Serious tug of war business with a relentlessly durable zip-tie thing clenching my waxy shirt tag oh it's on like donkey kong white knuckle gnashing teeth battle to the molar snapping end, right about an arm's length away from the only for the weak scissors in the drawer.
Mowing over and over, a vacuum maniac, one single shred of menacing tissue perhaps it's thread I can't tell from this carpet distance I refuse to bend all the way down there to pick it up I'd rather unbuckle this here hose attachment there, I gotcha, old piece of orange peel. Hmm.
The infinite heights of human determination have a spectacularly low starting point.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Five in a 5am Bed
Five in a bed is not forever.
Awake at five, I know.
They will grow out of these pajamas then
One long day they will grow away.
He will grow to pass, those dog gone years
And we will grow nearer and gray
Trying just enough for the two of us
To fit in this old bed.
Awake, I feel.
My same hand through the years
Searching for the roundness of their faces
Listening to our sleeping night together,
Growing tired as another day comes
Too soon and slowly, but
Never of this, what is not forever.
Awake at five, I know.
They will grow out of these pajamas then
One long day they will grow away.
He will grow to pass, those dog gone years
And we will grow nearer and gray
Trying just enough for the two of us
To fit in this old bed.
Awake, I feel.
My same hand through the years
Searching for the roundness of their faces
Listening to our sleeping night together,
Growing tired as another day comes
Too soon and slowly, but
Never of this, what is not forever.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Back to Leaves
Store vintage postcard walled and framed
But a photograph of someone real
A small heartbeat girl.
After closing hours, streetlights peering in.
I stopped just before exiting
Not to see her again.
She is already gone to moonlight
Plucked from a box to be decoration.
But she asked me to give her back to leaves
If not you who ever will. What luck
Will be my worth. No trees know me to
Take me back. Her plea, I could only
Give her this, a falling stem, traveling far from home.
It is not enough but it is all I have.
Thinking, a curious stranger.
Writing her a paper trail and not knowing if she will follow.
But a photograph of someone real
A small heartbeat girl.
After closing hours, streetlights peering in.
I stopped just before exiting
Not to see her again.
She is already gone to moonlight
Plucked from a box to be decoration.
But she asked me to give her back to leaves
If not you who ever will. What luck
Will be my worth. No trees know me to
Take me back. Her plea, I could only
Give her this, a falling stem, traveling far from home.
It is not enough but it is all I have.
Thinking, a curious stranger.
Writing her a paper trail and not knowing if she will follow.
Two Hands Free
Over a bowl, a clanking mess of silverware
Tucked into the window
A 30s girl lapped up her daily Panera bread
With humorous ferocity and desperation
Like a mom on a rare solo night excursion,
A time frame countdown and
Two hands free.
I saw her because I was there
Venting the same cause and conviction,
Laughing and reflecting
Her happy spirit, my
Two eyes free to see her.
Tucked into the window
A 30s girl lapped up her daily Panera bread
With humorous ferocity and desperation
Like a mom on a rare solo night excursion,
A time frame countdown and
Two hands free.
I saw her because I was there
Venting the same cause and conviction,
Laughing and reflecting
Her happy spirit, my
Two eyes free to see her.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Life Observation #1
No other particle of sacrosanct space is identified as
The deciding day's luck, good or bad
False indication of something so very much
It is not
Or strikes a mood of such extreme
Momentary happiness or lingering spite,
Depending on timing and availability,
Angle and speed,
As the parking spot.
The deciding day's luck, good or bad
False indication of something so very much
It is not
Or strikes a mood of such extreme
Momentary happiness or lingering spite,
Depending on timing and availability,
Angle and speed,
As the parking spot.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
No Longer
Young, she was days into motherhood.
The house asleep.
She held it up.
One ashen moment.
Not quite black or white.
A front porch home. Standing
Lovely with ringlets
Her grandma, holding so tiny,
Her mom.
Babies cried in 1945?
Oddly
Up to that moment
She didn't know
She was no longer so young
Nor they so old
Or far away.
The house asleep.
She held it up.
One ashen moment.
Not quite black or white.
A front porch home. Standing
Lovely with ringlets
Her grandma, holding so tiny,
Her mom.
Babies cried in 1945?
Oddly
Up to that moment
She didn't know
She was no longer so young
Nor they so old
Or far away.
Friday Skies
Storms on Friday.
Where is the miracle
Cynic lightly amuses.
Sit him blank inside a room.
Empty.
Tell he,
Make rain wail.
Thunder burst.
Have he,
Find armor
All animals of the land.
Then from common pacing
His fear alone
Unlock he,
To dark day outside.
Growing painful.
Look again.
A stopped sun.
Waters heaved.
Disappeared animals,
Unseen and beneath.
Who has?
Science.
Cynic mocks.
So soon casting
Lonesome awareness and
History.
The barren room.
Unto him without praise
Opened.
Cross to unprovable mystery.
Now angered eyes
Demand yet abate
Questions of
How giveth sight, or who
Released.
He revolts.
The ordinary phenomenon.
Friday cries black
Without miracle.
Passing storm, breaking sky.
A final breath.
The sun returns.
And creatures
From cavernous retreat.
He pauses.
Still to sound.
Examining quiet, like light.
Only he and his dry earth
Know towards which he will turn.
If he shall kneel
Or deny, standing alone.
Pray for he,
Master of all
Which happens outside
But sparse without key
To questions within.
Rains of his soul, or
How long will he fall
Or how dark skies fell open
When his emptiness called.
Where is the miracle
Cynic lightly amuses.
Sit him blank inside a room.
Empty.
Tell he,
Make rain wail.
Thunder burst.
Have he,
Find armor
All animals of the land.
Then from common pacing
His fear alone
Unlock he,
To dark day outside.
Growing painful.
Look again.
A stopped sun.
Waters heaved.
Disappeared animals,
Unseen and beneath.
Who has?
Science.
Cynic mocks.
So soon casting
Lonesome awareness and
History.
The barren room.
Unto him without praise
Opened.
Cross to unprovable mystery.
Now angered eyes
Demand yet abate
Questions of
How giveth sight, or who
Released.
He revolts.
The ordinary phenomenon.
Friday cries black
Without miracle.
Passing storm, breaking sky.
A final breath.
The sun returns.
And creatures
From cavernous retreat.
He pauses.
Still to sound.
Examining quiet, like light.
Only he and his dry earth
Know towards which he will turn.
If he shall kneel
Or deny, standing alone.
Pray for he,
Master of all
Which happens outside
But sparse without key
To questions within.
Rains of his soul, or
How long will he fall
Or how dark skies fell open
When his emptiness called.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Marriage Revelation #3
From a Chicago hotel room tonight, he smiled back at me through the webcam and I realized, we get hugged but feel held. The difference between them is miles, yes, distant miles, apart.
His Final Feast
From that day
Unleavened bread
Sin and yeast
My ignorance
Upon the table
Blood he shed
His body broke
Before he bled
Weeping prayer
Though fear not
His saving grace
Upon the cross
A tortured death
But just before
His final feast
Served by the Lord
One perfect lamb
Today became
My first holy meal
Of sacrament.
Unleavened bread
Sin and yeast
My ignorance
Upon the table
Blood he shed
His body broke
Before he bled
Weeping prayer
Though fear not
His saving grace
Upon the cross
A tortured death
But just before
His final feast
Served by the Lord
One perfect lamb
Today became
My first holy meal
Of sacrament.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Silent Bird, Singing
I just wrote a poem "I wonder why" and I guess I needed to write about it further. My poetry and my writing these days seems so quietly reflective that I cannot help but wonder - why the sadness, why the nostalgic tone and pleading. I act much less sad, and hopefully, don't look the part, at least not too badly. My friend Trina came over the other day and she sent me a text later, curious to know if I was okay, or just, overwhelmed. I love that word these days. Overwhelmed. Its connotation doesn't bring pleasantries. The word usually pushes me under, treading in a deep sea of housework and errands and things to do and life to live and all the words I'd really love to read but haven't the time to bother with. Those books sitting there. And, The Book. It calls me from my nightstand, and I uncomfortably ask the air whether it's even something I can apologize for. Does God accept apologies or only confessions? I am unsure, to tell the exact truth.
But, I am overwhelmed. In all ways. I am still dancing in my living room, singing made up songs and my heart is full of a little quiet joy that I mix into those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and unwrap with those extra sweet treats before lunch. I can read a few more books, in character, and I have the energy to fold that third load of laundry with a lightness, knowing that I can do for others without the weight of blame anchoring me down to the murky bottom, a pit where my guilt and regret swim deep. Yet, each time I sit to write, something like sadness comes out. I am not sure what it is, or why. I am trying to distill, just to know a bit more. Like a delicate wound, I am inspecting closer tonight to see what is there below. The wound is mine, but it is its smallness that fascinates me, my thin papercut door that won't open unless I ask it to. So I guess, tonight, I am asking. Just keep writing and keep asking, that's all I can do.
What comes to me is that we are unlike other animals or living creatures that experience only instinct and live freely without will. They are born to surrender. Birds cannot choose silence. Snakes cannot disavow prey. No matter what size or purpose or place, animals obey, and whether they feel emotion or sense pain or seek contentment, they obey, always, a calling from beyond a moral conscience.
In a way, I feel like that is how I chose to pretend to live, before God came to me and asked me to obey Him. Everything I did in my life, and all my decisions, I felt it was beyond my conscience to understand, or know, or to really have the power to choose. But instead of surrendering to God's calling, I surrendered to my own. My primal love of self to live as though I was an object of some foreign inertia, pulling me in to whatever deep dark and light places I felt I deserved. There is no limit to a godless conscience.
But it is in this way that I was most disobedient - my absolute refusal to want nothing else except to be happy, as much as I could, all the time, no matter the cost, or the neglect, or the hurt. My own happiness, my own pride, and reflecting that in the way I acted or the way I lived - that's all that really mattered. Self-exaltation, right? "Just obey your own instinct. You will always know what to do." That is how my former conscience instructed me to live.
Now that I am trying to listen to God, to obey Him and His word, I just feel - more. So much more. My great tide, pulling me in and pushing me out, beyond myself, to reach past the will I want and nearer to His will. I hear Him calling me to obey - not my own demanding voice, but His, the small distant one, the one that climbs into my writing day after day, and sits like a friend inside my poems. And in these recent poems, the ones filled with topics where I spit out "I" much more than "Him", I feel somewhat ashamed. I want to apologize to God - "Have I forgotten about you? Why am I not writing about you today?" And within that distant voice, a luminous one and kind, He tells me like laughter I am writing about Him every time I write, that He's inside every single poem, and every word, and all the spaces in between.
So, I think I am realizing. It's not sadness I feel. It's not sadness in my poems. It's being alive in the Lord. It's knowing sin, it's knowing love, it's knowing what it means to stand aside from the directive of your own partial self and obey the fullness of a will you cannot understand. To sing, or dance, or write, not simply because it is your will to do so, but because your open heart knows that it is against His will to not do so. To be given a song but not sing, a silent bird. Listening now, I know. Sadness only lives in my silence.
It is a glorious and beautiful thing, this love of God, and it is breaking me, down to my knees, flush against a wide sky of emotion. Overwhelmed, I can do nothing but surrender and write the song that fills me.
But, I am overwhelmed. In all ways. I am still dancing in my living room, singing made up songs and my heart is full of a little quiet joy that I mix into those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and unwrap with those extra sweet treats before lunch. I can read a few more books, in character, and I have the energy to fold that third load of laundry with a lightness, knowing that I can do for others without the weight of blame anchoring me down to the murky bottom, a pit where my guilt and regret swim deep. Yet, each time I sit to write, something like sadness comes out. I am not sure what it is, or why. I am trying to distill, just to know a bit more. Like a delicate wound, I am inspecting closer tonight to see what is there below. The wound is mine, but it is its smallness that fascinates me, my thin papercut door that won't open unless I ask it to. So I guess, tonight, I am asking. Just keep writing and keep asking, that's all I can do.
What comes to me is that we are unlike other animals or living creatures that experience only instinct and live freely without will. They are born to surrender. Birds cannot choose silence. Snakes cannot disavow prey. No matter what size or purpose or place, animals obey, and whether they feel emotion or sense pain or seek contentment, they obey, always, a calling from beyond a moral conscience.
In a way, I feel like that is how I chose to pretend to live, before God came to me and asked me to obey Him. Everything I did in my life, and all my decisions, I felt it was beyond my conscience to understand, or know, or to really have the power to choose. But instead of surrendering to God's calling, I surrendered to my own. My primal love of self to live as though I was an object of some foreign inertia, pulling me in to whatever deep dark and light places I felt I deserved. There is no limit to a godless conscience.
But it is in this way that I was most disobedient - my absolute refusal to want nothing else except to be happy, as much as I could, all the time, no matter the cost, or the neglect, or the hurt. My own happiness, my own pride, and reflecting that in the way I acted or the way I lived - that's all that really mattered. Self-exaltation, right? "Just obey your own instinct. You will always know what to do." That is how my former conscience instructed me to live.
Now that I am trying to listen to God, to obey Him and His word, I just feel - more. So much more. My great tide, pulling me in and pushing me out, beyond myself, to reach past the will I want and nearer to His will. I hear Him calling me to obey - not my own demanding voice, but His, the small distant one, the one that climbs into my writing day after day, and sits like a friend inside my poems. And in these recent poems, the ones filled with topics where I spit out "I" much more than "Him", I feel somewhat ashamed. I want to apologize to God - "Have I forgotten about you? Why am I not writing about you today?" And within that distant voice, a luminous one and kind, He tells me like laughter I am writing about Him every time I write, that He's inside every single poem, and every word, and all the spaces in between.
So, I think I am realizing. It's not sadness I feel. It's not sadness in my poems. It's being alive in the Lord. It's knowing sin, it's knowing love, it's knowing what it means to stand aside from the directive of your own partial self and obey the fullness of a will you cannot understand. To sing, or dance, or write, not simply because it is your will to do so, but because your open heart knows that it is against His will to not do so. To be given a song but not sing, a silent bird. Listening now, I know. Sadness only lives in my silence.
It is a glorious and beautiful thing, this love of God, and it is breaking me, down to my knees, flush against a wide sky of emotion. Overwhelmed, I can do nothing but surrender and write the song that fills me.
I wonder why
At the bottom of every single one
there seems a sadness moving from
the one last word, unable to ease
or comfort except to quietly end.
there seems a sadness moving from
the one last word, unable to ease
or comfort except to quietly end.
Waiting for an Invitation
What are you waiting for? A burning invitation
on your front porch? Plumes of dancing smoke
To scorch down your neighbors' houses.
Writing arson and a subcutaneous humorist
burning into what you touch.
Awkward attempts without malice.
Lives escaping past, and passing before
they know you. Try your hand.
Unsteady protagonist to ask, a polite glass of water
and what's there inside.
Furniture spots and rubble,
those crystal plate collections.
Torching yourself in, your own dinner invitation
without address or a table to lay your pen
to fix the damage.
Your small combustible portion
a gentle potluck offering, laughter and hurt
and their unsure skin, absorbing
what you wish were your words
smoldering light, from their rooms and yours
coming untrapped.
on your front porch? Plumes of dancing smoke
To scorch down your neighbors' houses.
Writing arson and a subcutaneous humorist
burning into what you touch.
Awkward attempts without malice.
Lives escaping past, and passing before
they know you. Try your hand.
Unsteady protagonist to ask, a polite glass of water
and what's there inside.
Furniture spots and rubble,
those crystal plate collections.
Torching yourself in, your own dinner invitation
without address or a table to lay your pen
to fix the damage.
Your small combustible portion
a gentle potluck offering, laughter and hurt
and their unsure skin, absorbing
what you wish were your words
smoldering light, from their rooms and yours
coming untrapped.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Keeping that Quilt
42 moths ate through that quilt.
Storage told the garage sale.
Remember what's beneath.
Her wrinkle hands and squares.
Stitched for me. Fabric girls and bonnets.
Upon my bed, a covering. 1986.
I hid against the wall.
Blinking fresh tears through an
Uncomfortable smile.
Not knowing what dead means.
I saw my father crying inside a suit.
I had not met him before.
Holes torn through one story.
That year he moved her to the lake
When he lost his old man at 24.
And kept her, loved and beaten by a boxer.
Widowed and healed beyond a sewn quilt
Because she raised a son
Better than she chose a husband.
That is why I keep those eaten squares.
Days beneath a simple old man.
His mother's warm thread
Covering him like years.
Storage told the garage sale.
Remember what's beneath.
Her wrinkle hands and squares.
Stitched for me. Fabric girls and bonnets.
Upon my bed, a covering. 1986.
I hid against the wall.
Blinking fresh tears through an
Uncomfortable smile.
Not knowing what dead means.
I saw my father crying inside a suit.
I had not met him before.
Holes torn through one story.
That year he moved her to the lake
When he lost his old man at 24.
And kept her, loved and beaten by a boxer.
Widowed and healed beyond a sewn quilt
Because she raised a son
Better than she chose a husband.
That is why I keep those eaten squares.
Days beneath a simple old man.
His mother's warm thread
Covering him like years.
Plagarizing William Stafford
I plagarized a poem today.
A good one.
"That's all well and good," he shrugged.
Dead as the mellow book.
"Looks about right but
you wrote it terribly."
A good one.
"That's all well and good," he shrugged.
Dead as the mellow book.
"Looks about right but
you wrote it terribly."
2nd Street Crossing
How quiet must I be for you to know what I say.
A void man.
He could see in my eyes.
How still must I sit.
Crossing
I could not recall what he meant
nor asked in his face.
Only did I notice my shoes
dim gravel sounds
walking away.
A void man.
He could see in my eyes.
How still must I sit.
Crossing
I could not recall what he meant
nor asked in his face.
Only did I notice my shoes
dim gravel sounds
walking away.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
What's This
What's this disconnect? Friendly connection cords wiring fractured posts and battery years, typefont friends and data loss fears.
What's this disconnect? Something searching keys clicking into media sounds and memory speeds, falsehood facts and frenetic frequencies.
Powering down and off. Window world gone. Return to walls. Life back on.
This other one, statue eyes and living wares. Wonder gazes, unthinking thoughts to this hard chair. We can't meet. Small talk typed and mute text life rather than to choose to speak.
What's this disconnect? Digital faces saved digitally from tsunami jaws though their lives were not, left unable to be held except flat against memorial screens.
What's this disconnect? Reading flip page picture frames and captions capturing marketing games without connecting us barely enough to lift our voice to one phone speaker and speak belief. Or anything about anything real, really.
Who will listen? Who will cry tonight with me?
Hoping against this connection speed of disconnect and gravity pounding global headaches and blowback broadband inequality.
What is this hope? Who of us will? Speak what matters. Listen carefully. Now slowing down to
slow word speeds,
Flesh utterances of one small shared try, to raise dignity undigitized and feel these praying bones inside of this, our forgotten human connection life.
What's this disconnect? Something searching keys clicking into media sounds and memory speeds, falsehood facts and frenetic frequencies.
Powering down and off. Window world gone. Return to walls. Life back on.
This other one, statue eyes and living wares. Wonder gazes, unthinking thoughts to this hard chair. We can't meet. Small talk typed and mute text life rather than to choose to speak.
What's this disconnect? Digital faces saved digitally from tsunami jaws though their lives were not, left unable to be held except flat against memorial screens.
What's this disconnect? Reading flip page picture frames and captions capturing marketing games without connecting us barely enough to lift our voice to one phone speaker and speak belief. Or anything about anything real, really.
Who will listen? Who will cry tonight with me?
Hoping against this connection speed of disconnect and gravity pounding global headaches and blowback broadband inequality.
What is this hope? Who of us will? Speak what matters. Listen carefully. Now slowing down to
slow word speeds,
Flesh utterances of one small shared try, to raise dignity undigitized and feel these praying bones inside of this, our forgotten human connection life.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Marriage Revelation #2
(he is a mystery + she is a mystery) x (a really long time) = the beauty of marriage is that we get to share our mysteries, not solve them.
past the plain
a part of me wishes i could really write.
one of those good, good writers. who writes cryptic magic and
past the plain. one voluminous saturation of admired words
layered beautiful. a labyrinth of language. a real writer.
from shadowy generations. like, meaning upon existential meaning.
prose upon iambic prose. life upon beat life.
a part of me thinks i should. write myself out as
one long unsolvable word mystery hidden
from plain sight. reading first to mean less
than i mean until
the third read, when i would all mean more than
plain second sight could see.
plain eyes could read. write past the plain, and
past belief.
but i write plainly.
just to be, and to believe
that i can live exactly
what i mean. refuse what's more
so i can breathe. plain and seen.
my first read through, and honesty.
i write to teach that part of me
how to write. how to be.
nothing less than all of me.
one of those good, good writers. who writes cryptic magic and
past the plain. one voluminous saturation of admired words
layered beautiful. a labyrinth of language. a real writer.
from shadowy generations. like, meaning upon existential meaning.
prose upon iambic prose. life upon beat life.
a part of me thinks i should. write myself out as
one long unsolvable word mystery hidden
from plain sight. reading first to mean less
than i mean until
the third read, when i would all mean more than
plain second sight could see.
plain eyes could read. write past the plain, and
past belief.
but i write plainly.
just to be, and to believe
that i can live exactly
what i mean. refuse what's more
so i can breathe. plain and seen.
my first read through, and honesty.
i write to teach that part of me
how to write. how to be.
nothing less than all of me.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
My Little Blue Topaz
I have to write this moment off my soul before it leaves me.
I am out the door quickly in just a minute, headed to Newburgh to visit my brother and Sun whose due date was yesterday, who are about to celebrate very soon the birth of their firstborn, baby Ethan. What a day it will be, with God's blessing. I have been thinking about him, baby Ethan, anxious to hold this small miracle, and to see a glimpse of my brother for the first time as a baby. No pictures of him exist before he was 3 years old. At least none on this continent, or perhaps, in the whole world.
Having packed the car last night, I awoke at 5:30am this morning, ready to buckle in sleeping children and break dawn with my headlights. I instead waited. A thunderstorm was passing through. "Should I wait?" I actually prayed about it, laying still in my bed. I didn't know if I'd be stuck on the side of a dark highway wishing I would have thought through the decision. I am so glad He gave me that moment of contemplation.
Now it is almost 9am, the kids are about ready and yes, I am about to head out the door, but as I was getting ready, looking at myself in the mirror, I felt like I needed - something. What is it? Perhaps a necklace? Yes! Just recently I have been wearing a necklace that my parents gave me when I was, I think, in middle school. It is a gold twist chain with my birthstone - topaz. I never liked my birthstone growing up, for many reasons. But my parents had given me this blue topaz, knowing that I preferred its blue color over the more common goldish yellow. I wore it for a while growing up, but it never really meant anything to me. It was just a necklace.
I came across it a few months ago, coiled up in a little gray sachet in the bottom of my jewelry drawer. I've been wearing it on and off, and haven't thought much about it. It's a pretty necklace, I'll put it on, I thought, with no more thought beyond that. I took it off last week, and under a pile of clothes and random mess on my dresser, I found it this morning so I could wear it again.
I put it on. I looked at it in the mirror. Hanging around my neck. I smiled. My little blue gem. Now I know. This necklace means something more. Much, much more.
My mother told me in our living room when I was maybe 8 or 9 that my birthdate, November 17, 1980 - was just an estimated date of birth. The doctors did a bone comparison, and they believed it was accurate within a three month window. But there in that living room, my spirit emptied into a blackness I would never be able explain to anyone - not as an 8 or 9 year old, or even, just yesterday. I had already known that I was adopted, but my mother's living room revelation felt like I was being disconnected forever to the one and only strand of truth that connected me to my past, to that one and only day I knew for sure that I was connected to my birth mother. I always wondered how she looked at me the moment she saw me. But I have never been able to think of that moment without feeling like maybe it never really happened. Maybe my purpose vanished forever inside that lost day. It is something I could never explain to anyone living outside of my skin, or anything anyone could have explained to me. Until today.
My whole life I couldn't wear that necklace and believe it meant anything because I've just never understood if I mean anything. What is my purpose? When was I born and who was I born to and why was I born at all? One day I might have disappeared into the quiet night sky and no one but my brother and the lonely street wind would have missed me. It is a feeling unlike any other to try and understand, to wrap a tiny child's mind around and live with for three decades. Everyone would say: "The day doesn't matter. You do belong. You have a purpose. You are a blessing." My parents with all their love, tried. But all I could think about was how the birth of my existence was lost to a day that I could not claim as my own. I could never celebrate a moment that was abandoned to lonely street wind, a moment I could not hold inside my hands and say with any truth: "This is who I am." Party hats and streamers and gifts and nice words. These were never enough to replace that moment of life that was given to me, and then, somehow, for some distant reason, ripped apart and given away.
This necklace gave to me this morning everything I never knew. That I don't belong here, or there, across the ocean. I don't need to search for purpose, or find a purpose. I don't have to keep fighting to believe that I mean something. "Of course you do," the necklace said. "You are a child of God. Your purpose is His purpose. You belong to Him."
Now, I understand. Around His neck hangs the life of every precious gem on earth, each one of us whole in our own meaning, each one of us born to Him. I don't need to know which day I was born on, because, He already knows. He gave that day to me, and every day since. And He keeps me with Him, small and whole, wrapped around the neck of heaven. Blue or yellow or green or ruby red. It really doesn't matter. I mean everything to Him, and he told me that today, His shining message of truth.
I've been asking my birth mother, silently crying out to her for three decades - why did you abandon me? He answered for her today. "I never did."
In one mirror moment, He eased my inexplicable hurt and told me what I've been waiting to hear my whole incomplete life. He gave me this morning my missing piece, my missing life, right here inside my little blue topaz.
I am out the door quickly in just a minute, headed to Newburgh to visit my brother and Sun whose due date was yesterday, who are about to celebrate very soon the birth of their firstborn, baby Ethan. What a day it will be, with God's blessing. I have been thinking about him, baby Ethan, anxious to hold this small miracle, and to see a glimpse of my brother for the first time as a baby. No pictures of him exist before he was 3 years old. At least none on this continent, or perhaps, in the whole world.
Having packed the car last night, I awoke at 5:30am this morning, ready to buckle in sleeping children and break dawn with my headlights. I instead waited. A thunderstorm was passing through. "Should I wait?" I actually prayed about it, laying still in my bed. I didn't know if I'd be stuck on the side of a dark highway wishing I would have thought through the decision. I am so glad He gave me that moment of contemplation.
Now it is almost 9am, the kids are about ready and yes, I am about to head out the door, but as I was getting ready, looking at myself in the mirror, I felt like I needed - something. What is it? Perhaps a necklace? Yes! Just recently I have been wearing a necklace that my parents gave me when I was, I think, in middle school. It is a gold twist chain with my birthstone - topaz. I never liked my birthstone growing up, for many reasons. But my parents had given me this blue topaz, knowing that I preferred its blue color over the more common goldish yellow. I wore it for a while growing up, but it never really meant anything to me. It was just a necklace.
I came across it a few months ago, coiled up in a little gray sachet in the bottom of my jewelry drawer. I've been wearing it on and off, and haven't thought much about it. It's a pretty necklace, I'll put it on, I thought, with no more thought beyond that. I took it off last week, and under a pile of clothes and random mess on my dresser, I found it this morning so I could wear it again.
I put it on. I looked at it in the mirror. Hanging around my neck. I smiled. My little blue gem. Now I know. This necklace means something more. Much, much more.
My mother told me in our living room when I was maybe 8 or 9 that my birthdate, November 17, 1980 - was just an estimated date of birth. The doctors did a bone comparison, and they believed it was accurate within a three month window. But there in that living room, my spirit emptied into a blackness I would never be able explain to anyone - not as an 8 or 9 year old, or even, just yesterday. I had already known that I was adopted, but my mother's living room revelation felt like I was being disconnected forever to the one and only strand of truth that connected me to my past, to that one and only day I knew for sure that I was connected to my birth mother. I always wondered how she looked at me the moment she saw me. But I have never been able to think of that moment without feeling like maybe it never really happened. Maybe my purpose vanished forever inside that lost day. It is something I could never explain to anyone living outside of my skin, or anything anyone could have explained to me. Until today.
My whole life I couldn't wear that necklace and believe it meant anything because I've just never understood if I mean anything. What is my purpose? When was I born and who was I born to and why was I born at all? One day I might have disappeared into the quiet night sky and no one but my brother and the lonely street wind would have missed me. It is a feeling unlike any other to try and understand, to wrap a tiny child's mind around and live with for three decades. Everyone would say: "The day doesn't matter. You do belong. You have a purpose. You are a blessing." My parents with all their love, tried. But all I could think about was how the birth of my existence was lost to a day that I could not claim as my own. I could never celebrate a moment that was abandoned to lonely street wind, a moment I could not hold inside my hands and say with any truth: "This is who I am." Party hats and streamers and gifts and nice words. These were never enough to replace that moment of life that was given to me, and then, somehow, for some distant reason, ripped apart and given away.
This necklace gave to me this morning everything I never knew. That I don't belong here, or there, across the ocean. I don't need to search for purpose, or find a purpose. I don't have to keep fighting to believe that I mean something. "Of course you do," the necklace said. "You are a child of God. Your purpose is His purpose. You belong to Him."
Now, I understand. Around His neck hangs the life of every precious gem on earth, each one of us whole in our own meaning, each one of us born to Him. I don't need to know which day I was born on, because, He already knows. He gave that day to me, and every day since. And He keeps me with Him, small and whole, wrapped around the neck of heaven. Blue or yellow or green or ruby red. It really doesn't matter. I mean everything to Him, and he told me that today, His shining message of truth.
I've been asking my birth mother, silently crying out to her for three decades - why did you abandon me? He answered for her today. "I never did."
In one mirror moment, He eased my inexplicable hurt and told me what I've been waiting to hear my whole incomplete life. He gave me this morning my missing piece, my missing life, right here inside my little blue topaz.
Friday, April 8, 2011
432 Times a Day
432 times a day on average, each, if it's a good day.
Starting with first thing in the morning know nothing else but sleepy love. They stir me.
Celebrating breakfast choice independence no milk yes milk no cereal I want a granola bar no I said raisin toast. Please? They ask me.
From faraway bedrooms and hmm where are they exactly I wonder candyland corners come back here and play with us. They want me.
With I can't reach it open it wipe it buckle it find it color it right frustration. They need me.
With we can't solve it how to split a plastic guitar in two fair pieces I don't understand life is so unfair. They beg me.
With incessant whining louder growing shouting high fever screaming urgently now or something's breaking maybe your is it bedtime patience. They demand me.
With there's nothing else I need or want no boo-boo bandaid hurt I'm tired sad alone scared all I need is to feel loved. They reach for me.
My children.
They call me.
Mommy? Mommy, Mommy. Mommy! Mom-mmy. Mooommmy. Mom.
432 times a day on average. Each.
If only I had a prayer for every time they said my name maybe I'd exemplify patient love instead of stirring, asking, wanting, needing, begging, demanding, reaching, and calling for it.
...oh. I realize.
If they didn't call me - then who?
They only call me - because why?
They call me because I answer.
Not always the way they want me to.
Not always because they understand.
But I answer. Because I love them.
Because I always will.
They trust me need me love me therefore they call me.
432 times a day, each, they remind me
That I need Him
Like they need me.
432 times a day, each, my children remind me
To call out for Him
As often and as desperately
As they call for me.
Starting with first thing in the morning know nothing else but sleepy love. They stir me.
Celebrating breakfast choice independence no milk yes milk no cereal I want a granola bar no I said raisin toast. Please? They ask me.
From faraway bedrooms and hmm where are they exactly I wonder candyland corners come back here and play with us. They want me.
With I can't reach it open it wipe it buckle it find it color it right frustration. They need me.
With we can't solve it how to split a plastic guitar in two fair pieces I don't understand life is so unfair. They beg me.
With incessant whining louder growing shouting high fever screaming urgently now or something's breaking maybe your is it bedtime patience. They demand me.
With there's nothing else I need or want no boo-boo bandaid hurt I'm tired sad alone scared all I need is to feel loved. They reach for me.
My children.
They call me.
Mommy? Mommy, Mommy. Mommy! Mom-mmy. Mooommmy. Mom.
432 times a day on average. Each.
If only I had a prayer for every time they said my name maybe I'd exemplify patient love instead of stirring, asking, wanting, needing, begging, demanding, reaching, and calling for it.
...oh. I realize.
If they didn't call me - then who?
They only call me - because why?
They call me because I answer.
Not always the way they want me to.
Not always because they understand.
But I answer. Because I love them.
Because I always will.
They trust me need me love me therefore they call me.
432 times a day, each, they remind me
That I need Him
Like they need me.
432 times a day, each, my children remind me
To call out for Him
As often and as desperately
As they call for me.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
My Mother's Tears
I swear I cried my mother's tears today.
The ones that dropped after
Everyday life pounded her down to that
Family dinner kitchen table. Just one day
While all the rest of us sat chatting up our day and troubles
Talking nonsense and her sitting there, very alone
Trying to concentrate on anything except
Her tender eyes blinking away
Something culminating inside rising
Completely unspeakably overwhelming and...
She cried only because she had no words.
I cried today because I didn't either.
I swear I cried her tears today.
The ones that fell upon the top of those steps
That burnt orange carpet in our Horger house.
She sat, face buried in her hands like a child.
I hugged her in silence except for a few deep breaths she took
As I inspected closely her face, from the side.
It looked as if she was in pain.
I didn't know why.
Crying her tears today I know enough to realize that
She didn't quite know why either.
One of those days, we say.
Us mothers do.
Just one of those days.
I swear I cried her tears today.
The ones that welled up that summer evening
Her gazing out our front window and staring into
Our tiny neighborhood world.
"Sometimes I wish I had a place to go."
I remember her saying quietly to herself, and me
Not really knowing what she meant.
I cried today because today I know
Exactly what she meant.
She meant -
I don't want to go out of this house
Or out of this life
Or out of this here, my beautiful existence as
Your mother.
Or out of this here, my treasured existence as
Your wife.
I need to be here.
This is who I am.
This is what I love.
But just today, these little tears fell just for me
To remind me that sometimes
It is alright for me to think
That I could need something too.
Not something more.
Not something better.
Not something else.
Just,
something.
I do not even know myself what it is.
I cannot quite even say what it is.
I cannot explain it with actions.
I cannot explain it in words.
So instead, I'll just explain it all
In tears. Until
I am okay with knowing that
I do not need to explain it any more.
I swear I cried my mother's tears today.
And I swear she sat there with me,
Comforting me
As only a mother can.
My mother, she knows.
She has already cried my tears.
The ones that dropped after
Everyday life pounded her down to that
Family dinner kitchen table. Just one day
While all the rest of us sat chatting up our day and troubles
Talking nonsense and her sitting there, very alone
Trying to concentrate on anything except
Her tender eyes blinking away
Something culminating inside rising
Completely unspeakably overwhelming and...
She cried only because she had no words.
I cried today because I didn't either.
I swear I cried her tears today.
The ones that fell upon the top of those steps
That burnt orange carpet in our Horger house.
She sat, face buried in her hands like a child.
I hugged her in silence except for a few deep breaths she took
As I inspected closely her face, from the side.
It looked as if she was in pain.
I didn't know why.
Crying her tears today I know enough to realize that
She didn't quite know why either.
One of those days, we say.
Us mothers do.
Just one of those days.
I swear I cried her tears today.
The ones that welled up that summer evening
Her gazing out our front window and staring into
Our tiny neighborhood world.
"Sometimes I wish I had a place to go."
I remember her saying quietly to herself, and me
Not really knowing what she meant.
I cried today because today I know
Exactly what she meant.
She meant -
I don't want to go out of this house
Or out of this life
Or out of this here, my beautiful existence as
Your mother.
Or out of this here, my treasured existence as
Your wife.
I need to be here.
This is who I am.
This is what I love.
But just today, these little tears fell just for me
To remind me that sometimes
It is alright for me to think
That I could need something too.
Not something more.
Not something better.
Not something else.
Just,
something.
I do not even know myself what it is.
I cannot quite even say what it is.
I cannot explain it with actions.
I cannot explain it in words.
So instead, I'll just explain it all
In tears. Until
I am okay with knowing that
I do not need to explain it any more.
I swear I cried my mother's tears today.
And I swear she sat there with me,
Comforting me
As only a mother can.
My mother, she knows.
She has already cried my tears.
Next Life Station: Boston
Boston doesn't ring like home. It's got that accent that makes me shake my head and smile but doesn't quite make me feel all warm and cozy. I once told my friend Sully, a full Red-Sox blooded Bostonian, that he sounded just like Ray Romano and he said, "Ah! I fackin hate that gwoy. He sounds like'a fackin ayss!" Whoops. Check...and...check. Don't mistake Baa-stonians with New Yoke-kers. I think he woulda knocked my teeth out if I was a little white man. Thankfully for me I was Korean and a girl. Little is relative and debatable.
I imagine this fall, wrapped in blankets and chili crock pots and the crisp autumn afternoons filled with the comforting sounds of football emitting from our television. I'll be sitting with Danny and the kids on this couch, twenty hours away from this Midwest place, my Springfield home, filled with these furnishings that will be packed in storage boxes or rearranged in a new crowded room, where I'll gaze at them, all there in their oversized cluttered glory and barely remembering, and perhaps half-lamenting, how they all used to fit a space I'll never see again. Back in September, I had to fill out a background check application where I had to list all of my addresses for the last seven years with no periods unaccounted for, and I couldn't remember the addresses of half the places I've lived. I had to rifle through old documents and bills to recall the once-upon-a-time addresses that used to be places I called home, at one time or another, and where I would lay my head down, night after night after night. I'd lay there and wonder, in every one of those temporary places, where our next station in life would take us. Now I know. There were nine addresses total for the last seven years. Springfield is nine. Boston will be ten.
But it's funny thinking of a far-away coastal city booming with sports crazies in caps and bustling students running around like they're about to up chuck the next brilliant revolution - and thinking, "This will be home." I say it, almost in question. This will be home? Boston? Beer chugging angry cheering baseball fanatics and weather resistant type people - those will be...my people? I think. I don't really know more than just my stereotypes. But I imagine a city of Sullys. That's enough to make me laugh right there. His hair was always a mess and he always had a story. I like those kind of people.
When we flew to Boston for the orientation back in February, I met a girl whose husband was an HBS student and mentioned that she had just returned from New Hampshire. "Did you fly?" I asked her, genuinely curious. She tried to politely hide her surprise at my stupidity. "Well. It's just an hour and a half drive away." Oh. I smiled. She smiled. I stirred my straw. We changed the subject. Okay, so not only am I not from Boston, I am also, oh yeah! - geographically dense. Like South American wild jungle dense. My geography skills mirror my navigation skills. Horrendous. Equivalent to that of a blindfolded first grader playing pin the arrow on the cardinal direction. Or a blindfolded first grader playing drive this car to the store without getting lost. Sometimes I just wish the North Pole was up and the South Pole was down and East and West would just fill in all the rest of the space in between. I think about the drive from Detroit to Flint and know no one in their right mind would ever hop a puddle jumper that distance unless they were very confused or half in the bag. Since I'm not drinking these days, I'm not privy to that excuse. I can only imagine the look I'd get at the Boston Logan International Airport, all posterously decked posh with my bags packed for a New Hampshire weekend getaway. I'd look at my boarding pass, weirdly confused: "The flight is only 19 minutes?! How can that be?!" And with his good-natured Bostonian courtesy some guy behind the ticket counter would be yelling: "Saam-wan gat this garl a faaa-ckin' map!" I'd be, like, completely the opposite of "wicked awesome." Definitely...not...awesome. I should just stick with the story that I'm from South Korea and let that be the explanation that fills in the blanks. "Oh, she's from (speaking quieter) Korea." Nodding heads. They understand now. She's actually not stupid.
Oh, but actually, I looked at Boston on Google maps and I was, indeed, shocked at how far north it was, er, is, on the East Coast. Did it get moved since I was in fifth grade? Why for thirty years have I thought that Boston was like, somewhere in the middle? I'll need to research my future home a bit more astutely. It reminds me of getting lost on foot my first day in Heidelberg and using our handheld Navigon to get me back home, pedestrian setting thank you very much, and that awful chirpy computerized lady voice repeating "make U-turn in 500 feet." Oh yes I did. Just u-turned it right there on those lovely cobblestone sidewalks, just to have her tell me to make another u-turn in 500 feet. Oh the woes of a new city and a terrible gut intinct. Or complete lack of.
A small part of me is hoping that I'll one day wake up with a strange inflection in my voice and know that Boston has gotten to me too, that I'll be able to call Sully up and say: "You were fackin right! And how 'bout those people who say Ay-pel?! How 'bout 'dem apples!" Well, I don't think it'll quite go down like that. If it does, I should give myself a trophy for the lamest attempt at injecting Boston jargon in an even lamer exchange of Boo-ya! Oh-no-she-didn't! dialogue. I'd have to pull out my Hammer pants and Roger-Rabbit it to the door of shame and please-stop-trying-so-hard.
I guess I'm just done resisting the culture of every place I've lived, either because I think I'm too good or not good enough. I'm done wearing my illusory t-shirt in every place I call home that announces: "I'm a tourist, oh yeah, and I also live here!" Maybe it's an accurate description. I can't lose my roots, my This-is-who-I-am. But really - is resisting where you are right now in life somehow a betrayal to where you're from, or even, of who you are? Or, is it just a sorry excuse to not embrace this moment as if real happiness only belongs to an unknown station of the future or is left stuck in a station of the past? "Be here now," I tell myself. Thinking of it this way, I might as well live it up in Springfield. Love my friendships here as much as I can. Love this Midwest place I call home today. The space and the yard and our family life here and the beautiful lack of profanity on these traffic-less streets. Just as I might as well live it up in Boston in all its overpriced East Coast beauty. Thoreau would tell me that it's a life worth living, regardless of how short or long I live it. He'd shout with enthusiasm - Live it up all the way! As though Boston will be the last place I call home. And in fact, when we inevitably move away from Boston a few years from now - that's exactly what I'll be saying.
(Note to self - I just looked up the distance from Detroit to Flint and it is only 66 miles. Much less than one and a half hours. I'll avoid that metaphor next time around and Google map a city that is appropriately distanced from Detroit.)
I imagine this fall, wrapped in blankets and chili crock pots and the crisp autumn afternoons filled with the comforting sounds of football emitting from our television. I'll be sitting with Danny and the kids on this couch, twenty hours away from this Midwest place, my Springfield home, filled with these furnishings that will be packed in storage boxes or rearranged in a new crowded room, where I'll gaze at them, all there in their oversized cluttered glory and barely remembering, and perhaps half-lamenting, how they all used to fit a space I'll never see again. Back in September, I had to fill out a background check application where I had to list all of my addresses for the last seven years with no periods unaccounted for, and I couldn't remember the addresses of half the places I've lived. I had to rifle through old documents and bills to recall the once-upon-a-time addresses that used to be places I called home, at one time or another, and where I would lay my head down, night after night after night. I'd lay there and wonder, in every one of those temporary places, where our next station in life would take us. Now I know. There were nine addresses total for the last seven years. Springfield is nine. Boston will be ten.
But it's funny thinking of a far-away coastal city booming with sports crazies in caps and bustling students running around like they're about to up chuck the next brilliant revolution - and thinking, "This will be home." I say it, almost in question. This will be home? Boston? Beer chugging angry cheering baseball fanatics and weather resistant type people - those will be...my people? I think. I don't really know more than just my stereotypes. But I imagine a city of Sullys. That's enough to make me laugh right there. His hair was always a mess and he always had a story. I like those kind of people.
When we flew to Boston for the orientation back in February, I met a girl whose husband was an HBS student and mentioned that she had just returned from New Hampshire. "Did you fly?" I asked her, genuinely curious. She tried to politely hide her surprise at my stupidity. "Well. It's just an hour and a half drive away." Oh. I smiled. She smiled. I stirred my straw. We changed the subject. Okay, so not only am I not from Boston, I am also, oh yeah! - geographically dense. Like South American wild jungle dense. My geography skills mirror my navigation skills. Horrendous. Equivalent to that of a blindfolded first grader playing pin the arrow on the cardinal direction. Or a blindfolded first grader playing drive this car to the store without getting lost. Sometimes I just wish the North Pole was up and the South Pole was down and East and West would just fill in all the rest of the space in between. I think about the drive from Detroit to Flint and know no one in their right mind would ever hop a puddle jumper that distance unless they were very confused or half in the bag. Since I'm not drinking these days, I'm not privy to that excuse. I can only imagine the look I'd get at the Boston Logan International Airport, all posterously decked posh with my bags packed for a New Hampshire weekend getaway. I'd look at my boarding pass, weirdly confused: "The flight is only 19 minutes?! How can that be?!" And with his good-natured Bostonian courtesy some guy behind the ticket counter would be yelling: "Saam-wan gat this garl a faaa-ckin' map!" I'd be, like, completely the opposite of "wicked awesome." Definitely...not...awesome. I should just stick with the story that I'm from South Korea and let that be the explanation that fills in the blanks. "Oh, she's from (speaking quieter) Korea." Nodding heads. They understand now. She's actually not stupid.
Oh, but actually, I looked at Boston on Google maps and I was, indeed, shocked at how far north it was, er, is, on the East Coast. Did it get moved since I was in fifth grade? Why for thirty years have I thought that Boston was like, somewhere in the middle? I'll need to research my future home a bit more astutely. It reminds me of getting lost on foot my first day in Heidelberg and using our handheld Navigon to get me back home, pedestrian setting thank you very much, and that awful chirpy computerized lady voice repeating "make U-turn in 500 feet." Oh yes I did. Just u-turned it right there on those lovely cobblestone sidewalks, just to have her tell me to make another u-turn in 500 feet. Oh the woes of a new city and a terrible gut intinct. Or complete lack of.
A small part of me is hoping that I'll one day wake up with a strange inflection in my voice and know that Boston has gotten to me too, that I'll be able to call Sully up and say: "You were fackin right! And how 'bout those people who say Ay-pel?! How 'bout 'dem apples!" Well, I don't think it'll quite go down like that. If it does, I should give myself a trophy for the lamest attempt at injecting Boston jargon in an even lamer exchange of Boo-ya! Oh-no-she-didn't! dialogue. I'd have to pull out my Hammer pants and Roger-Rabbit it to the door of shame and please-stop-trying-so-hard.
I guess I'm just done resisting the culture of every place I've lived, either because I think I'm too good or not good enough. I'm done wearing my illusory t-shirt in every place I call home that announces: "I'm a tourist, oh yeah, and I also live here!" Maybe it's an accurate description. I can't lose my roots, my This-is-who-I-am. But really - is resisting where you are right now in life somehow a betrayal to where you're from, or even, of who you are? Or, is it just a sorry excuse to not embrace this moment as if real happiness only belongs to an unknown station of the future or is left stuck in a station of the past? "Be here now," I tell myself. Thinking of it this way, I might as well live it up in Springfield. Love my friendships here as much as I can. Love this Midwest place I call home today. The space and the yard and our family life here and the beautiful lack of profanity on these traffic-less streets. Just as I might as well live it up in Boston in all its overpriced East Coast beauty. Thoreau would tell me that it's a life worth living, regardless of how short or long I live it. He'd shout with enthusiasm - Live it up all the way! As though Boston will be the last place I call home. And in fact, when we inevitably move away from Boston a few years from now - that's exactly what I'll be saying.
(Note to self - I just looked up the distance from Detroit to Flint and it is only 66 miles. Much less than one and a half hours. I'll avoid that metaphor next time around and Google map a city that is appropriately distanced from Detroit.)
Monday, April 4, 2011
Blinkety-blink blink day
The clocks blinking red aren't trying to annoy me as much as they are. It's not their fault. A sometime-in-the-middle-of-the-stormy-night power outage cut off the electrical circulation of our house veins but isn't it funny how we can still breathe without it? I rose from a bad night of semi-sleep, still breathing, but frankly finding it all unfunny. My nervous system was immediately...nervous, thinking of our refrigerator full of food and my son hacking with spring allergies and the need for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse this morning to get last week's laundry finished and this weekend's kitchen cleaned and a few home repair phone calls made and working myself into a dreary morning frenzy about the need for more time even though I had no clue what time it was, exactly. My phone was dead and unresponsive. Looking up, the clock went from off to red digital numbers blinking: 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. Oh, I think, in a very small moment relief. A flatline day of unproductivity - averted. But my blood pressure was still stuck at bad-mood over Monday-morning, which is, never a good ratio. It's dark and cold outside. I looked at my Bible sitting there and tried with half my heart to say a prayer for patience. Half-way through, I opened my eyes and noticed how dirty our carpets looked and remembered that I needed to buy carpet cleaner. I couldn't resuscitate myself. Take a breath, try again another blinking time.
And wouldn't you know, that literally between this sentence and the last, a time frame of roughly two hours has passed so that I could detour all of my good chore intentions to attend to the completely-out-of-the-blue percolating wet bar sink and the flooding basement and the burping shower drain and the leaking toilet, and having had called Tom's Plumbing with Daren and Robert (Tom must be Spring Breaking it this week) knockety-knocking on my door and kindly informing me with all the politeness of plumbers that in addition to the something-something injector something, there was also another something something pipe somewhere leading somewhere "out there" that was in need of immediate replacement. In his diagnostic explanation of its necessity, Robert stood there, behind a nodding Daren, made a terrible clicking noise and simultaneously showed me the invisible pipe, twisting his hands around it and speaking medical plumber idioms and assuring me that my husband should call them with any questions. I was already in a semi-despondent funk. I hadn't enough energy or care to cross-examine them or even, ask them the price. It sounded serious, especially with that guttural clicking noise. Alright, Daren and Robert. Good job, go to it. About an hour later, they both emerge from the basement, plumbing scalpels in hand, and a bill for...$141 even. Oh, hardly not the budgetary damage I was expecting. Not the figure I was imagining with all the positivity of a Monday mid-morning plumber. But you know, thinking about the both of them, these hard working middle-age fellows - they were not as bad as my creative pessimism was invisibly writing them out to be. In fact, they were both just nice-enough nose-to-the-grindstone everyday people who I just kind of waved in and waved down and waved away like pestery flies. And jeez, for a small 141 dollar sum, they saved our basement, minus a few nice storage boxes we just bought, and prevented a bursted pipe of watery pre-move catastrophe. To the lifeline of our everyday functioning - the flushing and the washing and the rinsing and the unclogging - they're like doctors who do house visits in flannel shirts and ballcaps and who go into the foreign trenches of our home's anatomy.
Thinking about Robert's demonstration, my swinging pendulum of pessimism stopped dead to a point of...agreement, and yes, appreciation. And yes (head hanging lower), apology. Before he walked out the door, I told Daren that I'd give'em a good Google review. He took my check and laughed and shut the door. Okay Daren, I gotcha. Springfield people are not Yelpers or Angie's List review junkies. The Darens and Roberts of Springfield know neighbors and talk to friends and make referrals using their voice, talking on landlines and sitting in Charlie Parker's diner. Oh, Springfield. If you weren't so gray today I might be able to think beyond the blah.
So, here I am, trying my very, very best to not reflect the mild dread of the afternoon and the annoyance of the glowing red clock that is now flashing 5:25, 5:25, 5:25. Just a blinkety-blink reminder that I've spent five hours and twenty-five minutes wallowing in self-pity over much-ado-about nothing and finding not the slightest bit of motivation to change the clocks back to the real time of...get-over-it-already! After finishing that last sentence up with Joey having fallen asleep in my lap, I just laid him in his crib, the innocent culprit of my terrible night's sleep, and he coiled into a sweet position of sleepful prayer, his small hands holding each other like matching friends. Ah, a reminder of what I need to do. Pray, that is. Well, sleep maybe too. Both of which are natural, self-prescribed, over-the-counter heart medicines that are better when unbottled and taken as frequently as possible.
My blood pressure drops. I'm breathing. As are my kids. Our house is alive. My sewage pipes are unclogged. So yes, it's time. Time to get up off my lazyass couch stretcher and victim-is-me attitude and change the clocks, something I shoulda just done 5 hours and 25 minutes ago.
Okay, make that 26.
And wouldn't you know, that literally between this sentence and the last, a time frame of roughly two hours has passed so that I could detour all of my good chore intentions to attend to the completely-out-of-the-blue percolating wet bar sink and the flooding basement and the burping shower drain and the leaking toilet, and having had called Tom's Plumbing with Daren and Robert (Tom must be Spring Breaking it this week) knockety-knocking on my door and kindly informing me with all the politeness of plumbers that in addition to the something-something injector something, there was also another something something pipe somewhere leading somewhere "out there" that was in need of immediate replacement. In his diagnostic explanation of its necessity, Robert stood there, behind a nodding Daren, made a terrible clicking noise and simultaneously showed me the invisible pipe, twisting his hands around it and speaking medical plumber idioms and assuring me that my husband should call them with any questions. I was already in a semi-despondent funk. I hadn't enough energy or care to cross-examine them or even, ask them the price. It sounded serious, especially with that guttural clicking noise. Alright, Daren and Robert. Good job, go to it. About an hour later, they both emerge from the basement, plumbing scalpels in hand, and a bill for...$141 even. Oh, hardly not the budgetary damage I was expecting. Not the figure I was imagining with all the positivity of a Monday mid-morning plumber. But you know, thinking about the both of them, these hard working middle-age fellows - they were not as bad as my creative pessimism was invisibly writing them out to be. In fact, they were both just nice-enough nose-to-the-grindstone everyday people who I just kind of waved in and waved down and waved away like pestery flies. And jeez, for a small 141 dollar sum, they saved our basement, minus a few nice storage boxes we just bought, and prevented a bursted pipe of watery pre-move catastrophe. To the lifeline of our everyday functioning - the flushing and the washing and the rinsing and the unclogging - they're like doctors who do house visits in flannel shirts and ballcaps and who go into the foreign trenches of our home's anatomy.
Thinking about Robert's demonstration, my swinging pendulum of pessimism stopped dead to a point of...agreement, and yes, appreciation. And yes (head hanging lower), apology. Before he walked out the door, I told Daren that I'd give'em a good Google review. He took my check and laughed and shut the door. Okay Daren, I gotcha. Springfield people are not Yelpers or Angie's List review junkies. The Darens and Roberts of Springfield know neighbors and talk to friends and make referrals using their voice, talking on landlines and sitting in Charlie Parker's diner. Oh, Springfield. If you weren't so gray today I might be able to think beyond the blah.
So, here I am, trying my very, very best to not reflect the mild dread of the afternoon and the annoyance of the glowing red clock that is now flashing 5:25, 5:25, 5:25. Just a blinkety-blink reminder that I've spent five hours and twenty-five minutes wallowing in self-pity over much-ado-about nothing and finding not the slightest bit of motivation to change the clocks back to the real time of...get-over-it-already! After finishing that last sentence up with Joey having fallen asleep in my lap, I just laid him in his crib, the innocent culprit of my terrible night's sleep, and he coiled into a sweet position of sleepful prayer, his small hands holding each other like matching friends. Ah, a reminder of what I need to do. Pray, that is. Well, sleep maybe too. Both of which are natural, self-prescribed, over-the-counter heart medicines that are better when unbottled and taken as frequently as possible.
My blood pressure drops. I'm breathing. As are my kids. Our house is alive. My sewage pipes are unclogged. So yes, it's time. Time to get up off my lazyass couch stretcher and victim-is-me attitude and change the clocks, something I shoulda just done 5 hours and 25 minutes ago.
Okay, make that 26.
Friday, April 1, 2011
My Mountain, Calling
I guess it's all coming to a point
Peaking an inner mountain
An impassible Cross.
To nurture my small children,
Tiny mystery love-light creatures,
Pour unto them the type of gentle love
Unmovable love, and
Plain full acceptance and thicker than skin love -
Theirs and mine
That shows them and cries out to them -
"You are loved as you are!"
"You are good enough as you are!"
Without trying to make them
Fill my own space.
Resolve my own insecurities.
Strengthen my own convictions.
Conquer my own fears.
Undo my own mistakes.
Absorb my own disappointments.
Satisfy my own needs.
I hear my mountain, calling:
"We are each, immeasurable.
So please, stop measuring."
Oh! How I attempt to change my world, all of them
To be more like the inside me
And to change my world, all of them
To not repeat the inside me.
But, yes, I see -
Less of my own need to change my inner world
Lessens my own need to change theirs.
Giving myself up
Somehow
Gives me more to give away.
Yes, I can. I can
Give without expectation.
Accept without condition.
Love without rules.
Live without control.
At least, I can with sincerity try.
Then ask for forgiveness when I can't.
Because,
I cannot reach into my children's spirit
Theirs or anyone's
Lift them or pull them or mold them
Teach them or unteach them or carry them
Every...single...moment of their
Every...moment...life.
Help is love, not judgment.
We each breathe and cry on our own accord.
Yes. I understand now.
He is, alone, to each one of us
Our own good mountain, calling.
Peaking an inner mountain
An impassible Cross.
To nurture my small children,
Tiny mystery love-light creatures,
Pour unto them the type of gentle love
Unmovable love, and
Plain full acceptance and thicker than skin love -
Theirs and mine
That shows them and cries out to them -
"You are loved as you are!"
"You are good enough as you are!"
Without trying to make them
Fill my own space.
Resolve my own insecurities.
Strengthen my own convictions.
Conquer my own fears.
Undo my own mistakes.
Absorb my own disappointments.
Satisfy my own needs.
I hear my mountain, calling:
"We are each, immeasurable.
So please, stop measuring."
Oh! How I attempt to change my world, all of them
To be more like the inside me
And to change my world, all of them
To not repeat the inside me.
But, yes, I see -
Less of my own need to change my inner world
Lessens my own need to change theirs.
Giving myself up
Somehow
Gives me more to give away.
Yes, I can. I can
Give without expectation.
Accept without condition.
Love without rules.
Live without control.
At least, I can with sincerity try.
Then ask for forgiveness when I can't.
Because,
I cannot reach into my children's spirit
Theirs or anyone's
Lift them or pull them or mold them
Teach them or unteach them or carry them
Every...single...moment of their
Every...moment...life.
Help is love, not judgment.
We each breathe and cry on our own accord.
Yes. I understand now.
He is, alone, to each one of us
Our own good mountain, calling.
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