HELLO, HELLO, HELLO! FIO'S COMPUTER IS WORKING AGAIN!

 Your girl will fill you in on all the news tomorrow...if her son's pugs don't slobber all over her with joy😀

 

                                      

I  LOST THE WHOLE STORY OF MY MOTHER'S LIFE, WHICH CAN ONLY MEAN SHE DIDN'T WANT ME TO TELL IT.  SEE YOU TOMORROW!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   When my mother was a girl, she used to paddle a canoe across the lac=ake to visit her friends, She lived on the Portage Lake outside of Akron, and the water was her highway.

    Sometimes a storm would come up and the black clouds would roll across the lake, the angry water swaying her bark. Then she would lean low in the canoe and paddle more strongly because she didn't know how to swim.

     Mother was in enough deep water anyway. As a child, her appearance went against her, A tall girl, she was expected to be as mature as her appearancd, and her dark coloring frightened her mother's people. "Schwartze Augen," her grandmother would say, gesturing against the evil eye/My mother's father was an alcoholic, a man's man, but a woman;s nightmare. The family lived a nomadic life, moving all arond the lakes wherever "Pop could pick up a job for a while. His older brother had died of a burst appendix when he was fourteen. His younger brother was as alcoholic by the time he hit high school. Her mother was bitter.

My Mother's eighth grade class photograph says it all. Mom, her black hair newly cut inyo a flapper bob, stands curiously apart from the rest of the students--beside them, but tilting her head awaw as if she is looking at the wotld from a different angle.

School was hher sancturay, She graduated as valedictorian of her hgh school and college ck=lasses. Then she taught for a couple of years and married my father, who did not drink,  required at the time, she  quit working when she became pregnant.

Mother didn't like sweet talk. I remember taking her to visit

      

 

 

 

 

NOT MUCH TIME TODAY----

ALONE

 

(A POEM FROM 1995)

 

   So many know my name and yet so few

Know me; I'm more and less than what I seem

To be, called friend by many people who

Know me as I know night by chance moonbeam...

   Chameleon-like I change my psychic skin

Depending whom I'm with and what the day,

Unending fitting, never fitting in,

Amending how I look and what I say,

   Unclothed and mute, inside myself I know

My soul complete, its multiplicity

A whole; but outside actor-like I show

The role I choose, or you assign to me

     And as no one can know my entity,

      I know no one, but only simile

LOVE ENDURES

 Another poem from times past--your girl wrote it with her heart and ran it in Suburban Notebook, a sixteen page newspaper she wrote in the 1980s.

                       Love Endures

    How long lasts love? Past tomorrow's dawn?

Past hurt and anger, betrayal, desertion, death?

This weakness of the heart--will it be strong

Enough to last the years, yet be weak yet?

   Love ripens in the lusty sun of youth

And is consumed, but blossoms ever-sweet

To be the springtime baby's first-spooned fruit,

The sustenance of summer, winter's treat

     The Music of the song survives the singer

And echoes of itself divinity--

Thus Love and Beauty, Truth and Courage linger

Long past their actors in eternity--

     How long lasts love? My love is yours

     As long as Love endures, yes, Love endures

 WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS

    I turned right at Billy's pool hall. then left at God's Lighthouse and right again at Kathy's Kwality wigs, then drove down the road through the low water crossing and turned right at the dead end, putting me in the faculty parking lot of Little Whitetail High School where I'll be teaching a duel-credit-college class  this fall. The weather is nasty, but I was in luck: an empty space in the first row, near the back door to the school was empty

     I eased into the space, half opened my door, and turned to gather my equipment from the seat beside me--purse, umbrella, satchel of books and first-day hand-outs.

      "Ma'am." What sounds like  the voice of God boomed from above my half-open door. Startled, I jerk around, only to have my vision blocked by a large male torso. The head and shoulders were so close that was hard for me to see his face, but his voice continues in slow, measured syllables. "Ma'am,  you've parked in my secretary's place. These two spaces are for the principle and the secretary."

     My head bobbed like it was on a string as I look around to see if  there was something I missed. 

    "There isn't any sign," I protested.

     His voice went deep, "Everyone knows."

     I glanced out of my back window to see where else I might park, but, but I must not have been moving fast enough because the menacing voice addresses me again. "Can I help you, ma'am?"

     "I'm just trying to find out what spaces are available, " I explained. "Oh, God--what other local dignitaries might I offend? Who else had invisible dubs on choice parking spots?

     "They are all open," ma'am, the headless voice replied.

     Then why can't I stay where I am, runs through my mind, but instead, I just say "Oh," close my car door, and back out of the parking space. I settle into a nearby spot, and God knows who's parking space it is.

By the end of the day, there are were two laminated paper signs designating the principle and secretary's  parking places hanging from shiny new posts. 

The flip-flap-flapping held up through several perfunctory mild pitter-pats, but the signs finally blow away in a truly magnificent Thanksgiving gale, only to be replaced by metal signs

"Those signs are totally unnecessary," I told local teacher I'd become friends with. "I'm the only one who didn't know the local custom, and now I know not to park in those two spaces. Beside, I'm not even parked out back today. I couldn't get through the low water crossing so I parked in one of those yellow-striped spaces out front."

My friend's eyes bugged out in alarm. "Out front? Those spaces are reserved for the coaches and the controller!

"There aren't any signs," I protested.

My friend  looked at me in horror, "EVERYONE KNOWS!"

    

THIS IS A TRUE STORY, BUT SOMEHOW, I'M NOT TELLING IT RIGHT....

LURCHING ALONG...........

 Hello, your girl has been working like a dog today in her studio and it hasn't been fun. Fio is trying to get all her written material--pen, pencil, papers, books, etc., and she would really like some help, but it is not to be. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR......

What the heck! How about Fio feeding you the opening page or two of a romance she has half-written?

   ________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________

    Six years of her life down the drain --Phillipa had never thought tit would come to this. She sat down on a concrete garden bench and wiped a hand on her jeans. Pulling her divorce degree out of its manila envelope, she read it through again, page by page.

     Until the papers arrived yesterday, she'd had a flicker of hope that Evan would return, throw himself at her feet, and beg her to take him back. Not that she would have. Jonathon had gone by the wayside as soon as she had found out that he'd married her to further his career--but it would have been nice to be the kicker rather that the kickee.

     She stuffed the papers back in the envelope......

     Damn! She may not have loved him, but she had become, well, accustomed to living in this venerable old house on Austin Avenue, even though it was too far too big for the two of them. Just the way she had become accustomed to spending most of her day away from the big house, either teaching at her small-town community college or attending faculty get-togethers at the big-city university where Evan chaired the philosophy department, thanks to her uncle Barney being dean of liberal arts

     And now Evan had dumped her. Their home had a FOR SALE sign out front, and her social life consisted of chatting with the landlady of Kinkaid House, the bed and breakfast that she's moved into when Evan had announced he was filing for divorce.

     She looked up at the canopy of trees  over her head. At least she still had a place to retreat to when she waned to be alone. There was something comforting about sitting under these grand old oaks. They'd survived hard times, and she could too.LURCHING

Reading through this story plot again, Fio doesn't think she'll use it.  Oh well--onward and upward!

       

POETIC REPEATS BECAUSE FIO CAN'T FIND THE POEMS SHE'S LOOKING FOR

 FIO SEEMS TO BE LOSING HER  POSTS, BUT LET'S TRY AGAIN :

Depression

   I pull it round me like a cloak of null,

This numbing void, this fine despair of mine,

This somber blanker folded thrice to dull

The knife-sharp edges of my dark decline--

    I need a nothingness, a time of naught,

A comfort place, an anesthetic  buffer

To suffocate my sense, my every thought

For if I do not feel, I cannot suffer--

    For if I do not try,  I cannot fail

And if I do not care, I'll haven pain,

And if I do not trust, then no betrayal

Can pierce my unprotected heart again,

       And if I do not hope, then no defeat

       Can mortify me in this sweet retreat

_____________________________________

    Suicide

Ah, Dorothy, your choice was much too rash--

There are other options I could recommend

Than poison, razors, nooses, guns, or gas

To bring about a graceful, private end--

   The suffocation of the spirit's one,

On shallow breaths, hope is inclined to smother--

An assault on the heart can get it done

The strangulation of the soul's another--

   Or you still could walk about, though dead--

A lumbering, slack-jawed zombie, hollow-eyed--

You'd grin and bow and nod your foolish head

With no one guessing you're a suicide

    Don't think that, knowing, any would be grieved--

    My own experience is, they'd be relieved

 _____________________________________________

Marionette

Dress the corpse in red and bright

And paint her pretty face,

Tie lines onto her hands and feet

And make her dance in place 

If you hold her jaw just so

And pull it with a string,

Supply a voice and words and tune-- 

Why, she can even sing

Then you can whistle and applaud

Her every sight and sound

Because she is the most alive

Of any corpse around

___________________________