“Once upon a time,” Dad began, “there were three chairs. Papa Chair, Mama Chair, and Baby Chair.”
“Chairs?” asked Junior, scrunching up his face.
“Yes, chairs,” Dad replied. He continued, “So Papa Chair said to Mama Chair –“
“Chairs don’t talk,” interrupted Junior.
“These chairs do,” Dad said. “Papa Chair said –“
“How can a chair talk? It doesn’t have a mouth,” said Junior.
“Maybe the wind whistles through the slats and makes a noise,” Dad explained.
“But then the chair has no control over it. It has to wait for the wind to come along.”
Dad sighed. “Just let me tell the story. Papa Chair said to Mama Chair, ‘How are you today?'”
“Maybe Papa Chair squeaked. Sometimes chairs squeak, right?” Junior interjected.
Dad ignored him. “Mama Chair didn’t answer, but Baby Chair said, ‘Can’t you see Mama Chair is a broken mess?'”
“Of course Papa Chair couldn’t see. Chairs don’t have eyes,” said Junior.
Dad continued, “Papa Chair didn’t know what to do! Baby Chair said, ‘Just call a committee.'”
“This is getting stupider, Dad,” Junior said.
Dad pretended not to hear. “Papa Chair said, ‘What committee? Why?’ Baby Chair said, ‘Any committee could help. They all have Chairmen.'”
“Yeah, well, when my chair broke, you just said that it was letting me down.” Junior said. “And then, you said that you had thought about replacing it with a rocking chair, but you kept going back and forth on it. Psssfftt… Dad jokes”
The poem is made up of quatrains with an aabb rhyme scheme. Syllable count 3-7-7-1. Lines one and two rhyme on a two-syllable word; lines three and four rhyme on a monosyllabic word.
I’m reading a book called Hoop: A Basketball Life in 95 Essays by Brian Doyle. It almost makes me want to watch a basketball game.
Almost.
I don’t think I’ve watched a basketball game since high school. When I went to Syracuse University, I got to know a few of the basketball players, but I never went to a single game.
This was back in the ’70s when they had a new young coach named Jim Boeheim. He retired after the 2022-23 season. I heard a radio announcer on the NPR station talking about the SU basketball coach retiring and she referred to him as Jim Bohemian. I laughed. I knew his name well. I thought it sad that after decades of coaching, he was still unknown to some.
But that’s true of all of us.
No matter how notable our lives, we’re equally unnotable.
And that’s okay.
Mostly, I watched games in high school as a cheerleader.
Yes, I was a cheerleader. I followed in my sister’s footsteps.
Oh, the good old days.
Not really.
My freshman year I had planned to play field hockey but I got very sick with mono and missed three weeks of school. I never tried to play another sport.
Then, I was a cheerleader, as I said. I didn’t — and still don’t — really understand football. But I know the cheers. “First and ten! Do it again!” Don’t even try to explain it to me.
Basketball made ever-so-much more sense. At least I understood the basics.
Reading Brian Doyle’s book makes me understand how much of the game I missed — such as the grace and beauty of dribbling a basketball.
The other day I was walking on the track above our basketball courts at the sports facility where I work. Below me, kids were playing basketball. They had just finished their first day of school and come to the gym. It’s a time-honored tradition in Cooperstown.
I watched one boy trying to dribble two basketballs — one with each hand — and struggling to keep them even. Before long, it looked more like playing the bongos than dribbling a basketball.
A bit later, a girl took up that same challenge, same activity. She was considerably younger, shorter, and more athletic. She made it look easy. I watched her in admiration. If I hadn’t seen the boy struggling to do the same thing a few minutes before, her ease wouldn’t have stood out to me.
But it did.
I hoped the boy would stick with it — practicing, practicing, practicing.
I thought this morning, as I was reading another Brian Doyle essay on basketball, that I should write a book about swimming.
About the grace and beauty of it.
About the heartbreaks and the victories, the old pools and dank locker rooms, the shiny pools and pristine locker rooms. About parent timers who forget to stop the stopwatch because they’re so intent on watching their child. About the officials who have fallen in the pool during a meet, or had a coach in their face about a disqualification.
Mostly, though, about the Zen reality of swimming laps – swimming down, pushing off the wall, swimming back, over and over and over. Because if that doesn’t mimic life, I don’t know what does.
At least, it mimics life for me.
This stream-of-consciousness blather is brought to you by Linda Hill’s Stream of Conscious Saturday, where the prompt for today was mostly/at least.
It was roughly the size of a grapefruit, translucent, mottled, and reflecting the gold of the cushion it rested on. The sign next to it read, “MAGIC. DO NOT TOUCH!”
Mairi reached toward it, but Iain slapped her hand away.
“DON’T TOUCH IT!” he yelled. “Can’t you read?!”
“I just want to look at it better. I can’t tell what it is,” Mairi said, her lower lip trembling.
The two children stared at ball. It had mysteriously appeared on the table.
“We should tell Mom,” Iain finally said. “It gives me the creeps.”
“She’s in the kitchen with George,” Mairi said. The tone of her voice and the accompanying eye-roll said everything about her feelings toward George.
“I’ll get her,” Iain said. “You wait here, but don’t touch it.”
She frowned and stared. “What makes it magic?” she said aloud and reached for the ball as her mother and Iain came in.
*POOF* Mairi was gone.
Iain grabbed hold of his mom, terrified. “What just happened?!” he cried.
Behind them both, a deep voice ordered, “Bring that here.”
Iain looked at George. His height and heft alone were scary, but that booming voice made Iain’s stomach feel all squeezy.
“Bring it here,” he ordered again.
“But… but…” Iain stammered.
George took a step toward him, so Iain reached for the orb.
*POOF* Iain was gone.
George slid his arm around their mother.
“Now, where were we?” he said, smiling wickedly.
This is my response to this week’s Unicorn Challenge — write a 250 word story based on the picture shown above.
Why do you unsettle me? Why can’t I look into your eyes, your face, without feeling pain? Is it the burden on your shoulders? Is it that I will never fathom your life, so different from mine?
This is in response to Sadje’s What Do You See? prompt — the photograph above.
The other day a conversation I was in touched on the phrase “Choose Joy.”
“It’s all in how it’s said,” the other person was saying, and it hit me how very correct he was.
Say it with heartfelt sincerity and it sounds like what it’s intended to be — an encouraging sentiment. Say it sarcastically, sardonically, with a touch of a sneer and it is exactly the opposite. However a person has heard in the past probably impacts how they hear it today, right?
Every trite little slogan has that potential.
When life is an utter sh-thole, the last thing someone needs to hear is “Choose Joy” — as if they had chosen the fecal matter surrounding them. Sometimes, our choices do lead us to the latrine — but sometimes a thousand things outside our control take us there.
Timing is everything.
When I wake up in the morning, I can tell myself to choose joy today. When I drop a cinderblock on my foot, I may not choose joy in that moment.
But, then, I do have a sign boldly proclaiming “HOPE” on the side of our barn. Does”HOPE” also fall somewhere on the sarcasm/sincerity continuum? Can it be said both ways? I sure hope so? not?
Hope somehow feels different to me.
Yesterday, I lifeguarded at a local park. All the young lifeguards are back to school or at soccer practice or some such. I’m glad I can help.
An old woman came down to the beach. I would guess that she was in her late 70s, maybe early 80s. She was unsteady entering the water from the beach. I watched her pick her way along, hoping she had water shoes on because the zebra mussels can hurt terribly when stepped on.
She lifted the rope separating the shallow end from the deep end over her head and started swimming. Maybe she was a strong swimmer at some point in her life, but she wasn’t yesterday. She made me nervous, especially when she had to stop and “rest” holding onto the rope delineating the further boundaries of the deep end.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, and sounded annoyed at the question.
When she went back to shore, she lost her footing in thigh deep water. I jumped up, quite sure I would need to go in to assist her, but she finally stood again on her own and walked the rest of the way. Back on the beach, she sat, exhausted, in an Adirondack chair for the next hour.
Why she came to mind as I pondered Joy and Hope stream-of-consciously is a bit of a mystery to me. I wish I understood how my mind works. Here’s my guess though:
I think she chose Joy when she chose to go swimming that day. She drove by herself — a questionable choice because she hit a bench when attempted to park. She descended steep uneven stairs to get to our narrow beach. Then she swam — even though it exhausted her and she had lost her footing in the water. She chose to do all that even though the rest of us questioned her choices.
Maybe that’s choosing Joy — choosing something for ourselves, even when it doesn’t make sense.
That line that she clung to? That was Hope. It’s not so much a choice as it is something we just hold onto when we need it.
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 