Because There Was Still Time, by Stacey Murphy

Because there was still time
      He leaned against the running parking meter
      Getting his money’s worth.

Because there was still time
      A last stolen slow dance.

Because there was still time
     They walked slowly through the meadow 
     Fingertips brushing tall grass
     Furtive sideways glances.

Because there was still time
     One more story to fill the silence.

Because there was still time
     Cutting extra zinnias to fill out the bouquet.

Because there was still time
     We wasted it deciding what to do.

Where I Live Now, by Margaret Dennis

I live in an "Old People's Home." That's what I call it, expecting listeners to laugh. I know that I do this because I am still slightly embarrassed by the fact that this is a retirement home and that I am old enough to qualify to live here. That sounds silly and egotistical, I know, but that is my truth. At any rate, any negative feelings about the place itself are dispelled by how fond I am of my apartment here.

It is a small space, termed a "studio." I actually like that word; it connotes something artist-like. It is just big enough to hold all my personal belongings. Over the years, I moved a bit, and I gave up furniture and larger items as I changed my address. Now I live in a space that Goldilocks might term: "just right."

People always ask if there is a kitchen and the answer is yes. I have a recently remodeled space with bright wood cabinets, a stove, and a refrigerator. Not that I use the kitchen for cooking. I wouldn't dream of it. I take my meals downstairs in the dining room whenever my "schedule" allows. (There I go again, suggesting a brisk, busy life!) It looks good though: bright colored utensil holders, colorful teapots, and vivid dish towels. This is a facade. If you tried to create a real meal here you would be disappointed, but it makes me happy. I only need my fire-engine red plug- in water heater and my French Press, and I am content.

My bed is big: a queen-sized one with one of those really good mattresses that you sink into. I know, I know! It cost a lot but it was an indulgence I allowed myself when I moved here.

I have a wildly-colored spread — orange and blue and red — that my son brought me from Texas. This year, I bought myself a really cozy throw that I found in a tiny shop in Ireland. It is grey, just like the skies there. Every time I pull it around me, to drink my coffee or read a book, I am brought right back to the rainy day I found it. I can still hear the lovely lilt of the young shopkeeper's voice.

I have a small divan; I prefer the term "fainting couch," and at least three types of garden chairs. These are not all that comfortable but I love the graceful look of them. I have a coffee table, bought in a secondhand store. My son looked at  the large scratch across the glass top and said, "You don't want this one!" I replied, "Oh yes! I like to think that scratch was made on a sunny afternoon on a veranda somewhere, probably Florida, when the hostess was serving a cool glass of gin and tonic to a friend and it slid across the table, making this mark." My son shook his head with a smile on his face.

Oh the art! I have some wonderful pieces. Some bought in New York City, some in Maine, some in Provincetown. Many were painted by friends. My refrigerator door provides a great backdrop for my most valuable pieces: paintings in noisy colors and misspelled notes from my grandchildren. My favorite note says "To Mimi: weird, loving, kind, funny," and there is a little sketch of us all digging in the sand at Coney Island, our favorite destination in summer.

I have several mirrors to catch the light and oh, the light: perhaps that is the most important thing. I don't bother my big windows with curtains. They face west and the light in the mid to late afternoon is spectacular. The windows overlook the garden in the front of our building and I have a wonderful view of trees and flowers when they bloom. There is also a small pond stocked with goldfish. I can count them moving about in the summer but this morning the pond was covered with a layer of silver ice. It seemed even more beautiful.

I love this space. It is my retreat, my hollow, my nest. It makes any of my dismay about living among only older folks, with all the slight irritations, fade away when I close my door. Oh, I forgot to mention my book case. That I will have wherever I live!

I am happy here and very, very lucky to be one of the "old people."

It's Where My Story Begins: short pieces about our places of origin, by 5 members of the Tuesday Morning Writing Circle

Leah Grady Sayvetz

It all started here, on this floor of hardwood tongue-and-groove boards, bought cheap from a building getting torn down. Here where the morning and noon sunlight beams through the giant window, the whole eastern wall of the room. Here in this small room which housed only one double bed and one small dresser. The bed, a mattress, bought new, sitting on a frame built for it from recycled lumber. The dresser, very old, and with its own story which creaks out a word at a time each time a drawer is opened or closed. Here with the old glass lamp sitting on the small dresser, a willowy pattern of leaves etched into the foggy glass. It all started here, where the big piece of mirror glass reflected my mom's rosy cheeks and big, full-moon balloon, pregnant belly. The mirror secured to the wall with two pieces of scrap wood and four screws. That mirror hides on the wall behind the door swung open. The door came from some place where it had swung into other rooms before, perhaps seen other babies born. I was born on the floor of this room, as my mother squatted next to that bed, the only brand-new thing in that little room besides me. Twenty-six years have changed the furniture here and covered the walls in artwork and photographs, marking my years growing up. Only just the other day did I finally leave. 

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Leslie Howe

My family and I moved to Orient, Long Island when I was in the second grade. My father had accepted an appointment on Plum Island — a few miles out in the Long Island Sound where animal research was done in order to keep foreign animal infectious diseases out of the United States.  

We rented a a house in the middle of "town."  Town consisted of two churches, a post office, a candy store called "The Idle Hour" (that must also have sold canned goods, soda, milk, bread, and tobacco), and a gas station that also provided mechanical work on every model of vehicle known to man back in the 1950s.

Orient had many farms. Potato farms were most prevalent. Fishing was a small industry there as well, but for other, larger industries, one had to travel inland to larger towns like Greenport, Southold, and Riverhead.

I attended a school that had two grades per classroom. Mine was grades two and three. I walked to school with my best friend, Sylvia Brooks. My phone number was 1109-R. We were on a party line. Everyone in Orient knew everyone else's business! I knew that my brother, Neil, age 9 1/2 when I was 6, liked Donna Latham better than her twin sister, Rosemary. When I told that information to others, I got into deep trouble at home.

Our house was located right next to the firehouse so every day at noon, when the fire siren sounded, we were deafened by the sound and all conversation was stopped due to the loud noise. If there was a fire or an accident in the middle of the night, we all woke up abruptly to that loud siren right next door.

It was really nice spending a few years living in the quaint little village at the tip of Long Island where everyone seemed to know everyone else, crime was nonexistent, and the salty sea air was filled was sounds of sea gulls and ocean waves lapping the shore amidst the reeds and sandy seashells. 

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Nancy Osborn

Where my story begins — the story of how I wanted to live my life and how I have finally done so for almost half of it — that story began in the small upstate village of Liverpool, on Onondaga Lake.

At the time it was still a village, not just an extension of the Carousel Mall. It was a small town, separated from Syracuse by undeveloped land along the lake. It was a journey to travel to Syracuse, past the Salt Museum, past the French Fort, a journey past ugly oil tanks, and a disgustingly stinky garbage dump at the end of the lake. I always hated having to leave Liverpool to go see my parents' friends in the city of Syracuse.

I would have been content to stay at home on our tree-shaded street, playing with the neighbor kids, or roller-skating down our block or chasing rabbits in the park by the lake.

Ever since we moved away from Liverpool to the quintessential suburb outside Chicago and then to other suburbs in Western New York, I had longed for my parents to pick another small town to live in, but they never did.

So it fell to me, after many unhappy years in Buffalo and Boston, where I learned once again what I always knew, that I was not meant to live in big cities - it fell to me to find that small town for myself, to continue my story that began 65 years ago on 4th Street in Liverpool.

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Olivia Royale

My story begins in a place where the cops killin' don’t exactly make the news. i credit my hardness to my home town and i never tell folks the name of it. i don’t remember much from  childhood. But in my teenage years, my hometown was a badge, i wore on my leather jacket. i often looked at the dirt, and the poor people, and used it to inflict pain. i lived in “the next town over” from the high school I went to. It was an all white school and my first lesson in privilege. i drove my sister’s boyfriend's car when I was 15 because no one in my family could drive me. i parked in the seniors lot. i always flipped off anyone who challenged me for it — don’t those kids know where i come from? most of my friends didn’t come to my house but lucky for me my folks worked all the time and no one was home to tell me what to do. when i finally got my license i picked up a girl i worked with, Yaz, who was from the Dominican Republic and lived in the worst neighborhood in town. i drove to pick her up and when we pulled away from the curb she told me: “Don’t make eye contact with anyone.” When i got out i spent a few years traveling around. i tried all those cool towns you were suppose to move to. i think about my hometown a lot, ‘specially when I am noticing that privilege. i always move to the dirtier parts of town after that. i wanna stay true to that hardness. i was one of the lucky ones, i got out. i owe it to my hometown to defend the dirt, and those poor folks. And level out all the differences.

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Sara Robbins

Poughkeepsie, New York is a small city with a strange name situated on the Hudson River, 60 miles north of New York City. I was born there at St. Francis Hospital where my father, a doctor, delivered me, because the doctor who was supposed to deliver me was late. 

I went home with my parents to live on the upper floors of an old Victorian house which housed my father's office on the first floor. It was in downtown Po'town (my nickname for my hometown) on Church Street, where many beautiful old homes stood. 

When I was six months old, my mother, father, older brother, sister, and I all moved to a big country house on two acres, at the top of Brickyard Hill on Dutchess Turnpike. Over the years this house was remodeled and given an early '60s look. A real soda fountain/bar was installed off the huge family room. A regulation-sized pool table and a pinball bowling machine and another bar were installed in the very large basement. A 20x40 foot pool was installed on the front lawn with an extra bouncy diving board and a tall curved slide. There was a field where my father had a garden. He loved to grow tomatoes and at night in the summer we would have "me me" parties where we ate ripe tomato sandwiches on white bread with mayo and salt — the three of us kids yelling "me me" when asked who wants one? Daddy was proud of those tomatoes. Eventually he had a three-car garage erected next to the garden site.

Our home was different from anyone else's. We had a live-in maid whose little suite — bedroom, bathroom, and living room — was upstairs. My father loved music and technology and he had a stereo system installed that played music in three rooms, plus out by the pool. He even had a phone jack installed by the pool so he could always receive calls.

My Home Place: Greensburg, Kansas, by Marty Blue Waters

Our home was a ranch style, one-story stucco house with a big, brick porch stretched across the front. The porch swing was one of my favorite places to be when a big storm swept through our small town in southwest Kansas. I was endlessly fascinated by how a strong wind could bend full-grown trees so low that they would lean parallel to the ground. Then, when the storm passed, all the trees popped back up straight. Well, most of them anyway.

There were enormous trees everywhere in Greensburg, lining both sides of every street. It was a beautiful little town of about 1800 people, back in the 1950s and 1960s, when I was growing up there. Only thirty-five kids in my whole grade at school. You could walk from one end of town to the other in twenty easy minutes, bike it in five, waving to everyone along the way. My dog, Princess, and I knew every tree in town. Many were always so irresistible to me that I had to stop, lean my bike against the trunk, and climb up as high as I could go. Princess appreciated the chance to plop down and rest, so she waited patiently while I studied the sky and scanned the ground for anything interesting.

I've lived in New York for thirty-six years now and still think of my hometown with great fondness. One night in May, 2007, I heard about a giant tornado that was screaming through southwest Kansas. It was one of the first off-the-chart EF5 tornadoes and the weather channel was going bonkers. It was a mile wide at the base and was on a direct path to wipe Greensburg off the prairie. I knew everybody there would be deep underground and safe because we always had a superb warning system that people knew they could trust. So that made me less worried about a big death toll, at least. 

I watched the coverage all night and into the next day and saw terrifying footage of familiar landmarks torn to bits and ground into giant piles of debris. All the trees disappeared, or were just stumps left behind, and that was so disorienting. On top of the shock of it all, I couldn't recognize my town anywhere!

Before all the dust had settled, my sister's brother-in-law drove by our old house and took a picture for us. It was still standing! It was one of only a few structures that did not fall. And, best of all, my old porch swing was still hanging intact, beckoning me to come and sit and try to make sense of this mess. Wow! I could have sat through a monster tornado, if I had just chained myself to the swing and held on for dear life. It's a fun thought anyway. The house was totally shifted off its foundation, even though it had managed to keep itself together, so the bulldozers came to plow everything down. 

When I finally got back to visit, a month or so later, there was just an empty lot left behind. But the tree in the backyard, where my treehouse had been, still stood its ground. All its higher branches were missing but its trunk was still almost climbable. I was so proud of that lonely Cottonwood!

2 Descriptions of "Home Place," by Liz Burns

Where I Grew Up

Where I grew up was a town of 8,000 people in western Pennsylvania. It was a steel mill town then, with railroad tracks running through the center of town. Now the mills are closed and all but one of the railroad tracks is idle. We lived in a red brick house on East Main Street, a house that had been my grandparents'.  My life, when I was little,  pretty much existed on Main Street. If you went out of our house and headed east on Main Street, you came to one of the entrances of the steel mill where my father worked, and where he walked to work every day for 35 years. It's still there, although some of the buildings are empty and the furnaces don't fire anymore. And across from the mill sits a row of houses, one of which was my great-grandparents'. I went to school on West Main Street, ten blocks away from my home. I could walk in a straight line and not have to zigzag across town to get home, which made my mother happy. My school was right down the block from my other grandparents' house, also on West Main Street, and across the street from the church where our family went to Sunday mass. If you keep heading west from the school, you pass the town cemeteries, one Catholic, one non-Catholic, where both sides of my family are buried. Life was simple when I was little. It was very linear.

Where I Live Now

I live in an apartment across from Ithaca High School. It's a basement apartment — spacious for me — one bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bathroom. It's full of bookcases, cat toys, filed and unfiled papers, and my phobias. I somehow find it comforting to live partly underground. My apartment is next to the laundry room, which means I don't have to go up and down stairs to do my washing, and I have nice neighbors. The apartment complex is right next to Lakeview Cemetery. As you drive into the parking lot, you can see Ezra Cornell's family mausoleum on top of the ridge above the apartments. My living room windows look out on a hill leading up to the cemetery. The hill has maple and walnut trees, some bushes, and an occasional empty flower pot that gets blown down from one of the graves.

  

It's Where My Story Begins, by Yvonne Fisher

Born in Paddington Hospital in Marble Arch in London, England, where my parents escaped to and lived.

They went through the war there, through the Blitz and now it was after that, a couple of years later, and my mother fell in love with a handsome muscleman, my father. And my mother got pregnant by accident and decided, this time, to keep the baby who turned out to be a girl and that was me.

And my story began as my mother didn't know what to do with this little thing, so she stuffed cotton into my clothes, between me and my clothes, so that I wouldn't be cold in that damp, gray climate in London with no central heating.

So I imagine I was sweltering, hot, uncomfortable, couldn't breathe, suffocating, couldn't move, claustrophobic as my mother tried to gently protect me from the elements. I can see her pushing cotton into every crevice like I was a China doll, my arms outstretched, ready to begin my life.

Maybe that's why I wear so many layers.

Or else my story began in New York City, in Flushing, Queens, where we ended up after coming across the ocean, after passing through Ellis Island to this strange new land where we were always outsiders and immigrants. That's how I felt all through my childhood. I was a misfit in Flushing, Queens, shy and afraid, and that's how my story began.

Or, maybe, when I finally got to college, to Queens College, across the street from where we lived. I never thought I would get in but I did by the grace of God, or someone, and it was at the exact time when the world was changing in astounding new ways and I was able to emerge, to change along with the new values. 

This was the awakening time of sex and drugs and rock and roll and revolution and protest and Ram Das and yoga and SDS and theater and one play after another and love and exploration and a haze of twinkling stardust everywhere I looked and me in the middle of it and, maybe, that's where my story really began.

No more cotton stuffing me up. I threw it off and I was free.

A Few Very Good Questions

On Saturday morning, January 9, in the last few minutes of the writing circle, everyone chose an Inquiry Card from a deck made by Sylvia Nibley. Here are the responses to those questions, written by some of the women in the group.

What am I committed to?

- Anonymous

Be-ing. No more scurry. No more flurry. Nope. Now is now. Feet on floor. Sit bones on the chair. Air in. Air out. Just that simple. But nope, not that simple.  

At dinner, another diner said that relationships, in her mind, are simple. She said, "Society pictures them as such." As though that made it so. I harrumphed.  Relationships' glory is in their messiness. In the chance to see a snarled tangle, one with the hair from our childhood hairbrush in it (?), and to gently untangle it; to curiously, gently, and with kindness loosen the strands, and then to run one's fingers and nuzzle one's face in the other's silky locks, that is the divinity of connection. To scurry, to rush, all of that just tightens the knots, the tangles. All of that just sucks life from existence.  

I am committed to bringing my be-ing the same gentle kindness and attentive curiosity that allows me to untangle snarls with people and hair. So I let myself be. Feet on floor. Sit bones on chair. Air in. Air out.   

Where is my joy? 

- Anonymous

Where is my joy?

I left it on the street, behind the house where betrayal stung with the shame of loss and secrets.

Where is my joy?

It stayed in that moment of seeing my children for the first time. I inadvertently left it behind.

Where is my joy?

Scattered in the wind with my mother's ashes.

Where is my joy?

It sank like a storm-battered ship — too tired and overwhelmed to go on.

Where is my joy?

within me

deep down

still there

waiting

What's working well?

- Camilla

The well. The well is well. The water keeps coming up and we don’t even know where the well actually is. The guy who owned the house before us wasn’t even sure. The pump has been pumping since the fifties for god’s sake. “Dontcha think we ought to find it and figure it out and what if it stops and what if there is a finite bunch of water and what if there’s a drought and…?!” But somewhere along the line we forgot to worry and the pump keeps humming as a giant wet heart. It’s a mystery. And that’s what works.

What inspires me?   

- Chris Carstensen

art color form architecture buildings beauty people love nature friends family words stories emotion passion travel Italy

I especially like to write and draw

I especially like to learn and love through the structure of school

I especially like to share

I am inspired by beautiful design and thoughtful purpose

I am looking for inspiration to move me into the next form of my life activities

What can I experience more fully?

- Edna S. Brown

joy

love

sadness

loss

sensual pleasures

quietness

music

dance

absence of judgment

sunrises

sunsets

darkness 

the winter sky

openness of heart

What moves you?

- Lilace Mellin Guignard

I am moved by mystery. Not answers.

What do the clouds see in us, and do they argue about it?

When that vertebrae burns in the back of my neck, what chakra is that and should I be worried?

What color is the soul? Does it change colors over a life? Are bug souls a different color than lizard souls?

How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a woman?

How can anyone talk about the end of the earth and feel comforted?

Why would anyone want to have everything figured out?

What am I hungry for?

- Margaret Snow

Such a relevant question now, at this time of year when we make resolutions, many of which involve shaking addiction. If it's not sugar, sex, or drugs that we're hungry for, I'm reminded that it's time to find out what our souls really crave, and feed them that. Stop, pause, ask the question. Go inside. The craving is real, and we must nourish ourselves.

What can I let go of?

- Maureen Owens

How about everything?

Boxes unopened — for years in the basement

Running shoes I don't run in

Running shoes I won't even walk in

All jewelry

Folders with teaching stuff — I don't teach anymore and I don't want to

Massage stuff — I don't do massage anymore and I don't want to

Judgment (especially self)

Worry

Doubt

Busy

Fear

Facebook

Just about everything

Where can I  be more kind?

- Priscilla Walker

In the shadow of my mind.

What are my boundaries?

- Susan Dixon

Well, a nice fence, certainly. A fence is my agreement with predators: you stay out there, in here is mine. But just a sturdy fence isn't enough. Good boundaries mean a well-ordered garden inside the fence, one with neat beds, some for flowers, some for vegetables. Even then, though, weeds invade, so good boundaries involve another agreement: everything inside the fence has to cooperate, like a French potager or a Three Sisters Garden — corn supporting beans, beans fixing nitrogen, squash keeping down the weeds.

What am I expecting?

- Zee Zahava

laughter 

movement 

strength 

gentleness 

alchemy 

abundance 

creativity  

friendship

change 

miracles

wordswordswords 

the unexpected

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If you are interested in knowing more about where these questions come from check out:

InquiryCards.com