Midlife Musings
Midlife Musings
Fall 1994
Movies for a quarter, dill pickles & egg creams,
45 records spinning & I’ll See You in My Dreams.
Bicycles just one-speed, Fibber Magee & Molly;
10 inch Black & White TV, my non-talking dolly.
French fries on the Boardwalk, Steel Pier feats of daring;
Swapping clothes & jewelry, a sisterly kind of sharing.
Pin clips in my stick-straight, Nair smeared above my lip.
Being cool in pegged pants & bucks, a 50s kind of sharing.
Hours on the telephone, kissing in the park;
Spin-the-bottle innocence, initials carved in bark.
Double feature movies, drive-ins with a date;
My mother hanging laundry; a key to fix my skate.
Woolen leggings, itchy; galoshes all in black.
Hand-me-downs from relatives; “Don’t step on the crack!”
Puzzles on the table; my father fixing cars;
Summers in the Catskills; dark nights filled with stars.
Stumbling through my childhood, armed with fork & knife;
Suddenly I was grown, and someone else’s wife.
Giving birth to children, Oh, the labor pains;
Seeing them become adults, the joy is what remains.
Then giving birth to myself, after my divorce;
Labor pains twice as hard to chart a different course.
Mem’ries that I conjure and some that never fade.
Good with bad, they’re all mixed up, and that’s how LIFE is made!
