"He Doesn't Like Me"

  

An indestructible bond
Woven together by laughter and tears
Revelations of doubt shared in the hushed pre-dawn hours
Private thoughts and hopes spilled across endless pages
Our friendship strong and true
 
Subtle changes unfolded
Before a single box was packed

Before a vow of faith and love was made
You grew distant and reserved
Still our friendship held strong and true
 
You battled against yourself
Pulling me awake with midnight calls of uncertainty
Our friendship frayed around the edges
The years of sisterhood withstood your demands
Yet our friendship held strong and true
 
Imperceptibly, you excluded me
Letters not answered, phone calls shortened
Visits while our children played ended abruptly
You needed to clean, and cook, and make things perfect
Our friendship weakened by his demands
 
You tucked into yourself
Tightened into a ball so tight I missed your despair
Your silence the only response to my concern
Even after Death ripped through your life
He withheld you from friendship strong and true
 

 

Copyright 2023 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

IOUNIO's song, "Scared" with today's poem!

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"He Doesn't Like Me"

 

An indestructible bond
Woven together by laughter and tears
Revelations of doubt shared in the hushed pre-dawn hours
Private thoughts and hopes spilled across endless pages
Our friendship strong and true
 
Subtle changes unfolded
Before a single box was packed
Before a vow of faith and love was made
You grew distant and reserved
Still our friendship held strong and true
 
You battled against yourself
Pulling me awake with midnight calls of uncertainty
Our friendship frayed around the edges
The years of sisterhood withstood your demands
Yet our friendship held strong and true
 
Imperceptibly, you excluded me
Letters not answered, phone calls shortened
Visits while our children played ended abruptly
You needed to clean, and cook, and make things perfect
Our friendship weakened by his demands
 
You tucked into yourself
Tightened into a ball so tight I missed your despair
Your silence the only response to my concern
Even after Death ripped through your life
He withheld you from friendship strong and true
 

 

Copyright 2023 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

"Christmas Lights"

            “Ooooh, sparkly!” becomes my obsessive observation every holiday season. As we drive through neighborhoods or around business decked with lights, my optimistic nature finds solace in the early nightfall because the world twinkles and glows. Inside our house, rings of lights loop around our tree, and I’ve placed candles in every room and merrily enjoy their dancing glow each evening.

            The exterior of our house, though, remains darkened. Every year, I eagerly await my husband’s promise to adorn the front bushes with lights. That’s all I ask for, a few strands thrown carelessly over the bushes, and I’d rejoice. I know, I know—if I really wanted lights out front, I’d simply do it myself. Except . . . it’s one of those few things that I ask of my husband that I feel goes “beyond” the norm. One of those silly “women” demands that almost every other man in our acquaintance does effortlessly for their wives. Some Christmases, I’ve pulled the boxes filled with lights out of storage and left them in a prominent spot in the living room in anticipation of the possibility that David will suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to decorate outside. If that doesn’t’ happen, I begin my verbal nudging (aka nagging). However, my wishes for decorations outside often go unmet. Some holidays, I actually put the boxes of lights away after a couple of weeks, defeated.

            Currently, the light bins dominate the living room again. Last year, I purchased new lights to add to the collection. They never left their boxes, though. My confidence holds strong that lights will go up this year because my husband’s taken three days off this week. However, just in case, I did post this on his Facebook page when it floated around a couple of weeks ago:

 

                                      from TexasHillCountry.com (Facebook)
 

 

 

Beggars can’t be choosers, after all.

Copyright 2013 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

 

"First Impression"

David, my husband, didn’t make a good first impression on my parents. As a matter of fact, he dressed so shabbily the first time he came over to their home in League City that I almost didn’t let him into the house.

His shoulder length light brown hair, streaked with blonde highlights from exposure to the summer sun, formed a tangled and windswept halo around his head. His t-shirt, yellowed with age, had no arms and had a chewed collar. I wondered if David had chewed the mangled fabric himself, or if one of his Westies had mistaken the shirt for a dead animal and mauled it.

I almost didn’t want to check out the rest of David’s attire, but my eyes shifted downward on their own accord. His shirt perfectly matched the condition of the bleached cut-offs he wore. Below the ragged hems of his shorts hung frayed front pockets. The back of his cut-offs had no pockets at all, and I fleetingly wondered where he kept his wallet and keys. However, a look at his hands answered that question. He carried a pair of relatively new Converse high tops in his hands, the wallet and keys stuffed inside. In horror, I looked at his bare feet.
 

As my mind wrapped itself around the image David would present to my parents, I heard my mother come up behind me and say, “Well, Lizzy, let him in!”

Over the years, David took quite a bit of teasing about his appearance on that first meeting with my parents. Being gracious and loving people, they set aside their misgivings and looked beyond the rags to find the richness of David’s character.


To this day, David always manages to find his favorite black and orange flower print shirt no matter how deeply I bury it in the back of his closet (I’m thankful he’s up-graded from the tattered white t-shirt). I do manage to keep him in respectable shorts most of the time, but I suspect he’s just humoring me. Although David does wear shoes now, he kicks them off as soon as he crosses the threshold!



David at 58! September 26, 2015

David didn't change his "look" for the first few years of marriage!

 

 

This is the way I think David would like to dress every day! Oh well . . .

I'll admit, I like garb, too!

David by David Chapman!

Copyright 2005 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

"Yellow Roses"

                     Yellow roses. My mother, sister and I all carried yellow roses in our wedding bouquets. As a young child, yellow roses appeared on my mother’s birthday, occasionally on Valentine’s Day, and always on anniversaries. Yellow roses bloomed on the dining room table when Mom felt blue. Yellow roses adorned the table with illness or loss. They said, “I care. I love you. You’re special. I’m thinking of you today.”

     Their tradition grew into my generation, with both my husband and my son recognizing the power of a yellow rose. Whenever life’s overpowered me with stress, a dozen yellow roses removes the harsh edges. If I’ve felt overlooked and underappreciated, a single yellow rose soothes my disposition with its velvet petals and fragrant scent.

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Starting with Nothing”

             A few days ago, we ambled into a “remember when” conversation after our son commented that he’s never met a woman from his generation who embraces a view that the partnership of marriage can start from nothing and work slowly forward over many years. The women he knows want a partner established in career with a steady income, vehicles that run, and the promise of eventually becoming “stay at home mothers” instead of remaining in the work force. So different from my own beliefs.

            Our first apartment, in Bryan, Texas, had orange shag carpet. For the first four months of marriage, we sat on the floor, eating off of a large paper box. A friend had given us the foam mattress from a hide-a-bed to use as a bed. Our clothing, folded into neat piles, rested directly on the floor. We didn’t even have a laundry basket at first, and the few wire hangers we had held heavier items like our coats and jackets. The television set, black and white, didn’t have working horizontal hold. It rotated the single channel we tuned through rabbit ears. A wicker chair with matching stool and a white pole lamp, pieces I purchased while in high school, finished the furniture we owned. David entered marriage with one small old suitcase, one paper bag of clothing, his guitar (a gift from a friend), his bass, and cabinet with amplifier. My uncle had given us a partial set of American Airlines silverware. Our pots and pans, mix-matched, barely filled our cooking needs. That was okay. We barely had food for groceries. Those months, before our first paychecks arrived, were our pinto bean days.

            Around September, one of David’s aunts loaned us an old mattress and table. We picked up a couple of folding chair, which graduated us to fine dining! We pooled our wedding gift cash to buy unpainted wood chests. Finally, our clothing had a home. The foam pad shifted to the living room for a “couch”.

           

            Those sparse first months gave us the ability to do sacrifice for later goals. My college loans got payed off at a double rate. Once we moved from College Station to San Antonio, we kept our budget strict. Together, we roamed through department and furniture stores to select the furniture that fit a style we both loved.

            For us, part of the success of our long marriage started in those first months of struggle. It gave us a foundation for working together for long-term goals.

 

Copyright 2023 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman 

"I Worry"

            Over the years, I’ve learned to channel my tendency to fret about every little nuance of life into major areas. It’s a sanity strategy that allows me to let the less important things “go” while satisfying my personal psychological need to control whatever I can. This Five Point Focus means I spend my energy on the bigger needs and wants for myself and my family. I thought I’d share these with my readers.

Money: 
            How much debt is too much?
            Should I work extra to get ahead?
            When will I feel financially safe?
Time:
            Am I spending enough time doing what I want?
            Will I make time to travel?
            Will I run out of time to accomplish my Want To list?
Health:
            Will I continue to be creative?
            Will my energy stay stable as I age?
            Will I remain accident/illness free?
Family:
            Are my siblings healthy, happy, and secure?
            Will my husband and son continue with their creative ambitions?
            Can we stay focused on the end goal for as many years as it 

            takes?

Right choices:
            Will the decision to stay in our neighborhood continue to be

             a good one?

            Will the new shift toward self-employment earn enough?
            Can I change the path I’m on as I get even older?  

Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman  

           

“Daring Changes”

          A few years ago, I decided to go back to my “roots” by cutting all of the color out of my hair and resisting the urge to cover the gray. I wanted to see just how silver or white my tresses had become after I hit fifty.

          I thought my silver/brown looked fine until I caught a good look at it in several different pictures. When several friends suggested I add a little color to my hair, I took their advice to heart.

          Remembering the guideline of coloring your hair to a lighter shade as you age, I experimented with various shades of light brown, ashes, and champagnes until I finally settled on something that drew more compliments than criticism.

          And I slipped into a comfort zone fairly rapidly, settling into changing my hair style instead of my color. I clipped my long hair into short layers, and I’ve slowly progressed to bangs and one layer over the last couple of years.

          Some nights, I believe my hair grows an inch. My color, presentable one day, turns into a mess of grayish-brown roots so suddenly that I never have my brand of color handy. Usually, I browse through the hair aisle on my own, but the other day my son accompanied me to the store.

          “It’s time for you to try a new color, Mom,” he dared.

          I stood looking at the wall of smiling models with a rainbow assortment of choices. We ruled out the pink and purple, shied away from the greens, and barely glanced at the dark blacks.

          The reds, though, drew my son’s attention. “You’ve never colored your hair red.”

          “It has so many red highlights in it already, I’ve always been afraid to go with red,” I explained.

          Before I knew it, I held a couple of auburn shades in my hand.

          “Go for it, Mom!”

          I didn’t need much encouragement.

          Sometimes, we get into ruts. We put ourselves into predictable boxes. We follow our set patterns. We bore even ourselves.

          So, I put a totally different color into the grocery cart, went home, and became a redhead within an hour.

          The color screamed, “RED!”

          I glanced into the mirror several times and wondered what David would say when he came home from work.

          “You look like my grandmother,” he piped when he took in my new shade.

          Now, no woman wants to hear that she looks like her husband’s grandmother!

          I immediately realized, though, that it the tint did closely match the shade of red that Grandmother had used.

          Deciding to “tone it down” a notch, I rushed back to the store, selected a shade of brown that I could apply, and created a totally different hue that’s uniquely my own.

          I don’t know how long I will stay with this latest tone, but I love that I can still take on a dare and not be afraid of changes.

 

Copyright 2013 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman