Painting with Words

Things cannot go on as they have
This pain needs to be felt

Old orders must die 
to make way for the new
Flowers must lose their heads 
to bloom again
Leaves have to crumple 
and fall to the ground
to give life to
spectacular and minuscule 
creatures, evolutions
happening underground

Beneath the snow 
everything seems dead 
but it is simply 
moving slowly

Nothing dies
It is waiting for us 
to see how it all fits together
How the amber sun
that presses into my skin
is the same light 
that touches you
No separation 
We are all 
creatures of the sun

Crystal by 
miraculous crystal
the snow will melt
and a new landscape —
wet and ragged —
will reveal itself
asking for another chance

Because we write constitutions
and fly planes and engineer sheep
I forget that we are beasts too

Because we hug slabs of silver light into the night
and wake up to a beeping bomb
I forget that we once rose with the dawn

Because we can send a rocket to Jupiter
split molecules and see our own DNA
I forget that we know nothing

Because we can build our resumés
get our degrees and tell our stories
I forget that these are just extras

Because we lock the door at night
and go into our little boxes
I forget that we don’t own anything

Today I had to ask a neighbor to borrow a bathroom scale to weigh my children. Our pediatrician is only doing telemedicine well checks and drive-through vaccinations because Personal Protective Gear is still scarce. A scale was delivered to my porch in 15 minutes.

In our neighborhood email group of 113 houses, here is what has been asked for, received, and offered since the coronavirus pandemic arrived in mid-March:

REQUESTED

• Newspapers to start a worm farm
• Childcare ideas for a 6-month-old baby
• Rainbows and notes for healthcare workers (collected by high school students)
• A wheelbarrow
• Masks for the neighborhood homeless shelter 
• Birdseed
• Quarantine-friendly care packages for two very pregnant moms
• SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) for making Kombucha
• Old silk ties to make a COVID Quilt

OFFERED

• Errands, grocery shopping, and prescription pick-ups for older and immunocompromised neighbors
• 4 skate helmets, Little League-sized bats, and a bike for a middle-schooler
• Who to call if you see a bee swarm
• Yard signs thanking healthcare heroes and essential workers
• A box of books, including the Spiderwick Chronicles
• Notary services (from the front porch and a safe social distance)
• Weber kettle charcoal grill
• Hand-drawn coloring sheets to thank mail carriers and garbage truck drivers
• Carolina slow-cooker pulled pork & slaw, Gatorade, jelly bellies, coffee, and a slew of We’re all in this together‘s for the couple who told us they had COVID-19

The cyclone outside is losing strength
I turn away from the window
and feel the ghosts
coming back

The gray fog
The faces in a crowd
The mask in the mirror

On Memorial Day, I am remembering my beloved grandfather, Wade Hampton Carden, who served in the Office of the Quartermaster General from 1942 to 1945. As a former sales manager of a grocery chain in Norfolk, Virginia, he was charged with supplying armed forces in Asia, Europe, and Africa with cigarettes, shaving supplies, toothpaste, candy, gum, soft drinks, and other things that made their lives a little easier.

At its peak, this procurement through the War Production Board required 50% of the nation’s candy bar production, 100% of the match box production, 50% of the Virginia peanut crops, 35% of the cigar production, 50% of the chewing gum, more than 50% of the razor blade production, 50% of the good fountain pens, and 100% of the popular brands of cigarette lighters.

Here is what he had to say about his service:

I was proud to have had a part in defending our country and way of life against the Germans and the Japanese. Colonel Webster, “Pop” Hover, and I were together from the beginning to the end. We saw the operation grow in volume from nothing in early 1942 to over $500,000,000 a year by 1945, serving seven million troops overseas. I was privileged to work for almost five years with a fine group of people and saw no one try to profit personally in any way. They performed their duties unselfishly with honor and trust. On leaving active service, Colonel Webster and I were awarded the Legion of Merit, and I resumed my membership in the Officers Reserve Corps, Army of the United States, as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Wade Hampton Carden

My grandfather, who I called Papa, died on August 15, 2006 at the age of 95. I still think of him a lot. Here is the eulogy I wrote for him:

Dear Papa

“Did you see the look in his eyes?” my husband Enrico asked me, referring to the photo of you that would appear with your obituary. Warm and rich, they told me unspeakable things like unconditional love. Delightfully mischievous, they reminded me of your playful nature. When Gram would remind you to take out the garbage, I remember how you would cock your head and say, “Ag, why is it that when you look at me, you think of trash?”

“What do you see in his eyes?” I asked Enrico.

“A man who has won the war.”

Yes, you did, Papa. Your resume’ tells the story of a boy who grew up barefoot on a farm in east Tennessee, took an overnight bus to Harvard Business School, married and raised three children with a beautiful schoolteacher, and rose to be one of the top executives of one of the most successful companies in the most powerful city in the world. And not only did you win, but you won your way – with honesty and integrity and respect.

You sometimes liked to point out how you were as tall as Abe Lincoln and had the same shoe size as George Washington. To your grandchildren, you were a living hero. Many people have memories of a lovable and warm grandfather, which of course you were, but what was especially unique about you was your noble character, your pride, and your intense desire to pass down your beliefs.  To borrow my husband’s words, you were “an eagle, an American eagle.”

Inside me, you are still soaring.

A man with a saint’s name 
called our house

He had the wrong number but,
No matter, he said, and left some scriptures
on our answering machine

Hebrews 13:5 —
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you”

My teenage daughter was wondering
why I was writing down the verses —
I don’t even go to church

But I wasn’t sure it was a wrong number
or that I am an unbeliever

When my grandmother
read me Genesis
I didn’t understand 
that it was all poetry,
a magnificent design
that takes a lifetime
to unravel

Deuteronomy 7:9 —
“A covenant of love
to last a thousand
generations” 

What if this pact is not
a Father’s promise,
but that which faithfully
tells the planets how to swing
and the birds how to nest?

I want to unforget that this life
is not a bad dream
and we are not ants
wandering over an orb hurtling through space

There are no numbers that are wrong,
no disasters without regeneration,
no triumph where all is won

I must write myself out of this comic book
of thick black lines and primary colors
and walk into the fathomless story 
that is unfolding within and around me, 
the story that is still being written —
no happy endings, no sad ones,
no endings at all

When I tuck the navy blue comforter 
around Mark and ask him 
what he’s grateful for, he says, 
“Can I tell you something instead?”

“In World War II, 
there were these bombers
called B-24s and
half of them crashed 
before combat
because they were that bad.”

He and his brother had read
the story of Louis Zamperini,
Unbroken, the young reader’s edition,
that my aunt sent them 
from Texas in a box. 

“Those were the B-24 Liberators,” 
Luke says in the bunk below him,
“but they called them ‘flying coffins.’”

When I was their age,
I didn’t understand
how death could be a 
liberation.
But now I see.

It’s hard to take off
and stay on course
in these bodies, brains,
with their stiff, heavy controls —
flying coffins
destined to crash.

It gave a man religion, they said,
to fly one of those bombers.

Six years ago, they found a
B-24 Liberator
in an old pine forest in Lazio.

I wouldn’t mind if my wreckage
were scattered in those woods —
boulders pillowed with moss,
trees draping the sky,
a medieval town
clutching the hill.