Mrs. Scattergood liked to think that she carries the sea with her,

from the sea  (5) - Baubo’s bird ludes by freda karpf

     As a kid, Mrs. Scattergood had to wade through nine months of the city to get to the three months of summer. She had no idea of the comings and goings of tides in marshes, birds nesting on shelter islands or the future that brought her to reside on a saltmarsh. Her father was a bookie.  He died at the same time that the biggest migration of Jews moved out of Newark. Everyone said there was no way to live there still. For her family, there was no living to be made. The roll of bills in his pocket, held only by a rubber band, vanished. His number was up. Her family moved to the shore.  The city was no longer under her feet.  It shouldn’t have felt so odd.  Living near the ocean changed the context of her life and with that, her longing.

~

     Mrs. Scattergood liked to think that she carries the sea with her, so she was not surprised that seagulls were with her all along her way home.  She looked her feathered friends in the eye and held them as if that moment mattered more than any other. 

~

     Baubo reminded herself that the unpredictable is predictable.  She might have been there for a purpose, and that might have seemed clear to her at times. But right then and there the only purpose was to be present. There is nothing beyond that which she was obligated.  More than once she thought she should have brought along cocktail sauce for the walk.  Last time out she told the gulls that she was going to steal their clams.  She watched them breaking them open with envy. They use only certain sections of the path to drop the clams.  There’s a whole mile and half stretch, at least, that they could use but there’s only two to three places where you see a lot of broken clam shells.  Back in the day she might have had a chance at them.

~

     ‘Well, sooner or later everyone comes here,’ Baubo tinkered with her own thoughts. Imagine what she did translating crow language.  ‘What I like about this time is the now of it; the sense of immediacy, of everything being right in its place.  Even though, I know there is flux, the change seems right and delightful.  It’s like flipping and covering and dosing and bagging French Fries with Ketchup till they’re soggy but good, salty till it stings your lips and yet the crisp crunch of the fried potatoes remains intact long enough till most are gone.  Even a soggy one or two on the bottom had merit. That was Sid’s fries from the Lorraine Bradley Hotel.  

~

     Mrs. Scattergood hadn’t seen Baubo in a dog’s age.  “Times seven,” Baubo would add.  Grief isn’t as hard on the ears of your friends as we all fear.  It could be they’re relieved they can pay back all the love you gave them. Your true friends might not always know you but they won’t run away.

Except from riding the waves:  a tale about being home in the world by freda karpf