Ray Scanlon

Modest Expectations

I never expected to prove my doctors fallible, but I decisively surpassed my prognosis of death by age forty. And as if death could not happen gradually, I supposed I'd be here one minute, fully functional, and dead the next; I never expected to join the cohort of at-risk snow shovelers. When I used to shovel, I'd make an exactly one shovel-width path across the yard to the compost pile, demonstrating my sloth, or, if you will, inborn parsimony with labor. Certainly I never expected three grandchildren, or for that matter, one marriage, let alone two. Yet I have a grandson who shoveled the compost path for me after the last storm. Out of animal spirits he dug it four feet wide, just for the sheer joy of flinging snow, and that gives me inordinate pleasure. I do love that boy.

CP

Ray Scanlon. Massachusetts boy. Has grandchildren. Extraordinarily lucky. Recovering assembly language programmer. Not averse to litotes. No MFA. No novel. No extrovert. Published in Cleaver Magazine, Apeiron Review, Journal of Microliterature, and other fine places. More at http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/

Ray Scanlon

Gauntlet on the Ground

Last night my grandson guided me on a full-moon nature walk: a labor of love compensates for my diabetes-blasted night vision. Today I started a round of interventional cardiology—love that term—which has already saved my sorry butt more than once. Cheryl and I saw Dad, whose stroke might well have killed him. My Holocaust experience is Wiesel's “Night.” I ate ginger ice cream. Who dares tell me my life is not good?

Eagle Cliff

From the cliff road I watch vultures soar above and below. No vultures? Gaze at the Catskills. Wiry geezer, all swaggering pockets and straps and walking staff, tells Aussies with him they've seen a red-tailed hawk, or maybe an immature bald eagle. Lightning fails to strike him down. Some of my ashes will be dumped here; some will wait in my closet for other venues. As if in death I'll be any better at multitasking.

CP

Ray Scanlon. Massachusetts boy. Has grandchildren. Extraordinarily lucky. No MFA. No novel. No extrovert. His work has been published in Stymie, Prick of the Spindle, and Short, Fast, and Deadly. He's on the web at: http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/

Ray Scanlon

 

 

Wiffle Ball

A warm early May sun dips, shading the back yard; gnats and mosquitos rule the air; pine warblers command the treetops. Jeff, his cigar aromatic, plays wiffle ball with his children. Runner, fielder, pitcher, and batter constantly change places as near-chaos unfolds from iterating the simple, if cryptic, rules. Jord and his dad pitch to strike each other out. The girls take their base-running leads in cartwheels.


CP

Ray Scanlon. Massachusetts boy. Has grandchildren. Extraordinarily lucky. No MFA. No novel. No extrovert. On the web: http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/.

Ray Scanlon

 

Sting

Train pulls out; Cheryl's off to Boston. A guy approaches my car. “I just came in from Kansas City...” “A likely story,” I interrupt, not yet knowing how true. He's in shorts, hiking boots, beat flannel shirt. Gigantic pack, bedroll below, bandanna. “I'm going to Lowell; can you help me with train fare?” Ahh. His accent's not from here. He's wicked plausible. “Where Jack Kerouac was from.” I give him the eight bucks.

Get a Life

At the Dunkin' Donuts there's a muted television. To compensate there's Elvis on the Muzak, three chatty teen-age girls, and Spanish on a cell phone; cell phones by definition are always too freaking loud. Behind me there's a robust trade in ice, caffeine, and fat calories. I'm composing haiku in my head, but lucky for me the symptoms are subtle and misleading. Anyone who notices is too polite to take me to task.


CP

Ray Scanlon lives in Massachusetts. He's paid attention for about fifteen minutes during the last 60 years. His web site is http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/.

Ray Scanlon

 

Karma

I believe it is good manners and good karma to give thanks, explicitly and formally—your choice how and to whom—for the memories we cherish. Doing so is an entirely positive practice, unlike picking up the trash of ignorant buffoons who litter in public places, the karmic benefits of which are compromised by more temptation to smug self-righteousness than most mortals can withstand. I do both, so my reincarnation could be touch and go. I hope to return no worse than a sloth.

I cherish the day Cheryl and I walked to a neighborhood pond. Behind it were acres of cattails, red-winged blackbird nirvana. A sharp dry Canadian breeze billowed their seed-bearing fluff across the marsh on a vast scale I'd never seen before, backlit gold by the low autumn sun.

I cherish the September evening Jess demonstrates to my granddaughters why jewelweed is also called touch-me-not. Hunter and Ali crowd in warily, not too close, so they can see. Jess, laughing under the portable shade of her rakish white Nicaraguan trilby, triggers for them the spring-loaded seed pods.

I cherish the many evenings my granddaughters have taken my hand to guide me through the inky outdoors, solicitously aware that I might trip and smash my head on a rock, involuntarily reincarnating due to my imperfect night vision. And also the wintry afternoon that their grandmother, long before becoming Grammy, led me down a mountain by the hand, for the same reason, as darkness overtook us.

I cherish how my grandson, newly thirteen, takes a jump at anything over his head, fingertips upstretched, as if gravity counts for nothing, as if he might actually reach it. He got into the habit years ago, walking—running, usually—through the doorway between dining room and kitchen. With feet flat on the floor, he now doesn't even have to stretch to touch the lintel. I hope he continues to cultivate reaching beyond his grasp.

I cherish the time I've spent cliffside in the Catskills looking out at vultures, below me and above me, soaring in thermals or running before a storm wind. I cherish the hours watching Catskill sunsets until it's only blackness, Venus, and pinpoints of blue and orange light down in the valley villages. Neither do I have any regrets about the time I've wasted watching a Linotype machine cast slugs, waves roll in at Burke's Beach, or a river otter swim in his zoo cage.

For good measure I cherish things for which I've lost, or never formed, memories of the first time I did them. The first time I touch solder to a heating-up joint, it turns to slush, melts into a bright silver meniscus between the parts, and cools to gray. Snapping a photograph, setting toes in the Atlantic, smelling tarred fishing line, striking a kitchen match—all little milestones worth remembering, all gone. Assuming that I'm lucid, I'll have plenty to think about on my deathbed.

CP

Ray Scanlon lives in Massachusetts, where he cranks out the occasional essay—crank being the key word. His web site is http://read.oldmanscanlon.com/.