Cover of "Of Life and Time, that Now and Then Rhyme"

Free Excerpt from the book

"Of Life and Time that 
Now and Then Rhyme"

     She worked as a clerk in the water department for the city for forty years, each year that followed the last and followed the next and the next and the next and again. And when she retired at seventy years old her monthly retirement checks were larger than her monthly work checks had been. But that was her affair, another of those, and therefore to be secreted, for her to keep to herself just as she kept most of the affairs of her life to herself until seemingly she had no life of her own, until she little more than mirrored the lives of those around her, living more in their reflections, while having so little that was characteristically hers individually hers separately hers, until it was almost unheard of for her to show a deep emotion or state a strong belief or reveal a tender flaw or speak wishfully of the past or hopefully of the future. She was always about, but never of. She was always there, but never here.

     But my mother told me that once long ago she had worked at Virginia Beach for several years when she was in her middle twenties when my mother was still in high school. But that she had, only that, was all that my mother knew of those years of her sisters'. Only that fact, nothing about where she had worked, for whom, what had been in her day, who were her friends, where had she lived, was it beachfront and sandy or beyond yet still within the seabreeze, had being there been to go to something or to run from something, why had she returned finally to her hometown, was that something sudden or something planned, had there been a quick and romantic tragic love, had there been no love and no friends and only emptiness and cold tears there at such a wonderful place where emptiness and nights alone and lonely should never be allowed and should be forbidden by law? Questions, wonderings, musings, ponderings, never to be answered. Because that time, too, was her affair. That she had gone, that she had stayed for a time, that she had then returned. Only these facts were ever to be known. That she never married was known and obvious. And the children that she would come to know and to love were the children of her sisters, with her always and only the visiting or visited aunt. And if this pained or troubled or bereaved her terribly, she was never to say or to even hint at because this too and again was her affair. Her affair, again, as were her feelings, whether many or none, on how it felt inside deep for her as a woman to go entirely through her long life without a husband, a lover, a man friend, or even so much as a single date that was ever to be known about.

     Because when she returned to her hometown, she returned also to living and working in the boarding house that her mother managed. And when she wasn't busy at the water department, she was busy with the demands of the boarding house. Then her father lost his right arm above the elbow while working in the railroad switching yard. So the railroad made him night watchman at one of the main crossings. But mostly he drank, and finally the railroad retired him. Then her mother became too worn out and ill, and they could no longer manage the boarding house. So the family went to live in an ancient upstairs corner apartment in a coal dusty block of ancient apartments there beside the railroad tracks. But with the clank and rattle of the trains nearby, their whistles low and moaning in passing in the dusk of evening, her father could not remain settled or sane or content or sober, so he went to visit with one of her sisters who was living then for a time beside the ocean at a far distance where it was always warm. There he fished each day from a rickety pier, and he enjoyed being lazy and warm, and mostly he was happy there away from the train sounds that so haunted him. And slowly he died there. Her mother never recovered from being too worn out, and she continued ill and bedridden even and shrillingly complaining for all of the years after losing management of the boarding house. Then her mother died slowly also. But through these many years she remained busy with her water department work, while her sisters remained busy with the raising and the caring of their families. And the difference in their lives and her life became even more clear and stark and set in its contrast, but if she ever longed for a close dream that had been lost somehow or stolen while she wasn't looking by the work and by the years and by the responsibility, it was never known because that again was her affair.