Whenever it rained, I walked funny. I wore my rubber boots with pride. I liked to play in the ditch behind our farm where I caught tadpoles in spring. But when it rained, I clenched my toes inside my boots, in case a worm would accidentally find its way into my shoe. The logic of a child. My grandma let me walk funny, she knew I would grow out of it.
My grandmother puts her feet in the sink
of the bathroom at Sears
to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,
wudu,
because she has to pray in the store or miss
the mandatory prayer time for Muslims
She does it with great poise, balancing
herself with one plump matronly arm
against the automated hot-air hand dryer,
after having removed her support knee-highs
and laid them aside, folded in thirds,
and given me her purse and her packages to hold
so she can accomplish this august ritual
and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares
I don’t hate nothing and nobody, which was true until autocorrect came along.
Just a while ago I texted a friend and wished her belated Happy Birthday. I confessed to being a terrible friend, what was quickly adjusted and corrected to “I am a terrier.”
I wish you could talk to me. Yes, you the damaged table and the old chairs right beside you. Tell me where you have been. Who made you and where do you come from? Who owned you throughout the years and what did you see? How did you like your life so far and now in up in age, would you like to be brought back to live on?
When I was a newlywed and a young student I cleaned offices late in the evening. I remember my first interview very well. The owner was hesitant toward my age. He thought I would lack experience, but gave me a try when I told him about the women who had trained me to SEE DIRT.
I didn’t like our neighbor, he frightened me.
“Get to know him,” my Grandmother had advised me and that’s why I was standing here and watched this cruel man holding a tiny bird.
“This was my first accident,” Marlise said with laughter in her voice.
Grandma didn’t find it funny at all.
They had been hidden in a box at the bottom of her wardrobe for many years.
“I bought them when I was about your age,” she said when she gently handed me the shoes.
A small bottle of Champagne is sitting in our fridge since a very long time. I can’t remember if we bought it, or if it was given to us; I just know it is stored there in the side door waiting for a special occasion.
One day I came home and I wasn’t a happy camper at all. That day somebody had made fun of me in school and I felt small, ugly and misunderstood. I was too tall and way too thin. I looked like a spider, with long limbs that I would grow into a few years later. A few kids had made fun of me that day, they had laughed about me and it hurt.