Tag Archives: hope

A Post From A Most Imperfect Mom

20 Wednesday May 2020

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I awoke thinking about connections. That we were once connected. My body has proof, it says we were. I remember your flutter when I sipped vanilla shake from McDonald’s, I could feel the cold going down and sure enough, there was the movement, like you could feel the freezy vanilla, too. Your angles alive in my bowframe, pushing or kicking like a boxer on the speed bag. Today we are connected by the green phone in a speech bubble app. Technology brings the distant close? Is that our miracle? Sometimes it is because when you sent me that hug I could really feel it from here.

We are in strange times right now because of a contagion, one we’re racing to understand, mitigate, and hopefully vaccinate off the planet. We are in quarantine or semi-quarantine, struggling to cope with who and what is essential. No paychecks. Trapped in our homes with wild children or good children turned wild and spouses we thought we recognized but never knew. Many people are turning to their creative side, making, mending, sorting, doing the best with what is at hand and making it better, bringing their children into the activities. Many are bend-breaking in the stress because they feel trapped. Some are sharing cruel words about their kids on social media which brings me here this morning:

I used to laugh at the commercials of parents singing and dancing while going back-to-school shopping as their children dragged themselves miserably in the wake of their parents glee down the aisles. Ha ha, that’s cute. Or teachers who post “here you go, parents, take your kids back, they’re all yours” in June. And now we feel “trapped” with children we chose to bring into the world? How did we lose our connection to our children and families and neighbors and each other? Oh I know how we lost it, the question is rhetorical.

I ask you today, what *will* we do to get our healthy connections back?

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Rest.

01 Monday Jan 2018

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20171231_203836Too often the ticking of the clock informs our lives.  Do not let the ticking of the clock inform your life.  It is loud and constant. It is easy to fall into the march of time, that everything must be done before it’s too late.

It is the day of the next year. The night before it all falls apart. We hinge our everything on the ticking of the clock, a countdown. Where have we been, what have we done, what have we yet to do? Lists on paper or chilled on ice in the back of our minds, all we failed to do, and we fear we’ll never do unless we state a resolution, loud and proud, in ink, on TV, on Twitter, that we will achieve that thing we’ve been chasing.

Do not fall prey to the ticking of time.  The clock is loud, but our love and lives should be louder. Forget measures. Forget time. Your magic doesn’t stop at midnight, it doesn’t begin at midnight, it never has. We are beautiful and powerful and hopeful and wonderful every night of our lives. Don’t fall prey to the ticking of time or trickling of bubbles in a glass. Forget the promises you forced yourself to make last year and the year before.

What if, just for tonight, you were here, hearing the ticking of the clock, and just felt happy that the wind is 16.5 knots, the sun will rise tomorrow, and whatever you wish will stir at your command when you are ready. Not tonight, or tomorrow, or maybe next week.  The world doesn’t begin or end tonight. So celebrate the changing of the guard, the return of the light, and give yourself power over your life.

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Solstice at the Thirsty Camel

22 Friday Dec 2017

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There is glitter on the table and salt in my book
gritty on my arm as I press down to write.
I sip and lick salt from my fingers.

No one sits in the center of the room
bodies huddle at the bar, hug the walls,
so I sit at the back where I can see you all
Ballcaps, hoodies, Santa hats, sweaters
Blondie in a ballgown texting who knows what.

I claimed a table for friends tonight,
brought a candle and journal to fill the time until their faces appear.
One by one they come and we make the ‘howdy stranger’ talk
over light beers, battered onions, and speakers playing a bit too loud.

She came in last, her withered body wrapped in sagging jeans
and a pretty white sweater made of cloud,
her face tells me her kitchen is on fire.
We danced around her fire all night trying to douse it with smiles
and talk of the sunlit moon, Saturn in transit, but
she wanted to sit in her kitchen fire.
We left her there watching as she poured old wine into older skins
wondering why everything in her world leaks
pushing hope away on the longest night of the year.

Lenny came on and gently, so very gently, plucked strings in the dark
to tell us about that famous blue raincoat, the one torn at the shoulder
and I knew we were meant to be here

and that we should always carry hope like a lighter in our pocket
for those nights we go astray.

Writing through seasonal change

15 Friday Dec 2017

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If I were in New York on my drive in to work and on my way home I’d see lots of cars with christmas trees tied to the roof, headed for a warm house soon to be seated in a bowl of cool water the cat will surely drink from.  Folks will add evergreen nutrients and water their needley tree so its boughs will stay risen and green as they add tinsel, orbs of glass, or baby’s first ornament from sixteen years ago.

I haven’t seen many cars go by with trees on their roofs here in Virginia. Maybe that’s because they’re all on the interstate while my business usually keeps me on the “back roads,” or maybe it’s because folks lean towards artificial trees, who knows. Either way, there will be evening road trips where we pile into cars and head for neighborhoods where streetlights still look like gaslights decked in climbing pine needles, festive ribbons, homes adorned with candles and others filled with inflatable icons, christmas music blaring, preparations begun in September.

All I know is that I watched him take the fairy lights down. The backyard is his purview and he’s in charge or almost in charge of everything in it. There will be no christmas tree in his house this year because they are leaving, headed for the lands of three-foot-snow. The fairy lights will be gone. His yard will be empty. His puppy will dig holes far away and learn the joys of snowplowing headfirst at five in the morning.  All life is tucked into boxes marked this room and that room and his kayak will be stuffed last into the moving truck.  A new neighbor will come, and I doubt they will finish the mural his wife began on the property wall.  I will miss the tiny blue fairy lights that lined his fence, that gave me comfort all those nights I paced and watched the trees sway or thrash depending on the mood of the wind.

I think about the saying “still waters run deep” as I spritz my windows in preparation of sticking holiday clings to them.  That will be the extent of my decorating. No lights, no noise. Just a quiet acknowledgement that I still believe in peace and joy and love. Every card I sign carries hope and goodwill, and I wish it all for my neighbor as he moves into his winter wonderland.

Feeling Cold In A Warm Sun

02 Monday Oct 2017

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The underground building and garage is labyrinthine, sharing arteries, paths, walkways like conjoined twins. Some shortcut paths we (the workers) weren’t allowed to take, those were designated for certain people only (perhaps the kind that wear heels instead black, tarry workboots.)  The building is brand new, the cement floors painted clean gray and bright yellow. It is loud and echoey in here. I’m the only woman in here, and the men aren’t nice to work with.  At my right shoulder is a man I used to work with.  He stuffed five pages of faxed copies of his records in my hand, and he’s appointed me the task to help him with pointing, grunting, and broken English.  He is Asian, his name hard to pronounce. (Mister H?)  No one wants to help him.  He follows me through the long halls that seem to lead nowhere, through bright tunnels where workers are laughing, smoking, fooling around, and definitely not helping.  He points to a name and phone number and wants me to call this man (the top man, the boss) and get Mister H help.  Most of the dream is me on a cellphone making a series of phone calls until I can get as high as “they” will let me to demand medical care for Mister H who was hurt on the job. He is out of work, no one will help him, it says he’s eligible right here on the forms, YOU signed it, what’s the problem, then?

It’s past sunrise and I awakened to a messy room.  I stand up, wobbly, because my right hip grumbles at me when my body is still for too long. I drink a cup of cold water from a Starbucks Seattle mug a friend gave me. I wonder how her night went, knowing, but still hopeful.  And then I read the news that comes from Las Vegas.

I can’t believe my eyes, and my heart cycles through broken, angry, sad, who cares, looking for fault, finding a reason, then starts all over again.  I light a sage-scented candle, something strong and clean to try and purge the sickness from my two little rooms. I’m too warm but my bare feet are cold, and it’s an October morning for sure. Another day I don’t understand and I know I’m not asking the right questions or speaking the right words. For now.  Someone posted a terrible verse from Isaiah on Twitter to the effect that god don’t care for your thoughts and prayers because your hands have blood on them.  Well okay, then.  While I wash the blood and shit and dirt from my hands, I will look for ways to be a vessel of peace, an instrument of giving, a la St. Francis.

If I close my heart, I’ve already failed.