August 2: Cheap Person, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

I am not a cheap person.  In fact, I think that I'm pretty generous with everything I have--my money, time, talents, home, books.  Sure, I sometimes get wound up about paying bills and putting a new roof on my house.  Those are times when I let my fears get the better of me.  For the most part, however, I will help out a person in need.

I do come from a family of frugally-minded people.  I have relatives who are so cheap that they think going on vacation means hitting all the Goodwill stores within a 100-mile radius.  It's frustrating, because those frugally-minded people have the most money, and, yet, they do nothing financially to bring themselves (or anybody else for that matter) any pleasure.  They're going to be incredibly wealthy corpses at the end of their lives.

I'm not complaining about these relatives.  I just don't understand them.  I struggle to pay my bills, and I live in dread of expensive car or home repairs.  But, if I have a friend or family member who needs cash or a car or a strong back--and I have the resources to provide assistance--I will do it.  That's part of being a good person.

I think that's exactly how God wants us to live.  With generosity and love.  Sure, I still have worries.  All kinds of them.  When I shuffle off this mortal coil, though, I don't want to have to explain to my Maker why I didn't give a couple of bucks to that guy outside of Wal-Mart with the sign that read, "Any money will help."  I believe that's what we're put on this planet to do, lend a helping hand.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired last August.  I wanted to see what I was worrying about a year ago. 

August 2, 2014:  Spider's Web, Walk, Phil Legler, "In Front of Our Houses"

A spider's web is stronger than it looks.  Although it is made of thin, delicate strands, the web is not easily broken  However, a web gets torn every day by the insects that kick around in it, and a spider must rebuild it when it gets full of holes.  Charlotte liked to do her weaving during the late afternoon, and Fern liked to sit nearby and watch...

I love E. B. White's descriptions of these lazy afternoons, a little girl sitting on a stool in a barn, watching a small gray spider weave a web.  He truly captures the mood of childhood summer days, when the biggest worry is whether the ice cream truck is going to come down the street or whether your mother will let you run under the sprinklers to cool down.


Now, at the beginning of August, the dog days of summer are upon us.  Today was absolutely perfect.  Sunny.  Warm.  Almost 80 degrees.  All that was missing was the tinkle of music from an ice cream truck.  I went for a walk this evening, just because it was too nice to stay inside.  I kept passing other people walking, and we would smile at each other, sometimes call out "Isn't it a beautiful night?" or "We have to take advantage of nights like these."

As I passed a copse of trees and shrubs, I saw wild rose bushes draped in spiderwebs.  The webs were thick, gauzy almost.  My nephew, who is a spider nut, has been naming the kinds of spiders he's been finding this summer.  One of the spiders he identified for me was an orb-weaver.  I loved that name, and when I saw the roses covered in spider silk, I imagined it was the work of a single spider.  An over-caffeinated orb-weaver.

My last Phil Legler offering is another U. P. poem.  It's about Marquette, Michigan, where Phil lived and taught at the university.  It captures the rhythms of life in this remote, shark-shaped swathe of land surrounded by water.

Saint Marty hopes all his disciples have ice-cream-filled summer nights.

In Front of Our Houses

by:  Phil Legler

It's hard to rent
in Marquette, Michigan; any day
the city's a buying place where most of us
believe we've settled
down, held by our monthly payments,
staid and dry-docked beside
lake and horizon.

The Mining Journal
arrives, washing the waves in closer,
two ships over the weekend to our front steps,
naming the vessel arrivals,
John Dykstra and Sparrow's Point,
listing tomorrow's docking,
at which harbor.

In winter, ship-
wrecked hunks of ice push up the beaches,
and downtown parking meters like frozen buoys
lean against buildings.
Winter is six months here; we need
our comfortable, high-priced
anchored houses.

But summer nights
we follow in the wake of cars
moving slow as boats drifting by the ore dock,
and those in the bay
where small craft warnings are up, tied
only to their sunset
still reflections.

At the upper harbor
quiet as dusk a ship is leaving,
its lights darkening the waves and windshields
tracing a gull
riding his shadow beyond the lighthouse.
In what deep hold are we stowed
away tonight?

The lake submerges
the city behind us like an island.
Even in front of our houses, owned by the bank,
the neighborhood lawns,
well kept, that stop at our streets at morning,
carry us out like boats
to Canada.

Confessions of Saint Marty

P. S.  Tune in tomorrow for the launch of a new daily cartoon strip, "The Adventures of Stickman."

August 1: Lowest Boughs, In-Between, Sharon Olds, "Close to Death," New Cartoon

In the back of that police car, he [Ives] remembered a four-color ad he had drawn one Christmas, about 1954-1955, for a toy company:  in it, a young sleepy-eyed boy, newly awakened on Christmas morning, stands before a richly decorated tree, gasping with delight over an electric train set, an illustration he had based on his son.  The boy looked just like Robert, and Ives could see him crawling around the floor of their old apartment on Fiftieth Street and exploring the lowest boughs of the Christmas tree, strands of tinsel, lights and ornaments glowing like majestic stars above him; his son reaching up, his son's fine lips slightly parted, heavy-lidded eyes wide.

In this passage, Ives and Annie are on their way to identify the body of their son, still sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the church where he was gunned down.  They are a little numb and shocked.  They're not sure how to behave.  I think that, in some part of themselves, they're hoping a mistake has been made.  That another boy is going to be under the sheet when it's pulled back.  A huge void has suddenly opened in their lives, and they don't know how to fill it.

It's an odd situation in which to exist:  that state in between anticipating tragedy and confronting it.  Until they lay eyes on their son's body, Annie and Ives can still believe that Robert is alive.  There's a certain disconnect with reality.  For most of the summer, I've been in that state.

A good portion of my sister's treatments have been done at the University of Michigan.  The last time I saw her at the nursing home, she was still thinking and talking clearly.  On Memorial Day weekend, I brought a friend to visit her, and my sister spent most of the time throwing up in an emesis basin, apologizing in between bouts of sickness.

I know my sister is very ill.  Every time I get a text, I experience a moment of dread, knowing that the text could contain really bad news.  That's how I found out about my sister's diagnosis--a text.  I get texted pictures of her.  This morning in the picture, she looked as if she was drenched in sweat.  She wasn't.  A priest had just visited and administered the Sacrament of the sick.  Her forehead was coated in chrism oil.

I don't know what I'm trying to say with this post.  I'm surrounded by family who are anticipating something all the time.  Good news.  Bad news.  My sister who's been visiting from Washington has suspended her return home indefinitely (her train tickets are now for the end of January, 2016).  I think that's the proper adjective for life right now:  indefinite.  Is the chemo working for my sister, or isn't it?  Is my sister coming home, or is she staying downstate?  Will my 14-year-old daughter love me today, or resent the fact that I'm still breathing?

Saint Marty is in limbo.

Close to Death

by:  Sharon Olds

Always, now, I feel it, a steady
even pressure, all over my body,
as if I were held in a flower-press.
I am waiting for the phone to ring,
they will say it and I will not be ready,
I do not have a place prepared,
I do not know what will happen to him
or where he will go.  I always thought
I had a salvation for him, hidden,
even from myself, in my chest.  But when the phone rings,
I don't know who he will be, then,
or where, I have nothing for him, no net,
no heaven to catch him--he taught me only
the earth, night, sleep, the male
body in its beauty and fearsomeness,
he set up that landscape for me
to go to him in, and I will go to him
and give to him, what he gave me I will give him,
the earth, night, sleep, beauty, fear.

Confessions of Saint Marty

July 26: Life in Turmoil, Control Issues, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Very warm day.  Close to 90 degrees.  The kind of day that should come with heat warnings for small children, pets, and old people.  Of course, faced with these temperatures, I decided to go for a run around noon.  Two miles.  I didn't run the whole way.  In fact, I walked a lot.  By the time I got home, it looked as though I'd gotten caught in a rainstorm.

It's that time of year, after July 4 and before Labor Day, when the summer already seems over, even though there's still a whole month left.  I have to start thinking about teaching in the fall.  Order my books.  Put together my syllabi.  The fact that so much seems up in the air right now isn't helping.  My sister at the University of Michigan hospital will be undergoing treatments down there for the next six months.  My sister from Washington has extended her stay in the Upper Peninsula to "help out."  She and her kids are now staying until the beginning of January.  My daughter is starting high school, and I'm going to apply for promotion at the college when the semester starts.

If you are a new reader to this blog, I need to explain something:  I don't do well with life in turmoil.  I prefer my days to be predictable:  same meal times, same work hours, same teaching hours, same bedtime.  My life is not going to be like that, at least until January 2.  If you're thinking I have control issues, you would be correct.

In a week's time, I will have my summer vacation.  No work.  No teaching.  For the past couple of years, we've gone to a resort downstate.  Too expensive this year.  Times are tight.  So, we're scaling back.  A night in a hotel with a pool and water slide.  Dinner at a nice restaurant.  Perhaps a boat cruise.  That's it.  I would prefer something a little more...distant.  Removed.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago, when things were very different in my life.  My sister was healthy.  My brother was still alive.  My daughter wasn't a teenager.  I was still working at my old job.  And I wasn't teaching freshman composition in the fall.  Ah, the good old days.

July 26,  2012:  The Clock, an Icicle, Dislocation of Time

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped.  Twelve!  It was past two when he went to bed.  The clock was wrong.  An icicle must have got into the works.  Twelve!

This little paragraph highlights something that has always fascinated me about A Christmas Carol.  There seems to be some sort of dislocation of time that happens throughout the course of the novel.  When Jacob Marley predicts the arrival of the three Ghosts of Christmas to Scrooge, Marley says that the phantoms will appear on three consecutive nights.  The first at one o'clock in the morning on the following night, the second on the next night at one o'clock again, and the third at midnight on the third night.  When Scrooge wakes up for the Ghost of Christmas Past, he becomes completely disoriented with time because it appears he has slept through an entire day into the night.

This time warp never gets that much attention from anybody.  Readers prefer to focus on the more ghostly elements of the story.  Time warps are the thing of science fiction and fantasy.  Scrooge is not Luke Skywalker or James T. Kirk.  He's a Victorian businessman who happens to have fallen into some kind of wormhole of the space/time continuum, past and present and future coexisting in one place.  Even the twelve nights of Christmas are compressed into a single evening by the Ghost of Christmas Present.

This time dislocation happens to most of us.  I have reached that point in the summer where I look at the calendar and say, "Where the hell has the summer gone?"  Time seems to fly by like a hungry bat chasing a mosquito.  Fall is looming, and I haven't even had my summer vacation yet.  I'm not ready for the leaves to start changing color, but in a few weeks, the green maples will start transitioning to yellow.  Time is passing.  Pretty soon, the Christmas holidays will be upon us again.

I'm particularly aware of the passage of time this summer because of my eleven-year-old daughter who seems to have blossomed into this young lady overnight.  She's still goofy.  She still watches cartoons and the Disney Channel, but in the last few months, she has become willowy and beautiful.  She doesn't sit in a chair anymore.  She lounges.  And she has a friend, who's a boy, who follows her around like Lassie followed Timmy.

I'm experiencing a dislocation of time.  I'm still in May, and it's almost the end of July.  In my mind, my daughter is still three-years-old, sitting in my lap while I read Charlotte's Web to her.  She's actually eleven-going-on-twenty and is starting middle school this fall.  I'm still in the 1980s, when I thought Cyndi Lauper was cooler than Madonna and mullets were never going out of style.  That's how behind-the-times I am.

Saint Marty needs to join the present. or he's never going to make it to the future.  Ahead warp factor five, Mr. Sulu.

Not too fast, Mr. Sulu

Confessions of Saint Marty

July 25: Baby Carriages, Motherhood, Siv Cedering, "Poem for My Mother," New Cartoon

And for weeks she [Annie Ives] thought about what he had said, fear tingeing every hope for happiness.  She saw mothers pushing their baby carriages who seemed wonderfully content, and mothers who were glum and remote.  She had memories of the house in Glen Cove reeking of her brothers' diapers, the safety pins nicking her fingers, their cylinder-shaped washing machine chugging all day, babies crying all night, the young boys running their mother ragged.  But whenever she even came close to making a decision, her thoughts always came close to making a decision, her thoughts always returned to Ives and how he had been a foundling [orphan], and how much it must have hurt him even to consider giving up the child to make her happy, and she felt more in love with him.  With that she thought how having a family would not be so bad a thing to do with this considerate and moral gentleman.  And knowing about his past, she could not imagine giving up the child.  He never raised the subject, maneuvering those waters quietly.  He simply treated her well, and in time, despite her doubts, she let the issue drop.  They married in December, as they had wanted.

At first, Annie Ives isn't sure she wants to be a mother when she gets pregnant for the first time.  As this passage shows, Annie's view of motherhood is colored by her own mother's experiences.  She watched her mother--dead weary, washing diapers and settling disputes and dealing with Annie's alcoholic father--give up everything for her family.  All her hopes and dreams.  Annie isn't sure she's ready to buy a ticket for that train ride.

Motherhood is a hard job.  In the mornings, my wife has to get up with our six-year-old son around 7 a.m., even though her bipolar meds transport her into a Walking Dead state in the early hours of the day.  Yet, she knows that's all part of the job description.  Sacrifice.  Exhaustion.  Hugs.  Band-Aids.  Bug spray.  Worry.  Tears.  That's just what mothers do.

My mother did it for nine kids.  I'm the youngest sibling in my family.  I always joke with my brothers and sisters that my mother was too tired to really be tough with me.  I probably got away with a lot more.  I remember the first time I came home drunk.  I was a junior in high school, I think.  I crawled through the dark house, climbed into my bed, and passed out.  At 7:30 the next morning, my mother was at my bedside, shaking me awake to go to the 8 a.m. service at church.  I sat in the pew, nauseated and dizzy.  Then, after Mass, my mother decided to take me out to breakfast "as a special treat."  It was a long, long morning.  But, my mother made her point.

My mother's memory isn't so great any more.  She repeats herself all the time, asking the same questions over and over.  "Is it warm outside?" and "Boy, it gets dark fast, doesn't it?"  She can't see very well, either, due to macular degeneration.  She can't read anymore.  Or watch TV.  She plays gin with my father, but she has a hard time seeing the cards in her hands.

It's hard to see my mother diminished like this.  She was always the person in charge.  Everyone listened to her, including my dad.  She cooked dinners, attended parent-teacher conferences, sent out the bills for my dad's plumbing business.  And she pushed us kids to be the best people we could be.  She wanted to see her children succeed, even my sister with Down Syndrome.  My mother never settled for mediocre.

So, today, I just want to acknowledge the mothers in my life.  My wife.  My own mother.  Through all the struggles in life, they never give up.  My mother believes my sister with lymphoma of the brain is going to get better.  My wife watches my daughter dance and cries.  Because that's what mothers do.

By the way, Saint Marty never came home drunk again when he was in high school.

Poem for My Mother

by:  Siv Cedering

Remember when I draped
The ruffled cotton cape
Around your shoulders,
Turned off the lights
And stood behind your chair,
Brushing, brushing your hair.

The friction of the brush
In the dry air
Of that small inland town
Created stars that flew
As if God himself was there
In the small space
Between my hands and your hair.

Now we live on separate coasts
Of a foreign country.
A continent stretches between us.
You write of your illness,
Your fear of blindness.
You say you wake afraid
To open your eyes.

Mother, if some morning
You open your eyes to see
Daylight as a dark room around you,
I will drape a ruffled cotton cape
Around your shoulders
And stand behind your chair,
Brushing the stars out of your hair.

Confessions of Saint Marty

July 19: My Daughter at Bible Camp, Feeling Unneeded, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Just got back from dropping off my 14-year-old daughter at Bible camp.  She will be there for a full week, slapping bugs, swimming, making friends, and, hopefully, learning a few things about God along the way.

She's been going to this camp for almost six years now.  It's always one of the highlights of the summer for her.  Yet, I always get a little melancholy when I drop her off.  I think it has something to do with letting go.  I'm not great at letting go of anything.  Books.  Shirts that haven't fit me for five years.  Past copies of Entertainment Weekly (I recently cleared out the magazine holder in the bathroom and found almost a year's worth of back issues).

I'm proud that my daughter is so independent.  She can make friends with anyone, and, when I pick her up next Saturday, I'm sure every person in the camp is going to be hugging her, entering her contact information in their phones, and taking selfies with her.  That's just the kind of kid she is.

However, driving home this afternoon, I started thinking about things I will never experience again, like picking out cute little dresses for her or braiding her hair after a bath or those hugs and kisses she used to give me so freely.  My daughter is officially a teenager.  No longer my little princess, wearing tiaras and letting me read her Charlotte's Web or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  My days of experiencing those little daughter things are gone.

Of course, my son in only six, so I have a lot of little boy things to look forward to.  In a couple of years, I'll be dropping him off at the same place for elementary Bible camp.  And I will probably have just as difficult a time letting go of him.  Pretty soon, he's going to be asking to borrow my car.

I'm feeling incredibly old and, in some ways, unneeded.  I have raised my daughter well, I think.  Given her everything she needs to succeed.  She knows that she is smart, kind, and important (yes, I stole that from The Help).  Now that she is spreading her wings, I want to tether her to the ground for a little while longer.  Being a parent is a strange occupation.  Just when you think you've figured out how to do the job well, you're out of a job.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty, from three years ago, focuses on another perennial parental concern:  summer vacation.

July 19, 2012:  Tremendous Family to Provide For, Tight Times, Cheapness

"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.

"Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?" pursued the Phantom.

"I don't think I have," said Scrooge.  "I am afraid I have not.  Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"

"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.

"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.

This little exchange between Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present seems pretty trivial, an offhand joke to lighten up the proceedings.  After all, the previous stave had ended on a pretty serious note with Scrooge basically smothering the Ghost of Christmas Past.  The current Phantom is decidedly more jovial, resembling the Victorian version of Santa Claus.  Yet, this Ghost also touches upon one of the weightier themes of the novel:  the plight of the poor and working class.  Bob Cratchit has a tremendous family to provide for, and he does it on the measly salary Scrooge pays him.

In election years, I get a little annoyed with all the rhetoric that's thrown around.  For instance, this year, one of the hot button issues in the United States is unemployment.  The tactic that annoys me the most is blaming the unemployed for being unemployed.  For the most part, people who are unemployed aren't lazy freeloaders, looking to live off welfare and unemployment checks and federal assistance.  No, most unemployed people want to work to provide for their tremendous families (as Bob Cratchit does).

You may be wondering where I'm going with this discussion.  Times are pretty tight for my family right now.  I don't teach during the summer at the university, and I depend on a lot of overtime at my other job to make it through June, July, and August.  My wife isn't employed at the moment (not from lack of trying to find a job), so these twelve-hour work days are making me really cranky.

The hardest part, for me, about not having money is disappointing my wife and kids.  I have a vacation coming up the first week of August.  We're not going anywhere.  We're not doing anything.  My daughter thinks I'm cheap.  She doesn't get that it has nothing to do with cheapness and everything to do with her mother's unemployment checks running out.  And no checks coming from the university.  And the checks from my other job barely paying the summer bills.

I don't need a millionaire President of the United States telling me how he's going to make my life better.  I don't need millionaire senators and representatives telling me how they're going to provides jobs for everyone.  I don't need a millionaire governor telling me how he's going to control state labor unions.  I don't care about any of that shit.

Here's what I need:  a job, one job, that pays my bills.  That pays for my daughter's dance lessons.  That maybe buys me a good book every once in a while.  That allows me to spend time with my family--good, quality time.  That lets me write without feeling like I should be doing something else, something more productive.  That allows me to sleep in past 4 a.m. every once in a while.  That makes me feel good about myself.

That helps Saint Marty provide for his tremendous family.

Does anybody out in blog world really care?

Confessions of Saint Marty

July 18: Great Numbness, Situational Depression, Adrienne Su, "Elegy," New Cartoon

He [Ives] went to church and prayed for guidance, begging God to bring forgiveness into his heart.  He would kneel before the creche, the crucifix, and wonder how and why all these things had happened.  At night he would dream of black threads twisting in the air and slipping into his body from afar.  Though he bowed his head and trembled at the funeral, though he spoke kindly with the priests and repeated to himself a thousand times that God was good and that the manifestations of evil that come to men are ultimately explicable in some divine way.  His wisdom greater than what any of them would ever know, Ives felt a great numbness descending over him.

Yeah, I get what Ives is going through in this passage.  In the face of incredible loss, Ives has to remind himself of God's goodness.  It is the beginning of Ives' decade-long battle with depression, that great numbness that takes over his being.  Ives holds onto his belief in God's wisdom and goodness, despite the ever-present darkness of mental illness.

I have been waging a little battle myself this summer with the great numbness.  It's easier to see God's wisdom and goodness when I'm busy, around other people.  When I'm working or worshiping or cleaning my house, the dark thoughts are held in check.  When I'm by myself, trying to read or pray or write, they come charging back like a pack of feral dogs.

My therapist would probably call this situational depression.  I'm not sure when situational depression transitions into full-blown depression.  It's not like I'm curled up on my couch under a blanket, crying uncontrollably.  Unless I become a completely nonfunctional piece of clay, I won't worry.

I actually think I'm going to try to write a poem for my sister.  Sometimes, when I'm dealing with difficult emotional situations, I find sitting down with my journal and pen cathartic.  When my brother passed away last year, writing his elegy really helped me deal with the loss.  Tonight, after I help my daughter pack for Bible camp, I may sit down on my couch and have a night of poetry.

When I was writing my brother's elegy, I struggled for days.  I couldn't come up with a way to communicate my emotions, which were all over the place.  I'm sort of in the same spot with my sister right now.  Hope mixed with sadness mixed with anger mixed with grief.  I'm not sure what kind of poem is going to come out of me.

Or maybe Saint Marty will just pick up some wine coolers, sit on my couch, watch The Lawrence Welk Show, and drink himself into a different kind of numbness.

Elegy

by:  Adrienne Su

You said the last word with your last
breath and I was not there to bury
it.  You spent your life writing
the note and intended
to go alone; you knew what
to say but poof! you were out

of breath--the night went out,
the chills passed, the last
gesture stopped.  What
took a little longer was to bury
you.  Everyone thought you intended
to stay; you were writing

me letters and though I wasn't writing
back, you said you had risen out
of despair and intended
to forget the last
ten years, in which you had buried
so many skeletons you didn't know what

you were born for.  Anyway.  What
you didn't count on was writing
the note, dying, and no one coming to bury
you.  The police didn't check out
the shed until the last
of the month; they intended

to go home by dark, then opened your untended
grave at dinnertime.  What
gets me is not that I was your last
woman, not that I was off writing
term papers when you walked yourself out
of the world, not even that they'd bury

you and not invite me, but that you buried
your body where you intended
to be found and were sniffed out
belatedly, faceless, unmanly.  What-
ever threw that wrench, I'm writing
you out of my memory as fast

as I can.  That last word's been buried
but it's in your handwriting.  You intended
to get what you got.  Now get out.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 28: Daughter, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

My daughter is 14 years old.  This fall, she will be a freshman in high school.  When I ask her to make her bed, she groans.  When I tell her she needs to babysit her brother for a couple of hours, she acts as if I've just harvested a kidney from her.  Nothing is ever easy with her right now.

Now, I understand the need for a young person to assert her independence.  After all, she needs to figure out who and what she is.  However, I'm not sure how staying in bed until two o'clock in the afternoon aids her on her road to self-discovery.

I remember being 14.  It wasn't an easy age.  I didn't have it quite as good as she does.  My summer vacations were usually spent going on service calls with my father and brothers, who were all plumbers.  June through August, my days were full of sewage and water heaters and faucets and toilets.  At the time, I hated it.  Now, looking back, I know that I am a better person because of it.  A harder worker.  A more loving husband and father.  Plus, I learned that I did NOT want to be a plumber, which made me strive even harder in high school and college.

I'm not saying I want my daughter to get a job and work all summer.  What I'm saying is that I want my daughter to behave like a civilized human being instead of a surly, resentful primate--otherwise known as a teenager.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago, when my daughter was still communicating with me in full sentences instead of grunts and eye rolls.

June 27, 2012:  Topper, Daughter's Friend, Boys

"Well!  I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I haven't any great faith in these young housekeepers.  What do you say, Topper?"

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.  Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister--the plump one with the lace tucker; not the one with the roses--blushed.

Topper is Scrooge's nephew Fred's best friend.  He also seems to be pretty horny, since he spends most of the party at Fred's house chasing after the young woman above.  It's a charming little detail in the book, and certainly Topper seems harmless enough.  He just wants to grab himself some Christmas cheer, put a little nog in his egg, if you get my meaning.

Which brings me to my subject for this morning:  boys.  Particularly, horny boys.  My daughter's best friend is a boy.  Notice that I didn't say, "my daughter's boyfriend."  My daughter has been hanging with this boy since she's been seven or eight years old.  They're the same age and get along well, when they're not annoying the shit out of each other, which they frequently do.  Just this past weekend, they unfriended themselves on Facebook on Saturday, and then friended themselves again on Sunday.

I'm not naive.  I know my daughter is reaching the age where boys start coming into the picture.  (She's eleven years old.)  One of my friends (who is of the opposite gender) said to me yesterday, "Oh, yeah.  They're going to end up dating," speaking of my daughter and her best friend.

My initial reaction to her statement was, "Over my dead body."  Even though I really like this kid, and have for several years, I just can't make that leap in my mind from best friend who is a boy to boyfriend.  Of course, I'm still in the mindset that my daughter is going to be too focused on dancing or music or collecting comic books or anything else besides hanging out with someone who has a penis.

It didn't help that my daughter sent me a picture she took of herself yesterday:

Saint Marty is in big trouble.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 26: Glass of Whiskey, My Plan, Louise Gluck, "Utopia," New Cartoon

Walking back from the park the day he had been told of his son's decision about the priesthood, he [Ives] went upstairs to his apartment.  His head aching, he drank a glass of whiskey with water and took a couple of aspirins, a twisting feeling shooting through his stomach when he realized his son was serious about his vocation.  Two whiskeys and Ives almost started to feel better.  Then he decided to watch some television, with its unpleasant war news, and--just like that--a quickly consuming bout of stomach cramps came over him.  Washing up, he decided to visit with Ramirez.

Ives' life is not turning out the way he imagined.  His son, Robert, has just told him he's planning to enter the priesthood.  His artistic ambitions have been sidelined by the responsibilities of family.  His work isn't gracing the walls of MoMA.  Instead, it's selling furniture polish in magazines.  Like most people, Ives had dreams, and those dreams have given way to reality.  And that reality is by no means utopian.

Life rarely turns out the way you expect.   I never saw myself working in the health care profession.  I hate being around hospitals and nursing homes and sick people.  Yes, a few dreams have come true for me.  I am a published author.  I teach at a university.  In my spare time, I play in a church praise band.  Music and poetry are a big part of my life.  All those things were a part of my plan.

However, God had other plans for my life.  I have two beautiful kids.  Didn't plan that.  I have a wonderful wife who happens to have bipolar disorder.  Didn't plan that.  My house is small and in need of a lot of repairs currently.  Didn't plan that, either.  Yet, like Ives, I've learned that God's plans for me are bigger and better than anything I could have imagined.

For instance, if it weren't for my daughter's wanting to study ballet, I never would have realized how much I love the art of dance.  If it weren't for my wife, I never would have developed my passion for educating people about mental illness.  If it weren't for my son, I wouldn't know my capacity for love is so bottomless.  Better plans.

So, the upshot of my post today is that perfect lives don't exist.  Movie stars die of drug overdoses.  Siblings get seriously ill.  Presidents start wars.  Parents come down with Alzheimer's.  Terrorists behead humanitarian workers.  Utopia is a fallacy.  But God can take any pile of manure and make daffodils grow.

Saint Marty tries to keep his eyes on the flowers instead of the shit.

Utopia

by:  Louise Gluck

When the train stops, the woman said, you must get on it.  But how will I know, the child asked, it is the right train?  It will be the right train, said the woman, because it is the right time.  A train approached the station; clouds of grayish smoke streamed from the chimney.  How terrified I am, the child thinks, clutching the yellow tulips she will give to her grandmother.  Her hair has been tightly braided to withstand the journey.  Then, without a word, she gets on the train, from which a strange sound comes, not in a language like the one she speaks, something more like a moan or a cry.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 21: Longest Day, Father's Day, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

It is the longest day of the year in my part of the world.  Summer solstice.  That means that, after today, the planet starts tilting toward winter, and we start losing daylight.  Pretty soon, the leaves are going to turn shades of mustard and cherry.  And then, one morning, frost on the pumpkins.  Shortly after that, white.  For months and months.  (Sorry, I had to go there.  It's the poet in me.)

It is also Father's Day.  For my international readers, today in the United States we honor the patriarchs in our lives.  That means lots of barbecuing.  Hot dogs and bratwursts and hamburgers.  Potato salads.  And lots of bad ties and Old Spice given as presents.  For me, it's a day where I sit around and try to do absolutely nothing.  After I'm done with this post, I'm going to sit in a corner and read a book.  That's Father's Day.

Today's episode for Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago, on a summer solstice when my life was in a state of chaos.  Not like today, when everything is absolutely perfect.

June 21, 2013:  Poem, Elinor Benedict, "Sudden Calm at Maywood Shores"

I have a poem for you tonight that calms my agitated mind.  I'm weary after this week of upheaval.  Tired.  Ready for bed.  Yet, my mind doesn't want to rest.  It keeps going when my eyes close at night.  I've been waking up every morning more tired, as if I've spent the night running with a herd of elk through the Rockies.

Elinor Benedict's sonnet "Sudden Calm at Maywood Shores," from her collection Late News from the Wilderness, slows me down.  Gives me peace.  That's why I want to give it to you tonight.  To give you peace.

Saint Marty wishes you a quiet, restful first night of summer.

Sudden Calm at Maywood Shores

For seven days the wind has plowed the waves
in restless rows across the moving field
of Little Bay de Noc.  While maples yield
their yellow leaves, my boundary oak still saves
its multitude of warriors' leathery hands
until they twist and threaten in the wracking
air that blows the lake to earth, attacking
grass with wars of acorns across the lands
I live to watch. 
                        These days of agitation
shake the universe beneath my hill
and make me fear this landscape never will
be calm again.  And yet--my habitation
feels just now a blanketing of grace
uncanny in its fall from no known place.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 20: Pay the Bills, Carve Out Enjoyment, Sally Wen Mao, "Lessons on Lessening," New Cartoon

[Ives said]  "Yes, we'll go.  I'll pay for it, and then you tell me who'll pay the bills a year from now if something should happen to me."

Ives is using finances as an excuse.  He's retired, and his wife wants to travel.  She brings home pamphlets about cheap airfare to the British Isles and Italy.  She desperately wants to rekindle her love for Ives, but he is stuck, unable to move from a place of grief years after their son has been dead.

Ives and Annie are not living paycheck-to-paycheck.  They are not wealthy, but they have a comfortable life.  They don't have to worry about money.  I sort of envy them.  I can't remember a time in my life when money wasn't a concern for me.  Maybe when I was in college, living at home, and had overage checks from my college scholarships.  That's about the only time.

On Thursday, I just signed the papers for a loan to get the roof of my house replaced.  My next paycheck is dedicated to getting my car fixed.  Most of the time, my paychecks are spent on the day that I receive them.  And the bills still pile up.

I know I'm not unusual.  Most families are in this situation.  I do have great fear of what would happen if I suddenly couldn't work for whatever reason (just like Ives).  It would only take a few weeks for the walls of my life to come tumbling down, so to speak.  That's always in the back of my mind.  I try not to dwell on it too much.

I worry too much about the future.  I know that.  I worry not about things that are happening, but things that might happen.  It's not a really healthy way to exist.  It's sort of like standing on a street corner, afraid to cross the street because a car might come screaming through the intersection and kill me.  Living like that precludes any enjoyment at all.

Yes, I have to account for every dime.  Yes, I bring home left-overs from drug rep lunches at work.  Lo mein and lasagna.  Yes, I only go to movies once or twice a year now.  (It used to be once or twice a month.)  Yes, I have house payments and car payments and loan payments coming out of my ass.  Yes, yes, yes.

But I still have to carve out enjoyment.  I'm planning on going to go for a walk today.  I may take a book with me, find some place to sit and read.  Tonight, I will have pizza, maybe watch an episode of The Lawrence Welk Show.  For Father's Day tomorrow, I may read all day long.  It's cheap and relaxing.

Lawrence Welk and walks.  Saint Marty is livin' large.

Lessons on Lessening

by:  Sally Wen Mao

In the rigmarole of lucky living, you tire
of the daily lessons:  Sewing, Yoga, Captivity.
Push the lesson inside the microwave.
Watch it plump and pop and grow larval

with losses.  Watch it shrink like shrikes
when they dodge out of this palatial
doom.  On the sky's torn hemline, this horizon,
make a wish on Buddha's foot.  How to halve,

but not to have--how to spare someone
of suffering, how to throw away the spare
key saved for a lover that you don't
have, save yourself from the burning turret

with the wind of your own smitten hip.
Do you remember how girlhood was--a bore
born inside you, powerless?  How you made
yourself winner by capturing grasshoppers

and skewering them?  You washed a family
of newts in the dry husked summer, wetted
them with cotton swabs before the vivisection.
That's playing God:  to spare or not to spare.

In the end you chose mercy, and dropped
each live body into the slime-dark moat.
Today is a study in being a loser.  The boyfriend
you carved out of lard and left in the refrigerator

overnight between the milk and chicken breasts.
Butcher a bed, sleep in its wet suet for a night.
Joke with a strumpet, save the watermelon
rinds for the maids to fry in their hot saucepans.

Open your blouse and find the ladybugs
sleeping in your navel.  Open your novel
to the chapter where the floe cracks and kills
the cygnet.  Study hard, refute your slayer.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 14: Phone Call, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Got a distressing phone call last night from my sister in the hospital.  She was calling to tell me that she loves me and was tired of being a burden.  Then, she preceded to tell me how she was going to kill herself after she got off the phone with me.

Thank goodness, I was at my parents' house.  I waved my arm, got my other sister's attention, and told her to call the nurses' station.  I kept my sister talking.  I don't even remember what I said to her.  Babbling.  At that point, I'm pretty sure I was babbling.  Anything to keep her distracted.

I heard the nurse come into her room and say something to her.  My sister paused on the phone and said, "Oh, you called in the troops."  She said something else to me that didn't make sense, and then she hung up.

It was a bad night, between phone calls and texts and guilt.  I'm not sure what's wrong with my sister.  The doctors don't know what's wrong with her.  Since my car has been basically out of commission for the past five or six days, I wasn't able to visit her much during the week.  She's had visitors, but she doesn't remember them.

I'm happy to report that, when I saw her this afternoon, she is much improved from last night.  It was almost as if she had no recollection of what transpired.  I brought her strawberry custard, and we actually had a cogent conversation.  In fact, I haven't seen her so upbeat and talkative in months.  This morning, even the doctor noted the improvement.

I hope last night was simply the end of a long period of decline for my sister.  She's got a long recovery ahead of her.  Hopefully, that recovery won't include any more emergency phone calls.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago, during my time with Scrooge and company.

June 14, 2012:  Neglected Grave, Mortal Coil, Last Day

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.

Most of my disciples can probably guess where this little paragraph occurs in A Christmas Carol.  It is the culmination of the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.  In it, Scrooge is given the unpleasant revelation of his imminent demise.  Judging from all the evidence, Scrooge's death is fast approaching.  Not ten years down the line.  Not five years down the line.  The impression I've always gotten from reading the book is that Scrooge is going to die within a year. 

The main clues for this assumption come from the death of Tiny Tim.  The Ghost of Christmas Present predicts, "If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race...will find him here."  That means that Tiny Tim will be dead within a year.  In the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come stave, Scrooge sees Bob Cratchit mourning over his son's body.  A few scenes later, the paragraph above appears.  That means that Scrooge is already planted in the ground by the time Tiny Tim shuffles off this mortal coil.  Scrooge has less than a year to live at this point in the narrative.

I've posed this scenario to my Good Books students in the past:  if you suddenly heard God's voice in your ear, and God's voice told you, "You will die next Tuesday at 3:17 p.m. EST," what would you do?  The answer I invariably receive is not sit in a classroom with me, talking about Great Expectations or The Grapes of Wrath.  They would be out with their family or girlfriends or boyfriends.  They would spend their remaining time with their kids.  They wouldn't worry about their finances.  In fact, 100% of my students don't even mention money, unless they intend to purchase gifts for loved ones.  That last mortgage payment for J. P. Morgan Chase doesn't even make a blip on the radar.  It doesn't even make the top 100 list of things to do.

Certainly, when Scrooge is faced with the reality of his untimely end, it changes him.  Actually, it scares the shit out of him.  He can no longer go back to his old life and old habits.  He must embrace a different way of thinking and acting.  I know, if I were in the position of knowing my final dance was approaching, I wouldn't be blogging.  I wouldn't be working.  I wouldn't be doing a lot of the things I normally do every day.

That's what makes the difference for Scrooge.  It should make a difference for everybody.  There's no guarantee, when you eat that bowl of Rice Krispies this morning, that you will be around to finish off the box of Rice Krispies tomorrow.  That should make us hug our daughters a little longer.  Enjoy that Milky Way bar a little more.  Listen to those birds singing for a few extra minutes.  I know it would change my day(s) drastically.

Maybe I should live today like it is my last day.  Make choices that really count, that make me happy.

Saint Marty needs to go.  He has a family-size bag of Cheetos and a pan of brownies to eat.

Judgement Day is here.  Grab a spoon.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 13: Chanting, Holy Spirit, New Cartoon, Michael Mlekoday, "Going North"

On that occasion, during Holy Week, Father Tom, transplanted from the Bronx and studying advanced Latin at the Gregorian University, had told them [Ives and his family] about a tenth-century church in Trastevere where some of the most devout Catholics in Rome gathered on Wednesday evenings for services that would "tear one's heart out," as he had put it.  So they went, and no sooner had they entered its candlelit gloom than Ives did feel the presence of early Christian spirits.  That night worshipers took turns giving testimony to their faith and strong belief in Him before the congregation.  They wept, beat their chests, they lay stretched out on their bellies on the floor, praying.  Others crawled on their knees, hands folded in prayer, toward the altar, their shadows thrown high against the vaulted walls.  Chanting in Latin, their eyes wide open, they seemed to be seeing something--the presence of Jesus of the Mother or the Holy Spirit--that Ives could not.

Ives is a deeply spiritual man.  Yet, he struggles with his faith, as most Christians do.  He goes to church every Sunday.  He does charitable work in his neighborhood.  Quietly.  Above all, Ives teaches his children to love God.  On a trip to Italy, he takes his family to the church described in the above passage.  He marvels at the utter surrender in the worshipers.  How the veil seems to have been torn away from their eyes and their vision is more eternal, less temporal.  Ives strives his whole life to reach this state of understanding.

Like Ives, I've had glimpses of what I call Holy Spirit moments, when something beyond my understanding has taken hold.  Sometimes, it's happened during worship services, when candlelight climbs the walls and incense clouds the air.  Sometimes, it's happened during songs I've sung or played at church; the music starts, and suddenly the hair on my arms bristles and I feel . . . something moving in the place.

I was lucky.  I grew up with church.  I didn't have to spend years on some spiritual journey.  Church was a part of my life.  Always.  Some people might consider that a bad thing.  I don't.  My upbringing has helped with my understanding of the world.  I like to think that I'm a more tolerant, loving person because of it.  I try not to judge too much (although I frequently fail on this account).  But, I'm a work in progress, for sure.

One of my biggest failings is trust.  When troubles come my way, I tend to panic.  Run around, crying out, "The sky is falling!"  It takes me quite a while to calm down, take a deep breath, and pray.  I think it's part of my control issues.  I don't like it when my life becomes a big bundle of entropy.  I think Ives' biggest struggle is the same.  He has a good, happy life, and then bad shit happens.  For over 150 pages, he is lost, until the end of the novel.  Then he's found again.

I tend to get a little lost every day.  Michael Mlekoday's poem today is about going north, looking for something.  I think that pretty much describes all of us.  We spend our whole lives trying to avoid the scary stuff--black bears, falling ceilings, death.  We walk around, sometimes in circles, looking for the answers.

Saint Marty just needs to stop walking.  Look up, metaphorically.  That's where the answers are written.

Going North

by:  Michael Mlekoday

The black bear of a Bible
that belonged to my grandparents
has gold-lined pages, paws
dipped in honey.

Running through its forests
is like deja vu every time.
The black bear eats everything.
If you've never stared past its teeth,

you've never held your breath waiting
to be ended.  The largest male black bear
weighs almost a thousand pounds
and can be found hunting at night

somewhere deep in the North.
I still have nightmares of his silence.
I haven't eaten fish since I saw him
pick a salmon from its bones.

Confessions of Saint Marty

May 31: Bull's-Eye, Dress Shopping, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Over the last couple of weeks, I've felt like God has something against me.  Bad news piled on top of catastrophe.  I finally have my house cleaned up from the collapsed ceiling.  It took seven hours of cleaning and vacuuming, two loads of laundry, and several wine coolers.  I don't know how much it's going to cost to get my house repaired.  The roof has to be fixed first, then the kitchen.  I'm not sure how much the insurance company is even going to pay.  I'm in a state of limbo.

Took my daughter dress shopping this afternoon.  Her eight-grade graduation is this Wednesday.  She picked out a  beautiful little pink dress, and we bought some shoes to go with it.  She was not thrilled with the trip.  When we got in the car, I looked at her and said, "Do me a favor.  For a couple of hours, try to get in touch with your inner girl."  She did, sort of.  She was more excited about the Rubik's Cube I bought her than her new dress.

This week isn't going to be much better.  Dance rehearsals.  Graduation.  Two days of dance recitals.  Things won't calm down until about 8 p.m. next Sunday.  Plus, I have to get an estimate on my kitchen, and I have a large payment to make on a bill.  All kinds of stresses, worries, and fears.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago.  Surprise, surprise--it's all about fears.

May 31, 2012:  Dragging Chains, Ghosts, Nightmares

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour.  The bells ceased as they had begun, together.  They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar.  Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

A terrifying little moment preceding the appearance of Jacob Marley's ghost at the beginning of A Christmas Carol.  Charles Dickens knew how to play upon the fears of his readers.  For me, there's nothing more frightening than this scenario:  knowing some unseen threat/creature/force is coming to get you.  Scrooge has to sit in his dusty room, listening to the approach of Marley with growing dread.  For me, it's the literary equivalent of hearing the theme from Jaws, knowing that the shark is somewhere in your vicinity.  DA-DUM.  DA-DUM.  DA-DUUUUMMMMM.

Fear comes in many shapes and sizes.  There's the faceless fear demonstrated in the above passage.  I would call that fear of the unknown, one of my particular specialties.  Then there's more tangible (still irrational) phobic fears:  rats, spiders, lightning, Nicholas Sparks novels, Justin Bieber songs.  Another kind of fear is generated by watching scary movies or reading scary books.

My daughter has been suffering from the latter these last few nights.  It seems my older sister thought it was a great idea to watch a film about demon possession with my daughter last Friday.  Since Sunday, my daughter has appeared at the foot of my bed, begging me to come sleep with her because of nightmares.  Last night was the first night of uninterrupted sleep I've had in four days.  I'm tired.

Yup, I grew up watching stuff like this

I'm not against horror movies or books.  Quite the contrary.  I grew up watching the British Hammer horror films in all their blood-drenched glory.  I was weaned on Stephen King novels, from Carrie onward.  I even read the loathsome Firestarter.  I am a fan of this brand of fear.  It's harmless and fun.  If you're a teenager or adult.  Not an eleven-year-old girl who's into ballet.

There's really no point to this little diatribe.  Fear happens.  Whether ghosts in the wine-merchant's cellar or bill collectors pounding on your front door, we all are afraid of something.  I have an entire wing of fears in my psyche, the largest room reserved for the Ghost of Change Yet to Come.  Fear can be healthy and useful (gun-wielding muggers  and rabid dogs and clowns), or fear can be limiting and detrimental (new jobs or new people or new chocolate bars).   Fear eventually drives Scrooge to become a new person:  kind and generous and good-humored.

Today, fear is driving Saint Marty to a two-liter of Diet Mountain Dew.

Confessions of Saint Marty

May 30: Face of Tragedy, Bad News, Joshua Mehigan, "The News," New Cartoon

With so much correspondence to answer, on many an evening, when she might have otherwise been studying, she [Annie Ives] sat in their living room, at their secretary, chain-smoking Chesterfields, sipping wine, and listening to music as she composed her responses.  That she did not know what to say in the face of tragedy greatly vexed her.  She would write sympathetic notes of response in her impeccable script and enclose an illustrated prayer card that her husband had made up in the office.  Christ giving his blessing.  Finishing with her signature, she handed each to Ives, as he sat by his drawing board, so that he could sign the notes too.  She was not certain that he read each one over, but had often watched his face sadden when, as if wincing, he would sign his name.

The year following her son's death, Annie spends her time answering all the letters of sympathy the family receives.  People whose loved ones have died in tragic circumstances.  A woman who lost her husband in a fire.  Parents whose son shot himself.  A mother with a two-year-old who drowned in a backyard pool.  Tragedy keeps paying visits to the Ives family.

Tragedy is never far away.  This week, floods in Texas that have killed dozens of people.  I met with a friend whose son died of a drug overdose last fall.  My sister who had her parathyroid removed at U of M hospital this week is a good example.  Last year at this time, she had just broken her wrist.  Two or three months later, she would have surgery on that wrist.  Two or three months beyond that, back surgery.  Infections.  Sepsis.  Hospital stay after hospital stay.  Then, for four months, flat on her back in a nursing home, unable to eat or move.

Last night, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.  After about the third hour of vacuuming and pulling down soggy pieces of my kitchen ceiling, I stopped for a couple moments to get a drink of water.  I was hot.  Itchy from all the dust and insulation.  My nose was running.  I stood by the refrigerator and said aloud, "What have I done wrong, God?  What's my problem?"

Of course, I know that's a pointless question.  Tragedy is not some kind of divine lesson.  Tragedy is simply tragedy.  The product of a world that the human race has abused and taken for granted.  The people who died in the Texas floods or my sister or my friend weren't being punished.   Tragedy doesn't have to make sense.  It exists.  Period.

That doesn't mean that those affected by tragedy don't question the universe, get angry at God, drown in waves of grief.  There's a certain amount of baggage involved in all difficult circumstances.  What ifs.  What if my sister hadn't broken her wrist?  What if the people in Texas had decided to go to Disneyland last week?  That is sometimes, I think, the most difficult part of tragedy, because it is an attempt to assign blame or reason.

Tragedy has a way of happening, no matter how much you try to control life.  Grace resides in how you deal with any tragedy that befalls you.  Annie Ives tries to console other grieving human beings.  My friend tries to educate her students about mental illness.  Once my sister has recuperated, returns home, perhaps she will go back to work as a nurse, helping other people struggling with limiting health problems.

Saint Marty thinks grace is God's response to tragedy.

The News

by:  Joshua Mehigan

What happened to today?  Where did it go?
The raindrops dot the window and roll down.
One taps the glass, another, three at a time,
warping the view of black tree limbs and sky.
Long hush, quick crescendo.  Wind leans on the sash.
Behind me in the shadows sleep two cars.
Nearby, like something small deposited
tenderly, by a big wind on the bed,
my wife sleeps deeply through the afternoon.
The sky is gray.  What color is the sky?
Rhinoceros?  Volcanic dune?  Moon dust?
Breast of mourning dove?  Gray butterfly?
Blank newsprint.  There's no news, no news at all,
and will be none,
until, at long last, in the other room,
one light comes on, and then another one.

Confessions of Saint Marty

May 24: My Mother, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

My mother was taken by ambulance to the hospital this evening.

Today started out normally.  Church in the morning.  I played in the band.  I sang with the choir.  Celebrated Pentecost Sunday.  There was cake after the service in honor of the church's high school graduates.  It was a good time.  Lots of smiles and photographs.

This afternoon, I cut up a watermelon for a barbecue at my parents' house.  My sister grilled some bratwursts and hot dogs.  Dinner was on the table.  My mother got out of her chair, grabbed her walker, and headed toward the dining room.

The next thing I heard was my wife yelling, "She's going down, she's going down!"  I turned around, and my mother was on the floor, unresponsive.  After a few moments, she started talking, but her speech was slurred.  She kept saying that all she wanted to do was go to sleep.

I called 911.  My mother was combative and confused when the EMS guys started helping her.  Eventually, they got her out of the house and to the ambulance.  Her blood pressure was 80 over 40, and she kept saying, "I just want to sleep."

I'm home now.  My son is in bed.  The doctors are still running tests on my mother.  They don't know what's wrong.  She could be dehydrated.  She could have had a stroke.  I'm waiting for the phone to ring with some news.

Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired on a Memorial Day weekend two years ago.

May 25, 2013:  Beatnik Saturday, New Poem, "Extreme Unction," New Cartoon

This Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, I'm looking forward to three days of relaxation.  Well, I'll relax as much as I can relax.  I still have to play the pipe organ for two church services (one tonight, one tomorrow morning).  I still have to write some blog posts, and I have a book I want to finish reading this weekend.  That's my definition of relaxation.

I have a new poem for you today.  This one's been sitting and percolating in my head for a couple of weeks, slowly taking shape.

Saint Marty can't wait to have some barbecue this weekend.

Extreme Unction

Swaddled by AIDS in hospital bed.
Unlimbed by bombs in Afghanistan.
Unhinged by helix in mind.
Stunned by stroke, macheted by Hutu.
Unbreasted by cancer, unvoiced by dictator.
Addicted by birth, unmemoried by age.
Jack Kennedy at Parkland Memorial,
wide-eyed on the stretcher,
Jackie staring into his wrecked face.
Twenty six at Sandy Hook,
taken on a sunny December morning
just before Christmas break.
My father sits with them all,
the wounded, ruined, helpless,
waits for the priest's prayer and oil.
To the man in black, he whispers,
This is for my wife, accepts it,
carries it home on his forehead,
cupped in his palms, like winter
run-off.  He gives it to my mother,
pours it over her feet, legs, hands, head.
He hopes she will jump out of her chair
and start cooking him liver and onions
the way she did when they were first
married, standing in front of the stove,
singing a Doris Day song, hair wrapped
in a blue kerchief, hips swaying,
looking as if she will live forever.

Confessions of Saint Marty