I engaged in an afternoon chat with our neighbor; a retired marine; a bit of a character. ‘Hi. Your lawn looks great!’ ‘Thanks’ he says. ‘It burns off every year and I keep working with it. I have to keep busy’. I respond, ‘I talked to your wife the other night. We talked about doing a book swap. We’re both readers’. He chuckled. ‘Yes, she’s got her PhD in psychology. She married me to analyze me!’ He grins. His marine edge is up and bantering, swaggering and a touch cocky in the sunshine.

I say, ‘Yes. We’re all borderline, you know!’ ‘Yup. I act like a ten year old’ he responds. I laugh and answer, ‘Yes, I think like a five year old many times’. Good. There is common ground between us.

He pauses, bends over the grass and then says, ‘The military is good for a lot of people’. ‘Yup’. I agree and consider this. I hear his voice. ‘You could have made it in the marines’. He’s actually talking to me; about me. I look down at my freshly pedicured feet. Nope. Incorrect. I answer, ‘I’m more the reflective type, I think’. He looks away. ‘Awww…you could have done it!’

I feel the heat beating down on my face. There’s the beginning of a slight sweat trickle down my back. He explains further, ‘I mean, you can’t complain in the marines. Unless you break a leg or you’re bleeding profusely, you don’t complain!’ I picture myself not complaining. Nope. This man does NOT know me. I begin moving slowly, with my freshly pedicure toes and matching sandals. Candy apple red. ‘Well’ I begin. ‘Um, I guess I’m going to keep walking. I’ll see you on my second loop around’. ‘Okay!’. He gives me a quick wave and goes back to unloading heavy bags of soil. I wonder what new plans he will proffer when I come back around again…

Quiet, fortifying Good and Holy Friday morning-early. Alone time, as precious as long sought silver, diligently mined and polished with care…its filigree shines and courses through veins of today’s rabble and sorrow, scrabble and horror and forward tumble.

Quiet, closing the noisy portals of anxious thoughts…seeking a small and splintered narrow passage…a shuttered window which beckons the soft corner of my spirit, away from nonsense, ego and vain rantings. This door opens with the most gentle touch…feather light and hidden…shhh, for the Son of God is crucified and we dare not listen to nor hear any more sounds from silly seasons…

The seasons are in that strange colliding space now…with the first tentative sounds of crickets late last night after the rain, new born and desperate…trying out the colder air, chirping weakly at the windows. The windows…oh, the dearest hope…the windows are open! At long last, the air moves freely in and around the house. The last autumnal vestiges of cinnamon are swirling out, replaced with rose, sage, iced strawberry.

The sun shone longer today and I went shopping and bought flower seeds and came home to find my husband seated comfortably on the porch; a tremendously good sign.

Suddenly, the low mournful sound of a single goose wafts through the screen. He flies somewhere over the roof of the house and he is lost. The northerly winged crowds flew by without him days earlier and I heard their wild cawing and squawking. I listen to him now and then he is gone; headed toward the lake possibly. It’s already dark now. He’s very late. I don’t know.

I do know I have seeds and two cans of almond colored spray to repair and upgrade a battered door wreath…and I have crickets and mud and open windows…

‘Unless you are all in line and QUIET, we are not living’. This is what I overhear. This wonderful teacher is still working her way around the ridiculous catastrophe known as English vowels. There are five vowels, yet there are eighteen different vowel sounds. Don’t ask me how we got here linguistically.

No one is ‘leaving’ unless he or she or the whole mob is quieted and in line. For one split second I fantasize and think, ‘if only it were that simple. ‘We are not living! We are not leaving!’

However, as I look at the churning, chattering, blithering, roiling, verbalizing, pointing, grabbing, poking crowd known as ‘my temporary people, my students’ I observe that every single one standing in line is very much alive, wriggling and living. But they’re not leaving right now because of the noise. Not quiet. Not in a line. Vowels, children…it’s a cast of thousands…

We traveled south to north, noting that life had turned rough, bruised along the mighty Susquehanna. The river’s edge is rotten with bad times. A plethora of billboards advertise solutions to addiction and arrest. They sit on top of gloom and old flooding and now Harrisburg has declared bankruptcy. It looks the part with old drive in theaters, civil war era brick houses and fading white barns.

Suddenly, I am no longer ‘Yes, Ma’am, No Ma’am’. Where exactly did this happen? Over which brick in the road did we drive where the nuances of the polite south dissolved? How now, dear rustbelt. How heavily you have fallen.

Our waitress is cheerful. Her name is Cheyenne. We swallow a heavy meal of ham, potatoes, and choose from flaky pies as we sit on strong oak chairs and place silver on crisp linen cloths; our dining experience lingering in direct contrast to that of the road life outside.

My childhood nestles in the memory of pies and cobblers and rolls and butter and butter and butter and there will always be ham, somewhere served up with black coffee and I’m thinking about all those meals from long ago and then…there it is…that voice. The voice rising above restaurant chatter, informing trapped listeners what this individual has accomplished and what he said and how his circumstances were unique.

This voice lives in every restaurant I have ever entered. I hear it and I laugh out loud. I envision my father and my grandmother and I share this secret voice recognition with them; my family members who are suddenly and deeply abiding in the restaurant with him, with me. I see their faces in every lined and elderly white face surrounding me; eating food generations old and talking politely…back in the days, back in time when no mother would ever name her daughter Cheyenne and today, in this very present…in a place where I am no longer ‘Yes, Ma’am, No, Ma’am’ and the voice by the river drones on and on…

It is before noon and the air smells like snow and mud and Sangria. My windows are open, letting in baby lush spring air…winding its way up from the South, struggling over muddy ruts and thawing fields…eager to make an impression on rooftops and on the residents of this community; opening their homes and faces almost reluctantly to receive the sun.

A new neighbor, once a stranger to me, to us…another fragile human walking this earth’s road waves heartily across the way from me and after making his way over to our yard, winces as he shows me his raw, open blister. The winter has rendered his hands soft and unused to outdoor work. The heavy rake rests at an angle on his shoulder.

As we stand together briefly in the muddy grass, we are joined for a moment in the common thread of sympathy, a discussion about the drainage pond behind the newer houses, the rare marriage which lasts over fifty years, his stint in the navy…and I am at last eager to be on my way. This fresh spring wind is calling me down the hill…over dale on this Holy Monday, toward the death of winter and all the promises that this new life holds.

Palm Sunday…the browned and roughened cross draped in dark purple, hovers over the edge of the altar rail. A crown of thorns, woven into a vicious circle, this ugly threat of sorrow to come, is placed atop the beam; jaunty cruelty, unspeakable grief.

The organ tune soars, pulling the parishioners forward, up and into the music along with the celebratory urgings. The sudden surge, the clumping stream of over excited children floods forward while each waves palm branches; fronds of hope strewn madly every which way. Leather-shoed baby feet rushing down the aisle…curly headed cherubs are scrubbed clean for this beginning of Passion week. Enraptured excitement…something is happening, but what?

Holy Week commencement…the children are running with gleaming eyes, jelly bean joy and visions of hot crossed buns. There are chocolate bunnies and promised baskets, pinks and corals and mint greens and woven purple. One or two whipper-snappers have that glint in their cherub eye…’take no prisoners with these greening leaves, methinks’.

Who will be the first one to arrive at the edge of the cross? Skipping, prancing and dancing, mincing and preening, laughing and chattering, chasing…no wait, there is one little freckled one…shy and reluctantly dragging branches and feet toward the altar’s corner. The tiny mob finds itself at last in the shadow of the cross…’O Sacred Head Now Wounded’ and everyone stops to place the battered ferns. The shy one places his leaves last.

Would that we all ran so blithely to that cross…the splintered boards which tear His flesh, those bloodied planks softened and mercifully covered today by bedraggled palms.

Toddler-pink grubby innocent flesh, all gussied up, return quickly to their parents waiting in the pews. There is a random jelly bean and a lacey white sock lying lost on the church carpet. At the corner of the pew sits a forgotten hair-comb and a well worn hymnal. White haired elders and the newborn, the healthy and the dying, the cradle and the grave, all are seated together today; shifting and re-settling in the pews after the rush to the cross; the detritus of human joy, frenzied innocence and ultimate tragic frailty.

Easter hope…bathes first in the shadow of lavender sorrow and in the three darkest hours yet to come…

‘Tis April again…with snow on the ground, and the birds sing low at the sill. ‘Tis April…the air is blue black and there’s ice at the top of the hill.

But…’tis April once more and the chill at the door will be gone by the end of this day. For the moon has turned over and the yard breathes of clover, the daisies are soon on their way…

April dawns…March, sir…go away! Time for blossoms now to play. Rain, rain…wash the clay…salt and grit and winter’s day. Earth, earth…grow and bend and lead us on toward sunshine’s end…our friend!

‘Wait, what? They have a drive-through?’ ‘Yes, they have a drive-through’. She pondered this. ‘We’ve been here in this neighborhood five years and I never knew they had a drive-through. How did I miss that?’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know how you missed it. They have a drive-through. Believe me, it’s there. I don’t know what to tell you!’

‘Where is it exactly?’ He shrugged again. ‘I’m not sure. You’ll have to drive around, I guess’. She rolled her eyes. ‘So that means that I am picking up the food?’ He grinned, handing her the phone so she could place the order. She phoned, rattled off several menu numbers and hung up. ‘Thirty-five minutes’. He looked at her. ‘Wow, it usually takes fifteen minutes at the most’. She turned to look out the window at the neighbor trying to walk a large, unwieldy dog. ‘That dog walks the owner. Every day that huge dog walks that tiny owner. I could just never…’ ‘Really?’ He interrupted her. ‘Thirty-five minutes? That must mean they are doing a lot of business, which is really good’. He turned back to the television and she moved away from the window while setting the timer on her phone.

She arrived at the restaurant and pulled into the parking lot. ‘There’s no drive-through here…no way’. She drove cautiously to the right of the grey building. She pulled up to a window with an awning. The window was boarded up with grey lined board. ‘Do I beep?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Pandemic or no pandemic…board is board. There is no drive-through’. She edged forward, veering slightly to the left of the building, reaching the back lot which faced a gas station. Here was another window with an awning, boarded up with another plank of grey lined timber. She thought silently, looking first at the shuttered window, then at the gas station across the empty parking lot. As if sensing her indecision, a tall man pumping gas, looked up briefly from the pump and over in her general direction. For about ten seconds, he looked at the restaurant, her car and then bent back down over the pump hose.

She moved the car again, very slowly, veering more sharply to the left and as she came around the final corner, she saw a third window with another awning. ‘Ah’ she muttered, pulling the vehicle up tightly under the window lip. There were no grey boards here. Suddenly, the glass pane flew open. She rolled down her window while a masked man, one of the owners reached out and silently handed her a flat egg roll bag. She took it and opened it. Inside were two face masks. Confused, she turned to ask him if he wanted her to wear them while she placed her order. Without waiting, he slammed the window shut. She sat back in the car and looked ahead. ‘What now?’ she spoke out loud. The window shot up again, with a much younger masked man peering cautiously at her. ‘What’s your order, please?’ ‘Um, I had numbers 4, 6, 29 and two egg rolls’. He looked at her blankly. She started again, ‘I called about thirty-five minutes ago’. ‘Oh yes’ he answered. ‘Pull into the parking lot. It’s going to be about ten more minutes’. He slammed the window shut. She looked at the clock in the car, turned on the radio and pulled slowly forward into the parking space where she had first started circumnavigating the building. She set the timer on her phone.

She lay her head back on the seat and listened to the radio, hearing an update about the number of people testing positive for Covid in New York. The road in front of her, which ran the length of the parking lot was empty. A beam of tired spring evening sun stretched out on top of the tree line and disappeared behind a second gas station resting unoccupied at the intersection corner.

‘Beep, beep, beep’. The timer rang and she backed slowly into the lot, beginning once again to circle the grey building. She glanced at the car clock. She reached the third window, slowed and parked and waited. The window flew open with the younger masked man peering out once more. ‘What’s your order, please?’ She looked at him, at her windshield and then back at him. ‘I was just here’ she began stuttering slightly. ‘You told me to wait for another ten minutes…’ ‘Oh, yes!’ he said and the window slammed shut. She waited and shifted in her seat. Up shot the opening in the building wall. The masked man reached through the opening, stretching frantically in her direction. She grabbed the bag, handed over her card and waited again. In a minute, he returned the card and handed her an empty egg roll bag with two masks inside. ‘Do you need masks?’ She picked up her first egg roll bag and waved it at him. ‘No thanks, I’m good’. The window slammed down.

At the corner of Westcombe and Longton, she sits brilliantly in the cold March sunshine. A small woman wrapped in long fuchsia cloth and wearing a small turban, she watches as my car approaches the general vicinity of her house. I wave. She turns her head slowly toward me, unmoved; unmoving.

I think about her as I run errands. I’ve seen her walking slowly along the sidewalk, barely five feet tall; age undetermined. Her face is small, brown and lined. She could be sixty. She could just as easily be one hundred. She is a recent immigrant from Nepal.

She stares out and up at the sky…at lands I don’t see, winds I don’t feel; the sun at an angle I have never experienced. Her face is stone; absorbing with a direct stare the mountains from whence she came. My face is fluid. I look around mountains, above mountains, beneath mountains.

On my way back I search again for her but she and her chair are gone. She has left the mountain, the wind, the waning spring sun and the front lawn. She has closed her door against the fishbowl which is suburbia…