The Possum Poem

So Gerald Stern wrote a poem

about road kill, a poem

everybody seems to know,

but I wonder if everybody thinks

about it quite as often as I do.

His poem is about an opossum

with a hole in its back “and the wind

blowing through his hair,” dead

on the road. Stern says he will

“behave like a Jew” and touch

the opossum’s face, stare into his eyes,

and pull him off the road.

After dark, after I’ve locked

the front door for the night,

after the outside cat has retreated

to her cozy shelter, I hear her

food dish banging on the porch.

It is pushed, flipped, slid, and flipped again,

its stainless steel racket pulling me

to the front door knowing

what I’ll find.

I turn on the light and lean against

the glass to see an opossum with its nose

in the dish—eating, or pushing it in a last-ditch

effort to extract every morsel from this

civilized meal. Sometimes the animal

is intact, and sometimes I see

the one whose back has been scalped.

I once knew a man who raised

baby opossums rescued from the pouches

of road-killed mothers. He explained

that opossums seek out macadam

because it retains the day’s heat.

Opossums have cold feet.

My feet get cold, too. I go through

boxes of foot warmers every winter.

I’m lucky. I can slap them on my socks

and walk around the house without fear

that two tons of metal will run me down

in my kitchen. But there she is,

the possum mama, nourishing her babies,

trying to get comfortable

in the only way she knows how.

And along come those bright lights,

that big noise, but her movements

are slow, way too slow

for 300 bullying horsepower.

I don’t know where Gerald Stern lives,

or how many opossums he has seen

on the road. I live in the country,

and see them on almost a daily basis.

Maybe it’s because there’s rarely room

to pull over, or maybe it’s because I’m only

one-quarter Jewish, but I’ve never

moved a dead opossum out of further

harm’s way. I like that he did, though.

But for now I set out a clean food dish

on the porch every morning,

wash the possum bathtub

I used to call the water dish, and keep

the cat food coming. When I lean

against the glass and see the one

with the skinned back, I tell her I'm glad

she survived to enjoy these meals.

We each do what we can.

Deadlines Big and Small

I mentioned on Facebook today that my writing group is valuable because it makes me accountable. We meet every two weeks, and I'm expected to bring three pages of my middle-grade novel-in-progress for critiquing. We've been meeting for several months now, and so far I've shown up with the required pages in hand. Sometimes these pages are written the day of the meeting. Did I say "sometimes"? Most of the time these pages are written a few hours before the meeting starts.

The group is great. There are four of us, all writing in the same genre and each writing quite differently. One of us has a great deal of experience with children's literature and is well published. I hope she's getting something out of these meetings, because she certainly gives a lot. The others have less experience, but are good writers and insightful readers.

However, I realized today (and I'm surprised it took me so long) that if I write this book at the rate of three double-spaced pages every two weeks, it'll take me years. And that's just for the first draft! I must speed up the process.

The other thing I mentioned on Facebook is a handy little download called Freedom (available from macfreedom.com). Costing $10, this little program sits on your monitor waiting for you to summon it. You do this when you need to accomplish something requiring your undivided attention--undivided, that is, by Words With Friends games, forum postings, commenting on someone's Facebook photo, research on ticks (or whatever), or the irresistible desire to check your email. Freedom cuts off your access to the Internet.

Once you set it for a certain amount of time (one writer recommends three hours, but my usual is 45 minutes), you are truly cut off from anything happening online. Freedom is a tough little program; you can't get around it, so don't bother trying.

So . . . now that I know the secret of productivity, I'll have to put it to use more often. Just how often is something I've yet to figure out.

While I've been holed up in the house.....

I'm still in freaked-by-ticks mode, and haven't been venturing out much, although that will probably change (cautiously) now that the weather has warmed again. But in the cool temperatures of the past few weeks I embarked on a project I've been thinking about for awhile.

Last year I bought a footstool at an antique shop. It cost only $21, and was probably a circa 1960 "antique," but I liked its sturdy, simple lines. I didn't like the fabric that covered it, and planned to change it right away. Well, we know how those things go.

Here's how it looked when I bought it (and used it for many months). Note how crappy the pink and green fabric looks against the Persian rug it's sitting on:



So last month I rather impulsively sketched out a design I felt would work with the rug without actually copying it, and then (this is the fun part) dove into my large stash of wool to pick out colors. I often play with colors by dyeing or overdyeing, but this time I wanted to use as-is colors and make the project go quickly. Then I started hooking. (That's fun too.)

I had a hard time figuring out the exact dimensions of the design. It's not as though I were covering something flat; the footstool had padding, and the hooked design would have to cover the top and a bit of the sides as well. I didn't have a lot of confidence that it was going to work.

When I finished it, or guessed I had, it was time to operate on the existing cover. I removed a zillion staples......



And peeled the pinky-greeny fabric off, along with a layer of dried, crumbling foam rubber. This was underneath:



Sort of sweet, isn't it? But it doesn't go any better with the rug (or anything else in the house) than the first fabric did. So I removed some more staples and peeled the chrysanthemums off as well.

For padding, I cut two pieces of latex left over from trimming a 1" latex mattress pad. I covered the rectangular block of wood with one and put a narrower strip on top, creating the slightly domed effect I was going for. Then I placed my hooked design on top. I discovered that I hadn't left quite enough of the burlap on all sides. What I should have done at this point was to sew strips of brown wool around the hooking to create an ample border. But I didn't.

Instead, I made good use of my son's staple gun. For those who don't already know this, adding staples is a lot more enjoyable than removing them.

Here's the finished footstool. It's not perfect, but it looks good on three out of four sides. For a first effort, I'll take it. I'm happy with the way it looks on the rug.

A Thousand Ughs

For the third time that I know of in the past year or two (I'm losing track), I've been infected by a tick. This could be a source of amusement, I suppose (my doctor calls me The Tick Magnet, or The Mine Sweeper), but this time I'm not amused.

This time I was bitten in the head, the least favorable site, the closest to the brain. This time the tick was attached for the maximum length of time (approximately 99 hours) before I found it. This time while the tick fed on and on I hugged and kissed and played with my 8-month-old grandson. This time, while blindly trying to remove the tick (it was on the back of my head), I managed to pop the contents of its fully engorged abdomen back into my bloodstream. Ugh. A thousand ughs.

This time, like the other times, I’m on my own, with very little confidence about what I’m doing. My doctor, an internist and very nice guy, isn't very knowledgeable about tick-borne illnesses. The rest of the local medical community (and indeed, throughout most of the U.S.) is the same. Even the infectious-disease specialists aren't on top of what is fast becoming a plague in the northeast. Last year I took what I thought was a radical step when I told my doctor I wanted to be on Doxycycline for a whole month—but then my veterinarian said, “Gee, Susan, we keep dogs on it for two months.”

This time I'm on Doxy for two months with a double daily dose. Doxy makes one highly sensitive to the sun; the first time I took it, I wasn't careful and lost a lot of hair, sunburned at the roots. Fortunately, it grew back. This time, on a double dose, I have to keep all of me covered outdoors. The double dose came from reading Dr. Joseph Burrascano’s treatment guidelines. If you even just glance at a few pages, you’ll see how complex is the issue of diagnosis and treatment. Lyme Disease websites are populated by people who seem to know a great deal about tick illness, but seem is the operative word. Some inspire more confidence than others, but I’m reluctant to blindly follow anyone's advice.

Most of the Lyme-knowledgeable people insist the only way to go is to find a Lyme-Literate MD and put yourself in his or her hands. This is what I know about LLMDs: They’re far away, they’re expensive, they prescribe some heavy-hitting (often IV) antibiotics, and they don’t accept insurance. One thing I don't know is how they got to be LL. Can any physician declare himself/herself to be Lyme-Literate? Who oversees LLMDs? Even the people who swear by their LLMDs don't seem to be getting better very quickly. I’m reluctant to invest in even the gas required to drive to one of these LLMDs without a lot more assurance that I’d get something out of it.

I just received a bottle of an anti-bacterial herb from the Rain Forest. I've read about it online, and one of my neighbors said his daughter had good results from taking it. Some say it kills the spiroketes carried by the tick; others say it simply drives the infection into hiding. Once again, who the hell knows? Directions on the bottle say to start with one drop. At least that much is clear.

From my journal: June 6, 2005

Tonight I was doing dishes when a big fat fly landed on the vertical window frame in front of me. My first thought was to reach for the fly swatter, but while I've killed a lot of flies over the years these days I always hesitate, feeling that Jill is looking over my shoulder and disapproving. She never liked to kill anything. So while I was mentally debating the fly's demise, another thought came into my head: Place the edge of the fly swatter next to him. He will step onto it, and you can carry him to the other window and put him outside. Wondering where that thought came from, I said out loud, "That's ridiculous." Flies seem to recognize fly swatters, and I was certain any fly, including this one, would take off the instant I approached him with one in my hand.

The thought persisted. So I dried my hands, picked up a fly swatter, and reached out to the fly. I put the edge next to him, and in the process got a little too close and actually bumped him. He took a step backward. Then after a moment he stepped forward—onto the fly swatter. I carried it, with the fly aboard, to the window at the other end of the kitchen. Leaning over, I opened the window. When the fly got outside, he flew off.

Leave it to Jill to orchestrate miracles that don't involve obvious props like burning bushes and parting waters.

(Trying to) Do the Right Thing

"Do the right thing." It was a mantra of my crowd when I was a teenager. I'm not sure why, and I'm not even sure what it meant. Certainly we weren't a gang of do-gooders. We were decent kids with good hearts for the most part. But we also acted like teenagers. If each of us helped an old lady across the street at least once, we had a similar track record of sneaking into the local movie theater.

Anyway, when I came upon some old prescription meds from my late dogs this week I tried to do the right thing. I know flushing them is a bad idea, as is tossing them in the trash. Some environmental-minded communities collect pills for proper disposal, but my rural area does not. So I called a pharmacy to see if they would take my old pills. The pharmacist said they wouldn't, but the State Police would.

So I called the State Police. The officer was very nice, but said they wouldn't either. He told me that a neighboring county collected hazardous materials, but they wouldn't take anything from my county. He said, "Why don't you just flush 'em?" I said, "Because I don't want pharmaceuticals in my well water." He then said maybe the hospital pharmacy would take my old pills.

The hospital pharmacist was very nice, but said they wouldn't. He had another suggestion for me: Burn the pills, plastic bottle and all, in my woodstove. He sounded quite pleased with his suggestion. Ugh.

Why is it so hard to do the right thing for the environment? I know in some cities it isn't hard, but there are areas—like mine—that really need to catch up. My family recycles, but around here it isn't easy. Until recently we had to separate the different kinds of plastics and the different color glass bottles, and remember to take them to the nearest collection site on the right day of the month. That was always a roll of the dice, and I often ended up with a garage full of recycling while I waited for the appointed day to roll around in the following month. Then I discovered that another county had single-stream recycling. We bag up all the glass and plastics together and put the newspapers in paper bags*, and I load up my SUV and take everything to the recycling center, which is 26 miles away. It's convenient for me because it's near several stores that I visit about once a month.

But how many people will do this? We don't go to a lot of trouble, but I suspect it's more trouble than a lot of people are willing to go to. Recycling is important. Proper disposal of hazardous materials is important. Our local governments should give these things some priority. Meanwhile, I still have my dogs' old pills. They've become a symbol.

*Paper bags! I tried to get some from a supermarket to use for recycling, but they were literally snatched out of my cart by an officious employee. This was so completely unexpected that I didn't react as I should have (taking the person's name, etc.). I told this story to a friend who lives in another state, and she stuffed a Priority Mail flat-rate box FULL of paper grocery bags and shipped them to me. Good friends make up for a lot.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

I watched a long-forgotten rerun of "Cheers" last night, and when I heard the lyrics of the theme song I thought of the Jazz Club. A bar in a small hotel in town, they had a jazz trio—piano, bass and drums—every Wednesday night. My friend Bobby and I went there the first time because he knew the bass player. I was working full-time then, and thought Wednesday was an odd choice for a night out, but I quickly changed my mind. It wasn't long before we showed up every Wednesday. We'd have a drink and dinner, and listen to the music, and then I'd go home around 10:00 while Bobby stayed on until the end of the last set.

Some of the patrons were transient (it was a hotel, remember), but the club had plenty of regulars: Mark and Sharon, the young couple who knew every fancy step to every sophisticated dance; Mary, the pretty, middle-aged lady who filled a table with her girlfriends each week; Leroy, the slick romantic who seduced Mary despite her friends' warnings. And then there was Ira.

Since my diet was even more limited than the limited menu, I always ordered the same salad for dinner. Betty, the waitress, always remembered. Thalia, the Greek bartender, understood whatever hand gesture I made over the heads of other customers. I became good friends with the trio and some of their family members, and the piano player was startled to discover that the beautiful young musician whose obituary he had cut out and saved years earlier was my daughter Gillian.

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came

For a few years the jazz club gave me the feeling of community I have always sought in my life. But nothing stays the same, and so eventually the trio lost that gig, the jazz club became just another bar, and we stopped going. If I walked in tonight, I doubt I'd be recognized. But that's okay, because I suspect I no longer have the energy or inclination to make a 40-mile round trip every week to eat, drink, and be merry. I still seek community, though, and these days every other Wednesday evening is spent with a writing group. Everybody knows my name there too.