Life-Like

The fingers of one hand were pressed to the rough fake grass as the other slowly brought the bakelite train transformer to full throttle - and everywhere red oil smoke and sparks churned out ozone trainsmell...

Where does this train go? Can it take me far? Can I climb inside the dining car and sit next to the striped-shirt boy and freckle-faced girl? Does the conductor have a pocketwatch? Can I live in Plasticville where store-windows glow yellow at night? Here, ya know - as close as people get to war is the Buy War-Bonds billboard. People don't get sick, really, as the hospital is where folks go only for white linen bandages, tongue depressors and to have babies. Around town, there's no such thing as high-pressure sodium vapor streetlights - only clean glass globes with Edison lights. Wool trousers are usually on sale at the Dry Goods and root-beer floats are sold at the soda-fountain in tapered milkshake glasses while chromed bar-stools spin around and around on oiled wooden floors

* * *

In a modern culture
My friend you must be careful
They've a million ways to kill you
In this dangerous world
There's an art to growing old
Taking chances
Magic happens
~ Breaking up the Girl, Garbage

Twisted Yarn

This old crocheted afgan was made by my great-aunt Mary. From the bits my mother revealed to us, Aunt Mary was generally a cruel person that was touched by some level of manic-depressive disorder and subsequently commited suicide several years before I was born. My sister's and I often heard the story of how my grandmother had tried to call her for several days and finally had sent my father to check on her. The house was located at 199 West Main Street. The doors were locked but her purse sat on the dining room table, so my father ultimately decided to break in.

She had hung herself from the transom above the doorway between the dining room and kitchen. We didn't know Aunt Mary, so we weren't particularly bereaved by the story and I'm a little embarrassed to say we found it somehow, intriguing. She wasn't real to us as kids - more of a person that was put-together by recall and fueled by our own imagination. Really though, she was real and it's certainly tragic but I felt more for my dad. I know he had unspoken difficulty after the war-time he served in the Philippines. My mom never detailed what the effects to him were - it was something she would talk about vaguely through allusion. But I do know he had been exposed to many forms of death and was touched by the death of his own father and brother, who perished in a large coal mine fire disaster at the end of the war. I've often wished I could somehow unlock those secrets but maybe it is better for me than I cannot.

Oh well, this afgan...

It was used on our couch for years - it is a matrix of red and gray crocheted squares framed by a black border - I am guessing it must be around seventy--five years old. Besides great-aunt Mary, It reminds me of being home from school on sick-days when I'd curl up on the couch watching TV and having 'sick-food' like poached eggs on toast, orange juice and baby aspirin. It also reminds me of my mom - in later years when I'd come to visit. She often would sleep with it on the couch especially after she had her left-leg amputated. She would say "It's too hard to put back on my leg and walk to bed" (referring to that sock-mounted artificial thing).

It's odd how a twisted piece of yarn can matter, but it does.