Pamela Pohlman – 1st Place 2023
We made our way down Estero Boulevard on Fort Myers Beach. I wasn’t sure
where I was. Landmarks were flattened, street signs missing, with buildings washed into the
street or gone completely. PVC piping stuck out of the ground where structures had been. Boats
were in the streets, in yards, on top of homes. Hundreds of cars were everywhere; in ponds, in
pools, overturned in driveways. Homes and businesses had holes in the walls, where you could
see from front to back, some with no sign of any personal belongings, others piled high with
unrecognizable stuff. Washing machines stood in a line like soldiers ready for battle where the
laundromat once stood. They lost the war to Mother Nature. The Seven-Eleven stores and gas
stations collapsed. Publix and CVS were boarded up. The musty odor of rot made me sneeze.
The scene of devastation became real. A picture of Hell.
Stepping out of the car in our driveway, the song by Annie Lennox, Walking on Broken
Glass, came to mind. Neighbors, like zombies, moved slowly with white faces and vacant eyes,
as they shoveled out their homes. Welcome home.
. . .
My husband, Bill, and I watched the weather channel for updates on the storm’s
direction. We decided to leave two days earlier than planned to avoid evacuation traffic. The
house was prepared with storm shutters, hurricane windows and a steel roof. Storage bins
were placed on high shelves in the closets and important documents put in a box in the car.
On September 28, 2023, we arrived in Indiana excited for our granddaughter’s wedding.
Then Bill received a video on his cell phone from our neighbor showing rising water above the
fence between our yards. It gave us a glimpse of what would come, that would change our lives
forever.
Two days after the wedding, we borrowed our son-in-law’s truck filled with donated tshirts, five gas cans, a shop vac, blankets, gloves, plastic bags, cleaning supplies and two grain
shovels and headed back to Florida.
After Hurricane Ian surged over Estero Island, residents were banned from entering as
rescue and recovery responders searched for bodies, and heavy equipment cleared the
mounds of sand and debris from the main streets. Finally allowed on the beach, we woke before
dawn, put on jeans and black sneakers purchased at Walmart. I grabbed the t-shirt my daughter
had given me that said “Not Today Satan.” The drive to the island was a slow crawl through
checkpoints. As the sun came up, we approached the Matanza bridge. To our left was our first
view of the commercial shrimp boats out of the water, piled on top of the trailer park.
During the drive down Estero, I whispered, “Oh My God,” as tears washed my face. We
passed Hercules Street, when Bill began to cry, unusual for a guy who rarely displays his
feelings. His friend’s house was gone. Mitch had been washed away trying to escape.
The front door was blocked by furniture. We entered our house through the lanai,
overwhelmed by the site. Stud walls, furniture, a staircase, an industrial propane tank, and wood
filled the pool. Not our stuff. My leather recliner, that comforted me through my broken femur
and knee replacement, sat against the wall of the pool having traveled from the living room. In
the kitchen, the odor of rotted food hit us. I slipped on the floor covered with debris and slimy
mud. On the counter sat the Kitchen Aid mixer, having not moved from its regular spot ready for
Bill to make pizza dough.
With some hired help, we moved from room to room carrying out furniture to pile at the
street. We used a cart to load the smaller items; books, art work, clothes, bedding. Our dining
room table fell apart in our hands, but the Fiestaware dishes sat on the floor without a chip or
crack. It seemed as though large pieces of furniture were moved and tossed by the pressure of
the water. Smaller fragile things simply floated gently to the floor.
One afternoon, I took another load to the street. It started to rain. I stood with eyes to
heaven and screamed, “Come on, really? You haven’t sent enough water? Give us a break.”
I searched through piles of mud covered clothes, hoping to rescue some. The only
clothes we had were those we had packed for our fall trip, none appropriate for the Florida heat.
To the rising hill of garbage, I dragged the soggy clothes. The grain shovels scooped up what
was left on the floor. A squeegee removed the slimy residual water from the slippery surface.
One of the workers, a young man in shorts and Crocs, stepped on a broken stem from a
martini glass and cut his foot. Fortunately, we had a first aid shelf in the garage with Lysol
wipes, hand sanitizer, BandAids, and antiseptic cream. I had a supply of masks and gloves and
encouraged everyone to wear both. The environment in which we were working was thought to
be full of toxic material. Bill and I found that after spending time on the island, we would have
upper respiratory issues, itching skin and overall fatigue.
The first couple of days we packed ham sandwiches and bottled water for lunches for us
and our workers. Then we discovered a food trailer from the American Red Cross, who
distributed warm meals, and set up porta-potties, shower stations, and a truck full of cleaning
supplies, bottled water, and ice. Reminiscent of our neighborhood spaghetti dinners that we
hosted on our lanai, with linen tablecloths, napkins and candle light, now we invited our
neighbors to sit at a folding table and chairs, still holding water in the legs, rag wiped of the mud,
to eat a Red Cross lunch out of a styrofoam container with a plastic fork. At the end of the day,
exhausted and filthy, we rolled down the car window and received styrofoam containers from
World Central Kitchen and Mercy Chef volunteers, who passed out dinner to take home.
We moved from room to room, hauling everything we owned to the growing debris pile.
My studio, a place where I found peace, creativity, and joy was tumbled with thread and ribbon
of all colors wrapped around fabric with cabinets turned over, books and tools in the water. The
ceiling was hanging, with the bed overturned and my sewing machine buried in the rubble. We
also found Bill’s mothers portable Singer sewing machine. Many years ago, she taught sewing and had one of the first portable Singer machines made. Both machines were irreparable and
headed to the mountain of trash. I cried my way down the driveway to hide in the garage.
After the drywall was removed and mold remediation completed, I walked back in the
house, greeted by an empty canvas, a skeleton of the past. A person’s choice of color,
furnishings, pictures, books and mementoes reveals a portrait of the individual. Our life together
had been erased. Everything was gray. The orange walls were concrete block, only contrasted
by the wood studs. The colorful kitchen tile had been ripped up to expose gray concrete. The
custom turquoise and cream draperies were gone. The white bookcases filled with book jackets
of red, yellow, blue, green and black, and brilliant pictures of puzzle boxes, gone. The furniture
of beige, turquoise and shades of orange, gone. Collected artwork, gone.
Some people have said, “It’s just stuff.” It’s true that furniture, dishes, pots, pans and
clothes can be replaced, but not my Mother’s high school graduation picture or my Dad’s
military discharge papers. Irreplaceable is the poem my granddaughter, Zoie, wrote that was
framed and hung in the guest room. The essay that another granddaughter, Samantha, wrote
about family gatherings at the lake house, that I carefully kept with my writing material, has
washed away. The folder of my favorite recipes and Lucy’s Father’s Day picture has
disappeared. The oval antique framed picture of Bill’s Dad and Uncle as little boys is soaked in
muck and irreparable. Vanished are photos of mine and my children’s childhood, not saved on
the Cloud. Mementos of trips we took to Germany and Italy are gone. So many things that I
think of and miss. Sometime in the future, my memory will fade and the belongings to remind
me of who I am are missing.
We won’t rebuild our home on Estero Island, but we will rebuild our lives. Maybe a casa
in Mexico, or a log house in Michigan, or a condo in Indiana will be our future home, filled with
color and new reminders of who we are and what is important to us.
SEARCHING FOR ME
Patricia Sheehy – 2nd Place Non-Fiction 2023
We’d been married a little over three years when I had my meltdown. It surprised even
me. I thought I was doing okay. Or okay enough.
I was nearly thirty at the time; my husband was thirty-nine. I was Jim’s second wife; he
was my one and only. Along with the I-do’s, I became stepmom to four kids, his two rebellious
teenagers moving in with us almost immediately, the two younger ones floating between houses.
And then there was his widowed father, paralyzed on his right side and aphasiac from a stroke;
he would live with us every June through October, rotating between the homes of his three sons,
one in Florida, the other in California and, us, in Connecticut. I didn’t go in blindly. I knew all of
this was waiting in the wings of my life, part of the marriage commitment. But knowing and
knowing are two different things.
Energetic and wide-eyed, I buckled down and tackled everything on my plate, including
working while attending college — determined to get my degree even if it took the eight years it
actually did take — while Jim met the demands of his engineering profession, often working
nights and weekends. Everything was in service to those we loved and to the future we
envisioned.
While most brides enter the territory of their new life, step by step, kid by kid, I was
shopping and cooking, working and studying, managing temperaments and expectations for the
lot of us, struggling to weave the threads of our life into a cohesive whole. And, in turns out,
losing myself in the process.
We pulled together enough money to buy land and finance the building of what we called
our forever home. We served as the general contractors, overseeing every step of the process and
doing much of the work ourselves. I was thrilled. I was scared. We were building the home, I
was sure, I would die from. It’s not that the house itself was going to kill me but that, in all
likelihood, it’s where I would live until I died. In fact, I actually said that very thing — out loud
— while hosting our first Labor Day cookout, one that would establish the traditions for a
lifetime of cookouts to come.
“Well, here we are,” I announced, trying for an upbeat tone, a toast to our present and
future life, “we’ve just built the house I’m going to die from.”
Looking back, I’m not sure how my voice and body language delivered that statement. Or
how it was received. I imagine there were tense sideway glances, solicitous pats on my back,
nods and smiles, nobody knowing whether to offer sympathy or congratulations. And, really,
why would there ever be another house? This one was perfect. Two stories with an inground
pool and walk-out basement, set on a pond that gave us ducks and geese. And poop. Yep, there
was poop to deal with. In the yard. And in my life.
Everyone wanted something from me. A ride here. A meal they didn’t hate there. A
research paper to write, bills to pay, teenagers to shop for, attitudes to quell, an ex-wife to
manage. And on it went. I was getting into work late and asking professors for extensions on
projects. Out went my good humor and bold, artsy style. Out went makeup and long hair curled
with hot rollers. I delivered the best I could on all fronts and opted out when it came to me.
Lying in bed, awake at 3 a.m., in what Fitzgerald called the real dark night of the soul, I’d
question myself. What was wrong with me? Look at what I had: a beautiful home, a caring
husband, the promise of a coveted college degree, a houseful of individuals striving to become a
family. A forever husband. A forever house. I was secure. I felt trapped. This was it. Was it
really?
I pushed down all of those feelings that beautiful Labor Day afternoon, said no more
about dying in this dream house, and silently served dessert.
Fast forward to a crisp November evening. Jim came home from work, found me
standing in the dining room looking out the bay window at the darkening sky. The house was
unnaturally quiet, only the two of us in this typically noisy and crowded space. His father was
now in California; the weekend kids were with their mom, and our teenagers were off with
friends.
I was dressed in one of my standard work outfits, this one in basic beige: blouse, skirt,
nylons and pumps, neutral and easy, right along with my newly chopped-off hair, a sensible short
style.
“Hey there,” Jim said, slipping his arm around my waist. “This is nice.”
“I want a red raincoat,” I responded.
“You have a raincoat,” he answered.
“I want a red raincoat.” My voice hit a demanding note.
“Well, okay, you handle the bills. If we can afford it, go out and buy one. If you really
think you need it.”
That’s when it happened. The Meltdown.
I slumped to the ground. Tears streamed down my face. A sad figure heaped on the
carpeting. Beige, of course. There I was: beige on beige, pounding the floor. “You don’t get it. I
want a RED raincoat” I raised my head. “I’m not me anymore. I hate my hair. I hate beige.” I
tugged at my polyester blouse wanting to strip it from my body. But all I’d reveal would be a
beige bra. “I’m invisible. You couldn’t find me in a crowd if you tried.”
Jim pulled me up and into his arms. “You’re my wife. I’d find you anywhere.” He
thumbed my wet cheeks. “You look cute in short hair.” He tugged at the ends, an I-don’t-get-it
smile forming along his face. “You don’t even like red.”
I stomped. I cried. I pushed at his chest. “It’s a METAPHOR.”
If I wasn’t so upset I would have laughed at the puzzled look on his face. My poor,
mystified, literal-thinking husband. I could see him flashing back to 8th grade English, the words
metaphor and simile pulsing through his brain.
“It’s a metaphor.” My voice softened. I’d lost my steam “I don’t need a raincoat. I need
me.”
We got through that moment. And in all the years that followed, I never did buy a red
raincoat. But, ultimately, I did find me. I shed that neutral uniform, glued and stitched together
the people in my life and crafted a family that’s loving and close. I made friends with the short
hair and I indulged in a ten dollar psychic reading that put me on the path of my destiny as a
writer. We built a home inside our dream house, facing death and illness, meeting challenges,
making memories that would carry us into what Jim calls “the autumn of our years.” Over time,
there were other melt-downs, other metaphors. Occasionally they were his. Mostly, they were
mine.
And then, after nearly 40 years, it was time: we sold our forever home and opted for a
new adventure, for a warmer climate, sea-breezes and one floor living. A new forever home.
This one, for sure, I would die from.
But once again my clothes were all wrong. They belonged to a northeast woman who’d
finally developed the perfect balance between artsy and corporate, between wife and mother and
working woman. That woman didn’t belong in a place where skorts and cropped pants were the
outfits of the day. Everything about me was stuffy, but I wasn’t ready for a deep tan and
bedazzled tops. I had no idea who I was in this tropical landscape that people call paradise.
“I’m lost,” I confessed to Jim as we sipped wine on our lanai, watching the sun drop into
the horizon. “The kids are gone. No they’re there, we’re gone. Our work, our friends. Us. It’s all
gone. Who am I now?”
“Is this another red raincoat thing?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe. I guess.” This time I laughed more than cried.
He swept his arms over my head — strong, caring wings — always there to protect me
from life’s storms, to find me when I can’t find myself. “I’ve got you covered. We’ll figure it
out.”
Change takes time. And I was feeling that I had so little time left to conquer the
challenges that come with a major lifestyle shift. Traversing the unknown when you’re pushing
past 70 is far different from when you’re pushing 30 or 40. Or even 50.
A few days later, Jim walked into the house and handed me a gift bag.
“I think this is a metaphor,” he said.
I dug through the tissue paper and unearthed a travel-sized umbrella.
It was red.
Audrey Hepburn and Me
MaryLou Williams – 3rd Place Non-Fiction 2023
In 1953, I was twenty years old. In 1953, Audrey Hepburn was twenty-four years old and an overnight
star. She won an academy award for her debut performance in Roman Holiday. She went on to star in one hit after another – Sabrina, Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, My Fair Lady, and a dozen other Audrey Hepburn classics. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was her signature role. She was a fabled actress, a beauty, a fashion icon, and thin. The little black dress she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was an icon of the twentieth century and the most famous “little black dress” of all time. Her slender figure was legendary. She made being very thin fashionable.
I wanted to be like Audrey Hepburn – the thinnest person of the twentieth century. And the best dressed. But I was plump. And not a fashionista. I was a school teacher. Haute couture was not my style. Even when I was not in school-teacher mode, I dressed down instead of up. How could I be fashionable if I wasn’t thin? How could I wear the kind of clothes Audrey Hepburn wore – like the white organza gown with the floral embroidery in which she swept William Holden off his feet in Sabrina; or the red strapless sheath in which she cascaded down the steps of the Louvre in Funny Face, throwing her arms in the air to show off her sheer crimson shawl and elbow length white gloves; or the black and white masterpiece topped by the colossal chapeau she wore to the Ascot races in My Fair Lady? How could anyone live up to that level of chic? Who could look that preposterously good? Who could be that preposterously thin? Who could be the work of art that was Audrey Hepburn? But that is what I aspired to be.
I went on diets – the South Beach diet, the Mediterranean diet, the Macrobiotic diet, Jenny Craig, Pritikin, Atkins, the Weight Watchers diet, the Eat Right for your Blood-type diet, the Cabbage Soup diet, the raw food diet, the liquid diet, the Paleolithic diet, the Scarsdale diet, the high protein diet, the 120-Year diet (the author died at 79). I became a vegetarian, a pescetarian, a fruitarian. There were well over 100 of these diets. I went on all of them.
My efforts produced results. I got plumper. Audrey Hepburn did not. She retained her title as the
Thinnest Person of the Twentieth Century. She remained a fabled actress, a great beauty, a fashion icon, a work of art. I remained plump, which rhymes with lump and frump.
But I never stopped trying. With all these attempts, I gradually went from 140 pound to 165 pounds. The graph of my weight went up and down like the stock market. But the dips always rebounded to ever higher heights, onward and upward – a bull market.
I thought 140 was bad, but 165! A far cry from Audrey Hepburn’s 110. After all the diets and all the
years, it occurred to me that diets didn’t work. I made a study of nutrition. After I retired, I went to school to get a degree in nutrition. I even wrote a book on the subject. The book I wrote was called Why Dieting Makes You Fat and What to Do Instead. What I decided to do instead was never to diet again – not in the sense of going hungry, eating food I didn’t like or depriving myself. I ate natural, unprocessed food that tasted good – no sugar, no white flour, no food in cans, boxes, jars, packages, bags. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Like Scarlett O’Hara I vowed never to go hungry again.
Eating this way, my weight gradually settled at about 140 pounds, give or take. Ironically, I ended up right where I had started, at 140 pounds. Still a far cry from Audrey Hepburn’s 110. But better than 165. And a weight I could maintain. Over the years, I should say decades, my attitude had changed. I no longer aspired to be the work of art that was Audrey Hepburn. I just wanted to be the best me that I could be. I didn’t have to look preposterously good. Good enough would do.
After I retired, I moved down to Florida. I was shopping in a boutique for some Florida clothes when a
woman sauntered in who had great style. She was wearing great colors, great design, great accessories, great jewelry. And she was greatly overweight. This was a great surprise to me. I thought being stylish and being overweight were mutually exclusive. I was wrong. Her outfit was a show stopper. It was a fire engine red duster that came to her ankles, underneath was a white tank top and white chiffon bottoms. A long black onyx necklace, dangling black earrings, and a broad band black bracelet accentuated the red and the white.
She looked good. She looked very good. In fact, she looked preposterously good. She was a work of art.
This woman taught me a great lesson. And she answered that question: “How could I wear the kind of
clothes Audrey Hepburn wore”? The answer was I couldn’t and shouldn’t. I looked for clothes that would look good on me, not on Audrey Hepburn or anyone else. I found them. I would go to great lengths to find them, asking perfect strangers where they had bought an outfit I admired. People were delighted to tell me. I scoured fashion catalogs. I found shops with colorful, flowing, whimsical, theatrical ensembles. Like black and white striped pants topped with a bright red tunic, a peach poncho trimmed with sequins with jewelry to match the sequins, a hot pink jacket with puffed cuffs at the end of the sleeves and over-sized black buttons. I found big, bold, colorful, striking jewelry like imitation flowers made of brilliant stones. I became a fashionista.
Nothing had changed except my attitude. And that changed everything.
Audrey Hepburn was unique. There has never been anyone like her before. There has never been anyone like her since. There will never be anyone like her again. And the same can be said for me. I am unique, 140 pounds of haute couture. As Oscar Wilde put it, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.
Dream Your Ink
Deborah Burghardt – 1st Place Non-Fiction 2022
I suspect to distract me from his needle, the anesthesiologist prepping me for cataract
surgery mentions my tattoo. I wonder if he has one hidden beneath his scrubs. “There’s always a
story,” he says, as if he might like to hear mine.
“For my sister. Merri.” I rub my hand across my tattooed wrist like Aladdin his lamp,
but alas, no sparkling purple smoke and no giant Genie appear. Unnecessary. The intricate image
possesses a quiet magic that enchants my life through memories.
I close my eyes to see: Our blue popsicle lips, red fireball tongues. Merri and me, hula
hoops whirling. Holding our breath underwater in a backyard swimming pool. Playing beyond
baby dolls with real-live daughters. Merri and me, tackling multiple sclerosis (MS)—twice
***
On a sunny September day in 2013, my niece, Autumn, and I pull into Crossbones
Tattoos off Fort Myers Beach, a small studio sandwiched between Tina’s Bar and a Bait Shop in
a strip mall anchored by Goodwill. The “Dream Your Ink,” sign painted in swirling pastel letters
on the window affirms what we’ve been doing for months—seeking symbols we could live with
permanently.
Inside, demonic skulls, coiled serpents, empty-eyed zombies, and fire-breathing dragons
glare at us from the walls, threaten to leap onto our skin. Not exactly what we have in mind.
A short, muscular man with shaven head approached us. “Hi, I’m Steel. ”
Autumn’s eyes widen. A die-hard Steelers fan, she takes his name as a sign. “Okay then.
You’re meant to be our artist.”
We tell him the connection and learn that his nickname originated with childhood friends.
“Yeah, they thought they could mess with me. A serious miscalculation. You know—due to my
size. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no bully.” His smile reads shy. “I’m really kind of a teddy bear.”
I start helping Autumn explain her ink dream. Oh dear, maybe interrupted her. Steel’s
smile slides into a scowl. “Please. Don’t say anymore. Her body, her choice.”
My cheeks a-blush, I slink away to check Steel’s restroom. According to the Google-god
that’s how to check out the cleanliness of a tattoo studio. I found a slightly stained sink, soap,
paper towels, and the toilet flushed. I’d seen far worse.
I defended myself to my reflection in the mirror. You weren’t trying to control Autumn’s
decision, only offer guidance. You started young, after all—being expected to substitute for your
mother with your younger sister, and father too. They asked you questions and wanted your
opinion on what lay beyond you to know. All because the plaque scars in your mother’s brain
and spine caused her nervous system to go haywire, short circuit, spark, and burn out.
***
Autumn flew to Florida at my invitation to celebrate what would have been her mom’s
60th birthday by getting tattoos. My idea surprised people who knew me. Fair enough. I had often
judged tattoos to be a passing fancy, a senseless fad, and worse, an act of violence committed
against the body. Absurd, but I still associated tattoos with drunken sailors and peg leg pirates
who flaunted vile images of naked women on their chests.
My daughter, Amber, had shocked me by getting a tattoo at 19, as I shocked my husband
when I revealed my plan to do the same at 64. Back then, I’d convinced myself tattoos ruined
any chances of landing an impressive job. Let’s just say, that didn’t happen.
Her decision did stoke my curiosity though and led me to consult on the matter with the
college students I taught. They argued tattoos reflected a person’s identity. Symbols inked into
skin represented words to-live-by and recognized lost loved ones. Tattoos were not destruction,
rather preservation. Not mutilation, rather art, created on a living canvas.
I reconstructed the significance of Amber’s tattoo—the crown on her ankle,
representation of her surname, King. In her ink dream, she challenged the confinement of the
position to males, reveled in her sense of worth, and established the intention to reign over her
life. Times had changed and I wanted to change with them—be a person capable of evolving.
When Autumn expressed the same fears, I had experienced but had never voiced, I saw
the opportunity to act on my new awareness. “What if I forget my mother’s face?” she said.
“Will I feel guilty for not thinking about her enough forever?”
She was 17 when her mother died. I was 18 when my mother died, 45 when we lost Merri
—both from MS. My niece needed more than old photographs and family lore. She needed her
mother’s spirit to exist in her body, her mother’s traits to run through her blood. And so did I.
***
Autumn goes first to show me the pain is bearable. Steel tattoos “MBS”—her mother’s
initials in black and red (Merri’s favorite colors) on the underside of Autumn’s left wrist. He
calls her desire to place them facing her “upside down,” but she likes having a secret only she
and her mom share.
“What do you have in mind?” Steel wanders over to the counter where I thumb through a
Floral Tattoos album. “You don’t need that. I’ll design something for you.
***
Last time I saw Merri, she lay on white satin billows in an ebony box as finely lacquered
as a Chinese chest. I could see my drawn face, my vacant eyes in its sheen. After Dad died,
Merri called us “orphans.” I rejected the label. With Merri in the world, I felt neither abandoned,
nor stranded. “We’re the Burghardt Girls—we’ll sister-parent each other like always.”
Who was I now?
We surrounded Merri with roses. Only roses. Only red. Her favorite—perhaps because
they symbolized love, romance, elegance, and expense. Perhaps because of the two red rose
bushes in our back yard. Had she remembered our planting radishes in front of them? The
fragrance of roses and fresh overturned dirt? The taste of dirt on our lips, so eager were we to eat
the treat? Maybe Dad’s habit rubbed off on her. For as long as those roses bloomed, he picked
one for the pink hobnail vase he set beside Mum
***
Instead of red roses, I choose a sophisticated pink I call “rose.” Rose, my color, after my
flower girl debut in fourth grade. Mum sewed me a rose velvet dress with satin cuffs, collar, and
cummerbund. “More flattering than red for blondes,” she said. “More surprising for a December
wedding.”
My turn to lie back in the black leather recliner. Extend my right arm. Steel sits close,
masked, his whirring tattoo gun loaded with a tiny needle. I close my eyes and imagine each
prick as a dot on a map leading to Merri. Each prick a portal to our past, our secret world of
sisters. Some pricks register sharper in my skin than others, though none so sharp as the grief
that stabbed me upon her death.
Steel tattoos a rose blossom for Merri and two buds for my parents. He tips the larger
rose-colored petals in red, sensitive to my ink dream of representing both Burghardt girls. Tiny
leaves sprout from a spiraling stem that ends in a curlicue—like the path we walked to
Anthony’s Beach on summer vacation, the grapevines we rode through the woods, our deserted
jump rope.
***
Autumn and I agree, since dreaming our ink almost a decade ago, the ache of missing
Merri lessened immediately, and has lasted. Sure, time helps heal, but I feel the magic released in
a rub to my wrist—Merri’s spirit radiates from deep within me to the place my love for her has
been etched into my skin. She comes to me face beaming, her hands overflowing with
stories—stories that float straight from heaven to our rose and radish patch.
A Slip of the Scalpel
Diane Parnell – 2nd Place Non-Fiction 2022
MY MOTHER WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE OF CANCER. At least that was the
assumption I was under. It seemed that doctors were always digging holes into her body wit
their sharp, silver scalpels, and then sewing her up with harsh, black sutures.
I was ten when the cutting began. I remember sitting in the kitchen at suppertime, hands
tucked under my bottom, fretting on the day she disappeared, not knowing where she went or
why or if she would be coming back. It was unsettling not having her there, the room seemed
unbalanced and half-empty even with the rest of us – me, my nine siblings and my father –
crammed around the table.
My mother had only wanted four children but ended up with ten, double-cursed it
seemed: Catholic and fertile. Debbie was the first born and fifteen at the time she disappeared.
Peter, the baby was three.
I remember Debbie making grilled Velveeta cheese sandwiches that night, cutting them
into triangles and passing them around. She didn‟t hover above us in that familiar way that my
mother did and she kept stealing glances at my father, as though she were waiting for him to say
something. I had noticed a lot of whispering between them earlier which deepened my worry.
There were times that I thought I might suffocate on the secrets in that house.
We learned about my mother‟s whereabouts in bits and pieces. She was in the hospital
but not to have a baby this time. Her doctor had found a tumor in a gland in her neck and
believed is might be cancer – Hodgkin‟s disease to be specific. The gland needed to be removed.
She’ll be home in three days, my father assured us.
But when three days passed and my mother was still gone, I waited expectantly for more
information, more clues about what was happening with her, and why there was a delay. There
was tension in the air around the table – different than the usual tension. This one was quieter,
and felt less threatening because my father shared it rather than caused it. Finally, he spoke about
what had happened, about how there had been an „accident‟ in the operating room. His face was
pale and his voice uncharacteristically soft. He looked at us, actually looked at each one of us as
he relayed the story.
“The doctor‟s scalpel slipped and sliced too deep, cutting into your mother‟s jugular vein.
She almost bled to death on the operating table.”
The news came as a gut-punch and with it fear. Fear that my mother was going to die.
Fear that it would then be just us and my father. I had never considered my mother‟s mortality
before, and I waited for reassurance that she was not going to die, that she was going to return
home. That comfort came not from him but from my sister.
“Don‟t worry,” Debbie jumped in, responding to all of our worried faces. “She‟s going to
be okay.”
“We‟ll say an additional prayer for her,” my father added.
Later, in bed I wondered what would become of us if my mother died and we were left
completely to my father. Would he be capable of expressing grief? Would he soften at her loss or
would it enrage him as so many things, big and small, did. As it turned out the tumor in the gland was benign. The cancer scare was just that; a scare. But the results of the slipped scalpel were not just a scare but very real. When my mother finally came home, she was pale and had a thick, white gauze bandage around her neck. She looked fragile and older, and every time she turned her head it was with a slow, deliberate motion that caused her to wince. She wasn‟t allowed to bend over or lift anything heavy because of the deep incision that would take weeks to heal.
Debbie stopped doing her outside chores as she took over the cooking, cleaning and
caring for my little brothers. Years later, she told me that she had worried that if mom died she
would be trapped on the farm raising the rest of us and never have the chance to go to college.
We lived in harmony as a family for a while after mom‟s scare, me and my siblings lined
up at the arm of the chair that she spent a lot of time in during her recovery, asking how she was
doing, did she need anything? My father didn‟t make any demands on her as she moved slowly
around the house, nor did he raise his voice, his fist, or any other weapon to us. We ate a lot of
sandwiches for supper during that time as Debbie took the helm of running the household.
It seems wrong to say that one of my few good childhood memories was when my
mother had a cancer scare and barely escaped death. And selfish to think about how good those
weeks afterward were for me. While she withstood the daily pain of her slow recovery, I did not
suffer one blow from my father. I‟ve often wondered what I would do if I were allowed to go
back in time and change the course of that event. Would I prevent that scalpel from slipping and
save my mother from all the pain she had to endure as a result of the doctor‟s mistake? Or would
I let it happen, welcoming the reprieve from my father‟s attacks at my mother‟s expense? These
questions haunt me still.
