Güd wrtr

Who put them there? I asked
the postmistress of Pioneertown
on the afternoon of the winter solstice.

I meant the old typewriters rusting
into artifacts in the old West-movie set town,
placed by someone more than a decade earlier
atop kids’ small desks, the kind with attached
seats found in schoolrooms of my youth.

The postmistress of Pioneertown, in the high
desert of the San Bernardino mountains,
had to think for a moment. We’d driven
from Palm Springs to see if we could find
the ghost typewriters that turned out to
sit listing behind a rickety picket fence
on deteriorating desks with rusty wells
where their chairs once perched.

Linda set them out there, she said, but
before I could ask, Linda who? a man came
through the door, packages in hand.
So we thanked the postmistress in her
genuine P.O. in its weathered, faux
wild West building, and ambled down
the wide, dusty street that once welcomed
camera dollies and crews and actors,
a living, breathing movie set.

Where Gene Autry filmed his weekly
cowboy show and where Roy Rogers
opened the Pioneer Bowl in 1946 with
a strike on lane 1, bowling a 211 game
in his cowboy boots, and where Mrs. White
served as the first postmistress when
the P.O. lived inside the bowling alley.

We paused again at the typewriters,
so I could call their names—Remington,
Smith-Corona, Royal, Underwood—
paying homage to the fingers that once
pressed those keys, as I do now on
a newfangled typing machine that will
one day be as obsolete as these
magnificent dinosaurs, their typed words
as transitory as the high desert wind.

in a warm place… well, warmer than home,
where, on the shortest day, we understand
it’s doing a fine imitation of winter—
the kind of winter we get, which is to say,
cold and dreary and gray, cold enough
for snow but sea-level elevation to prevent it.

So that fleeing for a time to the southland
of my native state feels like a holiday,
appropriately on the third day of Hanukkah,
heading toward Christmas and Kwanzaa
and a new year, December miracles
in a place where I can comfortably don
lightweight summer pants that reach
my calves and tennies with tiny socks that
barely reach my ankles,

and in only a T-shirt and sunglasses and hat
walk and walk through a mid-century modern
neighborhood, taking in low-slung houses
with butterfly roofs and angled turquoise
mailboxes like the one my father attached
to a 4×4 for my mother in the mid-’60s
after they moved north and set down new
roots by a lake called Folsom.

I am from this latitude, or close enough,
born about 100 miles west near an ocean,
but I’ve spent most of my life inland,
missing the sea. Perhaps that’s one reason
water has long called me—from the lake
out the front door and down the path
in my youth to a high school pool in my teens,
to a tropical ocean as an adult—any warm,
swimmable, snorkel-able, easy water.

I like easy, the ease of, after the walk
under the palms, admiring the San Jacinto
mountains to the west, slipping into
a suit that hugs me like an old friend,
then into the warmth of a champagne
cork-shaped pool for solo laps,
rolling over on the back to float,
look up at the bluest sky, smiling,
grateful for all that holds me.

for the first time—woo hoo!—
and though no one in the family
wanted to ask, we were quietly
hoping/wondering/imagining

what it might be like to have
a baby in the family again since
the last baby is now 32 and
a middle school band teacher
with a very sweet wife,

and the first baby is now 35,
my niece who’s gonna
have the first baby
of our next generation—
perhaps the only baby
of our next generation—
with her sweet husband,

and when she texted (as
the kids do) to request
a phone call with Aunt Jan,
I had no idea what she
wanted to chat about,

this baby born on my
29^th birthday, so she
surprised the bejesus
out of me when she said,
You’re gonna be a great aunt!

and I said (using an old line
between us), I’m already
a great aunt, and she
laughed and said, yes,
you are, but you’re gonna be

a Great Aunt, and then there
was talk about how far along
and due dates and names
she’s long loved and general
excitement—woo hoo!—

and all that adds up to
the fact that my little sister’s
gonna be a grandma,
and her husband’s gonna
be a grandpa, and I swear
it was just last week they
were getting married, and
a few years later announcing
their first baby-to-be,

the one who called
with the good, good news—
woo-hoo!—a new tiny
mammal will join our
little family in June!

tonight, beginning the festival of lights,
in tribute to friends and beloveds who
celebrate, honoring those rebellious
Maccabees, who reclaimed, cleansed
and rededicated the temple, then relit
the single candle that continuously
burned for eight days.

It is that miracle and others I praise
on these darkening days, on one that
dawned foggy and still. It is those latkes
and jelly doughnuts I crave, and will
find, heading south to a warmer land

where my beloved and I will holiday
with, among other blessings, a superb
Jewish deli, the delights of Hanukkah
and Christmas together, and give thanks
for traditions so graciously shared.

And I will take a candle or two with me
to light and burn and joyfully partake
of potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts
and thank the heavens for friends and
family, all that I’ve been given, such
glorious abundance.

(Photo courtesy of hebcal.com)

Two weeks ago it stopped,
mid-cycle, as we aging machines
can do, and flashed a two-word
mystery at me:

Pump block?

How should I know? I said.
But the washer ignored me,
flashing its persistent message
until I turned its knob to off.

I asked Leaman, the handyman,
who grinned sympathetically
as he wrestled with my dishwasher
and told me where to call. One
appliance at a time, he said.

So I did, and the appliance gods
delivered Adam, who, once shown
to the machine, plopped himself
and his puffy red beard in the tight
corner between washer and wall
and set to work, so focused he could’ve
been fine tuning a moon-bound orbiter,
one of which splashed down several
days ago—mission accomplished.

Which is what I told Adam after he
masterfully unblocked the pump
and carefully removed the small lake
in the washer, not spilling a drop,
which, as far as I’m concerned,
makes him a pro, one whom NASA
should consider hiring.

The man’s got wicked good skills.

Noun [man-swi-tood, -tyood]: mildness; gentleness

Is it because he was a man
that I found this his most
attractive quality—

his mildness, his gentleness,
his great heart, which,
by the time it stopped,

had grown three times                                
its normal size thanks to
malformed valves?

What if those leaky
flaps that never fully
closed and jacked up

his heart muscle like               
an iron-pumping      
bodybuilder

were what made him
such a gentle man
with such capacity

for love, the kind
that echoes around me
to this day, that

somehow powers
the beat of my own
imperfect heart?

(for Clifford Polland, 1952–2001,
on the 39th anniversary of our wedding)

she scribbled on a yellow pad in her lap,
sitting in my city, leading a workshop
of tentative writers, most of them
unsure about calling themselves writers.

A writer is someone who writes,
she’d declared long before, creating
the encouraging method she left us,
along with her own poems:

May you hear in your own stories
the moan of wind around the corners
of half-forgotten houses
and the silence in rooms you remember.

May you hear in your own poems
the rhythms of the cosmos,
the sun, the moon and the stars
rising out of the sea and returning to it.

Another woman more recently met
asked me to lead a writing group
for those in grief, a woman whose
mission in life is to offer resources
for those who’ve suffered great loss—
and isn’t that all of us?

And all the while, lost though you may be in the forest,
drop your own words on the path like pebbles…

After a year of writing together,
she made me a pendant with the last line
embedded in silver:

…and write your way home.

as we all are, keeping each other
company on the healing journey,
walking over rough stones toward
the great mystery, finding solace in
the outstretched hand of a stranger
who, step by precious step,
word after word after word,
becomes a friend.

—for Jill Batiansila, founder of Together We Heal, and for Pat, with much gratitude

—excerpts from “Blessing for a Writer” by Pat Schneider © 2022 by the estate of Pat Schneider; and from “Spelling” by Margaret Atwood © 1981, Simon and Schuster

with four Santa-sized bags around him,
khaki bits winking out of mostly dirt brown
lumps, his eyes crinkled even in shade

as though the sun shines perpetually in them,
I offer eight granola bars and a bag of garlic
naan, oval hunks of thick bread, which

seems a bit impractical for a man on
the street, but who knows what he
likes to eat? All I know is that there’s

something in those eyes whose color I
cannot determine, in the salt-and-pepper beard
reminiscent of a graying beard I once loved,

in the way his hand reaches for what I have
to share today, in his bless you, which
makes me want to linger for a while.

But I have places to go this day, every day,
tucked in with a tiny bit of fear and reluctance,
so I smile, offer my silent blessing in return

and walk away.

Gotta guy on a pole
in my backyard at 8 a.m.—
not something that happens
every day,

especially on a brisk almost-
winter morning like this one,
but he’s giving it the old
college try,

tinkering with wires,
trying to speed up my
internet, which guys like
him have tried to do
a couple of times
in the past
without success,

and that’s fine,
if it doesn’t work—
I’ve got all the speed I need,
I told the kids at the
phone store as they sold
me a cute purple phone,
insisting that my system
could move faster,

and I think,
Tell my feet that,
as they hit the sidewalk
this chilly December
morning on the way
to feed a friend’s kitties.

The walk does me good,
I tell myself—
the cold, perhaps,
not so much,

especially for that shivering
man outside on the pole
doing his darndest
to get me more speed,
enough, if I’m lucky,
to carry me into
the new year
and beyond.

for Georgann, of course

How many times did you have to forgive me?
How many times did I have to forgive myself
for my judgmental thoughts, for the minor
irritations I must have conveyed to you?
Far too many, I think, now that you’re gone.

Though just yesterday, coming down N Street,
I didn’t have to summon the Parking Fairy,
the one you graciously bequeathed to loved ones.
“Help me find a space, Parking Fairy,” you’d say.
And the goddess of vehicle positioning would,
every time—except when you hung from
the rearview the little sprite I’d found,
a poor representation of the spirit who made
sure there was always a space for you.

“I think she feels replaced,” you said, removing
the imposter, and, thus placated, the Parking Fairy
returned you to her good graces.

“You don’t want to piss off the Parking Fairy,”
you liked to say.

How many times did you have to return me
to your good graces? To forgive my overly
busy life that too often kept me from you,
the unasked-for advice, the thoughtless
comment made in jest that landed badly,
the trespasses I never realized I’d made?

Yesterday, I didn’t ask for your help,
Parking Fairy, because you seem to provide
an open space whenever I need one now,
though your time on the meter has expired.
You’re still finding me places to land, much
as you did when we journeyed together—
you who forgave me, believed in me,
navigated my weary self to the surface
now and then to catch a breath—
who accompanied me on this voyage
as good friends do,
who travels with me still.