Wild Greens

Let the bells ring: it’s a new year of Wild Greens! Our November issue opens Volume 4 of Wild Greens magazine.

Our theme this month is Rings, which was loosely inspired by the upcoming nuptials of our Arts Editor, Hayley Boyle, this month. Inside you’ll find a constellation of rings: a wedding ring, the ring of a bell, the ring of a racetrack, the one ring, a class ring, a boxing ring, the rings of Saturn.

Hayley Boyle’s “Bouquets and Boutonnieres in Fungi” showcases a DIY project of wedding florals made from foraged plants and fungi. Irina Tall Novikova’s collage, “Two” imagines a bride like a swan. “Wedding Card” by Melissa Lomax, in pen and ink with digital color, displays the artist’s work in the greeting card field.

Douglas Hardman’s latest poem, “the ballad of a tree stump in winter,” ponders the aging of a tree by its rings; the ending of one life, and the spring of new life that follows. Myra Chappius’s poem, “Transformation” explores the oval of the racetrack in an ode to the non-physical transformation running has had on her.

Vivienne Brecher is back this month depicting her stuffed pig Bob in her—in our—favorite ring-related movie.

In Evyatar Kanik’s comic “Chicken Call,” Gallus the chicken waits for news by the phone. The personal essay “1,460 Days in a Row” by Wendy Goodman tells the story of the author’s choice to wear her estranged father’s class ring. “Puddles,” a poem by Beth Kanter, focuses in on the moment the poet received a phone call that her father had been hospitalized.

Lauren Kimball is back after a monthlong hiatus with a new panel for Turtle and Hare. “In the Ring” depicts Turtle’s defense mechanism.

We close the issue with “In Perfect Silence” by Elizabeth Farris, a short story about wonder and awe, told from the perspective of a retired planetarium volunteer who sees Saturn from the eyes of children on a field trip.  

Putting together this magazine for the last three years has been an honor and a continual joy. I started this magazine to celebrate everyday people who make beautiful, offbeat, ambitious, and creative things all around us. I hope this space has inspired you to put pencil to paper, to sketch, to write, to paint, to create—to see the things you create as worth sharing, in the hopes that your art will inspire someone else.

Rebecca

Transformation

anniversary special! 

by Myra Chappius

1,460 Days in a Row

by Wendy Goodman

In the weeks after my mother’s death, I was digging through her jewelry box. Pulling out turquoise necklaces, glistening faux shell bracelets, oversized rings. Costume jewelry to adorn the basic black moo-moos she wore during the multiple myeloma years when the prednisone had blown her up like a balloon. (“Of course,” my mother said, “I couldn’t get the cancer that makes you skinny.”)

There in the back corner, a high school ring. 

A rectangular-shaped signet, with a black onyx inlay and thick gold band. Small in size, like one made for a woman. It was a slightly loose fit on my left ring finger. I spun myself around on the rolling desk chair to the 80s-era Conair makeup mirror on my mother’s dressing table. Day, evening, office, or home. I pressed the “office” button for the brightest light.

The year, split between each side of the band, 19 and 48. The tiny worn-out lettering around the design read: Teaneck High School. My mother’s (and my father’s) alma mater. This was my mother’s high school ring. 

Except, I thought she graduated in 1949. 

It was my father who graduated in 1948. 

I really wanted this to be my mother’s ring. Flipping the mirror to the magnifying side, I held the ring up to the glass. 

Oh no. An inscription. The thin letters “BG” were engraved inside the gold band. Burt Goodman. My father’s name. 

Since she’s been gone, I have been decorating myself from head to toe with her things. Nike running socks. Ann Taylor leggings. Neiman Marcus suit jackets. Elizabeth Arden mascara. Magie Noire perfume. Elsa Peretti heart necklace. I wanted to add this artifact to my ensemble. But not if it belonged to my father.

My father and I, best pals until my parents split when I was eleven, had been trapped for decades in a painful cycle alternating between closeness and estrangement. The shameful truth is that I’d long wished he was dead. It would have been easier than the micro-abuses of our push-and-pull relationship.  

I had been the receptacle of my mother’s anguish and regret, and I carried her burden. I was also the release valve of her guilt for leaving my father and taking me with her. So, she pushed me on him, enforced all call and visit schedules. But she didn’t hide her jealousy or resentment when we occasionally experienced closeness. This never changed, whether I was 12 or 32, it was the same. The war of emotions that raged in her was played out on me. It was safer to keep her as my ally and my father as the enemy, even as I tried for decades to end the war. I had always imagined that when my mother died, I would put down her sword, along with her cross. 

Instead of peace, though, something snapped. My mother died, leaving me here with him. My childhood fear came true, though I was then 42, married, and a mother myself. My mother was the antidote to my father’s existence. There was a balance. There was a reason. He would live on while she was gone? Hearing the sound of his voice and never to hear hers again?

I wanted so badly for that ring to not be my father’s, I told myself a story.

As the very young child of a single mother, I was witness to my mother’s “boy crazy” tendencies. I saw her obsess over boyfriends (and her ex-husband) like a teenager. So, I was certain that I knew who my mother was as a teenager to a T. And it would have been so very like my mother, at 16 and even at 60, to have bought for herself the high school ring, perhaps, my father didn’t get. Or perhaps he did get it but didn’t give it to her as some sign of love or commitment (which might have been a thing in 1948). So, she bought her own. Even to go so far as to pay extra to have his initials engraved in it. And why not make it a woman’s ring, which she could wear on her finger, rather than limited to around her neck on a chain.

There. Done. I could wear the ring now. 

A few weeks later my phone rang. 

“Mystery solved,” my brother Jim on the other end. “The ring. It’s Daddy’s.”

“Oh no. But my story, it’s so good!” 

“Yeah, it is good. But I didn’t even ask him. He brought it up.”

“What did he say?”

 “He said, ‘when you are cleaning out Mommy’s house, there’s one thing, if you happen to come across it, my high school ring.’ I couldn’t believe it.” 

“On no! What did you say?” 

“I told him we found it and that you’re wearing it. He said, ‘Oh. Ok. That’s good, Jim. That’s good. Wendy can hold on to it.’”

That was all that was ever said about the ring. 

I then knew with certainty that it was my father’s ring. Still, I slid it onto the middle finger of my right hand every morning for the next four years. 

And I felt awful about it. Over those four years, our relationship had degraded even further. We were at our very worst. And yet, day after day, I wore my father’s ring. My secret intimate connection. It was confusing to want to wear this ring, to have worn it for 1,460 days in a row, when I avoided seeing or speaking to him. And all the while, I remained in painful disbelief that he lived on when my mother didn’t.

I was having a particularly rough day living and parenting when I made a stop on my way home from work at our quirky independent grocery store, notorious for carrying never-before-seen brands of nonessentials from other parts of the world. I was taking my time, wandering up and down the aisles, when I passed a display of Burt's British Hand Cooked Potato Chips.

Comfort washed over me. And I bought a bag of the salt and vinegar ones.

It was an odd and unfamiliar sensation, comfort at seeing my father’s name. The last thing he represented, in any form, was comfort. And yet, it happened, instinctively. Like a reflex. It was outside reality. I wished seeing his name in a time of distress was comforting. I wished thinking of him at any time was a comfort. 

I could feel the small ache in my heart, the longing, the yearning. The dissonance between the reflexive, instinctive, bathing in parental comfort and the reality. I was with him, but I wasn’t.

Still in the grocery store parking lot, I lingered in my car eating the chips. As I stared at the bag of Burt’s chips, I recognized the familiar feeling. The comfort from seeing the signs of the dead among the living. I had come to know this feeling well since my mother died. Except my father was still very much living. And it struck me: I was mourning the loss of my father while he was still alive. Comforted by seeing his name on a potato chip bag. Comforted by wearing his ring. And living as though he were dead. Trying to be close to him, like he wasn’t there.

The next morning, I slid the ring on. For the first time, in place of guilt and discomfort, I felt something precious, cherished, treasured. I felt an opening. I felt love. 

A closeness I couldn’t have with my living breathing father, I could get by wearing his ring. Things standing in for people when they are gone.

Six months later my father died. Unexpectedly. 

And now I would be with him, without him.

Just as I had been pretending to be. 

Just as I had been preparing to be.