Pre-Pre Natal Care for Women and Men - Get Ready For Your Baby!

 

Did you know that childbirth is supposed to be an orgasm? No pain. Only ecstasy. 

This body that we nurture every day nurtures us back. We are stuck in it. And sometimes, it’s scary. But it doesn’t have to be.

I’ve written about health many times and it all boils down to something we all learned in school. Again, I’m saying it - it seems to me there are only two kinds of people in the world, those who paid attention in school and those who didn’t. Maybe you had a loser for a teacher and you coasted but you missed out on a lot that could be useful to you now. That loser had a lot to teach you.

In all of the pandemic, I only heard the WGBH Boston journalist, Adam Reilly* say what we all learned or should have learned in school (I’m paraphrasing) - “All you really need to do to strengthen your immune system and be healthy is to eat real nutritious food, get enough sleep and exercise.” 

That’s three things.

And, nobody does it.

I was lucky. I was brought up Italian, eating only whole foods from the Italian market in Haymarket Square, Boston. My grandfather and my uncle used to go every week and come home with wheels of cheese and hunks of prosciutto that the family shared. Every day was a fresh loaf of bread. Fresh fruits were abundant. My mother even foraged for dandelion greens. My grandmother grew her own arugula, tomatoes and red pepper in a tiny backyard garden in East Boston. 

My mother cautioned us to never eat anything from a factory! Candy was kept on a top shelf. Anything packaged was suspect.

I was thirty-one years old and eight years macrobiotic when my daughter was born. She popped out after only four hours of labor; she was pissing, pooping and screaming! I won’t say it was painless, it wasn’t. I did it without drugs and there comes a point, where, like Catholic saints, you pass the pain and drift into nothingness. 

Ecstasy.

But it’s not about pain or no pain. It’s about health.

A friend of mine delivered her ninth child herself behind the counter of her natural food store. Health.

Every time I see a commercial for children in a cancer ward, I shudder, because NO CHILD SHOULD HAVE CANCER! No, nor any other degenerative disease.

It is my opinion, and you can take it or leave it, that eating junk food as food causes cancer. “White bucket” fast food restaurants, where the ingredients come out of white plastic buckets instead of out of the garden or from the farm. Anything made in a factory - artificial “food-like substances” (Michael Pollan*, author, nutritionist and chef) that we eat as our daily food.

Feed yourself and your children real nutritious food! Everyone must learn how to cook! Every man, woman and, yes, every child as soon as they are able! 

Cooking is not an inconvenience. It is an opportunity. A chance to get better, to be better, to feel better!

NYC Mayor Eric Adams healed his diabetes and the blindness in his left eye 

by changing his diet 

What is good nutritious food? Here is the Food Pyramid we learned in school. It changes sometimes, but the basics remain the same. In macrobiotics, we lean more toward whole grains and vegetables with occasional servings of chicken, fish, dairy and eggs.

Here’s what to do for good pre-prenatal care and it’s the same for everyone’s everyday health. You don't have to be macrobiotic to be healthy! Get as close to this as you can!

Pre Pre Natal Care For Women and Men: Get Ready For Your Baby!

1. Learn to cook real whole foods. When you are a young adult (think high school!) stop all junk food as food. Junk food is a cheat meal, only for fun, not for food. Children cannot develop properly on a diet of sugary breakfast cereal, pizza and hot dogs. Not in life or in the womb - you must pre prepare for pregnancy to give your baby the best chance at health! 
2. No drugs, limit alcohol. 
3. Cut your sugar intake in half - or more!
4. Get enough sleep. This can be hard when you work and commute. But you must try.
5. Exercise. Keep your body as strong as possible. Keep your blood circulation pumping! Your own good quality blood made from good quality food is the best healing medicine for you!
6. Drink plenty of water! Water is the only drink that can truly hydrate you! Dehydration can sneak up on you.  It has many, many symptoms that can be dangerous!

Drugs, alcohol and sugar take from the body. Obviously, no hard drugs which can take your life as well as your baby’s life. Use other medications in moderation at all times. (Check with your doctor.) Nowadays women do not drink alcohol when pregnant. Many women also stop coffee. My mother never heard of these restrictions. I did drink coffee and everything was fine. I was advised by my European macro friends that European women drank good quality beer while pregnant to ensure plenty of breast milk. So, I drank the best beer I could find at the time, Pilsner Urquell. I had lots and lots of milk! I was also advised to eat a fermented soy product called natto for skin health. “No stretch marks,” commented the intern who cared for me. The doctor wouldn’t come down to the delivery. He said since it was my first, there was plenty of time. An intern and several nurses attended me. Initially, I had planned to use a mid-wife with doctor/hospital back-up. However, the doctor felt my hematocrit (number of red blood cells) was too low for mid-wife conditions. I studied what that meant and adjusted my diet to change my condition - I reduced my coffee intake and I made a hearty miso soup for my lunch everyday, bringing my hematocrit up to an acceptable level. The doctor couldn’t believe I had done it.

Be advised - 

Pre-Prenatal care also applies to boys and men! When they eat, young men are preparing the quality of their sperm which contains the program of their good or bad health. When they eat, they are creating the quality of their health which they are passing to their child! How many young men do I see leaving the convenience store at lunch time with a huge bag of chips and a huge bottle of Coke! Not a nutritious lunch for a working man! We could go into the eating habits of our mothers and fathers which also influence the quality of our health. Again, I was lucky. My parents’ generation did not have a lot of junk food around and most of it was too expensive for them to buy. That’s no longer true.

We are further and further away from that naturally healthy generation. Possibly four generations removed. In many cases, we could go back to great-great-grandmothers before we reach someone who cooked real nutritious food every day. And THAT effects our health, our children’s health and our future children’s health! The good news is, the body reacts quickly and powerfully to good food and good habits; we can reverse most damage that has been done.

This body that we were given. This body that we nurture will nurture us back.

If we don’t take good care of our body, it will seem to attack us one day when we least expect it.

But, it’s not an attack, it’s our body reacting to what we gave it.

Give your body goodness. Get ready for your baby!

©Patricia Goodwin, 2022

• I am not affiliated with journalist Adam Reilly, nutritionist Michael Pollan, or Mayor Eric Adams, and they have not endorsed me in any way. 

• I am not a doctor, nor a medical professional. I’m just a person who has enjoyed the benefits of a macrobiotic diet and lifestyle for nearly 50 years. I’m 70 years old and not on any medications. When something goes wrong, I am able to consider what caused it, make adjustments and watch things heal. However, by law, I am required to say that any advice you see in my blog is not meant to be followed without first checking with your doctor.

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

***Disclaimer: The information on this blog is not meant to substitute for medical care. Please consult your physician before beginning any new dietary guidelines. 

Bokeh: The Nature Of The Future

 

Bokeh

What does it mean? According to the internet - “Bokeh is a word with Japanese origins, defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.” The word comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means “haze” or “blur.” (The “h” was introduced to help English speakers pronounce the word correctly [BO - KEH].)”

Took me a while to find it. The way I discovered Bokeh, it was a movie, on television in the middle the night, but it might have been some other art form, a dream, a nightmare, a walk in the deep snow.

I was switching channels when I saw a blonde. I stopped. Something about seeing yourself on tv. I began to be pulled into the story - lovers on a brief, impromptu vacation in Iceland, just a lark, enjoying themselves.

I still didn’t have the word, Bokeh. I still didn’t know the story. Until I did, the whole experience floated in a blur.

The way we see the future. The nature of the future.

All we really know is that we love.

Lovers, making love. They fall asleep. She wakes up, alone, at the witching hour, 3:30 a.m. She’s gazing out the window when suddenly a flash of white light, so bright, it consumes the view, then, back to reality, back to bed.

But daylight brings a new reality.

Perhaps a devastating snow storm, a blizzard. Perhaps a pandemic. Perhaps Iceland will be closed. Italy closed. How could such a thing happen? Overnight? Who or what would close Italy? I begin to worry about the Eiffel Tower.

It was lovely the way it happened. They get up, get dressed and go down the café to get some of those lovely waffles they’d had the day before. But the nice lady who’d made them wasn’t there. In fact, no one was there. The café was empty.

The stores are empty. Giggling, they help themselves to some Icelandic goodies, a fur coat for her, a funny knit cap for him. Food is free! They pile it into a shopping cart and run back to the hotel.

Now they are camping. 

I still don’t know what’s happening. I haven’t read the synopsis. That’s the best way. I don’t even have the title, not that it would help. Bokeh.

I bought the movie, just to have it, I propped the case up in my bedroom. It came to mean, on its own, a question, a deep question, deeper, why do we live? Where do we live? Where do we love?

She wants to go home. I'm beginning to feel the larger tension. They are on an island and there is no way off. Everyone is gone. There’s no one to run the airline, no-one to fly the plane.

She gets angry that he is eating a yogurt out of sequence. “The blueberry is newer! You should be eating the strawberry, it’s older!” she scolds him. “I didn’t feel like having a strawberry,” he explains. Makes perfect sense to me.

They syphon gas and take a car. I shudder. Don’t go too far, I warn, then I realize it makes no difference. 

They drive to the hot springs, which becomes their spot. Lovely scene of naked lovers swimming. Iceland seems a perfect backdrop. Bare and primitive. A good place for life to begin again.

Every now and then, there are moments of hope. Maybe she’ll have a baby! She’d be lucky to get through it alone, but then, it’s a story and maybe she will.

He gets a little crazy and hurts himself riding around the market on a shopping cart. His arm is bleeding. She cries out, “We have to be careful! There’s no 911!”

Then, I remember saying those very words myself.

“There’s no 911!” Hospitals aren’t taking non-essential injuries. Broken bones are waiting hours in the Emergency Room, if that. 

All our care providers called us up and cancelled our check-ups. Luckily, we keep healthy. But, even healthy people need care. A dentist, perhaps. First do no harm. Do dentists take the Hippocratic Oath? My husband has a bad heart. We have to be careful. Physical stresses, even tooth pain, could be deadly for him.

But, what about people who need operations? Nothing. They have to wait. The people, God help me, who let their immune systems die. Some guy ate a bat, a comedian quips.  Or did the  lab release a secret bio-weapon? Either way, we are stuck in a real life horror movie.

Then, the police said they would stop responding because people were shooting at them. No 911.

I don’t remember everything about the movie. I remember the feeling of finding my soul in the middle of the night. I remember the lovers finding old man. They had a meal together in the evening. In the morning, the old man was dead.

I begin to see my injuries as Bokeh, my nasal passage, months later, after finally getting those two infected molars removed. The dentist said, I might have nasal issues. Good God! I’m gonna need that! My nasal passage! I have a dream that I am in a airplane terminal with my mother and I am explaining to her that there is a girl I wish to follow - a blonde girl - she’s right behind that plastic tarp - she saved the airplane and I want to go where she is, through the tarp to the other side. My mother is oblivious to my desires. My husband said she never understood that I wanted to fly.

We are macrobiotic, and yes, we can fly without an airplane.

I begin to call it, Bokeh, all of it. The hole in my mouth, the empty nasal passage. Dreams of my mother. Bokeh, the mystery. Bokeh, the future. I still don’t know the official meaning of the word. But, I get it.

I won’t spoil the ending of the film, except to say there is no resolution. No alien invasion. No superhero to the rescue. No government experiment, though we know they exist. Suffice it to say that I shall keep this film to my heart till I die.

I finally find the meaning of the word (I was spelling it wrong): “Bokeh is a word with Japanese origins, defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light.” The word comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means “haze” or “blur.” (The “h” was introduced to help English speakers pronounce the word correctly [BO - KEH].)”

The way the future looks. Now, it means so much more. 

What will we make of it?

©Patricia Goodwin, 2022

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

What Is It Like to be Born Into Goodness?

 

                                            Laura and her mother, Susan

It reminds me of a quote I saw online - “Found on a computer file search: Happiness does not exist. Do you wish to create it?”

I was not born into goodness. I had to create it. (It’s all in my novel, Holy Days.)

I'll tell you what it is like to be born into goodness - you can grow roses!

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of wonderful home shows hosted by wonderful people who are so good and gracious it's hard to believe they really exist, but trust me when I say no one is that good an actor - you cannot fake what you don’t know.

I’ve been watching Ben and Erin in Home Town. They’re wonderful. Jenny and Dave in Fixer to Fabulous. Equally wonderful. (Jenny and Dave have adopted a child from the Congo, so not everyone in the family was born into goodness, but she’s living there now!)

Mostly, I’ve been watching Garden Answer. Every day I watch the beautiful, blue-eyed, auburn-haired Laura Le Boutillier enthusiastically dig holes. I watch her plant beautiful plants. But, what I really love is hearing her voice. I have to hear the very beginning of every video when she calls out, “Hey, guys! How’re ya doin’?” She talks to me.

She’s my best friend and my husband, though he likes her very much, is tired of hearing about her. In spite of himself though, he gets drawn in. Together, he and I laugh at the antics of Laura’s ginger cat, Russell. Russell suddenly appears behind Laura as she explains about compost, he approaches the porch, he abruptly leaps on to the porch railing, gently balances on the arm of Laura’s chair, settles delicately into her lap, peers over the edge of the computer screen. Lol!

It’s all mesmerizing.

A nurse writes in the comments on YouTube that she gets to work a half hour early every day so she can watch Laura before work.

Laura has over 5 million followers on social media. 1.23 million subscribers on YouTube. I don’t even subscribe, but I’m there every day, sometimes more than that, checking on Facebook if she’s posted another  photo of her gorgeous garden. I especially love what Laura calls her Versailles area, a gentile corner of soft sweetness complete with a Grecian statue of the Goddess Hebe. Laura’s husband, Aaron (they work together so well that after 15 years of marriage, they practically finish each other's sentences) is mostly invisible behind the camera, but he does pop up now and then helping to lift the big pots on to the fork lift that Laura just drives away. It’s adorable to see her delicate form driving off atop heavy machinery. And, if all this wasn't enough, she just popped out another baby, a girl, Samantha Grace!

In today’s video, Laura opened boxes. Garden supplies were in the boxes. It was super fun. She loaded up the Gator (a cool electric golf cart/jeep) with huge boxes and drove them over to a shaded area where she had a party opening them on the lawn. Laura’s son, Benjamin has a mini gator. There’s video of Benjamin tooling around in his mini car, careful to avoid tulips and the robo mower, which is almost as cute in a R2D2 kind of way.

My favorite video is the April flower arrangement. Russell is in it a lot and so is her other ginger kitty, Cheddar. 

I sent Laura and her mother, Susan (Susan is model gorgeous and a very funny addition to the videos. Laura and Susan laugh a lot.) copies of my poetry book, Telling Time By Apples and Other Poems About Life on the Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme. Funny thing about writers, we keep trying to communicate. People send Laura gifts all the time. I wanted to send Laura something. The address listed online is not her home, but her parents’ garden center. Yes, Laura was born to the garden. She’s not a reader, though. She describes herself as a “doer.” But, I think she’ll appreciate the beauty of the book. It is a work of art. And love.

It’s not lost on me that the pandemic has made simple pleasures like home and garden so appealing. My husband loves Laura’s “can-do” spirit. He also loves Ben and Erin; Jenny and Dave, and those two lively twin sisters, Leslie and Lyndsay on Unsellable Houses for the same reason. “They just go ahead and do it!” I love them too.

Maybe Laura will mention me and my poetry book in one of her videos. It will be a moment like the one in Fahrenheit 451 when the television screen speaks to Julie Christie’s character, “Linda! What do you think Linda?” And she gets all befuddled and shy. That would be pretty exciting. But, Laura, you don’t have to mention anything. Maybe drop me an email. 

One other thing Laura has accomplished. My best friend has also fallen in love with Garden Answer. I can’t tell you how great it is to speak with her again about real and beautiful things that we both love. I’ve missed that. Her job and her family has kept her so busy these past 10 years, we’ve lost those precious times we used to spend together.

Thank you, Laura. Thank you for all you do. 

I can’t wait till the next video.

©Patricia Goodwin, 2021

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

Papa: A Poem and A Short Angry Review of A Doc

 

Papa

 

No one gets you, not really. How I suffer when I hear them argue.

I loved you when you woke in Paris

while Hadley slept and you washed the Bumby bottles

and afterwards, went down for the papers

then you wrote 

You taught me everything I know.

You raised me, word by word.

I listened carefully to your Zen description

of the elephant and the lion, the fish and the sea, the boxer and the bullfight.

How the old women went up the hill in the early morning

to drink the bravery and came down grey faced.

When Pilar washed her feet in the stream, I knew I’d come home.

You named your boat Pilar. Of course you did.

 

You were truly One.

 

Because of you,

I keep my baby picture on my windowsill

to remind me of my promise.

I cannot bear to hear lesser lights talk about him. I turn into a romantic hero who unsheathes his sword and cries out, “I will cut his name out of your foul mouth!” Complaining lesser lights, dim lights, alcoholic this, alcoholic that, whined Mary Karr. ("Who are these people and why would  care what they have to say about Hemingway?" my husband asked me as we watched the doc.) Write one true sentence and then you can speak about him! I remember one true sentence of Mary Karr's from The Liar's Club:“Jim’s dick was always rock hard!” She slammed her fist on the table as she spoke. I’m paraphrasing, so maybe I don't remember it.

After seeing Ken Burn’s and Lynn Novick’s documentary, “Hemingway,” I felt brutalized emotionally. That week, my daughter gifted me a book, a small yellow volume of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s remarks about drinking, called On Booze, and I, so very traumatized, carried this book with me for at least two days, cradled it to my bosom as a touchstone, you, Scotty, you understand.

I didn’t learn anything from the Burns doc that I hadn’t already known. But, I was absolutely appalled that Burns and Novick would abandon Hemingway as a doddering old damaged paranoid drunk when he complained and was terrified of possible FBI surveillance. True fans know that Hemingway was right about the FBI, but Burns does not mention what we now know and even Hemingway’s wife, Mary acknowledged, that yes, Hoover had a file on Hemingway for years, considered him a dangerous Communist sympathizer, surveilled him, followed him, wanted desperately to arrest him. Arrêter, to stop. Here’s a good article about Hemingway and the FBI, thank you Salon, thank you David Masciotra!

I always love to watch a good doc about artists. I’m usually pretty content to bask in the glory for an hour or so, but I was very disappointed when this one skipped lightly over Hemingway’s Paris years with the artists and writers who made Paris, well, Paris! Come on! Let’s face it, what we feel about Paris began with Hemingway and his friends! I loved Sylvia Beach spreading the legend of Hemingway liberating Paris after WWII - great stuff! But, why didn’t Burns mention how Hemingway’s little boy, Bumby, called her Silver Beaches? Or that when they were poor, Hemingway washed the Bumby bottles while Hadley slept? Or that he always regretted divorcing Hadley? 

Why leave out any of the true, good stuff? 

©Patricia Goodwin, 2021

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

HOLY DAYS: Gods and Goddesses

 

After seeing the documentary, "Allen Vs Farrow" on Prime, I was struck anew by an exceptionally weird phenomenon of sexual abuse - that is, that the abused child is pulled away from what I like to call "real activities," innocent activities, playing ball, swimming, running, reading, laughing, etc, to have sex with an adult. It's one of the creepier aspects of sexual abuse and it stays with the child forever. The victim doesn't have a strong feeling for real activities, the child thinks she should be having sex. In Holy Days, Gloria comments on her admiration of "real people doing real things." Here is an excerpt from Holy Days, the chapter called "Gods and Goddesses." 

GODS AND GODDESSES

When the boys and girls came down the street on summer evenings, after sunning all day at the Beach, the boys’ pastel shirts stood out against the buttery tan of their necks, the girls’ athletic knees strode surely and strong, their hair a shade lighter than when they’d awakened in the morning, tinted with sun and surf; they laughed cruelly and gaily at each other. My heart leapt to see them, luminous and gilded; my heart sank to be excluded from them. I watched them from afar, from the confines of my porch and my fatness, my ignorance of smart manners, my terrible shyness and fear of anything graceful, anything glowing as they were, a rank of young gods and goddesses straight from their mother’s dinner tables on their way to a Little League baseball game.

Preston and Ha were already at the ballpark. Calling him Ha out loud in front of people was forbidden to me, but I called him that secretly when I was alone. Ha and Preston were in prep school now. They strode past wearing real baseball uniforms that shone beautifully in the setting sun, grey and sparkling white, with blue and white socks that shaped their firm legs like colonial pantaloons and stockings. I snuck down after they’d passed my house: the crack of their bats, their shouts, the way the girls sucked on straws stuck in real Cokes. There at the baseball park I studied them: the murmurs of players and the scraping of their cleats in the dugout, and if I stood on top of the dugout, I could feel through the soles of my sneakers, the vibrations of real people doing real things.

I meant to write about Rick Likus and his friends, the group of boys and girls Rick went with, but my own classmates strolled down Hichborn Street instead. Rick’s group was very much like them, except for age, of course, and religion. The popular kids in my class were Jewish. Rick’s friends had no religion; they were wild.

If the boys and girls I knew were gods and goddesses, Rick and his gang were satyrs, centaurs and nymphs. They ran around the streets and islands, in and out of the houses and cars, their little goat hooves and bare nymph feet flying as fast as the pandemonium they left behind.

Frankie Carter, tall and blonde, quiet, always watching. Jerry Finley, skinny, with long, curly red hair that shined copper in the sun; he delivered our Revere Journal. On the days he collected, I answered the door if I didn’t have a pimple. “He’s here to collect,” Ma said, like a song, “He’s here to collect.” I was in love with Jerry Finley for years because he was so skinny and his red hair shone like golden metal when he slapped on our steps that rolled up Journal Ma devoured. She clicked her tongue over the stories and obituaries, repeating Revere names, “Leach, tsk, tsk,” “Roposo, tsk, tsk.” She made me sick every week. The sound of everyday Revere names made me sick, though the sound of magical Revere names, Frankie Carter, Jerry Finley, Rick Likus, Ha and Preston, resonated over Ma’s and Daddy’s, Jakey’s and my tongues, ringing bells of familiarity, inspiring adoration sometimes strangely mixed with contempt or fear.

Other boys whom I didn’t know were in Rick’s gang, their faces and bodies merged with the group as vague dirty brown jackets and dungarees, dirty brown hair and faces. The girls were tough as tree bark; they had harsh voices like crows cawing that cut across the street, laughter like sin. They wore ruffles on their bathing suits even though they didn’t need ruffles to flesh out their figures. Their long, bronzed legs shone out of cut off dungarees; they had stiff, sun-bleached hair that whipped their faces like dirty mops.

I didn’t dare look at the girls too closely. I didn’t know their names. I was afraid to look at them except sideways. If they’d caught me, they would’ve beaten me. I could hear them calling Annie Likus, “Hi, Rick’s mother!” Everything was Rick’s. They didn’t call Annette or Linda by name, the girls sang out across the street, “Hi, Rick’s sister!” from where they dangled their wondrous legs over the side of Rick’s little Triumph.

Rick’s gang played hockey for the High School. They were a fierce team, eager to fight, proudly limping, sneering with scarred eyes and broken teeth and lips torn up and pasted back together a little lop-sided.

Even amongst demi-gods, one god stood out. He didn’t need to be the strongest or the handsomest. He didn’t need to be the King.

I saw him on a summer morning when the pear tree shone green in the bright sun bearing heavily its load of tough, fat pears, while Daddy was mowing the lawn, sending the sweet smell of green into the air, while I sat on our porch steps reading a book, I looked up and he was walking down the street, as it turned out, to Rick’s house.

Our eyes met across the street. He didn’t know who I was, or wasn’t, so he reacted normally, kindly, as he would every time he saw me as long as we were alone with the street between us. A soft boy, gentle, he had light brown hair and brown eyes, a round face, a kind smile. He hung on the outer fringes of Rick’s little gang; he was the soft one, the sweet one, softer and sweeter than any of the girls. They called him Tweetie.

I looked up from my book, across the street into those gentle eyes.

“Hi,” he said, softly.

“Hi,” I returned, unsure that he could be so kind.

I was in love.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when he opened Rick’s door and went in.

Who was he? I ran in and asked Jakey.

“What do you want to know for?”

“Who is he? How come he went into Rick’s house?”

And Jakey told me all he knew. The boy’s name was Richie Silva. I couldn’t believe his first name was the same as Rick’s. He lived - I’ll tell you where he lived, where I snuck down in the middle of the night to stand in front of his house. It was a dear little forgotten road, half-paved as though the city had run out of tar right there, so the wild roses and lilacs, the morning glories and lilies, the skunks and stray dogs and cats took over. The scrub trees and bushes, black green where I stood under the street light, smelling the fierce odor of skunk, praying I wouldn’t be sprayed; Ma would kill me. I sniffed, trying to filter out of the smell of skunk and diesel fuel, always present on the air, to find the perfume of roses and the salty scent of the sea flying straight up the hill to my nose. This little street would be so dear to me, just kitty corner from the park where Helen Krauss had squatted and shat on the way home because she couldn’t hold it any more.

One night Richie came home with his friends; he stood on the curb, he laughed, “Ya, right!” into the car. He laughed, “Ya, right!” into the car. I could repeat that forever, strong as it is with memory, love and terror. “Ya, right!” He laughed with his friends. He didn’t see me. I wish I’d run up to him. I wish I’d run up and kissed him. At least once.

I saw another movie late at night. The night is filled with things. If I went down and turned on the television, in the middle of the night, I would see a thing I knew I wasn’t supposed to see: a true thing, a secret thing, hidden under the black screen of TV Land. Just turn it on, that’s all, just turn it on. There. A girl. She was on a bed in the dark. I could see nothing but her face, her hair, her shoulders. I knew she was on a bed because under her head were the black and white stripes of an old bare mattress. But, something was going on. The door of the room kept opening, throwing a weird light over her; she’d squint into the light at the boy coming in. Sometimes, she laughed. Her dark hair was spread out on the black and white stripes, flung out about her laughing face. But, then, if she didn’t like the boy whose turn it was, she made a grimace at him and his head blocked out her face for a moment; she reappeared over his shoulder and she looked angry. Several boys went into the room for her, but it was the last one she loved. Her face lit up with joy when he entered and came toward her. She held out her arms to him and in her mind, she whispered, her silent face rapturous over his thrusting shoulder, “You’re the only one, my love. You’re the only one.”

When I thought of Richie Silva and I thought of him every day and night, I thought of him that way. I knew I was the girl on the bed and the boys were all coming to me, one by one, Rick, Jerry, Frankie, the Nazi, Daddy, but when Richie Silva entered the room, he was the only one.

It was strange, eerie. A few years later, when I met the beautiful Junie, out of the blue, she said, “I’m gonna call you Tweetie!”

©Patricia Goodwin, 2015

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.