Washing Dishes

~ Christina Ferraro ~ Leave a comment

She wanted to splinter into fragments of a person, specks taking to the wind like confetti from a popped balloon.

She wanted to melt into the floor and creep across the pathways of grout, never to be solid again.

She wanted to drive, far and fast, chasing the sunset until she hit the Pacific.

She wanted to run—past old trees and under a chorus of cicadas—a whiff of hair blowing past, a sound of soles tapping pavement—a blur and then a memory.

She wanted to be on a train going anywhere, anonymous under sunglasses, listening to Fleetwood Mac and watching cat tails and graffiti out a rushing window.

Watching the gap. Standing clear of the closing doors.

Idling

~ Christina Ferraro ~ Leave a comment

We haven’t moved in a while,
your hand still resting on
the gear shift when
you used to hold mine.
A time ago we loved to park
and watch others drive by and
gaze at each other’s features
instead of out our own windows.
We’d warm our hands with each other’s
and talk about everything and nothing.
But now we don’t know what to say
without consulting the manual.
I check the glove box for
a fast-food napkin and find
that CD you made me
when all we had was time
and our food wasn’t fast.
We would laugh with each other
over three-course meals and wine,
our cheeks rosy with the heat
of affection and not frostbitten
from too much time in the cold.
I wonder if your pinky will
ever brush mine with intent again
or if keeping our hands
to ourselves is best,
because this machinery is heavy
and so is what’s on our minds.
I put my gloves on and
change the radio station.
You turn it off because
you have a headache.
I look out the window
to catch your reflection.
The last time I gazed at you,
you said “what?” and I said “nothing.”
So I watch you from a distance,
a hand’s reach away.
I turn on the heated seats
and get goosebumps.
You curse about the traffic.
I remember when we
didn’t mind sitting still.

When I Look at You

~ Christina Ferraro ~ 1 Comment

I see paper airplane stunts, mud pies and swinging branches.

I see building block skyscrapers constructed before the sun comes up. I see bowling pins made of paper towel rolls and tiny car races through shoebox tunnels.

I see dance parties while we wait for a bathtub to fill and movie nights with popcorn and candy that gets in our teeth.

I hear jokes you made up yourself and rhyming games and “name that tune” and the makes and models of cars we pass on the highway.

I hear raucous cackles and raspy belly laughs and self-satisfied chuckles. Sometimes a melody, sometimes a chaotic jazz tune.

I hear you working through math problems and reading assignments, opening your world’s windows with every advancement of a decimal place and a syllable.

I hear you whispering new phrases you learned on the school bus as you work out what they mean.

I hear you announce the count-down to ignition. You in your NASA costume with a chair on its back, lying with your back on the floor and legs in the air as if you’re strapped into a shuttle.

I hear dinosaurs stomping and shrieking (admittedly too loudly), and superheroes whooshing (admittedly too fast).

I hear Marco! And Polo! I smell chlorine and sunblock as you sit on a lounge chair crunching tortilla chips and sandwich cookies.

I smell pizza nights and sports drinks and sweaty hair after you’re chased on the playground playing Big Bad Wolf.

I smell your kiddie breath with notes of chocolate chips and veggie straws as you whisper instructions into my face for how to play Ninja.

I smell the grilled cheese that burned while breaking up your lively debate about whether your brother could look at, touch or Heaven-forbid play with your new toy.

I smell your hair after a bath and remember when it curled at the ends.

I feel a toy stethoscope on my chest and breathe as instructed. I fell and broke my ankle, and in addition to a cast I will also need a shot in both my legs and arms.

I feel the rogue jabs of cardboard sword fights for which I am collateral damage as I eat a cold bagel and warm my tea for the third time.

I feel the elastic strap of a birthday hat as I sing your Captain Zoom birthday song and you bury your face in my shoulder, smiling behind my back.

I feel the leaves underfoot as we see who can make the loudest crunch.

I hold piles of plastic food on plastic plates. I imagine what broccoli ice cream might taste like on the side of a hot dog.

I hold the helm of a pirate ship to keep us from running aground amidst enemy fire.

I hold a flashlight while you make shadow puppets on the wall and pretend a giant hand is coming down from the ceiling to attack us.

I hold your hand as you tell me about school and yell at me for not packing the right snack. I should have known that Goldfish and raisins were out of vogue this week.

I hold your toddler clothes and put them in bags to donate and bins to keep, wondering how long they’ll keep their scent of baby detergent and if I’ll remember the scent in a few years.

I hold your dreams next to mine and wish for them as much as or more than I ever wished for anything.

Windows

~ Christina Ferraro ~ Leave a comment

When I was a girl, I was fascinated by passing windows. Riding in the passenger seat, looking in at golden hues of hurricane lamps between draperies, wondering about the lives lived within them. Glimpses of dining rooms and chandeliers, people coming and going to the table. Glimmers of lives caught in five-second passes out my own small window of a Mercury Sable.

When we’d drive into the city the number of windows in every building we passed was overwhelming. “Can you imagine how many people there are?!” I said routinely. And a window for them all. An imagination can take great strides in a second’s time. A dinner table, an argument, a shadow, a television. I would get lost in the story of that family, that kid, that home.

I once had a dream that I was in the back seat of a taxi, looking out the window at the buildings we passed. And suddenly everyone in the windows was looking back at me, staring. It was so unsettling that I’ve never forgotten it. That’s the risk you take in looking in a window, I suppose. That someone will be looking back.

I feel a vulnerability in having blinds open at night and close them as soon as the sun has set. I will never own a mountain home with window walls. That’s how horror movies begin. When I was a child, if my mother was washing the sidelight curtains, I would run past the door. The darkness, showing only a reflection of the houselights, would bring to mind flashes of newspaper headlines. Anything—or anyone—could be looking in.

More often, and more comfortingly, a radio playing and a window to look out of has been the gateway to most of my daydreams–being of the sort who daydreams nearly continuously. As I got older, passenger windows were replaced by windshields as I drove to clear my head. (Particularly in recent years with little ones in tow due for a nap.) The rolling hills of farms and manicured lawns of center-hall colonials birth new visions of old dreams.

At night running errands, I find myself still comforted in passing the warmth of house windows alight, awakening a familiar wistfulness that lingers until Spring. That gutting nostalgia that takes your breath away on a random Tuesday on your way to pick up bread. Looking out of windows will do that.

When you live in the same town you grew up in, every now and again you catch yourself seeking your younger shadows. Walking sidewalks or school halls with a Jansport slung over a shoulder, sitting in the old library, being dropped off at a dance in the gym. Are those familiar chorus voices? Is that weeping willow still there? Memories over years are like a carbon receipt with each subsequent page less clear, until it’s so faded you can’t make out the original.

Today as I was dropping off my kids, we passed the high school. “Look,” I said, “You can see the teenagers going to class. Look through the window.” Teenagers being the most interesting type of people to a second-grader and a preschooler. Adults are boring. But teenagers, they’ve got a hook in my kids. “How long until I’m a teenager?” “When I’m a teenager, can I drive a car like a man?” Like a man. There’s a thought that’ll bring you to tears and triumph at the same time. That baby cheeks should someday have whiskers on them. And the windows they stood on tip-toes to look out of–noting cardinals and squirrels, garbage trucks and seasons’ first snows–will be unoccupied in a few short years. I don’t remember the last time they ran to the window to see a garbage truck.

I don’t recall the last time I looked out my childhood bedroom window while it was still mine, before it became a room for grandchildren’s toys. I don’t remember the last time I stood in my driveway and boarded the school bus, finding my place by the window and daydreaming of school dances going my way.

And when this season passes, our windows won’t have smiley faces drawn on them or smudges from little noses pressed against the glass while searching for an airplane. Car windows will show me my memories with them: of trick-or-treating past the old cemetery, snow ball fights in my childhood yard, picking them up at the nursery school gate. Memories that won’t quit my body even after my mind has forgotten. But that’s what daydreams are for.

The Bold and the Ugly

~ Christina Ferraro ~ Leave a comment

Pounding fists are not gavels,
and society unravels
when we concede to chaos and noise.
Some people won’t change no matter their travels–
they can traverse the globe yet insist the world is flat,
see a dog and call it a cat,
say “the sky is green,” and do we say, “No, I’m sorry, it’s blue”?
Do we say, “I think maybe your views are askew”?
No–we give them platforms and mics and attention with board meetings, podcasts, posts and conventions. It seems that every American town hall
has Toms, Dicks and Harrys with no heart, but all gall.
We worship idols who
ruffle feathers rather than lead, who’ll say anything to get the sound-bytes that they need.
Call out these blowhards, these mice among men.
I have told you once, and I’ll tell you again:
a secret that every one of us knows
is the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
Just a cool breeze of change would bring him to a knee,
and our awareness of his bareness
unchanged by decree.
He’s long in the tooth but short on change,
and ours is a future for us to arrange.
So speak clearly with poise
against mob-forming boys,
but don’t think women won’t form them, too.
We’ve been taught there’s not enough room at the table, so we
elbow and gossip our way to a chair,
pulling no punches but pulling out hair.
But if we’re the ones expected to set the table and serve the cheese, then we should sit wherever we damn well please.
We’ve been conditioned to think there’s no stopping the trolls who’ve pushed us back into corners and hallways in droves.
But what we’ve forgotten is more than they’ll learn–
that the truth doesn’t need to be yelled to be heard.
A new year sweeps in whether or not you’ve spun your noisemakers or banged spoons on pots.
When the record plays over and over, you start to hear scratches.
“What was that you said? You’ve come off your latches.”
Ask questions, engage and hold feet to the fire.
This world needs your voice– the situation is dire.
This space is yours, too,
so go, grab the mic. The floor is yours now.
Here’s looking at you.

The Distance to Wisdom

~ Christina Ferraro ~ 1 Comment

The distance to wisdom is crossed on foot, with no passing but through thickets and thorns and the burrs of low-hanging fruit. Some of us with machetes and boots, others with worn woodshed axes, some with nothing but gloves insulating from the terrain. And some of us with less than that—bare-armed against nature and the elements, sliced and scabbed. Still, onward.

There’s no delaying a setting sun, and a cerulean sky is pretty—when admired from a distance, when you can see trees silhouetted in black like a velvet page in a color-by-number. You can’t see that shade of blue inside the woods. If you find your way to twilight you’ll have earned a story of survival—and adventure, if you’re lucky. A cautionary tale is one misstep, one head turn, one crack of a twig underfoot.

Some try to arm their friends, kin: “Take my axe—I was given it by my grandfather.” “You’ll need this coat—it’s kept me warm, take it. My mother made it.” But many would rather have scars to show for their time. Tattoos of lessons and betrayals of uneven ground. They don’t want the wisdom of another’s hero’s journey. What is there after survival but to tell about it? After you’ve reached the clearing, barbs clung to pant legs like souls unwilling to be forgotten, while the low hum of the highway grows louder?

They say “you can’t take it with you.” Yet how many caskets close with stories inside, with the knowledge mined from years of finding fool’s gold, finally having learned the difference? Perhaps the riddle of it is that despite our ancient roots, we’re still looking at the tree tops, hoping to make it out of the woods for golden hour.

Ode to a Gentleman

~ Christina Ferraro ~ Leave a comment

You will open our car door
But lie to our face,
You admire our ambition
But call “false start” in our race,
You will compliment our blouse
But say nothing of our work,
You’ll applaud our career
But expect a clean house,
You tell us we’re pretty
But for our age,
You champion our audition
But won’t share the stage,
You adore our softness
But then say we’re too weak,
You pull out our chair
But then won’t let us speak,
You question our choices
But have done all the same,
You know our title
But don’t know our name,
“I prefer natural women”
But “don’t let yourself go,”
“We’re o.k. with your feelings”
But “don’t let them show,”
You encourage our passions
But dismiss our fears,
You take the lift up a mountain
We’ve climbed barefoot for years,
“Penny for your thoughts”
But steamroll our agenda,
Three quarters to your dollar
But we’re not wise spenders,
You say dress to impress
But keep ourselves modest,
Be coy and coquettish
But forthright and honest,
You applaud our efforts
But question our worth,
We should practice self-care
But “bounce back” from childbirth,
Make our voices be heard
But don’t ever yell,
It’s unbecoming for a woman
To kiss and to tell,
Your hobbies are a right
while our safety is a privilege,
We’re to have all your babies
But where is our village?
Be strong but not big,
be smart but play dumb.
You’ll kiss our hand
But keep us under your thumb.
“Don’t be a spinster”
But “don’t stay out late.”
If we must work after hours,
Then keep a quick gait
And have our keys handy,
because men lie in wait
To rob us and hurt us
and ruin our life.
But we should find a good man
And become his good wife.
There is no greater threat
to women than men.
Not sharks in the ocean,
nor bears in the woods
Have hurt us as much
as your coulds and your shoulds.
See, this is the wisdom
we’re taught our first minute:
that a gentleman will offer a light,
But will burn the entire house down
with us in it.