“The Hundred Acre Wood got floodier and floodier.”

How lucky am I to have married a man who can quote Winnie the Pooh?!

Farmer Gary and I were driving home after a wonderful weekend with James. Our youngest son lives exactly 250 miles from us, so it’s a bit of a haul, but always worthwhile.

James cooked for us several times and took us to our first cat cafe. My favorite moment was just as we walked into the special area for kitties and their admirers, James gave a lovely ginger a gentle touch.

“Mer!” came the brief but unmistakable growl. Look, but don’t touch.

James, himself a ginger, quickly replied, “Oh. Sorry.”

I didn’t take any pictures, but here’s a 2022 photo of James and Yow-Yow Kitty on our front porch:

Later that day, I was talking to James about Mom’s poetry. I’d noticed that her language choice in the 1970s was less Mom-like than earlier and later in her collection of work. Nothing extreme, but I’m guessing the writers conferences she attended in Indiana included encouragement to explore and push outside of the usual word-choice perimeters.

“Sounds like a bunch of women’s lib!” I can just hear Dad pronouncing. Little did I realize then that Dad coached many young women starting out in the corporate world to believe in themselves and carry the confidence that they’d earned their place at the table.

Here’s the first ’70s poem that jumped out at me when we got home Sunday night:

the scrappaper man

the scrappaper man has heard of heaven

at night he looks in jewelry windows
dreaming of galaxies of love

mornings his egg marooned on the cold toast
flung at him by a snarl of a woman
he keeps coming back

his office chair sighs under his fat ass
two minutes after eight
sometimes he puts his head down on the desk

he never asked anyone to marry him
once a month he goes to a whorehouse
and drops his suit off at the cleaner’s
twice a month he writes his father
and the check to pay his bills
every Saturday he calls his mother up
and walks around the zoo

every evening he reads the obituary column
always surprised his name is never there

~ joan vayo ~ March 8, 1977

I guess maybe you had to be there, but this was breakthrough writing – or word choice, actually – in our cuss-free house all those years ago. We were limited to “darn” and “shoot.” Oh, and “bottom.”

A personal example:

At Sacred Heart Elementary School, we didn’t have a playground, but spent recess on the church’s paved parking lot. In 4th grade, the girl students discovered the fun of playing marbles. Before each round, we were careful to agree on whether this was for “keepsies.” In one such game, I won a gorgeous boulder from a classmate by the name of Judith. When she double-crossed me and refused to hand over my winnings, I lost it: “Your name shouldn’t be Judith,” I shouted for all to hear as we headed back into the school. “Your name is Judas!” I believe I heard my guardian angel gasp. And I feel guilty to this day.

Back to the present time:

All weekend and in the days leading up to it, the weather was wild. Warnings and watches from tornadoes to thunderstorms to floods popped up on our phones five days running. When I emptied the rain gauge on Thursday evening, I wondered aloud if it would be full by the time we arrived home from visiting James.

Sure enough:

We used the water in the rain gauge to hydrate our shamrocks, which sit on Mom’s writing desk. The tube is back in place, ready for more rain tonight and tomorrow. Gary and I will sit in our sunroom and watch the rain, reminiscing about our lovely weekend with James.

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“the scrappaper man” © 1977, Joan Vayo. All rights reserved.

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