Honoring Veterans -- a Family Story

This is the official poster for Veterans Day 2009 created by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). You can hear TAPS playing . . . almost.

The VA Web site offers a poster gallery year by year back to 1978.

I wish I had a time machine to go back and tape my Uncle Rollo telling one of his WWII stories. Perfect for MP3. I would love to hear them all again. Uncle Rollo could be on YouTube. Imagine him tapping his pipe on his Annapolis ring (Class of '25) emptying the ashes before he filled it again and lit it with a long, wooden match.

His devoted pug, Friar Tuck, would curl up on his lap as he relived the Normandy invasion and his ship full of soldiers readying themselves for the battle on shore. Uncle Rollo's version wasn't quite as bloody as Tom Hanks's movie. All Uncle Rollo needed to do was captain his ship into position in a certain place at a certain time along with the rest of the fleet.

After the War, Uncle Rollo retired as a Rear Admiral. That rank gave him two stars on the bumper of his Thunderbird. When my sisters and I drove with him to the commissary at Quonset Point to pick up the week's groceries, the sentries would snap to attention as we drove through the gate.

I'm still not sure what to make of a life with that kind of order. At home, we lived in emotional chaos, with my mother spending her time organizing our sock drawer to perfection while the rest of the house looked like a hurricane zone. By the time my parents divorced, nothing was "normal" for us.

When Ted & Jan remarried a decade later, we were still a mess. Is it relationships that make us crazy or the particular people we choose for partners? Straight or gay doesn't matter. The hearts rumble just the same. You'd think kindness would be a given, considering the alternative.

At Christmas, Uncle Rollo would unwrap the tin of Grainger's pipe tobacco we gave him as if it were a treasure. The shape of the tin gave away the surprise, but he always managed to look amazed that he received such a wonderful gift.

And every night as we headed up to bed, we'd swing through the living room and kiss him on the head as he sat in his wing chair reading the New Yorker or the New York Times.

I still get the New Yorker in hard copy. The Times I read online. Some things charm the chaos like the skin off a snake.

Houdini's Birthday . . . It's Halloween

All Hallows Eve is not only the spookiest night of the year, it's also a celebration of one of our most enigmatic magicians -- Harry Houdini.

And it's also the birthday of Susan Orlean, one of my favorite writers and the author of The Orchid Thief.

Even more literary magic is happening tomorrow in Washington Grove, Maryland, where I'm joining a poetry group for the first time.

This is big news because in the past 2 years my journaling is pretty much the only writing in my life. Nothing to sneeze at Sneezy. I mean I'm writing 400 pages every 5 months. Hmm I wonder how much that is by the pound of paper?? Silly.

I think this blog needs more visits from me. As does the Shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that blue-domed amazement off North Capitol Street in Washington, DC. I hear they have quite a gift store. Actually, my grandma visited there on a bus filled with Polish ladies in flowered babooshkas from Anthony, RI. This was back in the early 60s. I heard they had a blast. My grandma's laugh alone could have propeled that bus to the moon and back.

I miss her. That's what happens when I eat too much chocolate. That's the thing about Halloween. If you're not supposed to eat candy, this is the wrong day for you to celebrate.

A New Season . . .

For someone like me who didn't really do much vacationing this summer, you'd think that the change of season would be a blip on my radar screen.

On the contrary, this is a chance to get in my car and drive up to New England to see the leaves and pour some maple syrup on blueberry pancakes. OK, there's maple syrup in Maryland. As a matter of fact there are changing leaf colors in Maryland . . . But once a New Englander, always a New Englander.

I'm thinking of buying a little cabin to live in, a cabin in a birch forest, a cabin with indoor plumbing, a cabin near a lake with a canoe with my name on it. My people came from Quebec to live in Rhode Island. Something went wrong. Not a potato famine, not persecution for being Catholic, not a plague of locusts. But something creepy and dark. Take my word for it.

At the New York Public Library many years ago, my Uncle Rollo (actually my great uncle Roland) found some history on our French-Canadian ancestors. Apparently, one of the married "une femme sauvage" or a "wild woman."

Her name was Marie. I guess the Catholics got to her before the foxy Frenchman did. Her full name, according to some geneaology by a long-lost cousin, was Marie Metiomiguok. She was Huron Indian. I guess she was lucky to marry and move away. The Hurons living near Trois Rivieres, not far from Lake Champlain, were decimated in the late 17th century by the Iroquois. What was left of the tribe moved across the water and changed their tribal name.

I'm simplifying things a little. Old habits die hard, as Uncle Rollo used to say. He also said that aging was not for the faint-hearted. So far, true!

But I think about Marie Metiomiguok. I think about leaves falling in Quebec. Maybe Marie feels the autumn chill in the air; maybe she sees brilliant leaves floating free from the birches. Maybe she wonders if anyone will remember her name.

Clam Cakes in Summer

There's a good reason for driving 7 hours without stopping from Maryland to Rhode Island.

Clamcakes.

In the summer there's nothing like them . . . We stand in line at Aunt Carrie's on Ocean Road in Narragansett for more than an hour sometimes on weekends when everybody's blue from being in the waves too long.

The clamcakes in this photo look a little greasy. But you get the idea. My favorite parts are the crunchy little "tails" of dough that get extra fried so the crisp talks to you when you bite down.

My dad met us at Aunt Carrie's one time when we were staying at the Anchor Motel just down the road. He always ordered the New England clam chowder, which is white. New York chowder is red. Every time I pick "red" I can hear that 60s Beach Boys song, "Be True to Your School." And I can see my dad shaking his head and mumbling, "Meredith."

And don't even mention not really liking lobster. What kind of Rhode Islander are you? Um, the kind that left home for college in the mid-60s to go to school in DC because the drinking age was 18? Who would admit to that?

Certainly not me.

If you ask me, I've lived up here all my life. My heart and soul walk that beach every single day without fail, rain or shine, just after sunrise.

A Cormorant Dries Her Wings

Published online at PoetryMagazine.com (Current Poets Summer 2007), this poem is deep in their archives now. Time has passed, new poets are posted. Old poems disappear every day from cyberspace unless someone who loves them reposts! So here's my Cormorant poem revived and reposted, exactly 2 years later:

A Cormorant Dries Her Wings

Next time you're driving up Race Point Road
on the way to the beach in Provincetown
don't be afraid of the solitary, black bird
you might find standing in the road,
as if waiting for a ride, rocking back and forth
from one webbed foot to the other,
as you wind your way around that wide curve
of beech trees and dunes. You'll be thinking
of the morning sun on your skin, the quiet
waves, the time alone. But the cormorant
is there of necessity, drying her wings
with great flaps and whooshes. After fishing,
she can't fly until the warm breezes funneling
over the dunes have time to dry her feathers.
Until then, she stops your car, and the cars
behind you. Her wings are huge. Will she
come to the window? Will she peck a tire
as you wait there like so much dirty laundry
piled on the front seat? Hope is a bird, isn't it?
Yes, hope is a bird. So, stay and wait a while
for the ranger to save you as he drives by
patrolling the road. He will shoo her away
and ask point blank through your rolled up
window: What's stopping you from everything
you want to do right now? This cormorant?
Don't answer right away. Give yourself some time
to think about it, think about every single thing,
what you're doing there and why.

Meredith Pond July 17, 2007

Dark Night in Tucson

July 1969. Dupont Circle, Washington, DC. The plan was simple. The four of us -- Alice, Alison, me, and Bill -- would camp cross country and down to Tucson. Bill's friend lived there, and he had a swimming pool.

And as we were soon to find out, a spider monkey. The little creature wore an infant-sized diaper that came up under "his" armpits. Do monkeys have armpits? Yes. Do monkeys like miniature marshmallows? Yes.

Do monkeys like it when their "mom" leaves for a trip to Denver? Absolutely not.

Have you ever heard a monkey cry? Let me just say, you don't want to. The sound is the same little whoop over and over again. Marshmallows are the only remedy. The small one fit like a plug. A silencing plug. With no harm done.

Nobody told us that the heat could almost boil that pool water in the daytime. But as soon as the sun went down, Tucson came to life. Grocery stores, open all night long, sold cold beer and wine and a fresh supply of miniature marshmallows.

One night towards the end of July around midnight on the way back from the store, the sky opened like a bathtub faucet and sent rivers down the sidewalks and arroyos, those dried up river beds that you figure belonged to the sidewinders and horned toads of Lone Ranger fame.

Black sky. Sheets of rain. And then under our tires, the sound of squishing. The road looked like it was lifting off the ground. And it was. The road was now a channel for thousands of frogs.

It's a lucky day in the desert when frogs are happy in the rain . . .

Woodstock Redux -- See You in August?

Has it really been 40 years? I guess so. I'm not 21 anymore, that's for sure.

I remember 21 . . .

Back then dancing around in the rain on a slippery hillside was a lot of fun. No looking for a towel. No whining that my feet hurt. Just happy happy happy. Rain rain rain.

In 1969, we lived well without cell phones, Starbucks, DVDs, and iPods. We had vinyl records and lots of velvet.

Anyway, I keep thinking that a whole bunch of people my age will show up in Woodstock, NY, somwhere around Yazgur's farm, just for the fun of it.

Just to see who's still around. See you there?? Last time, we (Alice, Bill, Alison, and me) arrived in Alice's VW squareback on Thursday afternoon, August 14. We left a few hours after Hendrix's sunrise anthem on Monday, August 18. I know the dates now. Back then I had no idea what day it was . . . or where we were headed when it was over.

A time machine would be perfect, wouldn't it?? Peace . . .