The 6S Social Network

What can YOU say in six sentences?

Welcome to
The 6S Social Network

Or sign in with:

Teresa's Blog – March 2012 Archive (8)

Edge of the Universe: 6x6

I always wear the black and white dress to baptisms and funerals. It feels appropriate either way. The dress is comfortable once I get it on, force three small buttons through slings behind my neck, like rounded black heads through too-small birth canals.

While I'm concentrating on this intricate frustration I notice the small heart-shaped tin in my closet which is decorated with the same black and white scroll pattern on my dress. Inside the tin is my six year old's…

Continue

Added by Teresa on March 31, 2012 at 6:00pm — 12 Comments

Just Another Saturday Night

Twenty-two hours in the emergency room of a busy county hospital can teach you a lot about poverty, about chaos and how invisible you are in a crowd.

The story of how I got there is someone else's story, so I'll just tell you about four of over four hundred patients that day/night/day, one a thirty-something Nigerian law student with a Seal voice, body and face, sans the lupus scars.

His name was Henry and we discussed the following during our nine hours…

Continue

Added by Teresa on March 26, 2012 at 4:00pm — 11 Comments

Parallel Universe, Except...

We were born in October, one year apart, then due to parental failure we were both taken in by non-relatives in the mid-seventies.

Our best friends "Pighead" and "Froggy Devil" both died in 1998.

He told his most intimate secrets to his journal and dog Brutus (my Fonzi), prayed "often and hard" as a child, watched Oral Roberts weekly and the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon every year.

He fired his Santa-like image of a higher power after…

Continue

Added by Teresa on March 17, 2012 at 12:00pm — 4 Comments

Rewind

Unlike the premiere almost fifty years ago, the Rankin/Bass classic Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer is digitally remastered, free of annoying commercials and now we can pause, rewind, fast forward and thoroughly criticize creative imperfections.

The program which premiered in December 1964 was quite impressive at the time, as were other Animagic efforts, but now they pale in comparison to Pixar films, which makes me wonder when humans will cease to be blown…

Continue

Added by Teresa on March 17, 2012 at 10:30am — 7 Comments

Plastic Sacrilege

The large plastic container that once held a "Spring Mix" of salad greens sits empty on the granite island.

"Do you want this?" I ask the person who left it there, the person who leaves all recycling on this island because of some implicit law stating only I can locate the large recycling bin not five feet away in the garage.

"No," the person answers, and when I ask why inconsideration still persists after so many years the person angrily tosses the…

Continue

Added by Teresa on March 12, 2012 at 5:00pm — 16 Comments

HE

He tells me, "I've noticed that during mass you're never able to repeat after Father Leonard, 'Though I am not worthy to receive you, only say the word and I shall be healed...'"

I don't answer because both the words and the fact of his observation feel demeaning somehow, so I answer that I don't trust the church and he says the church has never claimed to be infallible but the Bible is and I say, "But God didn't create language, except maybe…

Continue

Added by Teresa on March 11, 2012 at 2:30pm — 10 Comments

Debt

He built a bomb that blew out the clutter, closed the till. It blew away memories -- faces of victims, the face in the mirror, nights spent listening to rats in the walls.

Gone was the tally told in thin yellowed newsprint, stacks of grainy photos and forgotten names, collected horrors inevitable when prayers, dogs and deadbolts failed.

He blew up years spent wondering when they'd come, when they'd take him from one prison to another.

Now…

Continue

Added by Teresa on March 6, 2012 at 9:55pm — 5 Comments

Destination

Father Ed skulked in the back hallway, a brown square package tucked beneath his arm; I smiled at our little secret, that he felt guilty giving away Sister Fay's gift, a watercolor painting he didn't like that I promised to love.