o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-Read the PS, pliz o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o smile o-o-o

.Pan-de-mon-i-um !!

 I had a new word for my collection.
 One look around, and I knew what it meant..
Hiding behind a woods-found Christmas tree
that leaned like the tower I had spied in a book
and was buried in fans made from straws,  
cardboard candy canes with wiggle-waggle,
peanut-butter-smeared stripes, cut-outs of
the baby Jesus from a church bulletin,
and dented, poster-painted  balls and wads
of foil probably meant to be stars,  
I smiled.  "Ain' much, but it is home,"  drifted
through a pine-bough-slapped pass-through
I knew opened onto a tiny, jam-packed kitchen.
I recognized the voice, but it was the black smoke
told me my friend's mother was in there.
Burning another batch of terrible cookies?
Who cared?   My friend, who was 9 to my 8,
hadn't known what I meant when I had asked,
"Where can we play and where can we not?"  
"What do you mean?"  he said.  "You know,
which rooms will get us in trouble?".  
"Why would we get in trouble?  my friend said
with a frown.  "I live here.  This is my house."
I looked around.  His football was under a box
with legs that stood for a coffee table.
One of his socks was under a beat-up TV
with whichaway rabbit ears.   The other sock
lay on a pillow on a chair. Like the couch,
all had stuffing poking out.  We had scraped paths
so we could play hide-and-seek.  The living room
at the house my warring parents had just bought
had climbing roses between big, fancy pictures
in big, fancy frames.  Sun made them glare.  
My friend's mother had tacked up "art"
from coloring books that went outside the lines
and squiggles and swirls painted with fingers.
Smudged contruction paper behind was all ears.
Some had fallen off.   "Cookies!!"  "Cookies!!"  "Come
and get 'em!!"  made my friend and I laugh
and make faces, but we went.  Chocolate
chips are hard to ruin.   Memories
of running and yelling and wagging
Kool-Ade all over a house that  wasn't much.
Where Pan-de-mon-i-um spelled Home.
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The story the poem tells is fiction.  Believe it or not, I was in my 20's before I saw a TV.  Kool-Ade came later!   {Kool-Aid?}   My parents
were not wealthy {post-divorce, my mother and brother and I were, as they say, "plunged into poverty," and for reasons too complex to go into here, home became utter chaos}.  As for the way I raised my children, I think I stressed neatness too much at times, but I don't think I went overboard.  I wanted them to give full rein to their creative
instincts.  They are too easily suppressed!  D. & T. are both very creative now. . .because and despite of Mom?:)   Hope the point of the story is clear.  Message is old and perhaps a little tired, but I happen to believe there is nothing more important:   Love Should Come First.
Have a safe and joyous holiday season.  I hope that each of you is able to greet the new year feeling refreshed and raring to go
creatively. . .and in every other way.   Love 'n' Hugs,  'Pea'  ~~~ PS:  I also know how to burn cookies.:) <3 (:

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO.......................................................X!