Beneath the Wraps

          I like the sound of rain           Good Thing as it           has rained for most of           this month                     We have skylights in           our front room and           our bedroom and           sometimes the rain wakes me           after I have fallen           asleep           I know it's wet and cold           outside      ...

            I remember how I enjoyed watching fireworks when I was younger.   I remember lighting sparklers with my dad and dancing around the yard.   Fireworks were reserved for July 4 th (anniversary of our nation) and July 24 th (anniversary of our state) and gradually that turned into weekends.   Here in our part of west Valley, the fireworks happen EVERY SINGLE DAY IN JULY – or at least from the 3 rd to the 27 th .   Jenna’s enthusiasm shines for each holiday.   She’d been nagging Roland for some time to get fireworks whenever we pass firework stands or displays.      Somewhere along the way (and I’m not really certain when) I outgrew the thrill of fireworks.   I get headaches from the smoke.   I have a hard time breathing when I am outside.   I’m no longer a night owl and thus not very fun parent.   But we try.   Jenna often feels bumm...

After we had purchased the house Roland put the boys to work painting the trim red. That was seven years ago. Time to paint again. Randy needs money and Roland puts all three boys to work and says he’ll pay them 100 dollars each as soon as the work is done. The instructions are fairly simple:  Everything that is red needs to be painted over in green, everything that’s white needs to be repainted white. Biff was the first to show. He works graveyard and comes straight from his job though two weeks ago I think he went to the gym before coming here Roland had to work that day and so I had told Tony that he could be in charge I didn’t want Randy to be in charge because most of the time he doesn’t even know what he’s doing as he has managed to disappear each time Roland taught the boys a trade Randy appears to be genuine about helping or at least that was the case two weeks ago But he loaded the paintbrush so that it d...

                  When I was very young (like in first and second grade) my cousins lived not far from Highland High School and Sugarhouse Park.   Aunt Fern and mom would often take us to Sugarhouse Park as it was so near by.   Problem was that the trees were not mature (as they were not much larger than us kids) and thus the park did not provide much (if any) in the way of shade.            Sugar House seemed to be an older area overall, but it seemed the park was fairly new.   I vaguely remember a playground.   My cousins and I must have spent time rolling down the hill – although I haven’t run across any photos of us at that particular park.            I wonder if the main objective for our moms was to take us to the park was to wear us down.   I wonder if it bac...

Yesterday I took mom to the hairdresser. She said it was nice to see her hairdresser again as she hadn’t seen her for a long time . . . which she hadn’t. As I drove her back to where she lives, she kept on asking who it was that had fixed her hair. At Alpine Ridge she was greeted like a celebrity.  Everybody LOVED her hair. She had to check the mirror again as she couldn’t remember. “Who fixed my hair?” she asked again. There was a noise coming from the next room. The noise reminded me of a single bowling lane.  Mom said she didn’t think that’s what it was. Well, I knew that! That’s just what the sound reminded me of. Mom tells me about the woman in the room next to hers. Apparently they were the first two to live there.  No, not live.  They worked.  But Helen is getting slower.  She has . . .  well, she has . . .  she’s just slowing down. “You’re all slowing down,” I thought.. Mom couldn’t remember the word “dementia...

          Almost every household in America has at least one ghost living with them.   Since being married to Roland, I have encountered three.   Their names are “It Wasn’t Me”, “I Don’t Know” and “I Didn’t Do It”.   The ghost who gets blamed the most in this house is “It Wasn’t Me”.   “I Don’t Know” received most of the blame in our last house – though “It Wasn’t Me” seemed to share a lot of blame as well.           I find it interesting that about 20 minutes before Jenna returned home from school yesterday, I retrieved a hand mirror from the coffee table and put it in the bathroom.   She couldn’t have been home more than five minutes before I found the mirror on the coffee table again – in almost the exact same position it has been only 25 minutes earlier.           “Why is that mirror on the coffee table?” I asked...

                 When I got married for the first (and only) time, I not only got a husband,   I had a ready-made family. Our boys were 11, 12 and 14 (we were married six weeks prior to the 12 year old turning 13)           I met the youngest one first.   My mom and I had gone over to a quadplex unit to visit someone.   We had knocked at the door but there was no reply.   I don’t know if Randy called “Hi” to us from the tree before or after we knocked.   He smiled brightly but gave no information about himself nor inquired who we were.    As it turned out the sister we were searching for had moved out and Randy was actually living at that particular unit with his two brothers and dad.           Randy was ten going on eleven.   We had the same size hands at the time.   ...