It’s Here

I thought it was in the family room, so I cried at the bus stop. The Christmas tree lived there, with ornaments formed from salt dough and my mother’s fingers. When I asked if we could hold hands and dance around, my parents agreed this was a good idea.

The Olympics lived there, and my father’s boisterous feet, wriggling for ski jumps and flip turns. We were Zimbabwe and Belarus and every salty tear racing down the podium. We hummed along with all the anthems.

The rosebud sheets lived there, transforming the couch from green to pink when flus came. My lungs were besieged, but the world was new. There were ramekins of macaroni and movies about dogs who spoke. The couch had room for all three of us. I wore my mother’s slippers.

The fireplace lived there. The grandparents learned the names of all the bears. She revised historical cookies for the new story of juvenile diabetes. He let me pinch his nose until laughter leveled his dignity. I learned that complimenting brooches meant receiving them instantly.

I cried at the bus stop, and I bade my mother promise me I would never die.

I cried at the bus stop, but the driver sang Harry Belafonte songs and said her favorite color was pink. Mrs. Torani let us adopt a humpback whale. Eric brought me a Volkswagen the size of a baby carrot, with Daffy Duck as the driver. There was glitter in the Mod Podge. Asif told us about Pakistan.

I thought it was on my mother’s shoulder, so I frightened my residential assistant. The language lived there, Psalms born late in time. My mother’s poems and index cards crackled, as bawdy as sparklers and soothing as tapioca. We read each other’s every word.

The accent lived there, a Bulgarian bark that my mother could neither explain nor control. It ascended when my courage sagged. “We make best of situation!” “We dance when music playing!” She tied on the scarf that kept my head from tumbling to the ground.

The daisies lived there, fabric petals once pink but bleached by moves. Their hearts were still bright buttons, as yellow as the day they came home. From eight to eighteen, my mother brought them to my bedside when I needed sun.

The tea lived there, in lilac porcelain from the thrift store and liter tureens when my blood sugar bellowed. We toasted the ancestors and the absent. We prayed for cures and clues. We spilled gold drops in my mother’s book of Bible Quotations by Subject. The pages on “Love of God, The” curled.

I frightened my residential assistant, and I vowed I would drop out after one howling semester.

I frightened my residential assistant, but the Italian professor had tiny curls and called me “Principessa.” She laughed with my Dean Martin CD, declaring, “that man is not Italian.” Isaac took me square dancing, and my legs kept moving for days. The professor with the cat tattoo on the back of his neck clapped when I announced I was going to seminary.

I thought it was in the sanctuary, so I had panic attacks. The hymnals lived there, whole promissory notes. I dropped my own name on the sidewalk, but I could not forget “Abide With Me.” When the waves took me, Beulah’s voice carried. “What a friend we have in Jesus!” I woke humming in the sand and sniffing bread on the air.

The elderly lived there, with names like Hildegard and George. They took me to Target and told me about husbands. They said I had gifts and laid hands on my brow. We drank coffee in the choir room and wondered if angels were really covered in eyes. I found a tiny flying carpet in my backpack, rug-hooked with the words “Nothing can separate you from the love of God.”

The pause lived there, permission for low blood sugar or sentiment. When my tongue went numb, deacons delivered me to a velvet pew. Women with gardenia brims took me by both hands. They remembered my mother’s first name and the month my grandfather died.

I had panic attacks, and I wrote a ghost story where all sweetness was spent by the third chapter.

I had panic attacks, but the lady at the animal shelter knit me a pink cat as fat as a gourd. A stranger said my writing sang. Acquaintances hid incense in my pen cup. My pharmacist prayed for my thyroid. New elderly brought apples blessed by bishops. I put my head out the window and heard languages. My mother sent cards with bluegrass hamsters and new poems. Bookmarks fell out of my backpack.

I thought it was contained, but it runs feral down the years. I thought it took up space and time, but it only knows how to give.


Off the Map

I have a friend who is not where she expected to be at this stage of life. She is fifty-three. She holds a doctorate. She won awards, once. She is a secretary for the elementary school. She loves her job, which makes her feel guilty.

She turns to me because I do not know how to read maps. If you worry that you will die of flamboyant detours, come sit on my loveseat. Meet me at the cat shelter, where I have spent seventeen years confused.

I felt guilty once, too. I came here for a one-year walk between pins on the wall map. I dressed up as a Development Director, knowing I was naked as any tabby. This was a side quest, not the plot. Someone dropped the ball, and no one made me leave. I folded my atlas into a hat. I was illicitly glad.

I doodled on my terminal degree. I had ninety credits invested in seminary education. God, or at least the Presbyterians, had to be getting impatient with my dalliance among tails. I frolicked switchbacks over my tracks so no one could pull me back to the pulpit.

No one was trying. They were playing with their own rainbow yarn. I was doing ministry without wheels. I wrote newsletters about orphans. I met parables on two, three, and four legs. A church is supposed to be a shelter. A shelter may be a better church. I had invested too aggressively in specifics. I do not feel guilty anymore.

I tell my friend we are on a scavenger hunt. Go into the forest and find something orange, something sticky, and something you have not seen before. Not even the Presbyterians know what the pieces will produce. Details are jazz.

My friend is not sure. I adduce evidence. The best things that happen to us are frequently caterpillars who trespass the frame when we think the camera is off. They stage blurry, gooey selfies. If we knew the green and chartreuse strangers were coming, we would have sprayed the perimeter with pesticide. Now they can grow wings.

The best things are alive and undomesticated. Two were long-haired cats I did not intend to adopt. A stranger pressed tumbleweeds into my arms. I took home hooligans who would clog my vacuum. When I brush them, they waft frizz the size of fully developed gerbils. I laugh out loud. I do not miss the sleek.

I goose my friend with trauma, mewling down the years. The best things may require skinny dips in quicksand. I did not ask for Type 1 diabetes at nine, but it gave me a head start on yelling at God until I conked out on God’s lap and un-balled my fists in my sleep. I did not know that deliverance owns a costume called divorce, but I love forty-three more than twenty-three.

I do not mean to insult the expected. My seminary classmates lead lives of whimsy even though their paths went to plan. Their frescoes lack no seraphs on account of being organized. An itinerary is no enemy of the miraculous. Sometimes I envy long marriages. I scavenge.

I tell my friend: off-roading is no proof of error. We think we are going to an atelier to learn self-portraiture. The Jeep stops in front of a treehouse. God is wearing a smock to make a diorama. God brings in figurines left over from Happy Meals, and tinfoil to squish into swans. We are poking holes in the shoebox lid, for starlight. God puts on God’s jazz records.


 

Dear Grandpa

I declared my grandfather my best friend when I was three years old. Before I could write him a letter, I read the light in his eyes. Life brimmed over like tea.

I would learn that Grandpa was a retired NYPD captain, a rock of ages who sometimes fell heavy. I would hear my uncle joke that Grandpa’s middle name might be “Richard,” but the “R” really stood for “rigid.” I would glimpse myself as his second chance in pigtails, a blank page for words he wished he’d written the first time.

But what mattered was that Grandpa was the sunshine I drew in the corner of every page, his very few hairs sticking out like rays.

He hand-washed my teddy bear when I was sick.

Grandpa wrote drafts of my birthday cards before committing to ink, enfolding his love in quotes from generals and M*A*S*H* episodes. But as much as I loved getting Grandpa’s letters, I was more excited to inundate his mailbox.

I had seen the bronze sword on his desk, medieval majesty among ballpoints. No one on earth had ever sold such a letter opener, and I doubted this was its true identity. I imagined my Grandpa’s secret life in some fairy kingdom, kneeling to be knighted Most Honorable, Most Tenderhearted, Best Friend.

But when my cards came, the letter opener bowed to its purpose. My captain laughed in confetti, calling me with failed sternness. “Now Angie, you mustn’t write so many nice things about me. You make your Grandpa out to be a saint. You’re going to give me a big head.”

My grandfather happened to have a head as large as a pumpkin, but no one had ever gushed at him quite like this. “You can’t stop me,” I threatened. “You are my hero.”

We dueled in blue ink for thirty years, pen pals and co-conspirators in unstingy love. His bronze sword opened pink and purple envelopes, spilling Psalms, glitter, and confetti. (He gently chided me about the latter: “Angie, the tiny doves made me laugh, but you can’t make your old Grandpa pick up all those little bits from the floor.”) His cards chased mine, crammed with pride and poetry.

Our “Mutual Admiration Society” flourished, and shopping for Grandpa Cards became my favorite hobby. Hallmark could hardly keep up with my affection. I annotated kittens and pandas with admiration and observations. I blitzed his birthday with ticker-tape parades of four, six, ten cards at a time. The bronze sword never grew dull. The routine never grew dull.

I called Grandpa every Sunday at 7:30, and he answered like Patton even though he knew it was me: “HELLO.” I laughed at his anger, and he laughed and apologized: “You know I’m just trying to discourage those lousy telemarketers.”

I pity the telemarketers. My Grandpa’s encouragement was one of the greatest forces this world has ever known. He taught me to speak the full measure of your love in bold ink. He sliced through stoic decades to become a best friend. He erupted in exclamation points at the end of his life, and he convinced me the best was always still beginning.

Grandpa’s bronze sword sits among my pink pens, and I look at Grandpa Cards in stores until I cry. I ask him to pray for me every time I sit down to write. He smiles with brimming eyes.

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  • Angela Townsend is the development director at a cat sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in over 200 literary journals, including Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, CutBank, Paris Lit Up, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Terrain. Angela has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 34 years, laughs with her poet mother every morning, and loves life affectionately.