Cancer/Writing Journal #92

 

This is truly a Cancer/Writing entry.  I had my PSA tested again this week and again the level was too low to be detectable.  One thing interesting was that the Oncology lady said that with the meds I am on (presumably the one that turns off testosterone) she would have expected muscle wasting to be occurring in me.  The fact that that has not happened tells her that I am doing something very right.  I told my fitness coach and he was quite gladdened by that.  He asked if he could tell others of that.  My response, "Sure."

Here is my poem for my writing group.  It was generally well received although a couple of people did not see it as a poem, more of an essay.  My response, "Hey, it's got lines that don't go to the end of the margin; it's got stanzas; what more do you want?  Heck, it's even about poetry!"  I'm joking.  I sort of half get what they are saying but I don't have a real tight grip on when a poem is not a poem.  And I don't know if I care much.  If they want to call the thing I thought was a poem an essay, I can live with that.  I'm sort of play-acting at being a poet anyway.

I showed it to my sister.  She balked at the notion that Mom was always cross when she wasn't reading poetry.  I take her point but didn't make changes in response to her comment.  The thing that is sharpest in my memory are those two voices.  And Mom's life was hard.  One bedroom shack with four kids heated with a wood stove and no hot running water.  My own memories of the old house are warm.  I can understand another viewpoint.

Someone else objected to my mother's poetry choices as being arbitrary and odd.  She thought they were totally right.  That set me back a little.  My emotional response is to agree that my mother's choices were excellent.  It was an effort to be objective that prompted me to call them arbitrary and odd.  That effort was very possibly misguided.  Perhaps I could have called the selection eclectic which it is.

Someone suggested that I could download the recording of my mother and see about sending it to the people on the sign up sheet by email.  My response was on the order of , "Hey, that's a thought."  but that ain't happening.  For starters, I don't still have the sign-up sheets.  But I am in favor of being able to strike something off my five greatest shames list.  Alas, the list will remain intact.

Charlie Schaefer,   February, 2023

My Mother’s Reading to Me at Bedtime.

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin'-fishes play*

An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

These lines have been in my head for 70 years.  

My mother wound me down, gentled my mind

And heightened my familiarity with literature all at the same time.

Her choices were arbitrary and maybe odd.

Besides this, there was Gunga Din by Kipling,

The Legend of Sam McGee by Robert Service,

Daffodils by Wordsworth.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Frost,

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes.

Along with kid’s poems:  Mother Goose,

Custard the Dragon by Ogden Nash, 

Two books of children’s poems by A.A. Milne

Which we shorthanded as “Christopher Robin”.

Her voice, melodious, expressive, peaceful, really her at her best.

Most of the rest of her voice I remember from those years was cross reprimand.

Although she and I had quite nice discussions later on

Her voice, happy and pleasant then but still not as it was when she recited poems.

She recited poems on a cassette recorder for my step-son.

He listened to it for months, maybe a year, when he went to bed.

At her funeral, I arranged to play from it, her reciting Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

People were very happy to hear it.  So much so that when I offered a sign-up sheet

For people to get their own copy mailed to them, I got a pretty lengthy list.

If I were to make a list of the five things in my life that I am most ashamed of,

My failure to make cassette copies of that recording

and mail it to the people on the sign-up sheet would make the list.

*Only in my mind’s ear, it is “flyin’-fishes flay”

Which doesn’t make much sense but has nice alliteration

And “flay” is easier to say.  “Play” is actually a little difficult after “flyin’-fishes.