I ran to Grammy Genevieve because,
reading of Margret Fuller and the Dial,
I learned she’d found no flesh on those
“oversouled” philosophers she edited
and I had found no soul in that knuckle dragging
linebacker who’d been tackling me
in the back of his pickup.

Mothen had been half a help.

“Find your own soul first,” she’d preached.
“If you find no one else, you’ll have yourself,
which ought to be enough, anyway. I always pray for you.”

Middling advice from someone who’d found no one
since the “love of her life”, my father,
left her for his slick, hussy secretary!
How trite!
How cliched!

I’d telephoned,

so Grammy was waiting on her porch.

I cried everything to her.

She stared at me, smiled and said,
“So, you’ve come to Grammy for more than tea and pie.
Dear, it’s about time.
You’re old enough to be serious with, so I won’t
fool with you.

Your Mother should have been a nun.

She never found herself, looking, as she always was,
for some man to ‘complete her’.

The fool!

No one else should be needed for you to be you.
Do it yourself or it doesn’t get done.
If you must have a God in on it, so be it,
but the best verse in the Bible, besides
“Jesus wept”
is
“Don’t be to righteous,
why should you die before your time?”

You never met my mother, did you.”
To bad.

There’s one who never got to righteous.
Never married.
Died before her time anyway, she did,
but it wasn’t the fault of righteousness.
Know the first time I felt a mans,

organ?

I was seven.

Lucky number, right?

One of Mommas boyfriends, teaching me to swim
in a lake near his cabin.
Jack was his name.
Your Great Grandma was sunning on the beach.
He swam me to his raft, kept it between Momma and us,
held the raft with one hand,
pulled me to him with the other,
my bottom against his hard,

well,

penis-

Don’t blush,
honey,

your linebacker
has one,
I’m sure.

Jack moaned a little and I learned to swim.

That night I heard Momma screaming,
“Am I as good as my baby!!?”
She punched him.
Kicked him out of his own cabin!
He slept in his own wood-shed!

Isn’t that marvelous!

Next morning, Momma packed us up in her old Ford truck.
She never went anywhere she couldn’t get away from
on her own power.
She said I’d done nothing wrong.
I believed her.
“I learned to swim, Momma!”
“Good for you,” she said.
“Now just keep swimming”.

And I did.

Finding myself while I swam
into the arms of a big life guard named
Walter Keller,
your Grandfather.

He went to war one week after Pearl Harbor and came home
2 years, 10 months, 1 week and 4 days later
with a limp and a plan.

He came to me before he went to his house.
He held me, kissed me and said,

“I just came back from Hell to get us the hell out of here.

Pack.

We’re going to college.
We’ll get hitched when we’re ready”

I was ready then,
but I packed anyway.

A week later we left.

Walter’s Momma cried.
His Pops gave him 200$ and a good luck hug.
Four months later we were married.
I loved the marrow out of his bones.
He filled me with seed.

Only one took though.

Your Mother.

Don’t let that worry you.
Your Daddy was a good man,

( where ever he is,
what ever he did.)

He just couldn’t take being denied any more.

And you have Walter’s and my blood in your veins,
which means your mind is sharp and your body’s warm.

And I like that other young man, Ricardo.
You went to the prom with him.

You go to college.

If he stays home to work at his padre’s restaurant,
so be it.
A math teacher and a chef isn’t an impossible match.

So, you have a good time.
You’ll find your way.

Want some peach cobbler?

I did.