This Is My Legacy. No pressure.

  “Did you buy the boys bulletproof backpacks?” It’s 10:00 the night before school starts and my aunt has clearly forgotten about the house-wide chaos on theses nights, the agonizing over whether they know where to go, who’s in their classes, if we have purchased the right snacks. I used to make a big deal of the last day of summer. There were shopping trips and s’mores and we were always the last ones out of the pool. My mom insists that I gift them a little chocolate every First Day of School morning, “for a sweet school year.” They don’t hear her sentimentality over the joy of Peanut M&M’s. Even during the pandemic, their desks had jars of Peanut M&M’s on them that first, weird, morning. This year, I have COVID, so all the fun crap was replaced by my sixteen-year-old taking the fifteen- and twelve-year-old brothers to Food Lion for some junk food I would NEVER purchase. That seemed to make them at least as happy as being the last ones out of the pool. And my husb...

  I stub my toe on a stone and curse. “AT REST,” it says, coolly. “Aunt Sid, where are you?” I feel her response, her voice, her sensibility more than I hear it. I’m certainly not here, Tootsie. “But,” I say, out loud, not at all concerned about being judged by the 150,000 dead planted here. “But, I have rocks for you. Rocks from Utah and Massachusetts and from the creek behind my house in Virginia.” I wave the rocks over my head, a fist full of orange and gray and shimmering white, held tight to keep the tiniest pebbles from escaping. These rocks have been clanging around in my car for years, clicking in the armrest when I take a turn, avoiding the vacuum when I infrequently clean. When I see a stone and I think of her, when I’m thinking of her and I see a stone, I collect it. “It’s been two decades since I came to this place and I can’t find you.” Not here! she sings. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. Surely, my connection with my great aunt, my heart, the deepest w...

  I’ve been trying to write about my upbringing and my faith and who I am and where I came from. And the more I dig, the less I know. I sent a text message to my uncle. Me: How did your parents meet? Uncle: Max was stationed at what was then “Camp Polk,” later became a fort. Was in NO on leave when he saw Lillian working as a salesclerk at a shoe store. Me: Ah! So they met in NOLA! And she grew up there? Uncle: oui I sent a message to my aunt. Aunt: My mom was walking home from work on Canal Street. My dad was in the army, in special training. He saw my mom and tried to meet her in the street but she ignored him. He following her home to her mother’s house. He knocked on the door and said, “I’m not leaving until your daughter comes out.” It was love at first sight. My mom was really beautiful and my dad was very handsome. When I get Mom on the phone, I ask her. She says my grandfather saw my grandmother out shopping for shoes. He tried to talk to her and she ign...

  The First Twenty Reasons I Didn’t Write on April 22 1.       I am still a working woman in 2022. 2.       I have three sons who need to be fed and taken places and my husband can’t do every bloody thing for us, though he does do most of it. 3.       I have a dog. 4.       That week, I baked a cake and forgot the sugar. And I baked a corn pudding and forgot the eggs. (Truly disgusting, thanks for asking.) Also, I forgot the password on my work computer after a long weekend. Naturally, I convinced myself I had dementia or a brain tumor like my old granny, Lillian, and I got so wrapped up imagining my funeral, shopping for cotton shrouds and seaweed caskets for my plot at the green cemetery that I didn’t remember to write.   5.       I couldn’t find my special composition notebook with the gold tape on the spine. 6.       We were getting close to my baby brother’s 47 th birthday...

  I wake with a little something percolating in my mind, in my heart, whatever that place is where ideas and inspiration and inklings of Something Else get their start. I try to sleep some more, to dream, to let the thing grow, or go away, whichever. But I did not sleep and the thing nags and starts to dress itself in words. Something about witches and blessings and who people assume witches are and who is out there, living magic every day. Finally, the witches, the words got louder, more insistent that I rise. And I don’t worry too much about the normal morning rituals, of waking the boys, of making breakfast. I throw on my brother’s old overalls and a t-shirt blessing my friend’s war on cancer. I find socks with skulls and my cozy, tired, slippers. I creep down, past closed doors and all of the devices leaching energy from the wall. Instead of the normal routines, I come to the place closest to the outside, without the chill. The sky is orange, Sun threatening to burn away th...

  There’s a war in Ukraine and I am sitting in my warm home pondering springtime daffodils.   There’s a war in Ukraine and, on the news, Ukrainian people are begging foreign journalists, in their best English, to send help.   There’s a war in Ukraine and men in suits are talking about it. Men in suits are negotiating. Men in suits are pulling the levers.   There’s a war in Ukraine and where are the women? In the west, if they are lucky, carrying their children and pets. Did they leave their husbands and fathers behind? Did they leave their oldest sons? Did they leave behind their sisters, in basements, listening to blast after unending blast, smelling smoke and dust, praying for peace, for an end? Are they tempted to give up their resolve to make the pain and the noise and the dying stop?   There’s a war in Ukraine and their leader is an actor, trained to consider the feelings of others, their motivation, trained to consider the bes...

  When I was nineteen, I was a sophomore in college. I had a blues show at the college radio station. You probably heard of it. It's WAY down on the left end of the dial. Further...yup, a little further...Oh, damn, you missed it! It's okay. You had to be a pretty diehard fan to find me. In my freshman year, I crept across campus at the crack of dawn for an early-morning time slot on the AM dial. You can ask my roommate. I was MUCH more likely to show up on the radio than I was in classes. Later, I was the only one at the station who took advantage of all of the interviewing equipment. I used it to record phone interviews with John Hammond and Bob Margolin. I had the Nighthawks and a couple of local bands I was in love with as guests on my show. The interviews earned me a spot on Sunday afternoons, which was WAY better than the 5:00am Tuesday gig! When George Clinton was coming to town, I was the best/only choice to do his interview. I studied, at the library, like we had to do,...