Ghosted

July 2, 2024July 1, 2024 / Fran Haley / 18 Comments

A slice of memoir for my writing friends, who requested the story of my mail-order ghost…

******

The 1970s were steeped in tabloids, monsters, horror, psychics, UFOs, and ghosts.

Weird times.

And I was a weird little kid.

I thought I could see a lady sitting high atop a tree across the street from my house. Every day, year after year, she sat there, a regal bark-colored woman, never moving, just looking out over the world from her tall branchy throne.

I thought I saw feet in a pair of bedroom slippers left in my Grannie’s hallway…where was the rest of the person? None of the adults could make sense of my sudden hysteria.

Speaking of hysteria: My young parents, for some inexplicable, out-of-character reason, carried me through a haunted house before I was two. Just as they were exiting, a witch popped out from a secret chamber and her long hair swept over me. I have no memory of this. My father told me the story; he said I screamed and screamed, like I’d been burned. I figure it marked me permanently. Like a smallpox vaccination. I wonder what kind of immunity witch hair carries…

I recall being really being burned. I was afraid of cigarettes, of their red-hot circular tips, because some grown-up or other at a family gathering hadn’t thought to move his indolent hand out of the way when my preschool self went running through the living room. Maybe this is why I also feared flames shooting up from backyard charcoal grills (smell that lighter fluid?), from the flattop grill behind the counter of the local diner, and the whoosh of brilliant blue whenever someone turned the burner knob on a gas stove.

I was afraid of big smells. Like collards cooking. I’d gag and run out of the house (love to eat ’em now, though, with plenty of hot pepper vinegar).

My weirdest childhood fear (perhaps): Black toilet seats. Utterly terrifying. Why did anyone ever think these were a great idea? I wouldn’t even enter the bathroom at the doctor’s office, let alone “go,” because of that ominous seat. I sobbed and tried to get away from my mother. Not understanding, she became angry.

And I was afraid of ghosts.

So much so that I didn’t want to go to sleep the first night I stayed with my grandparents after Granddaddy retired and they moved back home to the countryside. Their cozy little house sat amid whispering woods, strange canals, and a tiny dappled cemetery situated diagonally to the left of their front yard, across the dirt road.

I took one look at those weathering old tombstones gleaming white in the dusk and thought Ghosts.

Grandma, I’m scared of that place.

Oh, honey. Don’t ever fear the dead. Fear the living.

It didn’t help.

Oddly enough, TV shows about monsters and ghosts did.

The Addams Family: How did Morticia move at all in that skinny black dress, drawn so tight ’round her ankles? How could a disembodied hand called Thing materialize from random tabletop boxes throughout the psuedo-gothic house to deliver mail or light cigars? My parents’ then-childless friends got a black Lab puppy and named it Thing. I loved that dog. She dug a big hole in our backyard; in the years to follow, I’d expand Thing’s hole many times over, along with my imagination.

The Munsters: Who could be afraid of Herman, with his goofy laugh?

Casper the Friendly Ghost: I quickly grew to love him and all the dark gray haunted-house scenery on the Viewmaster reels Grandma bought me. Casper wasn’t remotely scary. He was cute. And comforting. Somehow.

And so it was, one summer when I was nine or ten, I happened upon the little ad in the back pages of a magazine (or maybe it was in a novelty catalog, another 1970s staple):

Order Your Own Ghost!

I didn’t bother to read the rest of the details. The creepy illustration sold me.

I went in search of Grandma.

I would have it. My own ghost.

My land. What do you want this for?

I just do… please, Grandma?

She sighed, clipped out the form, addressed the envelope, enclosed the couple of dollars (?), and mailed it.

When the package arrived she helped me open it. One doesn’t want to slit a ghost by accident.

I’m not sure what I expected. I knew the ghost couldn’t be “real,” yet the ad had conjured a misty apparition in my mind, a filmy thing that would do my bidding. Could it be the allure of supernatural power? The need to overcome a fear by mastering it? Sheer curiosity? All of the above?

Would the the thing rise before me as soon as the package was opened?

Um.

No.

Opening the package the rest of the way, I found a folded white plastic sheet, deeply creased when I shook it out, a white balloon to blow up and place under the thin plastic, white thread for tying under the balloon “head” and to be taped to the top of the plastic so that the ghost could then be hung from a door or hook, etc., where it might move a little whenever we passed by (or if I decided to turn Grandma’s floor fan on it).

Oh, and helpful directions to locate a marker for drawing draw eyes and a mouth, if desired.

I felt like throwing the worthless stuff straight in the trash. When I eventually learned the term rip-off, this mail-order ghost would drift to mind.

Grandma, who’d tried to discourage the purchase in the first place, now tried to placate me: Here, I’ll blow up the balloon…

We assembled the sorry specter and strung it on the old bedroom doorknob where it dangled in front of the metal keyhole. I hated the sight of it hanging there, grinning at me.

I didn’t know it then, but Lessons were afoot…

Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

It may not be at all what you thought.

Fears are exhausting.

Fears can be overcome by recognizing the inherent ridiculous (look up Harry Potter boggart).

Things and people will sometimes (oftentimes) turn out to be something other than they seem.

Above all: Life is a carnival, a strange journey of compelling facades and disappointing realities, a house of shattered mirrors with perpetual distortions and misperceptions obscuring truth, of false narratives and unseen, lingering harm lurking in the darkest corners, where occasionally flares a red-hot tip held in an indolent hand…

Ghosts are, in the end, about loss; what do we fear more than that?

I’d had enough. I balled up my ghost and smushed it into the trashcan where it belonged.

It was a beginning.

Ghost. David Ludwig. CC BY-SA

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge

Parched

June 25, 2024July 1, 2024 / Fran Haley / 7 Comments

She perches
atop the hummingbird feeder
at my kitchen window

Mama Bluebird

haven’t seen her in a while
she keeps a low profile

when new fledglings
are about

I think she’s playing defense
watching me
watching her
(bluebirds are
ferocious guardians)

until I see
her open beak

she doesn’t close it

I’ve never seen
such behavior
before

from any bird

I look it up

she’s suffering
from the heat

trying to
cool off

birds can’t sweat

she stays on this perch
watching me
watching her

I sense a plea…

I take a cup

run a little water
at the kitchen sink

carry it out
into the drought

(she flies away)

pour it on the top
of the hummingbird feeder

(it’s really meant
to be an ant moat)

and as soon as I return
to the kitchen

I see she’s back
sipping
sipping
sipping

she stays a good while

perched
parched

until she’s refreshed enough
to close her beak again

and fly

maybe back
to help her children

all I know
is that my soul

(sometimes just as parched)

rejoices
that I was able
to provide

this little oasis

when I have felt
so utterly unable

to ease
the longsuffering

of others

Thank you
Mama Bluebird

for refreshing
me

******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge

For love of reading

June 18, 2024June 18, 2024 / Fran Haley / 4 Comments

with thanks to Anna J. Small Roseboro, today’s Open Write host at Ethical ELA, for inviting teachers to write poems of reflection on the past school year and projections for next…my thoughts came out this way, and so I’m calling it a prose poem.

For Love of Reading

Reading and writing were the great loves
of my childhood…for birthdays and Christmas,
I wanted books. And more books. I never thought
about them as keys to unlock life’s doors. In retrospect
I see that books were my lifeline, keeping me afloat
in a muddy sea of existence. I would read and find myself
in another world, another life. I didn’t think about reading
as amassing riches in my mind. My family didn’t have wealth
but I was rich, rich, rich in books. They were my
greatest treasures.

I never planned to be a reading teacher. I didn’t pursue
the vocation; it pursued me. My professional role changes
every year depending on funding and the current trend
for helping children learn to read. For many the struggle
is great. The battles waged by the Educational-Powers-That-Be
are great. Year to year the sands shift, the tides of research turn,
blame is passed, and verbal artillery is fired.
I have served in ranks wearing armor that didn’t fit me,
using approaches that didn’t dovetail with desired outcomes…
furthermore, we are not talking about war.
We are talking about what children need.

Every so often, the winds of war abate and through the smoke
blows a bit of fresh breeze. Let us name it Opportunity.
It comes offering me a chance to recruit volunteers
from the community to read with students each day. It comes
with a whole new library that I inventoried and archived
in preparation for next fall, a wealth of beautiful books
that are windows and mirrors for our young students
to pick from, with their volunteer readers. It comes
with taking donations of books to give to students
to keep at home. It comes with redecorating
a neglected space in the building, with an astounding gift
of bright new seating from the PTA, to make this space
special for our students. This is a sacred space.
Here people will give of themselves to others,
here relationships and lives will be built, here love will be born…

My reading soul rejoices.

*******

with thanks also to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
—writers need community. ❤

Red, white, and blue reflections

May 27, 2024May 28, 2024 / Fran Haley / 7 Comments

The words are in my head when I wake.

Memorial Day.

I should write about it, I think.

But my brain is restless.

For one thing, the weather.

I rise with the sun and patter, barefoot, to the kitchen. Pink light is spilling through the blinds before I open them. Thunder rolls in the distance. The forecast is severe. I stand in the bay window’s rosy glow as a soft rainshower begins. No birds in sight. The usual morning chorus of robins, house finches, cardinals, Carolina wrens is paused. Silence, but for the occasional caw of a crow near the woods. My neighbors’ freshly-planted roses are blinding red against the green grass, the weathered-wood fence. Stark white curtains hanging from their gazebo flutter like ghosts, like prelude…what’s past is prologue, as states the murderous Antonio in The Tempest.

That’s the second thing. Ghosts.

The imagery distracts me.

I ordered a ghost from a catalog, once. When I was a child. True story.

It was disappointing.

That was before I knew that ghosts have many manifestations. And to be careful what you wish for.

There’s always a cost. Ghosts aren’t free.

Why I’m thinking this just now, as the sun fades away into gray, as the lights in the house blink, as the skies crack open, releasing the predicted deluge, as my little dachshund curls into a ball on the kitchen rug, shivering uncontrollably…I do not know, exactly.

On the table I have a small arrangement of red, white, and blue flowers, in honor of the day and my country’s fallen soldiers. I recall learning that my first real home was once an Army hospital morgue.

It’s dim, but I can remember living in that shadowy house at age three, until my family was forced out. I wonder which WWII soldiers were brought there before their burial, before my time.

I light a candle by the flowers, against the encroaching darkness. At the window, a tiny ember-red flash. Male ruby-thoated hummingbird, undeterred by the tempest, coming for a drink of sugar-water at my feeder. Over by the wooden fence,in front of the gazebo’s billowing white veils, a fluttering of blue wings… bluebirds seeking to feed their young. Despite all. Above all.

Sustenance.

New thought: That’s what this day is about.

Sacrifice, prayer, and peace, too…in fact, the word prayer is mentioned four times in the legal language for the holiday (read it for yourself: 36 U.S. Code § 116 – Memorial Day). Peace appears twice. Contextually, in a call to pray for permanent peace, according to each individual’s faith.

That’s in the law of our land.

As the storm descends, I pick up my trembling dachshund. There’s no way to tell him it’s only temporary. I can only hold him ’til it’s over. Sustenance. The lesson of the birds. The whole purpose of prayer. Of faith.

Memory. It’s for teaching. If what’s past is prologue…it cannot be changed; but the present, the future, can. If we remember. If we do not remember the past, as the saying goes, we are condemned to repeat it.

That’s the lesson of the ghosts.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
-sharing your writing is a true act of courage.

The letter

May 21, 2024May 22, 2024 / Fran Haley / 23 Comments

I found it in one of my old Bibles when I was preparing to speak at a women’s conference.

A letter from my grandmother.

Postmarked September 29, 2001…not long after 9-11. In the wake of what seemed the end of the world.

She wanted to surprise me with a letter. She’d written dozens to me throughout all the years we lived in two different states, since I was six. In her eighties, however, her fine penmanship had begun to look shaky on the page. She had taken to making phone calls more and more.

She writes of the beautiful day: sunny and bright, the sky so blue. I’m planning to walk a short distance when I finish and feel good…

She writes of family, that she talks to my daddy every night, and tomorrow she will see him. She writes that my mother seems to be doing good, better than we even thought! I no longer remember the context of this statement; my mother was frequently in poor health, in body and in mind.

She writes of my Aunt Pat’s moonflower, presently blooming, and asks if I remember her moonflower growing around the stump of Granddaddy’s pecan tree by the old dirt road and that she once had another by the pump house…its runners grew on the pump house, shrubs nearby, and the fence.

For a minute, I am there, walking in long ago, seeing the profusion of white blooms, breathing their perfume…

Then she tells me not to worry about her. She had given up her house and had come to live with my aunt; at 85, unsteady on her feet and occasionally falling, she could no longer live alone. She writes: I have accepted it, like a death. You have to carry on.

She admits to crying a lot at first. Then: I’m not going to complain. I still have so much to be thankful for. I read recently that to be happy, you should act happy, so I’m trying to think happy thoughts and smile more…I think of you often because you have always been a big part of my happiness as well as Grand-daddy’s!

She read books; she played tapes of gospel music; she prayed for God to see fit to take care of our world problems. She writes of violence and violent people not knowing what being happy is.

She misses her piano, her most-prized possession. She says that since she couldn’t take it with her when she gave up the house, she’s glad I wanted it: I hope it will bring much happiness to you and the boys.

She would never know that my youngest would learn to play on that piano, that he would become a phenomenal musician, that he would learn to sing all the harmonies in gospel songs, that he would eventually obtain a college degree in this, that he would lead choirs.

She writes that she hopes to see me and the children soon, even if for a little while, knowing I’d go visit my parents, too. She so wanted to spend time with my children…

She closes with her love and prayers too.

Two tiny notes are included also, one for each of my children, then ages twelve and four. In the note to the youngest she mentions hummingbirds…they will soon be flying to a warmer climate but will come back at Easter.

As I hold these written treasures in my hands, savoring every word, a little shadow flickers at the kitchen window. A hummingbird, coming to my freshly-refilled feeder.

A year to the day after Grandma wrote this letter, my father would die suddenly. The flood of grief would overwhelm her; dementia would soon settle in, and she would be in a nursing home for four years until her death at age 90.

I reread of the beautiful day, sunny and bright, the sky so blue, that she’s talking to my father every night, that my mother’s doing better than anyone ever expected… I reread her words of acceptance and carrying on, of her great love and prayers for me. I think about how these buoyed me through every day of my life…even now.

I fold the letter back into its old envelope. I finish my lesson for the women’s conference, on learning the unforced rhythms of grace.

I carry Grandma’s letter with me.

I carry on.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge

Alphabeticals poem

April 4, 2024April 4, 2024 / Fran Haley / 2 Comments

For VerseLove today on Ethical ELA, host Jennifer Guyor Jowett extends this invitation to participants: Pick any letter from the alphabet. Think about its shape, its function, how else it might be heard or understood. Play with variations. See what might be discovered.

Welp… I find I’ve gotta go with this.

Ode to F

Let’s face it:

F is not the most alluring
letter of the alphabet.

It indicates failure.

It stands for an expletive.

Technically, it’s fricative,
a sound made by forcing
air through a narrow channel,
in this case, by placing the
teeth on the lower lip

looking rather like
trepidation

or, rather,
fearfulness.

Seems a humble
(if not humiliated)
letter
not to mention
nearly impossible
for a young child
to write
in its capital cursive form:
France, for example,
looks like Trance.

But
let’s face it:

F happens to be
a banner letter.
Case in point:
when a small child
has to turn her
first name initial
into an object
for a class assignment
and the girl beside her
is drawing E as
the gorgeous wing
of a bird in flight
the F girl’s got nothing
until she finally thinks
of a flagpole.

A universal
symbol of
freedom

and where would we be
without that?

It stands nobly
there in JFK and RFK

not to mention
twice ceaselessly
in F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A banner letter,
indeed

woven into the very
fabric of our existence…
how could we function
without

Fibonacci sequence
flora and fauna
forests
fish
family

or finches?

Or FRIDAY
or friends?

Or fearlessness.

Or faith.

Stand tall
and proud,
oh F,
waving your
two little fronds
in the wind
forever.

Fly on.

“Decorated Capital Letter F“.Jakob Frey, Swiss, active Italy, 1681 – 1752. CC0 1.0.
Public domain, Smithsonian.

Inspirational place poem

April 3, 2024April 4, 2024 / Fran Haley / 2 Comments

For VerseLove on Ethical ELA today, host Wendy Everard invited participants to “Take some time to rabbit hole online. Discover some places that were inspirational to your favorite author or poet. You can write about a place you’ve visited or one that you’ve discovered today, through some research.”

Ah. See if you know this place and, more importantly, the person that inspires me.

Remember the Signs

Sometimes
there is
a magic
that
chases you
from one
world
to another

such as when
you visit
a Tex-Mex restaurant
in North Carolina

dedicated to Elvis

and as
the hostess
leads your party
to your table
you happen
to notice

high on the wall
above all the
hodgepodge
framed photos
that aren’t even
of Elvis at all
but instead are
of food
and dogs
and cars
(the ceiling
is a mass
of actual
gleaming chrome
hubcaps)

…that high
on the wall
above these
eccentric displays
is a wooden sign

and that
is when
you know
you know
you know
magic is
afoot

the air begins
tingling with it

and if
you can somehow
explore this wall
without being noticed
by anyone else

you might
very probably
find, if conditions
are right,

a hidden door…

It is here,
somewhere,
I am sure.

Someday,
so help me,
I shall find it

I shall get in

to find myself
I suspect

in the Rabbit Room
of an Oxford pub
where a group of men
light their pipes and order
another beer as they
debate the manuscript
on magic chasing you
from one world
to another

by mysteriously
connected rooms
and secret portals…

inside the Tex-Mex
Elvis restaurant
I stand staring
at this sign
(later,
I will have trouble
remembering
if I actually
saw it)

knowing magic
is afoot

—it’s more than
a pretty strong
inkling…

A photo of the actual sign — and door—! on the wall inside the Tex-Mex Elvis restaurant in NC.

*******

*REVEAL* — in case you did not know:

The Rabbit Room was a private lounge in the back of the Oxford, England pub, The Eagle and the Child (nicknamed The Bird and the Baby), where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others (“The Inklings”) met regularly to share their working drafts. My poem’s title, the tingling magic, the door leading to another world are all Narnia/Lewis references. Even “I shall get in” is taken from Lewis, whom I’ve loved since age ten. The manuscript being debated in the poem is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – Tolkien didn’t like it and basically told Lewis it would never work. While writing the poem I actually forgot what the sign (“NARNIA”) looked like in my local Tex-Mex-Elvis restaurant; I recalled it as an obscure reference to that magical world. I had to scroll around for the photo I took, to remember…but even my forgetting the sign ties directly into the plot of one of The Chronicles of Narnia books (The Silver Chair).

The sign’s presence in this odd place is definitely magical to me…one day…I shall get in…

Hashtag and magic box poems

April 2, 2024April 2, 2024 / Fran Haley / 12 Comments

April is National Poetry Month, and over at Ethical ELA, VerseLove is well underway.

My friend Kim Johnson kicked off the daily poetry writing yesterday by inviting participants to introduce themselves via hashtag poems. Kim shared the process:

Write your name vertically down the left side of a page. You can use your first name, nickname, or full name – your choice!

Place a hashtag in front of each letter of your name.

Jot a list of your hobbies, your passions, and any other aspects that you might use to introduce yourself to someone getting to know you. You can scroll through photos, Facebook posts, or past poems to help you think of some ideas.

Finally, use the letters to make a hashtag acrostic to introduce yourself to your #VerseLove family! You can #smashyourwordstogether or #space them apart.

My hashtag poem (I used my favorite variation of my name, what my granddaughters call me):

#HeyY’all #ThisIsMe

#finchologist
#rise&write
#aweseeker
#naturereveler
#nowletmelookthatup
#anothercupofcoffeeplease

Today, Bryan Ripley Crandall hosts VerseLove with a “Magic Box” poem – the directions are somewhat extensive, but very intriguing; check them out here.

My Magic Box poem:

The Golden Rim

I discovered the jewels
right here at home
whispering rules, awaiting accruals
like longing, lingering talismans
to put in my pockets, protection from fools

I shall not suffer them, removing my saffron socks
barefootedly heading for another world
where winter is fading
adventure, a’waiting
already, I savor the welcoming salt

I wished, and the grail materialized
in my hand, like a poem
capturing the wellspring of my heart
hoping for rhythms of grace
with these words etched around the golden rim:
Write Me

Oh, this spiral shell of Time, wobbling on crustaceous legs!
It’s sweet as honey and bitter as medicine in tentative turn
luring me to press myself
between the musty pages
with my new ink, riding the roaring waves of the past
in the bubbling clean foam of Now.

Fossil nautilus.Hitchster. CC BY 2.0.

Speaking of Now…what will you write?

******

with thanks to Kim and Bryan at Ethical ELA
along with those sharing for Slice of Life Tuesday at Two Writing Teachers

	cvarsalona on Things old and new: Spiritual…
	patriciafranz on Things old and new: Spiritual…
	Denise Krebs on Things old and new: Spiritual…
	arjeha on Things old and new: Spiritual…
	gopearce3 on Things old and new: Spiritual…

lit bits and pieces

Snippets of learning and life

Ghosted

Parched

For love of reading

Red, white, and blue reflections

The letter

Alphabeticals poem

Inspirational place poem

Hashtag and magic box poems