our fascists try to build along our southern border.
To keep brown people out? Or keep us in?
Is America becoming a giant camp
concentrating those exercising free speech,
free movement and all dissent beneath the thumb
of authoritarian diatribe and power, making us numb
and willing to cooperate with endless hate?
I honor those who once fought to save the world
and keep it free from hate and bigotry,
and create a fair economy which served us all.
I see the last ditch in my mind with no need to recall.
It lives on every street, in every neighborhood,
in every school board meeting, and City Hall;
in governor’s mansions and courts of law.
It is still alive these many years
and brings anger along with tears
burning the back of my throat
as I mourn those who breached the fascist wall
and those whose bodies I imagine afloat
off Omaha and Utah Beaches, and now, in our cities.
And I remember, as if it is today. It is. Such a pity.
Community members clash with ICE, other federal officers, Minneapolis police, and other state officers as officials raid Las Cuatro Milpas in Minneapolis, Minnesota Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
A new year begins with hope and praise for new beginnings. New year’s resolutions? I still wonder what I shall be when I grow up. It becomes harder with age to grow up. Angela and Angelo who brought me into world, parented me through life, showing me the way to be better and stronger, have been dead many years. The aunts and uncles who shepherded me through trials and struggles are also gone from the sight of those of my family still alive. Even my older brother Angelo and several lovable cousins have died. Childhood friends, too, have accepted their mortality and left me behind.
Who is left to help me grow up? To remind me how to behave myself, and direct my steps of exploration? Too few for one as strong-willed as I. I find myself more child-like and childish than ever. Perhaps I do it deliberately so that I may hear my Mother’s chiding tone in my head as she shares her exasperation over my antics,. Her words have taken up permanent residence in my brain. She comments on everything I do, still. It is a mystery to me, one I endure willingly, now.
I fought that constant harangue and meddlesome interference while she lived. All the older Italian women, family and friends, had no qualms about meddling in my life. I laugh now, at their efforts, with some stirring of guilt. It was a hopeless task, and I made certain they knew it as I laughed in their faces. Who is laughing now? I hope they are. I hope I can still make them smile. I only wanted to watch their determined faces break into smiles as they hit me with a rolled-up newspaper and shook their heads. Oh, yes, they operated as a gang. When my mother’s singular efforts seemed to get nowhere, she called in the troops. They would descend on my latest apartment, in the latest city I had moved to, to take the latest job. I was supposed to remain at home, or live next door with a husband, or at least within a few blocks of Mom. I never did. When I was about 35 years old she asked her sister, “ She is not coming home, is she?” Aunt Millie disclosed this to me long after Mom had died. Aunt Millie kept Mom with me all those years after her death. Now, Aunt Millie is also dead to this world. But, she and mom, and all those other Italian women who mothered me will always be alive in my head and my heart. One day, I will be grown up enough to join them. I dread that newspaper. My guess is they still keep it at-the-ready.
Dad lives in my head and heart, too; along with uncles, brothers and older male cousins who formed a protective barrier around me sight unseen. I seldom hear their words. What I hear is their laughter. I see their smiles and watch them quietly hand me a baseball, fishing pole, chocolate milk shake, deck of cards, rake, electrical tape, cement tool. And best of all, their grins. They stood behind the women who were intent on “setting me straight” with grins on their faces and laughter in their eyes. They redirected my thoughts from my transgressions, as I watched them with great delight. Probably, they smiled and smirked because I had taken the focus of the women off their own antics, temporarily relieving them of the women’s attention.
I felt more kinship with them. I wanted their freedom. The women were content to stay in their place. I wanted to go find my place, separate and apart. I wanted the right to control every choice. I did not want to “ask my husband” before I took a step. I wanted to go farther and wider than our insular neighborhood of people and ideas, which seemed enough to satisfy those I knew. I am still searching for that place. I seek a place where freedom of thought and affection expand rather than contract. Often, but not always, like E.T. and all travelers, I simply want to “go home.” So, I do.
I travel through memories tough and sweet back to the South side, just beyond the railroad tracks where Italian immigrant families had settled down. Eventually, most of the children of those families left the neighborhood, as did I. But, I truly still live there no matter my current address. There are no dead parents, no dead aunts and uncles, no dead cousins, no dead brother or dead friends there. All those I love still live there.
Aging brains do not become forgetful. Aging brains simply choose to remember all that once was alive, all those whom they loved. Aging brains hold memory alive with a strength no young brain can comprehend. We do it out of love, not loss. We have lost no ability to remember. We simply choose to remember what we chose to love.
So, here is my New Year’s resolution; I shall love all that is new, and all I can remember from what is old. I shall continue trying to grow up. I shall look for new paths, new journeys of discovery. I may appear to move more slowly than I did last year. I am carrying more baggage with me. I am carrying more of those who died and can no longer physically walk beside me. I love this journey. I am in no hurry to end it. However, I may have to take more stops along the way. The journey of life may seem slower when young. But, it is not. The young simply have fewer bags to carry. They only imagine they go faster, because they go lighter. I may be old now, but I feel light, too. Those whom I carry share their lightness of spirit with me. Someday, I shall become as light a spirit as they.
Every morning as I made my bed, I started a new chapter in my book of life by telling myself, for example, “Today is the chapter where Louise starts school; or ate with the hobos by the river, or turned black and blue all over.” Each life experience began a new chapter. Today is my thousandth, or more, chapter. Today is the chapter where Louise writes her book for others to read. Not that others have not been reading me for nearly 73 years by simply watching and reporting upon my shenanigans. Today, they go to print.
Life for me was a book being written chapter by chapter. Sometimes under my control; most often, not. That was the exciting part; the part that kept me truly alive. Each episode was laid out thoughtfully, straightened and smoothed as I straightened and smoothed the sheets on my bed. There was always a need to recognize and tend to the rough edges and lumps. They required hands willing to pull tout the seams exposed by the tossing and tumbling of a child’s restless dreams created in my sleep. I once asked my Mother, “ Mommy, when I get up in the morning is this my real life? Or, is my real life what I dream after I go to bed? They are both the same, both as real. How can I tell why is real?” My mother’s answer, after shrugging off the slight frown of surprised concern on her face, was clear and concise. She said, “ I don’t know where you go in your dreams. But your real world is here with me. This life with me is your real life. And that is where you shall stay.” The sheets, this life, continue to need straightening and smoothing.
My earliest memory of this life is the slatted play of light and shadow across my body as I lay on my back in my crib. The shadows moved with the sun, sometimes dancing in strange patterns if the wind blew. I could feel the light and dark dancing in the breeze across my skin. I was too young to understand how any of this occurred. The memory simply tells me what and where. I recall small hands tossing something aside to grasp the light in a tiny fist, I hear the sound of gurgling laughter as I cheerfully played this game of “catch the light.” Whose fist is that? Mine? Curious, I asked my mother where my crib had been placed? My younger brother had just been born and his crib was in my parent’s bedroom. But, I recalled this light play in a corner of another room. I showed Mommy where the memory indicated and she said, “This is where your crib had been placed, but surely you cannot remember such a thing. You were too young. I told her I always heard a loud thud as I reached for the light. “You always threw your bottle out of the crib. I had the hardest time getting you to take a bottle in the crib.” She believed me then.
Memory is a fascinating teacher. Pieces of memory do not hold equal value. Many pieces are lost in the shuffle as we arrange the puzzle pieces that create a life.Those memories we recall may seem senseless. But, it is those tiny, seemingly senseless, memories which hold the greatest value when examined closely, their rough edges smoothed and straightened.
In these dark days of December, we remember that life is the interplay of darkness and light, the void and creation, destruction and rebirth. Every solstice changes the rhythm. This memory mattered to me enough to remember it and its recognize its value. The sense of beauty and awe in the dance of light and shadow across my body opened my senses to the wondrous impermanence of their interplay; and the expectation of their further encounters. This awe at such beauty stayed with me. Even on the darkest nights of my soul as I cared for dying parents, faced the struggles of chronic illness which stripped away so much of the life I had I built. Even then, there was beauty in the dance between light and dark, hope and fear, known and unknown. How could anyone forget such memory?
I am glad I chose to grasp the light in my tiny fists. Glad I chose open hands, and tossed that bottle out of the crib. I chose food for the soul. And in these dark days I choose both darkness and light, the good and the bad. Each. Both. Together they create a beauty beyond understanding. Together they fill me with hope, and the courage to face the unknown. And together, with open hands, we can gather the light into a beacon to lead us out of the darkness we now face.
annarino writes 
2024 NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION
A new year begins with hope and praise for new beginnings. New year’s resolutions? I still wonder what I shall be when I grow up. It becomes harder with age to grow up. Angela and Angelo who brought me into world, parented me through life, showing me the way to be better and stronger, have been dead many years. The aunts and uncles who shepherded me through trials and struggles are also gone from the sight of those of my family still alive. Even my older brother Angelo and several lovable cousins have died. Childhood friends, too, have accepted their mortality and left me behind.
Who is left to help me grow up? To remind me how to behave myself, and direct my steps of exploration? Too few for one as strong-willed as I. I find myself more child-like and childish than ever. Perhaps I do it deliberately so that I may hear my Mother’s chiding tone in my head as she shares her exasperation over my antics,. Her words have taken up permanent residence in my brain. She comments on everything I do, still. It is a mystery to me, one I endure willingly, now.
I fought that constant harangue and meddlesome interference while she lived. All the older Italian women, family and friends, had no qualms about meddling in my life. I laugh now, at their efforts, with some stirring of guilt. It was a hopeless task, and I made certain they knew it as I laughed in their faces. Who is laughing now? I hope they are. I hope I can still make them smile. I only wanted to watch their determined faces break into smiles as they hit me with a rolled-up newspaper and shook their heads. Oh, yes, they operated as a gang. When my mother’s singular efforts seemed to get nowhere, she called in the troops. They would descend on my latest apartment, in the latest city I had moved to, to take the latest job. I was supposed to remain at home, or live next door with a husband, or at least within a few blocks of Mom. I never did. When I was about 35 years old she asked her sister, “ She is not coming home, is she?” Aunt Millie disclosed this to me long after Mom had died. Aunt Millie kept Mom with me all those years after her death. Now, Aunt Millie is also dead to this world. But, she and mom, and all those other Italian women who mothered me will always be alive in my head and my heart. One day, I will be grown up enough to join them. I dread that newspaper. My guess is they still keep it at-the-ready.
Dad lives in my head and heart, too; along with uncles, brothers and older male cousins who formed a protective barrier around me sight unseen. I seldom hear their words. What I hear is their laughter. I see their smiles and watch them quietly hand me a baseball, fishing pole, chocolate milk shake, deck of cards, rake, electrical tape, cement tool. And best of all, their grins. They stood behind the women who were intent on “setting me straight” with grins on their faces and laughter in their eyes. They redirected my thoughts from my transgressions, as I watched them with great delight. Probably, they smiled and smirked because I had taken the focus of the women off their own antics, temporarily relieving them of the women’s attention.
I felt more kinship with them. I wanted their freedom. The women were content to stay in their place. I wanted to go find my place, separate and apart. I wanted the right to control every choice. I did not want to “ask my husband” before I took a step. I wanted to go farther and wider than our insular neighborhood of people and ideas, which seemed enough to satisfy those I knew. I am still searching for that place. I seek a place where freedom of thought and affection expand rather than contract. Often, but not always, like E.T. and all travelers, I simply want to “go home.” So, I do.
I travel through memories tough and sweet back to the South side, just beyond the railroad tracks where Italian immigrant families had settled down. Eventually, most of the children of those families left the neighborhood, as did I. But, I truly still live there no matter my current address. There are no dead parents, no dead aunts and uncles, no dead cousins, no dead brother or dead friends there. All those I love still live there.
Aging brains do not become forgetful. Aging brains simply choose to remember all that once was alive, all those whom they loved. Aging brains hold memory alive with a strength no young brain can comprehend. We do it out of love, not loss. We have lost no ability to remember. We simply choose to remember what we chose to love.
So, here is my New Year’s resolution; I shall love all that is new, and all I can remember from what is old. I shall continue trying to grow up. I shall look for new paths, new journeys of discovery. I may appear to move more slowly than I did last year. I am carrying more baggage with me. I am carrying more of those who died and can no longer physically walk beside me. I love this journey. I am in no hurry to end it. However, I may have to take more stops along the way. The journey of life may seem slower when young. But, it is not. The young simply have fewer bags to carry. They only imagine they go faster, because they go lighter. I may be old now, but I feel light, too. Those whom I carry share their lightness of spirit with me. Someday, I shall become as light a spirit as they.
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Tagged as aging, childhood, Death, growing up, happy new year, Italian family, journeys, love, memory, Memory loss, new year resolutions