Aunt Helen in the Kitchen, by Martha Blue Waters

My Aunt Helen was about a hundred years old when I first met her. Well, probably not quite that old, but she looked it to me. I was around six and had no realistic concept of age yet, but we both enjoyed each other from the first minute we looked eye to eye and recognized a certain twinkle there.

I got the biggest kick out of the way her flabby wrinkles had a rhythm all their own, swaying back and forth as she made her way around the kitchen. That’s where she always was, too. Didn’t really look like she was comfortable anywhere else. On the couch in the living room while the family watched something on this brand new thing called “television,” she sat frozen and still, bored out of her mind. But the second she entered the kitchen she changed into a new person. Full of energy, happy, very fluid and efficient in her detailed movements.

She could make stirring up pancakes a totally joyful experience. The fun all began in her favorite mixing bowl — a heavy blue and white crock trimmed with tiny yellow flowers — which tucked perfectly between her left hip and forearm. She’d grab a big wooden spoon from the tall jar by the stove and start the process of beating that dense blob of pancake batter to within an inch of its life. 

First it was a slow, smooth, circular pattern as though she were conducting a somber funeral dirge. As the batter quickened, she picked up the pace and did a little waltz around the kitchen, stroking and stroking and stroking. The downbeat brought the spoon firmly to the bowl’s wide bottom while beats two and three twirled it lightly back up to the top. Pausing occasionally to pick up a little brown pitcher and add more liquid to the mix, Aunt Helen would begin her dance again with new vigor. Changing to a sassy cha cha or a good old Texas two step around the kitchen table, she beat fluffy life into her beloved batter. 

By this time I would be hopping around the floor imitating her and we’d be laughing so hard we cried. But the best part — the part that stole the whole show — was the sheer momentum her wrinkles gained as she stirred that bowl with more and more gusto. The folds of loose fat on her arms flapped and jiggled and bumped into each other with such fierce energy I swear I could feel a breeze in the air. And the sound of those fleshy castanets echoed off the walls and brought the music in our heads to rhythmic life.

Nobody could cook up a storm like my Aunt Helen!

3 Shorts, by Sara Robbins

1. Ways to Cross a River

You are living near the river. Do you travel in a boat to the other side? Do you walk the new pedestrian bridge built some years ago? Or do you ever drive across the Mid-Hudson Bridge to go hike Minnewaska or see a play in Woodstock? Somehow I doubt you do either.

"The river is wide, I cannot cross over . . . " I used to play this song on the piano in the living room. I would sing the lyrics — "Build me a boat that can carry two, and both shall row, my true love and I." I always teared up when I sang that song. I still do.

Your parents had a boat. They belonged to the Wasps only yacht club. Once, only once, you took me to that boat in dry dock. We snuck on board. It was cold — too cold to get naked — so we didn't stay long, but I was clearly the aggressor that day. It was awkward and we never went back there.

And you never took me out on the river. I remember years before, watching the crew team rowing on the Hudson. You were the coxswain, the one who sat in front yelling through a megaphone. When the race was over your team had won and they threw you into the water! Everyone was yelling and laughing and you were laughing too, a  dripping wet blonde boy pulled from the water.

I saw you that day, but another boy approached me first and got my phone number. I did see you though, for the first time that very day. I even remember what I was wearing. My memory is too powerful for my own damn good.

And I haven't crossed that river in decades. Have you?

2. Twenty Dollars

$20 isn't much these days. But I remember going grocery shopping with my sister in 1964 when she was 16 and I was 13. My mother had given one of us a twenty dollar bill and a long shopping list. We filled the cart. I remember spaghetti and milk and ground meat and canned tomatoes and iceberg lettuce, orange juice, Italian bread and a bag of apples. And when it was time to pay — the 20 was gone! Disappeared! Missing! Lost!

We freaked and drove home empty-handed. My mother was upset. "How could you lose twenty dollars!" She drove to the store herself. Twenty dollars! A huge loss back then, even when we had money to burn.

3. How Many

How many times have we said good-bye? 

Be well, good luck, call again.

Please call again.

Is it 10 times, is it 25, is it 30?

How many years since that first time — was it really forty-five years ago?

How many years until the next time?

Good-bye, be well, please stay alive

so we can keep saying 

"Good-bye, be well."

One, by Barbara Brazill

one crisp october morning

one bright sun shining through the scattered cloudbreak

one brilliant crimson orange tree robust and bursting with color

one slender fish circling under the footbridge

one cardinal singing loud and shrill across the treetops

one brown speckled duck sitting

one-legged in the shallow creek

one flirty squirrel proudly perched on

one low branch squawking outloud

one round red bush sprawling across the sidewalk's edge

one black spotted cat scooting swiftly over pavement

one brisk walking woman carrying her thoughts through

one moment of glory over

one million crunching leaves in

one lifetime

The Flasher, by Annie Wexler

She wore her issues on her sleeve. And I mean in the literal, not the metaphorical, sense. It had been like this from the beginning.

Samantha started life in the ordinary way. She spent her first year sleeping under a brightly colored patterned quilt. Perhaps that’s how it started. She would hum for hours in her crib just staring at the patterns and cooing. By age two she was already expressing herself through the visual. She would point to objects to make her feelings understood. If she was happy, a vase of flowers. If she was hungry, the bowl of fruit on the table. If she was sad or angry, the black dot in the middle of a Jackson Pollack reproduction that hung in her parents' bedroom. At age four she was drawing or painting to express herself. But still, no words. At age five they took her to a child psychiatrist. He was a tall man. He was a fat man. He was a man with a full gray beard. Samantha took one look at him and his room full of dorky therapy dolls and said to her mother in a clear loud voice, “All right! So I’ll talk.”

I met Samantha when we were both living in New York City and working at Delmonico’s in the Village. We had both graduated from City College. Neither of us had any ambitions to go to graduate school so we wound up together in the restaurant, I was a hostess, she was a bartender. “Call me Sam,” she had said. That spring I had a sublet on a small studio on 12^th Street and my lease was about to run out. “I have a one bedroom,” Sam said. “Why don’t you move in with me and we can share the rent.”

She wasn’t very talkative even then. She had to make small talk at the bar with the customers and she could do that fine. She could chat about the weather or whether we needed a quart of milk in the apartment, but regarding feelings, nothing. I remember the first time it happened. We were walking together to Delmonico's one mild afternoon when I sensed that Sam was distressed about something. I asked her what was wrong, fully expecting the familiar mumbled “nothing,” when she flashed me the inside of her arm. There she had painted, in red, the words, “PMS headache.” For a moment I thought I was seeing things. “Show me that again,” I said. And there it was.

She wouldn’t talk about it any further but the inside of her arm became her vehicle for emotional expression and the colors matched her mood. One day she’d flash a yellow tulip with the words, “Happy Today.” Another day there would be a chaotic jumble of green and purple with the words, “Confused, What am I doing with my life?” And then black stripes with large red dots, “Mad at Josh — breaking up.” 

Slowly she began to open up to what was behind the colors and would actually talk to me. We were getting close, becoming real friends.

One day, about a year after I moved in with her, she flashed her arm at me. She had pink hearts in a big circle and the words, “I think I love you, do you?” I tried to tell her no as gently as I could. But all conversation stopped there. She painted dark swirling clouds and angry gray faces every day for a month until the words appeared, “MOVE OUT.” 

That was forty years ago. I never saw Samantha again but I thought about her often, and I still do. She was unique and life must have been hard for her. And looking back I realize that I probably did truly love her.

Leaves Let Go, by Stacey Murphy

It is not the way of leaves

To care about how they fall.

It doesn’t matter

Whether there are heavy, thunder-filled

Clouds overhead

Or miles of bright blue and sunshine.

A leaf doesn’t

Cry out in pain if a harsh wind

Tugs it from its twig

Nor does it giggle with mischief if it

Manages to break  free on its own.

A leaf doesn’t

Fret over which is better:

To swoop down in a wild, swirling canopy, a rustling riot of

Yellow magic with hundreds of others –

Or to flutter demurely to the ground

In a quiet, private moment.

Leaves  never consider holding on,

Resisting destiny,

Afraid to take their part

In the inevitable pattern.

For the leaf, simply letting go is the thing.

Wings, by Carrie Stearns

Have I ever had wings?

If I did I think I must have liked them.

Just the thought of them makes me smile.

Wings make their own kind of wind.

Wings can open wide or close up tight.

I think I would like to tuck myself under a wing

take shelter in its softness 

and sleep.

Crashing Onto the Beaches, by Melissa Hamilton

I want to be the kind of woman who would drive all night

with windows down

looking for salt air to yell, “stop!”

As if I had lain in a dungeon for years,

this first sight of ocean, better than food.

I want to be the kind of woman who would barely park between the lines, leave sunscreen on the seat and sprint down the sands.

Never heeding the beach towels and castles —

there is reason they call it Baptism.