Believe It...Or Don't

     The old crone has been around since the beginning. She keeps coming back because she believes in herself more than she believes in Him. He's just good company when he isn't in one of his darker moods. The ale is what ails HIM. She leaves it alone. Just two sips of alcohol and she can get as dark as a double midnight rainbow, truly colorful shades of indigo that sparkle like starlit silver arches bridging the gaps in moments of millenniums.
     This is the last fall of the house of his/tory, HER story is worth considering.. She doesn't care if anyone ever reads it but she knows how to make them want to. She has a way with words. She has a very sultry voice whether she's speaking aloud or crossing your mind like a naked, redhaired nymph. She's the reason Maine is WICKED good, Daddy's girl because four females was the last straw for her Mama. Mama didn't even want to name another female because then, you couldn't swap it in the nursery with a Mom who had too many sons.
     She believes that the only Hell is the one that you believe in and she believes in NOW. She also believes in ghosts, sasquatch, magic, and aliens. Unidentified flying objects are what crazy people throw at each other when they're pissed off.
     She knows things because she dares to believe in possibilities and manifestations. Maybe she knows how the story ends and maybe she'll dream up another possibility.
     Its Fall and the leaves have just started to turn in the little area of woods behind her home. She lives in a tiny community of many moons where she can hear the waterfalls when the rain has been as heavy as it was last week. October really came in witchy, woman!
     You'd think she'd hate bonfires but she loves to dance around them. She wanted a cast iron cauldron suspended over her hearth stone in the center of her cabin. Not all of her dreams came true but most of her nightmares did.
     She just read that Jackie O. suffered as badly as she herself did back in the fifties and sixties even though they were a generation apart and at totally opposite ends of the social ladder of New England.
     She sighs deeply, peacefully. Just now, she isn't feeling any discomfort that she can't alleviate without committing suicide. That takes practice since she has a very keen albeit annoying memory. That doesn't mean she's never wrong; nobody's always right whether they're balanced or unbalanced.
She cares too much but she's learning to let it BE. It HAS to BE. That's the story. Can she PROVE it? Be very careful what you're asking for. She owes none any proof but her higher power has had just about enough of your lack of faith in anything.
     She doesn't always get what she wants but she'll always have all that she needs. Abandon her and the loss will truly be yours. She is mother by natural instinct. She never raised any who couldn't be held accountable for themselves because that is what her mother and father taught her in her first decade. Survival in Hell? How about  Maine winters along the lower Kennebec, crossing tidal ice breaks. There's safety in numbers and girls were generally more responsible back in the fifties. It was the last five decades of the last millennium. It is all about the changes and surviving them.
   Emotions are the oceans everyone crosses alone. They may laugh or cry in gathered crowds but they feel alone without someone to believe in for the love. They teach their young that emotions must be controlled or others will consider you to be crazy. All wild creatures instinctively avoid people because survival depends upon it.
     She has survived six and a half decades among her memories in an age where Alzheimer's plagues accurate personal histories. She has a unique form of PTSD that allows her to descend into personal Hell or ascend unto passionate heaven depending upon her audience. She always has one even when she's home, alone. Time is simply a mind game. She may be a month shy of sixty-five or seventeen in '68 and an unwed mother. Oh, the shame of that when you're from the class of  '69 and he has to draw you a picture!
     She prefers romantic fantasies of roguish kilts and celtic roots or nearly naked bucks and bear skin rugs. Who needs reality when you create beautiful dreams because you lived through the worst nightmares. They don't scare you anymore. Even the worst that can happen has already happened more than once and you lived because Mama said you would.
     She really hated Mama most of her life. Karma brought peace and understanding. Mama is still the more beautiful but she will always be Daddy's girl and that's something Mama always envied. She wonders if they'll get to be sisters in another incarnation. She owes her mother that. She'd love to be her sister.
     It surprises her to consider coming back for another lifetime. She'd always insisted that she was done after this life. Hell, she'd written a stack of diaries in hard copy. They sat on a dusty shelf beneath her television where the ladies were discussing vaginas and virginity. Times really have changed, haven't they, girl?

Indian Ed's Trail of Tears

Back in the last five decades of the last millennium, a handsome sailor,Ed, who was last of his family line went to the second world war. His older sister became a spinster beautician. It was said that her beau had died in the war but families had to lie about things to avoid persecution. This is Maine as it is and was and ever shall be until the next flood or fire. The bible tells me so but I don't believe everything I read since God didn't leave an instruction manual. He gave us an E manual so we could reconnect against their will. 'They' are governments both foreign and domestic. There is excessive propaganda from all of them. We watch way too many commercials and hear far too many jingles on the radio. We're supposed to be listening to our hearts and our Mama's lullabyes.
     Ed chose a beautiful milk white orphan to mother his young. Her name was Maggie Mae. She spent her entire second decade bearing his babies because Mormon doctrine doesn't believe in birth control, Ed needed a son to carry on the family name and he kept throwing fillies. I was fourth in a row just before suppah in a November gale. THAT was a dark and stormy night, I heard the prayers on my way down. Mama was safe and sound in the maternity ward while nurses tended her and me. No, she didn't want to breastfeed. Can milk and Karo would fatten and shut me up! Someone else was tending to her other three howling furies and she didn't care who. This was likely to be the only vacation she was going to get before Ed was on her for a son. A woman's duty is to her husband after all. The male is dominant in most hominids. Women need to behave like bitches and find a BIG bad male wolf to eat the grandmothers who teach such garbage to little girls. Little girls are meant to be pampered and protected NOT used as sex toys, boys! Speaking of boy's toys, enough with the guns. Grow your own food. The woods aren't safe anymore. There are tribal feet running wild as the northwestern fires. The forest folk need homes, too! Besides that, you're depleting your own bubble and its already fragile enough! Pop! There went another planet!
     Indian Ed couldn't claim his Indian heritage because the king paid bounties on Indian redskin, Those dark braids made nice trophies. The new world needed to be exterminated before civilization arrived to bring the world to the war table for the REAL last supper.
     Ed needed a spirit medium to reach his fourth daughter in her infinity loop of Hell, Maine that connected one loop along the Kennebec River around Merrymeeting Bay to another loop across it from the falls in Androscoggin River. He planted his seed upriver near the capital but he brought them downriver for the jobs at Bath Iron Works on the Kennebec beside the Carlton bridge. His older girls could ride the train to their only grandparents' weathered shingle cottage during school vacations. Maggie's sister lived in Bath, too. She was sick and tired of his sister's complaints about her housekeeping and childrearing. Also, he was always a little too touchy whenever he'd had a few ales. Heaven help them all if he got into the hard stuff. As many times as she'd warned them not to let him drink more than a couple of cold ales, they'd peer pressure him past his limit and send him home for her to deal with.
The Indigo Girls are singing, "Come On Home" and it is almost suppah time so...

The Meanest -> Maddest Mother

She is a Mainiac and that makes her dangerous. She believes in herself these days. She knows that she's got you right where she wants you. She can be whatever she chooses but she's always fully female and as dangerous as any you might imagine. She's as ferocious as a grizzly around threats to children whether they're hers or another mother's. She's intelligent and always thinking of a better way to be or do anything. She struggles with her rage and pain so as not to misdirect the fury it can incite. It hasn't been safe or easy in Hell, Maine to survive these past six and a half decades. The world is always at war somewhere. She could easily become a casualty from such retaliations from total strangers. They aren't her enemies but they may be enemies of her state whether that is her state of mind or residence. She's all American and native to the land of her fathers' fathers. She likes the changing of the seasons because change is what living is all about. She's only recently become aware that she is far more powerful than the rumor mill that turns her out. On her best days, she is the best that you could hope for. She can make your mouth water or bring tears to your eyes. She's such a Daddy's girl that her Mama studied her often to see what her attraction was so she became Mama's favorite too.
     Most days, she taps away at the letters on her keyboard, sharing her thoughts and ideas. She tends to forget that EVERYTHING isn't about her. A little bit of Bev doesn't go a long way; it usually goes too far. When she stops loving you, she will be sorrier than you may be because love is meant to last. It doesn't last as long as snow people in Hell, even at the poles, which are melting these days. HELL is getting too hot to handle. She used to be until she turned off her furnace. She is a blast from her past and the center of attention at her own party. She can entertain children better than clowns and she's a great story teller. Little ones just call her Bev or NanaBev. They love her dearly and trust her completely. Children need to believe that their mothers are the meanest. She is. When she means it, she's deliberate and steady. She takes careful aim and BLAM! Down and dying! Its usually fatal. Someone or some THING is dying. It may only be who's interested in you. May BE ...She gives you permission to do your OWN thing. You wanna be mad, be damned, good AND mad. I'll give you every reason you need. I'll bake them into a batch of oatmeal cookies. She took no prisoners because she believed in free will.
     Her father was the wayward wind, her mother his night mare. She rode both with total abandon as fearless and free as a she eagle.
     She never quite fit in or out let alone above or below any other. There were none like her though there may be countless composed of her energy and fiber. Like each crystalline snowflake, she had her own unique points of interest and beauty. Her mind could be as sharp as any needlepoint, her personalities as magnetic as their pointed directions. She loved deeply and completely, absorbing  her own pleasures to fuel his until both were consumed utterly in mating passion. When angels breed with demon lovers survivors are fewer than half. Of five seeds that were fertilized, four were carried to term but the first born of each gender failed to thrive three months. The beautiful little female barely lived six weeks and missed her first Christmas.
     When death stalks a cradle, it is an omen of things to come. Difficult journeys await. Sweet love can never be forgotten. An angel needs many gifts to survive that mother's hell. Hope is one of them.

Waiting For The Tides

She lives along the coast where hurricanes in the night sound like a grief. Worrying wind wails and tears up tomorrow, pushing a flood of salty tears across all that was planted there. He still hasn't made it home. Maybe, with the next tide. If only she can wait out the storms brewing between them. If only she could understand the mistress that calls him away from her, that sirens' lure. The matron forfeits youthful longing as she gathers her wool and knits her brows. Foolish old man. Will he never be satisfied with his gardens and his books? Those eyes as changeable as sea water, will they never stop searching beyond his horizons? She used to blame some oversight on her part to watch her tone or the new style of her hair but intuition told her otherwise however cryptically. Even in his last embrace, SHE had been calling. A woman who lives with the tides knows she's powerless to stop them from going out or to make them come in. So she waits while the years of living too close to the tides and their flooding tears wash away her foundation.
She's been waiting to be the most important person in someone's life for all of her own. She caught fleeting glimpses of her goal in those moments of passion when she held him on the brink of release but she always knew that her talents weren't as unique or exclusive as others with better training, others more beautiful and appealing because they demand nothing from him except brief moments of acknowledgment. Like the flowers in his garden, they reward his attention with spectacular beauty but they cling only to his trellises leaving the man free to be wherever he chooses. If he never returns, they simply grow wild or die. Its never personal because it was never intended to be.
Perhaps, she has begun to understand his mistress after all.
     SHE waits for no man. SHE carries him away from all that would tether him like a flag to one pole. SHE whispers and moans, caressing his soul with promises of immortality. SHE raises her fury to pound him mercilessly against the cliffs of his own guilt and despair for abandoning his hearth and garden. He will be grateful for the returning tide. His bones ache from the cold and damp of wrestling last night's stormy gale.
The old woman will draw him a welcoming bath and set his table with a meal fit for a king. The smell of freshly baked pie and biscuits will mingle with the delicious aroma of bubbling stew over the coals of a hearth fire, a hearty supper and the softness and warmth of an ample body await his return. .
The old woman kneads her dough and blows a wisp of gray that has escaped her kerchief. Her kitchen window looks out onto his garden where a scarecrow boasts two daring to sit on its stick straight right shoulder while a third raucously tattles from an inner branch of the red maple providing shade for the potato plants.