I know this is terribly prosaic, but 1. I’m too tired to pursue another angle and 2. I forgot my second point (see: 1).
Every other weekend my sister and I stayed with our grandmother,
who lived at the bottom of sloping Lawndale.
We took a bus downtown on Saturdays
and downtown meant Kresge’s.
Though, we would also pop into Macy’s,
the department store was our main destination.
The street-level floor held cosmetics, jewelry and toys.
I don’t remember the upper floors.
Of course, we had our hamburger lunch
downstairs, in the Kresge’s diner,
where our grandmother would steer us to one of the red leather booths
to wait for our waitress, an older woman with red hair in a beehive.
My first milkshake was in the Kresge’s diner.
If it had been around when I was older and began taking myself downtown,
would I still be as charmed by the simple fare,
those high-backed seats and the red-haired waitress?
Probably.
Sometimes prosaic is exactly right. Your disclaimer let this charmer slip onto my lap and purr.
You perfectly and simply captured the way rituals emerge and define our relationships, places stand in for a cluster of an associated person.
It has been a long time since I saw either a Kresge’s out here on the west coast. or a red beehive. I marvel that you have such a sense of reality and presence for something that may have been a while ago…. or was it?
Paul, in my memory I’m choosing to remember her as a redhead. Thank you for this, and your other gracious and perceptive comments. I had to find time this week to revisit my page, and, perhaps, read so many poems I’ve still not been able to find from this year’s participants.