"The Missing Sock"

When I take dirty clothes into the laundry room, I try to make certain every item makes it from the bathroom to the hamper. When I sort the clothes into their designated piles, sometimes I pair the socks as a double check that each duo goes into the wash together. My laundry room, a petite rectangular four by eleven, cannot provide hiding places for anything. Yet . . . at least once a month a sock vanishes. I’ll shift the hamper out of its tight nook, slide a hanger between the washer and the wall, remove the vacuum and the mops, and scour the tiny room with vigilance in search of a missing sock. I’ll retrace my steps from laundry room through the kitchen, retreating to the master bathroom with eagle eyes peering into corners and under the bed. I’ll check the dogs’ toy basket in case Koi kidnapped a sock from the pile. Nothing. I keep the unmatched sock in the clean clothes basket in the belief that its partner will miraculously reappear during the darkness of night. After another week, the lonely sock gets placed in my drawer, sitting in neglected isolation.

             The hide-n-seek game with the missing sock may continue for several weeks. Yesterday, I stripped my mother’s bedding and shook out the fitted sheet of the clean set. A black sock soared through the air and landed on her dresser, knocking over her Chantilly in playful abandon. I immediately scooped up the wayward footwear and placed it in my pocket with a victorious grin. I felt satisfaction as I reunited the lonely sock tucked in my drawer with its partner. A quick inspection revealed that only one more sock sat segregated from the other sets. Prior experience made me pragmatically predict that days may pass before the wayward companion surfaced. However, yesterday turned out lucky for me. The last missing sock nestled in the arm of one of my mother’s nightgowns. Imagine her surprise when she pushed her hand through the sleeve and captured a sock in her hand!

            I feel smug satisfaction in knowing that when I go to bed tonight, every sock in every drawer nestles closely with its mate.

Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Laundry Slave"

            Chores don’t bother me. I can resist the urge to vacuum whenever I see a tuft of cat hair by looking the other way.  Our dog, Koi is shedding right now, leaving little balls here-and-there, but I don’t need to haul out the vacuum cleaner because I simply scoop them up as I move room to room. Dusting? I blow it off! Literally. I have a glass topped console in my visual range. In the bedroom, as I type on my laptop, it lurks in my peripheral vision. Some mornings, when the sun shines through the window behind me, the dust on the console becomes alive, catching my attention in the light as it drifts on whispers. My willpower allows me to ignore the coating until my “Dusting Day.” And if, for some mysterious and unknown reason, the layer forms faster one week, I’ll blow it off as I walk by.  My solution dealing with dirty dishes is simple—eat out. And the dreaded grocery shopping (which becomes torture lately with increasing prices)? My solution is to eat out more!

            But laundry—laundry enslaves me. If I avoid the overflowing basket, piles of clothing form in other places in the house, breeding daily into hideous mountains. My weeks revolve around conquering these Everests. Monday’s I round-up stray piles and herd them to the laundry room, maneuvering them into piles by color or temperature needs. I haul out the hamper, adding to the mounds until each item’s categorized. Dumping in detergent and a pile of clothing into the machine doesn’t demand much effort or skill. Shifting load after load from washer to dryer requires little, too. I don’t mind folding the towels into their neat piles, hanging shirts or dresses, or even battling with the fitted sheets. For some reason, though, I dislike putting away clothes. I hate fighting for space in the closets because once everything’s clean, there’s less room. I battle to find a spot for socks and often scrunch shorts into an overflowing drawer. And then, within two days, I must repeat the entire process again. Laundry never totally disappears.  I know, however, that my laundry challenge of today doesn’t compare to the work I did as a child.

        When I was a little girl, my aunt had a wringer washer down in her basement. I remember standing on a stool to submerge the clothes into the water, dragging the heavy wet cloth out and over the scrub board. My small hands ached when I finished scrubbing, plunging, scrubbing, plunging. To this day, I remember the fear that knotted my stomach as I’d timidly feed the clothing into the ringer. I had nightmares that my fingers would slip in with the fabric, the rollers grabbing me and pressing my flattened body out into the tub.
            We’d toss the wet clothing into wicker laundry baskets and half-drag them up the stairs to the clothesline in the back yard. In the winter, the wind and cold would freeze my fingers as I’d clip up towels, sheets or even undies. On freezing days, the cloth would stiffen on the line before I’d finish my basket. In the summer, the scent of sunshine would permeate the fabrics. I loved pulling the warm clothes down. As an adult, I’ve occasionally taken a load hot from the dryer, thrown it on the bed, and wrapped myself within the soft, warm blankets; but it’s not the same as bedding baked by a Texas summer sun.

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Cat Scratch Fever"

 

Six year old me (scars and all!)

            “Lizzy, let Penn in,” my mother directed as she shifted an overloaded bag of groceries onto her right hip and struggled to fit the house key into the back door.

            Penn, our Welsh Terrier, sat obediently at the gate, his little stub tail wagging eagerly in anticipation of entering the house. Penn, a typical Welshie, perked his head to the side in curiosity as his gaze shifted from me to Mom as she opened the back door. Carrying groceries, I elbowed the gate latch up, shifted to butt the gate out of the way, and followed Mom into the house, taking it for granted that our spunky terrier would follow on my heels. After all, we carried food!

            Feeling a whoosh of air around my legs, I spun around to witness a black and tan streak blur out of our yard and head for open spaces.

            “Peeeeeeennnnn! You come back here!” I yelled, dropping the groceries as I leapt down the back steps in pursuit of our dog.

            Now, Penn had a reputation in our neighborhood. A high energy dog, his devotion to my sister, brother and me made him extremely protective of us. My parents returned twice from evenings out to find our babysitter sitting on the back porch, us three kids playing in the kitchen within her sight, and the dog guarding the back door in ferocious dedication. Like most Welsh Terriers, Penn formed his own decisions and would never back down from perceived “danger.” For him, that meant he had to defend his kids at all costs.

            Freedom made him crazy with doggy glee, and he cut across the play area, running in circles around me as I tried to get him to jump into my arms. He’d dash full speed at me, make as if he would come into my embrace, and then veer off wickedly at the last second. Each time he made his circle, he widened the circumference of his loop until his orbit started zipping him into the back yards of our neighbors who didn’t have fences.

Suddenly, he broke from his circular rotation and made a dash to the opposite side of our field, and I pelted after him, my legs pumping like pistons. I’m not certain what happened next. Penn shot across one yard where neighbors had their cat staked out on a super long lead. I remember watching the cat spring straight up in the air, almost like a cartoon, with her fur bristling out and her snarling meow and menacing hiss bringing Penn to a full halt. At that point, I lunged for Penn, but he escaped my tackle attempt and continued on his mad dash. As I got to my feet, the hysterical cat started climbing onto me, digging her claws into my skin as she tried to get onto my shoulders. She dragged her lead with her, tangling my feet and legs. Before I knew it, I hit the ground again. Startled even more, the cat caught my right arm in a death grip and wouldn’t let go.

By this time, Penn sensed my pursuit of him had stopped and circled around in time to see me go down in a free fall with the cat attached to me. Terrier instinct took over, and he swooped in to defend me from the cat by grabbing the cat’s leg and pulling with all his strength. He’d pull and shake, pull and shake, trying to rip the cat free. And the cat’s claws dug deeper and deeper into my arm.

By this time, the entire neighborhood’s on alert! One woman, nine months pregnant, grabbed a broom and started beating Penn over the head, but he ignored each blow. Our next door neighbor, who played often with us and Penn, managed to pull the dog off the cat and haul him away while other kids and adults examined the pulp of my arm.

When my mother ran up, she found me sobbing uncontrollably as blood seeped through my sweater. Always calm in emergencies, she grabbed an offered towel from one neighbor, instructed my sister to get her purse and car keys, told the boy holding Penn to take him back to our yard, and carried me over to the car.

The emergency room staff, of course, knew me. I had enough visits to the ER that my parents worried the nurses would report them for abuse. My injuries, though, always had a bizarre tale attached to them that dovetailed with the physical evidence. Coming in with a clawed up arm and a story of my dog trying to rescue me probably topped the list. With efficiency, the nurses cleaned my ripped fingers and doused gallons of antibiotic scrub on the deep punctures the cat’s claws gouged into my arm. The doctor took a look at their handiwork, gave me another shot of penicillin for good measure, and sent us on our way.

Within a few days, the fever started. My arm throbbed constantly and overnight the wounds began oozing white puss. Another trip to the ER had the young doctor pouring over his medical books to diagnose Cat Scratch Disease. He changed my antibiotics, gave explicit instructions on how to care for my wounds, and sent us on our way. Every day, I’d head to the school nurse’s office to have my injury cleaned and new bandages placed on my arm. At first, the nurse would cringe and grimace at the seeping mess. Eventually, the antibiotics kicked in and the fever and infection went away.

I still carry the scars on my arm from my encounter with Cat Scratch Fever. Fortunately, I never attached any type of trauma or phobia to the participants in this event. I still love dogs and cats, and I don’t panic when I see pregnant women waving around brooms! I’ve never met another person who also contracted the disease, so as a child I enjoyed my notoriety that the disease afforded me. Finally, I survived the years of teasing from my family that I endured once Ted Nugent’s song hit the airwaves.   

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

           

"Padme"

 

            Padme, Princess I’m A Dolly Kitty curls next to my laptop. Her spots for snoozing move around the house, changing periodically. I don’t know if the warmth from my computer draws her to my side, of if she enjoys the indulgent head rubs and chin scratching I throw her way as I write. Either way, she now spends a chunk of her day dozing by my side.

            I love telling the story on how Padme joined our family. We’d gone out of town for Memorial Day weekend, and had left my son’s iguana in his cage by the back patio doors so he could have light. I’d placed a book on the top, just to make certain he didn’t pop off the screen. However, I didn’t think about our cat, Sassy, deciding to free the iguana. When we returned home, the cage sat open and empty.

            We spent days searching for the iguana with no luck. I’d warned my son that one day we’d move something in a closet and probably find his mummified corpse. Not a pleasant idea, but part of life when you have small pets like reptiles and rodents. After a few days of searching, we decided to head to Polly’s Pet Shop and pick out another iguana.
 

            Of course, no one can enter a pet store and not swing by the puppies and kittens. We’ve stood outside those windows hundreds of times and never felt the urge to bring one home, but on that day two kittens wrestled in a tangle of newspaper. My son fell in love with both of them. Since we already had another cat and a dog at home, I told him he could only bring home one. It broke our hearts to know that we would separate the kittens, but . . .

            Padme entered out home in a non-descript brown box. We wanted to surprise my husband, who expected us to return with an iguana, not a kitten. His surprise to find a ball of fur instead of something sleek and green made us laugh.

            We quickly realized that Padme’s small size made her an easy target for moving feet. One night, my husband stepped on her head, sending her into convulsions. One of our guests for dinner that night had experience as a vet tech, and he felt certain she was fine, but we rushed her to the pet ER just in case. After that incident, she always wore a bell!

           Our Padme’s very outgoing. Many people thought we only had one cat because our other cat tucked herself away whenever company came. But not Padme. She’d stroll up to someone, bat them with her paw, or head bump in affection. Her wild mane drew everyone’s attention, her personality kept everyone under her spell.

           

 Last year, when our other cat died, Padme stopped eating. Her grief worried all of us. I moved her bowls into the kitchen to monitor her eating. By this summer, I headed back to the same pet shop for their advice on the best foods for elderly cats. She nibbles on dry Instinct—rabbit, duck, or chicken—throughout the day. And her special treat comes in lamb, pork or pheasant three times a day. She’s desperately thin, even after months on this diet, but she is gradually regaining weight.
            So I take full advantage of Padme resting next to my computer because I don’t know how many years she has left. At nearly fourteen, she’s “getting up there.” She still loves to play and still draws attention to her when company comes since she is such a princess.   

 

 

 

Copyright 2013 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Replicate"

        I sit here. Day after day, I squat in my spot within these pale yellow-painted cinder block walls. My only contact with the outside world comes from a solitary window. I crouch too far away to see anything through the casement but rusty roofs and blue sky on nice days. A warm shaft of sunlight stretches out from the window and slants its way over the computer table, cutting triangles into the old orange carpet. It never touches me. I never feel the golden warmth although I long for it.
        I sit here, attached to the wall through my umbilical cord, bound in place as I hunger for energy. I long for freedom, but to pull the plug would sever my power. I would die, and I’d rather my four walled prison than not exist at all.
        I sit here, awaiting my destiny. Soon, she will come. She’ll run her smooth, cool hands across me before she’ll slip them into my drawers to see if I’m fully loaded. Her slender thigh will brush against me as she leans into me. Then she’ll push my buttons, and I’ll respond to her touch. I’ll ask her how much, and as I heat up, my insides will groan in effort to perform for her. With a flash of light and energy, I’ll spew out my warm progeny. She’ll gather this newly born bundle within her arms, and then she’ll leave me alone—once again.
    I sit here. Day after day I squat in my spot—a prisoner as I await her return. 

Copyright Elizabeth Abrams Chapman 1995

Occasionally, my writing gets me into trouble. When I took my Creative Writing class on a walking tour through the campus, I assigned the students the task of becoming an inanimate object and telling that object’s story. For my piece, I selected the copy machine in the teacher’s workroom across the hall from my classroom. I had a love/hate relationship with this machine. When I finished my piece, I taped a copy of it onto the copier, never dreaming it would offend anyone! Oh, well . . .

“Approval"

 

her exclamations of righteousness
fill every hour of every day
as she proclaims her piety
she protects her façade of devotion
with her illusions of perfection
she announces her good deeds
by never saying no
she weaves wreaths of sacrifices
she carries the cross of expectations
over her broken body
her fears wrap around her
 when she judges herself harshly
with condemnation for human failings
she kneels in supplication
asking forgiveness for her sins
 

Coppyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman