Talking Turtle

Rain has come to wash the stacks of snow from Seattle's streets. From their cozy den Sal watched as the shape of her dumpling plump Snow Woman whittled into some thing close to a large DQ chocolate-dipped cone sans the chocolate. It's still winter in the Pacific Northwest, winter every where in the Northern Hemisphere. Snow. Rain. Winds. Cold. The Planet cycles through the seasons and all the creatures make their way through the reality of change in their way. "Wanna hear what I wrote?" Sal was on the phone with Turtle Woman. "Sure," Sal was recovering from an exposure to one of the poisonous apples and had waited a couple days before giving her friend a call. Sal adjusted her ear-piece and propped herself up the the pillow. She heard Turtle Woman ask Mr. Pellet for the journal she fills with story. "My glasses are over there." Sal lay back and listened to her friend's newest real tale. The words Turtle Woman writes are a language familiar to the ears of a friend who knows the language ... bits of common poetry, a reference to a favorite minstral hero whose lines have always pasted life together in comforting text.

And yet as Sal listened she felt the fit of a different proportion enter stage left, or was that up from the middle. Sally Round listened as Turtle Woman began using the language of a deliberately slowed version of her story. "I followed Turtle to a slippery ...."The two long-time friends have been young mothers together. The sons are grown now with long stories of their own. Christmas and Solstice have passed with mild versions of passed celebration. When Turtle Woman could not read a word she had written, she made one that fit, or not. When she got to the end of her story and could not decipher her latest 'punch line' she said, "Oh well, maybe I didn't finish it and when I do it will be a doozey." Sal loved the story and felt a warm, girly sensation come over her. "Turtle Woman," she told her friend, "I feel like I've been in a dressing room with you where we've come to get you fit with a brand new shell. You've outgrown the old one ... and wonders of wonders we have come to THE most skillful dress-maker in all Turtle Land, and she knows how to fit, tuck and gosset so you are perfection." Deliberately slowed down, Sal and her friend had learned to listen to The Turtle Talking. "Until next time," Sal said. "A hui hou," Turtle Woman said, "See yah."