Tag Archives: child

What Happens In May

23 Sunday May 2021

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These last few days have been particularly abundant with spring life, new life, embarking on their new lives. People wonder what are the birds saying when they make that sound and as of yesterday I know:

A juvenile blue jay sat on the branch in the tree that is 2.5 feet away from my bedroom window. There are trees behind my apartment that are secluded and safe for birds and squirrels and other wild things to do their thang. I watch them all year long. The JV blue jay sat on the branch and squawked a soft squawk, not quite the jarring screech of an adult blue jay, similar, but soft, like it hadn’t found his diaphragm yet to ANNUNCIATE to the BACK OF THE ROOM. It sat on the branch and softly called and an adult came, and I watched it feed the young with something. The adult flew away and the juvenile hung around for a while and then hopped up and away out of my sight.

A juvenile squirrel came creeping on a branch. I could tell it wasn’t an adult because its eye was too small, its tail full grown but its body still smol. It stayed on the branch, still for a long, long time. And then it creeped, it tread, it wended carefully so carefully, unsure about what it was supposed to do and where it was supposed to go. This was not a professional parkour squirrel, though it would be someday. I should also like to mention that last year I saw a juvenile squirrel waiting on a branch for its mom, and she came and nursed him. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I was thrilled and amazed by this tender moment.

A juvenile robin, his head and back dark, dark, black was sitting in the backyard making that call. I know that call. It was a thready, reedy, whiny, gently screechy sound that said, “MOM MOM MOM.” The robin hopped a little bit here and there but mostly it stayed in the enclosed backyard of the lady who has a very vocal energetic black Pomeranian who barks and loses his shit if the wind blows. No sound. The adult robin came and fed the juvenile, then led it towards a large bush growing on the side of her house, probably where the nest is. This morning I watched the scene again, the juvenile hollering but the adult sat on the white fence calling “HERE HERE HERE, THIS WAY THIS WAY THIS WAY” and flew away. The juvenile kept watch this way for another meal and all I could think was that “Baby, you got your mind on breakfast and the hawks hear your crying and you’re going to be their breakfast.”

Yesterday the birds were crazy with activity. So many flights in crazy directions, things that made no sense to a dumb human, and I wondered if we had bad weather coming in, but no. This wasn’t about weather. It was about spring when the young are tested and called and cajoled to do that thing on the hot air rising from the rooftops and the sand. When wings and limbs are forced to grow and go.

There is no way I could see all this and not think of my own gestational effort and offspring that happened in May. I even told him all about it while he was here on his yearly visit, yes even in front of his fiancée. I tried to be matter of fact and not lean too heavily on the woman things, the things we scare each other with and dare each other with and support each other with if we are lucky. Spring life is nature and nurture, instinct is not a given. We struggle and suffer and none of us come out on top with gold medals. I could have attended a birthing class and watched the movies and read the books, I heard next to nothing from living women about “the day.” And yet somehow we all figured out how to make it work. I came home with a pink fella with some dark hair on his head and his balls. He cried and I cried and we figured it out, mostly. In Spring. When the birds are flying crazy and the heat is rising up from the earth.

Thoughts of Laquan

06 Saturday Oct 2018

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One

  Two

Three

Four   Five  Six

                      Seven

Eight

Nine
Ten.    Ten.   Ten.

   Eleven

                      Twelve

             Thirteen 

                Fourteen                                         Fifteen 

Sixteen. 

 

I’ll bet you’ve had sixteen kisses planted on your face when you were in the middle of something by a little kid who loves you, rapid pace, out of the blue, the moment when your child’s cup overflows and they must kiss and love the joy is so much and you might have been annoyed for breaking into your busyness, but sixteen pecks on your face. Pixels cannot hold that moment but a heart can.

The number means something different to me today. It means less because I am not his mother, I am not from his community. I don’t know what she knows. But still, I think about him today, and yesterday.

I don’t know what 16 bullet holes looks like in my son’s flesh, or even my own.  I could draw little dots on my body to see how it looks but that’s dots and this is flesh that will write junk today and junk tomorrow. I just need someone to know that I won’t forget. That her son matters. Justice matters. And I don’t want to play this numbers game anymore.

Sexual Harassment Assault Guilt Survivor #MeToo

16 Monday Oct 2017

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Big headline. Got your attention, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing.  Maybe because I’m not sure of anything.  Anyway. It’s provocative, I chose it for a reason: to draw attention to those who have experienced and suffer, and ask what can you do to help stop this epidemic of people who think it’s okay to touch, grab, and thrust themselves into anyone they want:

Life was lived in and around a complex of brick buildings surrounded by parking lots, grocery stores, a busy highway, a few green courtyards and parks, some way cooler than others.  Ours had a giant willow in the back, a maze of sidewalks that linked building to building, and two small concrete parks. Ours had a slide, monkeybars, a basketball hoop, and a showerhead that gave water only once in a while during the summer. It was surrounded by chain link fence, concrete benches for moms to sit on, and bushes that were full green at the top but gray and naked as they disappeared into the hard-packed earth below: perfect hiding spots, forts, space commands, and anything else we needed those bushes to be.  God it was fun watching the neighbors walk past, unbeknownst to our silent, peeking eyes in the bushes.

I was in the park when he called me over. I didn’t know who he was, but I went. It was just a short hop over the chain link fence into the high dirt hill behind the hoop hidden by a bit of brush and scrub trees.  We talked for a while.  His friend sat up on the higher part of the hill.  I was maybe ten or younger.  He was maybe 18 or more.  We talked and then we kissed.  Deeply. He was lying down and then I was lying down. I liked how it felt.  His friend clapped and said some things  like wow, I can’t believe you got her to do it. They left eventually and I hopped back into the park. I never told anyone because I didn’t think it was a big deal. Weird, but not something I should tell mom.  They never came back.

I was taught to be afraid of many things in those days, like that guy over there that mom made us cross the street to avoid because she said something wasn’t right with him.  He used to talk to himself.  She warned us about another guy who liked to come around, said he was dangerous and told us to come inside if we ever saw him, but us kids liked him.  He was older than us, a teenager really, but he was always cool.  Once he lit smoke bombs in our secret bushes and it was awesome! But he never did anything to us.  Mom taught us to fear bandoliers of fireworks smushed in the mud on the path between our house and the grocery store. She said it was dangerous, never touch it, and her word about danger was gospel.  Once I scared me and my brother to death by throwing rocks at an “Amityville Horror” billboard that was on the way to our Catholic school. I can still feel our legs running down the block and up the stairs, lungs seeking to replenish the hot fearful air we’d accumulated.

Turns out, I was taught to be afraid of all the wrong things.  To be on guard for all the wrong things.  I was taught guilt and shame for the human condition, but not how to say no to people putting their hands on me, like my boss, a woman, who loved to massage all us girls in her department. I should have stood up and told her keep your hands off me, I don’t like how this feels, but I stayed quiet because she did it to all us girls.

Danger doesn’t always come with a warning label. We have to figure it out for ourselves, and it’s hard to speak out when we realize we accepted something as normal.  There are some who will say we brought it on ourselves.  I want to tell you that you didn’t ask to be cat-called, touched, groped, assaulted, raped, physically or mentally.  I want to tell you that the world is starting to hear and believe. I want to tell you that you don’t have to speak out now, right now, if you’re not ready, but there are a lot of people who will believe you and can help.   I want to thank everyone who speaks their truth, brave in the face of unbelief and shame and pain who gave us ground to grow and walk upon.

#MeToo is the hashtag on Twitter if you want to share what happened to you. I hope the conversation will help open a blind eye from the abuse.  Thank you.

Growing Up

09 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Interesting things happen when people put their confidence in you.  Suddenly you have to perform. I’ve heard Hollywood stars say, “Fake it ’till you make it,” and that resonates. I think most of us do the same daily, because our ancestor, that shadowy Prometheus, pushes us out of our comfort zones into the hallways we’ve wanted all our lives. We’ve got the fire, we stole it from on high and now we’re not sure what to do with it, but by god we’re not going to give it up.   Sometimes the hallways aren’t the dream we dreamed they would be, and that’s all right. We find ourselves in new lands, new challenges, successes and failures await.  Will we fight or will we succumb?

I must have asked my coworkers how to get to the building in Manhattan where the boss was sending me. I’m not sure he believed in me, but he assumed I was capable of finding my way in the garment district. I was happy that he thought I was capable, perhaps I’d esteemed myself at the front desk and I wanted to continue to perform and elevate myself in the company.  There was no internet for me to ask, like some kind of Magic 8 Ball or Medusan cauldron how to get around. I was still living at home but had my own car, and I had to figure out Manhattan on my own.  Best I can recall I told mom I’d call her when I got there at some point, as cellphones and Android were not available.  I got there somehow by the Beacon train and walked some blocks to their building, excited to be dressed fairly fashionably (for a country mouse, anyway), walking around like I knew what I was doing, smelling the smells, observing everything hungrily, and warily. In the office, I observed the goings-on, ate their delivered subs with relish, no pun intended and made small talk. They gave me very little to do. I got home somehow and the next day was interviewed by the boss.  He didn’t send me there to observe the office so I could become a fixture there, something I was hoping for. It appears that I was a spy, a weak one, nothing more, telling him what was going on while he was away. I told him what he wanted to know, then he put me back into my receptionist chair where I felt weak and ineffectual.  I wanted to climb higher, all that ambition without internet or cell phone. Well. I left his company eventually because I was tired of cleaning the bathroom, pitting dates, repackaging soaking, stinking apricots, and dealing with a zealous employee.

I drove to Omaha last July because I wanted to (and for many reasons.) I laugh now thinking about how we relied on his magic talking box to help us find a restaurant nearby.  God, the soaking Blue Ridge parkway in West Virginia, steaming after the rain….  I drove through Tennessee and Alabama so I could see what makes this world, my world. I am grateful for GPS to get me through the wrong turns I made. My spiral-bound road atlas is large and I’ve traced pink lines across the places I’ve been so far.  I drove those lines without calling momma for directions or my dad for anything.

I’m faking it until I make it as a person. A woman. A writer.  And I’m not ashamed to say it.

Things I Won’t Get Used To

06 Sunday Aug 2017

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Yesterday was a perfect beach day, well for me, anyway. I’m the Goldilocks of being outdoors unlike some of my neighbors who are beach pros. For me, I like it not too hot, not too cold, and no wasps in sight makes it all just right.  The wind was high yesterday coming out of the north, northeast, kicking up high waves and blowing the heat far off the sand. The high, curling rollers kept the lifeguard’s skilled eyes busy.

It was a good day to sit on Samantha’s towel beneath the umbrella her husband held firmly down in the sand mound to keep it from blowing away, watching their son, a new beach pro, fling the world’s best toy with a simple yellow shovel.  She unfolded what was going on in their lives and what the future holds for them. Big changes for everyone, everywhere, it seems.

Change. Water, mirror, child, grass, sand. All subjects I study for a piece that I’m working on that touches on proof of time, but the subject of me still can’t get over some of the things she sees. She slowly adapts to change.  Change means I’ve had to get used to seeing guns worn on belts in public, and dealing with how I feel about that.  I’ve always believed that once you come to the beach and sit down, listen and watch in silence, you will never want to check your watch or social media. Something about the sand, the waves and the breeze, where we come to sit together or miles apart, makes us one somehow. You cannot be the same once the ocean puts her finger on you, but here was a man who wandered the shingle with a revolver on his waist. I cannot understand why.

The first gun I saw in public other than law enforcement was at the laundromat. Just a dude doing his laundry, Glock on hip. Ho hum? It’s not like we live in the elder wild west where anything goes, no sheriff in sight to lay down the law. Norfolk has its hands full, but our neighborhood is kind and stable, and the beach is certainly well patrolled.  The dude washing his laundry was exercising his 2nd amendment right, and I’ve slowly gotten used to it.  But the dude on the beach left me speechless. I wondered if the lifeguards are trained to deal with gun things? I mean, who could feel so insecure and afraid they need to carry a revolver on their hip on the beach? You hate seagulls that much? Or hate people who tease you for wearing white socks and Adidas flops with shorts and a cut off t-shirt, or maybe it was your bandanna you needed to defend? Why in the world, in all the places of the world, did you hang a revolver off your brown leather belt that belonged around a pair of Lee jeans instead of board shorts? What was going through your mind as you prowled the wet sand, staring off into the water like you were looking for some shark we needed to be defended from? I dunno. Maybe it was a drug thing, and I dislike typing that more than you know.

With some conversation and reflection, it appears that many people here on my beach are carrying where I hadn’t had a clue. They’re good, gotta give them credit. But my question remains: Why are you carrying a weapon to the beach? A place where we are all here for the same reason, feeling that same feeling?  There are children on this beach, and I’m not worried about you but I am worried about what seeing a revolver on a hip might mean to them as they grow up. Well, I guess since you’re permitted to carry concealed it won’t bother anyone. Maybe you believe you need to be prepared 24/7 for a personal affront, or you need to be prepared 24/7 in case a neighbor or fellow beach-goer is in dire need of protection before the cops can come?  Is this the world I live in? No. No. And no.

I watched a little guy pushing teeth through his gums laugh while mom held him as the ocean waves pushed and lifted him from behind. I watched a little girl lie on the sand in her floral print dress waiting for the waves to lick her ankles and tickle her feet.  I watched seagulls swoop down on a camp in search of food while the humans were away laughing in pummeling, frothy water. I think of my neighbors who live a quarter mile up the way where there are no lifeguards, and we tend to know each other’s dogs names better than our own.  I don’t want to get used to knowing that we are carrying guns openly or concealed because it makes me feel like we are all too afraid. Afraid of each other, afraid of the unknown. Don’t tell me it’s all about being prepared. There are no cougars or lions or packs of wild dogs coming for us down here on the beach.  What y ou call preparedness is what I call fear.

I believed there could be no fear here on the beach, before our mistresses of water and wind. I am not ready to relinquish that belief, and I believe I will never need to.

Women’s Lives

24 Monday Apr 2017

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The dream begins.
I was walking towards a large campus of low buildings, crowded with many people inside and out.  These are schools, elementary, junior, and senior buildings all in one place. The weather is neutral. Some folks are sitting on a low hill in the grass. All of the bathrooms were empty. No one wanted to use them because every room, every stall was polluted and broken.  I walked among throngs of people outside; no idea what the gathering was for.  A young woman approached me, her mother sat on the grass watching impassively. The young woman was shorter than me, her face round and young, her blonde hair long, very long, down to her coccyx, natural and wavy, recently unkempt.  She said she needed help, she needed to get back home. She was calmly distraught, if that can be a thing.  A great deal of the dream was me asking for her name, what is wrong, where are you from, but she wouldn’t answer. We kept walking through the crowds.  Finally, she brought out a picture from her pocket, a printed piece of paper and showed me an infant in a high chair, head and face bloody, a knife through the top of his head. She said she needed to get back to him and see if he’s okay.  Instead of recoiling and hating her, I could only feel a low, deep sense of need. She was in trouble and needed help. I put my hand on the small of her back and guided her towards one of the buildings to see if we could find “somebody” which I assume to mean “authority” to help us.  On the way I asked where she’s from, no answer. Every teacher I asked for help said, “She’s not in this school, sorry.”  In between jostling through crowds in the halls, looking for someone to ask for help, she confessed that she hit him before, the law knows about her, and she can’t ask anyone for help because of all the trouble she’ll be in. She just needed to get home, please help me. No tears.   I stayed with her.  Finally I came to a tall person in a white-shirted uniform. Seems he knew the situation with her from what through rumor and threadbare facts.  And then nothing.  The dream ends without me knowing what happens to the girl.

What strikes me most about this dream is that I can see her clearly, her mother stayed behind while I led her away,  that I feel empathy towards someone who apparently murdered a child, and that she showed me a picture she (or someone) took, and printed on a piece of paper.  I woke in the middle of the night recalling this dream, thinking, “are you kidding me? really? did this really just happen?” I spent some time with the dream before returning to sleep, soaking in details and I knew (somehow) I’d remember it in the morning.  What does it mean for me now?

March 8 dream

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

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The plot of the dream is very simple:  A toddler, after having a play date, does not want to go home and throws a fit.  But then a dream is never just that simple.

The child was a flaxen-haired boy with lots of curls and he was lying on his back, pressing his palms and calves into the low-carpeted floor, screaming.  Screaming. Screaming.  He sounded like the young man they scooped out of a crumpled car and loaded into a Medevac ‘copter that night before the morphine kicked in.  I wonder if, in my dreamstate, my cortisols or adrenaline kicked in?  So in the dream the child stopped screaming, stayed still lying on the floor.  I stood over him and said kindly, “I know how much this hurts. I know you are in so much pain. But tell me, does this make it better?”  The child said nothing.  I told him, “You are not welcome here again.”  I looked at his mother and she nodded her consent, she understood, and the dream was done.