I never knew either of my grandfathers--both long gone before I appeared on the scene. My mother's father died of stomach cancer. My dad's father died of a massive heart attack. (If you're keeping score, that mean's I have two strikes against me, health wise--heart disease and cancer.) Most of my younger life, I've heard stories about both men, written poems and essays about them. But I never really knew them, all my knowledge being second- and thirdhand.
Sharon Olds writes about her father and grandfather . . .
The Guild
by: Sharon Olds
in the darkened room in front of the fire,
the bourbon like fire in his hand, his eye
glittering meaninglessly in the light
from the flames, his glass eye baleful and stony,
a young man sat with him
in silence and darkness, a college boy with
white skin, unlined, a narrow
beautiful face, a broad domed
forehead, and eyes amber as the resin from
trees too young to be cut yet.
This was his son, who sat, an apprentice,
night after night, his glass of coals
next to the old man’s glass of coals,
and he drank when the old man drank, and he learned
the craft of oblivion—that young man
not yet cruel, his hair dark as the
soil that feeds the tree’s roots,
that son who would come to be in his turn
better at this than the teacher, the apprentice
who would pass his master in cruelty and oblivion,
drinking steadily by the flames in the blackness,
that young man my father.
Addiction runs in my family. As the old joke from Arsenic and Old Lace goes, it practically gallops. I have a high tolerance for alcohol and other substances. Always have. Maybe I inherited this tolerance from my dad, who possibly inherited it from his dad. I really don't have any way to verify these facts, aside from childhood memories of my dad sitting in his chair every night, a 7 and 7 in his cup. To this day, the smell of whiskey nauseates me.
But I'm not writing about the perils of addiction in this post. I'm also not writing about my father or grandfathers. On this Friday night, I'm thinking about inheritance--what gets handed down through the helix of my DNA. Yes, I'm predisposed to addiction. I established that already. But I'm also curious about other things that are tacked to the bulletin board of my makeup.
I have no idea where my penchant for poetry came from. As far as I know, I'm not the great-great-great-great grandson of Byron or Keats. I also don't know where my melancholic streak originates. Sure, my dad could be surly at night, and my older brother's moods are as changeable as Donald Trump's skin tones. But I don't know if there are any other vestigial fingers or toes of mental illness in my bloodline.
My day started out with a panic attack--not the kind that feels like a coronary, but one that had me deep breathing the entire drive to my office. There's a lot of big things happening in these first few months of 2025, and I'm sort of drowning at the moment in the whelming flood of responsibilities. Plus, teaching at the university starts up again on Monday. Throw in two or three church services I have to play this weekend, as well.
I met with a friend this morning who's teaching me ways to cope with these emotions with various methods of relaxation and energy. That helped a great deal. However, at the end of the long day, I found myself more than a little . . . discouraged is the best word I can come up with. When I got home, I didn't want to talk to anyone, so I took my puppy for a walk.
I sort of understand why my dad used to drink so much at night. (Eventually, he realized he had a problem and quit cold turkey. I never saw him with a 7 and 7 in his hand again.) He ran his own plumbing business and supported a family of nine kids. Alcohol was his way of coping with the stress. He came from the silent generation, so he didn't really talk about his emotions, especially not with a therapist.
Right now, everyone else in my house is asleep. I'm sitting in my dark living room, illuminated only by the Christmas tree and my laptop screen. There's something comforting in this solitude. All my work is still there, begging for my attention. Instead, I picked up the poetry collection Late Wife by Claudia Emerson and started reading it.
Maybe my maternal grandfather did the same thing at night. After his wife and kids were sleeping under their quilts, he stepped outside into the January night, his breath pluming in front of his face. For a few seconds, he found solace and escape in the moon and stars. Maybe that's something I inherited from him--that pull toward wonder.
Saint Marty wrote tonight's poem based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Choose a letter of the alphabet. Keeping a notebook with you, write down words that begin with your letter as you come in contact with them. If your letter is W and you are in the kitchen and you see a wine bottle, write down wine bottle. If your child comes in whining, write down whining. If you hear someone whistling, write that down. Keep writing until you have collected at least twenty-five words. Use at least fifteen of these words in a poem about something that does not start with the letter you chose.
Bulletin Board
by: Martin Achatz
Every day, I sit in front of it, not really seeing what
the pushpins hold before my face, the kitschy poster
of Bigfoot Knowledge with a pongidae comparison
chart, moving from Bigfoot through human and gorilla
to chimp, each one shorter, more hunched. I want
to take a permanent marker, write names above
each pongid of the people who make up my troop
of primates. The coworker who put a plant behind me
because it needed to be near the sunlit panes at my back.
A friend who forgot a present I gave her for Christmas
on my desk (a poem scribbled with my fountain pen
in the pages of my journal). My 16-year-old son who still
refuses to scoop out the slimy guts of pumpkins, and
my daughter who never visits my office, but looks up
at my window as she walks by, to see if my lights
are on, a pine tree dusting her head with snow.
On my phone, a photo of my wife, her face bright
as sky above a scrub of pussy willows, fuzzed and bobbing
in a wind. All these, and more, fill that corked space I ignore
eight or nine house, Monday through Friday, as I deal
with the panics of life. I see at my feet a sticky note
that fell from the board and now lies facedown on the carpet.
A reminder I wrote several years ago on the morning
my mother was dying: "Don't forget to pick up milk."
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