January’s poems

The previous entry got many, many more views than my entries usually get. It’s gratifying, but I can’t rely on McKenzie and Uncle Fred for copy every time.

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“After Henry” by Joan Didion (R.I.P.) is the Library of America’s newest Story of the Week.

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This Christmas, Karin’s friend Nora bought some Mother Goose books for Samuel. They are illustrated by Rosemary Wells and edited by Iona Opie (who, along with Peter Opie, compiled that pleasing folk-book, The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren).

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My mother said

That I never should

Play with the pixies

In the wood;

The wood was dark,

The grass was green,

Up comes Sally

With a tambourine;

I went to the river,

I couldn’t get across,

I paid ten shillings

For an old blind horse;

I jumped on his back

And off in a crack,

Sally tell my mother

That I’m coming right back.

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I could read these rhymes to Samuel all day long.

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Donkey, donkey, old and gray,

Open your mouth and gently bray,

Lift your ears and blow your horn

To wake the world this sleepy morn.

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Karin bought some cheap musical instruments for Samuel. I played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the recorder for him. He thought it hilarious and walked around panting the notes like a laryngitic dog (which is how that recorder sounds, more or less).

A wedding

Continuing on the subject of gluttony, yesterday was my “last hurrah,” at least for the season: I made two trips down a Polish buffet line. (If anything has a claim to being “South Bend cuisine,” it’s Polish food.) The occasion was my mother-in-law’s wedding. You’ll recall that she was widowed in 2020. Now she is married to Scott, her dead husband’s ex-roommate. It was a canny move. When Rick died, she griefstrickenly bequeathed Rick’s guns to Scott; now, presumably, she has got them back. Karin and Samuel and I rode to the wedding with McKenzie, Karin’s mom’s ex-foster daughter. McKenzie wore sweatpants and swigged from a half-gallon of milk and talked on her phone to her imprisoned boyfriend. “I have a gift card,” she told him. “I’m going to sell it to buy you another phone card.” It was a cheerful conversation. Like Scott and unlike the rest of my mother-in-law’s family, McKenzie is a happy-go-lucky sort of person. She gleefully told her boyfriend that her tattoo artist had just been jailed.

We also had a delicious venison stew, courtesy of my mother-in-law’s Uncle Fred, who shoots deer and hangs them up in his front yard. Uncle Fred preached the sermon. Karin said it was about sin (Uncle Fred is another happy-go-lucky sort of person). I didn’t hear it; Samuel started howling as soon as the bride walked up the aisle, so I took him to a Sunday School room where he played with toy cars and I read Agatha Christie. Karin told me not to bring a book to the wedding, but I did anyway; one never knows. I don’t think Karin’s mom noticed. She seemed to be relishing everything else that was going on.