in the absence of oars.........

i wish i had something to tell you. nothing has happened since mom left. she, like a giant, ancient glacier scraped my soul to the bone. that was harsh. that poor, old woman, she doesn't deserve that. ok, so she scraped my soul nearly to the bone. it's actually quite hard to get anywhere near my bones these days. i seem to be building a rather wobbly but nonetheless thick protective layer. middle age sucks. well i'm sure old age and death suck more but i want to feel bad for myself right now. what is this new found padding for? that is the question. is it because i haven't prepared for retirement and this is what i'm supposed to live on? and what, oh what is the purpose of an ass this size. all i know is i awake in the morning to find pockets of chub where the night before there was sinewy, taunt flesh. ok, maybe not that but something like that.  jesus, i'm getting jowls and if my breasts droop any lower they may be mistaken for testicles. It seems that after a couple of burritos’and babies I changed. that is a god damn lie, i don't even like burritos', i just couldn't think of a food that started with b and one of my children was adopted so i have no real reason for the downfall. not that I ever was a tiny slip of a thing. when i was younger my mother used to say – yes, we're back to her.  she used to say to people. “feel her, just feel her. you think that's she's fat but she's not. she’s solid.” the “she” of course was me. growing up by the ocean, swimming and endless rowing had produced a body that could rival any east german female wrestler.



 i loved to row. to feel a boat pull through the water underneath you is something akin to joy. i had a small green rowboat or punt as it was called.  my friends and i would be in that boat every day that was fit to be on the water. recently, one of those friends introduced me to someone and said, "this is beverly, she's the one who told us what to play when we were little."  that was me, the imagination bully. when you played with me i decided what was going to be played, i supplied the plot, your lines and your fate. when we in the boat, i rowed and i was captain, we were either pirates, detectives or survivors of a shipwreck. even when we were just fishing, it had to be some sort of drama... we had to catch fish or we would be put to death by our fief holder or something along that line.  one of the girls was quite pretty so she was always the maiden and thus would sit in the bow and sing, the other girl being always jolly would sit in the stern and bail and the smallest girl would do the dangerous bits because she expendable. she was the one to go overboard to retrieve the bail can or untangle fishing line. she would sit wherever there was a spot.  there we were, out on the vast atlantic ocean, far from shore with no fear or life jackets. just me and my unfailing belief that i could control the universe.

i could use that girl that girl today. that girl with the oars. the one who was often heard saying,  “don't worry. i know everything there is to know.”

bev