Special Deliveries

We didn’t get the AJC this morning, or, really the past few, but they were mornings strung together like little beads of Christmas chaos– house guests, present-wrapping, cooking, etc., so I barely noticed until today. We still had the paper delivered because I like to do the crossword every morning and typing letters into a computer grid isn’t the same as sitting with a cup of tea and an English Muffin, writing and erasing madly at the kitchen counter.  I come from a long line of morning crossword puzzle doers. My father, for all his dysfunction, still managed to complete the daily crossword, in ink and impeccable, every day before he left for work.

I figure the carriers are sick of the whole thing now that the paper will be digital only and they’re about to lose their jobs. Probably, we’re the only customers on our street at this point, easy to skip, and, anyway, I can empathize because I used to be a carrier for the AJC when I taught part-time and had three little daughters I could bring with me during the week. I did it for several years, in fact, back when there were two papers, The Constitution in the morning and The Journal in the afternoon. They were combined on Saturdays and Sundays, ensuring an odious start to every weekend, but the carriers – ahhh, the carriers. I have never, before or since, encountered so much humor, talent, and diversity collected in one place, despite the ungodly hour. There were teachers, musicians, authors, artists, grandparents, students, postal workers, psychiatrists (well, one psychiatrist, an early heart transplant recipient, who took on an apartment route for the exercise). Our conversations were hilarious, our unity sublime. It was like an endless uncensored sitcom. Friendships and relationships sometimes extended beyond the warehouse, but mostly they were confined to the small hours, as my British coworker used to call that time just before dawn, to folding papers, to double-bagging on rainy days, and at one point, union organizing.

That was my idea. When Cox Enterprises decided to double our workload for the same amount of money, thus cutting our pay in half, I called around until I found help in the unlikely form of the Hotel Workers Union. The person who contacted me was Reverend James Orange. I loved James Orange. He was very big and very interesting. He wore a large medallion around his neck, and he told me he was on the balcony in Memphis beside Martin Luther King Jr. when he was murdered. He and I had clandestine meetings in various restaurants and diners to give and receive updates. If we could get enough signatures, it would be the first time carriers were able to vote for a union. It was all very exciting. And fun! For weeks the petition was passed around under the noses of management, my youngest daughter helping, and then we’d load the car with papers and take off. Lawyers were called in from Detroit to quash this uprising and ferret out the leaders, but they were not successful.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. There was palpable unity, but there were also threats, and there was the night someone cut the wires under the hood of my car.  On the best of times list, Reverend Orange planned to send me around the country as an organizer in a sort of Norma Ray capacity, and I imagined myself standing atop endless paper-folding tables, fists pumping inky air, rallying the workers in the small hours.

I hadn’t actually thought things through, of course, the logistics of the thing – husband and children, dogs, cats, teaching job, dirty dishes – but as it happened, I didn’t have to. The paper brought in people to vote against the Union that none of us had ever seen before.

We should have won. We did not win, however, and the minute our six-month protection period was up, we were fired, picked off, one by one. We tried. That’s all we could do. It was exciting. It was exhilarating and empowering, and we got the first union vote ever for paper carriers, even if the odds were stacked, so to speak, against us.

A few years later, when I was working at Literacy Action on the corner of Forsyth and Marietta and one of my old bosses from the paper had been hugely promoted to a position at the corporate AJC office, also on Marietta Street, he invited me to lunch. I forget the restaurant now, but I remember saying I’d meet him outside his building since It was on the way. “No! No!” he pretty much yelled at me. “I’ll meet you outside YOUR building!” When I asked him why and pointed out my building was not at all on the way, he explained that my name was still brought up as a cautionary tale, that I was still a stain on the Cox Corporate fabric, and that, much as he liked me, it would not bode well for him to be seen with me.

I was delighted.

So, goodbye printed AJC. Goodbye erasure-scarred crossword puzzles (I do NOT do mine in ink). Goodbye. I will miss you. And thanks for the memories.

Rainy Days

A gloomy rainy day. What is it about writers - or at least some writers, at least me - that makes us love gloomy days? Is it the desire to fling color into the grey, to pierce the gloom with something beautiful, or is it the laziness and blurriness, the pitter-patter on the roof, the drops running down glass? Does it remind me of another place, another time?

I wonder if there’s a correlation between rainy days and creativity.

Ghosts of Thanksgivings Past

I saw part of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV in all its freezing, teeth-chattering announcer glory - the huge ballooning animals, the marching band from Texas.

When I first moved to NYC in my youth, I worked in Macy's toy department. Dolls. My boyfriend worked in toy cars and wore a tie made out of some weird paisley material I got on Orchard Street to make into curtains. It was often raveling along the edges, to the disgust of the White Flowers, and he was not invited to return to work there after Christmas. I still have the coat I bought after a few paychecks. It's hanging somewhere in a closet with its little faux fur collar, reminding me of all the times I shivered my way home from Herald Square in the cotton unwarm Macy’s jacket I had to wear to sell dolls.

They asked me and a couple of others to be in the parade the year I worked there for the holidays and I said yes at first, but then it turned out they wanted us to wear skimpy outfits – bathing suits, I think – and it was freezing and I’d moved there recently from the tropics of Miami, so I said no. Now I wish I’d stuck to the yes, #metoo notwithstanding. I was SUPPOSED to be in the Macy’s Parade sounds very different from I was IN the Macy’s Parade!

Killer Nashville 2018

I'm just back from the Killer Nashville Conference with a phone bulging with pictures of the mountains and the city, of the insides of bars, singers on stages, the wonky shots of conference-goers, blurring in the light and not so light, of Linda Sands looking like a Fleetwood Mac impressionist painting, grabbing her (Congratulations, Linda!) award for best Action Adventure novel.

But I'm filled too, like my phone. I'm filled with memories of good food and company, and so-so wine. I'm filled with laughter, the validation of good friends and conversation, but most of all, I'm filled with something more elusive. Awe, or inspiration, with the camaraderie of being for three days with other writers, with knowing that they understand the angst and isolation, the frustration and delight This conference makes me want to be a better writer, reminds me of the days I pulled down the toilet lid and wrote in our one bathroom because it was the only room in the apartment with a lock. This conference reminds me why I write, and in a way, reminds me who I am.

My Mother's Treasures

They’re closing my mother’s bank, the one she went to before she died, just up the street from the condo she rented when she moved to Atlanta at the end of her life. She was meticulous, making the going-through of her things much easier than the going-through of my things will be, probably, since I am not at all meticulous. She had a safety deposit box.

I didn’t really remember what was in it. I never added anything to it, although I could have. I mean, it was in my name too. I just never felt I had anything important enough to warrant a safety deposit box, plus it was on the other side of town and the whole double key vault thing made me claustrophobic.

A few weeks ago, I got a letter from the bank, telling me they were closing and to come clear out the box, and I put it off for a while, but then the other day I found the key and went down to get her stuff.

The bank looked the same, except for the dearth of people. Wasted space, the manager said, sweeping his slender hand in the general direction of all the empty, glassed-in offices that used to be filled with efficient-looking bankers lurking behind their nameplates and thumbing through Things of Great Importance.

Together we tromped back to the vault, where he and his assistant swung open and then closed (to my discomfort) the door, and we scanned the boxes for number 601. When it was spotted, the two keys were simultaneously inserted, the metal door opened, the red box extracted and, with a little kerfuffle and glitz, set on a table for my perusal. I glanced at the manila envelope and two small jewelry boxes, stuck everything together, and headed for home with my mother’s treasures.

I brought the envelope upstairs. I shut the door and sat on the bed. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, pictured my mother sailing through a thousand different moments – in Michigan, Chicago, in Miami and lastly here in Atlanta, dressing up to go out with her friends, sitting on her flowered sofa in sturdy white SAS shoes, or walking me to the end of the hall, waving as I got on the elevator to leave.

I don’t know exactly what I expected to find when I emptied the contents onto the bed. There were a few papers in a smaller envelope marked Important Information, but it was mostly her living will and a bunch of signed testimonies to the fact that her birth certificate was lost in a Henry, North Dakota vital records fire a million years ago. The jewelry boxes held, respectively, one brooch and a tiny gold chain with two tiny pearls and a hand-written note that said my godmother had given this to me when I was born.

I sat for a while, staring at the contents of this space my mother felt compelled to rent, at the miniscule collection sitting in the middle of my bed. I thought about how big everything about my parents had seemed once, how vibrant and daunting, and I wondered at the shrinkage, at how small a life is really, like the two pearls strung along a tiny chain in a blue velvet box.

I went to Home Depot to get grout - an adventure all on its own, with some random customer deciding to take on my project and giving me a lengthy talk about sanded vs unsanded, 1/8" or smaller/larger gaps, etc.

When I'd paid for the grout, a guy who worked there slung the bag over his shoulder and walked it out to my car and on the way I noticed the bag was leaking just a tiny bit (because I'd initially tried to rip off a tiny piece to see if I had the right color) I brushed it off his back where it had leaked and made a joke about cementing himself if it rained, but then all the way home I was thinking about how if I got some in my eye from the flying bits when I brushed him off and then my eye started watering, would I have a permanently-cemented eye? And then I wondered if other people obsess on things like this or is it just me?

A Slightly Different POV

So much is being said about the children being separated from their parents when they come over the border, the terror, the cries for their mothers. And the response from some is that these parents are breaking the law.

I would like to weigh in here because I taught many immigrants in this situation. They are not THOSE PEOPLE. They are mothers, fathers, grandparents, basically, they are us. They risk their lives and the lives of their children to come here because the conditions they're escaping are not endurable. They know what's at stake. They know the risks involved, the dangers of the trip TO the U.S. border, let alone the possible imprisonment if they manage to get here. And being separated from a frightened child is torture for any parent.

If you had a choice - if they were both horrible choices - to stay where you were and watch your children be sucked up and possibly killed by gangs and cartels and lawlessness and the other choice was grabbing that one chance to save them or yourself, what would you do? I know what I would do. I'd save my children or die trying.

Punishing people for their bravery, for their passion to find a better life for themselves and their kids is simply wrong. And punishing children, who had no say in any of it is disgusting.

My first ancestor came here the same year as the Mayflower. He wasn't on it, though. He came here from Scotland, a wanted man for refusing to obey the king of England. He was a fugitive, an outlaw, He was a criminal.

Book Worm

In my zeal for healthy eating and because I was out of potato chips, when I took a writing break today, I decided to stick some kale in the oven and make kale chips -a little salt, a little olive oil . . . I carefully picked off the leaves and washed them. There was something brown I thought was a bad branch so I poked at it. It was a little soggy. Hmmm, thought I, a rotten spot, and I scrounged around for my reading glasses, which I almost immediately wished I hadn't found because the rotten spot was actually a huge caterpillar or worm or whatever, and it was still alive!!! I've JUICED with that kale! I've had that kale in my REFRIGERATOR! By the time I took pictures of the thing and got the store manager on the line (Do you ever actually LOOK at your produce???) I was already feeling a few retroactive caterpillar-worm-juice consumption repercussions. The manager informed me that the kale was from California and assured me there are no poisonous caterpillars OR worms in California, which I'm sure he hasn't actually researched, and said the whole point of not using insecticides is to not kill things (including humans) which I suppose is true. He assured me I have a freebie coming. It won't be kale! My husband, after making sure the cats wouldn't find it because, of course, their constant hunting and mole eating has made their systems far more delicate than mine, suggested it was a bookworm.