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.

Christmas Day 2013

I dreamed about you early this morning, and kissed your forehead and cheek as you cooked mushy pieces of ham in a frying pan for two little boys. Dressed in jammies, they gobbled it  down. We were sitting at a kitchen counter, yellow, the color of of mine but the lightening of your former home.  I had the sense one was toddler Miguel, my grandson and whom you never met but perhaps know anyway, he now nine years old. The other maybe my grandson William, nearly three. Or perhaps your two boys all those years ago when they themselves were younger.  At any rate, you and I clearly together, my lips on your forehead and cheek like baby kisses.

Distance

In a dream you and Madeleine were talking on the phone and I picked up an extension, a 3-way call, you chatting about painting the floor borders of the room in a light bamboo yellow and how happy you were to have your house back and I was telling you how thrilled I was for you, too, except you couldn’t hear me even as I was listening in perfectly.

In real time we had a Hanukkah party at temple last night, services lead by Max, the Elliott’s grandson; he’ll graduate college this year. We bought menorah’s to light. I had yours, and I swear as soon as the candles were lit you appeared, jubilant, behind the candles with that broad, hearty smile of yours, your chocolate almond eyes gleeful.  I cried and cried, hoping no one saw, an allergy or perhaps a sudden cold of which I had neither.

We are celebrating Hanukkah here tonight, Saturday, November 30, and I am with you, now and always.

Together again

Hi Carole, we were with each other last night, I wrote down the dream and now can't find it, yet am sure we were whole and fleshy in dream about the ordinary, so close I could smell you, feel the heat of your body.

Sunset, 2013

Your final goodbye streaming across Key West sky, Oct 21, 2002

Candles lit on my dining room table, our Nana Sophie's table before here.