“These are the moments when we live,” JP says looking out into the evening sky, the sherbet sunset fading behind the leafless black-branches crisscrossing the winter landscape. “Hard to believe this is our third New Year’s without Charlie.”

“This is the opposite of what I expected just a few years ago.” Annie answers from her place next to JP in an Adirondack chair on their deck overlooking Dottie’s front yard. “Buying Nona’s house wasn’t something I’d have predicted.”

“Not sure this meets Mama’s expectations of my exceptionalism,” he smiles holding up the joint he’d just finished rolling at the table on the deck, the crystal ashtray set in the middle. “But this is a beautiful joint.”

Read More

On the day of the wedding, Annie stands on her bedroom balcony with a joint in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other watching the colors of the sky change above dark houses on the opposite side of the street. She feels the heat of the July morning begin to awaken the day and thinks of the winter wedding she’d always dreamed of. As the sun begins to rise above her neighbor’s rooftop she closes her eyes, with an inhale on the joint, and imagines cold air prickling her skin and the lightness of the frozen crystals cascading across her eye lashes, like her first night Cambridge. The only part of her dream wedding she’d insisted upon is that the ceremony end when the stars are sparkling in the night sky.

Annie sits on the chair she’d brought out for this moment and taps the ash of her joint on the edge of the crystal bowl she’d placed on a square folding-table in the center of the balcony. She sits with her joint and imagines herself a bride in a snowstorm – the beauty of the falling snow disguising her tears – on this day of mixed emotions.

“What are you doing out here so early?” Dottie’s words interrupt Annie’s moment of self-pity and she turns away from the rising sun to answer her.

“I got a text from Maeve around four this morning, said her flight was delayed. I was so irritated, and annoyed, I couldn’t fall back to sleep. She can’t miss my wedding.”

Read More

Annie walks into the yard, the spring air still warm well past sunset. The scent of the freshly cut grass calms her beating heart as she approaches the maple tree where JP sits cross legged with his eyes closed.

“When did you start meditating?” She stands for a moment peering down at his black curls before taking her place on the plaid blanket next to him .

“Mindy, my therapist on the island, she suggested it.” He answers without opening his eyes. “She said it would help me calm my mind and figure out my purpose. Turns out I like hearing the sounds in the world.”

As the words leave his lips Annie is aware of the trill of a bird in the distance hum just as  the bells of St. Catherine ring out eight times, the shrill call of a crow in the branches reminds her of the bittersweet loneliness she’s felt since her arrival now muddled with her desire to never be alone again. Annie feels grounded in her decision to invite JP to visit, but her fluttering heart and nervous stomach make her reluctant to give into hope.

Read More

Annie sits in Charlie’s room, the only sound his heavy breathing and the only light from the muted screen projecting Fox News on the far side of the room.

“I hate to see you like this, daddy,” Annie says leaning in close to Charlie’s bed. “I missed you, you have to believe that and I’m sorry. But I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere.” Charlie’s breath sounds heavy to Annie and her own heart misses a beat when she hears the faint rattle in his chest that stirs him to open his eyes that shine bright on her.

 “I missed you too, kid.” And he winks as Annie helps him sit up with the pillows fluffed behind his head. “How did I get so old? I was your superman.”

“Still are,” Annie answers as she sits back down and lays her head on Charlie’s chest, feeling his fluttering heartbeat. “Sounded like you were having a nightmare earlier?” She says cautiously, sitting up and taking his hand. “You were muttering and shaking when I got here this morning.”

Read More

hey sit together on the back porch watching the evening sun turn the sky a shade of orange that reminds Annie of mango sherbet, but stops herself from speaking until the ball of light disappears behind the darkened rooftops and there is no more color shining through the maple tree’s long branches just beginning to fill the spaces between its sturdy limbs with hundreds of green leaves. “I miss the tree house, but the view is definitely better since we took it down,” Annie announces between taking puffs from the joint in her right hand.

“I love this porch, I’ve been sitting her enjoying my last cigarette of the day since the day we moved in. Feels like I’ve been a thousand different people since then, but always in this same place,” Dottie answers, picking up her unlit cigarette from the edge of the crystal ashtray.

Read More

“We must admire the teachings of Luke,” Father Lorenzo states as he and Khadijah drive out of the church parking lot in his silver Toyota Corolla. “He teaches us the importance of caring for the stranger.” He pauses, first checking his right and then his left, before pulling out into the slow moving traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. “I try to live not with a shallow religiosity, or a pervasive immorality, or the lack of compassion for the poor, but with real religion which I believe is not far from the truest justice.”

“Mmmm,” Khadijah answers watching the houses outside the car window pass by in a blur of colors and shapes, thinking of her own connection to real religion. She opens her window and looks up at the small buds of green covering the trees on both sides of the road and listens to the bird’s staccato chirps from the open window “I do love this time of year.”

“Spring is the eternal hope. The miracle of life.”

Read More

Father Lorenzo and Khadijah approach the brick structure across from the church, the warm yellow light from inside illuminating the kitchen where they can see Annie through the plate-glass window perched on a small ladder with a paint brush in her right hand.
“Here we are,” Lorenzo says quickly as he opens the door for Khadijah and gestures with his free arm that she should walk in. As she passes through the doorway he closes the glass door, gives her a thumbs up and turns back toward St. Catherine.

Khadijah approaches the kitchen through the small room - vacant but for the chemical smell of the yellow paint on the three walls - her heals clicking on the linoleum floor, covered in white dust, until she reaches the open entrance to the industrial kitchen. From her perch on the ladder, Annie turns her head in Khadijah’s direction, removes the pods from each ear and says “It’s Really You!” in a way that makes Khadijah feel small, but Khadijah knows Annie’s hurt is because she loves her.

“You won’t keep me away,” Khadijah says quietly. “And you can’t ignore me forever, you need me. I’m like your catnip.”

Read More

Khadijah walks toward the church rising above the busy avenue and feels her legs shaking in her four-inch heels as they click on the cement staircase. Her pounding heart feels like it’s lifting the rhinestones on the clingy pink-top and her anxiety is begging her to flee, but Khadijah knows this is exactly where she needs to be. She takes a deep breath as she lifts her bosom and pulls her shoulders back, puckers her peony-pink lips and straightens her silky black hair set as a tubular crown framing her ebony skin and hazel-brown eyes shadowed with glittery purple eyeshadow and exaggerated black lashes.

Read More

Annie sits for moment after Father Lorenzo leaves and breathes in the musty scent of the space. She opens the door and walks into the empty chapel, the sound of her boots on the stone floor the only sound. As she exits through the large wooden doors, the bells of St. Catherine ring one single chime, reminding Annie it is already one o’clock. She stands with her back toward the butter-yellow brick wall of the church and pulls a joint from her left pocket. The afternoon sky darkens as she lifts the lighter to the paper tip and inhales slowly as she makes her way carefully down the cement staircase. Before walking toward the back of the church, Annie stands on the sidewalk, joint alit in her right hand, and looks at the stout brick structure across the street.

Read More

Annie and Dottie sit quietly together at the kitchen table with Annie’s joint and Dottie’s cigarette together, unlit, in the crystal candy dish set between them that Annie had decided was better suited as an ashtray. “Your face looks better.” Dottie says without looking up from her grapefruit half that she’s trying to cut with the edge of a small serrated spoon. “This thing is ridiculous.” She announces, pulling the serrated edge of the silver spoon from the pink flesh of the grapefruit.

“It’s been four weeks, I’d hope so by now.” Annie touches the side of her face and thinks of how she’d looked the night JP showed up and how when he’d gently touched her bruise it felt like he’d looked into her soul and she knew they would be ok. “He called last night, and Mama seems better but he’ll be staying there for at least another month.”

Read More

Annie stands at the balcony railing outside her bedroom and stares with wonderment at the night sky questioning how the small pin-pricks of light in the darkness inspired her to dream of a degree from MIT.

 “He’ll be here tomorrow night,” Annie says after exhaling a long wisp of white smoke away from Dottie who is sitting on a small rocking chair behind her. “I think I’ll make him a chicken pot pie.”

“You ok? We haven’t even talked about the letter.”

“That seems like a long time ago.”

“You read the letter at lunch time.”

“It’s funny, you know, I never asked why I didn’t have a father, I just accepted it, I guess. Maybe because there were so many men around, Papa and Uncle Tommy that I never thought someone was missing. And I was always looking at the stars and maybe I knew, maybe I was searching for Chapman Todd.”

Read More

“Smoking again?” he asks

“It’s my motto, stay lifted.” She smiles before taking another drag off the end of half-smoked joint she holds between her thumb and pointer in her right hand. Annie lifts her head toward the open rectangular window above her and exhales. She watches the long white wisps of smoke disappear out the basement window. Annie and Father Lorenzo stand quietly at the bottom of the rickety wooden staircase in the dingy nineteenth-century basement. The wire shelves along the rubble walls are elevated a foot above the dirt floor, to protect the contents of the plastic bins stored there. “I have so many memories down here.” Annie says with a sigh of sad nostalgia before breathing in the musty basement air.

Read More

“Good morning,” is all Dottie says when she sees Annie’s face, dark-purple and bruised from the corner of her right eye to the top of her cheek. She’d helped her ice it when she’d walked into the kitchen last night but knew, from experience, that the bump on her face was going to look worse in the morning.

Annie stands next to Dottie at the open window, the diamonds of morning light wink at her from the other side of the glass. Annie feels something light stir inside her chest despite the pain in her face.

“That’s where he died last year,” Dottie says with an exhale of gray smoke rising above her head as she moves her gaze from the light on the window to a spot on the gleaming wood floor. “Maeve’s cat, he laid down in that sun spot near the table and never got up. Maeve was pretty torn up that she didn’t get to say good-bye to Mr. Boo Boo. But life’s not fair now, is it?”

Read More

As the bells of St. Catherine announce the evening with five evenly-spaced tolls that ring out from its majestic brick tower, loud enough for most of North Cambridge to hear, Lorenzo unlatches the white-wooden gate and walks toward the front door. He hears the music before he steps across the threshold. The sounds of cooking greet him, the sizzle of oil and the garlic roasting in it, and he feels something he can’t quite place. Then he thinks, it smells like home, as he walks into the kitchen and watches Annie grinding the oversized peppercorn mill while singing along with Aretha Franklin. Before announcing his arrival, Annie turns her head, smiles at him and then nods her head toward Nona, asleep in her chair by the television in the living room. She grabs the joint smoldering in the ashtray next to the stove and takes a deep inhale. “We had a great day,” she sings out, after blowing the white smoke through the open kitchen window.

Read More

 “Forgive me Father. I have sinned.” Father Lorenzo feels every cell pull toward the wooden lattice when he hears Annie’s voice, his body yearning to be closer to her.

“Thank you, Annie. So glad you remembered what we spoke about. But I thought you were Mrs. Lander, you surprised me. Do you remember her?”

“That woman who moved into the old Lincoln school and turned it into a house. They had like a hundred kids.”

“Twelve,” Lorenzo answers patiently. “Some hers, but most were either adopted or foster children.”

 “Mom and the Bagel Club ladies love to gossip about her. Talk about her like she’s both Mother Theresa and Wonder Woman. Is she thinking about adopting another one?”

Read More

Lorenzo stands quietly in the dark hallway outside the open door and takes three short breaths before stepping inside the darkened room aglow in a blue hue from the enormous screen opposite Charlie’s mechanical hospital bed.

Read More

Dottie looks up from the pan and shakes her head in Annie’s direction. “Charlie, love of my life, he took us here to get you away from the hicks, from everything that would hold you back.” Lorenzo feels the air shift in the cozy kitchen, but doesn’t dare say a word. “We, Charlie and me, sacrificed so much for you to get that degree, that fancy degree in astrology you were destined to get.”

“Astro physics,” Annie corrects without looking up from the refrigerator.

Read More

Father Lorenzo finds Annie’s cream-colored scarf draped across the door to the confessional when he returns from his weekly lunch with Mrs. Fitzpatrick. A wave of confusion shadows his brain momentarily because he’s sure Annie tied it around her neck before leaving the church. Deciding it’s an invitation to visit, Lorenzo folds it carefully into a small rectangle, pushes it gently into his black leather bag, and makes a mental note to stop by Dottie’s at the end of his day before going home to have dinner with Nona.

Read More

To celebrate our community,  The Canna Mom Show is partnering with the iconic My Bud Vase and Courage in Cannabis stories with a special giveaway of the Sapphire Blue Jewel water pipe featured in the Boston Magazine story The Really High Housewives of Metro West Boston and Volumes One and Two of Courage in Cannabis.

Read More

It wasn’t my intention to become a mom. I wasn’t one of those girls who played with baby dolls and dreamed of her future motherhood. A favorite childhood game I played with the neighborhood kids was office, and my role models were Mary Tyler Moore throwing her beret in the air, and Marlo Thomas as that girl living a single-lady life independently.

Read More