A Floor Speaks

By Carrie Holmes

Her face became blurry as salty tears filled my eyes. I should have known better than to think that I could find a home in a stranger’s house.

“I never wanted you anyway. You ain’t anything but another check.”

It wasn't the first time that I had heard something like that. Foster home after foster home, they are all the same. It’s like the government pays these people to kick my butt. It all becomes second nature to me.

“You hear me? You ain”t nothing! You ain't never gonna be nothing!”

I thought to myself that if I ain't never gonna be nothing, then I was gonna be something because that’s a double negative. But I dared not say that to her face. Correct her? Please, I'd be picking up my teeth.

I struggled off the cold hard floor, trying to regain my composure, when I felt another kick in my back. Face first I fell straight into the smear of dried blood that had accumulated there from a previous beating. The door slammed. I felt as if even my heart was not enough life support.

I tried again to get up. This time I managed to make it to my feet. I quickly glanced around the room. I was looking for my foster mother, trying to avoid another blow, when suddenly the thick grey clouds, and foggy air, drew my attention to the window. It was the middle of the summer. Weather like this was very uncommon.

Instantly, the phone began to ring. It wouldn’t stop. The pictures on the wall rocked from side to side. Everything in the room began to shake. I struggled to stand. I turned around looking for something to hold onto. I fell.

“The floor is really popular today,” I thought to myself. The floor began shaking harder and harder. The sound of dropping items and shattered glass filled the room. This was no earthquake. This was something beyond geography.

Suddenly a loud screech pierced the air as a crack formed in the floor. It was the sound of war. There was nowhere to move without falling through the huge space that had opened.

I heard a loud, demanding voice.

“Get up!”

I looked around, but no one was there.

“Get up,” the voice commanded again.

The voice became louder and louder. Soon I realized the voice was coming from the crack in the floor. I couldn’t believe it. I got as close to the crack as I could without falling in. I leaned over the floor to see who owned the voice. I saw someone, someone strange yet very familiar too.

I saw me.

“Let me out,” The voice said.

“What?”

“Let me out. I have been trapped inside you for so many years. The abuse you got, I got. The tears you cried, I cried. The pain you felt, I felt. It’s time to put a stop to this. Let me out!”

How was this possible? I was asking myself to let me out. It made no sense. But then, life doesn't make any sense.

“How? How do you want me to do it?” I whispered.

“Trust yourself. All your life you have let others take advantage of us. Now it’s time for us to be happy. Trust yourself! Love yourself! Defend yourself!”

“Trust myself? Defend myself?" You must be crazy, I thought to myself.

“Go!”

So I did.

I picked myself up off the floor.

Carrie Holmes, a freshman at the University at Albany, State University of New York, grew up in New York City.

"Regina's Closet, Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal"

By Diana M. Raab

The following is an excerpt from Regina's Closet: Finding My Grandmother's Secret Journal, published by Beaufort Books, September 2007.

I was ten years old the morning I found my grandmother dead. Our neighborhood in Queens was serene while many residents were out of town celebrating the last three-day weekend of the summer. My mother and father weren’t at home, and my grandfather was visiting his sister Rusza in Paris.

I knocked on Grandma’s bedroom door. She didn’t answer. I cracked the door open and got a whiff of her perfume (Evening in Paris). Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the sheer white curtains swaying in front of the open window overlooking the street. The air in her room was crisp, and the night’s dampness clung to the wooden floor. Grandma’s bed, one of two single beds pushed close together, was beside the window.

Grandma lay beneath her soft checkered Scandinavian wool blanket with fringed edges. She called it the warmest blanket in the world. On her headboard rested Graham Greene’s novel The End of the Affair, a hairbrush, a box of Kleenex, and an open bottle of prescription pills.

“Grandma,” I called softly from the doorway, “can I go to Cindy’s?”
She didn’t answer. I glanced at my new watch. It was already ten o’clock in the morning. On most days Grandma was the first one into the maroon and pink-tiled bathroom that all five of us shared. I walked inside to see if her toothbrush was wet. It was still dry from the night before, but her towel, slung sideways on the towel rack, was still a little damp. The toilet cover was down, just the way she taught me to leave it. I didn’t remember hearing the sound of running water that morning, a sound often heard within the walls of our older house.

In my fluffy blue slippers, I returned to Grandma’s room and tiptoed around Grandpa’s bed toward my Grandma’s side. I gently tapped her shoulder.

“Grandma,” I repeated, “can I please go swimming at Cindy’s? I’ll be back by lunchtime. Promise.” Still no answer. Grandma’s face looked pale and her eyes were loosely shut, as if she were almost ready to get up.
I sensed something was seriously wrong. I tiptoed out of the room, glancing over my shoulder in the hope that she’d wake up and answer me. Under the weight of my footsteps, the wooden floor made cracking sounds. Her closet door was closed and her makeup was spread out on her vanity. I trembled while scurrying to my parents’ room at the end of the hallway. They also had two single beds pushed together with one headboard and two pale pink electric blankets sprawled out on each bed.

The beds were unmade, and on my father’s bedside table was an empty plate with crumbs left from a sandwich he had eaten the night before. The oblong wooden bedside table had a glass covering it and a display of family photographs beneath. One photo caught my eye. My grandmother was leaning against a tree in our backyard. She had a broad smile and seemed playful, the way I will always remember her.

Diana M. Raab is a memoirist, essayist and poet who teaches writing at The University of California, Santa Barbara Extension. She is a columnist for InkByte.com, an online magazine for writers. She frequently writes and lectures on journaling. Her award-winning writing has appeared in numerous national publications. For more information about Diana Raab, her book and other writings, please visit her website, http://www.dianaraab.com.

"She Gave It a New Life"

By Camincha

1. She gave it a new life. Donated the computer that sat in the spare bedroom. Bill, her computer guru-guardian-angel, had given it to her. "An extra one," he had said, "in case yours breaks down." But later he said, "You know if it does break down, it’ll be easier and cheaper to buy parts from the dealer."

So she got on the phone to find someone who would take the little orphan. Many calls later a very energetic, short gentleman, the principal of the local granmar school, said: “Oh! I know a very computer-literate teacher who would love to have it to print out our newsletter.”

2. She gave it a new life. Placed the projector in the hands of her film aficionado friend. She had owned the beautiful piece for many years but seldom used it. It's now in very good hands. So is the little movie camera she obtained years ago by trading the old movie camera and a little cash, and all 30 odd rolls of 8 and Super 8 home movies.
Her friend said, "I’ll place the film in a special safe-deposit box. It won't deteriorate. Won't dry out."

3. She gave it a new life. A purpose, to the sturdy, elegant case of French records and text books her friend Erik had given her. Linda suggested donating it to The Historical Society. But they said only took items if related to San Mateo County. She didn’t press it. And called a French teacher at Oceana High SchooL who said, I’Il be glad to take it.

She’s heard it’s greatly admired——this relic from other times——by the students who are in awe of the leather case trimmed in gold.

4. She gave it a new life. Donated her collection of clippings of the Kennedy family. She mailed them to the Kennedy Historical Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts with a letter that said: I have lovingly collected these. It’s time to pass them on, to be used, perhaps by a member of the Kennedy family who needs more information for their memory album, or to a school, or a student writing a thesis.

The letter with the seal of the Kennedy Historical Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts said: Thank you.
She’s giving them all a new life. No one had to sit by her side. No one had to hold her hand and say, you are doing well, you are doing the right thing.

Now, she has room for new tidings, new colors, new dreams.

Camincha is a pen name for a writer based in Pacifica, California.

"Shiny Things"

By Val Haynes

First of all, I didn’t start out being a shoplifter. It’s not something I was consciously aware of doing, at least not that first time anyway. The other times, I admit I was guilty, even planned on stealing, but not that first time.

The first time it just kind of happened and after the first time, it became easier and easier. In my career as a shoplifter and thief, I have taken: a man’s Piaget watch, $2500 from a pot-dealer, two pairs of jeans (brick red and blue), and $100 from a hard-luck alcoholic who happened to be my boyfriend at the time—oh yeah—and a skirt full of candy from the corner deli down the street from where we lived.

The hundred dollars was for the shaking I needed to stop and the candy was for all the times I had to go to the Saturday matinees empty-handed. I feel remorse about the $100 (my friend needed to pay his rent and his twisted face revealed the anguish my stealing had caused), for everything else I don’t care. My stealing didn’t make a bit of difference to me or anyone else. But the first time—the very first time I stole—it was for my mom. That first shiny thing I stole was a heart-shaped pendent in gold-toned quilted metal. It was my Rubicon—my maiden voyage into a career from which there was no turning back.

You see, I loved shiny things. I still do.

It all started with my Pa. See, when I was little, my Pa called me “Princess.” He called me that name so much I started to believe it, I guess. In third grade I wore a metal and rhinestone tiara to school seven days straight till finally Sister Mary Catherine made me stand in the corner saying it was a vanity.

The tiara didn’t go with the plaid blue uniform worn at St. Peter’s Academy anyway, so it didn’t bother me much, having to give up wearing it to school. Still, I loved shiny things and their clean brightness. Diamonds and bracelets, those kinds of things. You could put a ring on your finger and change your world. People did it all the time, like when they got engaged. Of course, I was too young to think about getting engaged or anything like that. I just thought diamonds and rings and necklaces, stuff like that was, well life-changing. Maybe those things only changed the way you thought about your life. Maybe wearing jewelry and seeing it day-to-day reinforced a kind of possibility—that things—good things were possible. Even for me. Not just people in shiny magazines. Maybe I’d grow up to be a princess after all.

Back then, my favorite place was Adel’s, the small jewelry shop I passed each day on my way to school. Adel’s was an island of shining prospects despite its location wedged between two abandoned store fronts on a side street littered with other shiny things like beer cans, broken glass and foil wrappers. I didn’t mind the street so much; it’s that Adel’s stood diagonally across from the El Dorado, a smelly old man’s bar, where my Pa spent most afternoons seated on a barstool.

He became a “regular” when one of our town’s chief employers, a paper-mill, went bankrupt. I didn’t understand why he drank instead of getting another job. I suppose he resigned himself to being out of work in the same way I resigned myself to being called names other than “Princess.” You just get tired and give up the ghost.

Both to and from school I walked this street never once passing in front of the El Dorado for fear I’d see my pa’s scowl or worse, his grin. If he grinned he was happy and I would have to go in and suffer the embarrassment of one of his drunken exhortations about how I was such a good girl and such a smart girl, all that kind of crap. I was hyper vigilant about avoiding him especially those days.

It was Christmastime and he was drinking more and more—getting stranger and stranger. There were mornings when I found him passed out on the john, mornings when I woke to find my mom with a black eye, mornings when the car we once owned mysteriously vanished. The winter I turned thirteen I passed Adel’s so often, on my way to do some errand for my mom, that old man Adel practically invited me in as I paused for a quick peek at the window.

One December afternoon the shop’s window glittered with the traditional colored lights and garland of the season forcing me to a full-stop while I stared mesmerized by the shiny display of rings and bracelets and watches. I had yet to buy my mom a Christmas gift and knew I wouldn’t be able to afford anything from the shop. Still, I planted myself in front of the window my gaze focused on the polished array of silver and gold.

Since my Pa lost his job I no longer received an allowance and the only extra money I had saved was from baby-sitting. I wouldn’t have much to spend on gifts this year. Still, I went in. There might be some cheaper items in the back of the store. I remembered that old man Adel kept a saucer of mints on the display counter. I went in for a mint and a closer look at the sparkly selection of jewelry.

Inside on the countertop suspended from a velveteen display rack was a row of chains and necklaces. That’s where I saw it. The watch. I’d never seen any thing like it before. It was a pendant, really. Heart-shaped. In the center of the heart was a watch. The pendant hung from a gold chain dangling near the edge of the rack. I fingered the pendant with care fascinated that there was a small watch inside the heart. I wanted it for my mom. For Christmas.

I closed my eyes and pictured her mouth forming a small oh of surprise as she cooed over the pendant’s beauty. It was seventy-five dollars more than I had. Despite saving all the money I earned baby sitting, I knew I’d never be able to save enough to buy the pendant by Christmas Eve.

Later that day around suppertime, while I helped my younger brother assemble a model airplane, my mom called to me from the kitchen.

“Could you pick up your father, Connie? I know you just got home but I don’t think he should walk home alone tonight.”

“It’s okay, Ma... I don’t mind.”

As I walked down the El Dorado’s street through the dusky twilight, I looked up at the streetlamps. They groaned and flickered on one by one in the wake of my footsteps crunching against the crisp, clean snow. It was funny how the flakes disappeared as soon as they fell into the lamplight. I noticed a small crowd of people on the normally desolate street.

It’s the holidays, I thought.

I saw myself in my second-hand winter coat reflected in the empty storefronts and paused. I thought about my ma and my brothers and sisters, how they seemed so innocent. I thought about how my ma, especially, was always going on about miracles and Jesus and heaven. Sometimes I wished I could make her see it was all a lie meant to keep people from doing things. From being who they really were. I wanted to believe but I thought only suckers believed in miracles and Jesus and heaven.

I passed Adel’s stopping briefly and raised my hand to wave at the old man who for once didn’t seem to notice me outside in the cold. Maybe he’s ignoring me, after all, it’s not like I’m a paying customer, I thought. Without thinking, I saw myself make the sign of the cross before I entered the shop.

The old man hunched behind the counter, busy with a woman wearing too much lipstick and a brown, old lady, fur coat. He held out a charm bracelet and she practically snatched it from his hands.

“It’s for my niece, her first year at Cornell. She’ll be home for the holidays and I want to give her something really special,” the woman chirped.

I tapped on the counter to get the old man’s attention and noticed the exaggerated arch of the woman’s penciled in eyebrow as she turned her head to look at me. The woman stared straight through me while she went on and on about her niece.

“Got any more of those mints, Mr. Adel?” I asked.

Sure enough the old man while in the middle of helping the woman turned his back to fill the empty saucer from a supply of candy he kept in the back of the shop.
It happened in an instant. I grabbed the pendant and shoved it into my coat pocket, the one without the hole in it. The woman was too busy toying with the bracelet to spot me and I figured that before Adel noticed the pendant missing I would be long gone. I felt like I'd unzipped my skin as I flew onto the sidewalk. It took me all of five seconds before I realized I was under the El Dorado’s faded awning.

As I skipped across the El Dorado’s threshold I saw my pa slumped across the bar. I wasn’t sad or scared; I wasn’t even ashamed of him. I tapped his shoulder and he lifted his head and grinned at me in that sad way drunks have.

"Hi ya, Princess."

I smiled and hummed along to the tune playing in my head. It was a song I heard while listening to Dr. Laura’s radio talk show.

I was just thinking.

I needed a little white gift-box.

Val Haynes. a writer, actress and singer, is earning her Master of Arts in English at the University of Albany, SUNY.

"Some Things I Learned From My Dentist"

By Ellen Zunon


Ever since childhood I have had a visceral fear of dentistry. At every six-month check-up, I always had new cavities; my older sister rarely did. My mother thought it was because my bones and teeth had been cheated of calcium because she became pregnant again so soon after my sister was born.

So I was always the one who had to listen to the dentist’s song and dance – literally! - while he pierced my tender gum with the novocaine needle, drilled until my skull vibrated, and then filled the crevasses in my teeth with that shiny metal. The trinket I got to choose afterward was small compensation for my ordeal.

In contrast, with Dr. Koiné, my dentist in Abidjan, there was no song and dance, no trinket, no nonsense, only cool, clean-edged professionalism.

Walking up the stairs and along the corridor to her office for the first time, I felt a sense of trepidation. My first experience with an Ivorian dentist, after I had broken a tooth, was not very encouraging. This was a professor who taught at the dental school in Abidjan. He had tried to grind down the tooth stump without using an anaesthetic. I vowed to myself at the time, if I ever get out of this dentist’s chair alive, I’m never coming back here again.

I think Dr. Koiné had been trained in France, but I’m not sure. In any case, she had learned her craft at the very same dental school from which my tooth stump still throbbed.

I preferred to think that she was trained in France.

She was extremely particular, meticulous even, about the sterilization of her equipment, and wanted me, as the patient, to know this. She wanted all her European and American patients to know this, as you could catch any number of noxious tropical diseases from unsanitary dental equipment.

Her assistant Kouadio was in awe of her. He was a dark black man with patches of pink here and there on his skin due to tinea, and it was his job to sterilize the equipment and to hand her the instruments. I had root canal before the crown went on, and many instruments were handed back and forth during this delicate process. Dr. Koiné admonished me in no uncertain terms to sit very still because the tools were extremely sharp, and missing the mark by even a millimeter could be disastrous.

Dr. Koiné definitely did not fit the Western stereotype of the submissive African woman. In contrast, she was very self-assured and in charge. She exhibited the resilience and self-reliance that I encountered again and again among the women I worked with in my community development projects.

Although she had a traditional Muslim last name, she was a devout Catholic. At first I thought that must be her married name, but I eventually learned otherwise. Incidentally, Koiné is not her real name. I’ve changed it to protect her privacy. But what you need to know about her name is that in the Ivory Coast a person’s tribal identity and religious affiliation are usually evident from their name. And it is quite unusual to have a mixture, as Christiane Koiné did.

As I sat gaping, slack-jawed, I learned how her family had disowned her when she had converted to Christianity. I wondered under what circumstances she had converted, but never learned any more details. I am guessing that her Christian first name had been given to her when she was baptized. She was very close to her priest and spoke highly of him on several occasions.

Dr. Koiné’s grandfather was known as El Hadj Koiné. He had earned the title El Hadj by accomplishing the hadj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, from Guinea to Saudi Arabia on foot during the early part of the 20th century. As Christiane spoke of her grandfather, I pictured him in sandals and flowing robe, trudging through the sandy Sahara from oasis to oasis in the wake of a caravan of camels. The family’s name is really that of one of the famous clans of the Ghana Empire, going back to the Middle Ages. It is a name which is still prominent throughout the Sahel.

I learned something about the degree of Muslim-Christian tolerance in Côte d’Ivoire from Dr. Koiné’s situation. During my years in the Ivory Coast, the country put forth an official face of tolerance and neutrality, but there were always private prejudices under the official façade. These became more evident later, after my family and I left Côte d’Ivoire, and it was torn in half for a time by ethno-religious tension. Some say that the conflict was purely political. Or was it? It is impossible to separate the religious from the political in a country of 60 diverse ethnic groups.

I also learned something about myself from Dr. Koiné. While drilling, and while her assistant was sucking up my copious saliva with that little plastic straw, she told me that my excessive salivation was a sign of someone who keeps everything in. I wondered if this was something she had learned in dental school or an observation drawn from her own practice of dentistry. It is true that I am an introvert and tend to hold things in, but not nearly as much as I used to. But who would have thought that this tendency would be reflected in my degree of salivation under dental stress? Is it because we introverts tend to swallow literally and figuratively things we should spit out?

I thought of Dr. Koiné last week when I learned that the rebels from the north of the country had finally burned their weapons in a public ceremony of reconciliation, putting an end to seven years of turmoil in Côte d’Ivoire. I hope this symbolic act will lead to a real and lasting peace, and that people like Dr. Koiné can go forward and lead their lives free of the anguish caused by ethnic conflict.

Ellen Zunon, a frequent contributor to MyStoryLives, is a writer living in the Capital Region of New York State.

"And Their Echo Will Never Cease"

By Jennifer M. Wilson

My son and daughter, twins, are now two and a half years old, and I am going through their things, sorting what can be sold or donated and what I want to keep for sentimental reasons.

I am not planning on having any more children (I am almost 37), and it seems like I just had these two. It seems to me as though I am still recovering from new parenthood, and yet I am researching pre-schools and giving away baby gear and noticing that the photo in my wallet is already a year and a half old and needs to be updated.

How did I go so long without updating that photo?

The first four months all I did was take care of them and take photos of them.

Photos that displayed round scrunched-up faces whose beauty I now see was so exhalted in my eyes that looking at these pictures now, I have to wonder if anyone really meant it when they cooed, "Oh how beautiful!"

Not that I care what anyone thought, it just strikes me as funny now, that time has given me perspective on what was once the most beautiful thing I had ever layed eyes on in my life.

Now I have trouble remembering, I have trouble recognizing my own babies as I have grown so used to their wide-eyed little people gazes. Their funny faces and their angry gestures fill my days with things I cannot believe I will ever forget. But I already know how much the mind pushes aside as it moves forward.

Ten years ago I felt as though I had lived so much life, in my pursuit of endless experience, that there was hardly room for any more. I felt ready to settle down, and yet I had a few more paths to travel before it came to that. And now I can see just how far we still have to go.

And I am beginning to get a hint of just how quickly it will pass. And I am hearing the voice inside of me yearning for my own time, my own space again, wishing I could spend a morning writing and reading Proust instead of cleaning up Cheerios and refilling sippy cups.

And yet I fight it. I fight it as best I can and try to turn my attention back to them when I notice my journal sitting on a shelf gathering dust. Because I can see in the tiny outfits I barely remember them wearing, in the shoes so small I have to stare at them and rub my fingers over them to believe my own children wore them once, I can see that before I know it, I will have all the time in the world again, as much time as I will allow.

Jennifer Wilson lives and writes in Pennsylvania. Visit her wonderful website, and check out her novel, "Witch," at http://www.jennifermwilson.com.

"Open Letter to All Imperfect Parents:

By Camincha

Father, you are the trunk of an enormous tree. Your children, blades of grass frolicking about you.

To Favorite Daughter you gave hand-knitted-robes made to order. Tiny jewels on which to sharpen her baby teeth. The trip to Magic Land. Her every wish your command. But one day you fell. Became less than godly than wise or enormous. Favorite Daughter spoke up: You are callous towards her, my mother, you are uncaring. Miserly. How righteous Daughter felt.

Time passed. And now knowing how imperfect she is, the one who knew it all. She realizes what a disservice she’s done you both, you and her, how she considered you perfect for so long. For all those first 13 years of her life. And you grow more perfect, human in her memory as she grows older.

Mother, petite, brown-soft-skin, brown-velvet-eyes, sensual lips that pulled Favorite Daughter into worlds of sensual images. Mother opened her horizons with unprejudiced teachings. Carried daughter by the hand against her childish desire to retreat into the familiar. Gave her a world where strangers jumped out of the books that populated the house, taking her to other worlds, where planets circled 'round her, and stars beckoned.

But when Mother began acting like just another woman, Favorite Daughter was confounded. Who is this Mother who celebrates her sensuality? Daughter is curious about the ways Mother displays it. What is romance? Who is this woman who lets herself be carried away by passion? Who is this woman whose cheeks flash and eyes shine like jewels? Who is this woman who is not just MOTHER? How can she be anything but MOTHER?

Too soon it was all over, you were both gone. Now, after all these years of missing you, I know you were just being human. I know now that being imperfect means, just that, you were just totally human: Loving. Selfish. Disgusting. Thoughtful. Beautiful. Ugly. So imperfect! So human!!!

Favorite Daughter has this to say: I LOVE YOU! not in spite of, but because of your imperfections.

With Love From Your Daughter

Camincha is a pen name for a Pacifica, California-based writer.

"Finding the Center," Part Two

By Mel Waldman

VIII

In the sprawling mansion of my mind, my old friends exist. Mother is there too. She died 42 years ago. And when she passed away, my soul was broken, lost in a black hole of despair and unbearable grief. Neither I nor Father could tolerate her absence. After her death, we could not heal each other. Indeed, we could not live or even, be together. Our grief was cutting, fiery, and chilling, compelling us to separate and sever all ties for a while. Later, when we finally got together, we were separated by a vast, soulless wasteland, watching each other from a distance in mutual unreality. Without mother, we were strangers in a barren universe.

Mother died in 1965, two years before I began working at the Coney Island senior center. Looking back, I realize that a significant part of my healing process occurred at that mysterious center ensconced in Coney Island. There, I rediscovered how to love and learned how to mourn for the departed and be one with the divine universe. According to Kabbalistic practice, I had discovered the principle of tikkun --or repair-- the process of restoration and redemption.

At this mystical center, I found Mother again. And by repairing myself, I was able to find Father too. Now, Mother and I continue to have loving dialogues. During our shared existence, she empowered me. Even now, she fills me with faith. But sometimes, she is silly. She makes funny faces and I laugh uproariously. She rolls her eyes back and forth, her cross eyes launching me into a fit of laughter. Such joy! Such power! With each new dawn, the crepuscular insects rise and Mom, who is eternally resurrected in my soul, empowers me once more.

IX

Father sits next to her and holds her hand. At last, they are reunited. They look like two teenagers madly in love.
Father died 19 years ago in a nursing home in Florida. He had Alzheimer’s disease. But he died of a heart attack.
A year before he died, he stayed with me for almost two months. He had problems with his third wife. (Eventually, he returned to her. Such was his choice.)

I took him in. At that point in time, we empowered each other. How? How did this happen, for almost two months, at the end of one lifetime, between a father and son who never saw each other?

X

At my father’s funeral, I stayed with him in the synagogue for a few eternal minutes. We were alone, the coffin open.

None of the others looked inside the box. I had to look! He was buried Israeli style. Like Mr. Murphy, he looked majestic.

I looked closely. He was really dead. And so very much alive! His gold-filled teeth glittered.

Inside the silence, we spoke. In those unmoving moments of death, Dad was more real and alive than in all the deadened, soulless years of life we shared.

“It’s a miracle, Dad!”

“Yes.”

“How did this happen?”

“I don’t know.” (Dad gives me a big, childlike smile, his gold-filled teeth illuminating the darkness.)

"It doesn’t matter, Dad. We love!”

But now I truly believe that the miracle began at the Coney Island senior center where I discovered the mystical principle of tikkun. According to Kabbalistic teachings, before the beginning of our universe, the Divine light contracted.

And the vessels that contained this Divine energy shattered. Holy sparks were scattered and hidden within every thing. With tikkun, the repair of the self, the shattered universe is mended. And the holy sparks are reunited with the vessels of Divine light.

XI

At this mysterious time in my life, I am enchanted by the power of being, the source of my creative energy and healing power.

I remember the late 1980s and 1990s when I worked in Brooklyn nursing homes in Bensonhurst and Canarsie as a therapist/consultant. I believe I rediscovered the divinely-inspired power of being, originally found in the Coney Island senior center, in those lonely Islands of Oblivion.

Yes, I remember…the power to be! My presence is powerful. My presence heals. On the third floor of a Brooklyn nursing home near Coney Island, I sit with old ladies and men who drift in and out of reality. I reach out to them. I talk to them-my abandoned children! I tell them what day it is, and the date and time and place and what is happening in the world.

Slowly, my old children come out of their cocoons. They emerge and reveal themselves. One precious lady, who hasn’t spoken in hours, recites a poem about a flower which hides from the world.

“And you too are a beautiful flower,” I announce. “Don’t hide my lovely flower! Reveal yourself!”

My youngest child is 78 years old. My oldest, 100. I sit with them and feel their presence. I feel beautiful. They make me feel like the most powerful man in the universe. And I empower them too. What is the source of such power?

XII

I discovered the power of being many years ago in the center. I was a young man then and open to new experiences. I allowed the old folks to enter my soul and they filled it up with beauty, faith, and old-fashioned enthusiasm. They knew the secrets of life and fed me an endless supply of creative energy and love.
Even now, when I sit with my patients ages five to 70 plus in the South Bronx in an underground office within a community health center, where we disappear into the mysterious Labyrinth of the Human Mind and travel across a barren Waste Land of rage, hopelessness, and despair, the eternal center empowers me. It is a place where the dying breathe life into the living, a place where a young man is blessed by a rabbi and destined to find his bride, a place that some men call home.

Dr. Mel Waldman is a licensed New York State psychologist and a candidate in Psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. He is also a poet, writer, artist, and singer/songwriter. Part One of "Finding the Center" appeared on Friday, August 17, 2007.

"Finding the Center"

By Mel Waldman

I never hung out in poolrooms until 1967. In ’67 I landed a job in a senior citizen center in Coney Island working as a Housing Assistant for the Housing Authority. I was sent into the geriatric center to be a recreation worker.

Strange things began to happen in this Coney Island hideaway. And although I had looked forward to a rest and an easy going lifestyle, there was more action there than in Peyton Place or any of the soaps on TV.

The center stands a block from the boardwalk and the Atlantic Ocean, but after my first day of work, I wondered if I had landed on Mars. Months later, I realized I was the Christopher Columbus of Coney Island. I hadn’t discovered America. Still, I had found my new home for the next two years. Welcome home, Kotter!

II

I hid in the poolroom where the old men taught me how to shoot pool and protected me from spirited old ladies in search of a dancing partner. The slick old men taught me how to hold a cue, to chalk up, and to play a smooth game of eight ball. And when lascivious old ladies found my secret hiding place, the wise old men formed an impenetrable fortress: “You can’t have him now! We’re in the midst of a serious game of eight ball. Come back later.”
“I’ll be back!” said one old lady who smiled sardonically at me. “We’ve got a serious fox trot to do!” And she scurried off.

III
Looking back, I realize there was more life in the center than in most places for younger folks. A few times over the years, I returned. I walked past the familiar oasis, but did not walk in. I suppose I wanted to keep the sacred memories intact. Re-entering the center would have severed my poignant ties and holy images.
In the castle of my mind, I see the little building whose structure is long and low and labyrinthine, flanked by tall buildings. Magically, it empowers me.
But can I walk through Yesterday’s door and share a nostalgic journey with my old buddies? Almost 40 years ago, I said goodbye to the gang. It was my time-a special time for a young man. A time of new beginnings: love, marriage, family, and career.
Yes, four decades and invisible boundaries separate us now. Where are they?

IV

Mr. Murphy, Jimmy, and Mr. Polanski were my mentors in pool. And of course, there was the tall cripple with the twisted torso. I can’t recall his name. The skeletal man frightened me but warmed my heart too. Nameless possessed a demonic laugh, played a wicked game of pool with his trembling hands and a mean game of checkers.

The three wise men and cripple empowered me. How? What was the source and nature of their power? And what did they pass on to me? The gift of the Magi?

V

“Hello there,” says Mr. Murphy in a lilting voice, as he pirouettes across the room like a young James Cagney.
“Hi, kid,” says little Jimmy, about five feet tall, with the voice of Humphrey Bogart and the lonely eyes of James Dean.
“Get your cue stick! We ain’t got all day!” roars Mr. Polanski, a gentle lion of a man who might be John Garfield in disguise.
In the corner, Nameless grins sardonically. He’s really the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.

Mysteriously, they empower me. And the old ladies bewitch and enchant me. They are the white witches of Coney Island. Their power is beautiful and magical.
“It’s time to do the Peabody, young man. Are you ready?”
“Well…”
“Of course, you are!”
“Of course, I am!”

In those antediluvian days, I was endowed with the power of the universe! I miss those early days. Yet they exist even now within the private theater of my mind. And sometimes, when I breathe in the ocean at Coney Island or smell the scents of the passing seasons, gentle memories of that lost era emerge.

VI

I miss the magic. One day, an old sorceress said: “You must get married! I’ll ask the rabbi to bless you.”
I suppose the rabbi blessed me (cursed me?), for I got married a few months later to a woman I hardly knew but loved. Such magic! Such power! (I never found out who the rabbi was.) Such joy! (And such sadness!)

VII

I miss my old friends. Murphy died a few months before I left. I went to his funeral. I’d never been to an Irish wake before. I looked at him in the open coffin. He didn’t look bad. Indeed, he looked majestic.
Now, he’s back in the poolroom. “Hello there,” he says to me.
“Good to see you,” I answer.
“I’m always happy here.”
“I know.”
“Of course, you can’t feel other wise. Not here.”

Stay tuned for Part two of Mel Waldman's piece next week!

Dr. Mel Waldman is a licensed New York State psychologist and a candidate in Psychoanalysis at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. He is also a poet, writer, artist, and singer/songwriter.

"Grandma Stumph, Bent"

By Al Stumph

Grandma Stumph was bent. The more proper term would be stooped but I always saw her as bent. Most of her life she bent over rows of vegetables in the fields or over a washboard or engaged in other activities that caused her to stand bent. When I was born in 1940 she had nearly reached her 59th birthday. She died at 77, still bending over crops in the field and doing laundry on a washboard.

For more than 40 years she and Grandpa worked the farm together. But she and Grandpa had this one sacrosanct rule: except for meeting the needs of the animals, they did no physical labor on Sunday. That rule remained in effect even when Uncle Freddie took over the farm after Grandpa died in 1948.

The only winter coat I remember Grandma wearing had this great fur collar. How much, as a toddler, I enjoyed scrunching into it during church services or in the unheated back seat of the Model A!

Tom and I joined Grandma in the fields from the summer of 1951 to her death in 1958. Until her last year, I was unable to equal her working pace. In spite of failing eyesight she could always follow Tom and me when we picked beans and find those we had missed. She never criticized us; she simply tidied up after our sloppiness.

Grandma always returned to the house around 11:30 a.m. to prepare dinner, a large mid-day meal, for herself and Uncle Freddie. The radio was tuned to her soap operas before, during, and after the meal. When we came together on Sunday afternoons I could hear her, Mom, and Aunt Chris in the kitchen exchanging perspectives on the latest twists in the lives of Ma Perkins and Helen Trent.

Although she had been long dead, I saw Grandma one day in 1980. I was watching Dad walk between his house and the patio. Obviously I had seen him take this walk hundreds of times before but this time I was struck by how bent he was when he walked. Now Kathy tells me that when I take out the compost each evening I too walk bent. Bent is good.

Writer Al Stumph lives in Chatham, New York with his wife, Kathy. A former priest, he worked for years in social services agencies.