May 9, 2026: "What Belongs to Us," Tootsie Pop, "Driving Home from Downstate"

It is the second weekend of May.  All of my grades for the winter semester at the university have been submitted.  The poetry festival is done for another year.  I'm not ashamed to say I've been sort of taking it easy since Wednesday, not giving myself any major projects to work on or complete.  Just been chillin'.

Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't big things happening in May.  My son will be graduating from high school on May 27.  That's right.  So, I have graduation preparations (pictures, announcements) and party planning (decorations, food, invitations).  The end of this month is going to be much more hectic than the beginning.  The last hurrah of adolescence before my son is staring adulthood in the eyes.

I remember how sad I got when my daughter graduated high school six years ago.  It felt like she was slipping through my fingers like rainwater.  For 17 years, my wife and I were the center of her universe until she got that diploma in her hand and realized that the planet was round and outer space infinite.  From that moment, every day was her becoming more and more independent.  Getting jobs.  Moving out and away.  

When you think about it, we don't really own anything in this life.  Nothing belongs to us.  We're just caretaking.  Our houses, cars, lawns, communities, country, and kids.  When you're gone, someone else will live in your home, drive your car, mow and weed your lawn.  Your kids (if you have them) will build their own lives without you.  Your community and country will continue to exist (unless some maniac with nuclear codes has a bad night or needs to distract the public from a child sex abuse scandal).   

Maybe, if you're a really good person (or a really evil one), you'll live on in memories.  You'll still be making people smile or shake their heads ten or 20 years from now.

Marie Howe writes about ownership versus stewardship . . . 

What Belongs to Us

by: Marie Howe

Not the memorized phone numbers.

The carefully rehearsed short cuts home.

Not the summer, shimmering like pavement, when Lucia

pushed Billy off the rabbit house and broke his arm,

or our tiny footprints in the back files.

Not the list of kings from Charlemagne to Henry

not the boxes under our beds

or Tommy's wedding day when it was so hot and Mark played the flute

and we waved at him waving from the small round window in the loft,

the great gangs of people stepping one by one into the cold water.

I have, of course, a photograph:

you and I getting up from a couch.

Full height, I stand almost two inches taller than you

but the photograph doesn't show that,

just the two of us in motion

not looking at each other, smiling.

Not even the way we said things, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Not the cabin where I burned my arm and you said, oh, you're the type

that if it hurt, you wouldn't say.

Not even the blisters.  Look.

Howe says that even the blisters and scars on our bodies from past injuries and hurts don't belong to us.  They're temporary reminders.  That's all.  When our last breaths leave our lungs, nobody will remember we burned our arms cooking on the potbelly at camp.  That experience will be buried or burned with us once we walk through that long, lonesome valley.

My hope is for smiles and happiness.  When my son or daughter think of me 40 or 50 years from now (assuming I will not be around), I want them to remember me as a person who was kind and generous and compassionate.  And, if I've done my job as a father correctly, my kids will be kind and generous and compassionate, as well.  Because kindness and generosity and compassion aren't qualities to hoard--they're meant to be shared and given away.

I typed most of this post at a laundromat.  It was a busy day--almost all the washers and dryers spinning and cycling.  I was sitting at a community table, earbuds in, typing away on my laptop.  There was an older gentleman sitting in a nearby chair with something in his lap that he was running his fingers over.  The woman, whom I assume was his wife, was sitting at the table with me, scrolling on her phone.

At one point, the older gentleman put the item in his lap into a bag by the side of his chair, and I realized it was a book in braille.  His wife got up and emptied a load of laundry from a washer into a dryer.  When she was done, she walked over to her husband, lifted his hand, and signed a message against his palm.  That was when I realized that he was both deaf and blind.  I saw him reach into his shirt pocket and remove a grape Tootsie Pop from it.  He handed it to the woman.

 Not wanting to be rude, I retrained my attention to my laptop and continued to type.  The wife finished their laundry, brought it out to their car, and then came back in and signed into her husband's hand that it was time to go.  He stood, unfolded his cane, and followed his wife out the door.

When my laundry was done drying 36 minutes later, I carried my clothes baskets out to my Subaru, and then I went back to the community table to pack up my computer and books.  

Sitting behind my laptop was the grape Tootsie Pop.

I smiled, picked it up, and put it in my pocket.  I carried that small act of generosity and kindness home with me.

This couple reminded me that there is goodness in the world.  At a time in the United States when hatred and anger and injustice and cruelty are headlines every day, this man and woman gifted me joy and sweetness.  I can't hoard their gift.  It's not meant to be hoarded.  It's meant to be passed on in some way.  Because joy and sweetness don't belong to me, or anybody else, for that matter.

Goodness only remains good when shared.  It's the fertilizer for love and peace.  Ask Jesus.  Or Buddha.  Or Muhammad.  

Saint Marty's message for today is pretty simple:  be a Tootsie Pop giver, not an asshole. 

And a new poem . . . 

Driving Home from Downstate

by: Martin Achatz

It's a long, listless journey, little

to see except sedans, SUVs speeding

toward some town near Topinabee, 

maybe to visit a mother or maiden aunt

who now needs help to knead

dough with digits stiffened and curled

with age, with sweeping and window

cleaning, perhaps collecting dog crap

after a hard winter of endless white.

After the day is done, the drive home

waiting like a headache, perhaps the driver

will hug Mom or Aunt Hester, hold

on a little too long because life

is short and you never know

when winter will return.

June 1: Dreamed of Africa, Son's Graduation, Night of Dreams

Santiago dreams . . . 

He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it. He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.

Usually when he smelled the land breeze he woke up and dressed to go and wake the boy. But tonight the smell of the land breeze came very early and he knew it was too early in his dream and went on dreaming to see the white peaks of the Islands rising from the sea and then he dreamed of the different harbours and roadsteads of the Canary Islands.

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. He urinated outside the shack and then went up the road to wake the boy. He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing.

Santiago dreams of Africa and lions on a beach.  Things from his youth.

This evening was a night of dreams.  My son's eighth grade graduation.  It has been a long road to this night.  Lots of struggles along the way for him.  School has always been a challenge, from the time he was in Head Start.  When he left his Head Start, however, he seemed to be on the right course.  But from kindergarten on has been another story.  I can honestly say that he's only had one really good year.  It was first grade, and his teacher got him.  Loved him.  And he loved school that year.  That means, out of 11 years of education, he's had nine good months.

Graduations are filled with hopes and dreams.  Starry-eyed students who think that they own the world.  And, for the most part, that's what tonight was.  Lots of happy, proud parents.  Lots of inappropriately loud teens, embarrassed to be the center of so much attention.

It has been a rough three years for these kids.  Halfway through their fifth grade, they were hit with a global pandemic.  Life, and their educations, ground to a halt.  There were wars over facemasks.  A crazy President of the United States who thought COVID would simply vanish if he ignored it.  Death, death, and more death.  Rampant mental illness.  And, a little over a month ago, one of their seventh-grade classmates killed himself with a gun in the school bathroom.

So, my son, who has been seriously struggling for almost all of his school life, was thrown into a tailspin that I don't think he's fully recovered from yet.  Add into that mix these last five or so months of bullying and teasing, and it's a wonder he walked across that gym floor and received his certificate at all.

I have dreams for my son.  Every parent has dreams for their children.  I'm not sure my son has dreams for himself yet beyond playing a video game with his older sister.  That makes me really sad.  On more than one occasion, he's told me that he knows he's a bad kid.  Of course, when he's said that, I've made him tell me all the things about himself that he likes.  

So, tonight, we threw a party for my son.  Had a huge group of family and friends at the house.  Bought four pizzas.  Played games.  Gave him cards and gifts.  And I think he felt loved and celebrated.

Saint Marty hopes his son finds his dreams soon.