I remember sitting in the car behind my father’s seat for the 2 hour drive to Alumni day at the Trenton school for the Deaf.  I am wearing a pale flowered shift made soft from afternoons of fluttering on the clothesline and I watch the anticipation in Mommy and Daddy’s hands as they talk of the day to come.  In my mind, I can see our green and white Ford coming over the rise of freshly mowed fields to dozens of people waving and hugging us in the warm, summer sun and of watching my parents become the center of many attentions.

I can call to mind mothers with pretty lipstick and being fed bits of chicken, racing with a hard boiled egg on a spoon and spelling-out my name, letter by letter, with my little girl fingers, showing off to the delight and admiration of the adults.

I think back on the pride I felt when Daddy took us into the cool, dark halls of the school building, pointing out the all the trophies that he had won as an athlete. A small group gathered to watch him talk about the Championship game of 1942 when his team travelled 3 exhilarating days by bus to Jacksonville, Illinois.

His eyes becoming wet while telling us that the school from Mississippi refused to play on a court with Trenton’s two “Colored” boys.  He puffed while up giving us a play by play of the last quarter when they battled point for point against the heavily favored hometown school, and he cried again telling us about how they came home to their cheering classmates who were all given the day off to celebrate. This was his house and we felt special to claim him as our own.

I have a memory of pollen scented air and running down a hill to throw my arms around my fathers waist from behind only to realize that it was not my father at all just an unrecognizable face wearing the same kind of khaki pants.  At first the face looked surprised and then laughing, he pointed across a wide playground where my mother was sitting on blue blanket under some shady trees.

I think back on swinging just before dusk next to a boy wearing a dirty shirt and watching our feet pump up and down past the horizon and when it was almost dark, I remember following my mother as she carried my sleeping sister to the car. I have memorized, my parents signing hands flickering above the lights of the dashboard as they talked about the day and of me staring out at the night sky to keep an eye on the those three stars in a row which I still believe follow me for protection.

I remember all of us and these memories have become my Madeleine to call back every happiness of my little girl life. I don’t know if these remembrances were from one Alumni day or the best of a dozen days sifted into one endless, dreamy loop.  All I know is that when we were there, the people around us became our mirrors; what we saw in their faces when they looked at us would become who we were.

I know that those small moments became bigger than any hurt or slight or feeling of inadequacy that Mommy and Daddy might have felt outside in the hearing world and that Alumni Day at The Trenton School for the Deaf sustained all of us.  When I unwrap these memories one-by-one as I so often do around the holidays, my fingers tingle, I sigh a happy sign and my heart titters at the slow-motion perfection of it all.  And then always, always these moments are followed by the single thought that I have such a lucky, lucky life.

DOG DAYS

SETTING- Professional and Convivial Corporate Office.

ALEX-  Excuse me, you wanted to see us?

SUPERVISOR-  Thank you for letting us interrupt you lunch.

 TERRY –  That’s fine.  We’re happy to do it.

 SUPERVISOR –  This is our Human Resources Liaison.  Come  . . .  Sit.

HUMAN RELATIONS DIRECTOR-  The two of you are the strongest of the new candidates and we wanted to know how the training met your needs. (No response from the trainees) . . . Alex why don’t you speak.

ALEX-  I feel like I was given clear job expectations and a good idea of how to manage the day to day tasks.

 SUPERVISOR-  (Accidentally dropping a pen) Sorry, would you fetch my pen? (As Alex begins to stand).  Stay! (Alex is caught in a crouch position- which s/he freezes in)

TERRY-  For me, one of the most helpful aspects of the training was gaining an understanding of the corporate culture here.

SUPERVISOR-  I’m happy to hear that.  Catch the imaginary treat. (She tosses an imaginary treat into the air, Terry catches it in her/his mouth.)  (To Alex) Down. (Alex sits.)                                                   

HUMAN RELATIONS DIRECTOR-  Alex, how do you feel about the guidelines for disciplinary action?

 ALEX-  I agree with them. I think that they appropriate and fair.

SUPERVISOR-  (To the Human Resources Director) Of course each one of them has their own strengths but both came down the learning curve beautifully.  Terry, sic em’.  (Terry attacks Alex.  They tussle)

 HUMAN RELATIONS DIRECTOR-  I just don’t know why I can’t get my dogs to do that.

SUPERVISOR-  They’re not employees.

HUMAN RELATIONS DIRECTOR-  Good point.  Terry, Alex- Play Dead. (Terry & Alex- rollover and play dead)

LIGHTS UP

I am a woman who can say the least amount of information in the most amount of words.  Some of the time it is grammatically correct, other times punctuationally inventive but most for the most part it’s just lengthy, inane, occasionally smart, perhaps a bit repetitious and it always beats around the bush.  I like to call it my style, my artistic form, my swagga. (Don’t you love it when I get all gangster?)

This talent- and I call it a God given talent- really worked in my favor during essay exams in school- (6th grade through Ph.D. with the one exception of Ms Balutanksi’s Social Studies Class, Junior year.  She was strictly multiple choice- which, of course, had it’s own advantages.)  When writing a play, I have the ability produce so much material that it takes a team of highly trained CSI’s to figure out the plot-line, which is great because everyone knows how difficult it is for CSI’s to find work in this economy.

I often like to trot out this artistic flair during the most exciting parts of movies, while writing e-mails about the best cat litter, and during sex.  I have also been told by my loved ones that it is especially appreciated when they’re are in a hurry to get off the phone or have a hangover.   Upon occasion, people have requested, that I “get to the point”.  Rather than get upset I simply remind myself that they are jealous because of their own woeful concise articulateness.

In certain circles I know that my gift is viewed as dendrite upon the world of polite dinner chit-chat.  What they don’t know is that I use it like a super-power to prevent me from ever getting another invitation where I have to pretend to be the perfect corporate wife.  (Although, I am grateful that my sweet husband is part of a corporate milieu that allows me the sheer, shimmery luxury of being an unfettered “artist”. (Air-quotes provided by my husband- but only with the nicest and earnest of intentions.)

All of that being said, It takes me a long time to get to the meat . . . .  and then along comes “Mr One Minute Play Man”, Dominic D’Andrea, waving his sixty seconds around like some kind of an annoying show-off.  So, I thought to myself,  “They don’t think I can do this.  Well, they got another thing coming.  I’ll show them and then they’ll be sorry.  All of them!  I’d write a one-minute play and a good one and I won’t cram it with words . . .  just out of spite.

I see them out of the corner of my eye, those girls with the long-legged swagger of youth and I reminded of that summer.

It was the summer of fervent anticipation, five best girlfriends, and a rented house down the shore.  It was having a drivers license, a job,  scorching tight jeans and our freedom.  It was the joy of being lifted by a lazy wave, the lure of being pulled by an undertow as powerful as first love and the sting of a shaved bikini line in the salty surf.

It was the summer of slathering baby oil and Imperial margarine over every inch of skin until we would sizzle and char like cheap hamburger meat on the grill.  It was lipstick melting in a beach bag stuffed full with Tolstoy, Sidney Sheldon novels and near empty wallets.   It was the smell of the ocean and the boardwalk tar and the salt-water taffy that followed us everywhere.

It was the summer of pruned fingers teasing uncooperative matches into cupped hands to light a Virginia Slims menthol.  It was sticky lips and salty teeth biting into a gritty salami and mustard sandwich.  It was the long, endless pull of an icy Tab under a razor hot sun.

It was the summer of Sun-In and lemon juice that made blondes turn golden, redheads turn penny and brunettes turn orange.  It was the blistering looks from skittish mothers as they dragged their children away from the melee.  It was the silent exchange of smug glances at the women we vowed never to become.

It was the summer of surging beer shots and bong chasers, sleeping three to a bed and tiptoeing through a houseful of dozing bodies to make the noon shift at Maruca’s Pizza Parlor.

It was nursing sun burns, sand burns, whisker burns and rug burns with community tubes of Neosporin and aloe-vera.   It was letting ourselves be swept away by the endless flirting, the public make-outs and the sloppy breakups.

It was the summer of loose hair, blazing defiance, skin the color of a Hershey kiss and the feeling that Labor day was a million miles away.  It was the simple, secret belief that we all would be young forever.

Now, as I watch them out of the corner of my eye, those girls with the long-legged swagger of youth, I am reminded of that summer- that high tide of my life summer.  “Remember this” I silently whisper.  ”It will not last long.  Nothing does.  I was one of you once and I know.”

Arlene Malinowski

You pass room after room empty but for the sick that lie in them quietly watching TV.   And then there are the regulars, the spouses or children, usually the daughters, pale and tired who eat three lifeless meals a day, everyday in the cafeteria and smile at you in the elevator simply because they know you’re the same.

But in that hospital it’s the sounds that that that I remember most. They crouch under beds and wander the hallways to keep you company.  It’s the sound whose secret heart holds, hope and faith, desperation and despair and it is the sound who hears the dozens of prayers offered up in dozens of languages.  And when you’re in that hospital you are a part of it all.      Excerpt- Aiming for Sainthood

Rare Photo of Actual Money

I miss money.  I don’t mean having or not having it.  I mean, I miss money; paper money, coin money, real money.  I miss the jingling of my fathers’ pockets as he walked up the stairs after a day in the factory. Or filching a smooth dollar bill hidden in the folds of my mothers old alligator wallet.  I love holding a new ten-spot up to my nose to breathe in its familiar and distinctive smell that is as indescribable as the scent of a freshly painted room.  And the taste of money!  I know you’re not supposed to put it in your mouth but admit it, we all have and its sharp, piquant flavor is like no other.

My first real job was working at The Mart.  A family owned women’s apparel store in downtown Paterson, NJ. I worked the main floor; accessories and sportswear, the basement; coats and better dresses and the 3^rd floor which housed the fine lingerie, layaway and the switchboard.  The minimum wage was 2 dollars and fifteen cents and every Friday I was handed a 3 x 6 manila bank envelope filled with cash and a little change to spend as I liked.

In college it was the Extension Diner conveniently located next to the Extension Lounge heralded as the “longest bar in NJ”. There, I would put a black polyester uniform over a frilly slip to ensure better tips when I bent over to wipe down a table or to scoop up my booty of quarters, nickels, dimes and the occasional buck or two.  It was like dying and going to cash heaven.  The harder I worked, and the nicer I was the more legal tender I could squirrel away for fifty-cent pitchers at the campus pub.

Growing up, I loved looking through the coins my parents carefully counted and rolled for our yearly vacations down the shore or put aside for their Christmas club.  Now a days, I use Visa for everything; restaurants and movies, lipstick and groceries, taxis and Weight Watchers.  I have cards for Starbucks, massages at Continuum Spa and Borders books.  I don’t need money for the bus or the El because I have a CTA card. Everyone does.  Even tollways and bridges have jumped on the cashless bandwagon and installed I-Pass.  Sometimes I wonder how panhandlers, Salvation Army bell ringers and strippers are coping in this cashless culture.  My God child gets his allowance deposited into an account that he manage with a debit card- and he’s 9 years old!

I miss the joy of opening a Christmas or birthday card from Aunt Rose and watching the five-dollar bills flutter to the floor. Remember how great it felt to put your hand into the back pocket of your jeans and find a crumpled ten-dollar bill?  And I hate that there is never any loose change in my couch or my car anymore to get a Slurpie or a .99 cent burrito when I’m running a little low.  It seems to me that the only place that cash is still used is in the summer blockbuster where the ransom note demands a suitcase of unmarked bills in exchange for the kidnapped kid.

My sister Diana once swallowed a quarter on Thanksgiving.  It caused a block-wide panic.  The pumpkin pie was abandoned, my sister was shaken upside down and we all took a trip to the emergency room.  For days afterwards, my mother had to check her poop for the wayward coin.  This would have never happened if Diana had a Discover card but then my family would have been denied one of our favorite stories that we tell and retell every holiday since then.  Incidentally, my mother still has the quarter safely wrapped in tissue and tucked into an envelope marked “Thanksgiving 1965”.

Even the wallets we use today are different.  There is hardly a place to put your paper money and forget a zippered pouch to collect your coins. Instead, they’ve been replaced with long rows of empty slots to store your green or gold or platinum cards.  Yes, I agree that real money is sometimes heavy and unwieldy and messy. That it may make our hands dirty or pass germs.  And yes, I agree that using cash and making change makes everything little slower. Just stand behind someone in the checkout line who pays for their lunch with exact change. Nevertheless, in the big picture is that such a horrible thing?

Not that I’m waxing rhapsodic for the good old days, but I liked how it felt to use cash.  When I am using my Master Card I can get something when I need it or want it even when I don’t have the funds for it.  But lately I’ve realized my relationship with money has changed. When I use an American Express card, it doesn’t even feel like I’m spending. When I used currency it felt like a real transaction. When I used ready money, I knew how much I had to spend and I saw where every dollar went.  It made me realize what I got in return for my hard work.  When I had money in my life- hard cash, my money was gone when it was gone.  And while it’s still true that money does indeed make the world go around I for one am going to make cash the new credit and you can take that all the way to the bank!

The New Jersey Silent Club was an old storefront with N.J.S.C. carefully painted on the picture window in gold and black letters.  When my parents and their friends pushed open the heavy, wooden doors they were no longer the “Deaf one”.  They became Samuel the machinist, Lucy the flirt, Joan the mother of five, Bob the drinker or Flo the club accountant.  Deaf club was where Mommy fell in love with Daddy, where Daddy played penny poker most every Friday night, where we celebrated our holidays, watched subtitled movies on a giant sheet tacked to the wall and where I could go to the bar and get a cherry coke for free because I had a tab.  It was our union hall, our classroom, our corner tavern.   It was the heart and the soul of the Deaf community where I was petted and spoiled by people who didn’t think of themselves as disabled or broken.  They believed that they were just another culture with a different language.

Whenever I meet a Deaf person in a Starbucks, or on the El  we talk and connect like we are part of the same family, the same tribe.  And I always feel like I’m back at Deaf Club.

Arlene Malinowski

And I know that we are all bound to each other by a sticky web of history and grudges, debt and love and love and love. This experience has become a bookmark in my family’s story and this experience has healed me forever.  I have become a better daughter.

I never found my Springsteen poster but sometimes it’s good to leave the past behind.  But I also know that he’s a guy from Jersey, who got outta Jersey, who is still connected to Jersey- just like me.

On New Years day we all walk to 9:15 mass at Saint Brendan’s and I realize that perhaps the best way to start believing in God is to start searching for God.  And maybe, just maybe that’s the miracle. As I hold Mommy’s hand on the way to church I remember that as babies we all were rocked to sleep by our parents talking hands.  Excerpt From solo show- Aiming for Sainthood

Up until 7th grade poetry was either boring or stupid and often both at the same time.  I was never really moved by Carl Sandburgs’ “Fog comes down on little cat feet” Although I can still recite it by heart- and recite it with meaning.

Rhyming couplets were especially hard to write because of the iambic pentameter thing.  And the limerick, I thought those kinds of poem had potential. They were funny and sometimes dirty but they had to be five lines long, written in a particular sing-songy rhythm that had an AABBA rhyming scheme and that was even harder. Then there was poetry-poetry, which was just complicated and didn’t make any sense- ever.  But the haiku was Japanese and had a lot going for it.  It was short, only three lines, but the thing that gave haiku its haiku-ness was the number of syllables in each line, 5-7-5.  I could do syllables and not everyone in my class could.  Haikus didn’t have to rhyme and most of the ones in our English book were about everyday things like rain and flowers.  And even the weirdest ones were easy to understand.

The first cold shower;

even the monkey seems to want

a little coat of straw.        Bashō:

This was poetry for the people.

I’ve always considered myself a writer; a playwright actually, penning such works as “The Christmas Ornament” which had a fireplace, a manager scene, 26 lines and a cast of 13.  Playing all the parts I would sign dialog to my Deaf mother as she typed it. I could often complete an entire work in just under an hour since she used a manual typewriter so there was no going back.  But after mastering the one act play genre I longed for a different creative outlet.

My previous attempts at writing poetry in the 5th & 6th grades often fell flat.  They were full of clichés and awkward rhyming.  But haiku?  Haiku I could do.  Mrs Valenz, one of the pretty teachers who wore plaid miniskirts and go-go boots, judged my first endeavor into the art form a critical success

We wait for robins

hopping on the new spring grass,

flying in blue skies.

This ode to spring was praised for interesting subject matter and correct syllabification.  I was burbling with pride.

I did most of my haikuing with Paula Rutkowski, my best friend.  She was skinny, buck toothed and by far the best poet I had ever met but she never bragged about it.  We wrote haikus about our classmates, the yeowling cats that kept us up at night, the new purple vests we wanted and we wrote about our families.

I hate my parents.

Why are they so mean to me?

Am I adopted?

I wrote because I liked it.  I wrote because I was miserable but mostly I wrote because one afternoon Jeffery Hazler leaned over to me and said, “Hey, Haiku Girl, can I borrow a piece of paper?”  It was an extraordinary moment in an ordinary life, I was considered a poet, a Haiku Girl, by the cutest boy in the 7th grade.  Haiku not only expressed my emotions but helped me figure out what I was feeling and why.  By the time winter ended I was writing hardcore haikus about black sucking voids and Vietnam.

War; man against man.

Protesters against the man.

We fight at what cost?

I used haiku to tease out the mysteries of life and the most touching and most profound were centered, of course, around love.

Michael how could you?

Is she prettier than me

or is she a whore?

I wrote because had something to say and no one to say it to.  I wrote because I thought my voice was important to my generation and I wrote to become famous.  Although I pooh-poohed getting my haikus published, it was considered “too establishment”, I did like the idea of reciting my poetry before an audience.  Maybe I would travel around with a folk singing group who drove a VW bus from gig to gig performing for hippies, yippies and beatniks. (Although I wasn’t quite sure of what a beatnik was.)  With haiku my future was pregnant with possibilities especially after I didn’t make the glee club.

Everyday is new

I start all over again.

Will it be the same?

Then one day it stopped.  I just didn’t feel the need to document every emotion and observation that I had about myself and the world.  7th grade gave way to 8th and “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe and basketball games and holding hands with Thomas Costello.  Just like that I stopped being Haiku Girl and it was OK.  It was like a pair of dungarees that no longer fit. I still liked them but they had served their purpose and I was excited to get a new pair of Wranglers.

I miss Haiku Girl.  She was full of alienation and hopefulness, confusion and hormones. I miss how easily the words came to her and her unshakeable belief that she was an artist.  I miss how the inner censor who screamed so loudly in so many parts of her life was quietly, respectfully silent when she wrote haiku. There aren’t many of those haikus left. They’ve fallen victim to too many careless hands and too many careless moves.  But on those occasions that I do think about Haiku Girl and my younger self, I see a smoky coffeehouse full of beatniks in black berets and a dim spotlight shining on a lone solitary figure sitting on a stool reciting her favorite haiku.

My dreams are like stars;

even on the darkest night

they shine on and on

Debut of "I Haiku at "In So Many Words" spoke Word event in Chicago