The assignment this month over on Northern Scribblers Online was to write about a windfall that happened to somebody. It made me remember the following true story. Go magic!

Miracle in the Parking Lot

Nothing makes you appreciate money more than not having any. Raising two boys on an income fixed at a level well below the basic needs of my family meant not having any was the norm for the last two weeks of every month. They were hungry boys, growing fast, and I liked to eat a bit myself.

On this day of days, I was desperate. What to do? We were out of everything: bread, cheese, pasta, condiments, anything the kids would eat, and my cheque wasn’t due for another week. I’d exhausted all the possibilities: I’d rolled up and spent the last of my collected coin stash and used every scrap and shred of food in the house. I didn’t know anyone I could borrow money from, and I was unwilling to get into a pattern of owing money I knew I couldn’t repay.

The ache in my chest swelled to bursting and I began to cry in pure thwarted need. I left the house and began walking in the direction of the grocery store. “God, fairies, whatever magic exists that cares and could help me, I really need it now. I don’t know where to turn. Please, my kids are hungry, help me.”

I repeated this prayer over and over like a litany, wandering aimlessly with my eyes to the ground, my tears mingling with rain that streamed from the deep gray belly of cloud that hung so close overhead I felt I could reach up and touch it, if it weren’t such a burdensome effort just maintaining an upright stance. Part of me wanted to give in, collapse to the ground, and let somebody else take care of my kids, somebody who could. I felt a horror of failure, beaten down by circumstances and my own painful inadequacy.

When I got to the grocery store, I stopped short. What was I doing here? I had no money to buy anything. I turned to walk through the parking lot, thinking to take the path that would lead to the beach on the other side. My cast-down eyes spotted a strange-looking scrap of paper flattened by the rain. Without hope or real curiosity, simply because my body seemed to want to, I walked over and picked it up.

It took a few heartbeats to recognize what I was holding, and when I did, my heart nearly stopped. It was a hundred dollar bill. I couldn’t have felt anymore stunned if it had been a million. Do these things really happen, my numb brain wondered? Who would drop a hundred-dollar bill in the parking lot?

An angel, maybe, or a helpful fairy. Perhaps my own desperate desire magicked the thing out of thin air. I didn’t care which. I only knew I had been saved, that my kids would eat.

When I walked home laden with everything from bread and cheese to toilet paper, I told my boys the story of the miracle in the parking lot. More than anything, more than the fact of finding the money or having enough food for the rest of the month, I was grateful for this evidence of real, practical magic in my sons’ lives. It made the stories of miracles and magic I loved to tell them seem more true and possible. A crack had opened in the grey clockwork universe that let shards of light, colour and mystery enter my world and the eyes and minds of my children.

Every month, more or less (depending on whether I feel like participating, and I haven’t for a while), I post an assignment from my writer’s group, Northern Scribblers Online. For this month’s assignment, I didn’t choose the word or the question; we each submitted one and were assigned random words and questions from others. It turns out, the topic was oracularly appropriate for me. All I can say is, ugh.

It’s March 

word: havoc
question: What is grey and drab and all round yucky?

My least favourite month of the year has got to be March. There’s something about this time, despite the new growth shooting forth and the promise of spring that shows in the calendar if not in the air.

March plays havoc with my emotions. Every year, no matter where I live, March feels just the same. Where I grew up in the North, there was more snow in March than here in the sunny southland, but as soon as the calendar turns from February to March, the mercury inevitably drops precipitously, the sky greys over and the world feels heavier.

Today is Easter Sunday, and the calendar claims that spring has come at last, yet this cold, grey snow-spitting day denies that and replaces it with its own March agenda.

February was lovely. We had sun, the crocuses bloomed, the buds were bursting forth on the branches. And I suppose those things are still happening; I’ve seen daffodils recently. But the air feels clammy and cold, the sky is grey and the wind blows unforgivingly. The world holds tight to winter in March as though reluctant to surrender its grip to spring’s balmy breezes.

This is the month when I have less energy and ambition than any other time of year, which explains why this piece is so short. What else is there to say about March? Except that it is nearly over, and thank goodness for that.

It wasn’t my first job, but it was the most memorable. I was seventeen, freshly fired from my first, low-paid, boring stereotypical waitress job for attempting to drink beer in the hotel bar. Well duh, of course they knew how old I was, but I was trying to be cool with my friends and hated working there. It was worth the risk, I thought, and when the axe fell, I went for the only job in town that paid real money in exchange for doing real work, down at the sawmill.

It was a guy job, in fact, all the guys in town worked there, but in the seventies there were already a couple girls at the mill so I thought I’d give it a try. It appealed to my tomboy side, always strong in my girl heart. As a kid, I was the one who played outside making roads, towns and tree forts with the boys. When I did play with dolls, I put them through their paces outdoors, chopping off their hair and staging elaborate space-operas (including some disturbing scenes of torture).

Thrilled to be hired on at a job that paid so well and came with such a coolness factor, I invested in the required pair of steel-toed boots (hard to find in my size), donned jeans, plaid shirt and hardhat and strode off to work. I was assigned to pair with an older woman (in her forties, but she seemed quite old to me—older than my mother) piling one-by-fours. The lumber landed beside us via chute from the guys upstairs who cut it to size; we piled it neatly on pallets and strapped the finished loads for the forklift to haul away.

Once I got over the considerable aches and pains of the first few days, I loved it. The machinery broke down regularly, so whenever we fell behind we were assured of a chance to catch up. We paced ourselves, worked hard and steadily and were able to rest during some of the breakdowns once we caught up. The first two weeks I worked day shift: then I rotated to afternoons, 4pm until midnight, which meant going to parties late in work boots, covered with sawdust and sleepy most of the time.

One day, one of the men approached us, a dark, heavyset Portuguese man that I didn’t know well. He said in a heavily-accented voice, “Girls, you shouldn’t work so hard. You work too hard!” He kept looking around as though worried that someone would see him. At our puzzled stares, he only repeated, “Please, don’t work so hard, it’s not good.” Then he anxiously hurried away.

We quirked our eyebrows at him, shrugged, laughed and went back to work. Obviously, the guy was threatened by our ability to do the job so well. It made us proud and motivated us to work even harder.

A few days after that, the foreman sauntered over to us. He hooked his thumbs in his vest, smiled toothily and said, “Girls, you’re doing very well. So well, in fact, I’m going to have to lay you off. The job’s too easy. I figure one man should be able to handle it.”

So. That was that. There was no possible argument to that logic, not in the seventies in the North. In a daze of helpless rage, I packed up my steel-toed boots, turned in my hard hat and went home. I took a job as a waitress down at the Chinese restaurant, trying to decipher the lesson I’d learned. Working too hard was wrong? Success was failure? Only if you were a woman, it seemed, and I added it to my every-growing list of all the ways it sucked to be female.

They hired Gordie from down the road, a burly young guy, to do our job. A few days after they hired him, they had to hire someone to help him, but we weren’t called back. I was crushed, but it was worse for the other woman, who had worked there for years with a family to support. I was just a kid, and I tormented myself with the fantasy that I had caused her to lose her job.

The only positive result from that fiasco was that it compelled me to return to school and graduate. I hated waitressing, but I might be at the sawmill today if I hadn’t been laid off.

Woman of a certain age and shape seeks soul mate

Must be willing to surrender everything to the one you love (me), to adopt my particular form as your physical ideal and to be my ardent admirer in all areas. The sound of my voice must thrill you and the scent of my body intoxicate you. I will become your drug.

I expect to occupy the center of your attention at all times, and while I am absent, you should spend your free time devising new ways to please me. You will be expected to pay frequent sincere compliments without being asked. It is essential that you know exactly what I am thinking at all times to ensure that you do not say anything that might hurt, shock or antagonize me. You must learn to consider my feelings and well-being to be a sacred trust which it is your task to nurture with the utmost care and tenderness.

I am unique, and I know exactly what I want. You will be expected to know what that is at all times, to serve me without question or complaint and to worship me as your Queen. I will not reciprocate the worship (though I will occasionally caress your flesh and feed you enough crumbs of affection to keep you enslaved) because living in a patriarchal society has put me off Kings. Women must rule! - beginning at home, of course.

Once I have practiced my domination technique on you and gotten it right, I will move on to conquer patriarchy and grind the former world masters under my cleats. I expect you to follow faithfully at my heels, for I shall require someone to keep me supplied with excellent coffee, chocolate and back rubs.

As a reward (if you behave impeccably in all ways), you will be allowed to retain your testicles intact. More or less.

Writing about fabric is like
singing about colour
or painting the sound of music
Words are clumsy tools
to transmit the feel of felt

Anyone who sews knows
material, its many moods,
its medley of makes
Shimmering silk, sleek satin,
Lush velvet, tough denim

I would rather caress
than converse about cloth,
I would rather admire
than try to define
its warp, weft, selvage

Textiles have no translation,
being innocent of subtext
I stroke silk and velvet
My skin finds comfort
in its blind, braille world

Once upon a time, a princess was given a magic mirror as a christening present. The mirror was most wondrous, for it enabled her to see herself as others saw her.

No one knew that the one who gave the mirror was a wicked fairy. The fairy had used her own magic mirror to foresee the future and was forewarned that the princess would grow into beauty and magical power to rival her own. Her overweening pride and jealousy could not allow such a future, and so she gave to the little girl a trick magic mirror. The trick was that the young princess would grow up with no image of herself that was not born of how some other person saw her.

Since no two people ever saw her the same, and since the older she grew, the more divergent became others’ images of her, her self-image soon became fragmented and weak. On one day, she might look into the mirror and see a beautiful, poised, proud princess. On another day, she might see a frightened helpless child, a spoiled sulky brat or a sly manipulative seductress.

These conflicting images frightened and confused her, and she began to keep to her rooms as much as possible. Because the mirror encouraged her to believe that she herself changed to cause the differing images she saw, she began to think of herself as an uncontrolled shapeshifter. The magical influence of the mirror combined with her own innate magical abilities caused others to notice her changes as well; she became known for her ever-shifting countenance, so that by the time she was nearly grown she had no face that was truly her own.

One day, while pacing in her rooms, alternately gazing into the mirror and avoiding looking at it, she was startled by a small voice that seemed to have no source but the shadows in the darkest corner of the room.

“You must break the mirror,” the voice whispered.
(more…)

I’m not as myopic as my mother, but my memories of things past are not much clearer. Memory has always seemed a slippery serpent in my mind, one to wrestle unsuccessfully with, and unfortunately many of the people who have meant the most to me have slid down that slope and out of my purview.

I know that I have been deeply touched and influenced by more people than I can easily remember; teachers, lovers, friends, family, but it’s very difficult to pluck three names from that past morass of mixed-up events, things and human interactions. I often feel sad about that; I feel I’ve lost something precious. I look forward to the day (often spoken of) when people get older and past memories become clearer. Does that actually happen? I want to remember everything and everybody!

Most of my past is a kaleidoscope, a moving collage of faces, feelings and snippets of conversation and action all swirling about and it becomes clear that the number of people who have touched me deeply and influenced my choices is great indeed. I’ve moved around a lot and experienced much in nearly fifty years of life and I haven’t lived under glass. I’ve been touched and I’ve touched others and everyone I’ve met has influenced me in one way or other.

There is, however, a certain class of people whose faces will forever remain in sharp relief; whose emergence into existence changed me more deeply than anything ever could have up to that point, and who continue to affect me profoundly, changing my life over and over. I speak of my children, conveniently (for the purposes of this exercise) numbered three.

My first child came when I was very young, younger than my years. Then, I wanted a child the way a child wants a toy: babies are so cute and all my friends had one, even my younger sister had a baby. A baby would give me something fun to do, I felt, I’d always have someone to play with and I’d be guaranteed someone who would want me around.

When that little person opened her eyes to the light, she opened my eyes and heart as well. Like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day. She was beautiful and precious beyond what I could have imagined, and I fell madly in love with her. She, not her father, taught me what real love was. Even now, I feel a thrill at the memory of those early days with my sweet new baby.

When I became pregnant a second time, I feared for the new baby who I believed was bound to be less beloved than his beautiful older sister, queen of my heart.  I couldn’t imagine loving anybody in the world the way I did her, but Nature (a Mother herself) provided, and when that little boy’s eyes met mine, my heart again swelled to accommodate all the new love that I had given birth to that day. I felt an entirely new space in my heart open up, one that had never existed before. A miracle!

It was unimaginable that it would happen again because my third child was an accidental conception. I did not want to have another baby. My oldest was not yet two and the second only nine months old when I conceived. It was unfair! Baby, go away, I cried! I planned an abortion, feeling strong and justified in my decision. However, once again Mother Nature intervened with the help of the strong-hearted being in my womb.

Between the time I made an appointment to have the inconvenient pregnancy removed and when I actually saw the doctor (who ended up delivering the child), I had an experience which changed my life and perspective forever. A rippling sensation flowed through my body like cool water trickling pleasurably down from my head through my heart and into my womb.  For the first time, I recognized the person inside me. He was forced to assert his presence and identity to me sooner than the other two. I invited them in; this baby had to tug at my sleeve, introduce himself and request admittance.

“Hi, this is me,” he whispered, and I immediately knew who he was, a warm, familiar and beloved presence. All thought of abortion vanished, and I gained an understanding of what I can only call magic—the truth of the spirit—that what was growing inside me was more than simply tissue. This was not something I would impose on other women, for I was, and remain firmly pro-choice, but my own choice was made then and there.

These three people each grew  in their own ways to become loving, responsible and impressive adults who continue to profoundly affect all those who know them. I am proud to have been able to introduce them to life, and I am grateful for my own mother who did the same for me. So thanks, Mom.

I’ve never been much for sports. Looking back, my sporting experiences have been disappointing. The one exception was Swedish Dodgeball in high school. For some unknown reason, that was the most popular game in the high school I went to.

The point of Swedish Dodgeball was to hit people with the ball. If they were hit, they were out, and then they’d go back behind the other team’s line and join in trying to hit whoever was left. In that game, I was magic. Untouchable. By the end of the game, it always came down to me and whoever was left on the other team.

My secret, of course, was fear of being whacked with the ball. They used a regular volleyball, which wasn’t nearly soft enough for me. Nerf dodgeball I could have handled. The girls shrieked ‘ouch’ and the boys made stoic grunting sounds when they were hit. It was a sadistic sport. I don’t remember ever actually being hit (though I suppose I must have been), but I do remember going to almost supernatural lengths to avoid the ball.

More advanced version of the game involved multiple balls, so in addition to being incredibly coordinated you had to have eyes in the back of your head. I could do that. Fear of pain will spur a body to feats of magic. I’ve always had a low pain threshold; I allowed myself to become pregnant only by dint of conveniently forgetting (until the eighth month) that pain was (gulp) centrally involved, then spending the last month in terror listening to ubiquitous tales from other women relating their own childbearing agonies in salacious, play-by-play detail.

But I am speaking of sports. My only other brief spasm of sports-related activity was as an adult. I played ladies’ rec softball for a single season. I got better fast; in fact, I won the trophy for ‘most improved player’… but that doesn’t mean I got good. It just shows how really, really pathetic I was at the beginning.

Nothing could have induced me to play a second season, though. Way too much pain. I couldn’t handle a game that involved actually trying to make physical contact with the ball; not a big soft squishy ball, either, but a hard round missile that left purpling bruises all over my body. I could never quite catch those bouncing low grounders..

By the end of my first and last season playing softball, my legs weren’t fit to be seen in shorts. I looked like I’d been mugged by a midget. If the point of the game had been to avoid the ball, I could’ve been a star, but as it was, I was middling pathetic, flinching away instead of chasing after the ball, and then getting hit in the legs anyway.

Softball was a masochistic game all around. Everything resulted in pain. Sprinting at top speed from a standing start, whacking a hard ball with a hard wooden bat and screeching to sudden bone-jarring stops all resulted in various agonies in hips, shoulders and other wrenchable joints. And for what? The rewards were never clear to me, while the punishments were obvious. Even the best players hurt after a game. It was a joke.

My other problem with softball, aside from the pain thing, was I could never get the hang of how to throw the ball properly. Naturally, I threw ‘like a girl’. I couldn’t figure that out. Why didn’t boys throw like that? Was there a “Secret Order of Balls (S.O.B.)” in which boys were initiated into proper throwing techniques and warned, on pain of expulsion from the brotherhood, never to reveal the sacred mysteries to a female?

Not being much of a conspiracy theorist, I eventually decided it must be a matter of anatomy. Boys’ arms were jointed differently than girls. The occasional girl or woman who could throw the ball properly must have had some boy genes somewhere. Then there were boys like my brother who also threw like girls. Well, clearly they lacked the ball-throwing boy gene.

Now, I’m told it’s a simple matter of technique: how you ‘cock your elbow’ (hmm…). I’ve been assured that I could easily be taught to throw a ball much farther than I ever dreamed possible. Even if it’s true, frankly, I’m not interested. There’s still the pain problem, and the question ‘why bother?’ has never been adequately answered.

This month’s exercise for my writer’s group:

Word: Journalize
Question: Do you know where your kids are?

I’ve never been one to journalize (I’m more the stream-of-consciousness sort) but this crisis should be documented, and I’m the only one who can do it.

You see, I’m the only one left. Everyone is gone–my friends, my family, my husband, the police, the mayor, and worst of all, a loss I cannot contemplate without tears (they flow from my eyes as I write) my kids.

It began innocently enough, I suppose; at least, I had no suspicions that life as I knew it was about to end. As for why I remain, I have no guesses. It’s a mystery to me, and there is no one to ask.

The day had dawned bright, one of those glorious, burgeoning May days that make you believe in immortality. I was in the kitchen trying to do too many things at once, talking on the phone with my mother, cooking dinner and mediating a life-and-death dispute between Sherry, five, and Teddy, who was three.

“So, what do you think I should do?” I asked Mom. I was telling her about an issue I had with my oldest son’s second-grade teacher, Mr. Eberts. He had been unfairly picking on poor Samuel, who was a sensitive boy. I was really angry but was too shy and intimidated by his air of authority to say anything directly to him. Instead, I bitched to Mom.

“You should make him stop!” Sherry shrieked, slapping at Teddy, who began to cry.

“I wasn’t talking to you, sweetie, I was talking to Grandma,” I said. “And don’t hit your brother! That’s no way to settle a quarrel.”

“I think you should march right up to him and give him a piece of your mind,” Mom stated firmly. Of course I knew she would say that. I didn’t really expect her to solve my problem. It was an old habit of mine, asking for her opinion, then ignoring it. She appreciated being asked, and I felt it was good for our relationship.

“I can’t do that,” I said. “He’s just so tall. And he looks down at me like I’m some kind of a bug.”

“Mommiiee!!” Teddy whined. “She gots my twain. Make her give it me!”

“I had it first, you little baby!” Sherry quickly interjected. “And it’s not yours, it’s ours! Santa gave it to the whole family!” (I had known that was a bad idea, but Glen, aka Santa, had insisted.)

“Mine! Miiine!!” Now he was full-out shrieking. I sighed.

Reaching down, I lifted him to my left hip and rocked him while I propped the phone against my other shoulder. “It’s ok, Teddy. Sherry’s right, the train set is hers too. And she did have it first. But you can help Mommy talk to Grandma, okay?” He sobbed inconsolably, and Mom said, “Heavens, Susan, you do baby that child. You’re going to turn him into a Mama’s boy.”

I chose to ignore that, bringing the conversation back to Mr. Eberts. “Okay, I know I should stand up to him, Mom, but I think he takes unfair advantage of his height and his big deep voice. He treats me like I’m just another child, not a parent. I should lodge a complaint with the administration, I think.”

Talking with Mom helped me to get clear in my own mind what to do. I breathed a sigh of relief. Teddy’s sobs trailed away and he began to fall asleep against my shoulder, and Sherry contentedly took the train back into the playroom to join the rest of the train set so she could continue with her game… a working woman commuting to the office.

That’s my girl, I thought.

Just then I noticed smoke curling around the edge of the oven door.

“Shit! I mean, shoot! I have to go, Mom, something’s burning.”

I opened the oven door to see what was happening in there. Immediately smoke billowed out, making me cough. I reached through the vapors to shut the oven off. Then the smoke alarm came on, hideously loud, waking Teddy, who shrieked.

“Dammit!” I cursed. The wail of the smoke alarm sliced into my brain like a serrated knife. I plopped Teddy onto the floor and looked for a towel to flap at the smoke alarm to dissipate the smoke and make it stop screeching.

That’s when it happened. I’ve gone through this story in detail, hoping I might find some previously unnoticed clue. But I still don’t understand. In the blink of an eye, all the people vanished into thin air. I wasn’t looking…I was busy…but I could feel it happen. My mom went first. I felt her go, like a soap bubble popping in my mind. Then Glen, my husband, went, along with his boss and co-workers, and Mr. Eberts, and all the teachers and grown-ups in the town. They blinked out of existence, whole blocks of them at once.

Last of all, my kids went. I had begun to realize what was going on and was turning toward Teddy to snatch him into my arms, but just before I could face him he vanished too. And then Sherry and Samuel went. One at a time, their bright little flames disappeared from the world.

I knew I would be the one to stay. I could feel it. Whatever it was, it didn’t want me. I was left here all alone in my smoky house, smoke alarm screeching. I started to howl like a madwoman and didn’t stop until my throat was raw. On the streets, suddenly-empty vehicles smashed into buildings, trees, telephone poles and each other. All the world came to a crashing, thudding, screaming halt.

That was a week ago. And I still don’t know where my kids are.