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Wisdom at the Age of 10
I watch him as we skip shells on the beach, walking in silence, obeying the wish of the waves, in their infinite wisdom, shhhhing us as they lap upon the shore.
He opens car doors for me now, and gates for the beachcomber. He uses please and thank you when ordering the homemade linguini and Caesar salad. I was a good mom, once. I did something right.
He treasures a cracked lightening whelk and sobs briefly when a tiny sand dollar is crushed between his slender fingers. He marvels at three dolphins - everything good in our life comes in threes – he fears the animals will lose their way or be caught in the propeller of the Midnite Son.
“Mom this is the best beach vacation I ever had.” In truth, it’s his first, of many perhaps. The last in which he’ll allow me to see him clutch Mickey and his new stuffed friend Moe.
He digests sports over pancakes and whipped cream. I gulp coffee while savoring this time. “Bye mom, off to the pool.” “Hey mom, let me work the key.” His high – gelato, three night’s in a row. My high – I was good mom, once, still am.
Later, he gives a smile, and a thumbs up, coaxing me to shop for shoes as if he understands, after six years of raising him alone, it is my turn now to let him lead his life, let me live mine.
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Spring Cleaning or Things I am Learning to Live with
The massage chair loafs in the corner, a behemoth which bestows little pleasure to the eye, instead offering relief to the back. At the foot of the chair rests Gipper, the statue, not their former dog, which looks real despite his innate ability to collect dust. This is easier to clean than shed hair, but his warmth still is missed.
Baseballs signed, unsigned, pocked by dirt or the logo of the Cincinnati Reds are strewn across a little boy’s desk.
The folding table for the laundry has accumulated clothes that no one declares despite being worn three days prior. Yoga Pants and mismatched socks and Frayed underwear wait patiently for their owner to collect.
Insurance paperwork, unclaimed Easter candy, Peeps that no longer, misplaced funds, college acceptance letters and athletic cups dot the landscape which once sported a journal, a pen a tome containing prayers for the Earth.
The desks of the busy bees in the loft brings to mind a call center in India. Ringing cell phones, instant messaging, Logging on to cartoon websites, a calendar still sporting a month from last year. The toaster oven with crumbs enough to recreate a loaf.
The empty bags and open boxes and dropping of Cheerios on the floor in the pantry betray the little mice that have visited but didn’t stay long enough to clean. Doors which used to squeak or close gently, now slam, really, I never knew The sound they made.
The lack of closet space to accumulate more unwanted goods, old bedding from two homes ago cough medicine that has expired plastic cups half full, set atop the foosball table whose arms extend into my former yoga space. The big screen TV attracts more dirt than the odd collection of DVDs and videos of girly movies and heroes in sports despite our best efforts
To clean, to rid, to divest ourselves from our prior lives
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She Said Yes
He digs out a box from his black faded jeans while the fire crackles from behind.
She catches the light of a spark that flies behind the grate and in an instant she sees another glint, in his blue eyes that shine like neon as if he never sleeps.
He pushes aside the crock of soup and the House wine, which is coursing through his veins and hers - its pace fueled by the fate of the fire.
The host moves plates of curried greens to make room for blackened catfish then the intruder scurries away.
From their discussion of children he segues into a marriage proposal - but the host breathlessly interrupts, begs them to share in the glorious full moon, the first before spring, the last to end winter.
When talk returns to marriage, they agree pools of blessings have freely formed, encircled the couple after a long draught. Water spews forth, like hot springs, a balm for their former aches.
They depart from dinner, she is still feeling the flames from the night’s fire as they enveloped the logs and relit her core.
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* Winner of 2007 GWCL Poetry Contest
It’s an Oregon morning, though only 6 o’clock in Ohio.
The oily coffee aroma drifts past, rouses no one else but me from slumber, beckons me back to Oregon.
The air is full of cloudbursts carrying the sea across three time zones. Carried too the memories. In the mist, I mistake my sweet bay magnolia - a shy debutante in the landscaping mix - for the rhododendrons – so lush, and boastful in their color. I confuse my sopping wet cedar deck with the wild woods of the West. The lingering scent of last night’s ginger chicken seared on alder planks I take for a campfire that once held songs of the sea.
Even my son, born in Oregon and raised in the coastal faith, will occasionally stand on our Midwestern cement, turn to me for kisses so that no one else can see, and whisper, It’s an Oregon morning. Playfully he will say goodbye.
The accordion door to the bus will close. He will be safe on his padded bench. And when I turn my back on the bus, the Oregon morning is gone.
5/23/06
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Lessons for Me
(Link to hear the author live on WVXU)
The way he reminds me that the ancient fish called coelacanth, is not spelled as it sounds, while we snuggle on the couch and debate his dream of playing baseball or discovering a new rock or fish.
How he celebrates in the end zone by letting the football roll down his fingers as if he’d always known what to do. And says he is different from other kids, but can’t say why, only that he can run fast, yet doesn’t have a trophy or ribbon to prove it.
The way he sleeps so assuredly on his back, arms splayed wide, sheets kicked off, face calmed as if kissed by the sun, while the ceiling fan blows a breeze through his dreams and Mickey Mouse nestles against his chin.
How his brown hair sometimes forms a nest and on school mornings he shyly asks for me to fix it. But other times, as he sprints down the street, his strands of hair appear to be feathers on wings that make him soar.
The way he swings his legs during piano practice, sticking out his tongue as he attempts to reach a full octave with his small smooth hands while playing Carol of the Bells allegretto because he likes to feel his fingers fly.
How he asks me, What was the best moment in your life, and, despite all that I have come to know, he quickly interrupts, I know- it’s me, right? And he tells me, you’re my best thing to happen mommy. I protest and say, What about hitting a grand slam?
Or doing 45 math problems in a minute? What about taking on the killer wave in the ocean, riding boogey boards with cousin Zach? And he says, but you bought the boogey board, mommy, and showed me how to ride.
October, 2005
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From the author’s new collection, working title - Second Life in the Making
* Note: This entry was recently awarded Third Prize in the Greater Cincinnati Writer's League Annual Contest.
Blue Memories
For an instant, our hired car staggers at the summit before spiraling towards the coast. We sit apart according to seat belts, but I can see into his blue eyes which reveal the sea - one that holds our dreams of not yet.
The fingers from his soft hands he angles just so, the artist framing a boat or cliff to paint later, and capturing in his mind the essence of my now. His eyebrows rise up to meet my delight in the gifts from the sea that feed and bathe my body the echoes that calm and cool my nights.
We wobble down cobblestone walks and peek into store windows before stepping in. He claps as the shopkeeper dresses me in silks and scarves, and silhouettes of fall’s rustic orange linens and the last pair of sequined slippers - just my size, as if waiting for Cinderella.- Was she Italian too?
We will come again to Italy at age fifty, revive our lost language tapes, try to consume each other and Tauresi wine in the way that we have at forty. At sixty, we will show the countryside to our children, revel in their confusion and charm.
Perhaps nearing age seventy or eighty we will once more visit these waters, this coast, our cheeks no longer smooth as the chestnuts that rattle in the breeze. Our faces will be lined like the branches of the sweet lemon trees from our grove.
We will be wrapped in the autumn sun, Italian knits and each other’s arms. The water will lap below us, first gently, then wave after wave will reach our perch extend its hand and beckon us to swim. We will lose ourselves in the eternal sea.
Three Sisters
She wears pink in polka dots that match her cheeks. Her lips are painted with the same bold brush as if she wants someone to notice she has something to say.
She wears pink on a sweater holding her womanhood. Her waves of red hair have been straightened, bangs falling unevenly to one side. As she steps forward, her eyes dart away from those she loves.
She wears pink in swaths that flash across her skirt. Her hand lightly rests on the shoulder of her sister, a feather atop a branch, to remind her sister everything must fly away.
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A Brief History of The Coffeeshop
Annette Januzzi Wick 2/4/06
The coffeeshop in Oceanside stood at the intersection of life. Only yards from the Tsunami warning signs for the Oregon Coast. In the crossroads of town, if a town that small can have one. But always at the stop sign before one has to choose: house or beach, mountain or shore. Its residents too were a cross-section of lifestyles and industry trades as if there existed an unwritten quota of one lesbian, one gay guy, one fisherman, one carpenter, one grandpa, one grandma, one artist, one writer, one husband, one pregnant woman and one little boy.
The corners of the coffeeshop’s windows were crusted over with sea salt when I first glimpsed at the land called Oceanside and its people. The view out the window was so clouded that that I sometimes wonder if I truly fell for Oceanside or just the one inside those walls. The floors were scratched from countless boots stomping off in all directions. They were sticky too. I couldn’t walk from the door to the counter without my white-soled running shoes feeling a downward pull. I knew nothing of lattes and cappuccinos and deep rich Italian roast coffee but everyone there did.
I pieced together a Great Monuments of Europe puzzle inside the walls of what once was a cottage rental office, but now sported a sea-foam green facade and a neon OPEN sign. I stumbled upon newspaper articles posted near the collection of the regulars’ coffee mugs. One had been written by a traveler who happened upon Oceanside, and called it the Positano of the West. I immediately ran to a phone to inform my very Italian parents of this connection to our past. From the monthly art displays upon its paneled walls, I learned about Clive Davies, an artist and marathon runner, and the incredible lightness of the clouds in his watercolors and bought my first Fred Bennett CD – aptly named Oceanside. Freddie he was called, if you were local, if you were lucky enough to be local.
I knew of a man named Vern before I met him. He was the prototype retiree in the first wave up and down the northern Oregon Coast. Vern sat around the table closest to the refill pot. Then he moved to opening the joint each morning that one of the former owners didn’t rise out of bed from the night before. On each of my subsequent visits, Vern was pouring the drink, spouting off along with the steam nozzle on the espresso machine. He was reliable and punctual, committed and opinionated. What more could one ask for in a manager? Vern moved back to the table after new ownership took over and was eventually bestowed a chair with a brass plaque proclaiming “Vern’s Chair” nailed to its backside.
Two years after my first encounter on the coast, my husband Devin surprised me with a proposal to move to Oceanside. That next February, I became a resident, the pregnant one at that. Devin would travel through the week but on weekends quickly became addicted to the dark roasted jolt. Whenever he worked from home, a trip down the hill to the coffeeshop was first on his agenda before any conference call with his boss. And Vern poured the decaf lattes which kept me afloat during those lonely days before the baby came.
The coffeeshop, as much as the town, was a canvas where its residents and customers painted their mornings over and again, each time layering their life upon someone else who had been touched by the sea. The coffeeshop, as much as the town, became a refuge from my ordinary life of rain, motherhood and cancer. Through its window panes, I could simultaneously watch the postmaster tend to his duties and witness the largeness of the sea as her swells consumed my breath.
Many lively characters rested lazily around the tables in the early dawn – Lee, the Oyster Baron, Dave, the Dave Crosby look alike, Craig, the local theatre aficionado who was always working on his house, Charlie and his sister Kay, artists whose work inspired the colors of my home. They kept me tuned into, connected to that other world, their world, after the baby came.
Writers held poetry readings during my friend Bill Rhode’s trek north from San Francisco. Neighbors fell for Aunt Lynne the way everyone else does, with a shake of the head and a lighter heart. Folks in town prayed when Devin was diagnosed with leukemia, celebrated during his remission then prayed some more when Devin died. And they rejoiced each time I came back with my son Davis excitedly in tow.
They welcomed my in-laws, Don and Judy, when they assumed our house up the hill on Maxwell Mountain. The coffeshop hosted the Friday Do Nothing club of which Judy was a member and put up for sale Don’s walking sticks, gathered from the streams where he fished. He carved these with such care, one had to wonder if he could ever carve enough to replace his love for Devin.
And each time I returned, the coffeeshop still stood. Always lingering with lattes to send me off to the beach, offering double lattes before I headed home. Always waiting for Davis with stores of brown cow ice cream for when the temperatures soared above 70, and not so hot hot chocolate for when the temperature dipped below 50. Davis drank more chocolate than he ate.
In all of ten years, I never brought myself to calling the spot Oceanside Espresso, finding the name to be a mouthful, like chewing on chocolate-covered coffee beans, bitter and rough going down. Instead, when Davis first learned to speak, it was with excitement and comfort that the syllables in coffee shop ran together and remained. But the coffeeshop has since closed down. Someone turned off the steam knob on the espresso machine and shut the oven door with no more a whiff of those gooey cinnamon buns they served. They locked the door that had always stuck. And I wondered how a town could lose a coffeeshop and keep its postal designation.
Perhaps I could have foretold this closure, not because the business was run into the ground or because the townspeople would no longer support the operation. But the sea sent word that I too am standing at the crossroads of widow or wife, writer or not. If I have at all contemplated a prolonged absence from the coast, then I cannot expect the coffeeshop to still stand, waiting for my return.
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Three Arch Press