How You Would Really Dress if Reality Didn’t Impinge on Your Spirit, by Maude Rith

First of all in velvet

The drapey, shimmery kind that’s 85% rayon and 15% silk.

And let’s say you can hand wash it when needed.

Rich colors but lots of them, your choice

Your favorites, the mood-lifting ones.

Cool colors warm colors

Colors that calm colors that command

Colors that say or shout this is who I am

Right Now

Add a few bits of chiffon

Beads, fancy buttons

Shoes that feel like you’re barefoot

Something that makes a sound, bangles

That clank, necklaces that rustle, fabric that swishes

As you move to remind you you’re

Dressed just the way you

Like, to please yourself

And you are pleased.

Fly Fishing, by Sylvia Bailey

I once cast a line. I cast it onto a snow-covered side yard in an arc, an unfolding loop so right my brother-in-law gasped. I'd never cast a fly rod before. He'd taken expensive lessons through Orvis, practiced and practiced and here it was — a natural, innately perfect cast from, well, me.

Don't worry. It all went downhill from there. 

This is it, I thought. Fly fishing is my raison d'être, my calling and my salvation. And, as I'd done so many other times, I threw out my previous passion and threw my money and my life energy into this. I was no longer whatever passion I'd just tossed away like an out of fashion pair of shoes. I was now the highest form of fly fisher, catch and release. I told everyone of my new hobby, sport, but thought of it as taking vows, as becoming a priest in this most exclusive and self evidently superior religion. I was all A River Runs Through It.

I was given a fly rod, a 4 weight, by my partner and her brother and I was off to a whole new world of acquisition. There is no end to the materials one might acquire for fly fishing. Oh the hours, the days, the weeks, the thousands of dollars I spent. Not practicing, but purchasing and reading about purchasing. Learning to tie flies and, oh boy, purchasing materials to tie flies: common and rare feathers and furs. I recall picking up a newly dead pheasant from the road and storing it in the freezer.

I didn't actually fish very much. Had no one to fish with. Had a romantic (read "deluded") image of myself on the water in my waders and felt-soled boots, my special folding staff, my vest with all those flies and leaders and tiny tools and that lovely wood-framed fish net, oh and my hat and special sun glasses, and special shirt, and special pants.  

And, in reality, my time fly fishing was not only minimal, it was miserable. Despite having all the accouterments, the essential books including ones about insect hatches specific to a certain stream or small region — (oh, how arcane the scripture of fly fishing. I adored the cache) — on the water I could barley get to a fishing spot without tangling the line, getting all sweaty and bug bit and having to find a place to pee, which meant first taking off the waders.

When I tried to fish, well, it was pathetic. I really embarrassed myself and I lied to cover up my laughable incompetence. Like so much of my life it was better in theory than in practice. And, like many passions before it, my passion for fly fishing built to a showy, chaotic , expensive, and cluttered crescendo. And then just hung there high in the atmosphere like the mists above a high spring falls while I lay below on the rocks.

My last class was  Orvis-sponsored. There were 2 male instructors. One of them condescending, sarcastic. Despite having mostly women in the class, these guys only provided 9 weight ( heavy) rods, too heavy for most women. We, the participants, had spent a lot of money on this day-long class and these guys had spent no time planning, or preparing to teach us. They clearly didn't give a damn. Why didn't I protest, or just leave the class, contact Orvis, and ask for my money back?   

I didn't. I stayed. I cast all day long. A matter of pride. Wasn't gonna be some weak female. By the end of that day all of my natural casting talent was gone, completely unlearned, and my right shoulder injured. 

I would never make a decent or pain-free cast again.

I Can't Remember, by Kathleen Halton

I can't remember anything

well, not the things "I should."

The things I do remember

aren't important, but they're good!

I can't remember anything.

Not sure exactly why.

Hormones perhaps, it's possible.

Perhaps I just don't try.

"You can't remember anything!"

I'm told by those who do.

I hope someday they're lucky

and become forgetful too.

Growing Up in Color, by Sue Schwartz

If you grew up in a house that was decorated in the early 1970s

And never got redone, you may recall

A living room with a deep blue green shag carpet

And tan jungle print curtains,

The carpet’s pile so thick

You could sink your four-year-old pinky in

Right up to your knuckle.

Or the smooth green-black geometric jeweled carpet

Of the dining room that camouflaged

The scattered shriveled peas

That were forever by your corner of the table.

Or the shimmering lime green dining room wallpaper,

With satin curtains to match;

Or the blooming blue green cabbage flowers

In the kitchen with green gingham curtains

Or the orderly birds of the wallpaper

In your father’s study, with the sheer tweed curtains

And the temperamental window shades.

You may recall pulling out the jumbo-sized pillows:

The one with a turquoise navy leaf theme that you always preferred,

And the other a series of orange, pink and mustard concentric circles:

How often you laid your face in them

During sleep overs and Saturday morning cartoons

Or the shining blue wallpaper

Of the entry hallway with the velvet white roses

That every new visitor commented on

As he or she ran her fingers over the raised texture.

Such things seemed normal:

The light blue/baby blue dinner plate circles

On the wallpaper in your first bedroom

Is the only childhood bedroom you’ll ever remember,

While across the hall the bold zigzags

Of the orange, gold and brown wallpaper

In the junk room made it forever known as “The Aztec Room.”

And you never considered that naming a room like that

Would be a unique mark of your particular family, as unique

As your parents naming your brother John Muir

And then calling him that full name, John Muir, for years

And how that name, like so much else,

Became, for your brother, a cross for him to bear

Because hardly anyone on the East Coast

Remembered who John Muir was,

Let alone preschoolers and most of their teachers.

Your parents had neither time nor interest

In redecorating your home: The strawberry wallpaper

In the upstairs bathroom remained until mold bloomed on it.

Their orange, brown, yellow and red shag carpet

In their bedroom with the beige botanical wallpaper

And burnt sienna see-through curtains

Remained until they sold the house —

It was only in the last month that they pulled the carpet

To reveal a beautiful hardwood floor underneath.

“If only we had pulled it sooner,

We could have slept better for years”

Your mother may have remarked,

Since dust had settled and remained

In most parts of your house for decades.

You may also be aware

That you are the only person on earth

Who carries that particular longing to climb again the wooden,

Blue-grey paint chipped steps of the front porch,

To open the door and hear your mother’s sleigh bells,

Tied to the other side, jingle

Or to walk straight back and find the key

To the old barn hanging on a square of scrap wood

By the back door, and see again the cowbell

Your Mother would ring in the evenings

Calling you and your brother home for supper.