~Upstream and Down~

The grey Cape on 32 Pine Street is empty-- no life or activity inside, unless you count the spiders spinning the messy cobwebs they never got away with when my parents' were there. My father is dead; my mother in an assisted living home. Their house should have been sold by now, or rented. But that is a tale of two siblings not to be told here. Still, I won't have the key to the back door forever, and today something called me to drive the half hour to see the house I grew up in. I usually listen when that "something" speaks. I wandered through every room, most empty or nearly so. Most things have gone to the auctioneer for an estate sale. What remains are odds and ends. Things that aren't trash, but no one really wants. I had my camera, and took pictures, inside and out. Not big pictures-- pictures of rooms or the yard-- but pieces of pictures, the details I think of when I remember the house I grew up in. I took: The tiny window in my attic bedroom, the one I...

It's Father's Day. Fathers are important. I've learned that even when they're dead and buried, they really aren't gone. Mine isn't anyway. Happy Father's Day, Dad. Love, Ruthie ~~~~~ The call from the nursing home jolted me awake at 3:19 on a snowy Sunday morning. Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 2003. I knew before answering that my father had died. “Is this Ruth?” The voice was soft. “Yes,” I said bracing myself. “Ruth, your father passed away a few minutes ago.” This call was not unexpected, but still I froze into silence, listening to the wind and whipping snow outside. I needed to be led through the process by experts familiar with wrapping a lifetime into a public package for the wake, the funeral, the burial . . . “What’s the next step?” “Well, with the storm, the undertaker won’t be able to get here for awhile, so you needn’t rush over.” But of course there would be no curling back into sleep’s warm cocoon. My husband got up with me, and made coffee....

I stretched out on the lounge chair in the back yard, a book on my lap. I'd just finished a bike ride, and had showered. I was looking forward to reading, but I was not ready to focus. So I drank my iced coffee, and let my gaze drift around the yard. The mind meanders when not put on a leash. The bleeding hearts under the tree reminded me of my grandmother's-- only hers were pink. I hadn't much liked them as a child. They were kind of a fancy flower, an old lady's flower I'd thought back then when daisies were my favorite. But there was something appealing about these in my garden. The flowers stretched along each branch reminding me of tee-shirts hanging from tenement house clothes lines-- second and third floor, one above the other. Then I thought I'd like to press them. I haven't thought of pressing flowers for long time. In a college botany class, I'd been required to collect and press local plants after determining their genus and species. My father...

I liked Helen Reddy, or rather her song, "I am Woman." I liked her haircut too. I belted out her song in the shower. I've roared in my husband's dumbfounded face. But I really always thought I was doing it for my personhood more than my womanhood . I've never called myself a feminist per se, although I've espoused feminist viewpoints. But, for me, the term conjures an image of the "radical" feminists of the 60's. About the only thing I did in that decade that put me in step with the feminist movement was to go braless-- though I never burned mine-- but I always sort of thought braless-ness pleased men; I never quite understood the reason feminists chose that particular action. Wasn't feminism supposed to be about doing what you wanted regardless of men? "Jessica Valenti, author of the new book "Full Frontal Feminism," discusses sex positivity, activism and boob flashing as a feminist statement," says Rebecca Traiste...

It was late. We should have been asleep, but we weren't-- David because he's eighteen, and me, because I lose track of time when I'm at my computer. I'm usually in bed long before he is, reading or maybe curled with the cat. Sometimes he stops outside my door and says goodnight. Other times, he comes in, pats the cat, and gives me a kiss. If I'm really lucky, he stretches out beside me, and shares his day, talking about kids and teachers, making it live for me with his talent for imitation. He's eighteen now, six foot four, already in charge of his own time and activities-- up to a point. But he's still my baby, so when I heard him whisper, "Night, Mom," when I walked past his room on my way to bed, I pushed open his door, and sat on the edge of his bed to give him a kiss. "Remember when you used to fall asleep on the floor beside my bed?" he asked. I do remember. It eased him through his nightmare stage. I'd lie on my back, ...

Two days ago I had the privilege of interviewing a woman for a profile piece in the local paper. Anna. She's a hairdresser in a small two-chair shop she owns. Born in Italy, she's retained a strong accent despite thirty years in the US. That day, while I waited for my turn, she cut the hair of an Italian man. She lapsed in and out of her native tongue so quickly that her words blended in a mixture I found hard to decipher. When finished, she powdered his neck and brushed off the stray hairs and then dispensed the hug she gives her male clients. They've come to expect it. Then it was my turn for the chair. I watched her in the mirror, keeping track of what her newly hired hairdresser was doing. She watched, chatted, and answered the phone while she wielded her scissors to cut my hair expertly, if not a bit shorter than I wanted. I returned later in the day, when her appointments were done, with a coffee for each of us. We sat on a leather couch in a small alcove off the shop...