When I started college in the 1960s, birth control was not available anywhere from anyone for any reason, unless you were married. Period. The pill had been released to the public, but the public needed to be in conventional unions sanctioned by society in general. And the pharmacist had to agree to fill the prescription, if one was brought to him. And believe me, it was almost always a him.

In my small college town, unplanned pregnancy was everybody’s worst nightmare — and it was a bad dream that became reality for many of my friends. Most of them married each other, and were plunged prematurely into relationships that often did not survive. Some did, of course. But they probably would have anyway.

One enterprising gas station in the neighborhood began stocking its men’s restroom with condoms, which were dispensed by a machine with a wheel that cranked down the purchase one at a time. I believe that each twist of the knob was a quarter. I do remember that the line outside the restroom at the Shell station on Friday night was long, and there were few cars at the pumps.

Eventually, when the student pregnancy rate become unwieldy enough, the campus physician stepped in and risked his job by making both the pill available through the student health center. Every one of us was diagnosed as having “problem periods” (they were especially problematic when they didn’t arrive on time). He also kept a supply of foam and condoms handy that were available on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” sort of basis. We were sort of left to our own devices over the summers, so we were sure to renew our prescriptions before we disappeared into our private lives for three months.

 A few of us resorted to abortions. They became legal in New York during my junior year, and more times than I care to remember we drove a terrified coed to the airport to catch a flight east. We would also pick her up in the middle of the night when she returned home. It was a grisly ritual, and it claimed many victims — both already-born and unborn.

For decades I have been a proponent of birth control on demand. And the demand should not have to be above a whisper. If the request is being made, clearly the need is already present. Sexual activity occurs whether we think the circumstances under which it occurs are proper, or not. Sex can result in pregnancy, and pregnancy is not something that should be forced on a female as a penalty for “doing it.”

There’s something else that birth control can prevent, besides pregnancy: abortions. An abortion is never a positive answer, but is almost always selected as a seemingly lesser of several evils. Regardless of which side of the debate a person takes, it cannot be argued that a deliberate choice of a death of some kind has been made. Even pulling a dandelion results in the demise of a living thing.

I was never able to complete a pregnancy, so my husband and I eventually adopted three children — all products of unplanned teen-aged pregnancies. They arrived in the world with many challenges, and even as adults their troubled beginnings pursue them throughout their lives. I raised them with love and hope, but now I think of the middle-aged women who are their birth mothers, and I wonder often how they have fared. I wonder why they didn’t use the contraception that they could have purchased easily, and why they chose to have their babies instead of terminating their pregnancies. I wonder, but I would never ask, even if I had the chance. Some questions simply have no black and white answers.

Here’s something to think about…

The other day, I stood in a checkout line at a department store with a pair of shoes in my hand. Across from me at the other register, two people waited their turns. One was a young man, muscular and tattooed. The other was a middle-aged woman who had cerebral palsy. She held a bright red shirt on a hanger. She turned to the young man and asked, “Do you think this color is good for me?”

 I felt my breath catch,  and I hoped that he would respond. He looked at the shirt, and said, “It’s a great color.”

 The woman considered his answer and then asked, “You think I should buy it? It’s eight bucks.”

The young man paused, then asked, “Will you wear it and enjoy it?”

The woman said, “I will.”

The young man asked, “Do you like it a lot?”

She said, “I do.”

He said, “Then eight bucks is a great price for something you like and will enjoy. I think you should buy it.”

She thanked him, and he said, “You’re very welcome.”

I bought my shoes, and thanked him silently for giving me hope for the entire human race.

One of my only regrets is that I haven’t been able to travel more. The circumstances of my life have required me to stay for years at a time without leaving the southwest desert. I did manage to get to Great Britain and vicinity a few years ago, and I’ve gone to the Midwest too many times to attend one funeral or the other. But traveling for the pure love of it hasn’t been in the cards for me.

I mentioned all of this to David, as we sat in our chairs on our back porch, preparing to watch the evening floor show of birds going to bed and lizards heading towards home. We started talking about all of the animals we have seen from the vantage point of the east end of the porch, which required us walking less than 25 feet to enjoy.

Some visitors have been particularly memorable, like the juvenile hawk who came regularly for a few days while he was learning the ropes of being a raptor. We also hauled a coatimundi from the pool, who ran up a nearby eucalyptus tree and sulked. Bats have come and gone, including a fascinating one with a long snout just like a hummingbird. The bird parade is nightly, and is usually led by quail, myriad doves, hummingbirds, and cactus wrens. We have had a coyote or two, and some other serious wildlife.

However, the most startling visitors we had — the ones that actually startled me — were the feral mother cat and her tiny little kittens. They stayed for a day or so under our oleander bushes. I first became aware of them when I was working in the yard, and one of the kittens — about a third of the size of my fist — exploded out of the bush at my head, its claws extended and its tiny little hiss torqued up to rattlesnake volume. I literally rolled backwards out of the way of something that probably could be mailed for less than 50 cents.

He was all black, and his tongue was red. I didn’t have time to see whether or not he had teeth, but I am sure his eyes hadn’t been open for very many days. I went into the house and let the mother cat and her kittens have as much privacy as they wanted. To reduce the amount of hunting they would do during their visit, I did put water and food out where they could reach it conveniently.

I would still like to get out of town this summer. In the meantime, I’ll be on the porch.

no comfort knowing
that I am not the first,
nor millionth from the last,
just one beneath the cross,
as the son bled god
the mother, dreamless now,
flickering, a shadow
of a moth
around an ancient fire

aren’t you proud? and I say
I am frozen,
rigid with worship.
I have touched his uniform,
robe of a  holy man,
yet beneath the cloth
I feel the boy
and know his face
in clouded light,
breathing sleep into the dark

copyright 2009, Jody Serey

I was there to look for an extra chair to pull up to the dinner table during the holidays. Although I am usually a little annoyed by people who sing mindlessly along with the recorded music playing in a store, I didn’t mind that she was singing along with the Christmas carols. Her voice was unforced, pure, and soft. She was completely engrossed in what she was doing, which was picking out gifts. Her cart was lined with her selections, which ranged from figurines to several spoons. She was completely and purely happy, and for a few minutes, she was safe.

The store staff knew her, I was certainly no threat at all, and there was nobody else around to spoil her moment. Her physical handicaps, which were many, were not hampering her enjoyment. She said to me, “I have $20 to work with today. I think I can find something for everybody.”

I answered her, “I am sure you will.”

I found a chair, took it through the line, and paid the $4.98 that was printed on the tag. In back of me, I heard her singing softly to herself as she thought about the ones she loved, and picked out their gifts. “…all is calm, all is bright.”

 All was bright, indeed.

Death is a fact of life, especially for those of us in middle age. Although a few of us may wrestle with the issues of mortality on a personal level, it is more likely that we are traveling final roads with parents. The past few years have been filled with goodbyes for both my extended and my nuclear family, and I have been to far too many funeral brunches held en absentia for friends.

Death produces is a major change in a relationship, and change often results in the necessity of dealing with “stuff.” Not stuff in the sense of philosophical issues, but stuff in the sense of items in boxes and storage sheds.

My own much loved parents have not been on this earth now for several years. When my father died, my sister and I redistributed or dispensed with the accoutrements of his daily life. Although he was an unusually tidy man and almost fanatically well organized and had himself streamlined his collection of earthly goods — there was still a goodly amount. I only recently had to buy a bottle of antacid again. He had enough stockpiled to stem off a cholera epidemic. My sister says she’s still got boxes of Kleenex left.

His cleaning rags became our cleaning rags, so I dust the furniture with my sheets from college or the towels he and Mom bought in the 70s when they wanted to pep up the basic beige bathroom. I clean the car windows with remnants of linens purchased when my parents were years younger than I am now. When a scrap gets too small or worn to wash safely in the washing machine, I whisper farewell and put it in the trash. Somebody witnessing me getting teary-eyed over half a hand towel with a faded paisley print would think I had lost my mind.

I am keenly aware that the twist ties around the screwdrivers were twisted by my dad’s fingers. And I know full well that the couple of handkerchiefs that my sister passed on to me were ironed by my mother before she had her stroke. My father couldn’t bear to use them and wash away the traces of her rare excursion into domesticity — and now neither can I. So added to the odd altar of memory are a couple of bleached and ironed squares of material with my dad’s initials in the corners.

What really puzzles me is my attachment to the address book that I have tucked away that is no longer accurate. I just can’t seem to part with it. In my perkiest handwriting in pre-computer days, I have written the numbers and addresses for friends long lost and family long dead. My parents are still there together in my careful cursive, their address and phone number giving no clue to the casual observer that dialing a few numbers wouldn’t conjure up my mother’s distinct voice.

I have put the address book away, wrapped in one of the handkerchiefs. I will leave them both for my puzzled children to dispose of on a quiet Sunday afternoon some day in the future.

He has been sober since late summer, a result of finally being jailed — not for drug use as we had all expected, but for excessive noise and property damage. The irony is that he was not under the influence when he finally lost it. He had just emerged from a haze that was years long.

I first heard his voice on my answering machine, calling me from booking. I had always said, “If you get arrested, I won’t bail you out. You will have to ride that train all the way to the station.”

So I left him to the system. And each day that passed, I heard myself say to the three-year old that he had been so long ago, “Mom will always be there.”

But I was there, all through those days when the heat in Arizona is not just a temperature, it’s an entity. I was there through the nights when the cement still held the rage of noon. I was there, middle aged and battered in the mirror at 3:00 a.m., when I couldn’t sleep and I knew he was awake in a bunk, wondering why I refused to take his calls.

Eventually, the system set him back on the street, and after he gathered what was left of his belongings — most of which I had supplied during my attempts to help him get basic survival accomplished with items like towels and silverware — I agreed to see him. My child of decades ago looked through the mask of a death camp survivor. His bones lay breathtakingly close to the surface of white skin. His teeth have been destroyed. His blue eyes, which once flashed and twinkled, burned through the gray of his face. I touched his hand, and traced the scars left by his pulling at the sensation of bugs crawling through the flesh of fingers. I pulled his six foot frame to me, and kissed him.

His voice was warm and relieved. “Mom,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

And so it began, the visits with me while his father kept vigil in the room nearby. His father, who had somehow always managed to love this boy despite what was hideous, what was heartbreaking. His father, who I had never realized was as savaged by his child’s destruction as any figure in the Pieta. His father, who had also held a front row seat to the crucifixion of the wife as well as the son.

The visits continue, one brief hour at a time, and their normalcy is fragile. Yet they survive the test of close proximity, and the small rituals have emerged again. He mows the lawn, I make supper, and we talk about the leak in the roof that defies repair.

It is mundane. It is sacred. It is what we have for now.

In 1958, we lived in Jacksonville, Indiana on Clay Avenue, next to what had been a farm in earlier days. Now our place, and theirs, was on a street lined with elm trees.The barn next door was a playground for us all, but particularly for the grandchildren of the couple who had lived in the main house for their entire married life. We all got along, so we were given the run of the place.

One late summer afternoon, the kids chased a field mouse into a corner of the barn, and covered it with a coffee can to trap it. In their haste, they pressed the can down on the edge of the mouse’s tail, and cut it. The mouse screamed in terror. So did I.

The grandchildren were not mean kids, and quickly lifted the can up and freed the mouse’s tail. But damage had been done, and I saw the blood. I insisted they let the mouse go, and they did, startled at how upset I was.

Over and over again, I replayed the event from the mouse’s point of view — the chase, the capture, and the sharp edge cutting something tender in the dark. I pushed my dinner around my plate, and went to bed long before I would have been told to do. I wanted the day to roll over into the next, and the sound of that shrill squeak to be out of my ears.

It never left.

For almost half a century, I have had that sound at the spot in my spine where despair finds a dwelling place. When circumstances press down on me, I think of the coffee can in the otherwise friendly barn of a universe coming down over my head. I wonder if anything, anybody will speak up and say, “Let her go, let her go.”

One squeak of a mouse has made an echo in the darkest parts of my heart. What chance did I have with my children’s pain? How could I ever sleep again?

I spend a lot of time in Prescott. My neighbors are few and far between, so when I get a call about an emergency, I tend to pay attention. Recently, Rebecca who lives on the next property over from me sent me an email that something terrible had happened in her chicken coop.

When I realized that she wasn’t referring to a problem of a personal nature, I put on my boots and made my way across the road. There I came upon the scene of a hennypenny holocaust.

What I found was a flock of eighteen chickens that were as mad as, well, as mad as old wet hens, as the saying goes. Despite being bantams and small ones at that, they seemed to occupy the entire pen all at once, and they were furious. Beaks and shrieks were everywhere.

The little hens appeared to be mostly naked. At least their little rear ends were. All around me, fowl fannies festooned with no more than two or three feathers apiece shook in fury, and I suppose with cold, too. I looked at Rebecca, she looked at me, and I said, “Females usually fight over sex or money. Why don’t you just start at the beginning and tell me what happened?”

She said, “Nothing happened. It was just breakfast.”

“Well,” I said, “something’s different.”

Rebecca nodded her head. “I thought they might be happier if I gave them two pans for their food. One for each side of the chicken coop. Two doors, two pans, the same food divided up for their convenience. It seemed pretty logical. ”

Rebecca continued her narrative of the morning’s events. “At any rate — two doors, two pans, two places to eat. So I divided their usual feed into two parts, and that’s when all hell broke loose. They ran from pan to pan eating as fast as they could, and when they got in each other’s way, they started pulling each other’s tail feathers out. It was awful.”

“Where was the rooster?” I asked.

“He’s still hiding behind the shovel over at the edge of the pen.”

“Smart guy,” I said.

Meanwhile, the eighteen hens had quieted somewhat, but the uneasy calm was broken from time to time when a hen found an unplucked feather in the tail of another and gave it a quick yank out.

“See that?” Rebecca asked. “They’re even drawing blood.”

I suggested that we analyze the situation for awhile, and we both ignored Rebecca’s husband’s suggestion to make preparations for a bantam-size barbecue. Rebecca and I pulled lawn chairs to the edge of the pen, poured coffee in thermal cups, and began our vigil.

“What are we watching for?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I told her, “but I bet we’ll know it when we see it.”

It didn’t take long for the facts to reveal themselves. The battling bantams continued to foray over to the two pans, each of which was out of the line of vision of the other. In other words, if the girls leaned over to feast from one pan, they simultaneously blocked their own vision of what was being consumed in the other pan and by whom, and exposed their nude nether regions to each other as they picked at the pan of their current preference.

And as soon as one chicken bent over, another would rush over, peck at her friend’s rump, and try to stop her from eating. The two would spat for a few moments, until the two combatants either tired or found a third would-be diner attempting to get a quick bite in between pluckings and pickings.

The rooster remained hidden, never presenting himself to danger or defilement. However, from time to time he would remind the ladies of his presence by cockadoodling.

At the sound of his voice, the hens would all drop their beakfuls of corn or bloodied tailfeathers, and look hope-filled at the direction of his crowing. But he never emerged. Disappointed, they would return to their carnage.

“Rebecca,” I finally said, “I have an idea.”

“Good,” she replied, “because I’m getting cold and I’ve had too much coffee.”

“I think the problem with the two pans is it divides up the food and they can’t watch each other eat. They’re each afraid somebody else is going to get more than the other.”

“Jody,” Rebecca replied. “They are chickens. They don’t reason.”

“Rebecca,” I said, “they are females. It’s a non-species specific peculiarity.”

I suggested that we get one single pan, bigger in size than the old pan, and put the same amount of food into the bottom of it, spread it around to make it look like more, and see what happened.

“Just make sure that when they lean over, they can’t see each others’ butts,” I told Rebecca.

“What do you really have there in your cup?” she asked me.

“Coffee,” I replied. “Just coffee.”

So that is ultimately what we did. Rebecca found a nice big shiny pan – just one – and we put the usual daily ration of feed into the bottom and spread it nice and even. All the hens strutted over, circled the pan, and leaned over to eat. They occasionally raised their heads and eyed each other, but since all the girls were in view of each other and nobody could be seen getting kernel kickback, illicit mash, or undue attention from the rooster, the bloodshed subsided as quickly as it began.

The hens will not be ready for any of the upcoming county fairs for which they had been bred and raised, and we are uncertain whether their fancy plumage will ever be the same after the follicle abuse it has experienced. But the girls are happy again, despite the fact that there never was a lack of food to go around, and the actual quantity of their supplies hasn’t increased with the change in its container, despite appearances.

Meanwhile, the rooster’s out of danger, at least for the moment. But he is considering going back into therapy.

Millie was barely old enough to have a litter. Half Maltese mixed with yorkie and chihuahua, she is tiny and intelligent. We had planned to spay her after the holidays. New Year’s Eve, semi-terminal, ancient Jack found enough of a spark behind his failing heart for romance. The first of March, against all odds, Millie gave birth to five perfect puppies, each one as different as the next.

David fell in love immediately after I cleaned up the mess on the bed, which is the place Millie chose to deliver. My skills as midwife were tested, but everybody was hale and hearty. We decided to keep two puppies in the family, and find adoptive homes for three.

It was an easy decision to make on the first day, with a box full of puppies more hamster than canine, and all the linens in the wash. It wasn’t so simple seven weeks later.

Every time we scooped up the little brood and took them into the yard to play, it was hard to think of them being anywhere else but with us. When the day finally came for the three who were to be adopted to leave, David wept openly.

Rationally, we knew each puppy was going to an almost ideal home for a life of love and good care. But emotionally, it was truly difficult to go through with it. Practical concerns like too many little dogs in one house, homeowners association rules, etc. gave us no choice. Plus, we wanted each dog to have somebody’s devoted attention.

As strange as it may sound, I gained some understanding for the feelings of my children’s birth parents. Now adults, the kids were small when we adopted them and brought them home. I wondered often in the early days what it must be like to have a child whisked into the world beyond the scope of vision and hearing. I could only imagine.

I sent puppies home with people I know and trust and who will keep me supplied with pictures, and it almost broke my heart. Somewhere out there are six people whose children went home with strangers, and were never seen again.