Things I’ve Loved and Lost
My favorite chair
upholstery worn so thin it always felt
like the cool side of the pillow
My mother, sick of its old-world pattern,
it’s lumpy seat cushion
scrimped and saved for over a year to replace it
only to have her four-year-old sob at its loss
“Where will it go?” I wailed
inconsolable
I rode between my parents, in the cab of Papaw’s truck,
hauling my beloved chair to it’s final resting place
the town dump
it was the 70s
Recycling had not caught on, yet,
in eastern Kentucky
It tore my heart to think of that chair,
outside in scorching sun
mountain rain storms
the spot where it sat, as empty as the space in the yard
where a tree used to be
My Dorothy doll
articulated elbows, she could hug
Barbie and Ken and Skipper
Her blue-checked dress and braided hair
Her thin nylon socks and plastic ruby slippers
The little woven basket she could hold in her plastic hand
Toto, a rubbery gray Terrier, with black dots for eyes
peeking over the rim
Where had she gone?
My Barbies, spread like tornado victims,
across the small green apron of our front yard
I ran in, for just a moment, for Kool-aid maybe
or a banana popsicle
taking a short break from whatever drama
I was playing out that day
when I returned, Dorothy was gone
She was not in Kansas anymore
I crawled around the yard, searching from front stoop
to chain link fence
Toto, was there, in a patch of wild onion grass,
still in his basket.
Years later, I was a wife, a mother,
still lamenting the mysterious loss of that doll
when my sister admitted, under duress,
that she took Dorothy and hid her in a cinder-block
in the unfinished basement
of our childhood home
Mystery solved
Sisters can be cruel
she said it was because I would not let her play that day
which was probably true
she did not understand my storyline
Instead, her Barbies, always asked
to borrow a loaf of bread
Bread?! My dolls and I had no time to dole out bread.
My favorite car
10-years-old already when Dad and I
bought it at a local used car lot
a red Nissan Sentra, previously called the Datsun Sunny,
I called her Senny and could not contain my pride
for learning to drive a stick shift
She was my college car, carrying me off to school
and back home to the hills
One night her left windshield wiper flew right off
during a heavy rainstorm
I’ll never forget it
I was driving blind for a moment, like a boat captain
caught in a swell
I couldn’t even see to pull off the road
but somehow Senny plowed through the storm to safe harbor
That car, with a crack down the windshield I couldn’t afford to fix
and four nearly-bald tires
would have driven on no gas
I believed
so strong was her love for me
And that’s the gist of it…things I’ve loved
because I thought they had some otherworldly
way of loving me back