ma
walks through the fire, courageously it seems, without drawing attention to herself. alone except for a couple of friends and her cat and her evening vodka tonics. independent of the maelstrom of her long years with dad and relatively independent of her bizarre children who only seem to provide unusual, abnormal, odd problems. rick’s queer and unsuccessful. janie is a thoroughgoing siddha who’s ‘worried about having children because she wouldn’t have enough time to meditate! she got over that fast, thank God!’ and lisa who finally slimmed down after blimping up, got a grip on her own manic depressive nature and who sincerely loves and gives to her. ‘she’s too good to me.’ so there she sits, in her gray and white, rather masculine and stylish seersucker bathrobe, newly purchased in Portland because ‘sometimes they wake you up in the middle of night to see the animals’ on her about-to-happen trip to Zanzibar. her white hair is fleecy and shining after her short shower and she bends over the Globe’s crossword puzzle and the remains of her coffee, seemingly at ease in these atypical homo apartment surroundings. we sit in silence, comfortably together after my twenty-four hour effort to keep her happy and proud of me somehow, and respectful, if not considerate, towards my boyfriend. i know that i love her. i definitely do. she is not pathetic or blind, and even though she rarely volunteers her deeper feelings, i know what they are. she loves all three of us completely, with an nearly unequivocal support and she chooses to never get in the way. i imagine her life to be solitary, even lonely, without sexual or emotional release, but she never complains if that is the case and appears to be sustained buy some simple act of will, of yankee self-ethic which tells her to be strong and fair and to help out where she can. she has bought an Horizon instead of a Rabbit because she wanted to be ‘patriotic’. she followed me in the MG to Brookline Village for gas, and I sent her on her way to New Haven. i don’t remember telling her that i loved her. i was in a hurry. i hope we don’t run out of time. i hope i get rich quick in order to give her some financial security in her old age. i would hate to let her down. i hope we can have some longer space together some day. when she can lean on me for a change.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
About The Paragraphs and how to order
Or here
