Meeting My Sister in the Big Easy
                            For Maurine

By Nancy Levinson

It’s a sauna
not inside
outside
it’s June in New Orleans after all
yet my younger sister and I
are weathering the stifling air
laughing at vanilla soup
dribbling down our arms
only seconds ago
gelato scoops in cookie cones
we are happy to meet up
any place between
the west and east extremes
where we live, separated
the last many years

The Lafayette Hotel’s
online slideshow bears no
resemblance to its reality
nor warns the room lacking
light bright enough to read

but never we mind
evening talk is endless

our children     our grandchildren
our family of yesteryears
swimming in Minnesota Lakes
skating on frozen ponds
fighting over the one and only
telephone in our home
the tornado that sent us hunkering
hugging in the basement

Our middle sister Gail
who died three years past
we can’t believe she’s gone
we can’t believe it

My sister and I ride a trolley
like street cars we rode downtown
we three dressed up
in matching gingham pinafores

Now here in the big easy
we embark on a slow swamp tour
with the guide we toss marshmallows
to entice alligators up close
my sister holds a baby alligator
which the guide passes around
I dare only touch its tail
she teases me     always
the daredevil of our trio

We arrive at the wrong designated hour
for our National WWII Museum tour
but as shared history readers
we don’t grumble at a long wait
we are glad to journey together
awed in this remarkable museum
deeply affected by wars’ horrors

At our departure I tell my sister
that I worry about her health
her stamina    she says she worries
about me and mine

where is it ever easy

Summer Memory

By Sue Pace

Every summer, my father was the caretaker of a campground just outside of Mt. Rainier National Park. His job was to empty the garbage cans and clear out any trash left around the campfires. My job was walking to the outhouses with rolls of toilet paper lined up along the handle of my broom. My mother’s job was to cook breakfast lunch and dinner on the cabin’s wood stove plus take care of my little brother, Rodney, who was nine years younger than me.

My father was a tough guy; strong and smart and an ex-marine. I was always very careful around him. When I was twelve my aunt and uncle came to visit with their five children. I was sent outside the log cabin to entertain them while the adults relaxed with beer and pinocle. At the last minute, my mother sent my little brother to join the group.

I took my cousins to the picnic area and led them in Follow-the-Leader and Ring-Around-the-Rosie and Duck-Duck-Goose. Those were the games that, decades later, my own children played. Then, I counted heads and couldn’t find my three-year-old brother. Anywhere.

I ran back to the cabin, the cousins following me. I burst into the kitchen and shouted, “I can’t find Rodney. I can’t find him!” My mother was concentrating on the cards in her hand. She frowned and said, “Don’t be silly Susie.” My father looked at my face and stood abruptly, knocking over his chair. “She’s not being silly.”

I followed him as he raced to the picnic grounds and then stumbled along the river bank. I had never heard fear in my father’s voice. Not when he shot the bear coming at him, not when he described packing a dead camper up to the main road, not when he described the death of a Marine chum. But, racing beside him as he pushed through the brush and waded into the gravel-bottomed coldness of the churning Clear Fork River, I heard his fear. “Rodney!” he kept shouting. “Rodney!”

There was no answer to his calls and I followed my father half a mile upriver and then back down. “Let’s go back to the cabin,” he said. “I’ll have to get help.” When we got there, my mother met us at the door, tears in her eyes “We found him,” she sobbed and fell into my father’s arms. “He’s okay. He was on the swinging bridge over the river.”

My father pulled me into his arms. “Not your fault, Susie,” he said. “We shouldn’t have made you watch everyone. Always remember this; this was not your fault. It’s ours.”