Ned Balbo Wolverine Brass, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Wolverine Brass, Grand Rapids, Michigan
adorned the pad of paper that you'd used.
My father handed me the note and smiled,
"This is from Patty"—his boss' younger daughter,
like her older sister, wheelchair-bound,
filling the down time at her father's office,
writing notes and looking out the window—
showroom filled with gleaming brass and porcelain
famous on Jerusalem Avenue.
The small square, sharply folded, opened neatly:girlish penmanship, a bit unsteady,
held your greeting—"Hi!"—confessed mid-summer's
long day taking messages, the wish
and dread that school would start again too soon.
My father's plumbing uniform was green—
by now, he'd vanished upstairs as I skimmed
the Wolverine logo's orange, neon-bright
banner along the page. My mother called—
"Coming!" I answered, tucked the note away
inside the piano bench, the Smiley Facethat covers every teenage girl's sadness
fat beside my name. Wrapped up back then
in my first girlfriend, I'd learned, months before,
the secret history I should have guessed—
whose son I was at birth, whose son by nurture.
What could I write back? Each night I heard
my father's deep frustration with your father,
orders he resisted—"Kick the pipes,
make work for us!"—which soon would get him fired.
But now I wish I'd answered you somehow—My summer's fine. I'm glad you got the card
I sent when you were sick. No, I don't know
when next we'll meet, but, yes, I do remember
when my father, summoned to your house—
low ranch in Massapequa, on the water,
bright canal where pleasure boats sat rocking—
left us in your den together, talking,
drawing quietly, the sheets we tore
for each new sketch soon thinning out the pad—
Wolverine Brass, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Note: Like Patty in 'Wolverine Brass, Grand Rapids, Michigan,' older sister and disabled activist Connie Panzarino lived with the effects of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a hereditary condition affecting the voluntary muscles that control head/neck movement, walking, crawling, and swallowing. A compelling window into both sisters'challenges and family life is Connie's book The Me in the Mirror (Seal Press: Seattle, 1994). My father worked for theirs for eighteen years, 1957-1975.