Phoebe Martone: Various thoughts that flow through the transom of my mind

 

"Look," my mother would say when I was a kid, "it's the Good Year blimp," and she'd point. The sky was a fascinating place. Sometimes there'd be an explosive noise, and my father would say, "someone's breaking the sound barrier." He said it meant the plane was going faster than sound. I struggled to comprehend that. So exotic up there in the limitless skies, way beyond what we could ever imagine; the thought of infinity makes me dizzy, but it stretches the imagination.

 

I have a problem. I can't stop loving someone once I've loved them. I can stop liking them. I can stop trusting them. But I can't stop loving them. So I still love four men. Either that or leftover love from years past still clings to me. What's the difference. I still love.

 

Flea dosing time. Not my favorite. I have a trio of the most squiggly, wriggly animals whenever it comes to flea control. I actually plan it out in my head, but I'm a defeatist. I know they can fly, if only for a brief moment, and that's all it takes. And they rat on me. They run out the kitty door and tell the others in the yard, "You better lay low. That nutty lady is at it again."

 

I have a scary looking weed out back that I need to pull out with my leather garden gloves. It's lethal looking and is growing like the plant in The Little Shop of Horrors. It's got loads of thorns and it keeps saying "feed me, feed me." Can't put it off any longer. Going in. . . I only managed to get it because I'm bigger. Next time I might not be so lucky.

 

My first apartment in San Francisco was beautiful. I think it was 1963. It was in a building right up against Stanyan Street where the park began. I loved feeling lonely in my trench coat in the fog, like somebody out of a movie. Good thing the deli wasn't far away. My mother was a wonderful cook, but she was back in New Jersey. My apartment had glass cabinets, a clawfoot tub with a view of the telephone wires, a marble sink, and plaster designs on the ceilings.

 

I remember the Blue Unicorn Cafe where there were interesting characters, and homemade cake and people playing chess. Sometimes a poetry reading or someone playing a guitar. I remember the Columbo Cafe in north beach, a tiny Italian restaurant with affordable prices, left over from times past. And the bookstores and thrift shops. My friend Mary sewed the costumes for The Lamplighters, a Gilbert and Sullivan acting company and I volunteered to sew on various trims. She told me to hold the line when the actors asked for too many geegaws on their costumes. I learned to be tough.

 

We had the first tv on the block and that's probably why the boys let me play stickball with them. I was an outdoor kid, loved my bike and my roller skates, but I was never good at sports. For stickball, you used a stick and a pink bouncer. It worked very well in the vacant lots and the apartment parking lot around the corner – only I didn't have to go around the corner; I'd cut through the back of my yard to the apartments. I liked being around the boys, maybe because I always wanted a brother. I told my mother that an older brother would be nice.

 

I used to climb trees when I was a kid. In those days, the term "tomboy" was still popular. I looked it up, and it said current meaning is a "wild, romping girl (well, I did wear rompers), who acts like a spirited boy." I broke my wrist climbing a cherry tree when the branch broke. I couldn't swim all summer and it itched inside my cast. Sometimes when I climbed trees my imaginary playmate, Marilyn Monroe, would show up. She liked to climb trees too, and she was better at it than I was. She wore a plaid shirt and jeans and said how great it was not having to dress up.

 

My mother went on mosquito patrol right before bedtime. She walked around the house with a fly swatter and checked all walls for the little vectors. It's a drag to turn out the light and hear one buzzing near your face. Mosquitos had an appetite for my cousins, and we all knew it. We three girls would set out on the trail between their house and the back end of Rahway Park and its swimming pool. They always got more mosquito bites than I did. There was something about them that mosquitos went for. If they got hard up, they went after me, but as long as I was with my cousins, I was safe. I did feel a bit guilty when I saw them scratching, but I was still glad they didn't like me so much. 

 

Phoebe Martone   8/29/2022