To My Grandmother

Below is a poem I wrote for my grandmother as a Christmas present this year. This goes along with the series I've been doing for important people in my life, starting with my mother, father, and sister. --- Steve

To My Grandmother…

The process of going to Mommom’s

Like the old suitcase used to say

Is a sequence of slight, gentle moves

The turn down the long used-to-be-dirt but now-partly-paved lane

The bend passed the barn

And the quick assessment of vehicles

To guess who might already be there

The farm, a mixture of fragrances (chickens, horses, and something that seems to change every time)

Hits the nostrils

While getting out of your car

And walking to the cement patio,

Up the brick steps and into the closed-in porch

Which typically gives the first hints of what might be cooking (or just cooked)

In her kitchen, the first room entered, the one where she is master and commander

Caretaker and socializer

You greet her first with a kiss and a hug,

And she greets you with, “Have you eaten?”

Or some approximation thereof

And you say no (even if you have)

Because even her tuna fish sandwiches are phenomenal

Washing it all down with her sweet tea

That doesn’t taste like any other tea you have tried

And you have tried a lot of them

The ensuing conversation

Had in-between her washing, wiping, sweeping in the kitchen

Takes you back to the summer you lived with her

She, newly widowed

You, home from college

Staying with her because family said she would need you

But, it is you who were in need, and you didn’t even know it

In need of knowledge and revelation

Because you learned what it is

To be strong

To keep on

To set life in motion

With the everyday things like cooking and chores

The solace of a neat living space

The routine of family care

All of it

The daily fragments that hold up the tapestry of life

Giving it something sturdy and true from which to spring forward

What-To-Watch Wednesday: Paterson (2016)

The funniest thing happened.  When I finally sat down to get back to doing some proper writing on my blog, the intention being to start off with a new W2WW movie review, I accidentally deleted my review for the film Paterson.  The hows and whys of how I managed to do that on a blogger system that isn't exactly intuitive or user-friendly and requires multiple steps to accomplish even the simplest of tasks remains a mystery to me.

What isn't lost on me is the irony of my losing a review of a film that has a very similar problem at its core.  I won't say too much more about that as it would be a major spoiler to the movie as a whole, and my situation isn't nearly as dire as the one faced by the story's main character.  Truth be told, I was never very happy with that review anyway and often thought about revising it in some way.  So, I took this happy accident as a sign that I should kick off my return to blogging by starting afresh with a new review of Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, starring Adam Driver.

My usual approach to the W2WW entries is to re-watch the film I am reviewing so I can have something accurate if not altogether fresh to say about it.  I don't feel the need to do that with Paterson though.  This is a film that has stuck with me since I first watched it on Amazon Prime, and my thoughts on it are very clear.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I knew there was something special about Paterson twenty minutes into it.  The film is quirky enough: the title is both the setting (Paterson, NJ) and the name of the main character, played by Adam Driver.  Paterson, the man, is a bus driver with an easy-going, understated personality and married to a scattered-brained wife, Laura, who he loves very much.  The film follows Paterson's day-to-day interactions with his wife, people in his community, and the passengers on his bus route.

Honestly, the film could have stopped there and allowed Paterson to be our way into viewing the very intriguing and intricate relationships the various characters have with one another.  It would have been a passably interesting story just by doing that.  However, the film goes further and reveals to us the internal life that Paterson lives as a poet.

It is here that the film became almost magical to me.  Never before have I seen a movie so successfully capture the idea that writers exist in two separate worlds: the exterior world of physical reality and every day living, and an interior world of careful observations and quiet inspiration.  A simple book of matches becomes the basis of a beautiful love poem for his wife.  An overheard snippet of conversation on the bus evolves into a commentary on how men and woman communicate or, rather, don't communicate.  Through voice over and subtle acting, we get to see Paterson find his way into writing his poems via real world experiences.

Somewhat paradoxically, the push and pull of these two worlds (and Paterson's attempts to keep them separate) creates the unstated central conflict in the film.  Paterson exists too much in one world and not enough in the other to understand the full effects and potential consequences of each.  Ultimately, the story leads to a tragedy that only someone who has spent time creating and crafting something out of nothing would understand.  The loss that Paterson endures and his subsequent coping with it come right out of the hopes and fears of every writer.

Paterson is written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, a name familiar to me although I haven't paid much attention to his prior films, an error I still need to correct.  He has made a film of real charm and power, grounded by a strong central performance from Adam Driver.