, for certain types of food.  Desserts, perhaps, or, as the little girl was often prone to think, candy. All of which little or none was ever found in that house.  Desserts, okay, they were sometimes had, and could be excused as being part of a meal, Sundays or special days.  And they would never be left over.  Two older brothers made sure of that. Certainly there were not desserts everyday, and most certainly no candy.  What would happen to the children's teeth, for heaven's sake!
Every time the asked her mother or father to buy some candy, one or the two of them would definitely say one of two things: Father: We can 't be frittering our money away  on something  that we don't need. Candy is a luxury.(Ironically the word luxury itself was a kind of riches, the smooth beginning and simple ending surrounding that almos- un-American sound, 'ksh'.) While mother would say It's nothing but butter and sugar.
And so it happened that one night the little girl looked up from her solitary reading and thought, I'm hungry for candy.  As she glanced toward the kitchen and thought of how her mother would stand there, cooking and baking the most delicious things, she became aware that her sweet tooth was wanting some candy, and it wanted candy right soon.  And so it occurred to the girl that it might, just might, mind you, not be all that difficult to make some candy herself......After all, hadn't mother said it was only butter and sugar?

                                                                    TBD

NaPoWRiMo 2017 Day Eighteen: To Be or Not?

My immediate response to today's challenge, to write  a poem incorporating a neologism, was not very enthusiastic. Nothing came to mind.  So I did what all intentionally creative people do:  I waited until something did come to mind.

My first thoughts turned back to my childhood home, where playful language was frequently employed, especially, and though sometimes unintended, to the annoyance of other family members. (AKA teasing, namely me ). Sometimes even as a bargaining chip to allow a little sister to join in family games.  Certainly there must have been some neologisms among the epithets? (According to MerriamWebster, an epithet can be understood to be the part of a taxonomic name identifying a subordinate within a genus. Hmmm.)

I typed and thought about this assignment day and night. Still, the neologisms were neither coming nor coming back to mind.  My thoughts turned to nicknames, the ones my family sometimes used for me, as perhaps the next closest thing:  Mom: Te-za-leet 'ree, Tabut'ta boggala, Linti-linti (which I thought was Finnish for 'little bird' (the feathered kind) but evidently means 'tape'--go figure--presage of  my later marrying a 3-M-er?). , and the inevitable mommy choice, Princess; Dad: Squirrelly (which may've been a reflection of my early childhood's chortling attempts to wriggle away from extreme tickling upon his return from a work week away.)  Brothers: Shy (may've been a fact, but not if you knew me personally.  More likely this one was just an abbreviation of my name.)

You may not be tempted to employ these or similar nicknames yourself.  Please make up your own, if you would.  I feel as possessive of these being ''mine' as any adoptee feels possessive of his or her children, their own flesh and blood newly come into the world. Well, maybe not AS fiercely, that one's a joy to behold, this one just 'is.'

Later in the day a neologism did come to mind...I will add it here when the slip on which I jotted it surfaces!

But the question remains, are the nicknames  neologisms or not?  I vote some yes, some not. But just considering the question was fun.

________________
Coincidental sidelight: My comment regarding Finnish narration of a short video I came across today:

 'Can't tell you how delightfully the Finnish narration falls on my ear, even though I can't follow it. I haven't heard it in years but it echoes of uncles (and other relatives') conversations,' background music' to childhood visits at grandparents' house. It must be awfully hard to translate to English, vis the fractured results of so many attempts out there. I applaud my mother, in retrospect, for the translation work she was able to do for others, years after there were few/no others around with whom to speak it. (Thanks to Ingrid, there was at least one!!)

Even more coincidentally, guest musicians in church the next day played and sang a Finnish song!

NaPoWriMo 2017 Day Seventeen

                                                                                                         May 18, 2017
Who said the month of poems had to be written within one calendar month?  As April went on, and the world became new, life happened, and so it continues, new from day to day, PTL. So this year's Poohcetera's NaPoWriMo will continue as it happens, throughout the spring, whenever time and thought conspire!

Today's challenge is to write " a nocturne. In music, a nocturne is a composition meant to be played at night, usually for piano, and with a tender and melancholy sort of sound. (The)  nocturne should aim to translate this sensibility into poetic form!"

Ironically, I start this page in the middle of the night, or, (is this?) more accurate(ly) in the wee hours of the morning.

Sounds in the Night
or, Writing the Wee Hours Away

Keys clack under bent fingers.
Tinnitus, tiny mimicry of sound
fills the ears' small channels.
I sniff.  A footstep. Mine. Clack, clack.
A click--my back. Shift posture, stretch.
Black computer tower hums.
Rain rushes, smattering my window,
splattering sidewalk, deck, the drive.
Thoughts jostle in the mind,
rush to places I would go,
places where I must,
routes I then must take
when it is day. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Is it possible, I ask,
to hear my thoughts?
Sleep, sleep, til it is day.
Ho hum, a hum, furnace, frig
or air conditioner.
Sounds combine as one,
become irrelevant when, finally,
bedsheets and softer blanket,
jostle, rustle near my ear,
sleep, sleep til it is day, they say.
And I obey.
                ----Shirley Smith Franklin