A lot has happened since my last post. Just a quick recap: I got a new car—another Subaru Impreza (an offer from the dealership I couldn’t pass on); Thanksgiving came and went with a raging blizzard that lasted about three days (and about 26 inches); my daughter turned 25 yesterday (hard to believe she’s that old and I haven’t aged at all); and the holiday season is upon us (theme for our front porch this year—A Bigfoot Christmas).
Perhaps the reason I tend to get a little (or a lot) blue this time of year is nostalgia—the sentimental longing for a period, place, or person with wistfully happy associations. Of course, there’s no way of reclaiming the past, unless you’re Marty McFly or Bill and Ted.
Sharon Olds gets nostalgic for an old lover . . .
Cool Breeze
by: Sharon Olds
You talked to me a lot about your kid sister,
Rebecca, a.k.a. Reebabecka,
and you knew me as my sister’s kid sister,
fourteen, and a late bloomer, and homely,
you talked to me about your family,
and your dream of cutting an LP,
and the Juniors and Sophomores you were in love with, or who
were in love with you, or who maybe you had slept with—
they were White, as I was, but you called me Miss Shary
Cobb, Miss Cool Breeze Herself.
You didn’t mind I was in love with you,
you were Senior Class President.
And you would dance with me, astronomer
who pointed out to me the star
bright of the cervix, when we danced it became
exact to me, far inside me
in the night sky. And you would park with me,
you would draw my hand gently across you, you had
mercy on me, and on yourself. When you would
slide your hand up under my sweater,
my mouth would open, but I’d stop you, and you would
say, rather fondly, Protecting your sacred
virginity? And I would say Yes,
I could always tell you the truth.
When the White cops broke up the dance in your neighborhood,
your friends worked to get us out the back
unseen, if the cops saw us together
they would hurt someone. We crouched behind a hedge,
and I began to understand
you were less safe than me. Squatting
and whispering, I understood, as if
the bending of our bodies was teaching me,
that everyone was against you—the ones I had called
everyone, the White men
and the White women, the grown-ups, the. blind
and deaf. And when you died, your LP cut,
and you had married the beauty from your neighborhood,
when you went off the coast road with your White
lover, into the wind off the ocean,
your Jag end over end, catching fire—
I knew that my hands were not free of your
blood, brother—Reebabecka’s brother.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into Olds’ poem, but I do feel a certain sense of nostalgia—the speaker yearning for Reebabecka’s brother and all that he meant. Sex and race and class and mortality all rolled into one. Olds, in some way, holds herself responsible for high school lover’s death (“my hands were not free of your / blood”).
Today at the library, I hosted a reading of MFA poetry students from the local university. There were about six of them. All so young and full of hope. I remember being like them when I was in graduate school—thinking I was going to get a job as a full-time professor, publish a few books, win the Pulitzer Prize, and be set for life. That’s where they all are right now. Ready to take on a world that isn’t always that nice to poets.
I found myself getting a little wistful as I sat listening to these grad students share their work. At the end of my MFA program, my wife had just given birth to our daughter, and I thought I had the world in my hands. Anything seemed possible.
Then everything came crashing down. My wife started suffering from serious depressions (she cut her arms and breasts with scissors, leaving scars) and was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. A year or so after that, she fell into a cycle of sexual addiction that almost ended our marriage several times.
In short, I really don’t feel nostalgic for all of that shit. I wouldn’t want to go back to that period in my life for anything. Except for this: holding my infant daughter in my arms as she drifted off to sleep, or braiding her long hair after she took her baths. I miss being everything to my kids—protector, friend, chauffeur, sage, comedian. There was a time I walked on water as far as my son and daughter were concerned.
My daughter is in medical school now. My son will be graduating high school this spring. He’s already talking about moving out. The future is bright for both of them. Me? I have more years behind now me than I have ahead of me. That makes me a little sad. (Just a little. Don’t worry.)
I know I’m very blessed. My kids are healthy and smart. My wife has a job she loves, and she’s been doing well with her mental health and addiction issues. We are more a team than we’ve ever been. Blessing after blessing after blessing.
Ten years from now, I’m probably going to be nostalgic about tonight.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for today, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Try writing some haiku that resist being about apple blossoms, insects, or frogs. Instead use the 5/7/5 syllables in a series of three-line poems that deal with subjects such as bad hair, infectious diseases, or people who’ve never heard of Rumi.
Saturday Afternoon Reading by MFA Poetry Students
by: Martin Achatz
they read earnestly
shaping words into creatures
feral as blizzards
I sit in the back
listen as they free their tongues
birds, birds, everywhere
they are all so young
ferment full, ripe as apples
I eat and drink them
when I was their age
I swam in Superior
naked, skin on fire
I’m an old sonnet
iambic, without couplet
don’t volta me yet
❤️
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