A SPECIAL VISIT

Yashdip is very happy

Today is special because we are awaiting a visit from Yashdip's  niece Amrit from Canada. She is the daughter of Yashdip's beloved younger brother Hardial whose death really devastated Yashdip in 1997. SHe has promised to come  to Pawtucket today with her husband and their children. 
We have not seen them since I took that  wretched fall from a ladder in a hotel pool in Montreal that really started this downhill spiral of my health, That was in August of 2012.  So we are talking  6 years. WOW!

We only  have one bathroom here and Yashdip occupies it with his morning rituals for at least two hours.  So now I hear that he is in the shower. And I just opened an email to tell me that their ETA is 10:30 to 11;AM. It is now 10:55AM.  So I yelled to tell him and he said --  oh they won't be on time.
So let us see  who is right. 

I do fear  seeing people who have not seen me lately. I used to dye my hair to its natural reddish brown but  long stints in  hospital and  rehab stopped that. AND I Am now  a mix of grey and brown--mostly white. I have actually startled myself in the mirror!! I wrote a ghazal that addresses those moments

GHAZAL IN THE MIRROR

Like a fish on a line I wriggle when I look in the mirror;

caught me up short, I couldn't see the hook in the mirror.

My saints, my guardian angel, my confessor:

their counsel – what else did I overlook in the mirror?

Where to find all those friends and lovers who stared

back at you; those you mistook, in the mirror.

You sought safety, shelter, your comfort zone;

but there is no private nook in the mirror.

Binges, car wrecks, strange beds, rehab stints; recount

all those broken vows that you forsook in the mirror.

You finished off the vodka, the beers were long gone

when you noticed how your hand shook in the mirror.

Lord Jim, Uncle Vanya, Othello, those never

fail to move you –heroes found in books, not the mirror.

Heroin, meth, ecstasy— street drugs you denounced--

who saw how much coke you took in? The mirror.

Thickening gels, mousse, comb-overs can't hide

the fact that you're losing your looks in the mirror.

We argue, kiss and fight again the same battles

like caged birds who peck that raging rook in the mirror.

Sans teeth, sans mind, sans hair, sans-- whatever--

that glass shows us what time took in the mirror .

“by brooks too broad for leaping” --no light-foot lads;

only Charon ferries that brook in the mirror.

I surprise a bent form in a window passing;

if I'm Wendy, why is Captain Hook in the mirror?

“Oh, Norma, whatever you do, stay in school!”

My mother yelled when I'd look in the mirror.

 Norma Jenckes

MY, MY --I NEVER KNOW WHERE  THIS BLOG WILL TAKE ME--IT'S A KIND OF FUN HOUSE MIRROR