Tender Hanukkah from Craig with Carole

Hi Craggie,

Finally found the Currier and Ives print you said you'd given us and I could not find, had no recall of.  Sunday, two days ago, in my bottom drawer along with white tissue wrapping paper that I'd thought to use but pitched, too old, musty old.

And underneath, or to the side of, something bulky, wrapped in plastic and then with a glass overlay. Emailed the company yesterday and after images, they verified.

A lovely gift from you with Carole, a litho all these years later,  our dear Carole and you, Craig, on this first night of Hanukkah with its candles, the glowflame of the past with its love, as well as the anguish of loss.

No Second Guessing

Excerpt: Three Attention Deficit Sisters and the Mafia

... It didn’t dawn on me to me to ask why she'd kept quiet all these years, her story so mesmerizing who’d care!  ‘Are you sure, positive?’ I’d asked rhetorically, knowing full well, having been there myself. 

Not long after Carolee told me about her dream, I had one of my own, one of those confusing jumbled visions. I was eighteen, Carolee seventeen as I said; she was seventeen when she told me. My sister Carolee had not doubted for one measly minute, she adamant about those colors underneath and the way we entangled.  Hers so vivid that mine seemed iffy and inconsequential by comparison.

(skip)

In retrospect, I came to realize that Carolee retained only a brief glimpse of our past, confirmed by what she missed.  She never mentioned Darren, or Myrna for that matter. Our past was about us, our shared protoplasm sparked into being.  My sister set the stage, imbedded our story like a genetic code, its secret for me to hear and remember since she wouldn’t be with me to tell it. She sensed before my dream, hers first: water and revival. Mine a dry dusty patch behind a wagon train. 


Now here’s the truth.  No second-guessing. Whether Carolee’s breathing next to me or not is a moot point. Writing solo way beyond my reach: not a remote possibility without my sister guiding me. 

Air brushed sky ...

Ten days from now, 12 years ago, smoke signals, what you could do.

Distance. Time. Beyond.

Shanah Tovah withou you ...

Hi Carole, so missing you. Had the kids over last night, was sweet, I didn't get all ruffled as usual, just let it be .... has taken a long while to reach this point. Lit candles for all who came before: you and you and you.

I'd made cards for Pinecrest Floods, Danny was only one who got it —  the spunkiness of activism passed to your youngest.

I'll be back to us in the next few days, still and forever tweaking, time jumping helps.

Mother's Day -- Sister's Day

Hi my beautiful, remembering the times you'd gift flowers, and I didn't get it, we also mothers but more than that to each other ... life lines. Am still working on our book, have added a speculative brother in an earlier life who comes back as evil, a main character in real life too. Am going that route, incorporating sci-fi to make writing doable. Works well in the first chapter, not sure about latest one, need to make a connection,  must think it though...  your speculative was as wondrous poetry .... leaps.

Great Aunts

Hello my dear sister. We are having a Passover gathering here this evening — a night when everyone could get together. Your children and mine plus my two grandkids, minus you, your fleshy hugs of great aunthood denied them.

Craig wrote a poem about great aunts after you died. It is handwritten on a box high on my closet shelf, where it waited, signed 'sometime in 2002, Key West.'   The souls of great aunts — 'a kind of family resemblance that no force can suppress.'  He spoke to the plump and softness of being; a jump, a curve. To birth, the in between, and afterwards —  you and he now rejoined along with the might of ages — the great aunts. Oh Carole, sister, mother, great aunt, love of our lives, the grief unceasing.

January 3, 2014

Happy Birthday Carole, can't write more cause the tears will flow -- need your help with our book, am stuck in the muck of it and no one wants to read slop: muck, and more muck, weighing down, pulling under so am am wondering where the writer is … the long climb or swirl to celebrate.