play – Jump off; Find Wings

I don’t remember what year it was when I heard Shel Silverstein speak at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. What I recall from the event is something he said—or maybe in the revisionist view of my past—something I think he said about teaching poetry to students. Encourage your students not to be slaves to rhyme. It’s a hard sell when he is such a master and was popular beyond all others in my first and second grade classrooms. We do love rhyme.

Today a poem of his is running through my head, a parody of a poem, to be exact. I have had middle school students, on the heels of successfully playing with the copy-change methods from Dunning and Stafford’s Getting the Knack,

embrace the opportunity to play with the poems we’d share in class. Frost’s “Stopping by Woods…“, inspired such classics as, “Whose cheeseburger is this? I think I know…” or lines from William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just to Say” morphed into “I’m sorry I stole your bike from the garage…”

I have Shel’s “Sick” on my mind this morning. My sister-in-law gave me my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends where “Sick” lives happily surrounded by other Silverstein gems. On the inside front cover her son, now a 50-year-old, had written a note in pencil letting me know that he was giving me this book because it’s the BEST BOOK EVER MADE, including page number of his favorite poem, “Sick.” He had struggled to unlock reading, but Shel helped him find the key.

Sick

I cannot go to school today,”
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more—that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut—my eyes are blue—
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke—
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is—what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”

In my head I am hearing, “I cannot write a post today/all my ideas have gone away./my pen lacks ink/my thoughts, they stink/I can’t imagine what to say./ What if I never find my words/ is that a thought beyond absurd?/ Around me people buzz and prate/ they seem to think their words are great./They do say much I wish I could/but my stories really aren’t that good!/I know I have no writer’s skill/to face the page takes more than will./ I’ve told some tales that make me smile/but not today, I’ve lost my style./Wait, you urge, just give it time/those challenging days are not a crime./Who knows if later on today/you’ll not be grabbed by what to say?/ You’ve started now, you’re on a roll/ You’ll end this now; you’ve reached your goal!

Post 29 of 31! (Thanks, Shel🙏)

She spots them right away as she’s leaving the house. Darn, I’d wanted to put them away, but now I’ll have to give my daughter-in-law some answer to her question, “What are those?” The short version, “Just a vintage toy that I got, ” with a wink, suffices. Impending grandmother status obviates the need for anything more. She hugs me and heads out the door.

You, however, get the long version. When my sister-in-law and sister tackled the task of cleaning out my parents’ home in preparing for its sale, I was living across the country, oblivious. It was a job, and in the months that followed, I received mementos thoughtfully saved. It’s funny though, what matters; it’s personal and random. Even I didn’t remember what I’d once valued.

Sometime last November I flashed on being home sick as a young girl. It was a rarity. School was a privilege as my parents emphasized, and “personal days” were not a thing. I must have been really sick, a fever for sure, because my condition allowed me to languish in my parents’ big bed, next to an armoire whose locked fold-down desktop rivaled the mystery of CS Lewis’ wardrobe.

My mom would unlock that magic and inside there was a set of wooden blocks. Now I was not, am not, a physical puzzle aficionado despite being raised in a jigsaw-puzzle-on-the-table family. But, oh, I loved those blocks. They came with a sheet nested inside the square lid, a colorful guide to the many patterns possible, and even someone like me, without a shred of puzzle talent, could create art. My tiny fingers would study and turn and compare and fix inside the box until I’d made a design that matched. It was almost worth feeling sick.

What had happened to them? As Lydia Davis says in “Lost Things,” “They are lost from me and where I am, but they are also not gone….only not where I am.” That idea plagued me. I needed to find them. Well, maybe not them, but …

There are blocks of all kinds for sale now, but I couldn’t find my blocks anywhere. Then I went to Etsy, and in my search “vintage toys” popped up. There they were, as familiar to me as my parents’ wide bed.

It didn’t end there. I found the original toymaker, The Embossing Company in Albany, NY only to learn that they were no longer in business. I found my cubes featured among their retired products, and with more specific search information, I located Joan at “Scavenger Chic.” Her website gave history and instructions for making a set of new blocks. I toyed with that idea, but truly…not in my wheelhouse, and not what my heart hankered, anchored in my past.

I returned to Etsy, and found my 5 x 5 array for sale, the description clear about the state of the box and that the insert had been lost. It mattered not: these blocks spoke to me. Restoring lost things comes at a price, but one I would gladly pay.

Those blocks had kept me busy and happy; they allowed my mom the peace she needed to get whatever was on her long to-do list with six kids. I imagined those same simple blocks, red, yellow, white and blue triangles, doing the same for my grandson, and his mom, even after I am not there to play with him. “They’ll last, because they’re solid wood.”