As I sit down to the tired laptop, weak battery, dirty screen, the clock reads 9:31 p.m. PDST.  Simple math says that in St. Louis, the clocks read 11:31 p.m.. CDST.  As of this moment, I have lived for 41 years and 13 and a half hours without my mother.  I share that burden with my siblings, our children, and our cousins.  

Forty-one years without the throaty laugh, the rolled brown eyes, the low voice, the brown curls and the myriad wrap-around skirts in every imaginable fabric.  She made those skirts from a Simplicity pattern. After the first successful project, she went back to the fabric store and acquired enough yardage to make it again and again.  She wore them with crew-neck t-shirts, Keds tennis shoes, and red Maybelline lipstick.  If it was late enough in the evening, she would have shed her bra.  During the day, she’d be demurely covered and carrying a shoulder bag that she also created in multiple materials with her Singer sewing machine.

I do not sew except with needle and thread in very small runs.  But I still darn my leggings using the egg that I found in my mother’s sewing box when I brought it home to Kansas City after her funeral.  I snip the thread with my mother’s tiny silver sewing scissors.  A few years ago, I took a photo of those scissors and texted it to my three sisters without comment.  They all instantly knew what they were.  Sitting in the same chair that I now occupy, at the same fold-down live-edge cherry table, I literally laughed outloud.  The habits of creatures never desert them.

Last weekend I stood on a stepstool to reach the shelf on which I have one  of my mother’s pictures and a few other sentimental trinkets.  An angel from my mother-in-law; a pair of God’s-eyes that my son made in kindergarten; a bronze rose that his godmother purchased at the Ren fest for my son to give me; a red crystal vase that belonged to my grandmother Corley.  I carefully ran a feather duster across the wood surface and the contours of the precious objects.  I had to strain to see the photograph of my maternal unit, arms spread wide and dancing a little jig in our front yard.  I lowered myself back to terra-almost-firma, a 24 x 8 vinyl floor in my tiny house on wheels.  Tears formed in my eyes but I ignored them and kept dusting, and sweeping, and washing dishes.

In the decades since my mother slipped from us, I’ve done so many things that she might have helped me navigate with more grace.  I wed and divorced three times; I lost several pregnancies, including my son’s twin.  She wanted me to have a career and I tried, Mama, I truly tried.  She encouraged me to write and that I certainly have done.  Every kindness done by me can be traced to her example.  My political views stem from her.  She gave me the curls on my head, the brown spots starting to rise on my hands, and the wicked sense of humor that I never quite suppress.  

My son didn’t meet her.  Neither did any of my husbands.  Had they the privilege, something might have changed.  What I am, what I do, what I fear, what I strain to undertake, makes more sense as a tribute to my mother.  Every thrift store reminds me of the jaunts on which she took us to find treasures and the delicate objects that she used throughout our home — bowls, and pitchers, and candle-holders.  When I sit on the porch at dusk, when I drink coffee and watch the sun rise, when I take drives to small towns — I think of her.  

The clock turns to 10:00 p.m. so it is tomorrow in Missouri.  Another anniversary of our loss draws to a close.  I have made it through another year without her.  The sorrow still grips me, but not as intensely.  I have not learned to live without her, but I have found a path through the Lucille Johanna Lyons Corley shaped hole in the universe.

I have had a lot of names in my life, but for every day that I have breathed, I have been Lucille Corley’s baby girl.  There are people who’ve lost their mothers at younger ages; and people that feel just as keenly the terrible moment when they held the frail hand of a fading octogenarian.  I do not claim a monopoly on grief; nor do I insist on the right to remain raw and bleeding in the wake of her long-ago death.  But I miss her.  I owe my life to her.  I owe my strength to her.  I owe my resilience to her.  I do not doubt that I also have her to thank for some of my insecurities, but I take sole responsibility for their stubborn persistence.  She taught me better.  She said, and meant, that although what can’t be cured can be endured, most things can, in fact, be overcome.

Rest in peace, Hot Lips Mama.  Your boy has come home to you; and I know that you fell into each other’s arms, and walked together to the banks of the river, where you now sit with both your sons, at peace, perhaps, for an eternity.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Lucille Johanna Lyons Corley

Me and my mother

My entire life has revolved around and been driven by lists.

Lists provide a sense of security in anxious moments and a drive in moments of exhilaration.  I can reduce anything to a chart of steps.  From time to time, I dabble in the asterisk, but a solid flow of enumerated bites sets the rhythm and sends me forward.  

I make mental lists but usually grab one of the scores of notebooks shoved in drawers and baskets, turn to an unblemished page, and uncap my favorite pen (at least, until I gave it to my son; now I settle for anything at hand).  If I get two or three lines down and think of another first logical move, I have no qualms about adding at the top, in the band of page crowning the wide-rule blue lines.  

I make Lists of Things to Pack, Christmas Card Lists, Grocery Lists, and Lists of Bad Habits to Break.  But my true calling lies in the To-Do List.

I carefully pen every step.  Beside each task, I draw a small box.  Some folks like to cross through anything they’ve finished.  I prefer the solid check, inserted with a flourish accompanied by a satisfied grin.  I’m not above adding an entry long after I’ve completed an interim step, just to make that tick which lets me know that I can move to any items that still sport empty boxes.  I like the jolt of satisfaction and the eagerness which follows, both of which I willingly relinquish for the heady sense of empowerment when I place a mark beside the last item and set the pencil beside the notepad.

In a dark period of my life, when I did not expect to survive, I broke my day into fifteen minute increments.  I made a list of everything that I would require myself to do in each fifteen-minute block.  I allowed myself to rest at the end of every segment.  After a few weeks, still breathing, shaky but sentient, I increased the period to 30 minutes by bracketing the to-do list for each of its halves.  Eventually, I could manage an eight-hour list and merge smaller tasks (“open tube of tooth paste, apply paste to brush, open mouth. . . .” became “brush teeth”).  I made it through what seemed an eternity by lengthening my lists and increasing both the abstractness and the complexity of each item of required activity.  Professional help might have hastened the process, but at that time, most of the better therapists served as my expert witnesses.  I could not bear to admit my frailty to someone whose testimony I would be having to prepare.  I used lists instead.  Somehow, I survived anyway.

Occasionally I amuse myself by creating lists of list titles in the way my friend Alan used to make a game out of drafting titles to songs he never wrote.  

• Things To Take On The Train If You Have a Long Way to Travel and Don’t Want to Make Any Friends
• Things Your Mother Actually Told You, Not The Ones You Claim She Did.
• Books You Want to Tell Everyone Are On Your TBR
• One-Line Insults to Bite Back Your Tongue Before Saying
• Places To Hide Your Stash of Loose  Diamonds If You Ever Get Any

On Friday, I found myself having to consider whether I could haul three tables out of a bathtub to access seven large original paintings that a deceased artist’s daughter would be coming to retrieve.   I thrust my walking stick aside, pushed back the door of the unused shower, and stared in dismay at the impossibility of the task.

I had never asked anyone to push three heavy tables against the artwork, which someone else had put in the tub at my direction.  Lifting the tables would pose a threat to my stability, especially given the rigid metal frame of the door opening.  Water and rust had gathered near the faucet, so I couldn’t slide the paintings over even if I could safely navigate them past a 5-gallon jug of water and three mops which I thought I had thrown out but which someone seems to have rescued.

Eventually, unwilling to admit defeat, I stood on the toilet, wedged my arthritic hip against the back wall, and locked my knees (the broken artificial right one and the bone-on-bone left one).  I slowly inched the canvases over the tables, through the gap above the shower door, and into the vicinity of the automatic accessible sink.  Every motion activated the hands-free faucet, which in turn jolted my annoyingly alert startle reflex.  As I worked, my oddest list title yet popped into my head.

Things They Forgot To Tell You About Being Single at Seventy.

I know what I would put on that particular list, but I will keep it to myself.  Too grim.  Tinged with bitterness.  Not cheerful.

Eventually, I got all of the paintings rescued and dragged to a table beside the stack of prints by the same fellow.  I dusted the edges, grouped them by size, and turned away.  I stopped, though, to gaze again at a particularly sweet watercolor of a hermit’s hut near the Georgiana Slough.  I thought about the man who had painted them during a reclusive period in his life, his family far away, separated from his wife and daughter.  He seemed to be doggedly forging an unknown but exciting path, bringing me picture after picture to add to his wall in our shop.  But then, unexpectedly, he died, younger than I am now, and, seemingly, more healthy.  I think he still had a fairly extensive to-do list, starting with finding his true north.

I left the light burning in the backroom so that his daughter would see the paintings on the table when she arrived even if I was busy with a customer.  I moved back through the suite, mentally reciting my morning chores, even though I knew the lot by rote.  

Mugwumpishhy tendered.

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Mubdie’s QOTD – 08/02/2026

My TBS on the shelf above the cedar chest.

Two men stood at the door to the shop yesterday, seemingly blocking access.  I pulled it open from inside, asking, May I help you?  One turned and gestured to his mastiff, lapping from the metal bowl of water at his feet.  I smiled and signaled comprehension.  

He told me that they had come with a photographer engaging in an effort to document the Delta.  His gaze shifted to someone on the opposite curb, crouching in front of the broad window of an abandoned storefront papered to guard against prying eyes.  He had aimed his lens through a torn spot and seemed to be documenting the emptiness.  

He finds the old buildings to be a fascinating indicia of the area’s decline, the dog owner told me.  I shook my head and turned to the other man, asking if he’d like to come see the art.  No, we’re good, he said, and then the two moved away, I suppose to join their friend with his fixation on failure.

As for myself, I prefer to think of our town as on the upswing.  The pandemic hit this place hard, as it did many small towns.  Artists moved away; businesses failed.  But some endured and others opened, and now we’re the stalwart few, staging a comeback, posting pictures of open signs, each other’s fare, and our own merchandise with clever quips.

Isleton sits in the southwestern edge of Sacramento County.  I spend three days a week here.   Monday through Thursdays, I work in Rio Vista, over the Sacramento River in Solano County.  It feels more generic there but it has fewer empty storefronts and more going concerns.  I cross the divide twice a day, traveling to and from my home.  I live in neither city; instead, I crouch among the eclectic folks who make their homes along the San Joaquin and the Mokelumne on the Delta Loop in RV parks that have seen, certainly, better days.  We call ourselves The Land of Broken Toys.

Now another day has dawned.  I sit on my green metal stool and eat a stale cookie that I anticipate I will regret.  Last night, I laid awake too long wondering why my new neighbor feels compelled to illuminate her porch 24/7/365 (at least, so far).  We have very little crime and mostly just light-fingered opportunism.  A boat might get vandalized or stolen in the slough, but our fifteen-acre park sees little stealth. 

But she might feel lonely.  Perhaps the light that tortures my sleep secures rest for her.  I do not know.  I’ve exchanged only a few dozen words with her, during which she told me what she does during the week and pointedly mentioned that my generator sits a foot over the lot line.  I studied its perch, around which weeds have grown in the five years since we settled it on the old concrete pad of the nearest sewer clean-out.  I told her that I would get someone to move it.  She spared me a crisp nod and went back into her tiny house, leaving me and my friend Michelle to ponder the newest challenge.

Out where I live, everything seems more difficult to manage and, somehow, simpler at the same time.  Is it muddy? Wear boots.  Need groceries?  Check with your neighbors for their list before you head to Lodi.  When we go anywhere, we gauge the travel time not in miles or minutes but in river-crossings.  A deep channel might delay the trip by half an hour or more, depending on your timing.  We sit and listen to our radios, watching for the ship.  Maybe we make a phone call or finish a podcast.  Tourists ogle.   Impatient locals post on social media as though they’ve never encountered a lift bridge before that moment.  Eventually, though,  the vessel passes; the bridge lowers or swings closed; and traffic moves.  It always does.  It always will.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

The little boy standing at my feet had dark hair compared with the blond curls of my own child.  He tugged at my jacket and urged me to lean closer so he could talk over the ruckus of the pre-school.

“Mrs. Patrick Corley’s Mommy,” he whispered.  “Can I come over to Patrick Corley’s house one day?”  

I patted his shoulder and smiled, saying that I would call his mother and we’d work something out.  He needed no more commitment to trigger a wide grin.  As the child scampered over to where Patrick stood, I felt a warm flush.  At 36, I had given birth to a golden bundle of unlimited joy.  At 40, I heard myself called something that I considered the greatest honor imaginable.

Mrs. Patrick Corley’s Mommy was not, in fact, married; nor would she ever have wanted to be known by the married woman’s title even when she was.  A devout feminist nonetheless burdened by a massive Cinderella complex, I’ve been a daughter, a sister, a lawyer, an advocate, and a wife.  But being a mother afforded an unshakeable and unexpected sense of worthiness. 

I had endured a difficult 34 weeks to bring my son into the world.  Early in the pregnancy, I learned that I would be a single mother with no co-parent.  Two months later, I found out that I had been carrying twins because I lost one of them.  My dysfunctional body shook and quivered as my uterus expanded.  I went into labor in a courtroom in Louisiana, the contractions intensifying as our pilot made a mad dash for home in a Cessna 206 chased by a spring thunderstorm. 

I went into even more intense labor two days before a scheduled C-section, an experience that I cherished for several hours.  Then I became hysterical, demanding that the midwife end the progression to delivery as midnight on July 07th struck and I realized that the child might be born on his biological progenitor’s birthday.  The midwife gently refused, leaning down to assess the situation and shaking her head.  I kept writhing in pain until she decided that the lack of dilation would necessitate calming the situation until the following day.

Accordingly, at 12:59 p.m. on 08 July 1991, I assumed a new, exhilarating role.  My little boy entered the world unblemished and laughing.  They laid him on my chest and my uncontrollable tears flowed.  My friend Laura leaned over my shoulder with an awestruck expression, lifting one timid finger to touch a breathtakingly precious tiny hand.  I had no idea how I would serve in the new role.  But smiles overtook my sobs as the child made his gentle sounds.  The noises of the delivery room rose unnoticed around me.  I heard nothing but him; I saw nothing but him.  When they gently lifted my child from me to take him for testing, the warmth of his small body lingered along with the heady scent that only a newborn baby emits.

I have never, and will never, forget that moment.  I recall my first words, Laura’s exclamation, the chatter of the doctor and midwife as they counted sutures and scalpels.  The brightness of the overhead lights; the cool touch of the surgical drapes; the smiles of the pediatric nurses:  Everything lives in a heavenly oasis in the otherwise grim swamps of my aging and weary brain.

Mrs. Patrick Corley’s Mommy.  In the three-and-a-half decades since his birth, my son has given me laughter in my darkest moments and wise words in some of my most confused hours.  He called 9-1-1 when I fell; got the neighbor when I broke my toes and couldn’t walk; and dragged a cover into the living room when I’d unknowingly had a TIA and couldn’t drag myself to the phone or my own bed.  I have boxes filled with lovely pictures that he drew in elementary school.  My windows sport laminated birds that he constructed out of crisp brown leaves in kindergarten and notes saying that he hopes I like what he could make for me at Christmas.  A binder holds his story of himself, written in careful block letters and thoughtful sentences.  I cherish it all.

We had some rough years, my son and I.  Decisions that seemed wise at the time proved foolish.  He rebelled in ways that astonished and frightened me.  But we made our way.  For the last decade or more, he’s walked a road of his own, with no guidance from me.  He has drawn from deep within himself to reveal a gentleness that I always saw, and I could not be more proud of him.  I do not know what the future holds for him but I know that he has navigated enough rocky waters with finesse to handle what life gleefully presents.

It is already July 09th where he lives though I have two more hours of his birth anniversary where I am.  I have not spoken to him today but I have confidence that whatever he chose to do, he embraced every moment of it.  I sent gifts, and a card with a dragon on it to honor that pre-school where, long ago, his friend begged for a playdate with my son.  One of my greatest joys lies in knowing that my son chooses his own path and has taken within himself the tools to put one foot in front of the other slowly, surely, and strongly.

I will always be Mrs. Patrick Corley’s Mommy, and I don’t suggest that a grown man doesn’t need his parental unit.  But I stand in the shadows now, watching him soar in the dazzling sunlight.  He might falter, he might fall, he might fail.  But he will always and ever make his mother proud, by the man that he is, by the kindness that he shows, and by the unrelenting grace that he radiates.

Happy birthday, my son.  May you have many more, and may they all give you as much happiness as being Mrs. Patrick Corley’s Mommy has brought to me.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

The high school religion teacher whom I most recall taught us to lie on our backs under trees and gaze into the sunlit branches.  I can’t do that anymore; my back would ache and I’d have to summon help to stand.  But I can tilt my head from the comfort of my porch and scan the oaks for birds.

Scores of them settle as evening falls.  Even more herald the rising sun.  I work on the layout of my little deck and think about mornings in Brookside, with our umbrella maple rising high and wide to catch the sweet rays of dawn.  That maple split in an ice storm one year.  Half of it fell across our porch.  We dealt with the mess, eventually; but the tree remained lopsided for the next decade.  You could see the sunset, filtered through its leaves and streaming through the open air on one side.

Whether I can see the horizon depends on who parks next to me at any given time.  For several years, my view of the western sky has been blocked by a blue tiny house.  But I’ve had an empty lot to the east followed by a small van for just as long, so I could see the dawn from my window if I focused on the skyline beyond the adjacent lots.  Whatever benefit comes from staring into the dappled leaves has inured to my benefit.  My soul stills and my psyche calms.

As I cruise into the last years of my earthly existence, sunrise and sunset become more significant.  Each day that I live brings possibility but now the moments radiate with the bittersweet tang of mild regret combined with gentle hope.  So I take every chance that I can to engage in the Jerry Curran tree therapy, sitting in my twenty-dollar porch rocker, surrounded by ivy and fluttering hummingbirds.  I rock, and I think, and I ruminate.  The breeze dances, the birds chatter, and the squirrel chases its mate.  I do not know if there is a God in a place called heaven but for the time being, at least, all is right with the world.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

I own seventeen chairs.  Six live at the art collective which I founded and manage.  One sits at the apex of the bookcase and antique trunk which form a 45-degee angle in my tiny bedroom.  Four face each other on my porch.  Three stand in the sitting room under the dropped loft in which I sleep.  I sit on one at my cherry live-edge table, writing; I dine here, too; and I drink coffee, watch videos, and sometimes, just stare at the curtain.

The mate of the chair in which I currently sit stays folded and slid between the wall of an under-stair cubby and a three-drawer dresser which holds half of my clothes.  That cubby wall forms the right-hand side of a nook in which a small chair straddles a little bench.  I pull them both out to dress and tie my shoes.

In addition to these chairs, I own two stools with folding steps, a large bench that once lived in a pizza parlor, and a cedar chest equipped with a seat cushion.  I have two metal chairs:  One at the shop cash stand and one that I once used in the shop but which migrated to my garden across from a small bench painted bright blue.  Finally, near the store entrance I keep a small wooden bench that we affectionately call “the spouse seat”, where the tired half of any shopping couple can pause to regroup while their enthusiastic other half browses our five galleries.

I am one person.  I can, between my home and the store at which I spend three of seven days each week, seat twenty-six people without anyone feel crowded.  In my home itself, eighteen souls could gather and balance plates on their laps while making small talk.

Once in a while, the pig farmers Tim Anderson and Michelle Bert ride their electric bikes down the levee road to knock on my door.  Ms. Bert takes the blue rocking chair while Tim settles into the gold easy chair which he traded me for an antique platform rocker that Michelle has in her stilt house down the way.  Now that summer has settled on our island, we can instead face each other from the blue porch chairs, though i suspect that Mr. Anderson will prefer the pizza parlor bench.

My NZ friend Moira sat on the loft steps the other day to cut veggies, but then we went outside and ate our salads in the sweet air of the Delta evening.  Yesterday, the other Michelle came to haul away a janky table, and we, too, found ourselves settling for a chat beneath the summer sky.  Once in  a while someone else wanders by:  Tracy, with her friend Regina; the inimitable Tom; a dog-walking neighbor. 

But most often, I sit alone, with a book, a glass of cold water, and seven decades of memories.  I call my sister or my son.  I work a puzzle, drink a mug of coffee, or tilt my gaze upward into the overhead trees, straining my eyes to search for the woodpecker that raps at the bark morning, noon, and night. 

Mostly, I just sit.  Sitting comes more easily when you have enough chairs.  Sometimes, I face the levee road and watch the cars and trucks pass.  Occasionally I turn the other way, gazing at the meadow and watching the humming birds flit through the vines on the trellis.  When the pale pink of the setting sun has faded from the horizon, I go inside, settle into Tim’s chair because I know he will not mind, and open my Emily Dickinson.  If I’m feeling homesick, I pull one of my Kansas City poets from the little table where they all live.  As the light fades, the empty chairs slowly fill with ghosts.  In their quiet company, I sometimes fall asleep, wrapped in a shawl that my friend Paula gave me for my birthday one magical year, long ago.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®