Tag: Mom

This Valentine’s Day Mom (poem)

by Stephen J FrankenberryLeave a Comment on This Valentine’s Day Mom (poem)

This Valentines Day Mom

In lieu of penny cards and cartoon hearts and scribbles for the girls in class

I give pews and prayers, psalms and songs

hymned

thoughts

of you

as we kneel and stand and kneel again

by rote

but not

this time

.

For this Valentines Day Mom

a visit’s miss of vibrant flowered kisses and Cadbury hugs

I introduce you new neighbors

with stoic, staid flowers

instead

in a tall-stoned village on a hill

taller for the tall stones of stories chiseled name’s memories

through a winter’s quiet breezed thought

around words from a book and a sash

of Greg Torggler, Max Rubenstein (“Ruby” to his friends?)

Nancy Benedict Sirko and Theresa (“T” maybe?)

Joan and James and Gail

to hold you (“Linny”, Dad would gush)

close

as neighbors should

.

For this Valentines Day Mom

No phone call to check on the mail

did it arrive

with personal notes and jokes

and a picture of a cat

folded in Hallmarked thoughts

writ with pen’s messy flourish

often the second or third drafted card bought

to flourish just right

but

I give

you

that one special penny card

that one special cartooned heart

held

brought home from class

scribbled “Mom” just for you

For this Valentine’s Day

Mother’s Day … Small Moments

by Stephen J Frankenberry6 Comments on Mother’s Day … Small Moments

Went to see Mom, “Ma”, today, for Mother’s Day at her assisted living facility in Somers, the Paramount, such wonderful folks, with Beck (my Sis) and her guy Buck. It was to be a perfect, and it was, perfect little brunch with a perfect little brunch menu of perfect fruits and French toast and scrambled eggs and bacon on a perfectly pretty day under an outside tent and with even a muffin or two with butter if you were so inclined to fill up too early from that basket before the main menu … and a Mom.

I’ve had some difficulty recently dealing with age and what it presents us, not for myself really though I joke of it quite a lot, not the worries of it and the remembering of better days to compensate, which is never a compensation at all by the way, that’s just the stuff and memories and doings in your past that built you, the reality of fond times, things learned, but of the creaks and cracks of body parts now that can be quite comical on occasion. I can no longer sneak up on anyone for instance with my ankle cracks, stand ups that take a little longer with breathy exhales, a belly paunch that reminds that I am terribly out of shape and leave an awful profile now in bathroom mirror selfies if I were to take such but do not (my God man! think of the children!) but for a Mom who has slid into a something that is unexplainable and something that scares me to death.

And I don’t do anything to help myself from what I have convinced a me might be inevitable. I habit too much in things that don’t help, even when I know that that habit too much is not the best of course. Put down the beer, put down the vape pen (cigarettes at least being well behind me), get some exercise, go out and mingle with actual human beings on occasion that don’t make just for fluffy pet pictures.

But I keep working anything, ANYTHING that might help the noggin keep working noggin stuff while telling itself just that.

This I do at least … constantly. A never stop no matter how much I know that no one may actually read or listen to whatever it is. Doesn’t matter. Just work it Steve … just work it.

But you know the thing I miss the most in this world is not being able to call my Mom, my friend, and recount a day, tell her of this noggin stuff, tell her of whatever stupid thing I came across that day that was latest funniest thing ever (at least in my mind) maybe direct her to new a post of mine in the Attic, that phone call that I am sure, while nodding and smiling, she was checking on her end the clock back then wondering if this phone call would end soon “Love ya Stephen, but it’s Murder She Wrote … it’s Angela Lansbury”.

Mom loved herself the murder mysteries, even in re-run, especially in the most dangerous sleepy small town that ever existed.

//////////////////////////////////////////

I brought Mom three things today, a bar of Ghiradelli chocolate, a dark chocolate salt caramel one where the caramel is salt crunchy not smooth, like a toffee, an almost English one I thought she might like, a T-shirt I was wearing with a cat paw fist bumping a human fist and a Mother’s Day card with also a cat. A wide eyed cat.

I thought maybe the cat thing might jog a bit of the Stephen. She always noted to her great dismay I think “Oh, that Stephen and his cats … why doesn’t he have a girlfriend”

When I mentioned that she nodded and said “Your cats” but then when Beck opened up that chocolate bar in her room to give her a piece of it she looked at me and said “Stephen, you’re ruining my diet” with a bit of chocolate on her lip and she also held onto that card, with the wide eyed cat all morning until we left and maybe past that on her nightstand.

Marveling.

Recognition.

When I was finally in my car (Beck and Buck and I always meet at the 84 diner to drive together the way down and back to be able to catch up and catch back) alone for my short rest of the ride home I broke down a bit. Quite a bit.

She said “Stephen, you’re ruining my diet”.

That was the world.

She said “Stephen, you’re ruining my diet” … to me.

Love ya Ma.

**Addendum: And please note that it is my sister who has been carrying the ball here with visits and keeping mind on the particulars of Mom’s care. I’ve been lax in that regard, cowarding out in the things that I just can’t quite face.

Save Me Alan Parsons

by Stephen J Frankenberry6 Comments on Save Me Alan Parsons

First, let me start by saying that I’ve been looking forward to this all week, a just me and the girls. Ok, yes, I say that all the time, at the end of any week, but current circumstance gives the “looking forward to” at the end of this any week and me saying it over and over again an added import as it’s yet another weekend reached to social distance for a full couple of days. No going into work (love ya pared down radio crew but I ain’t missin’ ya), no stoppin’ for gas (BB’s barely quarter tank doesn’t need to travel at the moment), no more curbside treats to myself from the Olive Garden (that Alfredo is a good two meals and the salad is so big it could even be one in itself with the garlic bread sticks and croutons enough to fill it out … that’s enough for a weekend), no grocery shopping necessary right now (a without such going on week # whatever – got girls & Steve essentials enough still).

Bella Cricket Mimi PC

I realize this distancing is already in my wheelhouse, well before the world blew up and got bent, sitting sideways now, has been wheelhouse shit for me for years, even when I wasn’t single, well, that might explain some things … but now it seems a bit more justified.

A friend sent me this meme …

Clint Meme

… yeh, that about covers it. (And no, funny one, he doesn’t look like me. He’s much prettier). No, this is what I looked forward to, just replacing the PBR’s with Busch Lights. Ya might need a bigger side table for the empties though Clint, if you and I are gonna hang.

About when this current nightmare first began a very best of college pals invited me to join a facebook group, I’ll have to look back to remember what it’s theme was, but there was, in my brief glimpse, the topic of Edgar Allen Poe which led me to break out my copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allen Poe) and a re-discovering of the Alan Parsons Project. I’ve been here ever since for goin’ on these almost two sequestered months now, even going so far as to order some Alan Parsons releases that I either didn’t have, didn’t know about or needed to replace, ones I know I surely owned at some point, maybe before my fire of 1989 that took so much. It had me spend money, frivolously, (anything other than girls or Steve food is frivolous) something I never do ’cause I just can’t, to the Alan Parsons tune of a hundred bucks. 7 albums. Damn, that’s something I REALLY never do. But …

When I was a kid my mother used to work, part-time, for a catering company on the weekends. She came home from one of her gigs on one of these weekends back then with a gleam, an excitement, a “just can’t wait to show Stephen” glow that I could see as she walked in the door.

She had an album, a poster, possibly a cassette, if I remember correctly and even an 8-track (yeh, I know, an 8 track huh?) of some band she had just worked a listening release party for at a studio in New York City. Boy, I was hooked on her story after hearing band, studio, New York City. Seems this listening party was for some guy named Alan Parsons and his release of “I Robot”, an album from he and his Project. She told me when it came time after the mucketty muck’s cocktail hour, to get to the listening part of the party, that she and her co-workers assumed they were done and were ready to head out. But Alan insisted that all in attendance stay and listen, the “staff” included. Alan called for the lights to be turned down in this studio where the party was held and asked all to just sit and listen in the now dimmed light. All the way through he asked, the full album. Ahhhh the envy Ma.

I’ve recreated that on occasion.

Man she was proud and too cool I’m sure she thought. “My Stephen is gonna love this”. It’s not something that I didn’t already know by the way Ma, you’ve always been too cool, but you were right. Your coolness factor rose quite a few notches with the story, moreso with whatever more details I could gather until you just yelled “bloody hell” at me to stop asking.

Funny, but one of my Mom’s biggest takes from this, other than so impressing this 13 year old with her hanging out in a recording studio with rock stars, was that there was an intricate ice sculpture party centerpiece of the album cover’s robot that, expensive as it surely was, was left when eventual boredom set in among those mucketies to just melt on a NYC sidewalk in front of this studio after the gig was played and done. She couldn’t wrap her head around the such disposable excess. Understood Ma.

But I’ve been in the Alan Parson’s camp ever since, melting money notwithstanding, all the way to the show, so many years later, in Middletown, NY, that she and Nick (my brother) and I caught, and a not her asking if we could go being a question, but a declaration, a flat out “we’re going, I bought the tickets, change plans if you have them”. What a night. Mom punched me in the arm a few times for singing along too loudly (maybe with even another “bloody hell” under her breath)

So now I listen to albums remembered so fondly, “The Turn Of A Friendly Card” and “Eve”, “Pyramid”, “Stereotomy” or those one hundred of dollars albums reminded or new to me, “The Secret” from last year being one of them. I didn’t even know that there was something recent as I haven’t checked in in too long.

I might still have an ear though, even after not being a PD or music director for quite some time (just a production guy now who couldn’t care ya a Billie Eilish from a Billy Joel) but it took only a couple of listens through to pick out one tune in particular, “As Lights Fall”,  only to discover this weekend that there was a video shot for it. So maybe I can still find a single.

Man, is there anything better than realizing that you’re not just remembering time past, simply replaying and maybe getting a bit melancholy but knowing that it’s still here, your past still alive, still workin’ it and hopin’ now for more.

So I woke my old tuner and my old 5 disc changer from a too long sleep, figured the out of phase sound that had had me turn them off a while ago, crystal now, put in some old and some of this new and I just sat, just sat drowning out the crazy (with a little extra volume, sorry Celie) of these anxiety ridden days and this fucked up new normal.

Save me Alan Parsons. Get me through another weekend, another couple of weekends, maybe more weekends than I’ll be able to count. Get me through this awful patch.

I’ll tell Ma you said Hi by the way.