These days the sun comes up with birds a-twitter and babies crying for the breast. The coffee is hot and the cream is sweet. These days the greens are from the garden. These days the morning dew is just enough to keep the garden happy.

We have jobs to help us buy drinks. We have dryers to pile papers and fabric on. We have babies to sing them to sleep.

Today I may bake a cake with almonds and butter and lemon. I will drink more coffee than I mean to. I will not open the mail.

You ask me what I am looking for.

What can I possibly say?

Tired from the heat of almost-summer. Windows still shut and fans still away. Afternoon rain in car windows. Baby crying upstairs.

Clean the spiders off of the new bookcase. Clean up puzzles. Move a speaker. Listen to that song. When I go deaf. When I go deaf.

Wash the dishes. Sneak dolls and Telletubbies into the wash. Slip mother's MRI behind the new bookcase. Think of that song. When I go deaf.

Pick up newspapers. Consider gardening at night. Doll's head against the washer. Think about water. Deep water. Hang clothes to dry.

Find a box. Fold a blanket. Try to find things I don't need. When I go deaf.

Biographers will accuse me of trying to reconstruct the people I have lost.

It's all a patchwork.

A cool morning, rain falling on yesterday's laundry. Last night the air was full of blossoms. It made a kind of mischief in me, like May Day girls dancing in white. It felt like cherry blossoms and cherry blossoms feel like you.

I tried to call you. Dropping Gerrit off as the late-morning sun broke through the rain. Looking back through his jungle, the taste of sorrel in my mouth. The air smelled like rain and earth and rain on earth and I missed you. I dialed your number. That is all that came of it.

It is late on Monday night and I am up alone. I've got that feeling that I can see evrything clearer now. Not intellectually but physically: cigarette butts on the sidewalk, streetlights up above me. I've been thinking of you all week.

It's getting close now. You know how all the rocks have names and all the marshes have mazes. You have always jumped in first while I shivered afraid on the dock. Even the glittering water of Lobster Cove makes me worry I may not come back.

I will turn 31 soon. Prime numbers have treated me well. Things could turn on a dime and I am ready for that but I think I'll go into it with optimism. Tomorrow I will bring my mother and my daughter to the beach and they will look for rocks together. We will chose which beach depending on which life we want to live. We will chose which life we want to live.

The other night I thought the fog horn was a train approaching. Funny how the sounds trade places. It's been years since I've heard a bell buoy. Last week on Front Beach there were pieces of blue beach glass everywhere. Must have been the storm that kicked them up. I haven't told anybody until now.

I had forgotten about irrational numbers but I know they have their place. Days and months and years go by and I don't think of them.

My peas have started to come up. By the time you get back they will have run their course and we will be deep in tomatoes and zucchini. The windows will be open. We will be waiting for you.

The shape of it all coming to me, coming back to me. Pilings rising from the water like the Giant's Causeway. The same thing happens over and over again.

The weather is changing again. Warm air comes in the windows and heats the rooms upstairs. The girls walk down the streets in as little as they can manage. Bass pours out of the cars. The drunks walk home at night. The city breathes with slow breaths, deep, making sure they don't lose their step.

Just got home and I'm trying not to cry. It's not that there's anything to cry about but sometimes the part of me that is you comes through and I just don't know what to do about it.

I think the old man across the street died today. Old women looking worried, coming and going with their dyed hair. Coming and going all week. And now they've stopped.

The woman in the next house down is on bed rest. So she sits on the front porch smoking cigarettes. Let's the dog out. I don't know how much longer before the baby comes but I'm worried.

I've got that fuzzy feeling in my head like I should be doing more. Or else. Like I should be doing else. Like somebody has decided my decisions aren't right.

I hate them for it.

When she got her Massachusetts liscense she took it out to show us. She took out his liscense too. She did it. She copied his smile. She got it right. Her husband, two months gone. She got his smile. Her husband. Hanged.

In the paper there is a letter from Wayne Lo. A letter addressed to the people of a well-to-do place. A letter telling them to remember. That they should have learned. That they should have learned when he killed my friend Galen.

I come home to the house smelling like a burnt-out car. The furnace is gone, running with no water. Cracked. The basement is hot. Nothing catches.

Abigail is better now. Not quite right, but better. Her lungs still making that crinkly noise. Every time she breathes in the tube I think of my father and the things he breathed. I think of my father and his lungs. His lungs.

A stone skips along the surface of the water until it stops and goes under.

Quiet omens in the night. A gate left open. The bone we found in the graveyard. A flag flapping against wrought iron.

Oh, Molly!

While they are talking I am thinking of you.

It is Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning always comes. Today when it comes I admit defeat.

This morning came with cold and sun. The house smelling like winter needs to end. Everyhere I look there are more things. More decisions. Apples in a bag left in the car for too long. Frozen and pock-marked. Paper on the floor from hours spent drawing and painting. Mustard-wine sauce in a pan on the stove.

Tuesday morning is a time for reckoning.

The man came a little after ten o'clock. He looked at the heating system. Asked if we had a dishwasher, a garbage disposal. Looked at the box in the basement. I told him the house had won. I admitted defeat. He said it was none of his business.

It is Tuesday morning. In a little whle I will try to get the kids out of the house to face Tuesday afternoon. But for now it is still morning. It is Tuesday morning and I admit defeat.

Recession

He's taken her off of one of her medications. I come home to this. He has told one doctor. Not the one that matters.

There is always laundry when you get home. And things to unpack. The mail keeps coming and trash day comes too. There is ice in the driveway and the sky is gray.

She thinks she has bugs in her fingers and she is picking them out. She is angry. Angry. He's taken her off one of her medications. She is picking them out. I am doing laundry and opening mail.

Trying to figure what it means to be remembered, why it matters. A cold morning. I remember that. A boarding pass to Shannon. A present never mailed.

Cleaning my desk, finding things I may have forgotten. A string of beads. An old violin. Letters written and not mailed. Letters recieved and not returned.

Trying to think of why it matters to be remembered. Graveyards full, full of people. Graveyards full of people I know. People I knew. People I remember. Graveyards full of forgotten people.

Smiles of a summer night. My grandmother, feet on the coffee table, drinking coffee out of a small white mug and watching old movies. I remember the swans swimming, candles growing long tails. What of this remembering? Red velveteen. Smoking on walks around the block, then only in the bathroom, then not at all. Cherries soaked in her Manhattans. Eating oranges before bed.

I tried this morning to remember my father's voice. How he answered the phone. Gave advice. I'm not sure I got it but I remembered the way he looked when there was nothing he could do. I remember his look. Sympathy. Empathy.

Looking down at my son at my breast. What does it matter more than this? Ice on the inside of the window, his body warm against mine. What does it matter to be remembered? His looking up at me, his eyes. He won't remember. But that moment will do.

Cleaning my desk of ways to be remembered. Yarn to knit a sweater. Pictures of my babies. Beads and silver. Fabric for quilts. Letters and bills and bills and bills.

The rug by the door is stained black from the shoes of the man who repaired the boiler.

Knitting a lace shawl for a friend, for her wedding. Hours and hours of sleepless nights, minutes caught between daily routines. Ten minutes here when I should be holding Abby. Ten minutes there when I should be holding Sam.

At the market tonight Abby and I put cans in the machine. Abby standing in pig slippers in the carriage dropping them in one by one, the machine gobbling them like a snake eats mice. Fifteen cans. The machine spits out a paper.

Bug-eyes has new glasses and I nearly miss him, nearly walk right into a conversation. But I hear his voice and turn away. Something about a letter to the editor. Some woman trying hard to break out of the converstaion. Trying not to be caught. The last thing I need is for him to talk to me, to talk about poetry. That was years ago, nearly eleven. I haven't kept up.

Rows taking half an hour at the end. 178 rows of easy knitting. Then 60 or so rows at half and hour each. Making holes and more holes. Making points.

The wind is howling outside. Abigail and James are asleep. Sam is asleep. I am going to have to talk to a lawyer soon. I am going to have to make decisions for her. I am going to have to talk to a lawyer to make decisions for her. The wind is coming in at the windows and the doors. The house is cold.

This binding off is taking forever. Thirteen stitches and a lace point falls off the needles. Another thirteen stitches. Another point. I am drinking red wine that should have been dumped. My breasts are full and the baby is asleep. I have eight points bound off and dozens more to go. Purl two, slip stitches back to the left needle, purl two together. Purl one. Slip stitches. Purl two together. Binding off the holes.

It is depressing to shop at that market. A girl from high school talking about Nascar. A fat woman crouched in the aisle looking at stuffing bread. Chatter at the lottery counter.

I didn't tell you about the dream I had a few weeks back. Pinochet's brain became part of my head, at the back, and a mob was leading me around the city looking for the right place to execute Pinochet. When they had me up at Willowrest I saw my sister in the crowd. I could feel his brain mixing with mine at the edges and I wanted to see him dead. All I could do was let the crowd lead me.

Candies fruit and Jewish foods are on sale. I buy chips for the party. Cream to make more egg nog. At the checkout I see a can I thought was artichokes is chick peas. The girl double-bags glass bottles of pear juice. The boy puts them in more bags before putting them in my cart.

Driving home it is still snowing. This is what it will be like for her-- white covering things she knows are there, covering them until she questions what is there, until she forgets what was there altogether and then that anything was there at all.

At home Sam is coughing like a seal. Abigail is walking in circles looking for chocolate, saying I am so lucky. I am so lucky.

She is lying on the table in a fetal position facing the wall. She looks younger this way, her skin smooth and her fancy underwear with a bow on the back. I stand at her head with my hand on the side of her face.

He feels her back, finds her spine. An inch out of place and nobody ever notices. Presses firmly here, and there, looking for the right place. He paints her back with an antiseptic sponge. Frames her spine with paper.

A shot to mask the pain. She doesn't flinch, she is sedated. The next needle shudders as it hits bone, stops and starts as it looks for a way through. I rub her cheek as she moans. It hurts, it hurts. Out and in again. Prodding.

He stops and looks for something else to stop the pain. I help him get the bottle out of the cabinet, hold it at an angle so he can fill the syringe. I was my hands afterward thinking I should have washed them first. I hold her head as he pricks her again.

The baby starts crying. We trade places, R. and I. The needle goes in again. She cries. The baby cries. Pain down her leg, her hip, her knees. I start to nurse. Blood trickles down her back. R. holds her head as she cries out, whimpers, moans. He ankles hurt. Her left leg jerks. She cries out in pain.

The baby is quiet. The needle moves in and out. R. is holding her head. She is crying. Nearly the right spot. Her legs kick. R. is holding her head. He tells her to be strong. Be strong for the babies. She is crying. Blood is trickling down her back.

Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Nearly an hour gone and finally it comes down the needle: clear fluid, like water dripping from a leaf. She is quiet as we watch it fall, drip by drip, into the vial. One vial. He turns the needle to see if it will flow faster. Two vials. She mutters and her body starts to unfold. Three vials. Four vials full from the needle in her spine. He takes out the needle. She is still as he washes her back. Puts a bandaid on.

I want to remember this so I don't judge her too harshly.

Quiet night, reading in bed when it comes in through the window like an anthem - the theme song for M*A*S*H. Almost every day for five years after Marnie got sick it came up the stairwell to our place. Almost every night growing up it came through the wall from my mother's room. For at least half of my life, one of the steadiest things I knew.

This morning cleaning like the Queen is coming. Sam nursing and crying and sleeping, nursing and sleeping and crying. Abby walking around with her doll singing a song to herself: Don't cry, Mommy, don't cry. Kitchen and bathroom mopped, chairs scrubbed, counters clean. Soup on the stove, soup on the stove. By six o'clock the three of us are sitting in the middle of a pile of laundry to fold, one of us crying. By nine I am the only one awake and not much of the day's work shows. By ten thirty the kitchen is clean again and I am done.

To think about it wakes me up at night.

When Judy got sick they flew her east. They gave her the bedroom we had slept in and the tv room on the second floor. They scoffed at her diet of whole grains and raw vegetables.

When she got sicker they wheeled her out into the sun on a new wrought-iron chaise lounge. She sat in the sun and tanned. She sat in the sun and grew new hair as her baby girl walked on the grass of the hill. She sat in the sun while her eyes got empty. After I saw her for the last time I watched the parade from the corner in front of the art store. Two days later she was dead.

I know a man who kept his toenail clippings in a decorated pill box next to the bed. He slept under a print of two men sleeping next to eachother. His lover's daughter thought it was a picture of her father twice.

Coming home from the orchard, a car burnt out just south of exit 15. Vermont plates, fire engine, ambulance, police cars. Trees turning red around us. Coming up on October, it'll be here soon, then November and December. Months get cold and colder.

On the second floor in the tv room we sat and ate oranges before bed. Marnie would peel them and split them between us. Elizabeth in her red and white pajamas. Robert in his velour tiger suit. A hug and a bug and a love and a kiss before bed. Us in the big house with our grandparents, her home alone in an empty room that would be mine. Crying.

When she was little she would climb into the bread oven beside the fireplace in the tv room and close the door. As he was emptying the house she climbed in again, in with old postcards and lost scrabble letters, the snakeskin from Peter's move west. The room almost empty but for the pictures on the mantle and my grandfather's grandfather's cradle. Pictures cut out and glued to a board, kids in turtlenecks. Judy smiling.

Sam

firstday
Originally uploaded by Mandy K.

This is Sam on his first day. Sam is now three weeks old. But here he is on the day of his birth: Samuel James Finnegan Cook.

Thank goodness there's a cop at Tony's Porn and Lotto Mart. Me with my pram and the guy in the wheelchair playing Keno, barely enough room for one of us never mind two vehicles. Talking with the guy who collects scrap metal about those immigrants. They're workaholics. Take $10 an hour even if the going rate is $23. And the Americans are so lazy-- they win a few bucks on a scratch ticket, go out and get drunk, don't show up the next day. The cop directs me to the ramp, exit 12, he says, Seabrook, New Hampshire. Crosses his fingers in prayer for Samuel's health. Calls me Good Girl for my Moxie.