Friday, April 24, 2026

...if we keep checking on each other

 

The first voicemail lasted nineteen seconds.

“Hi, sweetheart, this is your reminder to take the chicken out of the freezer before church. Also don’t trust those grapes in the fridge. They’ve turned on us.”

I stood in my kitchen staring at my phone and smiling like an idiot.

It had come from an unknown number.

Wrong number, obviously.

But the voice was warm and Southern and matter-of-fact in exactly the way my mother’s had been, and for one little moment, hearing a woman call somebody “sweetheart” and warn her about grapes felt like opening a window in a stuffy room.

My mother had been gone three years by then.

Long enough that the sharp pain had softened, but not long enough that I didn’t still miss her in all the ridiculous little places. At the grocery store when I reached for her favorite canned peaches. In the church pew when the alto line came in. On Sunday afternoons when I made roast chicken and wanted to ask whether she thought the potatoes needed ten more minutes.

So that voicemail landed hard.

I almost deleted it.

Instead, I listened to it twice.

The next day, there was another one.

“Baby, if you’re stopping by the drugstore, can you get the unscented lotion this time? The lavender one smells like a funeral home to me.”

I laughed out loud.

Then, because I am a grown woman with some manners, I called her back.

She answered on the second ring.

“Well, hello?”

“Hi,” I said. “I think you may have the wrong number. I’m not… whoever you’re trying to reach.”

There was a little pause.

Then she said, “Oh, mercy.”

Her voice was exactly the same as the voicemails. Soft, sure, and full of the kind of life that notices grapes.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “My daughter changed her number and I clearly wrote it down wrong because I was distracted by my neighbor’s peacock.”

I laughed. “Your neighbor has a peacock?”

“He does, and it has no respect for boundaries,” she said.

That was how I met Miss Loretta.

She was seventy-four, lived two towns over, and had one daughter named Janine, two arthritic knees, and strong opinions about lotion, produce, and doctors who “talk too fast and listen too little.”

I was fifty-eight, widowed, and still getting used to a house that echoed after dinner.

What started as me returning a wrong-number call somehow turned into a conversation that lasted twenty-eight minutes.

At one point she asked, “Do you cook?”

I said, “Enough to stay alive and comforted.”

She laughed and said, “Good. Then write this down. If your cornbread tastes dry, you’re being too proud with the buttermilk.”

I wrote it down.

That should have been enough.

It wasn’t.

Three days later, another voicemail.

This time very clearly intended for me.

“Just checking on you. The weather looked gloomy and I thought you might need a nudge to make something warm for supper.”

I called her back laughing.

After that, we settled into the oddest, sweetest routine of my life.

Loretta left voicemails.

I called her back.

Sometimes we talked five minutes.

Sometimes forty.

Her messages were tiny gifts.

“Remember to buy stamps before you run out. Running out makes people feel more isolated than they need to.”

“Take your vitamins, even if they insult your dignity with how many there are.”

“I saw strawberries on sale and thought of you, though I don’t know if you even like strawberries. That’s all.”

I did like strawberries.

I began to look forward to being thought of in such small, specific ways.

Especially because my own life, while full in many respects, had gotten terribly quiet in the spaces nobody notices from the outside.

My daughter lived in Denver.

My son called often but briefly, usually while driving.

My friends were dear but busy.

And evenings had become the kind of stillness that can feel peaceful one day and too wide the next.

Loretta’s calls softened that.

Then one week she didn’t call.

Not Monday.

Not Tuesday.

Not Wednesday.

By Thursday afternoon, I realized I was worried.

I told myself that was ridiculous. She was a wrong-number woman in another town. I did not know her last name. I had no formal reason to be concerned.

Then my phone rang.

It was her.

“Before you fuss,” she said immediately, “I had a little hospital nonsense and forgot where I put my charger.”

I sat down so fast I nearly missed the chair.

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing dramatic,” she said in a voice that absolutely meant at least some drama. “A blood pressure scare. They’ve sent me home with stern instructions and tasteless crackers.”

That was all I needed to hear.

I asked for her address.

She said, “Now don’t get carried away.”

I said, “Too late.”

The next morning, I drove to her town with a grocery bag full of things women know to bring.

Real crackers.

Chicken soup.

Good tea.

Fresh fruit.

A better lotion than lavender.

And a little potted mum because nobody should recover from “hospital nonsense” without something alive nearby.

She opened the door in a pale blue robe, looked at me for one second, and said, “Well. I suppose this is what I get for calling strangers sweetheart.”

I laughed and stepped inside.

Her house smelled like lemon oil and books. She had afghans on the couch, framed photos everywhere, and one ceramic chicken collection that made me instantly trust her more.

We spent the afternoon together.

I fixed lunch.

She complained about doctors.

We folded towels because apparently neither of us can sit with clean laundry nearby without addressing it.

She told me stories about Janine as a teenager and about the peacock next door, whose name was apparently Kevin and who had become “emotionally entitled.”

When I left, she hugged me hard and said, softly, “You came like family.”

That undid me a little.

Because it had been a long time since someone had said something like that and meant it.

After that, our odd little friendship became real in every way that mattered.

I drove over once a month.

We went to lunch sometimes.

She mailed me handwritten recipes with notes in the margins like:

Needs more pepper if weather is rude.

I helped her set up a doctor portal she hated on principle.

She taught me how to make coconut cake that didn’t dry out.

She called when my daughter had surgery.

I called when her peacock problem escalated.

Then last spring, I had a mammogram callback.

Nothing bad in the end, thank God.

But those days waiting for the extra imaging felt like walking around with a stone in my chest.

I hadn’t told many people.

I don’t know why.

Maybe because naming fear makes it louder.

The morning of the appointment, there was a knock at my door.

A florist delivery.

Inside the box was one small bouquet of yellow roses and a card in Loretta’s handwriting.

For whatever the doctors say,

Wear the good bra.

Breathe before parking.

And remember that waiting is not the same thing as losing.

Love,

Loretta

I sat at my kitchen counter and cried into the flowers.

Because how did she know exactly what kind of care I needed?

Then again, maybe that’s what older women do best.

Not solve.

Not rescue.

Just notice the practical shape of fear and answer it with something useful and tender.

Now it’s been four years since that first wrong-number voicemail about chicken and traitor grapes.

Loretta is eighty now.

She still leaves messages.

I still save some of them.

One says:

Take a sweater. Public buildings are run by men with no circulation issues.

Another:

If soup sounds good, trust that. Soup is wisdom.

And my favorite says:

You are not bothering the right people.

I listen to that one more than I probably should.

Because she’s right.

Sometimes love arrives by blood.

Sometimes by marriage.

And sometimes by one wrong number, one warm voice, and a woman old enough to know that the world goes easier if we keep checking on each other.

Source: Cheryl Purcell on Facebook

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Thursday, April 23, 2026

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water (Audio)

 

Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water album was released on January 26, 1970. The title single was also released that same month. As their final studio album, it topped the charts for 10 weeks in the US and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

Clinging to a Bridge Over Troubled Water

I was just shy of fifteen when Bridge Over Troubled Water drifted into my life. I was a confused, headstrong teenager, certain I understood love.

I didn’t.

I fell for the boy I would marry—and stayed with for twenty-two years in a life that never quite fit. I stayed for my daughters. I stayed because I was agoraphobic. I stayed because I believed I couldn’t leave.

Until 1992, when I had no choice.

It took three years to end it on paper, and far longer to quiet the ache of regret. I think now I carried a touch of Cinderella Syndrome—waiting for something to transform that never would. Betrayal came, more than once, and each time it hollowed something out in me.

I was devastated when it finally broke.

But somewhere in that breaking, I found a kind of bridge.

Not a person. Not a rescue.
Something quieter.

A thin, trembling strength that carried me forward when I was sure I couldn’t move at all.

I didn’t cross it beautifully. I crossed it barely.

But I crossed.

And sometimes, that is the miracle—
not that we are saved,
but that we survive.

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Wild Geese

 


You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver - Wild Geese, 1986.
Art: Kayama Matazō - Cranes, 1988.

Source: Ravenous Butterflies on Facebook

Tuesday, April 21, 2026

4am

 


I met with 4am last night
She said to say hello
And she said she’s seen a lot of you
Since several weeks ago
She said she hears your worries
When you’re lying there awake
But she’d rather watch you sleeping
With a smile upon your face
So she’s gathered up your worries
And she feeds them to the stars
And they swallow them with fire
‘Til they’re left with only half
Then they whisper to the sun
As she begins her morning climb
And the sunshine takes your worries
And accepts them every time
She chops them into pieces
‘Til she’s left with merely grains
Then she throws them to the clouds
So they can gently fall as rain
And the sunlight then transforms
Your drops of worry into hope
So that rainbow that you see?
That’s 4am saying hello

Becky Hemsley 2020
Artwork by Graciela Perrone, Artist
'4am' is in her first collection
Source: Becky Hemsley Poetry on Facebook

Monday, April 20, 2026

Sticks and Stones

 

Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will cut me deep
They’ll keep on hurting long after
The breaks and bruises heal
Because the sticks will meet my skin,
The stones may hit my bones
But words will carve their way beneath
And make my soul their home
And this gives them the power
To control me and to win
‘Cause now I’ve words of worthlessness
From outside and within
See stones are thrown in anger
But our words are thrown in spite
And whilst they’re easier to pitch
They’re more difficult to fight
Because we cannot run away,
We cannot just unhear them,
Because their echoes resonate
Long after we are near them
And if we are not careful
Then those words become our voice
One that learns to shout the loudest
And to make the biggest noise
So do not be the reason
Someone hates their own reflection
Or thinks they are not worthy
Or deserving of affection
And when you pick your words
Weigh them awhile between your palms
Consider whether hurling them
Will heal or hurt or harm
Yes, sticks and stones may break a bone
But words can break a heart
And they can be the reason
Someone tears themself apart
So if you wouldn’t break their bones
By throwing stones and sticks
It’s likely for the best
That some words do not leave your lips
******
Becky Hemsley 2022
Artwork by Femke Muntz
'Sticks and Stones' is from 'What the Wild Replied: Poems from Human Nature' available on Amazon

Source: Becky Hemsley Poetry on Facebook

Saturday, April 18, 2026

Poetry





















I started with this paragraph and played with it ... I had help.

When the moon is my only companion
I plunge myself into memories of us 
and swim in the river of blurred dreams








When the moon is my only companion,
I plunge into memories of us
and swim the river of blurred dreams.

The water carries your voice,
stretched thin by distance and time,
and I let it pull me under—
not to drown,
but to remember how breathing once felt
beside you.

When the moon is my only companion
I close my eyes and my mind to thoughts
of living days when happiness was
easy as breathing,
when laughter did not echo back
like a question unanswered.

The night listens without judgment,
silver light stitching memories—
a face I once held close,
dreams that learned how to fade.
I stay still,
afraid that if I move,
even the moon
might leave.





When the moon is my only companion,
I plunge into memories of us—
the water colder than I expect.

I swim the river of blurred dreams,
where the current tugs at my ankles
and every shape looks like you
until it doesn’t.

I don’t reach the other shore.
I just keep moving,
quiet enough not to wake the past.





I'm told this is a poignant image—using the isolation of the night to navigate the fluid, often hazy boundary between what was real and what remains in your mind.

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