Stand before a bookcase, close your eyes, pick a book, open it up, jab your finger down on the page, and use that sentence as your opening

Posted on by alisonmcghee

“…together, country-western on the radio.”

Johnny Cash. Tammy Wynette. Dolly Parton. Loretta Lynn. Lynn Anderson. Hank Williams. Glen Campbell. Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash. Has Johnny Cash been mentioned? Johnny Cash.

These are the country-western singers you grew up with, the ones who were on the radio in the station wagon as you and your family drove. Which you had to do all the time –drive– since you lived five miles north of the nearest town.

These are the singers whose records you played on the record player. The first record you bought with your own money, when you were a little kid, was Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.

You and your family once saw Johnny at an outdoor stadium in Toronto. It poured down rain, and your seats were out in the open. No shelter. “If you stay, I’ll play,” he said, and he went through guitar after guitar as each one got soaked on stage.

Dolly you loved, and you love even more now. She felt like a friend. Loretta you were a little scared of, but you admired her. Glen made you dream about wide-open spaces and horses and cowboy boots. Lynn had a song called “Fancy” that you listened to over and over and over and over and over and over, before you even understood what the song was about. Hank, Hank. . . something about him made you want to cry. Tammy made you think. But not too hard. She felt like the lesser of the country sisters.

Johnny, though, he was everything. You mourned the day he died, and you love his daughter partly because she’s a good songwriter, and partly because she loved her dad so much.

Country-western on the radio. Baseball on the radio. The WIBX morning show on the radio.

There was a lot of radio in your life, back then, and none of it was the NPR that you listen to nonstop now.

What would you take with you, if you could?

Posted on by alisonmcghee

If you could take something with you when you leave this world, what would you take? That’s the question that has been asked of you, and the obvious things aren’t allowed: those whom you love.

You put a colon in that sentence above because you thought you’d be making a list of all the obvious things that you aren’t allowed to take with you, but as it turns out, there’s only one obvious thing that matters: those whom you love.

Last night you couldn’t sleep. You woke up at 1:50 in a typical middle-of-the-night terror, your mind spinning wildly. You went through them all, all those whom you love, ticking them off one by one.

If you didn’t know exactly where they were, right at that moment, you imagined it. The boy: asleep in a room on the tenth floor of a building in a city by the sea.  The girl: asleep ten feet away; you could hear the whir of the fan that keeps her peaceful. The other girl: asleep thirty feet away; you pictured the dog curled up next to her on the sleeping bag she prefers to sheets.

The mother and father: asleep in the upstairs room of the house you grew up in, surrounded by vast snowy woods and fields, their own dog asleep on the couch downstairs.

The brother: asleep with his wife, three miles away, in the room adjoining their baby’s room. The sister: asleep in her upstairs bedroom next to her husband, the twin boys down the hall, asleep in their bunks. The other sister: asleep in her upstairs bedroom next to her husband, the three children in their rooms on the same floor.

The man and his dog: asleep, or maybe not asleep, in a room filled with books two miles away.

The best friend: asleep next to her husband on the second floor of the light-filled house fifteen hundred miles away.

You turn over. Everyone is accounted for. But for how long? How long will it last? What will you do when one of the dominoes tumbles? You must figure out a way to cope. You must be strong. You must not crumble. Your mind spins off again, spiraling up and away, and you flip the pillow. You listen to the fan in the girl’s room. You push your leg against the weight of the cat, asleep next to you.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

What would you take with you, if you could?

All these quilts on top of your layers of sleep clothes –the t-shirt, the other t-shirt, the long-sleeve shirt, the flannel pajamas– are making you hot. But if you push one of the quilts off then you might get cold. If you get cold you might never get warm again. Better keep all the quilts on.

But man, it’s hot. Push a quilt off. If you get cold, you can pull the quilt back on. Keep careful track now, because the minute you start to get cold it could all be over. You might never get warm again.

You lie there, keeping track. Where are those you love now? It’s 3:57; surely they’re all still asleep. Run through them all again, one by one, in your mind. Check. Check. Check.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

What would you take with you, if you could? Would you take your cactus mug? Would you take the photo of your grandmother and grandfather and their dog, that photo with you in the background beside them? Would you take your black cowboy shirt? Would you take your secret recipe for toffee? Would you take your favorite pair of jeans? Would you take your excellent sense of smell, the rickety green bench you commandeered from the trash down the alley? Would you take the letter your father wrote you ten years ago?

Two days ago you and your girls went to the Somali mall and got henna tattoos. Henna lasts a few weeks, and then it fades away.

You’re still too hot. All these layers. Push off another quilt. But wait, you might get cold at any moment. The first domino might fall at any moment. And then what?

What would you take with you, if you could?

A long time ago someone came running back up those narrow apartment building stairs after saying goodbye, four floors up, and threw his arms around you, and told you he was crazy about you. He was wearing a long black coat. Or maybe he wasn’t, this was spring, why would he be wearing a long black coat? You hugged him back.

Then he became a domino that fell, and he took you with him.

Still too hot. You get up out of the quilt-strewn bed and turn on the overhead fan. It’s winter, and here you are with an overhead fan? How strange. It is very, very hot in this room. Still, though, you might get cold at any time. Something might happen at any time, and it’s best to preserve as much warmth as you possibly can. If you get cold you might never get warm again.

The Archaeology of Snow

Posted on by alisonmcghee

That photo over there is a photo of the steps that lead up to her house. There are six steps, wide and shallow, covering a vertical distance of approximately four feet from bottom to top.

That’s what she remembers, anyway. There might be five steps, or seven. Who can tell, under all that snow?

She did a little experiment earlier. She stood at the top of where she thought the top step might be, and then she leaped. She landed, she thinks, on the sidewalk. But who’s to know, under all that snow?

Earlier in the day she put on her boots and hauled her yellow steel-spring snow shovel upstairs to her bedroom. Outside the large bedroom window is a small slanted roof (one of several, because it’s a house with several peaks and slants), a roof piled so high with snow that half the window was obscured.

Which would have been fine, because what’s a little more whiteness on top of whiteness, except that she noticed a crack in the wall, right through the plaster and paint, directly underneath the window and running its entire width.

No! This could mean only one thing: The Ice Dam Cometh.

Up to the bedroom she went, lugging the shovel. She pushed open the large window, which is on hinges, and hauled herself and the shovel onto the roof. Then she commenced shoveling.

The top foot or so was easy. Feathery light sparkling snow, the kind that whisks off the shovel and flies up in your face with the slightest breeze. Somewhat out of control, but weightless, so that it’s not really a bother.

Fling, fling, fling, gone. She considers this top layer Ectomorphic Snow. Given her body type, if she were snow, this is the kind of snow she would be.

The second foot or so was what she thinks of as ordinary, run of the mill winter snow. Solid, well-packed, not a lot of air. Difficult to shovel but certainly not impossible. She thinks of this kind of snow as exercise snow. Spend an hour shoveling this snow –she will call it Mesomorphic Snow– and there is no need to go lift weights at the Y. Mesomorphic snow is rewarding.

Her youngest child, if she were to turn into snow, would be this kind of snow.

The last foot and a half proved very grim. At first glance, this bottom layer looked manageable –granular, crusty, “corn” snow, as they say on the slopes. She attacked it with vigor, believing herself to be nearly finished, and a job well done at that. But the corn snow had been waiting, and it was going to take its time.

You think you are nearly done, O Woman With the Sock Monkey Snow Hat, but how wrong you are.

The corn snow –perhaps better termed the Borderline Personality Disorder Snow– was like a blind date gone horribly wrong. An unassuming, even pleasant appearance, a sociable hello, and then all hell breaks loose.

How long had the BPD snow been lying in wait? A long time, she realized. Months, perhaps, as far back as November. It would go to its death, yes, but it would not gently into that good night.

At this point, halfway through the dour BPD snow struggle, her neighbor emerged from her house to call up to her that she needed to get off the roof immediately because “You will die!”

She would not die, but the BPD snow would. She waved and smiled and carried on. Her neighbor, having done her duty, retreated into the safety of her own home.

And that is how it came to pass that her backyard clothesline, normally a comfortable few inches above her head, now hangs mere inches above the backyard snowdrift composed of Ectomorphic, Mesomorphic, and Death by Being Methodically Chopped Into Small Pieces and Flung Overboard snow.