Umbrella Black List

Umbrella Black List

No mosquitos should light upon you!
No bees, no hornets, no gnats,
Black listed midges, nor democrats.
No cold rain or sunburn pain;
I am your umbrella fella.

I'll walk with you but not on the rocks
No ankles that sprainfully swell
I'll sit with you and swat thru our talks
I am your umbrella fella.

I'll rock with you long in my lap
All Black-listed flies I will slap.

Vickie Lynn

Vickie Lynn

She super glued humility to the walls of all her palaces. She shopped the Dollar Store for essential necessaria and her genetic generosity overflowed the shopping cart. She always left people better than she found them.

Vickie Lynn was thrilled when any of us would take a trip anywhere. It gave occasion for her to remind us to bring her home a souvenir, a trinket, a remembrance of travel, a present. To her, a present to celebrate a homecoming was as sweet as taking the trip and the present was more or less the reason to ever leave in the first place. As she perfected her reminders, the travel became less and less important and the giftsong eventually became "bring me a present and you don't even have to leave on a trip." A jaunt across town or an errand to the Dollar Store was perfect justification for a present and Vickie Lynn was a consummate recipient.

The Dollar Store suggests by its name that you can get everything in there for a dollar. So Vickie Lynne calculated that she would just go ahead and get everything. The logic was solid. It was akin to the Vickie Lynne Mathematical Rule of Exponential Anniversaries. Hallmark publishes a list of what presents go with what anniversary: 2 years is paper; 3 is wood; 4 is plastic and on and on up to metals and precious stones. Be careful not to trivialize the early years; certainly nice enough presents. But the real presents, the ones that count are associated with the higher numbers and you must accelerate to accumulate. So she and Bill measured their anniversaries in 5 year increments. With this 5X multiplier math their first year anniversary already skipped over paper and cotton and wood and jumped to crystal. It would only take 5 chronological years to yield 25 celebratory ones and the presents would be so much more worthwhile. She and Bill have thus been married for 85 years and with that milestone comes a jubilee-level present . This time-warp formula of hers streamed clever, outrageous behaviors into a Bunnell Funnel and the outpourings were their private personal concerts of luxurious Laughter, their presents to each other. As this laughter chapter was written a loon sang a requiem verse in a flyby over us.
Laughter trumped it all. It was a treasure to be in the presence of her staccato, Wallyesque, machine-gun reverberations. Experiencing her laughter was contagious. It was a gift that sticks like super glue to the walls of our being. Listen to Jimmy sometime. Listen to Brandon. Listen to them all.
Sprite dethroned her Coke-du-jour with its effervescent clarity, a convenient and transparent remedy to the dark-sided cola urgency of her imperfect appetite. It was clear to her that Coke had to go with its sweet promise of liquid friendship and fizzy familiarity in a can, or a bottle or a glass or a cake. It was not, in the end, Coke Cake that powered her palate but Barb's Coconut Cake, lemon meringue pie no more. Vickie Lynn invested in Cake Futures for Chase and Brandon through NiNi. Rice pudding, craved and comfortable, would match pregnancy-like urges for gagootz and spaghetti and never reach an expiration date if it had one.
Much like her special friends Donna and Cathy, Vickie was a caregiving machine. She learned chiropractic manipulation from an employer and administered pain relieving back massages with strong handed skill. She learned podiatric care from an employer and soon ministered to a clientele of foot weary patients of her own. She befriended people who could not care for themselves and found a pathway to care for them. She engaged with Shirley and ignored the disintegration of Alzheimer's Disease. She was a caregiver, caretaker, and home maker. Once upon a time whilst helping Deb clean each others' homes Vickie sprayed windex on a framed photo of Debs family to clean the dust off glass that wasn't there.
She looked at the unlikely vintage house trailer on Motorcyle Ave and said " I can work with this!" After they left that estate nobody could follow her exhaustive accessorization so they bulldozed the place. She resurrected years of furniture rearrangement experience. Lindsay and Abby would wake up the next morning in a whole new world. Overnight, Vickie had painted the walls, relocated all the furniture and end tables were adorned with candles and perfectly placed treasures. She considered herself a minimalist decorator because there were some blank spaces left between her frames and shadow boxes and rustic signs and jars of garlic and onions. " I love you to the moon and back" hung over the entry to her living room and she welcomed everybody to her environment (especially Chase and Brandon) with heart hugs and she really cared for you unless she bent her pretend arthritic Harriet finger and was psst at you for 11 seconds. Vickie Lynn stealthily included her closest confidants in her interior decorating schemes and themes. Deb or Terry often complimented her on some extra special shelf adornment to discover that she had lifted it from their respective houses and repurposed it among her treasures. She delighted in the disclosure of her pilfering. "That's yours" followed by a machine gun volley of laughter.
"You can be leader today" Vivacious Vickie declared her own
Supervisory authority over who drove, where to sit at Applebee's, or just to simply enjoy the self-awarded distinction. This life got the best of her and I can visualize her greeting now in the Face of God "You can be leader today,"
Vickie Lynn contracted every known disease except cancer which was celebrated as a victory. Last Thursday she wished for the strength to keep up with her grandchildren. Much earlier in life she had stopped working to care for each of . She was pleased to love Tyler, an ally in their mutual care plans for Lindsay and Boo and Baby B. Vickie was Erik's Official Godmother and She teased with the reality of that special relationship by adding a whimsical dimension to her love for Erik, "Hi Erik John. This is your fairy Godmother". Chase pumped non-verbal "I Love You" hand squeezes and Lindsay plays the car horn to the same heartbeat
Abby was her rock: she brought perspective and 'tude. Everything will fall into place and it will be allright. "Hey Little Bird, love you long, long time"
A Gosnell Hospice bedside dance with Uncle Jimmy restored the loving telephone linkage between them. When Wally passed years ago she enlisted Jimmy as her surrogate Dad. Yesterday Vickie Lynn defrosted the freezer she gave us. The tree outside her window at Brighton Rehab grew before her very eyes. The dome light came on in the Pilot yesterday and nobody was in the car.
Wally, her Father, was the perfect centering focus of her life. Her measure of love and unconditional generosity descended from him and her suffering was made bearable by his memory. She was the classic Daddy's Little Girl and is now sitting painless in his lap, still.
Heart hugs for all.
The Beginning.
Be Nice.
Take care of you

Swipe

"You can swipe your card now!"
The definition has changed its meaning from the slang that once described the unauthorized taking of property.  It has morphed into the action used to slide a credit/debit card through a reader slot to allow money to be deducted from an account number stored in a magnetic stripe.  Swipe the stripe.  It is stealing from yourself.   It may not be stealing in the criminal sense but it is certainly taking money I don't have from the person who must pay it back whom happens to be one and the same.  Deficit personal spending is comfort food for the therapeutic shopper.  Just swipe what you need to feel better and you can delay the pay until you are dunned.  We have learned this behavior from our national economy and it is the moral equivalent of simply printing money like the Fed.  Abandoning the consequences, or denying the consequences, or kicking the can down the road is how swiping works.  So its rock paper scissors for me.  Put your card under a rock,  use your scissors to disable the card, and use paper money instead of plastic. If it isnt debit don't use it. Save up for it and buy it with money you really have.  Credit is a very misleading term which almost suggests that you win if you swipe;  you are credited, awarded, given, or souvenir'd invisible money which grants you permission to have and hold anything you want.  Swiping is pretend money and its plastic. You cannot swipe happiness.  The stripe on the back of the card is the brain.  It is a magnetic conscience that compels a swipe of pretend currency effortlessly and often without a cashier present so you can have anything you can swipe without discouraging word.  At some indeterminate timepoint the pretense has to be righted and the swipe made real.  Swipe once meant that you misappropriated somebody else's money. It still does.

FEISTY ELEGANCE

Harriet,  Aunt Harriet,  Nana,  Mum 

She once lived in New York City  Fashion District and modeled her very early feisty elegance to the boroughs.  She once lived in a city home with a Jewish family where she reinvented kosher culture. 

She once lived in a walk down basement apartment near the Arthur R. Gould Memorial Hospital and paid rent to a famous Maine State Trooper but we often suspected that she was somehow the landlady and he paid rent to her for classing up his neighborhood.   She left her keys in the car because Bud was always watching out for her and the garage bay was hers.

She once lived beside the fence that restricted access to the Presque Isle Fairgrounds and Harriet would annually create admission amnesty through her ivy covered fencehole for an elite guestlist of fairgoers.   

She worked at Sears for years but she thought she was on Madison Avenue and so did her customers.  After a fashion consult with Harriet, women would leave the department feeling like Julia Roberts.  Regional  Managers would seek her intimate understanding of retail detail and upon arrival at HER store would include Harriet in merchandising strategy meeting luncheons.   She remained loyal to the company throughout her retirement.   She accessorized life.

She accessorized Jimmy as a pilot,  Lynn wore  a CPA,  Vicki was an RN,  Terry had a chain of salons,   Denny was a Hollywood Producer and Gerri,  a dramatic starlet.   Abby and Lindsay and Brittany were super-youth with natural jewel like sparkle and promise who needed no accessorizing.  I alternated as a lawyer or a pharmacist.   She elevated everyone’s station  from within her prideful heart and generous spirit.  These enrichments were compliments,   her way to voice how special we all are.  Everyone got  the treatment.  

 Upon entering any room Harriet surveyed the perimeter and immediately began to befriend the nearest stranger by openly researching any common ground.  If you were in the room she was working you would leave with the very comfortable feeling that someone like Harriet knew everyone in your home town and they all liked you.    ”Your sister lived on Dyer Street just past Gouldville School, right?”  Someone you know,  knows Harriet.  God, for One.

 There was one room into which she walked that had Wally in it and two weeks later they were married forever.   Their marriage was thereafter accompanied by Wally’s automatic-ratcheting-machine-gun-laughter.  The stimulus for Wally’s magical song  was some highrolling Harrietcetera  and now Her call to assemble all of us here today means that she has lifted her spirit to a whole new level.   She wants be the very first to tell everyone in Heaven just who came to her funeral.

Her home on State Street was the center of the universe,  the fabric of Presque Isle’s social apron.  An Open house.  Her table was the centerpiece of life well-lived almost like being in a mural of it all.   In a Kennedy sense,  it was like Camelot.  It was an annex of the Country Club where brunch was first discovered in Aroostook County.

She cruised and bruised and wined and dined and swore and quit and prayed and fell and reeled and wheeled and dealed and healed and drove and pranced and shuffled and strolled and primped and scolded as needed. 

Harriet was socially gifted.  Whenever introduced to friends she had not met she would absorb the experience with gleeful appreciation of the new people and for weeks hence would share her special fortune with everyone.  “You’ll  never guess who I met!”   And she never slighted old friends.  Suddenly, she would make a phone call to reach out to someone she had not updated lately.   And most often the update would celebrate the latest winning of a new friend forever and ever.  Harriet called her friends out of the blue because she liked them and missed them and we should all do that more and more.  

She moved out of The County when her man surrendered to pancreatic cancer and built a beautiful life at Marcus Woods for the past 13 years.  We loved having her so close to us and frequent visits and conversations and celebrations and parties and Holidays and Wednesdays with Terry are the moments that make all our throats tighten as we think of being without her.  My tears are not for her; they are for me.  She knows everyone in heaven and loves her new place.

OREO

Two matching layers
Chocolate circles of concern
Contain a pure-white center
That urge a firm good turn

Reveal sweetened wisdom
Without broken promise crumb.

Outrageously Respect Each Other
The OREO rule of thumb.

Local Warming

  (Skiers’ Lament)  

Spring hath sprung itself upon us;

Flung its blooming promises into dull brown niches of lukewarm city-dirt,
Whilst it puts off ambitious foliation plans just long enough to coax
 Shepherds pie snow into barely holding its grip against the daffodiligence of the sun.          

Self Portrait

A Lot of nerve

And aggressive swagger

Not stagger mind you,  just verve

Vivacious and audacious

Gentle arrogant edge

With outrageous mental sway

I am here to swerve.