The Doubts of Unspoken Rules, by Diana Kreutzer

What is too much to share with a friend?

How do you know when you have shared too much?

What color combinations of clothes spill over the boundary of creative fashion and into the category of laughable, by those who judge such things?

What is the proper speed to eat in public so that you still qualify as being someone with good table manners?

At what point in a friendship is quiet time appropriate?

How much time is too much to be alone, before one is viewed as eccentric or hermit-like?

When do you start signing off your texts, e-mails, letters with "love" to your friends? 

When is someone considered a "friend"?

How much eye contact is allowed when you are alone among people you do not  know?

When do you decide to trust someone new in your life?

How many questions are too many to ask the tour guide, or bird guide, before everyone becomes annoyed with you?

How do you know that someone is interested in meeting  you and not merely saying "Hello! How are you?" to be polite?

Gab, by Vivian Relta

Gab: to chatter, banter, blabber, gossip

To gossip (a person who gossips), in Spanish, is chismoso(a), bochinche. 

In my culture, a gossiper or one one who gossips is almost always ascribed to women (bochinchera).  Woman and girl talk was considered useless chatter, blabber with little value. 

My childhood friend, Carmen, was a considered a bochinchera at an early age. She seemed to know a lot about everyone. For example, that Rosa got a beating last night after smart-mouthing her mother, or that my new, clean white sneakers came from John's Bargain Stores and not a real shoe store in Westchester Square. Carmen almost always told these stories behind the palm of her hand as she leaned into your ear, creating a momentary intimacy that could flip in a heartbeat. 

Our small group of friends liked Carmen, for the most part. She was funny, could dance real nice, shared her gum, and was known to beat up some of the boys on the block. She was a force of nature, I tell you. Carmen held a kind of power over us because we never knew if she was going to share a secret with us or about us. Sometimes when Carmen wasn't around, the rest of us would talk about her in low tones, calling her a bochinchera, a word we learned from the older girls, with a tone that dripped with accusation. 

Carmen was really no different than her older brother, Alex, a tall, lanky 10-year-old who seemed not to know that sentences could and should have a period at the end. But Alex was never called a bochinchero even though he told many a lie and tall tale in his day. A Puerto Rican boy, when he spoke on and on about whatever, it was never considered chatter or gossip. Rather, boy-talk was viewed as a good sign, a sign that he was practicing his God-given, DNA-driven, boy intelligence, and it mattered little if it was accurate or true. It was enough that he spoke it. 

A note from Zee: Today was DICTIONARY DAY in our Saturday Morning Writing Circle. When Vivian opened a dictionary to the word "gab" this childhood memory came right up. All of us in the Circle were so glad that it did!

Notula Nostalgiae, by Weiwei Luo

Once, back when it was socially acceptable to have blue tongues and sticky hands and stuffed animals whose names were derived from the formula of adding a y-suffix to whatever animal they resembled, I wanted to be a microbiologist. Which would remain the only hexasyllabic word in my repertoire for quite some time. I would travel far and wide, searching for rare specimens of bacteria and examining bdelloid rotifers under a microscope. Knowing about an invisible world that actually existed made me feel powerful, until the ghosts of the future chased those dreams back to Neverland. These ghosts became more real.

a note from zee:

It is with great pleasure that I share this piece with you today, in celebration of Weiwei Luo, who is graduating from Ithaca High School this month and will soon be leaving for Princeton University. She and I have written together for many years, in the teen group at the public library and in the word/play group at my studio. She wrote this delightful paragraph many months ago and I've re-read it frequently since then, taking pleasure in her words every time.

Little Altars Everywhere*, by Vivian Relta

Kitchen as Altar

Abuela's pilon (Grandmother's mortar and pestle)

created magical elixirs with

garlic, oregano, cumino (cumin), salt, pepper

transforming, transmuting

the ordinary kidney bean

or a freshly killed chicken

into a sacred meal.

The pots also played their part

seasoned over the years with her loving

attention and yes, food became God.

God became food.

And sharing this food around a simple table,

voices clamoring over and under each other,

love at high volumes is Grace.

Mami's Altar

As long as I could remember, there were always altars atop a chest of drawers in her bedroom. The altar was framed by images of the Sacred Heart of the Blessed Mother and Jesus Christ, who were always pointing to their hearts aflame. Today I realize all 3 of her children, all of us, were altars as well. Upon us, she poured her love, attention, discipline, light, prayers, water, food, medicine and laughter. Tending daily to us all the same, as she did with her altar in her room. There, too, she offered daily offerings of prayer, a lit candle, a glass of water and sometimes tobacco in the form of a cigar.

Many years later, when Mami died, a dear friend noticed I started buying black shoes just about every week. Black shoes of all types started to pile up outside my apartment door, as it was my habit to not wear shoes inside my home. She said I was walking through my grief. My pile of black shoes became an altar, of sorts, to my loss and remembrance of the one who first taught me about them.

  

*Little Altars Everywhere is the title of a book by Rebecca Wells

Mom in My Colors, by Xin Li

"You have to remember the Chinese name for forsythia." I told my son, "It is the brightest yellow, the very first you see every spring."

It was this yellow that started an especially tender season in my childhood: My mom was happier; she took walks instead of being busy at home; she taught me other trees and bushes.

Later, I understood that her happiness did not just come from loving spring, but also from the fact that spring was edible.

In the winter before the colors arrived, we ate frozen cabbages, frozen daikons, and potatoes. We had a monthly ration of one pound of meat per family — 0.13 ounces per person per day. 

Therefore, it was a permanent part of my childhood spring that my handkerchief had blotches of purple, green, brown, and my nails had the color of what was on the dinner table.

The best time to pick clovers was when the pink petals of wild plum began to cover the grass, when the forsythia had more green than yellow. Eyes on the ground, we searched for clovers with folded leaves. They were just coming through, their stems were white with a slight hint of green. They had tiny baby hair almost invisible to naked eye.

The goji sprouts came later. We left them to grow to the length of my fingers to produce a satisfactory bite. Their leaves were glossy; their stems had a hue of light purple. By the time they turned really purple, they were too bitter to eat.

There was this weed we called Gray, because the back of its leaves were covered with a layer of powdery gray. It grew in abundance along the roadside, under trees and bushes. We only picked it when clovers were gone and goji were too wooden to pinch.

Wild plums were green, because none ripened on its branch. By the time they reached the size of a green pea, we already circled the trees more often to patrol the territory we claimed in our own minds. We picked them when the danger to lose them to other kids became too great.

Every kid in my neighborhood mastered the art for splitting a plum into two halves without bruising its tender green body. We knew how to pick out the pure white ball in the center that never had a chance to grow into a mature stone. We popped the fruit into our mouths, one half at a time, sucked, held, rolled it from side to side, and chewed so reluctantly only when the temptation defeated our willpower.

The sour taste of a baby green plum was impossible, but most heavenly for us during those years, when everything edible was delicious.

"But why do I have to remember in particular the forsythia, Mama?"

"Because it is the first flower Abu taught me."

Abu is my mother.

Three Color Pieces, by Sara Robbins

Blue Eyes

My father visited me in a dream recently. It was the first time since he died, almost 40 years ago. I've seen my mother (who's been gone 30 years) a few times in dreams. The last time I hugged her and asked "Mommy, what's it like to be dead?" and she said "It's wonderful" and I woke up crying, my face covered with tears. This time my father sat in front of me — we held hands and I looked into his eyes — the bluest blue eyes I've ever seen — Paul Newman blue. His hands were cold and we both knew he was dead. I asked "Daddy, are you lonely?" and he smiled and said "But I'm not alone." Again I awoke crying, tears running down my face. I believe them both.

Baby Green

Green is what I see now. I've waited and here it is. Baby green, tender and sweet, and it's all for me. I need to paint a picture. The trees across the pond, black branches, green dots everywhere. Every spring I vow I will capture this image and every year the green deepens and darkens, the trees fill out, and I sigh. It happens too fast to catch on paper. Green.

Hot Pink 

Every year I plant hot pink geraniums next to indigo blue lobelia and white impatiens. I am loyal to the colors. I also plant lots of yellow, orange and red marigolds. These are happy colors and I believe marigolds keep bugs away and protect vegetables in the garden. I joke that I garden like a Polish grandmother (I am neither). Loud colors and lots of whirlygigs and windmills in bright colors. It's all very childlike and lighthearted and so temporary, so I savor.

Haiku: Heart of Winter to Heart of Spring, by Tina Wright

the roar of hard coal

pouring down a metal chute

the silence after

winter, my wife and 

mother dead yet the crazy 

leaning barn still stands

pips to their gladys,

sundogs simmer late afternoon

both sides    cold sun

alarm clock ringing!

daylight savings time begins

cursing in the dark

the great blue heron

sails over my niece's house

close as a prayer

the cat plays with her

feather then leaves. a breeze flips

the feather on its side

how lonely it is

sudden yellow of forsythia

on her birthday

april morning quite

muggy people wearing coats

wishing they were not

tails up jumping

for joy heifers out on

new spring grass

dreading summer heat

hot may day, sharp shadow of

trailer on my lawn

dew lights new maple

leafs, dogwood blossoms.

crossing guard near school yawning