“Petri Dish”

 

            Yesterday, a friend asked if I ever planned on returning to the classroom. After thirty years teaching and another eight years working as a substitute, she wondered if I missed my filled-to-the-brim days.

            “I can’t go back to the petri dish,” I responded directly to her question.

            “Petri dish?”

            “You know, the wonderful thing about Facebook turns out to be the Memories section. I never realized just how often I felt sick. How year-after-year, I suffered through stomach viruses and colds. Twice a year, my throat roughened into sandpaper. I caught colds that lasted for three or four weeks, recovered enough to feel decent for another week, and then cycled right back into hell.”

            Since 2020, I’ve had COVID-19 that was mild due to vaccinations and . . . NOTHING!

            At one point, I speculated that I may have had allergies since I fell sick repeatedly each fall and spring when both my husband and son suffered from airborne allergens. But during the last four years, I’ve walked when the ragweed and mold levels tip to purple without a sniffle. I bathed in oak pollen each spring with no scratchy throat, runny eyes, or chest tormenting cough.

            Work and school placed me into a petri dish of viruses that pulled me under within a few weeks of the start of each year and then again after winter break. I cycled from virus to virus and suffered tremendously.   

            The loss of substitute income means I’ve had to realign my budget, but it’s worth every penny lost because I feel so much better! In the back of my mind, I know that as I age, recovering from each round of virus induced illness may become harder. I want to live with as much good health as possible and diving back into the cesspool isn’t a risk I’m willing to take.  

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Too Hot”

 

            For the last couple of years, we’ve headed to our cabin in Leakey during the longer Memorial Day weekend as a way to celebrate our anniversary a week late. Our plans to go this weekend stopped dead with the weather report for an entire hunk of Texas—HEAT ADVISORY!

            Heading into the hills with the goal of hiking, weed-eating the overgrown grassy areas surrounding the small building, and collecting rocks and shoveling gravel to bring back home for landscaping doesn’t appeal to me at all with temperatures sweltering between 108°-111°.

            In 2022, a severe hail storm battered our cabin during this same weekend! We “saved” our Bronco with every cushion and quilt in the building. We’d never experienced such a severe storm in Leakey in May.

     

            So for today, we’ll spend inside on Arrakis, binging on both parts of Dune. 

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman   

 

“From Behind the Glass”

Forehead pressed against the pain
with Vision blurred by labored breath        
I push against cold resistance—
on the outside once again
Within sight
Yet out of reach
My desperation weeps
I cannot change
            your heartbreak
I cannot challenge Time—
            Unless I shatter through the glass
                        scarring myself
            to protect you


Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“Finding My Voice Again”

            My way to hold onto sanity in a crazy world? Writing. My thoughts flow across the page, whether with pen to paper or fingers flying across the keyboard. Pages fill with my life observations, a narrow slice of my reality as I share bits and pieces of myself to some unknown audience. Sometimes a poem evolves, sometimes a story surfaces. Often, my thoughts and feelings, displayed over a once blank page, leave me puzzled

.

            Did I think that?

            Did I write that?

            Even when I didn’t think I had something to say, words would scatter across the page.

 

            For more than a year, the thought of writing, and sharing those words, burdened me. I realized recently that the January 6 United States Capitol attack silenced me, not immediately, but slowly as the stages of grief tangled up in relationships with family and friends. What do I take away from the friend who waved her hands skyward, praying for my soul to be saved, while she still supports a malevolent tyrant? Did I do mental bargaining with myself that this bond, now more than thirty years strong, could survive my disillusionment? Where do I go with the family members who scorn science and turn away from facts? My wallowing in anger at them changes nothing. They now reveal who and what they’ve been all along: selfish, mean, clannish, narcissists.

 

            Regaining my voice has happened slowly. The first step came with a public library card. Each visit, I select a favorite author, a totally “new-to-me” writer, and two pieces of non-fiction. My non-fiction tethers me back to my roots of in Psychology, enlarges my knowledge of physics or economics, and provides a new, better understandings of how we got to this point in history. I took another step by making certain those places I loved visiting before my years of caregiving became destinations again, like our local museums and the zoo. During the lockdown, my camera opened a view to the small details of life, and I continue focusing on my need to link photography with words.

 

            My voice comes out now because I have to write again.

 

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman

“A Lesson in Art”

 

            Take a few moments to check out the latest art my son’s offering on his site! These extremely unique pieces are his vision of a black and white world that reflects what we see in the mirror and model through our mannequins of perfection.

https://www.jcmgstudio.com/

Copyright 2023 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman