The merest of gestures can shatter self-respect. A hand raised against comment; a slight shake of the head. A sardonic grin. Your voice falls on resistant ears. You tell yourself in turns that you deserve better and that you deserve much worse. Your greedy heart wrestles with a crushed soul that huddles in the unlit corner.

Before I moved to California, I got a pedicure every other week at a salon near my home. I can’t recall the name of the technician who provided this service for me but the same woman waited on me every time because I had a regular appointment. Getting this done did not feed my vanity. My particular mobility challenge inhibits certain acts of self-care; I understand how important one’s feet can be to heart-health, but I also acknowledge that a pedicure provides a certain sense of satisfaction.

Within weeks after I moved, I realized that I would have to find a new salon. Although I could count on being home a few times during that first year, once I finished my cases, I would have no need for frequent visits. With the trepidation of one who firmly believes in her unworthiness for such luxuries, I booked an appointment in Lodi and presented myself for scrutiny.

It did not go well.

The lady bent over my feet and exclaimed in unbridled tones that she did not wish to work on a crippled person. In truth, my ten toes have a few knots and gnarls, mostly the unfortunate result of a spastic gait and hard, unyielding shoes. As I struggled to get out of the chair, a woman approached the area and tried to intervene. Eventually, I let myself be persuaded to stay and the nail tech decided to do the pedicure.

Needless to say, I never returned. I tried another place in town to similar ends, although the woman bending over me took my feet in hand to treat without much fanfare. She voiced her complaints in obvious disgust but in a language that I could not understand and over her shoulders to a co-worker, gesturing to her basin and my offending digits. I never went back there, either. I have spent the intervening years tending to my own feet as well as possible, given my limitations. As for my spirit, it seeks other means of solace.

This week, I have come to St. Louis to see family. Yesterday my son spent several hours helping my sister, and I chose to find a nail salon at which to treat myself to a little pampering. The woman to whom I had been assigned gently lifted my feet into the tub of warm and bubbling water. She smiled and nodded, seemingly not versant in my native tongue just as I had no knowledge of hers. For the next hour, that woman — whose name I never learned — restored both my feet and a small but crucial corner of my psyche. She smiled, and nodded, and even gently drew my socks over my ten toes when the pale pink polish had dried.

As I sat outside waiting for my son, I closed my eyes and let the warm rays of the afternoon light kiss the fragile skin across my aging cheek bones. Later, my son, my sister, our friend Penny, and I shared a meal at a nearby pub. On the way home, I glanced westward, at the blazing sunset. I wiggled my toes inside my shoes, and felt a slight stirring of contentment. It cannot last; it doesn’t stand a chance against the onslaught of trouble in my small corner of the even more chaotic world. But in that moment I could savor its deliciousness, and so I did, all the way home to our Airbnb.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

You might notice a vague shimmer in the center of the sunset. I edited out a roof-top on a building in the bottom of the original photo. The image is otherwise unchanged from how my cell phone saw it last evening.

Sitting in the shop which I manage on the weekend, I watch the few cars move down Main Street, wondering what it all means. The sky spans across the town of Isleton, pale and clear. A few customers have wandered from wherever they thought they were going to the coffee shop next door and then to our place, mostly for the restroom. The library lady came to restock the sale books; a couple of artists brought new work. Mostly I have passed the time thinking about my old neighbor George, who died yesterday.

I almost missed the announcement because I never knew George’s surname. Specifically I did not realize that he didn’t share a last name with his mother and her husband, with whom George lived in a rig at our park and, later, in a neighboring park just a few miles away. The bracelets and tumblers that his mother sells in the shop rise above the sightline of shelves, reminding me that I should send a note. I texted; I donated to the fundraiser for his services. Otherwise, my acknowledgment of his death has been limited to a brief conversation with the man who works our office on the weekends, who knew a bit about what happened.

Grief weighs heavy on my shoulders when the tragedy strikes close to home but I never know what to do with secondhand sorrow. I have no claim to mourning attire, or special consideration. I did not know him that well. Yet for the last seven years, I could count on seeing him a couple of times a month, at community events or just sitting on someone’s deck. He would wave as I drove past. If we found ourselves within speaking distance, we would exchange casual conversation. He offered to carry anything heavy that I needed brought from my car. If I had cold water, I would share with him and he thanked me in simple, kind terms. Otherwise, all I knew about George came from his mother, who spoke of him in the special, uncritical language that we boy mothers reserve for our sons.

Yet I have unshakeable recollection of George as kind, undemanding, and unfailingly considerate. When the situation seem to warrant, I would offer him a few dollars for his help and he always refused it. At our markets, he would accept a lunch coupon if I had one to spare. Yet in a heartbeat, he would rise from his chair and extend his hands to take any burden with which he saw me struggling. I never heard the details of his life before my acquaintance with him. As far as I know, he was, and will always remain, the beloved son of my friend, a smiling face, a quiet presence.

The social media post described him as a son, a father, a brother, and a friend. I can attest to his virtues in two of those roles. If he performed the others with as much grace, he will indeed be missed.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Many moons ago, before I started funneling all of my disposable income into a new business, I traveled west nearly every month. Sometimes I got a bed in a hostel. Often I would take a small oceanside motel room. I usually left work early on Thursday and stayed late on Sunday, until going home could only be the last next option. I walked on the bluffs; I drove to the old Russian fort north of Jenner and sat at the farthest end of land on a metal bench. Waves crashed against the rocks; terns, gulls, and pelicans glided on the air around me. I kept my phone silent. I ate sandwiches and threw the crumbs for the seabirds to catch. Ships glided across the horizon and I imagined myself as a stowaway.

At the end of each sojourn, I would tell the Pacific goodbye as I turned inland. I promised my unending fidelity to her worship at the highest point in the arc of the Bay Bridge. It seems silly now, but I those weekends seemed like small visits to a sacred muse. They sustained me.

Now I find myself in yet another barely accessible hotel in Palo Alto, a few miles from where I will have blood drawn in the morning for the casual entertainment of an earnest oncologist who finds my continued improvement delightfully remarkable. I plan to submit for an extra vial or two that the folks in ID went in order to evaluate my status from their perspective. Between the lab visit and the yearly bond with hematology I get to break my fast, and I intend to enjoy the adventure.

The type of leukemia which dances on a couple of chains of my DNA evolves slowly and has already tarried so long that I will likely die with it, not from it. Last Sunday, I met a mother and her two teenage daughters who live with the loss of a seven-year-old who did not fare as well. Her name was Gianni, and each of them, the bereaved mother and Gianni’s big sisters, wore butterfly pendants in her memory. They gently sifted through the rack of bracelets to find three in Gianni’s favorite color as I stood by and suppressed tears of secondhand sorrow to which I really have no fair claim.

Years ago I participated in a huge lawsuit with far-reaching implications and a dozen or so attorneys. We held a conference call to hammer out discovery and scheduling disputes. The conversation got a little heated and one of the attorneys snapped, threatening to ask the court to fine me for what he perceived to be remission in cooperation. I sighed. “Counselor,” I began in reply. “I have been shot at, run over, assaulted, robbed, and left hiding in a corner fearing for my life. I think I can handle a motion for sanctions.”

That is almost a verbatim quote, except I have substituted the word “assault” for what I actually said. I spoke the truth, and that was thirty years ago. Since then, I have endured much more, and, worse, watched others struggle with burdens that I could not take from them. But standing in my shop on Sunday, listening to that woman talk of her child not dead six months of a vicious form of a disease with which I will have only a passing interlude, I would gladly have endured it all again tenfold to change the little girl’s fate.

Someone once scolded me for remarking that compared with many, my life has been tolerable, even privileged. He vouchsafed that i should have suffered less and rested more; that luxury ought to have found me. I could only shake my head. Now here I am, within reach of the voice of my beloved sea. How could I ever complain? My problems might irritate me; some nights certainly find me awake and cursing the constant pain. I have known loss. Yet no bombs fall on my village. A pleasant waitress brought amazing food to my table this evening. Tomorrow I will receive excellent medical care at a phenomenal clinic, and I will drive the long way home so that I can take the heady fragrance of the Pacific into my tired lungs, nourishment for my spirit that will last until my next visit to the magic edge of the world.

Some might consider me sad, and lonely, and abandoned. I admit that there are times when I agree with that assesment. But then a lovely poem crosses my feed, or a couple of friends appear on my porch with a bottle of whiskey, a gluten-free chocolate cake, and a basket of snacks. The world turns another click; the clouds part; and the tender blue of the summer sky surrounds me. I whisper to myself, If I am not blessed, then no one is.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Once in a while I cannot hold back the accumulated tears torn from my eyes by every little thing that life sends crashing into my fragile orbit.

A mother visits the shop with her two daughters. She selects a digital depiction of hummingbirds from a back display and sets it on the counter. It reminds me of my daughter Gianni, she tells me. I see the shine in her eyes that I know comes from the peculiar mixture of joy and sorrow. She died in December, but she remains with us. She touches a sterling butterfly on a chain at her throat. The girls standing next to her reach for the necklaces which they, too, wear in honor of the one present only in their hearts. Every time I see a hummingbird, I think she is with me, the woman softly tells me.

I suppress a sob, smiling at the memories they share of the precious soul.

A few minutes after they leave, three folks sit on the bench outside my store. I lean over and adjust the music which plays on the speaker beside where they tarry. I suppose that I’m still thinking of the little girl, because I play Beth Nielsen Chapman’s Sand and Water, a haunting tribute to her deceased husband. When the trio enters the store, they ask about the music. They wander among the art and handcrafts in our little collective and leave a note on our Gratitude Wall. We trade stories. Just before they go, one of them spies my book on its small shelf by the door. He stands reading from pages over which I spent many hours agonizing, selecting each essay from the ten years of accumulated scribblings.

He buys the book and I inscribe it to him. He turns a page and reads a sentence outloud for his companions. I remember writing those words; I remember everything. The sound of another’s voice speaking what I composed almost overwhelms me.

My cell phone rings; and the three wave goodbye as I answer my son’s call. He checks on me most days, and when I’m in the shop, he phones to learn the quote of the day. I read it to him: “I have nature, and art, and poetry. If that is not enough, what is enough?” He asks to whom it is attributed. I tell him, Vincent Van Gogh. While we are talking, the man who bought by book stands outside, reading from it. As I watch he slips back into the shop and offers me a hug. I receive it without hesitation.

We have a tradition at my shop of taking photos of our customers with their purchases. We post them on our social media pages and tag the artists. The three of them let me take their photo but they say, softly, that they would rather not be on Facebook. I promise; and I have kept that promise. But I share their picture here, in my world, where only you and I and God can see them.

They deserve that much.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

From the road, I train my cell phone’s eye on two fields. A small boat knifes through the slough while a ship heads to the Pacific through the deep channel of the San Joaquin. Oblivious to my scrutiny, the captains of each vessel navigate forward, determined to see the sunset from stable shores.

My engine hums, waiting for the shift and acceleration that will take us around the dogleg bend towards the park and the evening’s chores. I realize that these two boats actually sit distant from each other. One easily cuts through the calm expanse between neighboring marinas. The other’s long, heavy hull carries tons of cargo bound for the San Francisco port. Only my perspective sets the race; only the distortion of my inadequate lens pits them against one another.

I close my eyes, knowing that in the few seconds of my exhausted distraction, the race will evaporate. The motor boat will turn a corner into its own slough, while the ship will angle itself into the confluence of two venerable waters, heading towards Suisun Bay. But still I picture them neck-and-neck in crashing waves, dozens of crewmen on the ship’s deck while a single boater clutches the till of the smaller vessel. I cheer from the shore, loud and lusty, encouraging the lone sailor to hold its line while the cargo ship streams forward and its mates raise their fists in a glorious, universal pledge to victory.

In my car, idling in a layby on Brannan Island Road, I open my eyes to an empty vista. I can barely see the stern of the ship as it ponderously turns south by southwest. The smaller boat has already motored to its own safe berth. On the western horizon, the sun spreads its glow across the line of turbines. Its grandeur catches my attention; I release a long slow sigh. After a few minutes, I signal my intent, move onto the roadway, and continue my silent drive home.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

How can a year or two pass without my calling someone who hand-carried my son through most of his childhood, steadfastly dragging me with him? Unfathomable — yet my only excuse lies in the fact that she has not called me either. Lame, I know; yet there it is.

I first met Katrina Singsen Taggart when our boys both attended Purple Dragon Pre-School, where they learned sharing, math, cursive, and the delights of German food before they turned five. Our families gravitated towards one another. Our curly-headed sons formed a fast bond which their mothers soon emulated.

Katrina tackled adversity with cheerful logic and unfailing determination. She also let kids take risks that terrified me, and remained unflappable throughout every adventure. As a consequence, my son took to life in her household in a way that I envied. She fed the kids beef, which Patrick never got at home; made popcorn on the stove; and baked delightful desserts like cake and pie which I could not begin to master. She put the boys to work and taught them such necessary skills as how to clean by opening a rag to its full length “to increase the available surface area”. I will never forget Patrick sharing that lesson with the patience that I knew she had exhibited in the first instance.

With the Taggarts, Patrick picked blueberries, went to the RenFest, and Trick-or-Treated for hours. For Katrina, he bagged Meals On Wheels and helped deliver to the households on her list. I called Katrina to help with every crisis over a fifteen-year period, from needing childcare so I could attend a funeral to the death of our beloved dog Chocolate. She came each time, with food, a tool kit, suggestions, and endless hugs to comfort us through the trying hours ahead.

We alternated holidays in each other’s homes. Their family filled the table in my house while we augmented their already crowded dinners. Katrina’s calm offset my nervousness, easing situations that might have been unbearable. She graciously expanded her holiday traditions to include my son and me. When my turn came to host, she boxed her Eastern Bunny cakes and her Christmas cranberries and brought them to my table.

Katrina enriched my son’s childhood, and thus his life, in ways that I cannot articulate without tears. She raised her own children to be gentle and kind, without losing their uniqueness. She stood by her husband in all his trials, to his dying day. She rescued every kind of animal you can imagine, from the chipmunks in her back yard to the mice which infested her garage. She handled everything life piled on her with infinite patience and ingenuity. In the thirty years that I have known her, I do not believe that I have ever heard her complain. But I’ve seen the glow of love, the sparkle of compassion, and the liveliness of discovery cross her face enough times to consider her a shining light in my often chaotic, dark world.

Midnight approaches in the time zone where Katrina lives. Her birthday draws to a close just as I have remembered it. Her children no doubt lavished her with gifts, sent her cards, made dinner for her. Here in Pacific time, I sit reflecting on all that she gave me without asking anything in return. Her generosity of spirit touches everyone she knows. She is, quite simply, the best friend I ever had. I have no words for how much I miss her. If I could pray, I would pray that her life holds no more sorrow, and infinite quantities of joy. She deserves as good as she has given, and not one iota less.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

;

Only the barest thread holds the current hours to minutes which have long since yielded to the universal sweep of time’s ruthless hands. In strange terrain, in unfamiliar weather, I move with clumsy steps. I keep thinking that I will find my groove. I strain to claim an easy flow here, in this place, to which I came nearly by accident.

I like my life. I dwell in a tiny house on wheels, a few feet below sea level adjacent to a serene river. Nights fall with gentle ease. The sunset flashes, the moonglow serenely passes through the sky. Wind raises the leaves of the old pin oak rising high above my blue steel roof. Succulents thrive on my porch as the radiant sun and the sweet moon kiss their sturdy shoots. Lights twinkle on the meadow throughout the evening. What darkness surrounds me yields to starlight. I should be content.

But faces that I have not seen in years haunt me. I contemplate my family’s fate and future. Worry clings to each raw breath that I pull into my body. I wear a smile but my heart beats heavy in my chest. I am here, now; I cast my lot westward when an upheaval seemed prudent. But oh, the ghosts! They gather round and cast baleful looks in my direction. They silently scorn my treachery.

The yearning for my old home carries no disrespect for those who populate my current days. I want it all. I want to walk the levee road along the San Joaquin yet sit on a bench by Lake Michigan with my son. If I had the chance, I would cleave the countryside between this river and the confluence of the Missouri with the Kaw, sending all the states between asunder. I could step from here to there. Like Alice slipping through the looking glass, I would have both worlds at hand.

The disembodied voices of my brothers and sisters come through the phone. My heart contracts. My son checks on me twice a day, the sorrow evident in my voice from time to time. There is, indeed, no place like home.

Yet here I am. That life happened a hundred years ago, and this one has seen a mere seven. Perhaps it deserves more commitment than I have yet mustered. If those whom I have left can but forgive me, perhaps the love that they have shown me will carry into something new.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

“Morning“, from Rivers to the Sea, 1915, Sara Teasdale

I went out on an April morning
      All alone, for my heart was high,
I was a child of the shining meadow,
      I was a sister of the sky.

There in the windy flood of morning
      Longing lifted its weight from me,
Lost as a sob in the midst of cheering,
      Swept as a sea-bird out to sea.

When I have the energy, I stop at the local grocery store for a bag or two of what I like to consider healthy food. But I fall prey to the temptation to let food science deliver plant-based fake food, supposedly filled with arguable harmless stuff like soy and egg white. On such days, I watch the grey lumps turn brown in my 7-inch cast iron skillet.

I stand at the butcher-block counter, leaning slightly, sometimes stretching my calves. An image rises unheralded and certainly unwanted, of my haggard father on one of countless mornings when he clutched a Camel straight and waited for the coffee to percolate in the battered metal pot on the stove. Small children lurked around the corner of the kitchen doorway, hesitant, uncertain of what might happen if they took another step onto the linoleum surrounding him. His brief, sharp glance sent them scurrying back to safety.

Decades later, one morning after I had come crawling back to St. Louis from a failed experimental relocation, I approached the kitchen with equal trepidation. My little brother Stephen faced the counter, awaiting a cessation in the hiss and grumble of the automatic drip machine to deliver black nectar. His hand gripped a Marlboro, the red pack crumpled on the tile beside his mug. I spared a grin and a small chuckle. We had been at a bar together until after midnight, with both of us having to rise for work and both of us camped at our parents’ house with no greater destination in sight.

He raised his eyes, sending a sudden pain through my belly. He looked so much like our father in that moment; I could barely stand the sight. Something must have shown on my face because he snarled, You looked at your own self in a mirror yet? I fell back, clutching my robe to my thin body, one hand guiding me backwards to the front bedroom. In the unforgiving glow of the overhead light, I stared at myself in a mirror that I propped on the desk. He had not lied.

Four and a half decades later, I sit on my porch in the cool of a California evening and think about my brother Stephen. In one week, give or take a stray day for which no account could ever be made, he will have been dead for twenty-eight years. He was the first of the infinity eight to die, on a hot summer evening on land in St. Charles County, Missouri, with no one and nothing beside him but an angel of mercy and the memory of his mother’s soft hand.

Some days I make a full dinner and eat at the table, with a knife, a fork, and a cloth napkin. I neatly fold the cotton square, one of several in my drawer that my mother made on her Singer sewing machine in the years between becoming an empty nester and dying far too young. A full metal cup of cold water suffices for drink. The air around me holds nary a waft of cigarette smoke. Of a morning, I brew my coffee one cup at a time, in a fancy pot with a paper filter and grounds from a heavy, noisy machine.

Other days, I take slices of sheep’s-milk cheese and fig jam from a jar out to the table on my porch and eat with my fingers while I read a detective novel and ignore unopened mail. I pour a short glass of leftover wine and let it run smooth as summer silk over my tongue and down my throat.

Some days, I practically skip down the steps to my house and play loud and rowdy songs as I carelessly drive the levee roads. Other days, I trip over the flagstone walk, and then let the silence of the car embrace me as I cautiously navigate the treacherous curves.

On my son’s first day of kindergarten, I stumbled on the stairway to the elementary school that he would attend. He turned an anxious face towards me, no doubt intensely aware of how sick I had been. Are you going to die before I’m big? he asked, in a voice more anxious than any child should have to feel. No, Buddy, I answered. I’m going to live to be 103, and I’m going to nag you every day of your life! He thought about that as we finished the climb. Before we moved into the classroom, he slipped his hand into mine and responded: If you’re going to nag me every day of my life til you’re 103, I’m going to annoy you every day of YOUR life. I smiled but he had turned away and walked ahead.

My little brother Stephen never made it to 40. I will be 70 come September. By my reckoning, I’ve 33 years to go. I aim to get there, because a promise is a promise. But I’m bringing the spunky spirit of my lost brother along for the ride, held close in my heart. For him, and for my little Buddy, I’m going to keep walking forward, through the diamonds and the stones, to whatever lies ahead.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

In memory of Stephen Patrick Corley, 12/25/59 – 06/10/1997.

With endless love.

“Some Days Are Diamonds” by John Denver

The last minute bait-and-switch perpetrated by an Airbnb host left me scrambling for a hotel room for my fourth trip to UC-Berkeley’s School of Optometry and their fourth attempt to properly make my glasses. I count, of course, the two prior pairs that I had seen and the one rejected by the lab. Self-acquired frames in hand, bag crammed into my messy car, tired feet ensconced in wool socks and Blundstones, I drove hell-bent for fury to a hotel room booked at the last minute, right after I pushed for a full refund from the out-sourced customer service folks at Chesky’s franchised palace place.

Still blithely unaware that the hotel I had selected stood to be sold on the auction black in two weeks’ time, I idled at a light in the soft air of a spring afternoon. I could not see the ocean, but I had crossed the Bay and strained to catch a glimpse of the broad westward sweep of water breaking on the concrete rim of the City. A ship tarried just north of me as I tore my eyes back to the roadway and watched for my exit. I cannot deny that my muscles loosened their tense grip, perhaps just a small release but enough for me to understand that I need but drive a half mile to hear the voice of my Pacific. A sigh escaped into the quiet confines of my vehicle.

I looked through my windshield as the light continued to glow with its commanding red. I felt my brow furrow; my eyes squint; and then, without so much as a twitch of warning, I smiled. The cars around me and those across from me waited through an extra cycle as a little row of urban ducklings crossed, Mama duck at the front, her helper taking the rear.

In a half hour, I would be laboriously leaning on a high counter shouting through a plexiglass barrier as the clerk tried to rescind my booking due to the demise of the elevator which would have taken me to my accessible accommodation.

In an hour, I would trudge up seven steps to a king-size nonaccessible room and stare dejectedly at the step-in tub shower combo, wondering if would be able to struggle into its depths without falling.

Two hours later, I would beg the DoorDash Customer Service to make sure its driver brought silverware.

As night surrounded the Juliet balcony overlooking the parking lot, I would pry over-cooked tofu from bitter kale with a plastic fork begrudgingly tendered by the same clerk, after I declined her first offer of a spoon through gritted teeth.

In ten hours, the waitress at Oceanview Diner would inform me in a weary voice that she couldn’t serve me on the patio after all.

In twelve hours, the optician would adjust the fourth incorrectly-made glasses on my face, and promise Attempt Number Five before mid-June. Or, quite possibly, early July.

But as I sat at the red light, watching those little children innocently cross from curb to curb on the broken streets of Berkeley, California, in their matching yellow T-shirts, my heart felt only joy.

And of my own free will, without hesitation but with an unwavering dedication, I left my heart right there.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®