Me: What should I title it?

Diane: How about Homeless?

Me: Isn’t that too ham-handed? I don’t want people feeling sorry for me.

Diane: Then don’t post it.

Me: But I want my words back on the blog, and I want people to know why there haven’t been any.

Diane: Then post it.

*******************

Dear Helen,

I’m behind. I should have written earlier. Maybe I’d be sleeping now.

I understood your death. I knew it was coming, I didn’t know how I’d react, but your perpetually bright smile helped me cope. Mack’s demise has unhinged me. Most days I know who I am, but some days I feel lost, and many nights I feel myself thrashing about. I wish he’d lived longer than six months after you died, I wish I’d intervened to stop his surgery, I wish my last memories of my father were not of him lying in bed, eyes closed, exercising the only parts he could still move, his hands.

Wednesday night I dreamed I couldn’t find my way home. I was in a strange city and all streets were dead ends. Anxious, I’d wake myself up, but go right back to the same city, and the same struggles. I’ve had these dreams before. Wander, wander, wander, look around, not knowing where I am, or really, even where home is. This time I got mad and said to myself, “I know where to go.” I grabbed my shopping cart and walked through dark, empty streets until I came to a highway without cars. I sensed this was a place I shouldn’t be, where I might be arrested, but I picked my cart up, hoisted it overhead, and continued to walk over the lanes, past high fences and down to a broad building with a loading dock. The concrete platform was too high, I’d made one wrong decision, but I heard a man’s voice that said, “Over here.” Over “there” was easy entry to the building and I walked in that direction with my cart.

I remember your dreams. You loved dreams. Yours were colorful and intricate and populated with people, and you looked to that PBS guy for help interpreting them. What was his name, the guy Mack derided, who liked James Joyce and wrote about symbols and myth and…Joseph Campbell, that’s him.

Thursday night, as if to ward off more wander-in-the-dark dreams, I cooked garlic toast with dinner. I crushed four fresh cloves, soaked them in olive oil and slathered the mixture on sour dough bread, which I then browned under the broiler. It was so strong it bit back. The toast reminded me of Karen’s potato soup which she cooks with five heads of garlic.

I often think of shopping with you at Idylwilde, of how you’d marvel at their exotic produce – like a child your eyes sparkled at new and different – and I still have the garlic cooker you and I bought. Anyway, Karen’s soup made her whole house smell like a crushed garlic clove, but it was about half as intense as my toast. Did she ever make it for you?

The point of my wandering letter is I need help. I need more rest, I need to feel up to this task, I need to feel not so alone. I know you don’t have the answers, you didn’t when you were alive, but you did always listen.

Anyway, as Diane and I were driving into Cambridge yesterday, we rounded the rotary near the BU bridge and Diane whispered, “There you are.” I thought she was talking about the driver in front of us, and I said, “You mean the curly-headed guy?” “No”, she answered, pointing to the green grass near the overpass, “The homeless man sitting next to his shopping cart.”

Usually the roar of the propane catches my attention, but this morning the Counting Crows and our closed windows sealed off the sound. Luckily I glanced out the back just as they were floating by.

I wasn’t the official photographer so I got to lurk in the background and have fun, which is good, because I ended up with about two pictures of the boy. More photos of people no one knows.

I wasn’t the official photographer so I got to lurk in the background and have fun, which is good, because I ended up with about two pictures of the boy. More photos of people no one knows.

John and Karen invited us to their house for dinner, and we arrived just as the sun was setting.

John and Karen invited us to their house for dinner, and we arrived just as the sun was setting.

Many birds and the beating of wings
Make a flinging reckless hum
In the early morning at the rocks
Above the blue pool
Where the gray shadows swim lazy.

In your blue eyes, O reckless child,
I saw today many little wild wishes,
Eager as the great morning.

Carl Sandburg

This is a must see.

I asked a woman, who was a friend of my father’s, and who’d double majored in Econ and French, if she were still fluent in French.

Hi Michael –

Let me put it this way………..25 years ago I lived in France for a year and could actually think in French. Now……I’m pretty effective if the speaker would just take the time to not speak actual French directly to me…….but instead just write everything down and let me read it!

When my husband and I traveled to France a few years ago, we went into a men’s clothing store. The clerk asked my husband a simple question and I translated for him. After I finished, the clerk looked at me with pity…….then she told my husband in English what she REALLY SAID!

Ciao……..Margaret