writing group 10.24.10

freewrite: 12 minutes
this morning she scratched at my window. crying to get let in and bleary eyed i half fell out of bed, grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and threw her into the hallway. moments like that where i know that children, in any traditional sense of the situation, are not in my future. or even a dog probably. i’m enjoying being selfish with my time these days. or at least the time in my room. haven of hoarded clothing for post-surgery fashions, art postcards and letters from across-country friends lining my wall, books and books and books. my room would light up in a bonfire if a stray spark ever flew. i remember writing about how scared i was of a house fire. college notebook thinking about the apartment patricia, then haley and i shared. all the friends that slept on the chartreuse stripped velveteen couch i bought for $50 from the hadassah house in skokie. my first night in that apartment spent there while i waited for delivery of first double sized mattress. alone in the apartment that night. excited. unknowing of the simultaneous trauma, support, blessings and delicious feasts that would make their way into that apartment over the next two years. clifton avenue. we would lock bikes to the chain link fence out front and the poorly boundaried landlord who spoke too loudly and grew up in the apartment would get mad at us. i’ve always lived places where landlords have suspected us of housing too many people. but really there was just a constant stream of visitors. sleepovers so that alejandro and lisa didn’t have to go home after late nights. that summer where it seemed there was a different person every night. that summer we went to des moines, then omaha. two car caravan of city queers off for adventure. we picked up kristina in iowa, spent time with haley’s family. cyndi was a smoker then. i hated it. it made my stomach turn to smell it on her and i would have mini panic flashbacks. haley’s dad, lonnie, telling lisa and cyndi that smoking was bad for them in his half serious deadpan.

object as intended: freewrite: 12 minutes
the image of the tea kettle on stove is reassuring. every house i walk into i check out two things. location of books and tea kettle. if there is no tea kettle there seems to be a hole on the stove, waiting to be filled with the steam of wintertime company. my tea kettle is paul revere brand, as given by my mother, two match hers. since my sophomore year of college it has collected the orange rust stickiness of grease stains. i once was, but can no longer be bothered with scrubbing in down. no longer the silver of my mother’s kettle but something layered and dense, and yes, a little dirty, but mine.
he lifts the kettle off the stove. the kitchen is cold, the only heat emanating from the front gas burner. pours water into french press of albina co-op tea blends–cool out and immune boost to keep him focused for homework and free from the constant sickness of last winter. sometimes he talks distractedly to me, sometimes bangs the kettle down with too much force, squeals, calls to his boyfriend who lies in bed with the cats. “kristopher, come pay attention to me. do you want tea? drink this coffee jesse made. can i give him the rest of your coffee? kristopher you should ask before you take jesse’s food.” we laugh at him, scatterbrained and constant in his stream of thought. no filter. back to the kettle. we refill it hourly, it seems, on cold days when we are all home. add water to half heated water, wait for the boil to begin. mugs of morning coffee, afternoon tea and the strong whiskey-lemon-ginger toddies we drank all last december and january. back to the kettle. rachel’s hands are toughened from food service work and she calmly lifts the black plastic handle without flinching. i use towel, rag, hoodie sleeve to lift the kettle and not hurt my heat sensitive, social worker hands.

object re-envisioned: freewrite: 12 minutes
ginny sits on the scrubbed wood floor. around her, in half circle, a drum kit of upended pots of varying sizes, a tall, empty quaker oats container and fresh scrubbed silver tea kettle sit and she has the stage. wooden spoon in one sticky hand and whisk in another she loudly bangs in rhythm on each of her different drums, chanting songs about the family of ducklings she found yesterday nestled in the wound up garden hose and about asim, the boy n her class that she thinks has very cute dimples. “ducklings why are you so small, maybe one day you’ll be tall. boys with teeth and lips and hair, sit in class, in line and stare!” she bangs on the tamale pot, the biggest of her drums, her bass drum and knocks out the beat of her song. bumpah bumpah bump bump pah! with that a final crash of the whisk on the tea kettle the way she ends every song because it is her favorite sound. it sounds different depending on how much water her mama has left inside it. hollow, empty rattling when all the water is gone and full it is deep and heavy sounding, like when she hits the metal posts on the playground with rocks at recess. today it is maybe half full, she thinks, and echoes loudly when she hits the side, like the way a submarine might sound if she threw a rock at it. with a final flourish, she tips the kettle into her mouth and pours the cold water in, chugging and dripping water down the front of her brown corduroy jumper. “thank you! thank you!’ she shouts to her audience of stuffed animals and kitchen spices, waving the kettle around so much that it splashes water into the whole crowd.