jeannebirdblog

Early morning sunlight inches its way around the edges of the venetian blinds on our bedroom windows.  I pull my thumb out of my mouth, fold a couple of inches of the pink, satiny edging of the blanket on my bed into a cone shape, and gently stroke my nose with it, then circle my eyes.  It’s soft and comforting, as I worry, worry, worry.  Donna sighs in the twin bed next to mine.  Barb shares Donna’s bed, and Maria shares mine.  They’re fast asleep, exhausted from the war-like explosions in our home last night.  The telephone rings in the kitchen and I hear Mom answer it with a dull “hello.”  I know it’s her mother, my Nanny, giving her a daily morning phone call.

The blanket flies over Maria’s head as I fling it off of me as I get up.  I gently pull it off her face so my little sister won’t suffocate, look for my pink slippers that travelled under the bed, and shove them on my feet.  My hair’s a tangled bird’s nest.  I run my tongue over dry, cracked lips, and pull down the too short, too small sleeves on my hand-me-down, floral flannel nightgown.  Whish, whoosh, whish, goes the nightgown against my bare legs as I shuffle out to the kitchen.  I stand numbly at the table, waiting for Mom’s attention.

“Okay, Ma,” said Mom into the phone that’s cradled between her ear and neck.  She takes a second to drop a spoon on the counter, hangs the phone up on the wall, and turns back to filling a coffeepot with Chock full o’ nuts, the heavenly coffee. 

She barely looks at me.  Coffee grains sloppily spill from the spoon, flicking brown specks on the counter.

“Nanny told me to wash my face and to make sure and put lipstick on today,” said Mom, more to herself, than to me.  She slows down, thinks of her own life.  I imagine Nanny in her warm kitchen, standing at the sink that overlooks Grandpa’s zinnia bed, towel-drying a load of hand-washed dishes, and talking to Mom on a phone that is cradled between her ear and neck. 

Mom’s spoon clatters to the sink as she turns to put the coffeepot on the stovetop.   

“Go wash up and get ready for school, Jeanne.  Tell your sisters to get up.  Then get in here and have breakfast,” said Mom placing a box of Kellogg’s frosted cornflakes on the table.  Tony the Tiger, a cartoon mascot on the cereal box, cheerfully grins at me.  I can’t grin back. 

Mom acts as though nothing happened between her and Daddy after supper last night.  His ugly, aggressive threats of violence and their loud, mean words of swearing and yelling at each other scared me and my sisters to death.

Daddy tried to touch her, but she pulled away and shouted.  

“Get out!  Get out!  Leave us alone!”  Mom hysterically screamed, crying in a verbal assault, her fists tightly clenched at her sides.

Then out Daddy went, banging the front door.

“Yes, Mom,” I said, aching from her lack of awareness to my suffering, yet comforted by Nanny’s words for some reason or another.  I inch my way back to the bedroom.

Get ready for school.  Put on my parochial school uniform.  Go to school, to my third-grade class.  Sit at my desk, with head down, too ashamed, too bashful, too fearful to look up or look at anyone.  Forget looking!  Forget talking!  Try to learn, try to study.  Try to listen to the Catholic nuns who are my teachers.  Everything looks foreign to me, is foreign to me, including Mom and Daddy’s fights, which I can’t understand, and which I hate, hate, hate.  Sit with a painful knot in my stomach, as though a cord is tying me up, as though a cloth is stuffed in my mouth, and shoved down my throat.  Clench my teeth.  Fight back tears.

Dear, Sweet, Jesus.  I can’t breathe, afraid to speak.  Afraid, afraid, afraid.

The Virgin Mary, my Blessed Mother, firmly hand-turns the outdoor spigot that connects to the water faucet and garden hose at Nanny’s house. She wears a sacred-blue veil crowned with red roses that flows to the ground, fluidlike.  She smiles at me.  Her foot presses a still garden snake – a serpent, his sins and sorrows quieted by Mother Mary.  Blessed is she, as she stills my heart from devil-evil serpents of the world. 

The spigot that releases water is at the front of the house; the green garden hose is lettered along its long length, with bold, silvery words that spell out “sisterly love.”  The hose snakes its way across the front yard, passes the brick porch where Nanny sits on a lawn chair eating a sandwich of fried peppers and eggs cooked by Aunt LaLa.  Nanny is the queen of her world in the town of Darien, the porch, her throne.  Her home is her castle, where she lives with Grandpa, Uncle Pippi, and Aunt LaLa, ruling by the front door that is shielded with a hanging red, white, and blue flag.

The hose snakily slides down slate steps cut by Grandpa, to the driveway, and ends in my younger sister Barb’s hand, where its’ shiny, copper-threaded connector sprays Mother Mary’s magic water onto the black asphalt driveway, making it glisten wildly in the sunlight.

Standing next to Barb, I watch the water spray from the driveway to the hill that slopes easily from the front porch to Maple Street.  My eyes fly over the scene, take everything in.  The street is named after Great-Uncle Mike’s maple tree, now aged and regal, at the top of the hill.  Barb wears a yellow t-shirt, and brown barrettes clip back fly-away hair; a red rubber kickball waits for my red Keds sneakers to kick it, make it fly through the air; the open mailbox holds an Italian newspaper for Grandpa; and the stone walls hug the driveway to another stone-cut stairwell leading to the back door of the kitchen.  Grandpa, warmed by a gray sweater, waves hello and smiles at me from where he sits at a kitchen window.  I know that Mom is chatting with her older sister, LaLa, at the kitchen table, where they trim string beans from Uncle Pippi’s garden.  Sometimes, Mom parrots advice from Aunt Lala on how to parent my sisters and me, ages four to twelve years old, and where I’m second in line, with God’s wings backing me as a little protector of my close-knit sisters.

Here, across the driveway, is Grandpa’s zinnia flowerbed that caps a stone wall.  Bees zip-zap and orange butterflies flitter-flutter through the hardest-working flowers of the summer garden.  The zinnias are waiting, and expect me to stop by with scissors soon.  The ironed-down grass path that runs alongside the flowerbed is the way to the neighbor’s old gray cat, asleep atop another stone wall, on a bed of coppery pine needles, fallen from shadowy pines.  Sparrows dart and dip, swoop from tree-to-tree over his head. 

We are in our own world, under the blue sky, where Uncle Pippi’s wheelbarrow, filled with just-picked sweet corn, waits by the garage door, where my older sister Donna, in a yellow dress and white knee socks, hands an Italian cookie to youngest sister Maria; flick-flecks of snowy white sugar dust her pink-and-green flowered dress.  Barb sprays water from the hose in an arc, up towards the zinnia bed.  I look back at Nanny on the porch.  She smiles at me. 

The Blessed Mother is no longer there, by the spigot near the porch.  She’s gone.  Yet, not entirely gone, as she is in my heart and intercession prayer –  O, most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known, that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided.  It is she that I run to when my sisters and I witness violent abuse in Daddy and Mom’s evil fights in our home, around our kitchen table.

I need to fly to her, beg for her mercy, for healing, and to answer my humble pleas for help. 

The magic water of sisterly love sprays the stone wall near the slate steps, hits the green grass of the sloped hill, to the sidewalk and quiet street.  A surge of water reaches me, drenches my body and the constant, blue feelings of being trapped in a painful loop, like a twisted snake, with the back and forth of opposing emotions, fearful fight or flight thoughts – the mental anxiety of childhood abuse. 

“Did you ever want to fly?  I want to fly!  Fly, fly, fly!”  The magic water causes me to freely shout.  Fly, fly, fly, to get away from sin and sorrow.

“It’s magic water!” whoops Barb.

Suddenly, my dripping wet hands turn into giant, rainbow-colored parrots that wave their wings with great strength and lift me upward.  Off I go!  I fly up, up, up, as Barb jets more magic water from the hose onto me.

High above the driveway, I am in blue-tinged, white clouds shaped like an airplane and a sailboat.  Time rests, as the translucent clouds puff along slowly, as though sliding out of a faded polaroid photograph.  A blue cape appears around my neck, waves behind me, and my legs, with red-sneakered feet, are out-stretched.  My arms extend as the parrots disconnect from my hands and they soar away in a bright-colored flash.  I am flying!

I call to my sister in the driveway below.

“Barb, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying!”

And here I go, towards heaven, far above the driveway and Nanny’s house.  Above the street and then to Uncle Pippi’s garden, where I wildly zoom down, low to the ground, to see the tomatoes, peppers, green beans, basil, parsley, whatever he’s planted, so low to just touch the top of the cornfield, where I see Uncle Pippi working.  He smiles at me.  The garden gate is open, the hoe waits for me.  The garden is a daily dose for peace from devil-evil wartime serpents of his own.

Up and up I go, fly away over the Noroton Heights neighborhood, until I see our Noroton Avenue house, where I live with Mom and sisters, and then swoop over to Mom’s sisters’ homes that I know so well – Matheline on Relihan Road, to Joyce on West Avenue, Mae on Park Lane, and Dee Dee on Sterling Place.  I fly over to Weed Beach, to take in the sea air of Long Island Sound, where I label everything mine, and it is all my Darien.  It will always be my Darien that freely fills my spirit with joy.  The blue flowing cape falls off from around my neck and drifts slowly away to the clouds.

With a birds-eye view and out-stretched arms, I fly over Nanny’s house, the yard, the gardens, see the clothesline in the backyard, where Aunt LaLa smiles as she hangs pink, billowing sheets, see Grandpa’s prickly cactus plant sitting on the back porch, and cucumbers that grow in the kitchen garden, a place where everything is beautiful and safe, and where the Blessed Mother sent the magic water through the garden hose to Barb to me.  Mom is there now, in the driveway, with my sisters.  She smiles at me.  I turn and call to her.

“Mom, look at me!  I’m flying, flying, flying!”

And, off I go again, sprinkled with sisterly love from the garden hose, fly into the blue sky of heaven in this magical world, guided by the forces of Mother Mary, as she teaches me the healing power of sisterly love.  I fly and search for Mother Mary, the Queen of Heaven, who leads me back to her path whenever I stray, to stand before her, with my sins and sorrows, to beseech her never-ending shield of firm protection over my sisters and me.

Copyright © Jean DeVito, July 18, 2024.  All rights reserved.  https://jeannebirdblog.wordpress.com.

Note:  This piece was written for the sheer joy of writing, as non-fiction and fiction intertwine. My style of writing is to slow down time, with descriptions of scenery, characters, and emotions. I plan to use the religious aspects and my adoration of the Virgin Mary when I was a child in my memoir. A theme in my memoir is how religious beliefs change throughout life.

The Virgin Mary, my Blessed Mother, firmly hand-turns the outdoor spigot that connects to the water faucet and garden hose at Nanny’s house.

She wears a sacred-blue veil crowned with red roses that flows to the ground, fluidlike. She smiles at me.  Her foot presses a still garden snake – a serpent, his sins and sorrows quieted by Mother Mary.  Blessed is she, as she stills my heart from devil-evil serpents of the world. 

The spigot that releases water is at the front of the house; the green garden hose is lettered along its long length, with bold, silvery words that spell out “sisterly love.”  The hose snakes its way across the front yard, passes the brick porch where Nanny sits on a lawn chair eating a sandwich of fried peppers and eggs cooked by Aunt LaLa.  Nanny is the queen of her world in the town of Darien, the porch, her throne.  Her home is her castle, where she lives with Grandpa, Uncle Pippi, and Aunt LaLa, ruling by the front door that is shielded with a hanging red, white, and blue flag.

The hose snakily slides down slate steps cut by Grandpa, to the driveway, and ends in my sister Barb’s hand, where its’ shiny, copper-threaded connector sprays Mother Mary’s magic water onto the black asphalt driveway, making it glisten wildly in the sunlight.

Standing next to Barb, I watch the water spray from the driveway to the hill that slopes easily from the front porch to Maple Street.  My eyes fly over the scene, take everything in.  The street is named after Great-Uncle Mike’s maple tree, now aged and regal, at the top of the hill.  Barb wears a yellow t-shirt, and brown barrettes clip back fly-away hair; a red rubber kickball waits for my red Keds sneakers to kick it, make it fly through the air; the open mailbox holds an Italian newspaper for Grandpa; and the stone walls hug the driveway to another stone-cut stairwell leading to the back door of the kitchen.  Grandpa, warmed by a gray sweater, waves hello and smiles at me from where he sits at a kitchen window.  Across the driveway is his zinnia flowerbed that caps a stone wall.  Bees zip-zap and orange butterflies flitter-flutter through the hardest-working flowers of the summer garden.  The zinnias are waiting, and expect me to stop by with scissors soon.  The ironed-down grass path that runs alongside the flowerbed is the way to the neighbor’s old gray cat, asleep atop another stone wall, on a bed of coppery pine needles, fallen from shadowy pines.  Sparrows dart and dip, swoop from tree-to-tree over his head. 

We are in our own world, under the blue sky, where Uncle Pippi’s wheelbarrow, filled with just-picked sweet corn from his garden, waits by the garage door, where my older sister Donna, in a yellow dress and white knee socks, hands an Italian cookie to little sister Maria; flick-flecks of snowy white sugar dust her pink-and-green flowered dress.  Barb sprays water from the hose in an arc, up towards the zinnia bed.  I look back at Nanny on the porch.  She smiles at me. 

The Blessed Mother is no longer there, by the spigot near the porch.  She’s gone.  Yet, not entirely gone, as she is in my heart and intercession prayer –  O, most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known, that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided.  I need to fly to her, for her mercy, to answer my humble pleas for help. 

The magic water of sisterly love sprays the stone wall near the slate steps, hits the green grass of the sloped hill, to the sidewalk and quiet street.  A surge of water reaches me, drenches my body and the constant, blue feelings of being trapped in a painful loop, like a twisted snake, with the back and forth of opposing emotions, fearful fight or flight thoughts – the mental anxiety of childhood abuse. 

“Did you ever want to fly?  I want to fly!  Fly, fly, fly!”  The magic water causes me to freely shout.  Fly, fly, fly, to get away from sin and sorrow.

“It’s magic water!” whoops Barb.

Suddenly, my dripping wet hands turn into giant, rainbow-colored parrots that wave their wings with great strength and lift me upward.  Off I go!  I fly up, up, up, as Barb jets more magic water from the hose onto me.

High above the driveway, I am in blue-tinged, white clouds shaped like an airplane and a sailboat.  Time rests, as the translucent clouds puff along slowly, as though sliding out of a faded polaroid photo.  A blue cape appears around my neck, waves behind me, and my legs, with red-sneakered feet, are out-stretched.  My arms extend as the parrots disconnect from my hands and they soar away in a bright-colored flash.  I am flying!

I call to my sister in the driveway below.

“Barb, I’m flying, I’m flying, I’m flying!”

And here I go, towards heaven, far above the driveway and Nanny’s house.  Above the street and then to Uncle Pippi’s garden, where I wildly zoom down, low to the ground, to see the tomatoes, peppers, green beans, basil, parsley, whatever he’s planted, so low to just touch the top of the cornfield, where I see Uncle Pippi working.  He smiles at me.  The garden gate is open, the hoe waits for me.  The garden is a daily dose for peace from devil-evil wartime serpents of his own.

Up and up I go, fly away over the Noroton Heights neighborhood, until I see our Noroton Avenue house, where I live with Mom and my sisters, and then swoop over to Mom’s sisters’ homes that I know so well – Matheline on Relihan Road, to Joyce on West Avenue, Mae on Park Lane, and Dee Dee on Sterling Place.  I fly over to Weed Beach on Long Island Sound, where I label everything mine, and it is all my Darien.  It will always be my Darien that freely fills my spirit with joy.  The blue flowing cape falls off from around my neck and drifts slowly away to the clouds.

With a birds-eye view and out-stretched arms, I fly over Nanny’s house, the yard, the gardens, see the clothesline in the backyard, where Aunt LaLa smiles as she hangs pink, billowing sheets, see Grandpa’s prickly cactus plant sitting on the back porch, and cucumbers that grow in the kitchen garden, a place where everything is beautiful and safe, and where the Blessed Mother sent the magic water through the garden hose to Barb to me.  Mom is there now, in the driveway, with my sisters.  She smiles at me.  I turn and call to her.

“Mom, look at me!  I’m flying, flying, flying!”

And, off I go again, sprinkled with sisterly love from the garden hose, fly into the blue sky of heaven in this magical world, guided by the forces of Mother Mary, as she teaches me the healing power of sisterly love.  I fly and search for Mother Mary, the Queen of Heaven, who leads me back to her path whenever I stray, to stand before her, with my sins and sorrows, to beseech her never-ending shield of firm protection over my sisters and me.

    The Victorian Gothic Italianate house is five minutes away from the little green Cape house that I squeeze in with Mom and my sisters.  Here, in subsidized housing, I share a bedroom with Donna, who, in my unspoken opinion, is a bit too sloppy.  Most mornings, I straighten out the turquoise bedspread on her bed.  Mom orders us to do chores before we head to high school every morning and swears cruel words if we don’t comply.  I’m a shy teenager stuck in a small, wealthy town, and, even worse, for the 1970s, a child of divorced parents.  I think everybody in town knows it and there’s no way to sugarcoat how I feel.

            Even though the town is not the same as when Mom grew up here in the 1930s, lots of her extended family lives here.  My sisters and I trek all over, to every aunt’s house, investigate every playground, park, woods, and God-only-knows what else along the way.  Sometimes Mom’s brother, Uncle Pippi, invites me to enter his garden.  He swings open the garden gate to his sanctuary, and I step inside, my blue-sneakered feet feeling quite sneaky.  He shows me the status of string beans dripping in bunches, puts a few plucked tomatoes in my hands, then holds open the garden gate, notice for me to go.

            Sometimes, Mom gives us rides in her old station wagon and along the way, we pass the Victorian.  She tells me that the owners of the Florentine Iron Works in Brooklyn owned the house in 1939, when she was twelve years old.

            “That’s a real old house, built in the 1800s,” said Mom.  I glimpse the black iron swirls of entrance gates through the trees in front of what I call the wedding cake house.

            The Victorian is as sweet as a big, white-frosted wedding cake, the kind of cake I just want to scoop up, sugary and delicious, to lick every last bit of buttercream icing.  It’s decorated with curlicues, pointed arches, scalloped edges, iced rosettes, and leafy latticework, layer-upon-layer, with peaks, in the same way a wedding cake is ornamented.  Wings, towers, corniced eaves, angled windows, and fine ironwork grace balconies in layers that draw me in.  Orbed spires, like a bride and groom, top the cake.  The house is a baker’s wish come true.   

            When I am fifteen years old, and gotta’ make some money, Uncle Pippi gets me a housecleaning job.  He picks me up in his car, drives five minutes, and pulls into the side driveway of the Victorian.  My heart skips as the path to the house is like the path to heaven.  I’m going inside the wedding cake house!

            Uncle Pippi tells me the tasks, and, as he has errands to run, leaves me all by myself.  I walk through this sanctuary as though in a dream.

            In a sunlit hallway, the vacuum cleaner glides as I cover pink flowers and swirling diamonds and squares on an antique carpet.  I am awed by the tightly woven yarn.  It is quite different from the yellow knots I embroidered into a sunburst on the seat of my blue jeans.

            I stare at a grandfather clock.  The minute hand slowly tick-tocks and a painted sun smiles at me from above the gilt plate of the clock face.  

            Because of my dilly-dallying, I don’t have time to gaze out windows at the flowering gardens and hurry upstairs with the vacuum cleaner.

            In a bedroom, furniture explodes in Victorian glory with mahogany carved roses and almond-shaped finials.  The wood glows as carved birds at the top of an armoire nearly turn their heads and sing to me.

            I lay the vacuum handle down on the floor, its flexible hose carelessly curves under the bed.  A glass cabinet filled with antique French Bebe dolls with soulful, blue eyes, stare back at my soulful, brown eyes.  Golden ringlets frame faces with pink cheeks.  Bonnets with ribbons and ruffled petticoats peek out from pink silk smocks.  Tiny hands hold white gloves.

            In this quiet house, using my housework hands, I feel content.  I forget about the turmoil that rolls around Mom, sisters, and me – the explosive fights, the things I don’t have and can’t get.  I dream to meld my painfully shy girl self with budding traces of assertive control.

             “What a beautiful house!”  I can’t contain my joy even though I’m beat from housework, as I settle into Uncle Pippi’s car.

            “Jeanne, do you know what this house is nicknamed?” asks Uncle Pippi. 

             “No, I don’t know.  What’s it called?”  I yearn to know more about the wedding cake house.

             “It’s called The Garden Gate,” said Uncle Pippi.

“Daddy!  Leave her alone!”  The words strangle out, thrust forward, uncontrollably, like the invasive, bitter cress weed infecting the gardens at Nanny’s.  My screams join my sisters’ as my begging pulls tight, like a knotted cord, choking me.  At nine years old, I try to protect Mom.          

Mom had grabbed the butcher knife, silvery gleam shimmering in her fist as she ran ’round the kitchen table, following Daddy as he suddenly turned, swaggering unsteadily away at the sight of the knife.  Mom’s scowling face is madder than the buzzing hornets in a nest that I jab at with a stick.  Blue ribbons on her untied apron swing wildly.  Around her neck, a “Hail Mary, pray for us sinners” medallion crazily flips.            

The knife, used to trim blood-red roasts for Sunday dinners, is an attack tactic in this war.  She uses the weapon, aims to end the fight of belittling stabs with his drunk hands that pull her close.  She uses it to protect my sisters and me. 

            A rose garden lines the right side of the cement path leading from the house to the street.  Another way, the garden is on the left side of the cement path leading from the street to the house.  Whichever way, the rosebushes are in the front yard, Babcia’s domain. My sisters and I are forbidden to play there, and, God forbid, don’t dare to touch the roses. 

            However, every now and then, the devil that I am, when I believe the house is quiet, and Mom isn’t bothering me to do a chore, or she’s busy with my little sisters, or she tells me to go find something to do and get out of her hair, I sneak out to the front yard, climb up a young, red maple tree, and gaze at the rosebushes.  I just gotta’ dream.  I’m taking a risk of being caught and getting a harsh slap from Mom, yet I’m doing it my way and think the tree will hide me for a bit.

            Mom says the rosebushes belong to my Polish grandmother, Babcia, given to her by Uncle Eddie.  Yet, in my young heart-of-hearts, the roses belong to me.  The yard belongs to me.  The house belongs to me, too.  Everything is all mine, mine, mine.

            Soft yellow and the palest shade of pink roses bloom full, petals bursting, with tiny brown and yellowish squiggly sprouts, like sea creatures, that squiggle at the roses’ center. With stems as tall as me, prickered boughs bend down from the weight of exploding blossoms, tempting me to touch.  Roses as soft as Aunt LaLa’s pink powder puff that sits on her vanity and that I softly stroke across my cheek.  Petal upon petal, I don’t know which is prettier, the blooms, or the pinker buds still tightly curled.  Their energy floods me with a desire to pry them open and search for who-knows-what inside.

            Sooner or later, my younger sister, Barb, finds me in the tree, asks me to chalk out a game of hopscotch on the rose petal-lined path, dangerously close to the forbidden rosebushes.  I climb out of the tree.

             Suddenly, Mom yells out a window, “Don’t touch the roses!  Jeanne, make sure your sister doesn’t touch them!  You’ll get hurt by the prickers!  And, the bees!”  By the prickly tone of her voice, I know I’m in trouble.

             “Jeanne, I don’t want to listen to your grandmother bitchin’ at me!  Go on in the backyard.  The front yard belongs to Babcia!”  Mom reminds me for the umpteenth time. 

            Sometimes, a few roses get misled by this misbehaved daughter, and Babcia curses at Mom, usually first in English, then Polish.  I’d feel sorry about that, yet, the forbidden roses must reach my uncontrollable hand.  I’d wonder why Babcia can’t share her roses.  After all, at my Italian Nanny’s house, Grandpa shares beautiful zinnias from his flower garden that bring poetic thoughts to mind.

            Other days, Mom sings the same warning song about Babcia’s rosebushes as my sisters and I head to St. Mary’s school, the rose blossoms springing along the path.  I close the heavy, oak front door of my house, sprinkle my feet lightly down the green-painted, wooden steps of the front porch, slip my hand round the green, column post, feel its smoothness, and follow sisters Donna and Barb.  A few petals, loosened from the fluffy pink and yellow puffs of blooms, lay in the grass along the path to the front gate.

            It was only thirty feet from porch to the street sidewalk, but, oh, how the front yard made me want to linger!  The tempting yellow and pink roses, the irises, the hydrangea bushes, the purplish Rose of Sharon bush, the red maple tree, the green grass, and the path to the backyard, where I want to run and play.  Sparrows dart back and forth, land in the maple tree, and call their friends to join them.

             “See the beautiful flowers, feel the sun upon them, the grass so green, the purple irises nod to me, the rose petals are blushing,” the birds seem to sing.

            As Mom stands on the front porch, holding baby Maria, she tells me to get going.  I swing a brown paper lunch bag, my name carefully written by my hand in script below the rolled down top, and slowly drag my feet along the path.  Mom calls to Donna to tie her shoe and tells Barb to straighten out her uniform collar.  In this second when Mom’s distracted, I quickly grab a few pink rose petals off a bloom, avoid the angry prickers, pray that Mom or Babcia do not see me, frightened by the thought of what if they do, and stuff the softness to my nose to take in the sweet, fragrant perfume.

            I rub the petals on my cheek and roll them between my fingers in a soothing motion, as the fragrance seeps into my skin.  Then, I stick my forbidden rose petals in the pocket of my uniform and get going, my way.

Note: I began writing this story in 2008 and finished it in June, 2023. Barb gave me a vase of pink roses in June, 2023, which was the inspiration to complete this story. Her rosebushes were grown from a cutting from Babcia’s rosebushes on Jefferson Street.