HE SHALL COVER THEE WITH HIS FEATHERS

                  

by Marianne Carlson

When I was in the second grade I started sleeping at my grandmother's most nights. My parents never even knew or cared where I was but her kitchen always smelled like bread baking in the oven, and it was warm there. Our house was always cold. I slept in a spare bedroom under one of her handmade quilts. I remember the sun used to shine first thing in the morning on a framed Bible quote hanging on the wall. The room was white, and there was an old oak bureau under the window.  I  put my treasures in the top drawer: my Hello Kitty knapsack, lip gloss, toys from MacDonald's happy meals.  As I grew older,  my treasures changed to bags of weed, pipes, needles.  

I'm not sure why I am telling you this, maybe because I have sat through too many group therapy sessions where anything goes as long as you keep talking.  A lot of what is said in those groups is just plain bullshit. I can spot a bullshitter a mile away.  I never said much in those groups. Confessing all was never a catharsis for me, and the older I get, the less I talk. There are too many talkers as it is, and I don't think I could ever hear anything ever again that would surprise me. 

My grandmother practically raised me. She was a tiny, fragile looking lady, but cantankerous.   I remember once some cretin tried to swindle her at a convenience store, and she knocked him over the head with her cane. Damn near killed him. It is hard for me to talk about my grandmother now because I broke her heart, not once, but over and over again. We lived down the street from her, my mother and father and six kids. I was the youngest, a most unwelcome surprise. I figured that out as soon as I learned about the birds and bees. Our house was a real pig pen all the time, but my grandmother's cottage was a safe haven, and my grandmother didn’t drink. My father was drunk all the time, a mean drunk.

On the wall in the room where I slept next to the Bible quote was this framed picture of an owl sheltering all these little owls under his wings. My grandmother told me that the owl was supposed to be the Lord, He will always protect me if I believe in Him.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High 

shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, 

and under his wings shalt thou trust:

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, 

to keep thee in all thy ways.

Yeah right. What I saw in that picture was that there were five little owls under those wings, but the sixth one was left out in the cold to fend for herself, and that sixth one was me. There wasn’t gonna be any angels watching over me, that’s for sure.

It was in middle school when my life began to go down hill. The only time I ever went home was to see if I could swipe some money from one of my siblings so that I could buy weed. I smoked pot every day. My grandmother could sniff out a bad actor in a New York minute, and she hated my friends.  

“You’re known by the company you keep,” she would say to me when she caught one of the shifty high school boys hanging around. 

“Keep them away from this house.  Boys shouldn’t be wearing earrings.”

“Birds of a feather flock together.” More birds, more feathers, this was the worst thing she could have said to me.

One of the “walking wounded,” I dressed like a freak, wore black, dyed my hair a different color every week, pierced every possible area of my anatomy.  I dropped out of school in the 10th grade, got a job washing dishes for a local restaurant, had an abortion and fell in love with heroin. The trajectory of my life seemed to be set, and in that path the owl was nowhere to be seen. In retrospect, I am amazed I survived at all, but I am beginning to entertain the notion that perhaps that owl was operating behind the scenes. I was spiteful. I pummeled  my grandmother with cruel behavior,  taunting her, the last person in the world to deserve it.

“Where were those angels when that piece of shit killed the people in that movie theatre in Colorado? I guess those angels weren’t into Batman.” 

“Why didn’t those angels show up at Columbine?”

“Are the angels on vacation when a plane crashes or some poor bozo crossing the street gets hit by a drunk driver?”

She always had the same unsatisfactory answer. “You have to learn to love the mystery of it all.”

“Fat chance,” I would answer. 

After too many years of chasing some elusive dream, I overdosed on a combination of pills and heroin, the medics told me that I was more dead than alive when I was wheeled into the ER. From the hospital I spent a month in rehab and another six months in a halfway house, I learned that angels come in all shapes and sizes and that I better listen to them if I wanted to stay around awhile longer.

My grandmother died when I was in rehab. No one in my family told me, I guess they were afraid it would set me off. She left me her house so I am back in the same bed I slept in when I was in the second grade. The owl is still on the wall, the little owls still under his wing. I don’t sleep well, most recovering addicts don’t, insomnia is something you  learn to live with.  The funny thing is I could swear I can hear that owl hooting at me sometimes, and when I do, I think it’s my grandmother’s way of telling me that she was right all along.

It's All Temporary

A SENSE OF URGENCY

by Marianne Carlson

The cottage has seen better days, but it was all Rosie had and she loved it. Half a block from the beach, half a block from the golf course, it was an ideal location for a summer rental property. When Rosie’s mother was alive renting was out of the question. Her mother painted water colors, soothing scenes depicting the coast of Maine, for every room. “Like a miniature museum” friends said as they walked through the house, stopping to admire the dollhouse in the stairwell. “Look! In every room a tiny painting! How like her, the most creative person I know.” 

These same friends were nowhere to be found when senility robbed her blind. First her eyesight, then her mind slowly drifted away, like a low tide slowly washing away from the shore. Rosie and Chloe, her pug, cared for her. Chloe never left her side, she told her stories about life as a puppy on the farm, about her seven brothers and sisters, her mother, Hilde, and how hard it was to leave her pug family. “The Law of Attraction was at work,” said Chloe, and that is why she had to leave Hilde and her favorite sister, Barbara, to come and live with Rosie.  Rosie’s mother drank up every word, begging for more. “Tell me more about Hilde, about Barbara,” she would say to Chloe, her eyes misting over, happy in her own world that protected her from the bruising that life often brought to the rest of us. 

When she inherited the cottage, well meaning people told Rosie to sell it, but her heart wouldn't let her so her uncle, a financial planner, told her to rent it out. "Run it like a business," he said.  Running anything like a business was foreign to Rosie whose only previous business interactions consisted of negotiating some pretty savvy drug deals with shady Portland dealers. It was while in her second rehab that Rosie realized if she didn't shape up, she would surely die. Used to being surrounded by beautiful things, the florescent lights and white-washed stucco walls of A New Beginning Rehabilitation wounded her soul. Completely hollow when she entered, she left three weeks later, drug free, but filled with regrets, remorse and resentments. Chloe  was no longer alive, she was with her mother “in a better place.” Almost any place was better than the shaky ground Rosie found herself navigating without so much as a joint to mellow her out, but she was determined to stay clean. 

Tall, thin with beautiful posture, she floated, rather than walked. This is what you first notice about Rosie, then you begin to take in the rest: black framed glasses behind sad blue eyes that could surprise you with an unexpected twinkle, long blonde hair,  tattoos, a great sense of style coupled with a sense of urgency.  One of those rare young women who looked good in anything, she could grab a dress off the thrift shop shelf that was ready for the rag bag and look great in it.

The cottage was rented, the new tenant was to move in later in the day. Rosie floated through the cottage, scanning her check list on a clipboard, looking for cobwebs, crooked lampshades, memories. If she squinted, she could see Chloe and her mother huddled together over the kitchen table, whispering. Rosie wished that she could be with them, she yearned to die but suicide was not an option.  Gone were the paintings, the dollhouse, the antiques - anything that had made the cottage home. What remained was all generic, generic furniture, generic dishes, generic quilts from Walmart. 

“Hello, you must be Rosie.”

“Who are you? How did you get in?

“Walked right in. The door was unlocked.”

“You should have waited. The lease says arrival no earlier than 10:00 a.m.”

“I apologize.”

“Apology accepted.”

This self possessed, strange little man sat in Rosie’s mothers chair. Oddly enough, he looked perfectly comfortable, as if he belonged there. Even more odd was the feeling that her mother would have liked him there. He had a rather endearing quality about him, an ingenuous aspect to his nature. Everything about him was somewhat faded, his white hair, white beard, pale gray eyes, flannel shirt, blue jeans. He looked as if he had been through the wash with a bit of Clorox thrown in.  

“Would you like me to show you the house?”

“No need, I took a walk through, it’s perfect.”

“Would you like to sit on the screen porch? My mother loved the porch.”

“I would.” 

They sat on the old white wicker furniture with the floral seat cushions, slowly rocking back and forth, saying nothing. The bell on the chapel across the street rang, calling parishioners to Sunday service, a mild reminder to Rosie that life goes on.

“My wife and I were married in a little chapel similar to this one,” he said softly.

“Where is she? Your wife?” Rosie wished she hadn’t asked, she felt as if she was intruding, but he lit up like a Christmas tree adorned with gentle white lights.

“Oh, she died many years ago. I still miss her, I think about her every day.”

“You never remarried?”

“No. I would have always been comparing my new wife with my first one. It would have been unfair. 

“Oh.” Rosie could see he was not listening, he was far away.

“And it’s a funny thing. I know my memory is distorted. She wasn’t as perfect as my mind likes to tell me, but I don’t pay attention, I like to allow her to be perfect in my head.”

“I think that is what I am doing with my mother,” said Rosie, her eyes beginning to tear.

“Nothing wrong with that, no one can take your memories from you. You have a long life ahead of you, just remember, slow but steady wins the race. No sense of urgency, just one day at a time. 

It's All Temporary