desperate to get it over and done with before she’s dead
i choke on the dream scene, the prognosis and the grand scheme / ever-present in my throat / and weep then, a memory of us wedges in i cry a smile, and smile a cry
i think this, is all, too much i can’t do this.
though,
she is the one doing it
with her dignity, her calm, her reserve, she’s had too much practice, she’s well-traveled on this terrain
This Hydrangea nostalgia bush was grown from a 2017 autumn cutting from its parent which is, or was, located in the front yard of my brick 2-flat in the northwest side neighborhood of Portage Park in Chicago. One of a half-dozen or so white hydrangeas planted by me in the late 90s, I had nurtured and obsessed over them for nearly 23 years — this one is now the lone survivor in my care at my rural home in Michigan.
lilac cuttings, rooting hormone solution, and growing medium, September 23, 2017 (not even one of these most precious lilac cuttings rooted and survived)a box of hope. autumn hydrangea & lilac cuttings, not ideal for propagation, but ready for transport and transplant to Michigan
But the genesis of my city girl hydrangea devotion was not Martha Stewart’s ubiquitous “Living” magazine, also of 1990s — though she certainly named, informed, inspired and validated many a hydrangea obsession within those pages — but rather, it was the nostalgic ubiquity of enormous white snowball blooms and arresting blue-purple poms on heritage shrubs that I admired, coveted, played and hid among during my childhood summers spent with my maternal grandparents in Murphysboro — a sleepy, rural town in Southern Illinois — where my maternal great, great grandmother, my great grandmother and grandmother were all born / my grandparents didn’t have or cultivate hydrangeas but it seemed all their neighbors and the entire town did.
I was so enchanted by those plants each summer — yet never knowing/hearing their name or even describing them to my mother when I returned back home to the Chicago Housing Authority’s Lathrop Homes aka “the projects” – which usually, was just in the nick of time for back-to-school in late August. Interestingly, I don’t recall ever drawing a picture of hydrangeas or taking a photo of them with my hard-earned Kodak Instamatic pocket camera as a child – though I frequently used both methods to capture/record my favorite things. //
“Nostalgia Kills”
Nostalgia is a psychological pining for a sweeter but mostly false time in our lives — a naive, shallow or ignorant time that we prefer to — that we choose to, remember as “innocence” — or romanticize, idealize or distort as the “best times of my life” or the “good ol’ days”.
Instead of thoroughly revisiting the entirety of the time, place, people or experience, nostalgia often robs — or kills — the opportunity for true introspection and material dialectics. ///
early July 2023
Nostalgia sounds like the name of the a psychological condition catalyzed by avoiding “dis-ease”
originally published june 17, 2016, revised june 11, 2023
* please visit the website/app Falling Fruit to add a fruiting tree that is located and accessible in the public way to the foraging database for others.
the author’s mulberry-stained fingers
A clear glimpse
A clear thought
on this clear June night
Of age,
and Alzheimer’s
the old-timer’s disease
A clear memory recorded and archived tonight
An acute awareness of myself
tonight, in time and place
a new track to play on loop for a listener in my future life
a husband, friend, or son
a caregiver, a kind one
a visitor, volunteer, or nurse,
a grandson, or maybe — no one
A reddish dog, eating mulberries
from the sidewalk in shadows
Mottled concrete in the dim light of a city street lamp
obscured by the canopy of that beautiful, June, fruit tree
Woody Guthrie, the mulberry forager
A woman, middle aged, seems so young, even a tad pretty, in her mind’s eye now
Stretching her still strong body upward for plump, dark berries
Reaching for branches trimmed too high by the urban foresters
or arborists or surgeons, I forget what they’re called
On her tippy toes
grabbing, pulling, picking
squeezing the dog’s leash between her thighs
don’t let him get loose in the dark, don’t let him get skunked in the dark
a contorted mulberry tree at night, located in a private front yard, but sidewalk spillage is fair game
the same contorted mulberry in Sun’s light: wowowow
Some of the best ones are lost in the awkward tussle
before she can palm them, save them, taste them
She triggers a reverberative rain from boughs on high
That precise, delicate sweetness of the bounty in her mouth
The dog’s belly full of the ripe windfall
sustained by both gravity and this woman
His name was Woody, or Digby, I think
He used to climb into our sleep
Smashed and whole
The street, sidewalk and cars stained
by the impressive purple mess
the dark grass hiding perfect treasures for doves tomorrow morn
She and that dog,
They were urban foragers and gleaners in June.
All month long, her fingertips, feet and lips
tinted with their fuchsia dye, it didn’t even once occur to her to check his paws
A clear, recollection of acute melancholy:
this day — that day was also her son’s birthday //
The first birthday he ever spent away from home, away from her — in Nebraska, or was it Alaska?
That glorious tree, that good dog, that golden boy
an impressive purple mess-feast
i pressed a twig and berries from the Le Claire street mulberry, before I moved to the otherside of the Lake; i used my Chicago Botanic Garden gift shop flower press.
a man who knew my father befriended me causing me to question the nature of my reality, my history, its validity, my possibly-false memories — all, viewed through the lens of the person who had a vested interest in indoctrinating me, who preferred my naïveté, under the guise of protectivity,
