Here to see our daughter,
five-year-old Amy knocked on the door.
Midnight frost hovered
in the night air, about to settle like dust
on the prairie’s broken wheat stems
and her bare arms. In her white
undershirt and panties, she’d tapped
so quietly we almost didn’t hear that
small leaf scudding against the door.
Had my husband still been shouting at me,
she might have frozen there. But he let me
let her in, take a blanket from the sofa
and wrap her up, a tall doll delivering herself
to us, her blue eyes wide open,
her blonde hair long and chill.
Clearing his throat, he called her parents,
who came from down the street, talking nervously
of sleepwalking and insufficient locks.
They took her home, and it was quiet.
He got another beer and looked around,
still deciphering that stern, small message.
Published in The Persimmon Tree: An Online Journal of the Arts by Women Over Sixty, Winter 2019
After retiring from a column-writing gig lasting eleven years and yielding over 300 personal essays, I find I still have something to say. My thoughts range far and wide, and occasionally deep, on subjects including being an Iowan who misses Colorado; surviving marital violence; raising an amazing daughter and an equally amazing son; being justifiably angry about the world “these days;” writing poetry and plays; wondering if I’ll get Alzheimer’s like my mom and her two brothers; wanting to write about my twin granddaughters without sounding all Hallmark-y; fixing OCD-ish food; making sense of pants that come in shorts / crops / ankle-grazing / bootcut; being a librarian in public, academic, archival, and medical libraries; waiting 46 years to attend my high school reunion; having a gorgeous garden I can’t take care of; seeing a shaman; loving good men despite all the bad ones; and trying to wrest a little joy from life despite an 11-year-and-counting chronic migraine.