Complete silence. A long walk. Slowly drinking a cup of well made coffee with heavy cream and taking time to read a portion of a novel…something from a long disappeared era. Resting from the onslaught of noise. Just sitting and dreaming…with coffee and a plate of hot buttered toast…and thick creamed froth.

The first lazy day in June…when everything around beckons. Lying down, resting and I would not, could not fight it.

The vanilla white calendar square’s bold lettering says, ‘This is the first lazy, crazy day in June…by order of Hallmark’. Or so imagined, because how else is it justified to melt away into goose down?

A long month, and so very rich…full of color and motion, pink roses, the endless stream of family birthdays all clumped together in June like so much soft laundry…cake crumbs strewn from the first to the thirtieth. Every last goose feather, plumped and frumped and shaken and smoothed over…the sun bleached mounded comforter calling out…’Lie down! This is the very first lazy crazy day in June’.

He was still talking to me and I wanted to listen, but I could not, would not. I watched his mouth moving and I heard the consonants and the vowels and the dipthongs and the hard ‘t’. I understood.

I heard sounds but now…emotionless. Eiderdown drowned it in a puff fluff and shifting with my weight…the chittering, flippering birds outside the window joined the conspiracy and one single sun beam leaning through the blinds ended our conversation.

I could not, would not, should not for this was the first lazy, daisy, crazy day in June and I sank into cotton and cool and feathers and silence…

June is all jazzy and buttercream. White sugared tents rising slowly on Main Street and early notes winding their way brilliantly through the early summer air surrounding Gibbs and Chestnut…all along the tucked away alleys of this city by the lake.

And in June, there will always be buttercream…tangerine for graduation and chocolate for birthdays and lemon and raspberry for Father’s Day and vanilla…sugared steam coming out of the ovens of Savoia Bakery on Clifford…so rich and grand one must stop and stand still on the old sidewalk to just breathe it all in. Sugar air with musical undertones is mingling over the Eastman legacy…crawling up under the eaves of old wood, a thousand classrooms, settled marble and new fabric…rich, sugary tunes spilling out over rain soaked sidewalks…

I caught a furtive glance of that child; a third grader being led in to the main office for the daily two hours of allotted educational time. Two hours? He comes from an unimaginable background of chaos, filth, abuse, violence and cognitive limitations. These are the bricks in this child’s foundation.

This small human being killed the family pet a summer or two ago. Warning bells! Both day treatment and long term treatment facilities rejected the case. The child is…too difficult to handle properly. So where in the name of all things Holy do we go now?

He’s sent back to us then…a waif…a cast off landing once again on the deck of a very unprepared public school. What are we then to do? Ahh…the home tutoring program it is. Only, wait a minute now. The family will not allow any school personnel on their property or in their home. Warning bells!

So…back he comes to the school building where a well intentioned and well meaning tutor will attempt to do the impossible in two brief hours every day; what has not been accomplished in a lifetime; bring some hope, a semblance of progress…maybe some education into the boy’s small life.

A rare glimpse on a rare morning when we two happen to meet in the main office. I look at him. He stares at me. Even in our togetherness we are at odds and ends…one sane adult and one child who long ago began walking on the path of his dark world; the crumbling road of slowly increasing insanity. He’s aged long ago before it was time; years older than I am in mind and spirit.

Bless you, my child for we have sinned…we have indeed…all sinned.

As it had rained steadily all day long; sheets and slivers of chunky New York rain…there was nothing left to do but buy a loaf of strawberry and cream bread. And as there was still nothing really to think about, a cup of strong black coffee with real whipping cream might do the trick.

The lake kept rising and even the umbrellas were sleepy and the rain led nowhere and everywhere. It was time to sit down…

Laundry…a cup of linen bleach. A cup of lavender and vanilla soap. The gushing, rushing sound of water I did not drag uphill from a creek. The pleasant grinding inner workings of a machine I did not build…doing the work I do not wish to do.

Presto! All is magically white again…sheets and towels and socks and flowy things…all done! Gone are days of struggling over a scrub board or banging wet rags on a rock. Women squatting and laboring in blazing sun over clothing I would never wear…using water I would never dare touch.

Complain about laundry? Considering it all…the answer should always be…never. For I am awash in linen and lavender and vanilla and I have never really done a hard day’s work in my entire lavender petaled life…not really.

Clifford Avenue morning…uncomfortably humid well before the clock chimes eight…bubbly tar and rutted road meet up at the seedy corner of Goodman and Clifford…close to the building labeled crazily as ‘Al Green’ and that boarded over chicken place.

Quiet and sleepy…for nobody awakens yet. This morning snoozes on forever during endless summer construction…in a neighborhood which does not seem to care.

Across the intersection strides a healthy looking avenue girl. Head held high with a defiant stare at the cars parked by the red light…daring them to run her over, daring them to stare too long, daring them to linger…for this section of the city belongs to those who know.

She sees all and sees nothing…knows all and knows nothing as she stretches long firm legs…flip flops dangling off the edge of her polished toenails. They feel the weight of her anger; flipping and flopping with defiance.

Pristine skin with a sheen of grace…rosy and dark, mahogany and elegant, shapely and focused. Strolling with books in hand…a summer school student with her head tossed back up and arched skyward. Out and around and over the pink and lovely mouth…a cloud of white, wispy poison swirls. A pretty puff and another inhale and then another and then another. The extra heat rims her head like a halo.

So cool, so very cool…deadly cool. The girl from this ‘devil may care’ corner. She buys lies and stores them up for harder days ahead. Firm hips likely to bear children too young, too young…exposing new lungs to old ways, old poisons, old neighborhoods…old compromises.

On her way to summer school, the thick books slung over her arm. The traffic light turns green and the trail of poison lingers around the vision in my rearview mirror…

A blast furnace surge of wind sweeps over the city on this Friday afternoon. It’s a fruit salad kind of day but it turns out instead to be an iced Coke and salty fries kind of day. Sage green leaves whipping upward in the wind…in and around and between the flapping flags in dappled sunlight and brilliant yellows…there is the slightest hint of rain…hints only and there are miles to roam before that promise.

I sip that frozen Coke and lick that salt off the tips of my fingers and consider the house on East Avenue as I stop from my meandering stroll. It rests heavily a few blocks up the street from the George Eastman house. Buried in pounds of climbing ivy and low hanging trees…matted vegetation and strewn stucco pavers lying behind and around the steps in the front yard where no grass can grow. Trying to glance into the front windows from the edge of the sidewalk, I hope to see anyone, anything. In past days, clearly this huge home was occupied and occupied well. Books lined the walls, the window glass shone and sparkled and once in awhile a lamp was lit…early on a winter’s eve…but now there is never a car, nor a person, nor a newspaper on the stoop…everything remains hidden and buried behind the massive walls of green and the piles of leaves mounting around the base of the big trees…growing in rotten stages…with each passing year…roots bubbling upward and outward, pushing up against the edge of the sidewalk and crumbling toward the edge of the avenue.

One day two springs ago, I saw her. I took an East Avenue afternoon stroll and I finally saw her…long, straggly hair, wearing a long sleeved white shirt, she was seated in the middle of the grass…next to the passing traffic on the heated afternoon…seated in the middle of the grass, bent over with a pair of scissors…cutting small sections of sod.

I kept a wary eye on her, oh yes…as I walked on by…quickly. No attempt at conversation acknowledged…the air around her…thick with caution…and that massive house…wrapped in ivy watching her, watching me as the world passed by on the avenue.

And after that day, I saw her several more times during my walks…always seated in the same spot…in the middle of the grassy median…just inches away from fast traffic…hunched over with a pair of very sharp scissors…chopping at or snipping up sections of yard…as if the claustrophobic ivy had finally broken her…as if she needed to cut her way out and back into the real world which runs along this rapid stretch. Too little, too late and whatever caged her in years ago, kept a grip on her person…for she never looked up…never acknowledged the foot traffic, never lay down the sharp scissors…crouched over so dangerously near that heated thoroughfare in that long sleeved white shirt.

I take a final sip of the iced Coke and look at the house from across the street. The city trucks have rolled in and cut down the ivy with massive shears and dug up the matted moss and raked the tons of rotting leaves, trimmed the trees and bushes and washed down the walls of the stucco mansion…so elegant in its appearance.

The woman with the scissors is no where…perhaps dead, perhaps institutionalized…perhaps hidden away with family…quietly cutting green paper, or straws of grass…safely tucked away from the crumbling edge of the dangerous avenue…

Big and burly…gruff and lumbering…wide as he is tall, this guard man…all gussied up and poured into a smart blue uniform. He provides security for the elementary school. Sporting a shaved head, he bellows a greeting to me in the parking lot. ‘Good morning!’ Birds scatter noisily as I watch him unfold himself out of his car, twisting his bulk this way and that to get out from behind the steering wheel. He waves a large waxed paper bag up over his head in triumph.

‘You know that bakery on Ridge, the one with the giant doughnuts?’ I nod politely as my mind races to picture which bakery he means. ‘I get one every Friday…you could cut it into quarters and serve four meals…I mean, excuse me! It’s that big! It’s a big doughnut and it’s Friday!’ He cocks his head to the right as he talks with excitement. This hulk of a bumbly, crumbly man with his black security pants and shoes. He wears no socks. He is barefoot in those heavy work shoes and he is a happy go lucky doughnut lover, this giant of a man on an exhausted Friday.

Despite unwieldy bulk and blast, he’s a sweetheart. His size intimidates the sixth and seventh grade boys who rally around the classroom in defiant bravado. He will roll them over, tough little guys. ‘I’m gonna call the cops right now, and have you up on assault. You come with me and watch me do it!’ He stabs a thick finger in their direction, stomping off with one subdued student in hand; this big, hefty man with the world’s largest doughnut. He worked hard this week for this sugary treat.

‘You know, I go to the gym all week to try to keep the weight off’…he laughs in a raspy, whisky raw voice…rabbly and scrappy, pointing with a thick bent thumb toward his bulk, this sockless, coffee swilling thick necked man…wearing his big old angry heart on his sleeve along with a dusting of confectioner’s sugar….

He asks Dad, ‘Where does the creek behind your house originate?’ Dad looks out the window and replies gently, ‘Yes, that is a maple tree’.

And I chuckle because he and I agree silently with a shared wink between us that what was asked was not heard, but the response given was what may have been wished and even true…and it’s good enough. Because in this room there is friendship and contentment…and no one here is truly deaf…just selective and dreamy…

‘Are you talking to me?’ I turn around and look at the custodian wiping down our door handles for the hundredth time. I had just said, ‘Hi, how are you?’ when he entered to clean. ‘Yes…how are you?’ He took a swipe at the door…’I’m very tired’. ‘Well’ I respond…’you have every right to be. It’s been a long year’.

This man wipes down our door handles, both sides four or five times a day…times scores and scores of other doors in this three story building. Classrooms. Bathrooms. Hall entries. Exit doors. Library doors. Computer lab doors. On and on it goes.

He’s wearing sunglasses today. He glances at me. ‘These glasses are not for fashion’ he says quietly. ‘I’m hiding my face. I work two jobs’.

I think about this. I can only hope the other job isn’t wiping handles in another building. ‘Oh…I’m sorry’ I respond. That doesn’t seem adequate somehow. Anyone can say that.

I turn around as he starts to leave the room. ‘You have a good day now…’ he says and the heavy door clicks shut. We’ve been partially back in the building since the first week in February and these are the first words he has ever said to me.

I believe we could eat off those handles.