​Downsizing
 
You start by throwing things out
packing things that will fit
in a smaller place, selling stuff
 
that won’t, ignoring the birds 
because the seed’s run out
not weeding the garden
 
you won’t see bloom, then
finding a home for the dog
which is almost as tough as
 
watching your last child accept
a diploma and wave good-bye
get on a plane and leave home.
 
 
Donal Mahoney

​Honeydew Sherbet
 
Down the patio walk,
white stones, through the garden,
under the trellis toward me
yellow frock, yellow hair
rising and falling
 
I lie in my lawn chair,
spoon honeydew sherbet, sip
pink ade from a tall glass,
cubes circling
 
She is almost upon me
I look up and I tell her
I have sand, sea, skies, laughs,
all paid for and nothing
nothing at all to do.
 
 
Donal Mahoney

​Hubert Might Go Upstairs But Not To Rome
 
Tea in the afternoon with his wife of many years is usually peaceful, Hubert thinks before he makes his announcement. Then he says it.
 
"I'm going upstairs," Hubert tells Ruth as he hoists himself out of his old recliner, "and if I don't ever come back down it's because you want to fly to Rome before we die so we can meet Pope Francis. Fat chance of that happening! You think the pope takes walks in St. Peter's Square?"
 
"Well, why shouldn't we go," Ruth says. "We may be old but we're still healthy and seeing Rome might be nice. Pope Francis seems like a pretty nice guy."
 
"Getting old is bad enough," Hubert says, "but why complicate matters with a trip to Rome? We'd have to pull out visas and passports and we'd have TSA agents--total strangers--patting us down in nooks reserved for a doctor or spouse. Besides, Pope Francis might be busy."
 
"Well, I'd still like to go," Ruth mumbles, none too happy with her husband's lack of enthusiasm. "If I wanted to go to Minnesota and fish for northern pike, you'd be packed, sitting in the car and gunning the motor. Why not do something interesting while we still have time? We'll be dead long enough."
 
Hubert suddenly has another idea, one he hopes Ruth will buy into.
 
"Why not let me die first and then you and the ladies from the garden club can go to Rome on that certificate of deposit we let sit in the bank all these years, the one I should have cashed in and invested in that electric car company, Tesla.
 
"That CD is big enough to take you and five ladies to Rome and back home again. They'd probably like to see Pope Francis as well. Fat chance of that. Unless you want to stand with thousands of others on a Wednesday morning when he speaks from the balcony. Better take binoculars."
 
Hubert is on a roll now, explaining to Ruth that she and the ladies will have a great time touring gothic churches and eating the finest pasta in the world once he's in the ground looking up but unable to see the sky.
 
"Once I'm dead, Ruth, you won't have to worry about me being grumpy on the trip. I'll be in the family graveyard stretched out between your Uncle Elmer and your Uncle Vince. Right now those two fine farmers are staring at the sky and bookending the plot your father allotted to me once the poor man realized I was actually going to be his son-in-law."
 
When Hubert first met Ruth's father many decades ago--fresh off the plane from Chicago, in a suit and tie no less--her father had bounced Hubert over many a country road to show him the plot in the family graveyard reserved in case Ruth married someone eventually. She hadn't married young because as a professional photographer working for National Geographic she had traveled all over the world and preferred taking photos to marrying any of the men she had met. Then she met Hubert in Chicago and decided to settle down.
 
Taking Hubert home to meet her extended family of farmers, however, had not been easy for either of them. And not easy for her family either. They had hoped Ruth would marry one day, preferably a farmer with lots of acreage, not some editor from a big city and certainly not someone like Hubert who couldn't tell a Holstein cow from a Guernsey.
 
No matter how much Ruth talked about the delights of a trip to Rome, Hubert still didn't have much interest in going, with or without the rare possibility of meeting Pope Francis.
 
Hubert liked Pope Francis because the media kept hoping the pope would change some things in the Catholic Church but the things the media hoped he would change no pope could ever change. It would be like saying the color red is blue which can never be true.
 
Pope Francis, Hubert knew, was an old Jesuit, theologically sound and skilled in  handling the media. What's more he had the capacity to rile both conservative and liberal Catholics at the same time. And it was always interesting to see him pop up on the nightly news. Anchors not too well acquainted with matters Catholic would sometimes offer commentary far off the mark.
 
"Ruth, you and I are the only family left, except for the kids and they're doing fine working in the big city, several big cities, in fact, as your father would have called them.  And although the grim reaper isn't waving his scythe and ringing our doorbell yet, I still think you should let me die first and then you and the garden gals can go to Rome. When you get back you can plant sunflowers around my headstone to give the squirrels something to gnaw on in the many hot summers to come."
 
"Well," Ruth said, "if you had a terminal disease, I might not mind the wait. Why don't we go out for dinner now and we can talk about all this later. I'm hungry."
 
"Okay," Hubert said, "but I hear the pike are hitting the lures pretty hard up in Minnesota. And I think there's a new bishop in charge. We could go to the cathedral for Mass. Maybe you and the new bishop could have a chat. Some day he might become pope. One of these days an American has to get that job. Can you imagine listening to the News at 10 when that happens."
 
Ruth agreed to go to a Thai restaurant that evening, a place she had never gone to in the past. It was a tiny place where immigrants from Thailand liked to eat. She knew the food would be too spicy for her but that Hubert would love it.
 
Eating Thai food was the start of her new campaign to win Hubert over to making that trip to Rome--following a fishing trip to Minnesota, of course. Ruth planned on asking that new bishop to drop a note to Pope Francis to let him know she and Hubert would be coming to visit. She thought it was only right to give him time to adjust his schedule. She was planning on giving him a big batch of her fudge--and a small batch to Hubert to eat on the plane. 
 
 
Donal Mahoney

​Comic Books and Candy
 
Fred brought his old comic books
and some hard candy to a food pantry
and didn’t think much about it.
Just a different kind of donation.
Maybe somebody would want them.
 
When Fred visited the pantry again
Molly behind the counter raved
about the comics and candy
how much they meant
to the children who came in
with mothers looking for food.
 
Molly said the children were
happy to have something
they could call their own.
They took their comics
and candy home smiling
proving little things mean a lot
to little people who have nothing.
 
 
Donal Mahoney

​Advice Against Being an Ass
 
In a very crowded bar
Fred decides he must
tell this fellow
something important
so he whispers
 
“Don’t be an ass
and go home tonight
and raise hell over
a matter like that.
 
“She did nothing wrong
except hurt your feelings
without knowing it.
She meant no harm.
 
“Be happy you married
a good woman like that.
Let’s pay the bill and you 
go home and hug her.”
 
But Fred shuts up
when the barkeep
brings the tab with a smile
and says, "Fred, you
talkin' to yourself?"
 
 
Donal Mahoney

​Children Are Why We Need Higher Taxes
 
Steven is a retired teacher disturbed by the problems he sees in education. Schools weren’t perfect when he was teaching but they were better than they are today. He has ideas for improvements.
 
Some of his ideas are new and some have been around awhile. It’s hard to disagree with them. The problem is, they will cost money and that money will have to come from higher taxes. He thinks if we can spend billions on defense, we can afford to spend millions on education. Children’s minds are more important, he says, than missiles and bombs.
 
The reform of public education begins with getting more parents involved in it. Studies in the Amana colonies in Iowa show high performing students result in part from the support of parents. Involved parents are needed more than ever. Twitter and Facebook, appealing as they are to students, won't teach them the important things about life they need to know.
 
In Steven's community, there’s a noticeable lack of parental involvement. Parents will flood a cheerleader tryout but won't attend a back-to-school event after their children are beyond third grade. Teachers try everything to get them to attend and nothing works. It’s always the same, relatively small group of parents who come.
 
I was surprised to hear him say students must learn their multiplication tables and long division by fourth grade. I assumed most students managed to do that. Apparently not. Many teachers say students won’t do the homework necessary to learn these basic skills.
 
He also says a pleasure reading time is needed in elementary schools. This would help build reading skills and make reading an avocation. Students need to read something besides what's on their cell phones.
 
The first three grades, he says, should be dedicated to reading, writing and arithmetic. Again, I had assumed that was the case. Not so. Too many children today become adults without being able to read and do basic math. Being able to write a coherent email can be a challenge for some. Shortcuts used on Twitter aren’t a big help.
 
Calculators should be banned until the end of the fourth grade, he says. I didn’t know children were using them in grammar school. Eons ago I never saw one in grammar school or high school. You had to do the math in your mind.
 
Students must also be taught to spell. Too many of them can’t do that now. Reading a lot and seeing words frequently would help them learn to spell, my friend says. 
 
I remember spelling bees when I was in grammar school. Boys would stand on one side of the room and girls on the other. By and large the girls were the better spellers. But for me and two other boys, there was competition to be the last boy standing. And sometimes one of us would win. We learned to spell and had a lot of fun.
 
It’s wrong, my friend says, to allow software on grammar school computers that corrects grammar and spelling. Grammar checks and spell checks do the work for them and students lose an opportunity to learn.
 
Civics and American History also need to be emphasized. He remembers having a student in the 9th grade ask him who had the Nazis fought in the Civil War.
 
He also recommends that teachers be given supplies to give out to students who need them. Poor students don’t have the money to buy supplies and teachers have to provide them. Too many have to do so out or their own pocket.
 
Executives in private industry go to lunch and charge it to their employers. Teachers don’t do that. So why not give them access to the supplies their students need.
 
My friend knows higher taxes will be needed to do this but says more children will graduate and be prepared to find a good job or further their education. And they in turn will become taxpayers.
 
Another of his recommendations would also involve higher taxes. Students should be allowed to eat breakfast at school if they arrive hungry. At some schools this is currently the case. It's important, he says, because too many students don’t eat breakfast at home.
 
Poverty is often the reason but sometimes it’s two parents leaving early for work. They assume their children will eat a good breakfast. Not always the case.
 
It would also help to stop criticizing teachers, Steven says, most of whom do their best to instruct students. Students who come from difficult home environments aren’t easy to teach.
 
Some teachers are the most caring adults in the lives of children. They need public support and the money required to get the job done.
 
Everything Steven suggests is based on common sense. The problem is, most of his suggestions require that you and I pay higher taxes not only to educate children but to feed those who come to school hungry.
 
Since we have to pay taxes for public education, why not pay a little more to do the job right.
 
You and I won’t go broke and we won’t go hungry and we’ll still be able to buy a car when we need one.
 
Parents of poor students can’t do that.
 
When someone must live paycheck to paycheck, it's difficult when the paycheck isn’t big enough. And that is still too often the case in the United States of America.
 
 
 
Donal Mahoney

COMING SOON
Bright
by Mary Paddock

From Dreaming Big Publications

I Have a Friend on Jupiter
by Celine Rose Mariotti
​COMING SOON from Dreaming Big Publications!

Here's a sneak peak at the cover for one of our "coming soon" titles from Celine Mariotti. We are excited to add some more children's books to our list. Stay tuned for a release date to be announced soon!

​About May Cause Love• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (February 14, 2017)

In this powerful memoir, a fiercely honest and surprisingly funny testament to healing after abortion, a young woman travels across the United States to meet a motley crew of spiritual teachers and a caravan of new friends.

At age nineteen, Kassi Underwood discovered she was pregnant. Broke, unwed, struggling with alcohol, and living a thousand miles away from home, she checked into an abortion clinic.

While her abortion sparked her “feminist awakening,” she also felt lost and lawless, drinking to oblivion and talking about her pregnancy with her parents, her friends, strangers-anyone.

Three years later, just when she had settled into a sober life at her dream job, the ex-boyfriend with whom she had become pregnant had a baby with someone else. She shattered. In the depths of a blinding depression, Kassi refused to believe that she would “never get over” her abortion. Inspired by rebellious women in history who used spiritual practices to attain emotional freedom, Kassi embarked on a journey of recovery after abortion-a road trip with pit stops at a Buddhist “water baby” ritual, where she learns a new way to think about lost pregnancies; a Roman Catholic retreat for abortion that turns out to be staffed with clinic picketers; a crash course in grief from a Planned Parenthood counselor; a night in a motel with a “Midwife for the Soul” who teaches her how to take up space; and a Jewish “wild woman” celebration led by a wise and zany rabbi.
​
Dazzling with warmth and leavened by humor, May Cause Love captures one woman’s journey of self-discovery that enraged her, changed her, and ultimately enlightened her.

About Kassi UnderwoodKassi Underwood grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. Her work has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic online, The Rumpus, and Refinery29. She holds an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University, where she taught on the faculty of the Undergraduate Writing Program. She has been a guest on MSNBC and HuffPost Live, and a speaker at colleges, comedy shows, and faith communities nationwide. Kassi lectures about personal transformation, social justice, and the spirituality of abortion. She is a student at Harvard Divinity School and cohost of the podcast Spiritually Blonde.



MY REVIEW: Kristi M

5 stars

This is a powerful story of one woman’s search for healing after an abortion. Her search led her on a spiritual journey as well, one that I gather was unexpected since at the beginning she claimed to be an atheist.

I’m a therapist and have counseled many people who have suffered past traumas. This qualifies, as does any loss/grief. The author did what so many do – buried herself in her schooling and career and excelled in those areas. But as always happens, her trauma/grief caught up with her despite her best effort to get over it by burying herself in building her career. When one can no longer run from something or push it out of mind anymore, there are two choices. Let it consume you, or finally face it and heal. She chose the latter, and this is her story of healing and triumph.

Kassi tackles some of the deeper questions about abortion that many are afraid to talk about. This goes beyond what the law says is okay, beyond the political and social argument of is this right or wrong.

I recommend this book to anyone who is struggling with any past trauma, guilt, grief, questions about spirituality, anyone who has emotional and spiritual healing that needs to take place.
​
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for writing a review. I was not obligated to give a positive review, just an honest one. All thoughts and opinions are my own.