5 Minutes / 5 Lines

Written by some members of the Thursday Morning Writing Circle on October 1, during the last few moments of our gathering

Leah Grady Sayvetz

fall is when leaves come down

I think that's called onemonopea

but I don't think I spelled that correctly

now I'm trying to think back to English 103

where I learned that word

today is Thursday but it feels like Tuesday

making me realize who needs days of the week anyway?

because the significance of a day is 

what you do

not what they say it's called

sitting on the break or work bench, he's cutting fabric

he's making paper from old military uniforms

I sit down later on my break and am taken off guard

holding this inch-square stained camo with a seam and one button

I realize that the person who wore this died in war

Liz Burns

this morning I walked

my feet hurt

the creeks are fuller and flowing faster

there are some bigger puddles on the streets

but the ground has soaked up all the rain that fell

the small bulldozer plowed through the high grass

it cut through the brush on the hill and

moved a huge mound of earth

the landscapers cut down trees and then not content

with that, moved across the road and cut down more

Michael Schaff

five minutes — stop engines

five lines the limit

on a boat tying up

to an aquatic clock dock

only seconds left to summer

Sue Crowley

we slept in our car while crossing a desert

I was so small I fit on a shelf beneath the curved back window

one night I woke in the dark, overwhelmed by the endless infinity above me

aware at once of this tiny human speck amidst the unfathomable

not even my mother's gentle comforts could stop the tears

Susan Lesser

horse chestnuts nestle in the still green grass

only a few tomatoes left to pick

red leaves from the maple let go and dance to the ground

the gaudy zinnias bloom unaware

their time is passing

on the stove a pot of winter beef stew

in the oven a pie of apples, homemade crust

on the blue countertop a bowl of green salad crowned with a ring of feta cheese

in the basket rolls waiting for the butter dish

all of us home for dinner at last

Yvonne Fisher

at Yom Kippur services

the rabbi reminded us

that just beside joy

is sorrow and just

beside sorrow is joy

the Rinpoche said:

yes, you live in the heaven realm

now but it's better

to come back

down to earth

somebody hit my parked car

I jumped up ready to yell

the driver was a nice man

from Tibet in a big SUV

I calmed down instantly

Zee Zahava

34 years ago I met my sweetheart

she was wearing a pair of Frye boots

she spilled a cup of coffee in my lap

I thought she was adorable

last week she finally gave the boots away

yesterday I cooked up a big pot of apple sauce

for the first time ever

I left the peels on the apples, sprinkled in cinnamon

and used a large fork to mash things up

keeping it all lumpy the way my grandmother used to do

Never, a list by Nancy Osborn

Never borrow your best friend's bicycle if you don't know how to ride a two-wheeler without training wheels.

Never pretend to yourself that you understand those dreadful word problems in algebra.

Never study astronomy if all you really want to do is gaze at the full moon.

Never try to follow an elaborate recipe for a main course if at heart you only love to bake bread.

Never count on being able to renew a library book you haven't finished, or worse, haven't even started.

Never buy beautiful journals in the hope that their elegance will draw forth beautiful writing.

Never expect that any kisses after the first one will be as delicious.

Never trust what your stomach is telling you when you are buying pastries.

Never imagine that you will ever reach the end of your To Do lists.

Never expect that the bulbs you plant in the fall will come up where you artfully planted them.

Never expect that your flowers will grow faster than the weeds.

Never imagine that your most cherished childhood memories are the same ones as your sisters'.

Never pass up the chance for corn on the cob or fresh strawberries.

Never hope that you'll be able to fit into those old jeans, stashed in the back of your closet.

Never delude yourself when times are hard that things will seem better in the morning.

Never have hope that an old lover will return.

Never turn your back on someone who has treated you cruelly.

Never think twice about smiling at someone — friend or stranger.

Never forget your water bottle and rain parka when hiking in the fall.

Never, ever, regret all those things you didn't do yesterday, last week, or earlier in your life.

Shoe List, by Deirdre Silverman

In elementary school, we had to wear shoes to school, then change to sneakers to go into the gym. Because I hadn’t gone to kindergarten, I was younger than the others and didn’t know how to tie my shoes, so I couldn’t make the change. For months, my teacher left me alone in the classroom while the other kids had phys ed.

Buying shoes with my father in the 1950s and being embarrassed by him using 1930s shoe salesman slang.

My father had been seriously injured in an accident, resulting in problems with his legs and feet. He developed a nightly shoe ritual, which I performed kneeling on the floor. I had to unlace his shoes, remove them—gently! — loosen his socks (disgusting), put slippers on his feet, place the shoes in position to air out for 24 hours, and insert wooden shoe trees in the shoes from the previous night. I did this five days a week for how many years?

The late '50s style of dying silk shoes to match a specific dress, and then obsessing about keeping them dry so the color didn’t run.

Boots: the sensuality of showing less skin

   Black vinyl high-heeled boots that ended several inches above my knees. I wore them with a hot pink mini-dress cut to the waist in front and back. Totally trashy '60s manbait.

   My favorite boots ever were black cowgirl boots with red and white stitching, until I sprained my ankle and had to walk a mile in them. I never wore them again.

   The boots I lost at Tai Chi last winter were old and beat up. In fact, I had planned to replace them. But once gone, they became irreplaceable. No other boots can match their comfort and function.

   Now I have duct tape on the toes of my Muck boots. It’s really ugly, but no one will mistake my boots for theirs.

Aurora Shoes: made only a few miles from here, are what I live in now

   Going with my daughter to the barn/factory outside of Aurora to buy “seconds” of Aurora Shoes. Cats wound around our legs and we grew drunk on the smell of leather. Later we had lunch at the Aurora Inn, looking at the sailboats on the lake, pretending we were ladies, which we weren’t, out for a perfect fall afternoon, which it was.

   Getting dressed in semi-darkness on a gloomy winter day and discovering, several hours after I got to work, that I was wearing one brown Aurora shoe and one black. It made my day.

   Having my favorite pair of Aurora shoes resoled and resurrected — pure joy.

Random Autobiography: Notes from a few members of the Thursday Morning Writing Circle

A group of writers gathered in my studio on Thursday morning (August 27, 2015) for the third session of the new writing season. During the first 20 minutes we each wrote notes for a "random autobiography" and some of us decided to share excerpts from our memory lists right here.

I love to read mystery novels but I can't stand the suspense so I read the last page first, for reassurance, which doesn't really spoil things because I usually forget what I read within an hour.

When we were children I was in awe of my sister's ability to burp on demand at the dinner table, and equally amazed that she never got in trouble for doing that.

When I was 14 years old my parents bought me an expensive guitar for my birthday, and I used my allowance to buy the Joan Baez songbook. I'd sit on my bed for hours at a time, strum-strum-strumming my way through the book. I thought I sounded amazing. My mother said that every song sounded the same and my father said I should sing "inside my head" instead of out loud.

I remember struggling with math in school but my mom helped me, and  I actually discovered that I like logic proofs, geometry, and algebra.

I remember begging my parents for puppies and when I finally got them I learned what the frustrations of parenthood would feel like — two puppies, and every time I turned my back they'd relieve themselves. There was hardly any time to sit for a second to collect my thoughts.  

I remember rolling down the green, green slope of a hill until I was dizzy and when I landed at the bottom, still laughing, I had to spit grass out of my mouth. Then I did it all again.

I remember when parking meters only cost $1.00 an hour, but then, I remember when a phone call cost a nickel. In fact, I remember those phone booths, but now I’m thinking the Port-A-John industry has taken over the design.

I remember penny postcards that arrived from friends and family announcing the Grand Canyon was a sight to behold, or how it had rained everyday but one for a week in Nova Scotia. No one ever used the word “awesome” on a penny postcard: it had not yet entered the world of the vernacular.

I remember a song with lyrics that said “I forgot to remember to forget you” — an appealing verbal somersault. 

I remember my first teaching job: the only "Yankee" on staff; the only woman whose husband wasn't an Army officer; the only person in the school who spoke without a southern twang.

I remember the ocean. Green and gray and so much more emotionally developed than I am. I wanted to throw myself into it, not so much to eviscerate my experience but to make it so much more meaningful. 

I remember crying on the roof at 5 in the morning. The sun was rising over the Manhattan skyline and something about the series of orgasms and revelations I had experienced the night before had left me utterly dismantled. The overwhelming orange light brought acute awareness to the fact that we were two women, naked and drunk on a rooftop for all the world to see. Her body was so beautiful but I spent most of that time staring at her laugh lines. Abruptly, she sat up and lit a cigarette, before studying me intently. “Sometimes, when I look at you, I feel like Woody Allen."

I started out life as an introvert and ended up as an extrovert. The change was miraculous.

I grew up in a family of immigrants. We thought we were better than everybody else. My father was a big man. He worked hard. He died when I was young. I was merged with my mother. I spent my life trying to get away from her. Then I took care of her for 5 years before she died.

In college I did political Guerrilla Theater. I played a Vietnamese peasant woman with a baby. I fell down dead in the faculty cafeteria.

I went to hear Ram Das speak in Berkeley, California in 1969 when he had just returned from India and it completely changed my life.

I find myself dancing whenever and wherever I can.

The first time I stood at the edge of the ocean, the water rushing back into the sea around my feet made it feel as though I was running backwards though my feet were completely still. I fell over.

I remember trying to eat a baloney sandwich while sitting on a blanket, but we were at the beach, and the sandwich was full of . . . sand.

At 19 I stared at the ocean’s vastness and decided, just like that, I didn’t need my big sad problems anymore, that they were tiny enough to disappear in all those waves. That same summer I learned from my mother and aunties that they thought peeing in the ocean was quite acceptable and normal. I was shocked and disgusted.

I remember sitting on a rock jetty letting the water bash my legs into the rock, wondering whether it could turn them into a mermaid's tail.  Or back into a mermaid’s tail.

==

THANK YOU to these contributors:

Lottie Sweeney

Louise Vignaux 

Stacey Murphy 

Susan Lesser  

Yvonne Fisher 

Zee Zahava

Zeffi Walsh

Random Autobiography: notes from 8 women (Wednesday Circle)

A group of women gathered in my writing studio on Wednesday morning (August 26, 2015) for the second session of the new writing season. During the first 20 minutes we each wrote notes for a "random autobiography." We want to share some of these with you here. 

I remember the sense of victory when I finally managed to squeeze out a sound on a kazoo.

I remember a dream where my grandmother appeared, shortly after her death, and presented me with a huge piece of chocolate cake on a plate.

Before I had siblings, I had the cows in the barn. I'd make mud sandwiches for them, which they never ate.

I remember playing beneath my mother's ironing board as she listened to the McCarthy hearings.

I remember auditioning for the high school musical, so nervous I could hardly hold the sheet music. Luckily the director was my French teacher. She smiled at me, I took a breath, and I got a part in the show.

Summer vacations, school over for the year. My reward to myself was hours in my geologist aunt's jungle hammock, hidden from the world, reading science fiction.

The best present I ever got was my grandfather's collection of rocks and minerals, which he brought to me on one of their rare visits to our house. It wasn't even my birthday or Christmas.

I remember my grandmother's molasses cookies which I loved and which my grandfather ate every morning at breakfast. I'd never heard of such a thing.

I remember every library of my childhood.

I remember when my boots filled with the salty water from a wave pummeling in from the Sound at Orient Beach when I was 4 years old, and it made me so mad.

I remember looking at family photos with my dad just before he went to Hospicare.

I remember playing the part of Aunt Polly in the 9th grade musical, Tom Sawyer.

I remember sneaking out at night at Girl Scouts Camp and hiding from mean Mrs. Gillespie.

I remember eating a banana split for dinner.

I could never do a broad jump; just had no lift at all. One year at summer camp it cost my team, of which I was captain, the Decathlon. All we needed were a few more inches, but I just didn’t have them. And I just realized, after 50+ years of feeling responsible, that no one else did either.

I’ve never understood why we remember the things we do, and don't remember the things we don't.

Last week my grandchildren were visiting from suburban Maryland. One evening in the pouring rain the sky was an unearthly orange-green. I thought it wasn’t even worth telling my grandson to look. He’s a hyperactive 10 year-old, addicted to electronic devices. He wouldn’t care, and how sad that was to me. Just then he walked into the room and yelled, “Look at how beautiful the sky is! What’s that color?” Bad me.

Two trees of my childhood: the crabapple I climbed down to sneak out of my bedroom, and the weeping willow my parents had ripped from the earth because it dared to break our kitchen window during a hurricane.

Forty years of being in my pond, enveloped by cool water, birds complaining about my presence, dragonflies as my insect repellent, ripples reflecting sunlight on the grasses.

The old Rothschild Building was a very cool place to work — so many interesting people to meet. I remember taking the creaky old elevator to the second floor where they made the best egg and green olive sandwiches.

I remember Sunday morning polkas on the radio and dancing on my father's feet and singing in Polish.

I remember having a breakdown when I found my birth family after so many years.

I remember Summer Jam Music Festival in Watkins Glen

I remember developing a successful career at Cornell that lasted 25 years.

I remember my father calling my name as my mother died in his arms.

On cold winter nights I remember my Bubbe’s cabbage soup, seasoned with sour salt, thick with cabbage and meaty bones. 

I remember my first jumbo-sized kosher hot dog at Jack & Marion's in Coolidge Corner.  

I remember the first meeting of the Brookline High School Folk Music Club: Jim Kweskin was there, a tall scrawny man, years before his Jug Band albums became so popular.

I remember going to the Young People’s concerts on Saturday afternoons with my beloved Mema.

I remember the first time I put on tap shoes.

I remember that dreadful co-ed party in 10th grade when I called my dad and asked him to come get me and take me home.

I remember teaching my 4-year-old brother how to swear, and the taste of Ivory soap in my mouth when my mother found out what I had done.

I remember my first baby-sitting job for the Bernstein twins, both impish and adorable.  Their father used to keep Playboy magazines in the bathroom.

I remember riding the indoor trike around in a circle, from the kitchen into the front hall, to the living room, and then the kitchen again.

I remember the safer swings at the park that were very uncomfortable compared to the old rigid hard-rubber ones.

I remember the way sounds carry across a lake in the early evening.

I remember the fun of swinging back and forth on the "rings" in gym, feeling so powerful, like a monkey swinging on vines in the forest.

I remember wondering why the doctor didn't mention to my mother, or to me, that I was a pregnant teenager.

I remember my husband saying my parents should move to New York so we could fill their final years with the presence of family, and how he would build an addition on our garage so taking care of them wouldn't be as much of a burden.

I remember all the times we opened our home to our children's friends, helping them stay in school or deal with undesirable home situations.

I remember waking up and hearing a voice inside my head saying "Don't Eat Meat" and I believed it was the voice of God. But I didn't listen.

A purple glass bauble hung at the entrance to my home for the last four years, and I liked it, until one day this past July when I decided I no longer liked it and I said to that bit of glass "Your days are numbered." When I returned from my early morning walk the glass bauble had fallen off its hook and shattered into dozens of pieces. How can I know if something is a coincidence of if I have super powers?

==

THANK YOU to these contributors:

Anne Taft

Deirdre Silverman

Grace Celeste

Kathleen Jackson 

Leslie Howe 

Linda Pope 

Nancy Osborn 

Zee Zahava

Random Autobiography: notes from 9 women (Tuesday Circle)

A group of women gathered in my writing studio on Tuesday morning (August 25, 2015) for the first session of the new writing season. During the first 20 minutes we each wrote notes for a "random autobiography." After going around the circle, reading these out loud, some of us decided we'd like to share them more widely. So here they are . . . .

We lived with my grandparents in a railroad apartment until I was two. The reason given was that Mom couldn't boil an egg, let alone be trusted to prepare baby formula.

One summer our extended family stayed at a bungalow colony in the Catskills. There was a parade for the 4th of July and my mother dressed me up as an Indian maiden. One of my aunts kept calling me Princess Potch in Tushie. All day people patted me on the behind but I couldn't figure out why.

I won a Lindy Hop competition, dancing with an older girl who I didn't know before she asked me to be her partner. The whole experience was thrilling. The prize was a bag of pretzels.

In junior high school I played the tuba in music class, except I never actually managed to squeeze a single note out of the instrument, and the band director was so fed up with me he ordered me stay away, to go to the library instead. The school librarian said I was the best volunteer helper they ever had. The band director gave me an "A" for the class.

When I was 14 a counselor at camp called me a hippie and I thought he was being mean about my big hips. But later, when he explained himself, I was flattered.

I remember standing on the back porch with a monarch butterfly poised on the tip of my finger, opening and closing, drying off, readying for flight. 

I remember when the elevator doors opened and we were getting off, and the kids getting in said, "Did you guys hear about Princess Diana?"

I remember when mine was the only bedroom on the first floor and how lonely i felt at bedtime. 

I remember the first lines from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: "Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912."

I remember when my parents let me go on vacation to Maine with my high school boyfriend, and how when we got there we went grocery shopping and he bought new shampoo and said that way he would always remember the smell of the trip. 

I remember being surprised by a lemon shark gliding 10 feet beneath us as we snorkeled and how we froze and how all the brightly colored fish scattered so quickly.

I remember how my baby brother called flies "yies" and would say, "Go away, yie!" and how I still find myself thinking the same thing — "Go away, yie!" when there's one bothering me. 

In the mornings sometimes I sit and chat, luxuriating in relaxed togetherness time with my parents, friends, cousins, sister, lover — whoever is there in the living room. I love connections with people.

When I was very young, maybe 5, I had my father promise that once the Grassroots Festival office moved out of our basement he would fix it up for me as a dance studio. I subsequently forgot about that agreement, only to remember it years later and not mind.

I have one sister and we share a middle name. 

I am part of a clan of strong women, my six female cousins are really my six other sisters.

As a child I always figured I'd be in federal prison by the age I am now, 26, because my mother was.

I love salad. Lettuce. Vinegar. Give me a pickle or some sauerkraut any time of day and I'll be happy. You will find a bag of almonds in my purse, backpack, drum case, coat pocket. I love to cook.

It's really no secret that I love shoes. I remember sitting Indian-style (or, now, the more politically correct criss-cross-applesauce) on the floor of my grandmother's closet, completely enveloped by shoes. Glory be to the highest!!

I remember the endless days of summer on the farm in Mecklenburg: the cool, soft carpet of grass under my feet, riding bikes pell mell up and down the lone road in front of our house, unfurling the butterfly blanket with a snap and lying out in the sun, dripping with Bain de Soleil, reading Rich Man, Poor Man.

I remember when embroidered gauze shirts from House of Shalimar were all the rage.

I remember one of the first stories I wrote about a cat who travelled the world and all she saw and did and everyone she met along the way. I sandwiched the written pages between construction paper and bound them together with yarn. I wish I still had that small bundle.

I remember putting Vaseline in my hacked-up hair; I wanted it to look like Keith Richards's. It was weeks before that Vaseline washed out. My mother ranted over ruined pillowcases.

For some strange reason I love to feed people.

I love to read and can tune out just about any noise and focus on a book.

I love dead people, they know more than we do.

I think about my mother every day.

I have learned to have boundaries with people but I'm still open.

I am struggling with grief every day.

I have always loved dogs more than people

I remember the 1960s — dances like the boogaloo and the twist; graduating from college; participating in the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement; having an illegal abortion.

I remember sitting with my mother, in the summer, on our front lawn and no mosquitoes bit us.

I remember standing next to the singer Odetta at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

I remember my first car, a two-door red Corvair that was my college graduation present from my parents.

My first apartment in New York — June of 1968 taught me how to live in small spaces. 

I remember being robbed at gunpoint on the first day of 1979 in my feminist bookstore in New York City, and closing the store and going home. 

I remember holding my mother’s hand when she died.

I remember sand between my toes as small waves slipped past; writing my name — the "S" backwards — in indelible ink on the bed sheet at hated nap time; a pair of blue corduroy pants with an elastic waist — when they got too short my striped socks showed.

At 5 I picked a Holstein cow from the herd, pretending that she could/would be my 4-H project. 

I remember the smell of baking oatmeal bread coming in through the open school windows.

I had two toddlers when we lived at the Hasbrouck apartments. There was no insulation in the walls; frost on the inside of the windows; wet squeaky toys on the bathroom floor.

I remember my first bike ride on the dirt road in front of my grandmother’s house.

I remember when I knew Darryl liked me, he pushed me off my bike! — age 8.

I remember my first adult bike — a heavy 12-speed Royce Union.

I remember fixing flats, adjusting brakes, and oiling chains.  

Yesterday I wore an old sock on my hand, used the orange cleaning fluid to clean the chain on my Trek hybrid, the bike that I’ve ridden  for the last 15 years.

Just yesterday my husband and I were in the bike shop regaling the mechanic with bike stories.  As customers began to line up behind us we knew it was time to calm down and come down off the mountain of memories.

I remember most of the places where we pitched our tent and spent the night on our 3048 mile ride across the USA. I relive and remember details from that trip as I try to fall asleep on sleepless nights.

I buy an alarm clock only if it has an excellent snooze button.

I like numbers divisible by 3 because they are usually the most curvaceous.

I could swim underwater before I could walk on the ground.

I hope I'm a lot like my sister and will keep a sense of humor even if, someday, I can barely get from my bed to my wheelchair, which will soon be the scope of her mobile reality.

I reason with insects, politely asking them to go away. If they won't, I escort them elsewhere or smash them, if they're especially irritating.

==

THANK YOU to these contributors:

Leah Rose Grady Sayvetz

Linda Keeler

Marty Blue Waters

Paula Culver

Sara Robbins

Sue Perlgut

Sue Norvell

Summer Killian

Zee Zahava

Today, by Nancy Osborn

Today I pulled out my meditation bench, set the timer and prepared for my morning sitting.

Today it was very dark in the room where I sit, storm clouds gathering, ready to release rain.

Today I did not have the blinds open. I could not see the leafy branches just beyond the windows.

Today I kept my eyes closed, which is the way it should be each day, but some days I can't help turning my eyes toward the sky and trees.

Today it was very quiet outside while I sat. Sometimes this is not the case.

Today I heard no bird song, no squirrel chatter, no walkers' conversations, no creek sounds of water flowing over rocks. Perhaps everything was holding its breath before the storm.

Today I wondered, was I holding my breath as well? Or was I remembering to breathe in, pause, breathe out, pause. Sometimes I forget to breathe. Sometimes I forget to pause.

Today I found my sister's face floating in my mind's eye. Perhaps because of yesterday's late afternoon conversation about her upcoming performance piece, Seven Disappearances.

Today I found myself imagining the disappearance of my sister herself. I tried to let the thought come and then flow out of me, but it wouldn't.

Today I thought of disappearances in my life. The easy ones of my meditation breaths every morning. The hard ones of deaths of family and friends.

Today I thought about the disappearances I talked of with my sister. Of mud dissolving in water, of ice melting into the ground, of food chewed and swallowed, of words written in ink gradually becoming invisible, of soap bubbles rising on the breeze and vanishing, of the notes of songs released into the air and fading away.

Today I thought of my mother, whose sense of her self has slowly disappeared into her dementia.

Today all these thoughts came and went in the pauses between my breaths.

Today I wondered where the thoughts actually went. And then I reminded myself not to dwell on thinking, but to just breathe.

Today I could hear echoes from yoga pranayama practice on how to use fingers to keep track of breaths.

Today my fingers felt restless in their usual meditation position.

Today my fingers wanted to grasp at all that was slipping through them, of my life that was disappearing — both during breaths but also during the pauses.

Today I wondered whether the pauses could help me hold on to the moment.

Today I wondered if slowing my breathing, lengthening the pauses, could help me slow down the passing of time.

Today I wondered what of my life I might be missing while I sat and breathed.

Today I wondered what of my life was held suspended in the pauses.

Today I wondered about my father's last breaths, the pauses lengthening until that's all there was.

Today I wondered if it would fall to me to count the last breaths of my sisters, or would they count mine?

Today I wondered if it would help if I could learn to synchronize my breaths with those of my sisters.

Today I remembered the quiet mornings when my cat would lie on my lap, breathing in and breathing out.

Today I wondered where all those breaths had gone: mine, my cat's, my sisters', my father's.

Today I thought about all the pauses, all those moments of not breathing.

Today I wondered if those pauses were a reminder of mortality, of the long pause lying somewhere in my future.

But for today, it was just a long moment, seven breaths perhaps.

Then came the gentle chimes of my timer and life resumed.

* The phrase "just a long moment, seven breaths perhaps" comes from "The Dam," by John Milton Oliver, and appears in the poetry collection Pine Street Poets, edited by Meg Reynolds and John Milton Oliver