"Over The Fence"

Dixie trying to get Paul to throw her Frisbee

            Years ago, the boys next door would vault over the cyclone fence that we have on one side of our property to play with our dog, Dixie. They’d dash around the yard, trailing a toddling Paul behind them, waving an old blanket to entice Dixie into the chase. An athletic dog, Dixie would zoom in sharp spins around the boys, gather momentum, and make wild leaps through the air. As she grabbed the blanket, she’d twist in the wind, torquing her body and sending the boys tumbling across the grass. Dixie loved her Frisbee. She learned how to throw it herself, sailing it prettily from one corner of the yard to the other. Occasionally, it would float over the fence and land in the yard next door. A good problem solver, Dixie never wasted time with futile barking at the Frisbee. Instead, she’d come straight to one of us; hit us with her paw until we did the “What Dixie? What do you want? Show us?” routine. She’d bound back out the door, taking us straight to the fence.

Dixie at 8 weeks

            The back part of our fence separates our yard from the elementary school in our neighborhood. Over the years, we’ve returned home to find basketballs, dodge balls, baseballs, and footballs all labeled with the proud school name. Sometimes, the teachers would send a couple of the kids to our house to pick up the balls. Most of the time, we’d get home from work and place the balls on the other side of the fence, tucked up by our gate so the students would find them waiting the next morning. In all the years we’ve lived here, we’ve only had trouble twice with students kicking down fence boards. Most of the time, the children respect this wooden boundary.

Hackberry Trees!

            On one side of our back yard, two Hackberry trees decided to take root on the neighboring property. For years a rental house, no one ever cut the trees down, and they’ve pushed against the wooden fence, causing it to have a permanent wave. One of these days, we’ll pull this fence down and zigzag a new fence around the trees. New neighbors purchased the house and filled their backyard with rose gardens and trellised nooks, and they want to help us build benches that wrap the trees. We’d take one; they’d take another.

Koi smooching with Sarah

            Now-a-days, we don’t have boys climbing over the side fence, and remodeling at the school shifted the playground to where balls no longer fly over the back fence. However, conversations do float across these borders. I chat with my neighbor about her new grandson (maybe someday he’ll scale the fence), her husband’s recovery from his stroke, or the latest adventures of Koi and her small dog, Sarah. My neighbor on the other side, a chef by profession, delights in sharing many of his favorite dishes. Occasionally, he’ll pass plates of food over the fence, which definitely beats the balls we used to get.   

  

Favorite place to chat over the fence!

In the fourteen years since I wrote this piece my neighbor's husband died. We became full-time caregivers for my mother as she lost her battle with Huntington's Disease. Our chats over the fence focus on our latest gardening dreams. Little Sarah and Koi no longer kiss through the fence. Sarah passed several years ago, and Koi's loss this spring weighs heavily on my heart. 

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"A Vegetable Garden"

 

I dug out, added soil, carved out rows, and neatly planted my first vegetable garden the year I turned nine. In my memory, this plot of backyard covered acreage, but I know in reality it couldn’t have eaten up much of the yard. I grew lettuce, green onions, tomatoes, and two varieties of radishes. If I close my eyes, I can see the child I was kneeling on the ground, worshipping Earth.

When we moved to Texas, my parents delegated a larger garden for my passion. I added peppers, herbs, and even corn to my crops. One year, I planted cucumbers along one section. That summer we ate cucumbers with onions in vinegar, sugar and water. We ate them on sandwiches and within salads. The bumper crop meant we gave them to our neighbors and friends. My mother didn’t want to pickle them (she had extremely limited pantry space), so we made cucumber ointments for our faces. I remember slicing cucumbers into my bathwater! 

Making a living shoved aside my desire to garden; and as an adult, I shifted to herbs and native plants and flowers. I haven’t grown much more than tomatoes in recent years. And I think a part of me longs to sink my hands into rich soil again.

In the years since my mother’s death, I’ve toyed with the idea of toiling in a vegetable garden. In my mind, I’ve carved out a huge section of our backyard and planted it to the brim with thriving life. I imagine myself outside each day, watering and weeding. I can actually feel my body kneeling in worship of the harvest.  

This image seduces me.

But I’ll prepare no garden this spring. I promised myself a year of doing less, of walking away from the “must do” lists that I create for myself. 

I grow a different garden this year. One that allows me to dip into serendipity instead of structure. I hope to nurture creativity and whim not bound by schedules or lists. In the end, I strive cultivate a gentler “me” who’s not so driven to do more, but instead slows down enough to enjoy more.

Once I’ve gathered my harvest of contentment? Then I’ll plant a vegetable garden.  

  

Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman 

"A Watched Pot"

 

Water simmers   

on the edge of boiling   
Steam rises to the rim  
swirls with deceptive beauty 
a mist—that scalds and burns   

A few degrees more  

and turbulence erupts    
whirling into blistering instability   
Unrealized outrage   
that seethes and sputters   

A few degrees less   

and danger recedes—    
Gentling back into     
warmth and comfort   

Simmering again on the edge   

 

Copyright 2015 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

 

"Righteous Anger"

 

"Fire" by David Chapman

because you yell the loudest   

TYPE IN ALL CAPS    

divide and pontificate with provocation  

you lay claim to justification    

you demean those who disagree    

through a false sense of superiority    

you lash out with vindictiveness    

choosing to injure and belittle    

you suck others into your fallacies    

with endless word manipulations    

you deride and insult    

to defend your flawed and mistaken reasoning    

you rationalize your anger and hatred    

by looking at everyone    

but yourself    

you are mean    

you are cruel    

you love no one    

this is your failure    

your loss    

your inability that wounds    

your harshness that kills    

your unhappiness that warps and destroys    

so scream out your      

righteous anger    

louder, louder, louder    

until you become hoarse    

until fatigue forces you to pause    

until you must be silent    

then listen to the echoes of your loneliness    

Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

 

"New Dark Age"

            Trust your religion and religious leaders more than science, logic and reason. Trust your gut over scientific research and objectively collected data. Trust the story about a friend of a friend’s third cousin over documented and investigative studies. And then—TRUST NO ONE!

            Our slippage into an under-educated population occurred gradually. First, we forced the content of our public schools to dumb down to standardized testing levels. Then an Us VS Them mentality bloomed that tainted legitimate media. Finally, we allowed Christian religious beliefs to seep into public and governmental institutions, to become a litmus test for viable candidates for many elected positions. The message shifted to TRUST NO ONE (unless that person has the same religious views as you).

            So now we find ourselves, as a country, mired in obvious lies and more obscured half-truths that our gullible population cannot unravel. They blindly turn to sources for information that foster more confusion and promote distrust.

            These are the most recent theories I’ve followed. Each one disturbing because they prey upon fear. Fear that someone’s out to take your jobs, undermine your marriage and family, or physically harm someone you love.

THE NEW DARK AGE BELIEFS (in no particular order):

               First, women should have no rights to determine their own reproduction. This includes using any birth control. Women are secondary to men in many faiths, and therefore, deserve lesser pay. They shouldn’t expect respect within the work force. Legal protection for women being abused by men should be limited.

Troubling, isn’t it! We actually have a growing population that believes a woman’s place in in her home, where she may not even be safe.

            Second, all of the “research” on climate change is false. Climate change is a liberal lie to undermine our profitable use of fossil fuels. They have some kind of secret agenda that will wipe out our economy if we turn to reusable energy and protect the air we breathe and water we drink. They have a plot, as yet unknown in details, to subvert the entire course of modern civilization by implementing laws internationally that could begin to contain the destruction of our environment. Many people actually believe that God will step in, wave his magical hand, and wipe away all of the damage we’ve done to the planet.

I cannot fathom why anyone would risk our entire planet just to prove they are right about a possible liberal agenda.

            Third, anyone who’s different from you threatens you, your family and your community. Therefore, anyone immigrating here is suspect of engaging in behaviors ranging from taking your jobs to murdering you and your entire family, as you sleep peacefully in your home. (Thus, you must arm yourself with an arsenal of weapons and ammunition). Anyone who has a difference in sexual orientation must be ostracized. You have a duty to deny this group their rights to job security, medical care, purchasing homes, or even marriage. Many people actually shift blame to current weather disasters to God’s punishment for acceptance of “differences.”

I keep wondering why God punishes all of the “innocent” people, too, through these floods, famines, and other natural disasters.

            Fourth, Big Pharma controls all of our doctors and scientist. Therefore, any program that benefits pharmaceutical companies should be rejected. This belief meshes together the facts and data that these companies have one agenda alone—PROFIT. Therefore, nothing that comes from these companies can be trusted. The latest, of course, is vaccinating our population. Many people believe these companies actually inject cancer causing agents into our systems in order to generate future clients dependent upon medications to survive. Many people believe that by refusing to vaccinate their children, they are protecting them.

I know that pharmaceutical companies drive all decisions by profit, but I also believe that resurgence of diseases like tetanus, measles, and polio far outweigh worry that Big Pharma want to make a buck.

            Fifth, colleges are indoctrination centers that subvert the core religious beliefs of families and undermine the structure of American society.

I will admit that colleges do expose young minds to new worlds. The curriculum should drive students to critical thinking. My worry about colleges stems more from the fact that they are driven by profit instead of aiming for the purer goals of student self-actualization.

            How do we get out of all of this mucked-up thinking? I look to our youth with optimism that they will filter out the lies and filth that my generation’s heaped upon them and create a courageous new world of enlightenment.   

Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Lizard Brain"

A clear objective—survival       
Tuck head down and traipse through desert sands—       

            An Arrakis boiling with religious certitudes,     

                      ancient political nuances   

Multitudinous paths leading to destruction       
Ignore the razor winds that slice through reason   
And only hone instinct   

Survive   
Clutch the knife of insanity in your righteous fist   
Rip into the enemy’s flesh   
Retaliate—an eye for an eye—until all are blind   
Blades become bombs   
Homes reduce to rubble housing mutilated families   

Logic stumbles through the wreckage   
And gets lost in the stench of decay   
Becomes overburdened and overrun by molecular rage—   

            (Passed down from evangelist to fanatic     

                       to zealot to extremist)   

Until it dries up and dies   

 

Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman 

 

"Forgive and Forget"

Over time, the walls of self-defense become chinked with wear   
Overgrown by ivy, flowering each spring with climbing roses,     
The origins for brick and mortar fade in memory     
The enemy’s conniving and manipulation forgotten with each passing season     
Over time, the story of the their cruelty mutates     
Into a softer narrative of the human frailty found within their souls  
And the need to forgive and forget their heartless and vindictive natures      
Grows because I must repair my damaged spirit      
Over time, the protective barriers seem superfluous      
My internal longings to belong create false hope      
That “this time” will prove different—better      
That somehow they’ve gentled with time      
Foolish me—to pull down the walls, to retell the tale        
To desire their love    
Foolish me—to provide them opportunity, to crush me     
Under the weight of my forgiveness

      
Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman