Second-Hand Smoke

          Lying in bed barely awake,  I became aware of cigarette smoke.  Daddy' s home!  I thought, and bounded from my bed and down the stairs.  I could not have been more than four years old, and already the smell of cigarettes and the joy of being with my father were intrinsically entwined.

          I could hear my parents talking and laughing together in the kitchen.  He was home from the night shift, and although I dreaded when he was on night turn, its saving grace was that I got to see him first thing upon awakening.  I remember the excitement bubbling in me as I ran down the stairs and into the kitchen.

          "Daddy, Daddy!"  I said.

          I climbed up onto my father's lap and, watching the white smoke curl from the cigarette in his hand, sighed and was happy.  Security and contentment were bound together in a lovely smoke ring with my father's name on it.

          My mother set eggs in front of him and poured steaming coffee into his cup.  My father took one last puff from his cigarette before crushing it in the ashtray.  I watched a 

wisp of smoke rise and then die away.

          "Now, honey,"  my mother said, "get down and let Daddy eat his breakfast in peace.  He's tired and hungry.  He's been working all night."

          "I don't really want to eat it in pieces," he said, and I giggled.  

          Sometimes his jokes were corny even to my young ears, but I always laughed.  I wanted him to know how much fun he was.  Even in later years, I laughed indiscriminately at his humor, and he knew and I knew that it was because we shared, he and I, a mutual admiration society.   

          My father gently slid me off his  knee, and I stood and made a pronouncement.  "When I grow up I'm going to smoke cigarettes, too."

          "No, you're not!" my mother said.  "Ladies don't smoke."

I couldn't believe the unfairness of that.  Why was it okay for gentlemen to smoke, but not ladies?  Although I didn't even have an inkling of what the word meant, what I was feeling was the first stirrings of feminism.  Yet, true to the dictates of the time, I gave no voice to my resentment. 

Actually, what my mother meant was that proper ladies didn't smoke, and indeed, in the Thirties, they did not, at least not in public view.  By the time I was twenty-one, though, not only improper ladies smoked, but perfectly proper ones too, as well as rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves, doctors, lawyers -- and Indian chiefs.  I did, too, and enjoyed it for thirty years.  Long after my father's death, with grandmotherhood approaching for my first time, and finally educated to the danger of second-hand smoke, I gave up cigarettes forever.  It was one of the most difficult things I ever did.  

          The worst of it was that in giving up cigarettes, hard as that was, I also gave up thirty-some chances per day to recapture a whiff of childhood happiness with my father, and even now, when a stray curl of cigarette smoke wafts my way, for a brief moment I am filled with nostalgia and long for my dad.

Tania

Eight-years old

she talks to trees 

and waterways

and animals 

from man to mouse

Before she plays outside my house

She runs to greet the weeping willow

That droops its mourning branches

In majestic sorrow over the creek

To which I hear her say

Dear river

You look so pretty 

In the sunlight today

It’s a creek, sweetie, I say and smile

I know says she but don’t you see

I call it river to make it feel

Important and bigger

She teaches me so much

I love her so

Grant me please 

Half a score or more years

In which to watch her grow

Tallinn, Estonia and a Nightmare in Progress

The date was May 31, 2005, and we were far from home in the fourth port of our cruise on the Baltic. With our native guide Karin, we were enjoying the beautiful city of Tallinn, which rises dramatically in narrow, ancient roads to the heights of Old Town, one of Northern Europe’s best-preserved medieval towns. It was in the Cathedral of St. Mary (once Catholic, now Lutheran from the time of the Reformation), that several bus groups of us were being treated to a rendition by the church choir. After the long walk from the bus over uneven cobblestones up the hill to Old Town, it was good to be settled in the pews, resting feet, legs, and backs, and enjoying the voices of the male choir, and the music emanating from the great, silver pipes of the organ positioned on the balcony to the back of the church. Then suddenly, almost rudely plucked from my reverie, beside the pew where my husband Al and I were seated I saw a man from our bus group step into the aisle and, all bent-over, shuffle and stumble desperately, seeming to be trying to regain balance. Several of us seated near the end of the pews half-rose to help him, but it all happened too quickly, and with a loud “smack” he landed hard, face down on the floor. Two men and a woman from our group somehow materialized to kneel beside him in the aisle. “They are doctors and a nurse,” someone whispered. Gently, they turned the man on his back. My husband, professionally unobtrusive as always, quietly reached down and took the man’s wrist, searching a pulse. He looked over at me and shook his head. Then one of the two doctors and the nurse began artificial respiration. The doctor pressed hard and released, pressed hard and released, while the nurse, in synchronization, breathed into the victim’s mouth. After a few moments, I looked at my husband, who still held the man’s wrist. This time Al nodded to me, and I knew they had succeeded in reviving the man.

I heard a voice in the group say that an ambulance had been called. Someone else (perhaps my husband, I’m not sure,) said, “Let’s leave by the other side of the pews.” In silence, we ushered into the street, leaving the two doctors and the nurse to tend to the man. Staying together as a group (there were at least thirty of us,) we moved to the opposite side of the narrow road. I remember no conversation among us, but surely, we must have been buzzing to each other. I do, however, remember thinking that I might be sick, and then I thought I might cry, but thank goodness I did neither. Finally, in the distance we heard a siren wail through the narrow streets as it made its way up to Old Town. Without being told, we pressed against the buildings, giving the ambulance room when screaming its ominous scream, it appeared at the crest of the street.

Karin, our guide, seemed as shaken as we, but after some time, when no one further came out of the church, she said, “It is very sad, but life goes on, and now we must continue our tour.” I was resentful of what I considered her calloused attitude, but later, upon less emotional reflection, I realized it was the only thing for her (and for us) to do.

Late that afternoon, on toward five o’clock, as we passengers were making our way up the gangplank, returning to The Star Princess, our temporary home, I wondered if it was the poor man’s wife behind me in line, for I heard her wistful, almost whispering voice say to a woman accompanying her, “Maybe I expected him to do too much today.” From the corner of my eye, I saw her companion put an arm across her shoulder. “Oh, now don’t think like that,” she said. “He would have told you if he was having difficulty.”

The gangplank led to Deck 4, which is the same deck where the Infirmary is located on the ship. I saw one of the two women behind me knock on the infirmary door. A man in white lab jacket (the ship’s doctor, I presumed) quickly appeared, let them in as though he had been expecting them, and shut the door. That must mean the man who fell in the church has been brought aboard, then, I thought. God! I hope I never have to play the rôle his poor wife is playing right now – and certainly not as a stranger in a strange land. But maybe he will be okay. They did revive him, after all.

Well, I was wrong. We learned later, via passenger grapevine, that the man, a Canadian, did indeed die. His wife opted to remain aboard with the large group of Canadians she was traveling with. From the same grapevine we heard that she felt she needed to be with friends. Funny (isn’t it?) how each of us copes in our own way. I would have wanted to fly home with the body, to be comforted by my children, and to, in return, comfort them.

The next port on our tour was Gydnia, Poland, from which we traveled overland by bus to Gdansk, where, thanks to Lech Waleska, that brave Pole, the communists’ death knell began its tolling and didn’t stop until the Berlin Wall came down and Communism departed the European continent. As we stood in the square in Gdansk before the Monument to the Fallen Shipbuilders, I thought of our own fallen man from Tallinn. Mostly, though, I thought of his poor wife, for the nightmare was hers. His trauma, sad as it was, had been brief. Hers would last to the end of her days.

Mid-Term Break

I challenge winter driving skills

On roads that wend around 

Tree-covered hills. 

Up I go, then down

In steep descent, 

My nerve near spent.

Highway wet with snow

Trees dark against bright sky

Here and there I see

From valley below

Sunlight glints on window panes,

Telegraphing courage. 

I ride my anti-lock brakes

And go slow, yet I quake

And marvel at what it takes

To lure me to risk life and limb

For the privilege of lunch with him,

My grandson home from college.

At the Gym

Assignment:  Try to write a chant

Posture perfect, tummy in

Raise your arms tall.

Inhale

Exhale

Let your arms fall.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me.

Left arm overhead

Bend to the left

Bend to the right

And pulse, pulse

With all your might.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me

Now as before

But on the other side

Bend right

Bend left

Stretch it wide.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me.

Weights in hand

Lift arms shoulder high

Then take them 

Out to the side

And open shoulders wide.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me

Hold a weight at each hip

Bend your knees

Then pulse and dip

Hold the squat

And pulse and dip.

One, two, three

One, two, three

Count with me.

And so it goes 

We bend and stretch

Stretch and bend some more

Defying Old Age

Knocking at our door

Litany

If the child bites,
Bite him back.

It takes two wrongs

To teach what's right.

(Pray for us.)

If the man murders,
Put him to death.

It takes two wrongs

To teach what's right.

(Pray for us.)

But do two wrongs
Make a right?

Maybe yes and maybe no.

Maybe rain and maybe snow.

(Pray for you and me.)

Morning on Capital Crescent Trail - Washington D.C.

A roller blader

Swishes around me.

Close on his heels 
(Or rather, on his wheels) 
A bicyclist circles past, 
Cutting a wide swath, 
Followed by a jogger 
Lean and tall. 
Youthful, all – everyone 

Except me. 
Out of my class, 

Old and slow. 

Suck in stomach muscles 
Just to show 
That I too am fit; 
I too am hale; 
I too am worthy 
Of the Crescent Trail. 

Around a bend 

Yet another jogger comes. 
Older 
Fatter. 
Approaches with jowls jiggling 
Like jelly. 
Jelly-jiggling jowls. 
And what’s more, 
He leads with his belly. 

Footfalls pounding, 
A woman on the run 
Pushes a baby stroller 
Fast in front of her. 
The boy child 
Buckled securely there 
Bounces in his sleep 
And dances unaware 
A wild fandango. 

Next: three hefty women.
Flesh-wobbling women, all three
Amateurs, at a glance I can see

Who know nothing of

Power-walking regimen,

But chatter and chatter,

Thinking it doesn’t matter

That their unsupported bosoms

Bobble and dance.

On this erstwhile railroad site,

I see now a tunnel loom.
Its bricks, black with age,
Prophesy age’s ultimate doom.

I shiver and look up high.

Are those vampire bats

Hanging there from ceiling’s arch?

Or is it just the absurdity

Of my imagination’s perfidy?

Back in daylight again,

I see that the sun,
Through leaves of the trees,

Is strewing lacy shadows

Across my path.

And the morning breeze

Cleaned fresh by last night’s rain,

Stirs a Muse of sorts

Within my brain.

O, Muse

Hark, then!

This shall I do:

I shall make a poem for you.

I shall write it now,

Quickly,

Without fail,

And I shall call it

Morning on Capital Crescent Trail