Passion and Purpose: Two CNY Heroines Help Fill the Early Childhood Education Gap

Syracuse Woman Magazine/January 2025

It is well-documented that early childhood education is extremely important to human development yet undervalued due to many factors from unlivable wages to resistant policy to public disinterest. Not surprisingly, there is a shortage of affordable childcare options across the United States, one that has far-reaching effects.

 A June 7, 2024 article from the website www.zerotothree.org states:

As the demand for quality childcare continues to outstrip supply, the ripple effects are felt across communities, impacting the economy and the well-being of families nationwide.

Central New York is no exception, but there are those in our community who are dedicated to making a positive impact. Tanika Jones and Ann Schaefer are two veteran teachers who, operating in different settings and meeting different needs, share a relentless passion for their mission as early childhood educators.

 Tanika Jones’ grandmother was a professor of education at Syracuse University, her mother a long-term public school teacher. Tanika studied social work, originally employed as a community organizer where, among other tasks, she planned rallies and protests. After suffering a big personal loss she became inspired to open her own at-home childcare center. Following her inner compass and deep spirituality, she trusted that “if she built it, it would come.”

 A single mother of two daughters, Tanika understood the need for quality early childhood education in Syracuse city. With her social work and organizing background and possessing a lifelong desire to create new employment possibilities, she was well suited to make change. Exasperation with gun violence and drugs in her neighborhood was the last straw that propelled her to into action and It Takes a Village (ITAV) was born.

 “The message I received was that if I gave back it would all work. My children, my family, my neighbors all bought in. My house became the daycare house. People protected it. I felt on assignment to deliver this service.”

 One of the most important aspects of ITAV is its 24 hours a day, seven days a week schedule.

 “When I think of the economy after 5 PM, I think of the people who keep it running and if they have children and who is providing care for those children, and if they are safe and well cared for… I make SURE that ITAV 24 hour childcare continues to serve families seven days a week, even on some holidays! Non-traditional hours of care is imperative to keep the economy going,” she says. 

 Tanika makes it clear ITAV is not a babysitting club for the many children  in her charge, setting high standards for them and their parents. She provides a positive environment where children are offered an English and Spanish curriculum while  engaging in play and ultimately preparing for school. Below age-appropriate reading levels for black and  brown children is a concern, explaining a deep focus on reading and literacy. A wide and ever-evolving array of activities are offered to engage and inspire - field trips, STEM lessons, cooking, yoga. Tanika’s center is shoes-off with plenty of dancing and singing.  After school, ITAV offers enrichment and tutoring.

 “I have to kick them out at the end of the day. This is a big, happy, fun place,” she  says.

 Tanika and her 20 staff members are lifelong learners, holding themselves to the same high standards they hold their students, constantly engaging in professional development and trainings. People want to work at ITAV because it is a fun, loving, and flexible environment, but everyone employed there  must believe in Tanika’s positive philosophy. She has a no gossiping, bullying, or cell phone policy. Her staff is a team and must be dedicated to the vision of the center.

 One of ITAV’s greatest challenges is the increased number of children with special needs and the lack of input childcare owners have with law and other decision makers.

 “Celebrating 11 years we are proud to say that we have made a huge impact on the community through the childcare services we provide and employment opportunities we have created…This is not just childcare, it is a ministry and it blesses me as the CEO to bless others!”

 Ann Schaefer of Ann Schaefer Childcare in Lafayette, New York also comes from a family of educators and social workers. A former nurse and stay-at-home mother to four children, she became aware of a need for childcare when her own kids were small and began filling it, creating a unique experience for babies and children up to four years old in her rural community.

 Ann’s curriculum is child-led, Montessori-inspired, and nature based. Children spend as much time as possible outdoors.

 “This approach helps children develop physical strength, fine and gross motor skills, spatial awareness, and overall fitness. They grow into strong, independent, and capable little humans,” Ann says.

 “We share a garden, tend to bird feeders, care for chickens, plant flowers for butterflies, and learn about trees and insects. The children climb, jump, and enjoy nature walks. I’ve created special spaces like mud kitchens for sensory play. We also read books, sing songs, and fill our days with rich exploration, fresh air, and meaningfulexperiences.”

 Ann does not have to advertise and does not use a waiting list. Her students come to her by word of mouth. Her bucolic setting and model of education self-selects families who are looking for a nature-based, intentional play curriculum.

 Ann believes passionately in the importance of early childhood education and feels the failures at this level are what contribute to broader issues in education.

 “Teachers are leaving…most of their day is spent correcting behaviors because the early childcare educator is not meeting those executive functioning skills,” she says.

 (Executive functioning refers to a set of higher-level cognitive skills that help planning, organization, self-control, and emotion management, laying a foundation for lifelong learning.)

 Ann sees her mission as having far reaching effects. She believes she can make the change she wants to see in the world child by child.

 “How can I set a foundation for a child who’s eventually going to be an adult and be a part of forming our future society? How can I model how to be a good human and how to be accountable, even at age three? How can I teach them their own self-worth and the self-worth of others? How can I create a conscience?” she says.

 Ann acknowledges the steep hill to climb surrounding these questions.

 “Quality care from educated providers is rare, and the lack of adequate childcare workers, combined with low wages, creates a cycle of burnout and attrition…Simply put, the system is deeply flawed and in need of meaningful reform.”

 For now, Ann continues living out her dream for a better world under the open skies and wide fields of her pre-school in Lafayette. She knows she might never see the ultimate fruits of her vision, but her faith in its value is unwavering.

 “With the current shortage of childcare providers, the experience I offer is not just rare—it’s a unique and meaningful learning opportunity during a crucial developmental period in a child’s life.”

Stigmata

The Brussels Review/Winter 2024

The call came on the front desk phone at 7 AM, the start of Tanya’s shift. She’d picked up on the required one ring, reciting the canned greeting.

“Good morning, Sweet Serenity, how can I help you?”

A pause loomed, then a middle-aged woman’s voice.

“Ah, thank god. I’ve been calling for an hour. My father, Henry Glaskin, room 415. I’m concerned about his teeth. I’m told he often takes them out. I can’t get there to oversee. I’m out of town. I rely on you people. He needs them otherwise he can’t eat.”

“Certainly, mam. I’ll have an aide check asap,” Tanya said, texting the only other person on shift at that hour, pale blubbery Kevin.

“No, I want you to check now. I’ll wait on the line,” she said.

Tanya pictured her arms folded, toe tapping.

“I understand that but I’m not an aide. My job is to cover the desk, that’s all. But I’ll-”

“Do I need to call the main office?”

“Okay, mam, I’ll head right down to see your Dad.”

Irritation propelled her from the desk through the social area to the darkened residents’ hall. She passed room after room of snoring old people, glancing in at turkey wattle necks cranked back, mouths open wide.

In room 415 Henry Glaskin slumbered, blankets tossed to the floor, exposing a wretched skeletal frame. The sought after teeth floated in a glass beside the bed, particles of food, like saltine specks, suspended in liquid.

“Hey, Tanya,” a voice behind her provoked a start. Kevin.

“Where were you?” she asked.

“Taking Jerry down the back elevator. Someone always pops off on Saturday night. You can count on it,” he chuckled.

“Can you put this guy’s teeth in? His daughter’s on the phone and all worked up about him starving to death or something.”

“Sure thing,” Kevin said, “Soon as I strip Jerry’s bed. I’ll get right on it.”

***

The interview occurred just one week before. Tanya wore her best flowered blouse, uncomfortable black pants, and a pair of cheap pumps. With her blonde hair cut in a pixie style - a look her ex-husband would have hated – she hoped to give off a highly responsible vibe. Wedged in the office chair , she watched the tired-looking HR woman leaf through paperwork. Sweat pooled beneath Tanya’s arms.

“I see you’ve worked in this biz a long time,” the HR woman squinted, like the small bland room was too bright, or she had a really bad hangover.

“Since high school, actually.”

“Most people go from nursing homes to private. Not the other way around

Tanya held her breath, fiddled with the ruby ring on her left finger.

The HR woman stared at some unknown spot on the back wall.

“It was emotionally draining. Getting so close to my clients and then having them, you know,” she said.

“Yup, for sure,” the HR said, “we’re all on the same train headed to the same station. Don’t I know it!” She slapped the desk, causing a gigantic Dunkin Donuts cup to tremble.

“Can you start tomorrow? We need someone answering phones on every floor, right away. We’re super understaffed but we don’t want it to sound that way!”

Tanya exhaled, relief rushing out of her lungs. There’d be no time for checking references.

***

At 10:30 Tanya’s pen hovered above 10 across, a three letter word for time period. She was writing in ERA when the desk phone rang.

“Henry Glaskin’s daughter. I’m just calling to check on the teeth.”

Tanya pressed her lips together before speaking.

“I’m sure they’re in, mam,” she said.

“Are you? I wish I could be so sure. Can you please check?”

“Again?” Tanya knew she sounded like her teenage daughter Katelyn when asked to do any chore, as though she was capable of performing useful acts only once. Tanya did not want to get involved with the patients. The whole reason she took the job was because it was answering phones. That’s all.

“Yes, again. And I don’t care that you’re not an aide. Anyone, absolutely anyone can check for dentures.”

She found Kevin in the hallway, supporting a shuffling old man, holding him by the back of his pants with one hand, like a pail of water.

Tanya feared an alert Mr. Glaskin (What if he shared his daughter’s personality?), but found him still sleeping, a repulsive pile of scrambled eggs heaped on a plate near the bed. His open mouth revealed bumpy gums and a string of saliva. The glass with the teeth absent from  the nightstand. She stepped into the bathroom. Not there. She looked in the closet, under the bed, on the roommate’s nightstand, everywhere. No teeth.

Artificial daisies in bright pink plastic planters, watched, winked, smiled from the window ledges as she dragged herself back to the phone.  

“He’s all set,” she said to the daughter.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s resting comfortably, all set.”

“Teeth in? Did he eat his breakfast?”

“His breakfast-eggs and toast-is there with him. He’s all set.”

“But what about the teeth? Where are his teeth?” the daughter demanded.

She really didn’t want to lie.

“They’re there.”

“In his mouth? Secured with the dental glue?”

“Yes. His teeth are in and glued and he’s had his breakfast and today, today we’re having a Sunday Social.”

“Oh, how nice,” the daughter said, “Thank you so much. You don’t know what a relief this is.”

***

Before, she’d worked for the Angiottis, a close family who hired her to care for their demented father, Al. On weekdays from 8 AM to 8 PM, Tanya cooked all the meals, cleaned the house from top to bottom, and washed and folded all of Al’s laundry. But she mostly talked to him, read to him, listened to his Great Depression and World War II  stories. He could remember the long past but none of the present. His adult kids took over nights and weekends.

Tanya loved their cozy ranch house with all its framed photos of Christmases and Thanksgivings and weddings from long past. Her past did not include such family togetherness. Her father had pretty much always been out of the picture. She hadn’t spoken to her mother in years. At Mr. Angiotti’s Tanya watered the plants and swept the porch and emptied the dishwasher, pretending it was hers, a great escape from her own unravelling home. Katelyn, 12 at the time, went to an after-school program and then to a cousin’s house until Tanya finished her shift. It all seemed so stable, so well-planned and perfect. Mr. Angiotti rewarded her with his wife’s ring. He asked her not to tell his children, which of course she never did.

***

At noon, Judy the activities lady appeared to the set up for the Sunday Social. She introduced herself, smiling relentlessly, a firm grip on Tanya’s hand.

 “Ya wanna help? There’s so much to do and just me to do it!” Judy said, dark red hair spiking, purple crystal earrings swinging.

“I’m really supposed to be focused on the desk. They want phones answered on the first ring.”

“Suit yourself,” Judy said, still smiling, unfolding table cloths, opening tissue paper flower centerpieces, filling small plastic cups with hard candy.

Huffing and puffing, she rolled each resident in their wheel chair, one by one, some still sleeping, to the social area. She arranged cowboy hats, fedoras, and funny mustaches on the men, hung feather boas around the ladies’ papery necks.  Glenn Miller played on continuous loop. She wheeled out Mr. Glaskin last.

“Tanya, have you met Henry?”

He was awake, milky amber eyes scanning the  decorations. Tanya crouched beside his wheelchair.

His open-mouthed smile revealed perfect teeth gleaming in the overhead fluorescent light. 

“His teeth!” Tanya said, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Of course. You can’t eat a cupcake without teeth, right Henry?” Judy said in a kind of baby voice.

“Sure you can,” Kevin emerged, pushing an empty gurney. “A cupcake’s easy to gum,” he said before diminishing down the hall.

Judy struggled to call out the numbers and assist the residents place their hard candy on the bingo cards.

The phone remained silent, so Tanya relented and came to assist.

She even enjoyed herself. When one old lady achieved BINGO, she rushed over to secure a plastic tiara on the giggling lady’s head. Tanya high-fived Judy, exclaiming a hearty Woo-hoo!.

Then the desk phone began its infernal ringing.

Tanya told Mr. Glaskin’s annoying daughter that his teeth were front and center. He’d just consumed a chocolate cupcake, frosting slashed his face, like a football player’s eye black, except pink.

“Wonderful!” the daughter said, adding, “but I do hope he has something more nutritious before bed.”

“Of course,” Tanya said.

***

A year before, Tanya had no idea Katelyn was having sex. When she found the pregnancy test in the kitchen garbage can she felt only confusion, not accusation, not suspicion.

“I found a positive pregnancy test in the garbage,” she said.

Katelyn, distracted as always by her phone, did not answer.

Tanya stirred seasoning into ground beef for their weekly taco night. She glanced at the table where Katelyn sat, hair hanging, covering her face.

She was crying.

“Pregnant? At 15!” Tanya sputtered, storming out of the kitchen, leaving the flame on, her wooden spoon tossed in the sink.

***

“How do you do this?” Tanya asked Judy as they cleaned up from the party, “Stay so cheery and going to all this trouble when-”

“They’re going to die soon?” Judy said, her smile fading for just a second. She swept the floor, where most of the cupcakes lay in large crumbs and shreds. “I love it. I love them.”

Judy carried out the last box of party supplies. The floor returned to its steady hum of silence. The paper smiley faces she’d hung sagged a bit, some detaching from the walls.

The phone. Tanya hesitated, allowing it to ring three times.

Of course it was Glaskin’s daughter, asking about the teeth.

Of course, Kevin was nowhere in sight.

She walked slowly down the hall, avoiding the passing rooms, the many lives snoozing their way to eternity.

Mr. Glaskin leaned to one side in his wheelchair, a black and white movie playing on the television. Tanya recognized Humphrey Bogart, her grandfather’s favorite actor. Roast beef and mash remained untouched on the rolling table. His mouth was closed. She cringed as she inserted a finger to lift a crusty lip.

No teeth, not in his mouth, not anywhere.

This time she found Kevin in the hall, sprawled on his ubiquitous gurney, mesmerized by his phone.

“Where are Mr. Glaskin’s teeth?” Tanya asked, surprised be her raised voice.

“Huh? How the hell should I know?”

“They were there before, during the party. Where could they be?”

“Relax, lady, Jesus. He probably swallowed them.” Kevin started laughing and couldn’t stop, dropped his phone on his chest as he rubbed his tearing eyes.

Two hours until the end of shift. Tanya returned to the desk, moving past darkened windows under the low lights of the social area. She considered removing the phone from its hook. Instead, she allowed herself to switch on her cell phone. How she’d love to answer one of her daughter’s persistent baby questions or gaze at a photo of her grandson, anything to escape this situation.

Inevitably, the desk phone rang.

This time, Tanya lied about the teeth, no hesitation.

***

It happened on the most beautiful summer day. Tanya walked beside Al Angiotti as he pushed his walker in the driveway, the sun glowing over their heads, the sky a faultless blue. Their long shadows stretched out before them on the black pavement.

Her phone buzzed.

Katelyn.

Mom, he won’t stop crying. You gotta come home. I . Can’t . Do. This!!!

Tanya let go of Al’s arm, began typing a response.

Somehow in that split second, he wobbled over and fell. She threw her phone down, pulled him up, checked for bruises and bumps.

“You okay, Mr. A.? You alright?”

The old man nodded and smiled a toothless smile. Later she’d find his dentures across the driveway, sugared with pieces of dirt and rock.

Back in the house, she checked him from head to toe, the dead wife’s coo coo clocks staring from various perches. Next, two fatal choices. She didn’t call 911. Then, she put Al to bed without calling the children, letting them know what happened. He just needs a good night’s sleep, she told herself.

The next morning his right arm presented a disturbing purpley red, like the tube of blood pudding she saw once at a butcher. Internal bleeding.

By the time the EMTs arrived, Mr. Angiotti was dead, his hands hanging limp at his sides, his chin to his chest.

***

For the last call, Tanya skipped the greeting, picked up, waited.

The daughter sucked  in her breath.

“I just don’t trust you,” she said.

“What?” Tanya said, having heard her clearly.

“I don’t trust you people to do your jobs. You don’t understand my situation as an out of town daughter trying to do what’s right. My father can’t eat without those teeth. How can he live if you people don’t do your jobs and keep those teeth glued in his mouth? How can I take care of him from a distance without reliable help? You have no idea how hard this is on me, my own family.”

Tanya dropped the phone, walked back as if in a trance, the rumble of the back elevator the only sound on the floor. She found room 415 still, so still. Mr. Glaskin’s blankets were again tossed to the floor. In the glow of the feeble nightstand light, she scanned his body, his knees and arms held a spidery reddish pattern. His face was frozen, lids partially closed, mouth stuck in a half-open expression, just enough to show the gums, the absence of teeth.

Returning to the desk, she noticed Judy in the staff room hovering above a table full of construction paper and markers, like a kindergarten classroom. She was crying her eyes out.

Tanya entered, gaping at the woman.

“Why are you crying? Did you know already? I thought you left after the party.”

Judy looked at her.

“What? No, I’m crying about my parents. I took care of them until they died. I always resented it. Now I miss them, I miss them so,” she broke down again, her shoulders shaking.

“Mr. Glaskin’s dead. Did you take them?”

“Dead? What?”

“His teeth. Did you take them?”

“No. Of course not. Why would I?”

Tanya didn’t know.

Kevin’s encroaching gurney rattled.

“Leave it to old Glaskin to pop off after the party!” He shook his head back and forth as he rolled the dead man to the back elevator.

Behind the desk, Tanya removed her ruby ring, tossed it into her purse. Her fingers had swelled during the day, the gold band constricted. The sound of the insistent desk phone followed her as she walked to the exit, lights flickering overhead. She could feel the warm wetness of Glaskin’s teeth, their presence a solid certainty. The arc of plastic smiled inside her pocket, weighing into her, pressing, creating a deep, dark, unmovable stain. She knew she’d carry them with her this way, forever.

Not an Animal Person

Hibiscus Magazine/Fall 2024

Garvey, the landlord who opened the door, was no spring chicken himself, shorter than me, hunched and gnarled. A wild puff of white hair emerged from a chasm of baldness. Instead of a hello, he grunted.

“I don’t like this one bit. First I gotta put up with her, a homeless person with a home. Now this,” he said. 

The stairwell was a deep turquoise, dark drips stained its walls. I gripped a rickety wooden railing, passed a series of doorways, guarding what I imagined were uninhabited apartments. Breathless, I followed a thin shaft of light streaming from above.  

Harriet Schultz stood at the top of the stairs beside her open door. 

Her face was a mask of rubbery layers of skin draping from her skull. She wore garish pink lipstick which missed her lips in spots, leaked onto her chin, cheeks. My late mother’s own blurried mouth flashed then retreated. 

“I’m Margaret,” I said. 

“Weird hair,” she said, examining my cropped locks.

I followed her into the sitting area, noting the dirty strands of grey hair colluding at her shoulders.

The afternoon light came through splattered front windows. 

An unpleasant moth bally plus old food smell pervaded. I contained a rising sick panic. 

Her pants were pilly polyester, a white stain on her left thigh.  She wore a tank top. Large moles mushroomed from weathered skin. Her breasts hung low, braless. 

A hot flash overcame me.

I removed my coat. 

“Hot in here, huh?” 

Her laugh was kind of a HA-haaaaaaaaaaaa-guttural, low, rising up at the end. 

I tried to smile, to laugh along, but could only fold inward, press my lips together. 

I took in the whole of the apartment. 

Cats. Pictures of cats lining the walls, shelves, even the ceiling.  Cats cut from magazines, books, labels, obviously wherever Harriet could find them. 

“Do you have a cat?” I asked.

“Can’t take care of myself, why’d I have a cat?” she said.

She plopped on a cluttered couch. Her large age-spotted hands spread on her legs. 

“The social worker said you might like me to read to you,” I said, taking a surreptitious glance at my watch.

Her ice blue eyes narrowed.

“Planning your escape? Can’t blame you,” she said. “Well, go ahead, read this.”

She handed over a book, James Herriot’s cat stories. 

A Place to Return

The Manifest Station/ December 2024

My 93 year old mother sits in her wheelchair, hunched at the round kitchen table. My father’s seat, empty for a year and a half, remains quietly insistent beside her. His presence exists only in small smiling photos magnetized to the fridge, clipped to a shelf. There used to be a round clock on the wall nearby, part of my mother’s antique collection, but it fell, crashed to the floor a while ago. 

The Rescuers: CNY Women Confront the Animal Crisis

Syracuse Woman/November 2024

There is an unprecedented glut of homeless animals across America and Central New York is no exception.

 According to an April 2024 article in the Economic Hardship Reporting Project,

 “After a record low of 5.5 million in 2020, animal intakes are slowly increasing. In 2023, 690,000 dogs and cats were euthanized in shelters across the US. In 2023, 6.5 million animals entered [shelters], and only a little over 6 million left. Animals are lingering for weeks, months and sometimes years in shelters.”

 Indeed, Central New York is saturated with animals. The reasons are many, ranging from evictions by landlords who do not allow pets to poverty to lack of access to spay and neuter services and vaccines to behavior problems caused by lack of socialization during COVID.

 Veteran animal rescuer and Baldwinsville resident Bonnie Watson remembers many of the cats she’s helped across her 45 years saving animals, but Dottie stands out. Dottie was a freckle-faced kitty with a propensity to scratch who couldn’t find an owner. One day, a nurse from Upstate Hospital came along and adopted her. “She accepted Dottie for who she was and fell in love,” Bonnie says.

 Bonnie became involved with the Central New York Cat Coalition (CNYCC) when she moved to Onondaga County.

 “I was overwhelmed trying to help on my own. CNYCC taught me how to trap and sometimes were able to provide a foster home for cats I rescued. Additionally, I recruited foster homes for my own use that were dedicated to taking my rescues that needed a place to go when the Cat Coalition didn't have any available,” she says.

 Bonnie, who has a background in public relations, pitched the idea for this Syracuse Woman article because she wants people to understand the gravity of the problem of homeless animals in Central New York and beyond. She wants the women who run so many of the local shelters to be recognized for their care, compassion, and endless work in the animal rescue field. Finally, she wants more people to get involved, pointing out the myriad ways one person can help: monetary or animal supply donations, shelter volunteerism, fostering animals, etc.

 “Who did people always turn to when they had a need for help? The shelters. Now the shelters are turning to the public. For the animals sake we have to do this together,” Bonnie says.  

***

 After years of volunteering in various capacities for local shelters, lifelong animal owner and retired IT professional Maureen Davison found a second act in 2020 as executive director of Liverpool’s HumaneCNY. Maureen remembers the heartbreaking stories of thousands of dogs that have arrived there over the years, like “Max the 13 year old dog tied up with a note at the park or Tito who came with multiple stab wounds.” Maureen works tirelessly to help as many animals as she can, knowing she can’t save them all.  

 Since 2020, 3000 surrendered, abandoned, and abused animals have passed through the door of HumaneCNY, funded almost entirely by donations and grants and kept running through the invaluable time and efforts of an army of volunteers. Prior to COVID, Maureen says they received roughly five to ten surrenders a month. Currently HumaneCNY averages 30 surrenders a week and now has 127 animals in their care. The shelter stands out for its extensive rehabilitation of injured and neglected animals and intensive dog walking and cat socialization programs.

 HumaneCNY’s volunteers and staff are its life blood. “We couldn’t do it without them. They walk dogs 8am-5pm EVERY SINGLE DAY. They socialize cats in shifts EVERY SINGLE DAY. They do laundry, transports, fostering.  Without them we wouldn’t be able to help,” Maureen says.

***

 Although she hates to choose, Friends Forever Animal  Rescue (Pennellville) founder, Casey Newton’s, most memorable rescue is Rory, a paralyzed dog in a diaper and a wheelchair. After some failed adoption attempts, Casey adopted Rory herself. Initially, Casey was overwhelmed by Rory’s care, but the dog’s loving spirit always lightened every burden. Recently, when Casey brought Rory along to a children’s program, Rory bypassed every other child and bee-lined to a little boy in a wheelchair, resting her head in his lap to happily receive the boy’s pets.

Casey began rescuing animals at age 20 from a bedroom in her grandmother’s house.

“I’ve been in Rescue for close to 26 years…The amount of animals that we are seeing in need is increasing day by day. We average close to 40 Rescue calls in a week, and with limited space, we are not able to accommodate all and with other shelters and rescues in our area facing the same problem with overcrowding and at full capacity, we have absolutely no other solutions or recommendations to give the people who are calling to help,” she says.

Casey credits Friends Forever’s success to the power of her community of volunteers and donors.

 “Our transparency and our ability to make the community feel a part of the rescue is why we are so recognized and successful. We actually are humbled by the amount of support that we get and do not take any contribution no matter how small or how big for granted because without them, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do and that is saving lives one paw @ a time,” Casey says.

***

Current Central New York Cat Coalition (CNYCC) President and Vice President Rebekah McGraw and Courtney Armbruster both have day jobs as a kindergarten teacher and a marketing and communications director of Syracuse’s Museum of Science and Technology (the MOST) respectively. In their spare time, they lead a team of selfless volunteers dedicated to rescuing thousands of local homeless cats.

 Rebekah cherishes one special memory of a foster cat named Plum, a sweet six months old with long gray hair whose severe mastitis prevented her from feeding her six kittens. Despite Rebekah’s mother’s bottle feeding, each kitten ultimately passed away in her arms. The day Plum was finally adopted, Rebekah’s entire family cried with happiness.

 Courtney recalls an older homeless cat named Berkeley, a loving, long-matted-haired fellow with an infected paw.

 “I thought there was no chance someone would want to adopt a cat this old and figured I may have him for life. Within weeks a young man contacted us who only wanted a lap cat and didn’t care how old he was. He immediately fell in love once Berkeley climbed right into his lap and snuggled up.” Courtney says.

 Plum and Berkley are just two stories of the 50-100 homeless cats CNYCC encounters every week. The organization has no physical shelter. Each of the CNYCC registered fosters chooses which and how many cats they can help. When those fosters are out of space, they have to stop taking in cats. With so many cats in need this limitation is often heartbreaking.

 “They can survive outside for years, breeding and growing in number. Our leaders wouldn’t stand for thousands of stray dogs running through neighborhoods, but there is absolutely no action by local government to help the thousands of cats living throughout our area,” Courtney says.

 Clearly, rescuing is not possible for every cat, but CNYCC believes spaying and neutering directly addresses the current state of extreme cat overpopulation.

 “Since CNYCC’s founding in 2002, more than 18,000 cats have been spayed/neutered. Since 2010…we have found new homes for more than 9,500 cats,” Courtney says.

 CNYCC exists without a paid staff or government funding and relies entirely on donations, grants, and adoption fees. They partner with vet and spay and neuter clinics who generously offer their services at a discount. Their registered fosters often pay for cats’ needs from their own pockets.

 “What we’d love to see is a better plan that puts money toward helping our neighbors help themselves. Encourage people to rescue cats and get them fixed as a way to improve quality of our neighborhoods. But they can’t do it without funding, and they can’t do it without more spay/neuter providers,” Courtney says.

 In short, many people are working very hard to confront this distressing problem of animal overpopulation and homelessness, but it’s not enough.

 Looking on the bright side, Rebekeh sums it all up.

 “I am so thankful for all the rescues in the area that help control the animal population in the Central New York area. I am proud of the work we do!”

After Edna

The Literary Hatchet/November 2024

 Edna told Hank about the marbles, how she could fit many all at once in her accommodating mouth, when they first met at the church breakfast, the two of them awkward thirty-somethings still living at home with their parents. She’d even won a prize for the skill, at some county fair or some such.

 “That’s why you can fit all that pancake in,” he said, immediately regretting it.

She finished chewing and smiled, sexily, he thought.

Her mouth and how it could stretch so willingly to allow so much became a joke running like a bowling ball down the alley of their marriage. When they fought, a reference to her big marble-filled mouth would make them laugh and forget what they were fighting about in the first place. In the bedroom, Hank whispering about her capacity for his marbles would cause her to roll over in the darkness to face him, her warm breath colluding with his.

But the bowling ball veered into the gutter and Edna had died, leaving Hank alone, weighed down by grief.
Hank felt the logical way to deal with Edna’s loss was to make a New Edna, an avatar. Work on New Edna began even before Old Edna died, Hank typing code into his laptop under the dim hospital lights while Old Edna’s empty-of-marbles mouth hung in endless sleep.

Obviously, New Edna wasn’t warm or snuggly, but she looked like Old Edna and sounded like Old Edna and said many things Old Edna said. They fell into a new/old routine. He said his usual good morning to her on his bedside phone to which she responded with her well- worn: Wakey wakey eggs and and bacey! In the kitchen he fixed coffee and turned on the news which they watched with morbid satisfaction across from one another at their circular table.

New Edna knew all the important stories of their meeting, elopement, and long marriage. She knew she’d been a school nurse and Hank a computer- fix-it guy. But she didn’t know about all the miscarriages they’d suffered or that time when Hank was out of work and had a moment of unfaithfulness, okay a month of unfaithfulness. She didn’t know about that time he grabbed her arm after one too many beers on Super Bowl Sunday. Old Edna never forgot those things and never let Hank forget she never forgot. Naturally, New Edna never mentioned them, which Hank felt was his prerogative as a widower, and her creator.

 “How’s the coffee? What will you have for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? How’s work?”

She asked all those wifey questions Old Edna was so good at asking. When he answered, she stared at him, her younger- than- Old- Edna face open, eyes unblinking, all ears.

She bestowed copious compliments on Hank that he knew Old Edna thought and even said once and a while, but he’d wished she’d said a bit more.

“You are one handsome man, hon,” she said often, because Hank had coded her to do so.

And of course, New Edna said the thing about the marbles and he teased her back about how many she could fit, and she’d tell him some ridiculous number and he’d say how wonderful it was to have a wife with such a capacity and she’d laugh on repeat.

Hank realized with New Edna there he no longer missed Old Edna.

He ate healthier, sweated on the old stationary bike for thirty minutes each morning. He bought new clothing, shaved his raggedy beard, spritzed cologne just under his left ear.

On their morning constitutional Hank chatted to New Edna on his phone. He told her about the weather, the neighbors’ houses and their changes. Old Edna loved to go on walks, back in the day. They used to hold hands, sometimes kiss and hug midway. Obviously, things changed after 40 years of marriage.

Ironically, it was on one of these walks he first saw the new neighbor, whom he soon learned from another neighbor was a contortionist named Lucille.

“A contortionist, of all things,” Hank said to New Edna, her steady smile beaming forth from the screen.

In the spring, Hank spied Lucille through her big bay window. The sight of  her neck looped under her torso, her head appearing to pop out from her behind, caused him to cease conversation with New Edna, whom he’d just told about the lilacs blooming in the side yard (signifying she’d been dead a whole year). He stopped in his tracks, continued to enjoy Lucille’s smooth moves.

“I’ll see you later,” Hank told New Edna, fingering her home button.

 “Okay, Hon! Naptime,” she said, shutting down.

Lucille appeared in her front yard, said, “Howdy do.”

She actually said, “Howdy do,” which Hank found surprising, charming.

The trouble with New Edna, Hank was beginning to think, was her lack of spontaneity, variation. In that moment he admitted to himself she was growing a little burdensome.

“Boy, you can sure, uh, twist,” he said to Lucille, relieved to note the wrinkles on her still pretty face. He didn’t want to be accused of robbing the cradle. Her body looked quite young, but her face looked more, well, realistic. Sitting at her messy kitchen table (she’d invited him in!), his fingers itched to run across her form-fitting ribbed top, her shiny yoga pants. He reveled in her three-dimensionality.

“Guess how many marbles I can fit in my big, luscious mouth?” New Edna asked that evening over dinner. Hank had programmed her to say that dirtier version of the old line.

Sadly, for the very first time the marble thing fell flat.

Hank wanted much more to guess if Lucille’s wonderous legs could loop around his waist, grasp his aging body, hold him up, steady and strong, swing him around, like a kite freed from its string, rippling in the wind, weightless, free.

He pressed the escape button, closed the computer, went to bed without saying goodnight.

Rock, Fire, Water

Edge City/November 2024

Before Maeve, Hastings had been very, very lonely.

Maeve from the geology club. Maeve with her feathered red hair, flecks of gold in her green eyes.

He kissed her one night after a hike, her face flickering in campfire light.

 “Your hands are your super power,” she said, “They make me feel safe.”

He admitted his fingers had grown sensitive from all the rock work.

Touch was important, maybe more than sight.

He ran one finger along her face, neck, grazing a tender earlobe.

Fourteen months later, he removed a hunk of diopside from a larger piece of rock, carved it into two small tear drop shapes, attached them to thin wires.

He pushed them toward her across a table in a crumpled paper bag.

“I made them. They’re black star diopside,” he said, looking at her expectantly.

He wanted her to know what he was trying to say, to ask.

A tear ran down her cheek. She stood suddenly, excused herself.

Hastings sat like a stone, scratching his beard. He’d never known what to say, and he knew this frustrated her, and everyone else.

Still, he did not follow her. He lingered there with the sun streaming through the café windows, inhaling her spicy scent hanging in the space she’d left behind.

***

Somehow, the stones prepared him for the loss. The stones, with their endless presence, their wisdom attained from the ages, also revealed some opposite state, a terrible emptiness. His own parents had died, his aunt and uncle who raised him had been distant. There was so much depth and history and beauty in stones, and there was perseverance, hope. He could hold them in his hands, comfort himself, guarding against the void.

Years later, when he heard Maeve died in a fire, he believed the stones he’d given her had survived. Not long after that, on one of his many lonely hikes, when the long green tremolite fingers drooped down from a ledge and tapped him on the shoulder, he was not surprised.

“It’s me,” Maeve said, and Hastings wept with joy.

***

At the library where he cared for the Geology department’s famous collection, there was an old emeritus professor named Dr. Spawn who liked to talk of the old days, his dead wife, his children who never called. Hastings was the perfect coffee partner, sitting slowly chewing the cake with which Spawn lured him from his dusty office every Wednesday.

“It always sounds to me that you’re talking to someone in that office of yours,”  Spawn said repeatedly.

“Naaa, just the radio,” Hastings said, brushing crumbs from his threadbare flannel shirt.

Spawn nodded.

Hastings didn’t tell him about his companionable Maeves, the countless golden specks, the variations, multitudes of rocks lining the walls who chittered and jabbered, sharing long stories about the origins of the universe, space, and time, and love, of course love. They filled his mind with beauty and light, his nostrils with the smell of spice.

Spawn yammered on about his own Earthly experiences while Hastings itched to return to the more vibrant conversation of his Maeves.

“You want to come over to my place? For dinner this Friday? I can get a pizza?”

Spawn looked sadly at Hastings for a moment.

Hastings’ heart broke recognizing the depth of the man’s loneliness.

He was lucky to have all of his beautiful stones, his Maeves.

Spawn had nothing but rotting paper and wood and fading memories, bitterness.

“I don’t think so,” Hastings said, a kind of numb haze suffocating him.

When he returned to his office, the Maeves judged him in a tomb of expected disappointment, abrupt, endless silence.

***

Time passed.

Hastings had taken a leave of absence, spent most days in his quiet trailer, in bed.

One morning a ray of weak sunlight inspired hope. He trudged up the hill searching the ground until a twinkling occurred near his right boot. He produced a small brush, dusted the sparkle’s source.  He touched, explored, reveling in the juts and crevices of quartz. Its brilliant bits, like golden foil stuck to each end, revealed identity: a Herkimer Diamond. He held it to his cheek, ear, he smelled it. Half relieved by its stoney silence, its lack of Maeveness, he slid it into his pocket.

Back at the trailer, Hastings found a teenager sleeping in a shaft of sunlight in the folding chair he kept beside the door. Her long red hair touched both sharp shoulders. Her mouth turned in a frown as she slept.

He surveyed her, excited anxiety tickled his arms like bird feathers.

She startled, wiped her mouth with a hand, stared at him with green gold eyes.

“Hastings? Hastings Smith?” she said.

He nodded.

“I’m Lilly. My mother was Maeve. Maeve Gravely.”

Maeve’s face suddenly emerged from Lilly’s.

“I don’t have money for you.”

“I don’t want money,” she said, her face cold as stone.

“Then?”

“I was hoping you’d want to meet me. Um. Maybe I could stay?” she said, looking around sheepishly, “I’m good with plants. I could grow a garden. Grow you vegetables?”

With no words available, he reached in his pocket, pulled out the Herkimer Diamond.

She turned it in her hands, squinted up at him in the late afternoon light.

She seemed to realize this was all he would offer, all he’d say, so she sighed, shoved the stone in her backpack.

He considered offering coffee but noticed her studying something, a phone?

“The Uber’s coming.”

He didn’t understand at first. She spoke some other language.

 “You might need to walk down the road a bit,” he said.

Her back turned. She moved away, shoulders hunched.

After she gradually disappeared from his sight, he crouched to the ground, gasping, listening, his hands sifting, searching through the sea of small rocks beneath him.

Maeve! Lilly?

He wanted to call out, to be heard, for the girl to come back to him, but he could only find his damned predictable silence.

***

Eventually he made a circle of his best stones, piled fragrant branches and old wood, set it ablaze. He held his hands out to the warmth, his spirit rising up, colluding with smoke.

Perhaps chances in this world were plentiful, like stones, he thought, appearing steadily, one after another, when the time was right. He’d have to be patient. He’d have to keep watch. Perhaps someday he’d be offered another chance to drink the water of words, and he’d take that chance without hesitation and he’d douse his charred remains. He’d reach across the table and touch Maeve’s lone tear, and he’d become that tear, and he’d be alive, healed, at last.

Jennifer Wood: Trappers II Owner Perseveres Following Husband’s Death

Syracuse Woman Magazine/October 2024

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic certainly brought pain and separation, but it also brought many communities together. Neighbors paraded down their streets for kids’ birthday parties, families gathered outside their grandparents’ nursing home windows, cities and towns celebrated essential workers with songs and honking horns. That same year Jennifer Wood, owner of Trappers 2 Pizza and Pub (T2) in Minoa, suffered a separate trauma: the tragic loss of her husband. Through her community she found the strength to not only survive, but thrive.

 In early 2020, Jen and Aaron Wood had been married for almost 14 years and were the proud parents of daughters Madison (13) and Avery (11). They bought out their business partner in 2014, becoming the sole owners of T2. Between Aaron’s job as a financial advisor, their rental properties, their girls’ sports schedules, and T2, their lives were busy and happy. By spring, that world came crashing down, not just because of COVID, but because of Aaron’s diagnosis of neuroendocrine cancer, a condition his doctors insisted wasn’t terminal, but caused Aaron debilitating, worsening pain.

 “At first Aaron and I were making decisions together of how we were going to operate. The sicker he got the less he was able to participate so it was me and our niece and General Manager, Bri [Sturick], navigating it, trying to interpret any new rules…implement all the new protocols,” Jen says.

 Jen still calls herself Chief Problem Solver to this day, and it was during that hectic and devastating period that she began to tap into her inner visionary and leader, finding one solution at a time to every problem that arose while running T2 during a family crisis and a pandemic. A staunch believer in giving back by treating others how she would like to be treated, she saw the pandemic and even her family’s misfortune as opportunities for generosity.

 “We would raise money for families affected by COVID, or who were struggling financially. Customers would call in and buy trays of ziti or pizza and we’d deliver them to local families.”

 Under Jen’s and Bri’s direction, T2 weathered the COVID storm and survived, though Aaron did not, passing away at 50 years old, ten months after his diagnosis.

 Neither COVID nor Aaron’s death pressured Jen to sell T2. She retained her employees, increasing their pay and constantly encouraging them to learn from their mistakes and manage stress by maintaining a healthy perspective on work. And, she hired lots of high school students.

 “I’m a huge believer in high school kids working, managing extracurricular activity and excelling in school. This makes for a good adult. I just put my faith in them and they do well. I move them up. I’m going on my second dishwasher moving all the way up to General Manager. They are all awesome. I’m lucky,” she says.

 Instead of doing less after their loss, Jen and her daughters did more. They got involved in travel lacrosse (Madison) and soccer (Avery), finding another community of parents, coaches, and young athletes. They traveled to games on weekends, made new friends.

 Still, it wasn’t easy.

 “I think the hardest internal thing I deal with is the fact that Aaron was my best friend. He had my back no matter what. He and I raised the kids together, each assuming a role. Losing the father of my children I’ve had to try to fulfill both roles and I think along with that comes the guilt of having to be away from my children, of working, dividing my attention between earning money for my family and tending to their other needs,” Jen says.

 Four years have passed. Madison is driving, working at T2, and thinking about college. Avery plays every season of sports at school: soccer, volleyball, and lacrosse. Jen has met a new love, Steve, introduced by a friend of Aaron’s. She continues as Chief Problem Solver for both home, T2, and her other business ventures. At first skeptical about her abilities, she now owns twenty properties in total. She faced a steep learning curve when she built the side patio on T2 and her current project, an elegant cocktail and small plates bar she’s named, aptly, Good Wood, scheduled to open next year. Many of Jen’s efforts, including renting her first new property to childhood friend Jamie Weisberg who runs Northbound, a holistic mind and body shop across the street from T2, have been attempts at erasing the recurring “Where’s Minoa?” line from all outsider conversations, an interest she shares with her friends from nearby Spill the Tea Café and Infusion Yoga Studio and Mayor Bill Brazill.

 T2 has flourished. It is a force in Jen’s life and the community. People come for the pizza and beer but linger to connect with family and friends, play volleyball or trivia, or even attend a private party. Jen adores her staff and fosters a family-like environment at T2. She revels in her high standard (one Aaron shared) of generosity. She donates pizzas to East Syracuse Minoa concessions, teams, and other organizations and funds three $1000 scholarships a year to kids that work (preferably at T2), have good grades, and do an extracurricular activity. Jen continues to think big for T2 and the community by expanding delivery and outside catering, renovating the whole building, hosting bigger parties, and dreaming of bands on the patio and even a future music festival on Main Street.

 Jen wants people to know how she survived such a devastating loss.

 “Appreciate whatever it is that you have for what it is, especially if it’s just your health. Focusing on what I did have and not what I didn’t was the key for me to maintain my strength and composure.  When I was really missing Aaron or really stressing, being appreciative and grateful gave me the focus to carry on and thrive,” Jen says.

 In her darkest moments of grief, Jen remembered her community of family, friends, and coworkers.

 She had so much to live for.

Loyalty

Dark Winter Press/October 2024

The first dog, a big Irish setter of all things, was spotted after Memorial Day. I knew it was that weekend because I’d gone for a hike and I can distinctly recall feeling happy walking with Sophie, and how nice the weather was that day, and how I thought about feeling better, almost normal again.

Practice as Pedagogy

Syracuse Woman Magazine/August 2024

Husna Lapidus has a dream for education. 

Ten years after taking over leadership of Kumon Math and Reading Center (now in Manlius) from her mother, Husna has built this dream on the foundation of Kumon concepts and ideals in which she passionately believes, as well as the changes she has observed firsthand in students and education since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Kumon is not only a learning method but also a philosophy with implications that extend well beyond any individual student, family, or classroom, into society itself. 

In 1954 Japanese math instructor Toru Kumon developed a series of step- by-step worksheets to enable his son, Takeshi, to teach himself math. Toru “believed that the work of an educator is to foster a mindset for self-learning in children”(kumongroup.com). He dedicated the rest of his life to perfecting the Kumon educational model based on this tenet.

New Kumon students are evaluated so they may begin with work they can do easily, without any input from parents or other educators. They are sent home with worksheets (a derivation of Toru’s originals) to finish every day until their next Kumon classroom visit. Students return the sheets for review by supportive instructors who then assign the next appropriate level of work. The students leave the center with more sheets to complete independently at home until handing them back the following week. 

“It’s not a miracle; it’s a practice,” Husna says.  

“The secret sauce, the golden ticket of Kumon is students starting where they are…where there are no gaps in learning…even if that seems lower than where they think they should be. When they do this, they are accessing the portion of their brain that’s automatic…automaticity. That way, they build on their knowledge gradually so that at every stage they’re growing that foundation…By greasing the wheel, getting them confident, and getting their habits ingrained, we change their mindset and we empower them with an unstoppable ability to impact the world in the ways most important to them.”

Indeed, Kumon teaches students about themselves as much as it teaches math and reading. 

Husna says, “All knowledge is self-knowledge.”  

Moving through the Kumon curriculum reveals to students their own tendencies, their useful and not so useful habits, allowing them to change their approach to study, become better. 

“They will want to be better,” Husna says. 

Since COVID, Husna observes changes in all of her Kumon students. 

“It’s said by the Department of Education that American children are behind by an average of three years of learning. There are a lot of kids today who have gaps… that started from COVID-time education that have never been addressed. These kids are now embarrassed to even get help or attend school. Nationally, we’re finding a higher than ever percentage of chronically absent students, and I think it is in large part because of this ripple effect,” she says. 

She notes how the pandemic exposed the deficiencies in the American education system, causing parents, teachers, and students to question everything from how information is delivered and by what means and by whom and in what time frame to how learning is measured and assessed. 

“As our world becomes even more globalized, parents will appreciate knowing that their child’s ability stacks up on an international scale rather than just the USA, NYS, their district, or teacher. As we know, American standards in primary education are lacking, even more so since the pandemic,” she says, referring to the international standard by which Kumon measures its students.

In short, COVID turned education, like so many things, on its head.  

But what can be more important than how our children are formed, nurtured, informed? As a highly educated adult who experienced the trauma of academic pressure, a parent of three independent, unique learners, and an educator herself, Husna mulls this question regularly.  

She recognizes the emotional legacy of COVID, as she and her Kumon colleagues detect anxiety, social skill challenges, and emotional regulation struggles amongst their students, highlighting the need for strong mental health support and social-emotional learning. 

She says, “At Kumon, we address these needs by providing a structured, supportive learning environment that fosters resilience, and academic growth. The brain training we do at Kumon has been neurologically studied and found to enhance other prefrontal cortex functions beyond calculations and comprehension. It strengthens the brain’s abilities to elevate self-control, empathy, and emotional well-being for both students and their families.”

The mastery acquired by practicing knowledge from a place of confidence and independence naturally spills out into other places in life.

Kumon’s aspirations, as outlined on their website, line up with Husna’s:

“By discovering the potential of each individual and developing his or her ability to the maximum, we aim to foster sound, capable people and thus contribute to the global community.”

Husna questions if American schools currently achieve this goal. 

She knows that school serves many purposes outside of simply the pursuit of academic knowledge. But what if school could be reimagined using the Kumon model? What if school could be shorter, self-regulated, different? What if students had more time to pursue their own interests and passions? What if they had no anxiety around homework and tests, no fear of trying new things, no personalization of mistakes?

“We believe the more we talk and teach, the less the students will think for themselves. The difference with the Kumon method is that the aim is to foster independent learning ability.” 

Husna dreams of a time in the future when all students are encouraged to think for themselves. 

During COVID she taught herself how to play guitar and she recently bought a cello. 

The Kumon method of starting where you are and practicing from there, the patience and humility she’s learned as a student and practitioner of the Kumon method, gives her the belief in herself, the confidence that she can and will learn. 

“I don’t know the first thing yet,” Husna says, “but I know I’m going to be able to do it.”

We Find Ourselves Alone Together for the Last Time

Tiny Moments, Volume IV, 2024

The unsmiling expression of the funeral director met my puffy, grief-strained face at the door. She knew I was coming. I’d just called about my forgotten diaper bag. She quickly closed the door behind me, reducing the smack of November chill. 

“Please,” she said, one extended hand gesturing into the hall. 

Please. This was a word I assumed funeral people said a lot, and by itself. I understood this to be a profession marked by restraint, knowing just what to say or not say, simple, direct pleases. She pointed to my light blue - polka dotted bag slouched on the floor beside a grandfather clock, then disappeared without seeing me out, like a ghost. I guessed she was tired. She probably wanted to go home, eat dinner with her family, get on with living. My brother Donny’s wake had attracted over 700 mourners, a long night for everyone, closing time.

The double doors to the room which held my brother’s body were wide open, exposing his splayed coffin. Like a light turned off or a chair moved, I supposed opening his coffin was just another closing- time task. Still, I was surprised. After all, it had been so ceremoniously closed just an hour before, after the viewing. The dimmed lights evoking a classy, somber mood were now snapped to a nasty brightness. The harp musak Donny would have mocked switched off, the room held its breath in a stiff, overwhelming silence. I could not ignore his presence. I could not believe, in that moment, he was not really there. I could not stop myself from inching in, coming closer.

There he lay, ready for the next day I supposed, when family would gather again to say our final goodbyes. I lingered there beside him, of course I did, studying him, my friend, our lives together speeding through my mind: riding bikes to the pool, watching Gidget reruns, laughing at the breakfast table. Answering his phone with fake surprise and interest, “Maggie…my fourth favorite sister,”  always the teasing older brother, humor his shield. More recently, the two of us standing in our parents’ living room, watching my son struggle to walk. Donny was 51 and dying and I was a 43 year old new mom.  “You will say and do things as a parent that will shock and surprise you,” he said, wisdom and regret hovering in the air, fading in the moment.

I knew I had to go. I had to leave him there with all the other furniture and non-living things in this sad, strange place. I willed my body to move, feeling like a traitor, hearing Donny’s voice.

“Don’t leave me here, Mag. Take me with you. Let’s go home.”

There was no other choice but to take what I needed, abandon the undertaker air, escape to the car, humming in the bracing cold.

Doing Without

Tiny Moments, Volume IV, Summer 2024

While prepping the dough, Gran asked me about school and friends, snuck in a question about Mom. I kept a tight lip.

Dad, Gran’s son, snored on the living room couch, sleeping off the excess of the night before.

Gran still blamed Mom for everything even though she should have known better than anyone how it was, living with a drinker.

I was dying for a cup of coffee, but Gran thought young people should drink milk in the morning, so I poured a glass of juice.

She sent me for the raisins.

I pulled the pantry’s light string but the bulb had blown out.

“Is it round or square?” I called out.

“Tall and round!”

She shouted above an endless Johnny Mathis sing-along.

I touched the edges of canisters and tubs and sticky bottles, dreading a mouse’s wet nose sniffing my hand.

Finally, the container Gran described.

I lifted it, felt something heavy shifting from side to side.

“C’mon, Lolly,” Gran said. Lollygagger, slowpoke.

I set the container on a nearby laundry machine, lifted the lid.

There were no raisins in there.

I looked at the thing in my trembling hands.

I’d touched a gun before. It was the surprise of it that shook me.

I returned the container to its place.

“No raisins, Gran, “ I said.

“Have to do without,” she said, touching my cheek before returning her large capable hands to working the dough.

At Last, You’ve Come

Love Letters from Poe: Tales Torn from the Heart, 2024

The asylum at Christmas amuses with its small attempts at revelry. The sagging pine, misplaced, like me, out of its element, covered in paper ornaments crafted by lunatic hands, lightless in the corner. The screams instead of carols.  

I see you’re wet from the snow, Mother. How it falls! How it slants, whitening the streets, coating the horses’ manes.

Sit, mother, sit.
The stench of you, dead all these years.

You see, my senses are still quite acute.

I must open the windows, allow the cold air to refresh us both.

Oh but the evil one, Nurse Bell, will alarm like a ghost, close it.

I will endure your odor, Mother, just to be near you.

Ah, your hand, so small, so cold, fits just right in mine.

Your plaintive face is like looking into a mirror.  I have always seen myself in you.

I would get out of the bed to study you more closely but my legs seem to shake.

I see the rope’s red stain still bruising your neck.

May I touch it?

Sit here, Mother, stay, I will tell you how I ended up here, locked up for good, and on Christmas no less.  Are you like Dickens’ ghosts, all three in one?

I will pull the curtain snug. Spies are everywhere, you see.  

My extreme sensitivity, my patience, are exhibited even here. I’m the most careful mouse. I’ve earned their trust, my discharge from isolation.

Oh, they recognize my wit, my  sincerity.

They now allow me to  move about.

I can talk to you, Mother, touch you!

Please, come, lay down with me as I have always imagined.

***

After your death, Father hired a Mrs. Hooper to cook and clean and assume childcare duties. He was never home, spending much of his time out,  presumably at meetings with other doctors, discussing big ideas, restraints and ice baths and electric shock and cutting out wedges of brain like the Christmas goose. (Thankfully, perhaps because of my relation to the late great man, they’ve not done that to me. Yet.) Usually, his presence in the house was known by the sight of his hat and coat in the hall. Sometimes I put my face in his clothes to get a whiff of him. Oh, I was so lonely, Mother.

He kept the house a frightful cold, for health I was told. Even in summer, my breath hung before me at the breakfast table. Most of the rooms were closed off, their furnishings covered in white sheets. So, I spent my hours in a dreary so-called nursery, the kitchen, and outside on the grounds of the house.

Consumption was rife, the dreaded blood coming up into the cloth signaling the fate of the afflicted. That’s what Mrs. Hooper said happened to you, Mother.

I imagined your hack drifting from shadowed closed off corridors. I never knew your voice, so I invented a coughing, dying mother. I prayed  the cough of the consumptive no longer ailed you. Alas, I pictured a bloodstain on your sleeve or on your lace-lined pillow.

I sometimes envied you, being dead. You could come and go from this sad, cold house.

How beautiful you are now, Mother, as beautiful as I dreamt. Your chest is still. Your brown eyes, so deep, so much like mine, such a comfort here.

Let’s not talk about eyes though, that will come later.

***

Of course I loved him, as you did once. What son does not at least try to love his father? When I was seven, enduring a rare meal together, I asked him to tell me about you, Mother. He put his soup spoon down, cleared his throat and then said, quite unforgettably, that my birth caused your weakness and subsequent death and I should never speak your name.

Lenore. Lenore. Lenore. Lenore.

Let me say it and say it, now that you’re here, now that I can.

My twelfth year, a banging on the door disturbed the house’s usual forlorn silence. Two brutish men lugged Father on a stretcher, deposited him in his room like a bag of stones. He’d apparently been found in the street, despondent. Mrs. Hooper wanted nothing to do with illness, so I, a veritable child, was tasked with the burden of care. I barely knew the man before but now emptied his bed pan, blotted sweat from his greasy brow. He too coughed up blood. Day after day I spooned mush into his hanging mouth. He lived in a state of delirium, babbling nonsensical words or sunk in a coma of sleep. Mrs. Hooper made the meals, tidied the kitchen and fled each day.

Meanwhile, I lurked from silent room to silent room. The clocks, long unwound, stared with unquestioning faces. Their pendulums, stilled tongues, hung motionless. They did not accuse, did not torment. With each step I grew more powerful. My house, I said softly, practicing the phrase, my voice growing stronger with each utterance. My house.

 I built fires in the once-locked rooms, raced the hallways. My frequent bursts of laughter giggled away from me, echoing down the corridors. I coerced a stray black alley cat inside, offering milk, allowed it to stay. Soon the house was filled with multitudes of dark, skulking felines. Bowls of milk sat in every corner, upon every surface. The cats weren’t always tidy, so soon Mrs. Hooper quit in disgust. I celebrated her departure. With access to Father’s accounts, I was more than able to pay the grocery bill and cook a roast. The Lord of the Manor, at last.

One day, I found the key to Father’s study in his dresser, dashed off immediately to unlock the room. I was thrilled to find the tremendous number of books lining the walls of sturdy shelves. There, my self-education began! I studied his medical and anatomy books, marveling at the human form, all its sinewy connections, its cartilage and bone, and of course its blood. I felt my own blood more keenly, began to respect it. Before, as I said, it was only a dreaded product of illness, decrepitude, encroaching death. Now it was the beautiful, holy stuff of life. I promised myself I would master its form and function.

I fell into a routine of caring for Father, reading in the study, and working various chores in and outside the house. I brought his meals, sat beside the bed turning the pages of all the books I’d wanted to read with him as a child. Stevenson’s Treasure Island had just come out and Father and I enjoyed it very much indeed. Eventually, he told me how much he’d always loved me, how difficult it was for him to express his feelings, especially after you died, how well I looked, for I did look well. He smiled and reached out his shaking pale hand from the bed, and I held it, Mother, I did. He thanked me for my care.

I grew a robust garden in the back. I purchased chickens, rabbits, a pig. I taught myself how to kill them-the chickens with a snip of the neck, the rabbits with my foot to the rake and the rake to their necks, the pig with a knife through the heart. Every now and then a neighbor would complain about the smells and sounds of livestock, but I’d hand them a big basket of vegetables and they’d scurry off.

I drained the animals of their blood, skinned and prepared them for eating.

I was entirely self-sufficient. Father was completely reliant on my care. I had created a better life for myself, a life of control.

***

For weeks I continued reading in Father’s study, ignoring the solid desk sitting squarely in the middle of the room.  I assumed the drawers were locked and since I possessed no key I paid it no mind. One day I decided to approach, surprised by the easy shift of every drawer. Inside lay multitudes of papers, boring medical case studies, deeds and contracts of business. Perhaps because no one was there to stop me, I studied every word carefully, so carefully. You see Mother, my life was a bottomless pit, a seething, swelling question mark. I knew, the way children always know, that there was some truth from which I had been excluded. 

Then, I found it. Your letter. In its sweet, tiny, wavering cursive, ink blotting the page,  you described your own bottomless pit of darkness. You told him of your loneliness, your despair. You said you had asked untold times for his love, his companionship, but he did not respond to your pleas. You told him you saw no way out, no way besides death. My hands shook absorbing your final words.

It was after reading this, learning the truth of your death,  that I no longer saw him as my father, but a pathetic, needy old man.

I no longer read to him, kept our time together short. I assured his colleagues who sometimes appeared on the stoop that he was doing much better. And he was. I permitted him just enough food, water, and sunlight to keep death’s door shut, but I would never allow him the strength to  leave his bed, that room.

***

I’ve told everyone, absolutely everyone, it was the eye, that pale blue filmy right eye, watery, always looking at me. The vulture eye. Perhaps it was infected, I knew not. I did not think the old man wished me ill, but the eye became like a relentless tapping on the window, reminding me of the old man’s failings,  toward me, toward you.

It was so clever, ironic, how I used all the knowledge the old man’s library gave me to sustain myself and our home, and then that knowledge taught me how to kill him, to sever him into little bits.

Oh, Mother, I believed you’d be there in the end, but you did not come, and I felt so weak without you. So weak that when the police came my courage bled from me like the pig I hung from the oak tree last fall.

Now it’s Christmas one year hence. You’ve come too late.

What is that you say, Mother? Speak up!

Coward? Lunatic? Murderer? How can you call me these things, when you, you…

No, no, no, no.

Watch me, Mother! I will pull the curtain, open the shutter, throw open the window, release you out into the cold, dark night.

Nurse Bell be damned!

Fly. Mother! Fly! I have no need of you now. Out into the swirling snow you go, join the church bells, they’re ringing now, clanging, insisting, accusing, replacing, at last, the old man’s lingering heartbeat. I am poised, alert as ever! My blood courses in my veins. The bells, the relentless ringing bells, sustain my eternal wakefulness.

Jennifer Prochna: A Magical Life

Syracuse Woman Magazine/Cover Story/July 2024

A Magical Life

by Maggie Nerz Iribarne

“It’s magic.”

This is how stylist Jen Prochna describes the palpable energy at a cabi fashion party where the room is full of women trying on clothes, talking, and laughing.

Magic is, according to the dictionary, an extraordinary power or influence, something that seems to cast a spell, an enchantment.

Jen Prochna is a wife, mother, friend, registered nurse, and fashion stylist whose magical life shimmers with passion, purpose, and gratitude. 

Looking back, Jen’s career in fashion seems fated. Between her undergraduate degree in psychology and earning an MBA at Syracuse University, she worked as a freelance model (something she continues to do to this day), doing advertisements, voice-overs, commercials, and fashion shows. With her graduate degree in hand, she was set to start work at an insurance company when the sudden death of her father-in-law thrust her unexpectedly into the jewelry business. Prochna Jewelers in Armory Square became a successful fifteen year venture with her husband, Gary. Jen jumped right in, quickly learning the market and customer base. Over the years she and Gary ran both the jewelry store and another family business, Dependable Paving Company, from one office. Their three children, Sierra (now 32), Ryan (now 30), and Ava (now 25) grew up observing their busy parents first from office playpens and later as helpers themselves. When an incredulous five-year-old Ryan asked his mother why work stopped her from attending his Christmas play, Jen’s exit strategy from the jewelry business was born, conveniently opening a door to fashion styling. 

Three years later, in 2004, Jen found herself charmed after attending something called a cabi party at a friend’s home in Camillus. This company presents and styles their high quality, fashionable (investment fashion, i.e., not cheap) clothing to small groups of friends in private homes. Soon after, Jen began hostessing her own parties and then applied to become a stylist herself. 

Each of the two cabi seasons begins with a fashion week in a different city where stylists convene to meet and study the latest line. Afterwards, boxes of clothes arrive at each stylist’s home, where they work producing outfit combinations and accessories for different tastes and body types, preparing for the imminent styling/sales parties. Jen styles at about 15-20 parties each season, with from 5-30 people at each event. Women find out about the parties by word of mouth, one friend invites another and so on. Hostesses provide the wine and cheese and the space for the racks and in return receive half priced clothing and “cabi cash” to inspire further shopping. 

Jen says,  “I present the current collection and we sip a little wine…then the action starts!  We try on clothes. I assist with sizing and pairings…most of my clients I know so well that I have recommendations before we even begin. I’ve been doing this for 19 years…this fall is my 39th season!”

Surprisingly, Jen does not like to shop. Before becoming a stylist, she’d go to the mall and buy multiple single pieces and then have to go back to find more clothes to match. Manycommiserate with this experience of having many articles of clothing yet nothing to wear. 

Jen says, “They have items, not OUTFITS!”

And styling is about the outfits. Jen’s long experience gives her the, perhaps magical, ability to help women of every age, shape, and size find the right clothing combinations to look their best. 

Looking good is nice, but the friendships and connections forged and nurtured through these gatherings cast the most important spell.

“I have had thousands of clients whose lives I've touched and I am so proud of that…My two best friends are my assistants, my attorney and eye doctor are my hostesses, my hair stylist is a client!  Many appointments extend very long because we take time to catch up, hash out the world’s problems, exchange stories of husbands and kids!  I have days, just like everyone, where I am not wanting to go to work…tired, weather, whatever the reason. But unbelievably, every time I come home energized and smiling,” Jen says.

Long-time client Karen McGinn, says of her friend,

“Her style advice is dead on and many of us in Onondaga County dress a whole lot better after Jen has come into our lives!”

Judy Bragg, a self-professed “die-hard cabi fan,” cites Jen’s incredible talent for everything from upbeat presentations to fashion knowledge to honest advice to customer care to business acumen among her many strengths. 

Jen believes in fashion’s power to transform.

“When I am dressing a client and she looks in the mirror and I see the sparkle come back in her eye and she stands a little taller with new confidence, then I know I have been successful in my mission. Every woman needs and deserves to feel beautiful and special when she sets that foot outside the door,” she says.

However, fashion styling is not the only magical occupation in Jen’s life. 

“My 50th birthday gift to myself was to become an RN…I had always loved medicine and I should have gone in that direction right out of high school, but what does a 17 year old know? So I asked my husband if he would mind if I went back to school for my RN. Understand, we already had two [children] in college and one in middle school, so it was hard.”

She attended Onondaga Community College for prerequisites and Crouse Hospital to complete her training before accepting a job in Crouse’s maternity center, where she’s worked the last ten years.

“We take care of moms and newborns after birth (post-partum and post-surgical) and women who are with us antepartum (before birth) if they need extra care before delivery due to illness or a complicated pregnancy. I assess moms [and] babies…offer education in breastfeeding and newborn care. I do my very best to get my families out the door with good information, confidence, and advice. I strive to give them the best possible start as a new family.”

Indeed, becoming a mother, a parent, is a magical moment, a metamorphosis. Jen participates in that magic by advocating for her patients, giving back what she received.

“I always remember this is their [her patients’] moment. I remember everything that happened to me and the people who were kind to me. I do for these new moms what was done for me.”

Jen believes she has the best two jobs in the world. Although motherhood has been the most defining role of her life, she finds both styling and nursing equally fulfilling.

So, what’s next for this magical woman of reinvention? 

“It’s nice to know when you’re happy. I’m right where I want to be,” she says, “I am profoundly blessed. Serving women is my passion!”

Inset:

Jen’s Top Five Fashion Tips: (66 words)

1.     You don’t have to follow every trend, you are uniquely you.

2.     Confidence, and a smile, are the best accessories.

3.     Yes, you can wear yellow.

4.      Buy a perfect bra, the one you have probably doesn’t fit right.

5.     Kick your wardrobe up just a notch. It’s OK to be one of the best dressed people in the room!

The Secret Stones of the Vatican Observatory

Sophon Lit/Aurora/June 2024

I’d pictured myself surrounded by the best telescopes in the world, stargazing for the rest of my days. 

Instead, I looked down at a floored box of rocks. 

“This is the largest collection of lunar meteorites known to man,” Fr. Phelps told me. “No one has ever studied them, no one until you.”

Lexi Spadaro: Mrs. New York International is the Queen of her Castle

Syracuse Woman Magazine Cover Story/June 2023

 The alarm goes off at 6:15 Monday morning. Lexi and Cody Spadaro begin their usual well-orchestrated preparation. While Lexi dresses, Cody makes lunches and breakfasts and feeds and walks their dog. Their three and one year old sons, Easton and Axel, giggle and wriggle as Lexi dresses them and they make their way to the kitchen. After Cody leaves for his carpenter job at 7:15, Lexi feeds the cat and bunnies and prepares her own lunch before finally pouring herself a cup of coffee. By eight the boys are off to the babysitters and at nine Lexi is ready to welcome her second graders at Hastings-Mallory Elementary School in Central Square. All of this seems like a lot, but Lexi Spadaro is not just a wife, mother, and teacher, she is also the reigning 2024 Mrs. New York International. 

Born in 1992 in the Fairmount section of Syracuse, Lexi Kerr grew up attending West Genesee schools. With her younger brother, Joshua,  and their parents, Michelle and Charles, they formed a close-knit group that still enjoys vacations to Disney World, cruises, and camping trips with extended family. 

“My parents always told me to chase my dreams and do what made me happy. They gave me the opportunity to competitively figure skate for about 20 years, participate in competitive cheerleading, model, dance, participate in gymnastics, and sing! They always did whatever they could to allow me to experience anything I wanted,” she says.

Chasing those dreams proved fruitful in other arenas. At age 15, Lexi met her future husband, the friendly and funny Cody Spadaro, at the Camillus ice skating rink where he played hockey and she skated. After high school, Lexi went on to study education at SUNY Cortland (graduating in 2014) and then pursue a Masters in Early Literacy from Southern New Hampshire University. Her mother’s hairdressing career motivated Lexi to add a cosmetology license to her resume, working in that field for a number of years (She still does wedding hair and makeup on weekends). Ultimately, she felt something was missing and reconnected with her vocation teaching elementary school. 

“The relationship I have with all of my students makes me smile and I know I’ve made a positive impact on their lives because I still have students coming to visit me years later. That alone speaks volumes!” Lexi says.

Another key moment in her formative years was the realization of her father’s growing disability related to his childhood diagnosis of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, a genetic muscle disorder affecting the face, shoulder blades, upper arms, and other muscles. For many years the disease did not affect him very much, but over time it slowly progressed.

“At first, he was embarrassed and didn’t want others to know... But he slowly began to accept his condition and learn how to live life in a new way. He got a wheelchair scooter, ankle braces, and soon a chairlift. If we’re out to dinner and they fill his water cup too much, I take some sips to make it lighter for him. I hold his arm as he goes up and downstairs. I get his dinners ready when I’m with him, and so much more. The biggest challenge was when we were in public and people made fun of the way he walked. I’m now not afraid to say something and stand up for my dad…Seeing what he goes through, and also knowing the financial burden it puts on families to get the medical technologies and assistance needed…pushes me to advocate for others and make a difference within the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) community,”  she says.

Lexi’s passions fused when she became involved with pageantry, specifically the International Pageants Organization. Interested in pageantry from an early age and buoyed by a friend’s involvement, she competed in smaller events, winning state, national, and international competitions. In 2017 she planned on doing the makeup for the Miss New York International Pageant and was so taken by the organization’s uniquely high standards and commitment to  their contestants’ families and platforms she decided to enter the pageant herself, winning that competition and placing in the top ten of the Nationals. 

“I didn’t know that I could incorporate my passion for giving back to the MDA community and educating others [about] muscular dystrophy. That discovery was the answer to my question of if I should compete,” Lexi says.

Through this first experience with the International Pageants Organization, she realized that pageants give their participants a way to amplify their fundraising goals and efforts they would not have otherwise.  

“My pageant platform, Muscle Warriors, is dedicated to fundraising and education for muscular dystrophy. I’m a certified national volunteer for the organization and before the pandemic I participated in many local events for the MDA such as the Muscle Walk, Christmas Celebration, and Fill the Boot. Since COVID shut down local offices there’s now just one national office that puts together different events, campaigns, and fundraisers. Thankfully, I’m still able to volunteer virtually for the organization and even reach out across the country!” she says.

After her 2017 Miss New York International victory, Lexi  promised herself she’d be back to compete in and hopefully win the Mrs. New York competition, and in 2024, after getting married and having her sons, that dream came true. Lexi is currently working hard to represent New York at the 2024 Mrs. International competition this summer in Nashville. Of course, it will be a family affair as Cody and the boys will come along. The crowning event happens to fall on July 27th,  Lexi and Cody’s fifth anniversary, a good luck sign for sure. 

“If I were to win the title of Mrs. International I would have achieved my ultimate dream. I’ll continue to work on my platform, but bring it…to new heights and reach hundreds, if not thousands of more people in hopes to continually make a difference,” Lexi says.

After her long workday, Lexi treasures sacred time with her husband and children playing, eating dinner (Lexi admits she is not a very good cook. Cody takes the reins in this department.), doing tubby time, and reading before a 7 PM bed time. She hits the gym three nights a week only after her boys are asleep.

Not too long ago she found her son Easton standing on her crown box, his weight causing it to bend a little out of shape, a good metaphor for what it’s like to be Mrs. New York. In Lexi’s house there are two closets full of gowns and a box holding a crown, but there are also Legos and clothes scattered here and there, children and animals to be fed, lesson plans to write. 

“The crown and the sash are beautiful things, but I want people to see who I am inside,” she says.

Lexi hopes to boost others by her life and work. She wishes for all women to have the confidence to celebrate their inner and outer beauty and pursue their dreams. She knows that if she can impact others, then anyone who’s willing to dedicate their time, passion, and hard work can do the same.

A Process

Stone’s Throw/June 2024

On her way through the familiar lobby, Margaret passed Superintendent Kevin, or K-man, as Phil used to call him. He twisted in his swivel chair, his legs spread, knees loose, flowing with the rolling movement. He looked her right in the eye, said, Good morning, but did not produce her name. She forced one confident glance before moving with purpose to the stairwell. No worries about K-man, she thought. K-man didn’t remember or notice anything special about her. K-man hadn’t moved from his perch in all the twenty years she’d lived in the building, except to plod across the lobby to shovel doughnut holes down his throat at the occasional coffee social.

Seeing Him Through

Tales from the Moonlit Path/Demented Mothers’ Day issue/May 2024

Where is Herman? Where is Herman?

Herman is not in his room, on his hospital bed, underneath his patchwork quilt.  Herman is not in the bathroom, sitting on the commode. Oh, where is Herman?

“Herman! Herman?”

Has he forgotten his name? Perhaps I might as well be saying, “Sermon! Sermon?”

Of course, Herman could be dead somewhere. That’s a strong possibility. Since I’m quite a bit younger than my husband, ten years to be exact, I’ve expected (hoped for) him to be dead for some time.

Ah! There’s Herman, outside, on the other side of the window of all places, bathed in light, tilting a bit, like a ruin, standing beside my rose bush, ironically beside the oak tree under whose canopy of branches I harvest my mushrooms.

“Oh, Herman,” I scold. He is not supposed to get out of bed by himself, let alone leave the house. He knows better, or he knew better, until today.

My hand covers his, our wedding bands touching. He pulls away. Oh, Herman.

“It’s too early to be out. You’re half naked. You haven’t had your breakfast.” My slippers are soaking in the morning dew. What a nuisance!

Herman begins to cry. A light rain sprinkles.

“And you haven’t got your teeth! That won’t do.”

Herman cries harder, gums showing.

Inheritance

Wyld Craft/Issue 2/Spring Summer 2024

Inheritance

Dedicated to my late brother, Donny, who loved to ride his bike.

June noticed Mr. Morton’s feet first. His brown loafers came apart at the seams. His khakis weren’t much better, hanging from his painfully thin frame. She hadn’t seen him in months, felt the need to contain her shock, swallow it, a big pill rammed down her throat.

“Hello!  Glad you came! Canape?” he said, holding out a silver tray with little crackers blobbed with something white. 

June’s discomfort grew. She did not want a canape. 

“Thank you, Alan,” her mother said, giving June the be polite and take one nudge.

June complied, standing like a statue, cocktail napkin displayed on an upright palm. 

The house had a lemony just-cleaned smell. Afternoon light streamed into the living room through the front window. 

June remained frozen next to her mother, hyper-aware of the alien Mr. Morton greeting others, offering his gross little snacks.

Her mother’s smiling face glimmered above straight posture, a pressed flowered dress and sandals. Her hair was perfectly smoothed back in a neat ponytail.

June slouched in self-consciousness. She’d won the earlier party attire argument, but somehow her tee shirt, cut-offs, dirty Keds, and  messy bun didn’t scream victory. 

They hadn’t planned to stay long. June was relieved to see her mother raise her time to go eyebrows, went to find someplace to throw out the untouched canape. She entered the kitchen, finding a mess of cream cheese and crackers hanging out of open sleeves, a dirty butter knife exposed on the counter. She pictured Mr. Morton in his old shoes and baggy khakis spreading cream cheese. She pushed back the memory of him out front in his cycling clothes, returned from his Saturday ride, gulping from his tilted water bottle.

“Thanks so much for having us,” Mom said. She shook Mr. Morton’s hand stiffly, as though he was a stranger, June thought. 

June copied her mother’s gesture, avoided Mr. Morton’s eyes. It would be easier if he was a stranger. She followed her mother out the door and down the walk to the street.

Her mother glanced back at Mr. Morton’s house.

“Terrible,” she said. 

Mr. Morton was dying of cancer. 

Last Words

Flora Fiction/Volume 5/May 2024

 Last Words

       by Maggie Nerz Iribarne

The room was completely still, oblivious to my demise. The fire waned, flickering in the grate. The wind howled on the moor, challenged the sides of the house, the window panes. Judith, also unaware of my passing, slept on the divan. I whispered her last words spoken to me, “Sister, we are running out of time!” She’d studied me with dry, serious eyes. Her hand held the pen above the page, pushing me to finish the book. 

I didn’t expect to linger, to have this sense of the room, all the spaces in the house. I could hear the maid Betsy’s soft snores from her cold little bed upstairs. I regretted never giving her an extra shawl. I could feel the emptiness in Father and Bertram’s rooms, the tightly made beds untouched for many years now. My senses exited the house, swept the moors. The purple heather, its insistent ubiquity, its persistent beauty, despite, in spite of recurring storms.

Ah! The expectant, waiting church bells, the hidden stars and sun and moon. Yes, things were much bigger than I imagined, but much smaller too. The rat scurried behind the kitchen cupboard, the broody chicken sat on her egg, the worker bees buzzed, warming their queen.

I approached my sister’s sleeping form. How beautiful and kind she was! The love I felt overwhelmed but did not sadden. I shifted my glance to examine my own body laid out stiff, lifeless on the opposing couch. I marveled at all that wasted time fussing, of smoothing my hair and pinching color into my cheeks, worrying about my scars, my plainness. 

 I examined the book’s unfinished pages. The story lived on in my presence, my consciousness. I moved the pen, the words colluding, extending and twirling, spinning and swirling. The ending came, brighter than Judith and I imagined! I released our heroine, allowed her joy, new life. She would not be swallowed by grief and heartbreak. She would not wander the moors alone. I couldn’t help myself! I laughed, a deep sound I didn’t recognize as my own. It echoed within my own ears, reverberating down the halls of the house, out of doors.

“Tricia? Tricia!” Judith stirred, rose, crossing the planks to find my corpse. She fell across my chest and sobbed. She was the last of us left and I pitied her. 

“Why do we attempt these long stories,” she once asked me, “when we so often take ill, die so young, so quickly?”

“What else are we to do with the tales bobbing in our heads?” I replied, knowing it was not much of an answer. Judith, Bertram, and I spent our childhoods holding one another captive, spinning stories of dark woods and generous lords and mysterious ladies, spending wondrous, magical hours doing so. Without our mother, ours was a sad life. Our imaginations provided some escape.  

Judith did not notice the finished book. Well before its discovery, she ran for the maid, Betsy, she waked and buried my body, she noticed the signs of her own consumption. When she finally found the unmoved book upon the desk, she read with amazement, assuming those last lines were her own forgotten inspiration. Pleased, she wrapped the pages and sent them to the publisher.

Soon, she passed too, cold in her own bed. With nothing left, the windows blew in, the papers scattered, the walls collapsed. Released from our stories, we flew from the page, the demands of story. Reunited, we whipped in the wind, loose, frenzied, free. In life, we believed composition our greatest joy. Now we knew something else.