for Pat Schneider 6/1/34 – 8/10/20
Hot cornbread in cold milk.
Singing all the way home from Chicopee.
The way she said Missouri and diabetes.
Her long legs and the sweep of her skirt.
Hands steepled before her mouth.
The private shorthand catching the exact words.
Index cards.
Stones like temples.
Elizabeth’s pen.
Everyone remembers the brownies, the smell as they enter the hall. That front hall, the liminal space of dreams before finding a place in the circle. Dreaming came fast or hard or strange or a thousand other ways.
It’s always like that with dreams.
She told me once—if you lose your words, lose your place, or your way, close your eyes, breathe gently, relax, let your mind wander. It will come back to you. All of it. All of what you need. It hasn’t disappeared. This story is still yours, all the words.
She was right. She was talking about a notebook of writing I had lost. I was distressed. I am distressed again, having lost the words we said to each other, the humanness we shared until we no longer could.
I close my eyes, breathe, and enter the hallway, the coat pegs on the right, the deacon’s bench on the left, the stairs just there, and ahead the room of writing, the kitchen beyond, each in light and shadow. In the middle ground, the chair, its turtle cushion, where she sat, placed her feet. The low side cabinet against the wall where she set her pad of paper and her pen. This room where she said to us: Let’s write. Take what comes.
We dreamt with her, every one of us—each in our own wandering and creations. She, dreaming with us, the hum of her pen nudging us forward.
We were welcomed once or a hundred times into that hallway. And there’s no reason now to turn back. We are in; we are held. It will always be so. We shape our own hallways and rooms and chairs. We welcome others and others beyond them.
She is easing back.
Hot cornbread and cold milk.
Later, a glass of diet Dr. Pepper on the porch swing.
If you dream long enough,
there’s a cave in Missouri,
a convent in County Cork,
a small waterfall in Massachusetts;
a room with your chair,
and a suitcase full of magic
for always.
Upcoming Events
Release Date: May 6, 2021: Maud & Addie, a middle-grade novel. In 1910, sisters, Addie and Maud Campbell are swept out to sea off the coast of Nova Scotia. With a half-filled picnic hamper, a carriage blanket and their wits, they survive the North Atlantic and landfall on a deserted island. As castaways, their resilience, courage and inventiveness are tested.
Join Maud & Addie on Instagram: maud.addie
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Facebook: Writing Full Tilt
BREATHING WHILE BLACK Virtual Exhibit at Augusta Savage Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Tuesday September 1, 2020 6:00 p.m. Terry Jenoure, Director http://www.fineartscenter.com/augusta
Third Eye on the Prize Poetry by Debra Sansone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4fGFprcLj8
Prompt Photo
