Because the women’s population is not equal in size
There are some countries
Where the women
Must get married at the age of seven
Because their families are so poor
There are some countries where the men
Stay with their families
Cannot fulfill their dreams
And they lose their courage
There exist men
Who love women
But the women do not care about their feelings
There exist men
That keep secrets
And they get upset
When they are asked
To show their true self
They don’t know who they are
There are some countries
Where a few women
They love and dream for a perfect romance
But the men they love
They don’t show any interest
There are some countries
Where the men
Beat the women
Or murder them
Because they went to super market
Without escort
They exist men
That meet women
But they do not have a relationship
Because their families
Do not approve that specific woman
So they go away
There are countries where a couple
Can be in love
And just see each other
Only from distance.
There are some men
They stay silent
They say white
And black every day
They are afraid of love.
There are some men
That keep their feelings hidden
For years
Until one day
They get old
And they discovered
What they lost…
There are some men
That love money
More than women
And they are closed doors to love.
Love, is a free path
An energy that can realize so many wishes
Love is for the believers..
Love is for the strongest hearts
Looking for a country
Where men and women
Will live in harmony
Surrounding themselves
Only with love and hugs
Looking for this country….
Eva Lianou Petropoulou Lianou
ANALYSIS
Eva Lianou Petropoulou’s poem, “Relationships,” delves into the complexities of human connection across diverse cultural and societal landscapes. It paints a poignant picture of the challenges, hopes, and dreams associated with love and relationships. The poem underscores the impact of gender inequality on relationships, particularly in societies where women are marginalized or subjected to restrictive norms. It highlights the role of cultural expectations in shaping romantic relationships, often leading to compromises and sacrifices.
The poem explores the pain and frustration of unrequited love, where one’s feelings are not reciprocated. It delves into the fear of vulnerability and the reluctance to express genuine emotions. The poem highlights the suppression of desires and the subsequent regret. The poet yearns for a world where love and understanding prevail, free from societal constraints and personal insecurities. It emphasizes the importance of strength and belief in the power of love to overcome obstacles.
The poem employs vivid imagery to evoke strong emotions and create a sense of empathy. The concept of “country” symbolizes different societal and cultural contexts. The repetition of certain phrases emphasizes key themes and creates a sense of rhythm.
Life is a figure of multi things (history and mystery) we know
We realize this before the eyes
Experienced so good in the moderate weather
So bitter in cold or hot
Life charmed with you
Life bleeds on the leaves in the ground
We pay tribute to the Almighty
We shoot, we arrange tribunals
Justice never comes out
Justice lives in the heart,
Though we leap not looking before
People fight, people die
To see this weapon play
Our Almighty laughs from above
Though the moon still shines in the darkness
The ship can mark the right way in the mid sea
The magnetic power always works from all sides
Make us stable to live in joy and peace
Makes us feel how to make a bond of love
Then why we intrigue for hurting others
If one part cries in pain
The other part must suffer for long
This or that time
Then what’s the life figured out?
‘Think thyself’, reflects clean before the glass.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
26 November, 2024.
Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.
Eros and Thanatos in D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and Reviewing Literature and Film from 1960s
Imaging professorial tutorial of Amy Gerladine in the creative writing program and modernist British fiction novels outlining that “Abstract intellectualism and puritanical industrialism are responsible for causing separation of Paul Morel from his fiancees”. Explain the significance of the contextual statement with textual references.
Miriam possesses the polarized selves between the conscious exterior and the unconscious interior and she is romantic in her soul, and metamorphosed into a transmogrified swinegirl of her own imagination. Both Miriam and her mother are mystical and elusive beings with the former’s preoccupation with the heroes and heroines of Walter Scott fashioned after evangelicalism and ecclesiasticism. Overly religious, overly sentimental, overly sensitive, overly romantic and being overindulgently hyper alienated, she can’t get along with the circle of the loutish lot and other congregationalists of the chapel. Furthermore Miriam is characterized as eager, tense, passionately, thrilled and trembled in contrast with Paul. Her ethereal wonderment and surrealistic allurement regarding the stars of the night sky and the moonlight waves on a dark shore echoes her holy communion of worldly reconciliation in romantic fantasy with Paul.
Apprehensive gulf adrift the romancers Paul and Miriam with the bedevilment of estrangement and separation by spirituality incompatibility complex. Non existence and non beingness invade the heart and soul of the protagonist Paul Morel because of Miriam’s quasi religiosity and quasi romanticist vampiric spirit that “she is one of those who would suck a man’s soul out till he has none of his own left”. Masculinity of Paul Morel is excruciatingly emasculated and this loss of individuality dawns bleakish despondency in correspondence with Paul’s repressive phallic struggle associated with anaclitic love. Independence of both the partners in a relationship is an essential prerequisite for the survival of sustenance and continuity of the gene pool and after all this sexual politics is subverted by the hero and heroines of the novel. Self-sacrifice bestows liberation and salvation through unprecedented fulfilment of the self and the other. Miriam thus epitomes the antithesis of the woman of her lifetime as implied in autobiographical personae of Frieda Weekley; who emancipated Lawrence from Lydia’s traumatic elegiac funebrial and salvages him from overindulgence in narcissistic brooding.
Miriam bolsters the spirit of poetic craftsmanship and artistic personae despite the blurring of the borderline between masculinity and femininity spectrum in correspondence with the clashes between logical intellect and sensual physicality. Even Paul’s successful physical sexuality with Clara Dawes the divorcee doesn’t reach the brink of fruition because of lack of spirit or soul communion. Sexually frustrated Paul ultimately condescends and stoops into the apocalypse of decadence by starving and drugging his cancer suffering mother Gertrude Morel. “Now she was gone abroad into the night, and he was with her still” examines the perennial maternal allegiance of Paul Morel despite the stellar maternal bereavement.
If love can be internalized by the magnificence and glory of the spirit alone then the bodily cravings were to be abjured by the fanaticism of spirituality as implied by Miriam: “Love is a thing of the spirit”. How about the incestuous relationship pervading the narrative in filmic language : “The son and the mother walked down the station road together, with feelings of excitement, having adventure.” Furthermore this dialectic emphases the forebodings of being knitted together in perfect intimacy, which later on witnesses the cantankerous bowdlerizing by the domineering rapaciousness of the drunken Walter Morel. The mother is behind the son’s downfall and character assassination in emasculating him to the chains of libido and in this case the fatherly figure is saintly lionized in declaiming tumult of vociferation. In filmic gaze we visualize framed cuckolding of Paul Morel with Clara Dawes and thus contemplate immortalization of platonic love between these romancers. Iconization of the dark lady of sonnets or the lady of a lifetime Miriam Leivers crystallizes in the silhouette of sylvan and nirvanic utopian phantasmal escapism through the enchantment of boudoir or the tranquil seaside.
Eroticization of repressed phallus reawakens towards a blossoming of fruition from dormancy and transitioning towards maturity and adulthood is starkly contrasted with Paul’s repressive phallic desires with Miriam Leivers as she abhors further kisses. This abhorrence of further kisses is a deterrent imposed by gendered expectations of puritanical anglican society virgin maidens to safeguard their chastity and purity as symbolized by pristine reflection of sanctity. However, filmic heterglossia establishes meta commentary veiling the scenes within scenes from encounter of the Willey Farm. “Oh, come on, my sweetheart” do not erode after all if amnesia reigns for a monumental triumph of fugacious respite and thus the filmmaker evangelizes the cast through the eros motif within the realm of the subconscious.
Prissy Mrs. Gertrude Morel the reincarnate of Miss Havisham wouldn’t tolerate Miriam Leivers and considers her as her vampiric rival competing for the love of Paul Morel. This mirrored mimesis insinuates towards the impetus of maternal allegiance as the groundbreaking avant gardism faced by twentieth century anglican mother’s lads and contemporaneously prevails in today’s urbanism. Afterall Paul doesn’t feel heebie jeebie in catharsis of fleshly pleasure in romanticizing a suffragette anti patriarchal and antimisogynist woman of the then era. Paul is the avatar of the promised land as a reformed Baxter Dawes in love making and while Marie is that alter ego poltergeist of Clara Dawes. Sexual frustration overcome with the bougainvillea and calendula of eroticization and libidinization as universalistic production of love affairs.
Farewell kiss with Clara Dawes is the embodiment of destiny’s twist in the superannuated romantic lifestyle as spotlighted by the parting of Clara’s in anticipation of reconciling with Baxter-dangerous life mate antiheroism being portrayed by the cast. Nevertheless breeding of offsprings and the passing on of genes don’t end marital bliss but prospers with the harvest of antlered pelicans homemaking and ironically the reclusive spirits of the secluded woods reunite for their soul communion transcending platonic love as exclaimed by the diction: “We belong to each other.” Nonetheless Paul Morel’s brooding dependency culminates toward the pinnacle of nihilistic despair and exilic vagabondism that he would transform himself as a bohemian individualist who belongs to none other than himself.
Afterword: I was struck by the turn of phrase used in a standard year-end recounting of those recognized persons who have passed away this year and it started me thinking about what else has been lost, some things perhaps irretrievably, and what might come to pass. Are we entering a liminal time?
Also, The British Economist in their “On language” feature just has published its word of the year for 2024, it is kakistocracy. Here is the concluding paragraph: “Kakistocracy has the crisp, hard sounds of glass breaking. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on whether you think the glass had it coming. But kakistocracy’s snappy encapsulation of the fears of half of America and much of the world makes it our word of the year.”
I remember your laughter, a sun that no longer shines,
your gaze, a lighthouse that the night has buried.
Now only an echo of your voice remains,
a distant whisper that the wind took away.
My heart, a boat adrift in the sea,
without a rudder, without a compass, without a direction to reach.
Tears, waves that break on the shore,
a torrent of pain that my soul distills.
But in the silence, a faint glow,
the memory of your love, an eternal glow.
And although pain oppresses me, and sorrow hurts me,
your memory will live, as long as my soul sighs, dear husband.
Rest in peace.
GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.
First of all, contributor Jeff Rasley invites people to consider this opportunity to further education in Basa Village, where he has spent much time.
From Jeff: The people of Basa Village, Nepal, have requested our Foundation’s help with two projects commencing in 2025. Funds are needed to help pay the salaries of three of the village school’s teachers. If private funding is not provided, the school’s English, Science, and Social Studies & Computer Literacy teachers will have to work for no pay or resign. Because the village’s family farms are all subsistence farms, many of the 85 elementary school students will eventually leave Basa. Acquiring education that will help to make the village’s youth employable in a city may be vital to their future. The Foundation is seeking contributions to fund those three teachers’ salaries for one year.
The second project is the development of a commercially viable herd of goats and pigs. The villagers are dependent on subsistence farming and money earned by some of the adults working in the tourist industry as support staff for treks and mountaineering expeditions. Disastrous earthquakes in 2015 and the 2020 COVID pandemic virtually shut down tourism for two years following each of those catastrophes. The village leaders realized that a sustainable business is needed to support village families, when jobs in tourism are not available. The first animals were purchased this year, but to make the endeavor profitable, more animals must be purchased and cared for. The goal is to have a profitable co-op business of selling goat milk, cheese, and yoghurt and pork within two years after the requisite number of animals are acquired. Money earned above costs will support the village school and provide assistance to any families in need.
Please consider contributing to our fundraiser for the school and farm projects via our website at https://www.bvfusa.org/donate
Or, send a check to our corporate treasurer David Culp 2322 E. 66th St. Indianapolis, IN 46220. Let me know if you have any questions about the projects or the BVF. The Basa Village Foundation USA, Inc. is a 501(C)(3) organization, and financial contributions to it are charitable donations, per the US Internal Revenue Code.
Now, for this month’s first issue: Who Will We Become?
John Edward Culp personifies the human journey through life as a child learning to walk under a giant sky. On the other hand, Ilhomova Mohichehra’s work honors the beauty and longevity of a tree.
Sayani Mukherjee communes with the hidden longings and feelings layered within a landscape as Rubina Anis melds colors into gentle natural scenes. Christina Chin and Jerome Berglund’s collaborative tan-renga highlight vignettes and observations of humans co-existing with nature. Raquel Barbeito’s art zooms in on pieces of nature – flowers, spiders, a skull – in black and white. O’tkir Mulikboyev wishes to become part of his natural environment and bring nutriments to those around him.
Alan Catlin presents human and animal wildness in its feral glory: hunger, fear, crashing ocean spray, animal eyes in the dark, earthworm trails. Sidnei Rosa da Silva’s prose poetry depicts the lonely calm of a northern winter. Christina Chin and Kimberly Olmtak’s collaborative tan-renga becomes more personal and domestic, presenting cozy tea and houseplants.
Duane Vorhees furthers his poetic exploration of sensuality, fecundity, and history. Brooks Lindberg’s poem probes the linkages between older mysticism and newer beliefs given our understanding of physics.
Isabel Gomez de Diego’s photography positions youth and new life as a continuation of the world’s cultural and natural history. Kylian Cubilla Gomez captures the off-center wonder and mystery of childhood through his photographic close-ups of toys.
Jacques Fleury’s pieces address awakening, surprise, and discovery. JoyAnne O’Donnell celebrates the manifold ways ordinary people can find joy in our everyday lives, including love and close relationships. Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa conveys the deep joy of intimacy, friendship, and love. Mesfakus Salahin evokes quiet moments of peace brought by a tender love. Sara Goyceli Serifova wishes to live a long time with her beloved partner, as her grandmother did.
Z.I. Mahmud examines the characters’ journeys out of self-absorption toward empathy and wonder in Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince.
Layla Adhamova suggests that happiness is accessible to many people, not just the wealthy. Gullola Nuriddinova laments the betrayal of a lover who chose money over their beloved. Bill Tope’s short story illustrates a youthful form of justice against family favoritism and classism around the holidays.
Brian Barbeito conveys the wisdom of age in his piece on a friendship between a young boy and a kind elderly neighbor.
Haitmurodov Ismoil reflects on how a father’s love can sustain you throughout life. Azimbayeva Dilrabo gives a tribute to a caring father who passed away, Iroda Sherzod offers up a tribute to her caring and selfless father, and Rahmiddinova Mushtariy pays tribute to her father’s wisdom. Olimjonova Muslima pays tribute to her parents’ continued support all along her academic and personal journey.
Sobirjonova Rayhona shares tributes to beloved teachers here, here, and here. Shahnoza Ochildiyeva’s story illustrates how a teacher brought about justice in the classroom without shaming anyone. Shoxijaxon Urunov’s essay highlights how teachers accomplish so much more than imparting information.
Dilbar Koldoshova Nuraliyevna reflects on the difficulties and hard work of the creative life and her determination to pursue that path, as Kass probes the solitary inner drives of a literary artist.
Rick Reut tinkers with the arrangement of words in concrete poetry exploring time, memory, and language. Vernon Frazer’s words pop out of juxtaposed shapes and images while Mark Young serves up a heady word-marinade. Maftuna Yusufboyeva looks into a different way of using language, examining the role, goals, and purposes of advertising. Texas Fontanella links ideas and words and bursts of thought together in his Pound-inspired modern canto.
Federico Wardal spotlights the elegance and cultural history of Andrea Ceccomori’s San Francisco flute performances. David Sapp illuminates a moment of rapturous ecstasy in the view of sublime art. Dr. Jernail S. Anand’s poetry reminds us that the truth about history and humanity is often difficult to stomach and that art helps us process our knowledge. Thus, the literary arts are a worthy calling, despite the lack of remuneration.
Norova Zulfizar outlines various historical sites in Uzbekistan while Rustambekova Nozimakhon sketches life in her neighborhood, showing her pride in her community. Khalida Nuray’s poem urges people of Turkish ancestry to rise up and defend and protect their homeland and culture.
S.C. Flynn’s poetry illustrates the tragedies of incomplete journeys and transformations: beautiful thoughts, creatures, and relationships that never develop into what they are meant to be.
Taylor Dibbert’s poem reflects the quiet anxiety many Americans felt over the 2024 presidential election. In a similar vein, Daniel De Culla satirizes Donald Trump’s values and personality through poetry and a photo. Pat Doyne bitterly calls out the United States’ less welcoming attitudes towards immigrants. John Ebute poetically seeks signs of life in his native and troubled Nigeria. Abigail George mourns the loss of life and the obfuscations of international politics in her poems on the war in Gaza. Alexander Kabishev ends his saga of the trauma of living in St. Petersburg under siege. David Woodward reflects on broken American political systems with concrete poetry using absurdist forms.
In a more general vein, Anvarova Nilufar laments the harsh state of the world and human nature. Goyibnazarov Abdulla reminds us how people often overestimate their abilities and knowledge.
Mykyta Ryzhykh’s undercapitalized works evoke the barren, alienated landscape of modern life. J.J. Campbell offers up a bah-humbug to the festive season, showing overworked cashiers, commercialism, pain, racism, and loneliness behind the holiday mood. Jim Meirose sends up a quirky tale for the season of online electronics shopping.
Tempest Miller explores memory, trauma, and the absurdity of existence through his pieces on zebras, crocodiles, industry, and nature. Jake Cosmos Aller revels in the surreal wild spirit of a crazy night of passion and booze. Paul Costa uses the language of Western-style adventures to highlight struggles within and among people.
Ilhomova Mohichehra reflects on human vulnerability and on gratitude for her health. Graciela Noemi Villaverde reflects poetically on the loss of a great love. Mahbub Alam also mourns an absence that has become visceral and inescapable. Philip Butera’s poetry explores personal and relational grief, loneliness, and the desire to escape from oneself. Christopher Bernard expresses similar sentiments in his poetic tribute to writer Marvin R. Hiemstra and other deceased writers, which focuses less on than on the individuals who passed and more on the implacability and universality of death.
Christina Chin presents a third round of collaborative tan-renga, this time with M.R. Defibaugh. Its protagonists bring a quiet determination to face unexpected twists of fate.
Maja Milojkovic presents a glorious vision for the world, where everyone enjoys peace, freedom, and mutual respect. We hope that this publication brings Earth a step closer to that goal. Please enjoy the issue!
When I was very little, my family used to visit my dad’s mother twice a year: once during summer vacation when school was out and again in December, for the Christmas holidays. The main thing on our minds during Those trips was, would the old jalopy my dad drove make It all the way to Franklin County, located about 100 miles South of our home, which was just across the Mississippi From St. Louis.
Bessie lived in a one-time mining Community called Buckner, named after an incompetent Confederate general who served during the Civil War. We were joined at these get-togethers at my grandma’s House by my Aunt Blanche, my dad’s sister, and her husband Art and their two children, David and Christine.
Now, the Millers were everything that we weren’t: my dad worked in a glass factory as “unskilled labor,” while Uncle Art was a Foreman at General Motors in Flint, Michigan. Which meant that Art made about three times as much money as my dad. And never let us forget it.
Where my mom had dropped out of high school at 16 and my Dad never went beyond the 7th grade–he enrolled in FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression, probably helping to grade the park where you grill your hotdogs on the Fourth Of July or making the redwood benches at the forest lodge you use come Autumn–the Millers were “educated,” which in those days meant they had finished high school. Aunt Blanche had even had a year or so of secretarial school, making her the family intellectual; she was very much looked up to!
She had worked for Public Assistance, which in those days was called “Relief.” Being mean to poor people gave her an additional sense of superiority. Dad’s sister’s family always seemed to arrive at Grandma’s at the same time that we did. Perhaps it was a coincidence; maybe Uncle Art Just wanted to show off the new Cadillac he bought every year. In any event, the Millers always commandeered the one spare bedroom, leaving my parents to rough it with the kids, scattered across the living room floor. I guess it had something to do with Dad being the older brother who had always helped take care of his sister, the “baby” of the family. He had helped pay for the secretarial school she had attended, a fact no one ever mentioned.
And so it was one Christmas when I was four years old; my brother Gary was eleven; David was six, and Christine two. During these adventures, my brother always seemed to escape, to pal around with his “hoodlum” friends; wherever he went, he must have sought them out, because he sure found them. More on that at another time. As we pushed through Grandma’s door, we beheld there on the hardwood floor a miracle: the tallest, fullest, most beautiful Christmas Tree that– Even to this day–I ever saw. There were crystal, sharp, brilliant lights– Not like the old ones I was used to, where the red paint on the bulbs was scraping off–in all kinds of magical shapes: doves, reindeer, ginger bread men, Santas and many others.
They glowed bright and clear as Stars. There were the “perpetual motion” ornaments, with little seesaws or propellers which were powered by the heat of the nearby Christmas lights, and the millions of shimmering icicles. Someone had spent long, arduous hours hanging them individually, no one touching the other and each strand reflecting the vivid colors of the ornaments and lights. They were like metal–probably lead-based in those days–stalactites hanging in a Christmas grotto. There were miniature Nativity scenes–done in wood, not the plastic that you see today–with each individual wise man and angel clearly delineated in pewter. There was even a very tiny silvery Christ Child in the creche. Elaborate sun-colored garlands were draped majestically over the boughs, like strands of Golden Fleece. These were intermingled With others, thicker and fluffier and red as the planet Krypton. And the scent of that balsam fir was–heavenly.
And there were presents! Literally scores of beautiful, individually wrapped Christmas presents, all swathed in the finest, prettiest wrapping paper I had ever seen. I wondered, how could any present do justice to such wonderful wrappings? I just stood rapt and absorbed the scene, admiring. My dad said, “Lotta presents this year.” “Yeah, and most of them are probably for Christine and David,” my mother muttered darkly. It didn’t quite register at the time, just what she meant, but I understood later.
I knew that my folks had bought David some more of his seemingly unending supply of comic books and they had gotten for Christine a special friction toy, a kind of large top. When you pressed down on the handle, it spun madly around, rather like a gyroscope, with a fairy princess display encased within the glass bubble, which would unfold and sparkle as music played. I was convinced it had been created by magic elves.. It was a marvel. When mom grumbled about the price, I sagely pointed out that if Santa were going to get Christine a gift anyway, then why did she need to? To my memory, that question went unanswered.
I had badly wanted to play with It before it was wrapped–even if it was a girl’s toy–but my mother admonished me not to break it. “Christine will do that soon enough,” she conjectured wryly. We had dinner: turkey, of course, like a scene out of a Norman Rockwell Illustration; all the trimmings. But that was just a requisite prelude to the real order of the day: the presents, the lucre, the loot! “What if, when I open a present, I don’t like it!” David asked obtusely. Duh! It was a present, you goof! You can’t but like it. What was the matter with this character?
“Just say you like it,” whispered Blanche, glancing furtively at my mom and dad.. “We discussed this, David.” Apparently, his expectations weren’t too high in the present department. My jaw jutted out in resentment at the callous jab at my parents. Finally, we all sat around on the floor to open the presents. David had a big bag of Christmas candy that he wouldn’t share. I may have growled at him. Well, truer words my mom never spoke: virtually every present there was for Christine and David. David got an electric train; David got a new red wagon; David got a first baseman’s mitt; and on and on. Christine didn’t do badly either. These were the days before Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes or else my cousins would have had dozens of each.
Christine was relishing no less than six baby dolls–Tiny Tears was big then–and a crib to put them in, clothes to dress them in, and on and on again. Forgotten was the neat new friction top that my dad had worked two and a half hours to earn the money to buy. That was left idle, still in its box, the wrapping paper scarcely disturbed.
All It had gotten out of my cousin was a petulant, “I don’t like it!” I could have swatted her like a fly. Grandma got a lot of fussy “old lady stuff” from her children and their spouses. Blanche got a fur coat of some sort that she paraded around in for what seemed like hours, and Art got yet another pipe, like the ones you saw on the back cover of Esquire magazine, with the bright yellow bowls. I don’t believe my parents received anything more than a package of new handkerchiefs apiece, from grandma.. But they were mollified; Christmas was for kids, after all.
My older brother got a cool Timex watch with an expandable metal band, which was all the rage at the time. My parents had spent $10–like $150 Now–to buy that watch because they didn’t want their oldest son to be embarrassed by his Christmas gift in front of the snooty Millers; I was proud of him, too. Of course, David had to upstage him up brandishing His new “chronometer,” like the “kind the frogmen use.” Sea Hunt was also very big back in the day. Lloyd Bridges was a star! What did I get? A tiny cap pistol with a translucent orange plastic handle. I stared down at it, not sure what to say.
While David and Christine were reveling in their loot, I stood there. forlorn, because I didn’t see anything else for me. Whenever I made to select a present, David would jump up and shout, “Mine! Mine!” and snatch it out of my hands. What did I know? I was four years old; I couldn’t read the gift tags. I thought to myself, why did Santa double-cross me? He seemed to like the Millers so much more. Everything in the world seemed to belong to my cousins. My mom touched my shoulder gently and murmured, “There’s no more in there for You, honey.” I caught Dad’s eye and he gave me one of his grins that crinkled his eyes. I knew then that things would be alright.
The pistol hung down limply from my hand. I blinked, but no tears came. Next, my cousin walked up. David glanced down at my pistol, looked over at his Official Roy Rogers Six-Guns–with the real leather holster–then looked back at my tiny cap pistol, and he laughed. He laughed! Ever since that night I’ve felt like I owed my cousin David a punch in the stomach. Sure, I was disappointed that I hadn’t gotten more gifts, but I really felt bad for my parents, whom I loved very much and I knew wanted so much to make me happy.
For my dad, who worked four times harder than Uncle Art but who gleaned so much less from his paycheck; and my Mom, who scrubbed other women’s floors, on her hands and knees, for a buck an hour! So I aimed that wonderful cap pistol with the translucent orange handle–which I have to this day–squarely between David’s eyes and defiantly I pulled the trigger. And ended him!
