Family History

24 August 2016, 12:45 am

It happens slowly,

all at once.

Those of them who know the story

leave those of us who know less.

We who know little

begin to pass on the narrative

to those who know nothing.

We deemed it fitting,

they were so young.

What would we tell them of the hurts,

of the anger,

resentment?

I find the story necessary,

now those who were there when I wasn't

begin to fall silent. Few now can tell me

what I don't already know.

Few now can give me what I never wanted,

what now I can't live without--

the mortar to hold together

the gross, obvious bricks I couldn't bury,

the wounds that never healed.

There are pains which cannot be relieved
by therapy, by understanding,

by the act of naming.

They must be lanced and drained,

but the tools for such grow few

as time dances away from us,

as do the Ones Who Know,

the Ones Who Might Bring Understanding,

the Ones Who Are No Longer.

Broken Faith

15 September 2011

Think before you call it quits--
you’ll never stop
realizing all you’ve lost,
even when the sting subsides
and you’ve forgiven yourself
and other. There will always be
another reminder of where and who
you could or should have been;
who you should be with.
No matter how good it gets,
it’s never quite perfect,
and you can’t ever make it
what it’s not, no matter how you long,
no matter how you try to believe
you never loved,
you never broke faith.

Thoughts After Bedtime At Friendly Acres

You give me poems to write:

space for me and mine to work out

our idiosyncrasies here

in a place Friendly to such things.

There is so much opportunity.

I am afraid to go to sleep,

even at 11:32 PM, when

my children have long since

left their struggles to find rest;

when my husband has been in bed

for at least an hour without me.

You must understand, this is unheard of.

Home is a complicated combination

of many ingredients. He is the first.

My children are a close second,

and after that, it's all a matter

of geography, and being in the same space

together--safe and somewhat understood,

if only for a moment.

You needn't catch every nuance;

understand every shade of meaning

entailed within our struggles.

The matter is only one of willingness

to be present, to endure,

to come together at the end of the day

on the porch with the sun in our eyes

aware that the time is slipping past us;

this won't last. We have to enjoy of each other

what we can, while we can.

That's what matters most.

What Matters

The thought occurred to me today that some of the most important things in life are the relationships we keep (and *how* we keep them), being creative and resourceful when needs arise, and learning to be content with what we have. Or maybe I should say that those have been some of the most important things in *my* life. When I was a single mom, being creative with what I had--physically, relationally, and in all other imaginable ways--was extremely important.

I get *very* distracted from those things now that life is not quite so demanding as it once was. Relationally, my difficulty is most pronounced when my kids ask me to do thus and so on a Saturday, and I'm so busy folding laundry that I miss the opportunity entirely. Being Busy is the number one joy-stealing culprit of my relationship with my kids. Not to harp on it, but this may come of having been a single mother for years. There was one bread-winner, one house-cleaner, one child-rearer, one planner-of-all-things for said child. How much time did I have for fun with my kid back then? And yet during those very busy years, I was deliberate about making sure my son had time with people other than me, especially kids. And I made sure he was loved by as many healthy, stable adults as I could muster to my aid.

However, I also bore the burden of the aforementioned responsibilities alone. Now that I don't, I can't imagine why the sense of busyness and urgency persists. I have five days out of almost every seven when my children are at school, and plenty of time during those days to get stuff done when the baby is napping. If I don't get it done by the end of the day, there are two parents in this household, and we work together to get things done. Not to mention the fact that my school-aged children are PLENTY old enough to make themselves useful.

During the single-parenting years, I was extremely creative with my belongings--my clothing, my furniture, objects of high artistic potentiality (I find artistic potentiality everywhere), curtains, vases, pictures by my son. I didn't have much of monetary value, but what I had, I made count. If space was lacking, I was creative with my floor plan, and I used what I had to make it feel like home. If I couldn't find something dressy in my closet, I created it myself. I may have seemed a bit eccentric, but it was an honest eccentricism. I used what I had to make something beautiful, if a bit unorthodox.

So back to what was my original line of thought:

I need to unlearn busyness. I think my husband might giggle to hear me say that (I'll find out soon enough) because I'm the world's worst procrastinator. But even when I'm procrastinating, I live in a pretty near constant state of feeling as if there's something I'm missing, and if I don't get it done, no one will.

I also need to unlearn the assumption that if there's nothing in my closet that appeals to me, there must be something lacking in my wardrobe. PAH! There was a day when I was known for my creativity with what I had available to me in my closet. I have somehow gotten away from that creativity, and I'm intending to find it again.

In a related vein, when did buying things become the answer to the [lack of] space issues in my house? First of all, I know a great many people who make do with far less space than I have, and just as many kids. In the same way that I was once known for my creativity with my wardrobe, I was also pretty well admired for my ability to make any space my own, and comfortable, without spending a dime. Let's find that again, shall we?

And most importantly, I have GOT to learn how to give an unqualified yes when my children want to spend time with me and I am able. This is, perhaps, the most difficult item on my list, because I'm not looking to RElearn it. I am not good at stopping what I'm doing, whether it's a want-to-do or a need-to-do item, and giving of my person to my kids. I'm good at doing *for* them--painting, cleaning, cooking, driving to activities. But painting *with* them? Stopping cleaning to play checkers *with* them? Going to the activity and enjoying it *with* them? I don't think I'm so good at these things. Ok, so I hate checkers. I don't play checkers with anyone. That's quite beside the point. This brand of busyness I have learned, wherever I have learned it, has got to be unlearned.

On that note, I'll close this post, because there aren't any words I need to write at this moment that are more important than the sleep that's waiting for me. Priorities. I think that's what I was getting at here, though I never said the word.

My Husband's Job

Eight days ago, I gave birth to Elise Marguerite. She was 6 lbs 3 oz and about 20 inches long. She's lovely and healthy and content, and we are enjoying her in the extreme.

To say that I gave birth to her feels a bit like short-changing my husband. He left only once early in the process, before it became unbearable, to get himself and our older daughter something to eat, but he was present and working hard with me for every moment of active labor. Several people offered him breaks, including myself. I think I was the only one in the room who realized, after having offered the break, that he really, truly didn't want one. He was tired, but so was I, and I didn't have the option of a break. He stayed right beside me as I labored in the pool, let me squeeze the hell out of his hand while reading Dandelion Wine to me between, and sometimes during, contractions. When I had to get out of the pool for them to monitor the baby again, he lifted me out of the tub as I cried that I was afraid to stand up. He applied counter-pressure to my back for what seemed like hours (probably was minutes) while I endured transition. He never allowed the doula even to take *that* job so that he could sit down and just hold my hand for a while.

When it came down to pushing, he sat beside me, held both my hands, [turned off his hearing aid, I'm sure], and let me moan and scream in his face. There's no more intense moment with him in my memory than staring into his face, aware only of the pain and the color of his eyes, between the last few contractions. How frightening that must have been for him. I think it's probably normal for a woman to have thoughts of death in those moments, wondering if she can live through that pain. I know I said to him once that I felt as if the contractions would kill me. Did he believe me? Did he fear the same? If he did, he only let it come through in his voice once or twice. The rest of the time he was calm, reassuring, adoring, gentle. I have no idea how he maintained such a demeanor in the midst of so much of my emotional chaos, but I think that, in light of the experience, he will always be my hero.

So now we have this amazing little girl at home with us, often lying between us on the bed because at 3 AM, I really don't have the energy to get up off the floor (we don't have a bed frame) and put her back in her bassinet. I feared during the pregnancy that her presence might cause tension or resentment for one or both of us. We both liked our life very much the way it was. Contrarily, I think we're both experiencing that she belongs here, and her existence is just a natural extension of our love for each other.

Everything is changing. Everything is already different. But it's not a change to mourn--not entirely. There's an aspect for each of us of having lost something--I, my independence (I simply cannot do for myself in the aftermath of the delivery), Richard, his freedom, and both of us our spontaneity. But there's something here to replace those things, and eventually to exist right alongside them, that is so very precious and beautiful and sweet that I'm really not sure what we were doing before. I loved my husband. He was already my best friend. But now the ideas of Protector and Provider mean so much more than they did before as I am forced to rely on him for fulfillment of some very basic needs. As difficult as it can be to need him to fill those roles, he does so graciously and without resentment, even lovingly and, dare I say, joyfully. This is his contribution to the process of her birth. Mine was nourishing her for 9 (well, ok, 8) months, and then going through the pain of labor and delivery, and now healing from that process as I continue to make small sacrifices to provide her nourishment.

It seems my husband never forgets those things. I wish very much that I could be as relationally, psychologically, and emotionally constant as he is. Unfortunately, I'm tossed about rather violently by the biological realities of pregnancy and of the post-partum period. Who am I kidding? My emotional stability is questionable on the best of days, pregnant or not. I suppose that's why there are two of us, and why we're wired so differently. I'm certain my mode of existence serves us in some way. Apparent to me, however, is the fact that it does not provide stability. I guess that's my husband's job.

Recovering Gifts

A Piece of Her
5 June 2010

I bought a chinois just like Grandmother's--
Ebay has its uses. She never called it that--
it was just a colander with a wooden pestle,
and she couldn't have told you where or when she got it.
She was always so elusive about the recipe--some flour,
a bit of baking powder, a pinch of salt (I'm fairly certain
it was Bisquick), and the dewberries, of course,
which I always thought were just blackberries.
Turns out I was wrong--and right.
Dewberries and blackberries are related,
and the name is legitimate. That makes me smile
as I press pestle against colander, juicing the blackberries;
coming one step closer to the mind of Bernice.
She's been gone for years now,
and I thought her cobbler was gone with her,
but I've found a piece of it, by trial and error--
a piece of her.

It wasn't perfect, but it was very close. It's definitely close enough to satisfy my memory. The taste of it brought tears to my eyes. I think I'll try it again this weekend. Although The Boy wants me to make a strawberry one. That feels like blasphemy. :-) But I guess I can alter tradition a bit here and there for the sake of my children's preferences. But the *norm* will be blackberry--and I'll probably call them dewberries. I'm going to try to find someone who sells berry bushes and plant them in the back yard. I'm very excited about the prospect of having the berries in the backyard like grandmother did.

It's always such a joy to find some small gift that has been passed on to me from my family members. Mother's quilting, Grandmother's cobbler, Vovo's chorizo & eggs (eaten in moderation--whew!). None of these gifts was ever handed down directly--I'm learning them now by consulting the poignant memories I have of the smells, the sights and the sounds associated with watching these women create beautiful things. And now I create beautiful things, both theirs and my own. I feel more whole every time I recover one of these treasures in myself.

Today, I should quilt. Of course, when I say that to myself, and especially when I say it out loud to someone else, I always pay for it later. The Boy wants to go to Gamestop, The Gril wants me to fix her hair, or I find housekeeping tasks that need to be done, and I feel badly sitting down to something "non-necessary" until those things are done. The trouble is there will always be a household task to complete. If I don't *make* the time for these small but very important creative tasks, I will always find reasons why it's not a good time to get to them now. I'm learning as I recover well-hidden gifts inside myself, though, that it's important to pull those to the surface, and to give them to my children.

White Christmas

20 December 2009

Madness infuses the everyday

rituals that help our home get through

the holidays, but now and then we manage

contentment--as near perfection

as we’ll ever get--as near the wishes,

hopes and dreams we’ve feared

we’d never realize as we can hope to come.

I am given to analysis,

though I could never manage to encapsulate

what makes these moments happen,

what gives me eyes to see this

brief window into Paradise. I’ll quit now,

while I’m ahead and my vision’s clear,

the children are here and ours

for a white Christmas.

Without Fear

17 October 2009

My eyes are open today. I see

how fruitless are the hours spent worrying

about a form and substance you adore.

These conversations never cease behind the eyes,

laughing or weeping. They never cease.

I hear the fretting accusations,

the whispers of starvation. I hear them,

but they grow quieter with time. Or perhaps

I build a wall inside my head, beyond which

their power diminishes--

I am, without fear, who I am.

Song Lyrics

I'm not a huge fan of the Christian music industry. A lot of the music played on Christian stations strikes me as insipid or manipulative jargon aimed at winning people into the Kingdom, or keeping them there, by means of an emotional high or, worse, an emotional low, when being faithful really has very little to do with how we feel. (Just as an aside, I know a lot of people who enjoy Christian music as a genre. I can completely respect that. I just don't tend to enjoy it myself.)

There have been songs over the years, though, that immediately struck a deep, deep chord of truth in me, despite my very strong bias against the genre. They may or may not have appealed to my emotions as they proclaimed, loud and clear, a truth which was not only valid, but vital. The lyrics below come from a song by a band called Tree 63. And perhaps the reason it strikes so profoundly every time I hear it is that they didn't try to say anything new or bend the Message to be "relevant". The song is scriptural, almost straight from the Psalms, and it acknowledges joy and grief, while praising all the while the God who works in all circumstances.

I heard it in the car on my way home from having a cup of coffee with friends after celebrating a liturgy with them this morning. I haven't heard this song since the Divorce Years, and while the trials in my life have morphed and eased dramatically since that time, it still brought tears to my eyes. Blessed be the name of the Lord--when I'm celebrating triumphs and redemption, or when I'm struggling with the results of my sin--blessed be the name of the Lord.

Blessed Be Your Name--by Tree 63

Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out,
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out,
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, Blessed be your name

Cobbler

5 July 2009

Bernice Imogene Pope

Now and again I get back

a part of myself. A cobbler brings me

face to face with my grandmother

and the dewberry bushes that grew

at the back fence in Victoria, south Texas

when I was younger than my little ones.

She picked them thinking of me--

no one loved those berries quite as much as I--

and she pummeled them through

a v-shaped colander so only the sweet

juice was covered by a rich cobbler crust.

The pan is two feet across,

the crust golden, the berries

sweeter than they’ve ever been since

in my memory.

Back to painting...

Even for a woman of 33, with 2 kids, a fabulous husband, and a relatively stable, ridiculously happy and satisfying home life (it took long enough to get here); even having already weathered the storm of divorce in my own life, watching the marriage of one's progenitors dissolve is nothing less than harrowing.

I've had an image in my head for a while which expresses, for me, a portion of the chaos of it, and I started painting it today. I think for this one, I will dabble in mixed-media for the first time, because there are some things I simply cannot do in acrylics. We'll see how it turns out. Here's a peak at Stage 1. I apologize in advance for the quality of the photo. My husband is out of the country, and he accidentally left with our good point-and-shoot digital AND the digital SLR. So I have to work with what I have.

The dreadful intimacy of divorce

I am reminded often of how foreign the feelings which accompany divorce are to those who have not experienced it. Actually, I realize now and again that there are folks for whom those feelings are foreign in spite of the fact that they themselves have been through a divorce.

So a relatively new acquaintance learns that I don't have my children with me today, and the conversation very naturally, though very uncomfortably for me, veers to the fact that they are each with their respective Other Parent. And my family is evinced as blended, and my heart as broken, though I'm never quite sure if the person with whom I'm talking understands the depth of the wound.

Or someone who has known and been close with both me and my ex, either in the past or currently, admits curiosity about our circumstance. And the conversation ends up in the vein of asking about our time-sharing agreement, and what the person perceives as the pros and cons of it, or asking me what pros and cons I experience.

It's not offensive to me to talk about--it's my life and it's dreadfully intimate, but it's bound to come up. I carry it with me everywhere I go, whether by the conspicuous absence of my children, or by the fact that my daughter addresses me by my first name, and my son addresses my husband as Baba. But it hurts. My, how it hurts. And no, I don't consider my children's Other Parents to be built in baby-sitters. It's not a newlywed perk that my husband and I are without our kids every other weekend.

And it will never be over. This is reality not just for the foreseeable future, but forever. My children will always have two homes, and I will always be obliged to split their time with folks who are, at least at this point, relative strangers, and worse yet, people who hurt me, and whom I hurt, by the very fact of our respective existential realities.

I heard someone recently say that if they had to choose between the death of a parent and that parent walking out on their other parent, they would choose the walking out. That statement provoked profound ambivalence in me. Ten years ago, I might've said the same, but now it strikes me as short-sited. Granted, the person who said it had lost a parent--one he loved and missed dearly. I honestly don't know which I'd prefer. Death is final. Divorce is an ongoing wound, with ongoing perpetrators. Death is closure, and leaves room to grieve for the person we knewso well, for good or ill. Divorce leaves us wondering who they are, whether the years we spent with them were really a lie, and whether there was something we could have done differently--or better. Divorce is never truly over, and given my demonstrable need for closure, I tend to think I'd prefer to deal with something cut and dry, something honest that Time might could help to heal.

New Moon

25 December 2008, 1:07 PM
Since I first begain writing, the moon has always held a very specific meaning for me, and for reasons I can't really explain in a public forum, I have used it less and less over the last two years as a symbol in my poetry. Today, I redefined the moon.

No one would disparage the mutual influence,
subtle yet inexorable. The Sea is the Sea,
The Moon is the Moon, the two indivisibly
intertwingled, undiminished by his sway.
She has never been subdued by this drawing
and releasing. He gently pulls upon the tides,
makes her more, not less, than what she is.
As he pulls away, the tides pull back
to follow, woo him back again.

Chimera

12 December 2008
chimera: noun: a thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.
inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

This House is...
should have been built on Sanity,

but even a foothold is rare purchase.
At least the Cornerstone sits solidly
upon rock-hard, sound rationality--
he does not wander. The Little Ones go,
return again, find the House
in need of repair, but standing,
safe and warm, sheltering,
in her right mind.

Blogging military brats

I love this website, though browsing it is not for the dull of mind or, at times, the weak of stomach. One post in particular was amusing to me, being a military brat:

Cynicism vs. naivete

The experience I described in my thumbring post has left me with some very uneasy feelings. I tend to be a bit reactionary in matters pertaining to affronted sexuality. Chauvinism of any kind absolutely gets my hackles up, even on the occasions when it slips past my filters and I am the offender.

Sometimes, though, an offense has long been committed before we even become aware of it, or like yesterday we become aware of it once it's in progress, and we may already have participated in creating what seems to be an awkward and demeaning situation. In such circumstances, I'm not sure if I should assume the worst and feel bad when folks prove me wrong, or assume the best and feel naive and stupid when they live up to the nastiness of which all humans, both male and female, are capable.

Regardless of which way I fall, cynicism or naivete, there's always room for vigilance and guarding of my person so that I would be less likely to find myself in situations where my judgment or the integrity or character of another person are compromised. This sort of caution doesn't have to be the function of cynicism at the one extreme or naivete at the other. It's just plain good sense.

Was it foolish for me to accept a cup of coffee and friendly conversation yesterday from a seemingly benign local business owner? I wasn't looking for trouble, and I assumed he wasn't either. So I did accept the cup of coffee. I guess in doing so I erred on the side of trust. After all, it is *possible* he was simply warning me, in a fatherly way, of the possibility of mis-communicating to other men who might be less kind. Perhaps the trustworthiness I assumed was not ill-placed. At this point, I really have no idea what to think about him. I'm just trying to sort out how I got as far into the situation as I did without realizing that maybe I shouldn't have been there at all.

Unfortunately, because I wasn't suspicious of him nor particularly on guard for myself, I can't remember how things unfolded well enough to judge if I practiced good boundaries or not. If I didn't, I guess next time there must be a better way to carry myself. If I did, then maybe I can stop fretting and be glad that whether or not the man's intentions were honorable, I left with my honor intact. While it would be nice to be able to trust other people always to treat me with the respect every person deserves, there's just no substitute for personal propriety.