No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
He sat on the far end of the bleachers in the schoolyard, legs pulled up with both arms wrapped around his knobby knees. He had frizzy black hair that was big enough to poof around his head and fine enough to let light leak through like a halo...
The year 1974 began with me watching a Marx Brothers movie on WGN in the partially finished basement of our next-door neighbors, the Birdlemans. Hopped up on Pepsi and cocktail wieners, I relished the late-night affair, despite the basement’s dog hair and exposed, asbestos-wrapped plumbing. Mr. and Mrs. Birdleman were upstairs entertaining friends in the manner still reminiscent of the prior decade—stiff drinks, cigarettes, and Polyester knit dresses.
“You walk better than most people I know.”
An insult conveniently wrapped in a compliment. A stinging backhand. The intent was clear: after several years, he finally brandished new ankle-foot orthotics, or AFOs, and given his previous struggles, the comment came from a place of love, of pride.
But it was, in fact, a slight. A slight against his intelligence, for he knew otherwise. That his walking was worse than the average person. That the culmination of aging and the progression of his symptoms would cripple him in various ways, both obvious and subtle. For the sake of being polite, he grit his teeth and smiled.
The soldiers stood looking over a man, in his early twenties, unaware that his blood was being gradually diluted in the thick squelch of mud. His watch that had first alerted the men to his location, glimmered in the moonlight, marking the moment and time of a man who’d fallen.
We strongly believe that where there are people, there is always the hope -- and it’s not a small hope -- for peace and for love. And as long as we have the wherewithal and the means to help, we must keep going.
“Um. Lorna? Scott and I need a favor. “
Scotty can’t ask her himself? This saddens her. Paul is the leader. Dominant, she cringes. It is Paul who will decide whether she and Scotty have any kind of relationship. It is Paul who will decide if her son ever sees her again.