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Tag Archives: son

Universe, Fingerpaints.

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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aliens, border, cars, children, dream, fingerpaints, fishing, Hoya, justice, life, music, ocean, peace, potted plant, questions, rain, son, sunrise, Universe, writing

I wake up at 0400, I don’t know why.

My Hoya plant climbs and changes direction all day, pushing out leaves that start out maroon then turn green, looking for something cling to, I guess, but I don’t know how. They don’t care why.

Somebody’s gorgeous, imperfect black Mercedes 350 D sits in the parking lot, and I don’t know who it belongs to. Should I do penance for coveting?

I had a dream and you were in it and I was awful to you. Should I apologize?

My son shivers under a pile of covers every few weeks and nobody knows how to fix him. When will we find the answer?

Who will tend our nerves and muscle, spine and hips, and tell them stand down, the money has come, go and get well, healthcare has come?

What does an unaching body feel like?

Where does music come from?

Why are those finger-sized fishes jumping out of the bay into the air?

Where did my pouch of flash drives go?

What will my next best writing look like, and who will tell me “Yes, we want this.”

Are you the one tapping on my window at night when it rains, sounding like somebody is dropping berries onto my windowsill from the roof in the middle of the night?

Who’s going to put all this stuff away, and wash laundry, and take the garbage out, and pay bills, and wash the car?

Does anyone else hate the fact that Greenie’s is gone and wonder what will replace that beach bar that the mayor said yeah that was nice but it’s time to move on?

How many children are still without their parents at the border and will they ever see them again?

Peace in our time?

Are aliens shunning us?

Who made the first fishing net?

I dunno.   It’s all just Universe painting, I guess.  Meanwhile….who can think with all this going on…  20180926_070410

Praise Be For When We Allow

13 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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creatures, evolving, friend, holy, humanity, hurricane, katydid, listen, nature, son, waterfall

I think my understanding of the concept “holy” evolved somewhere between my first communion and touching the wriggling minnow caught in my net at summer camp. The idea of holy immigrated from an echoey church that smelled of incense and psalms and kneel-dimpled pews to seeing the midnight milky way that night I talked to my bestie on the cordless phone in the middle of the lawn. Holy and me came to have an understanding: It would always be secret, it would always be available, and it promised to make me feel (something) and I would know it when I seen it.

Holy was no longer frankincense escaping its decanter like jinn from a lamp, no more a captive in a flying-buttress box. Holy became ancient fallen trees brought to their knees by hurricane Gloria. A waterfall you cannot see unless you hike five miles in. Bowls cut into rocks for sweet, clean drinking.  The white flash of space between midnight and dawn in an Arizona bowl. My son’s smile while he slept on my couch. My friend’s dying. Rescuing box turtles as they crossed trafficky asphalt in pursuit of their home.  Curtains of fireflies rising from hot summer grass, signaling secrets on four- and sometimes eight-horsepower wings. A stranger paying for her formula at the checkout counter because she ran out of Wic. Listening to a stranger’s broken heart because it’s all he needed.

I’m not sure you believe in the word holy, except for maybe that one time you saw the moon on the walkway.   I think you do what you do and holy never crosses your mind.  But I believe you felt it in your fingers when you plucked the katydid from the parking lot and put her in the grass. Holy is in you.  Poetry is in you.  I weep because I see it and you doubt, you refuse to believe.  Holy is available to us all, every day, all the time, no sacrament required. We just have to keep our eyes open, allow ourselves to see.

Help Us Move On

26 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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family, flat earth, future, science, son, truth

Long solo drives require that I have good music, and when I’m tired of that I have a good story to listen to on CD.  I never had a reason to get into books on tape when they first came out, but I have come to value them now.  After listening to four music CDs, I was ready to hear an audio book. The story asked me to suspend reality, to believe that a cyclops, the last of his kind, wandered an island and all that that entails.  The authors wrote a story that makes me believe. Yes. Why not?

I drove to New York to attend my son’s graduation from high school, and it was a wonderful day.  He is a beautiful thing in this world, not the standard teenage sheep, but a wild spirit full of deep thought, creativity, and the rebelliousness that comes along with not playing inside the lines or staying inside the box.  He’s cultivated some true friends along his journey, friends that certain parts of society might label sinners and sodomites.  He spent graduation night with his “fruit” friends, a name he lovingly calls them, and I am glad he was with them.

The next day I took a long walk with my dear friend in a local park and then we sat at one of the benches under the pavilion to continue our conversation in some shade.  We noticed a long-haired person lying on one of the bench seats, but he was keeping to himself so we kept on chatting.  He got up from his bench and asked if he could bet us that he could change our view of everything in one minute.  He was about 20 with lots of full, brown hair, board shorts, a tank top, and he wore a long pendant that had what looked like a dragon with wings outspread, but there was a symbol underneath my old eyes couldn’t make out and I didn’t want to get closer to discern.  I said, “I won’t bet you, but what’s on your mind?”  And he sprang into preaching the view of flat earthers.  Oh gawd… really?  Sigh.  My friend sunk into her cell phone while I engaged the young man in his beliefs, not trying to debunk him because you can’t tell an alcoholic to stop drinking just as you can’t tell a flat-earther not to believe.  I understood his reluctance to believe in what science espouses because it’s all just a conspiracy to get us to be afraid and conform and turn away from God, but once he said, “Just like they pound it into our heads that we have to accept trans people as normal….” all my light-hearted goodwill shut down.  I no longer wanted to let him take up any more of my time. I stopped engaging him with questions, I think he got the idea that I was done, so he got in his car and drove away.  All I could think was that if my son had been sitting there, he would have been up in that guys face, and it would not have gone well.

I am driving a car that no one could ever believe existed.  We are defeating diseases that no one could ever believe we could.  We build towers and bridges, planes, vessels, and armament that no one would ever believe could be true all those years ago, but here we are. I am typing my thoughts on a keyboard and screen knowing that there are people who will refute the science of vaccination.  I can’t disprove it, so proving it is impossible, like proving the moon does not have a light of her own, which she does not.  Right now I can’t prove that Newton and his society wanted to control the world with fear, nor can I disprove it. Only you can, and I ask that you spread the word of reasonableness. I want to ask that everyone set aside their emotion and look beyond yourself, your children, your grandchildren, and their children.  We are alone in the universe at the moment, not because the earth is flat but because we haven’t found anyone else yet, and even if we did, we need to take care of each other as we would brother and sister.   I would like to stress that the future is not white and god-fearing hetero, but it’s a future that understands we are tender, fragile humans that would like to go on, but you must use science to do so.  Science is not the enemy, no matter what anyone says.   Your beliefs are relevant and no one should ever shut you down, but at a certain point you need to believe that one plus one equals two. And those two need to embrace and keep the whole thing going.

A Wet Graduation.

23 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Graduation, life, love, proud, son

Do you remember the day you graduated from high school?  Was it a big day? A long, tired, sad but happy joyful tearful day? Maybe your parents dropped some cash to have a catered family gathering to celebrate the day, or you all met at the diner so Mom wouldn’t have a lot to clean up afterwards? Bellies full, lots of reflection and hopefully laughter and too many pictures?  Perhaps everyone repaired home and went to their separate rooms while you changed your clothes and charged back out the door with friends to spend the night doing what teenagers and young adults do when there’s no parents or teachers around.

The school my son attended has a very small population of students, many of whom live on campus because society just can’t handle them anywhere else, in the “normal” places.  Those students are handed over to the school and, once there, most of the parents wash their hands of them. They don’t show up when the kids get in trouble, when their grades are poor–or when they graduate.  My heart broke for the young lady who graduated yesterday and her living parents did not show up to see her receive her diploma, to watch her next steps into the world. Faculty and friends were surrogates and that made the ache a little less.

We celebrated my son’s graduation yesterday with a small group of family.  It’s been a difficult road for him and us and his teachers. He wasn’t easy on himself or anyone else because he’s not a typical teenage sheep that follows the rules and stays between the lines or inside the box.  He is a wild spirit with a huge heart, a deep thinker and deeply creative.  I hope he never loses those qualities as he finds his way in a society that expects us to be productive, to behave and be normal.  It took me a long time to learn and accept he’s just being himself, and that his self doesn’t look like the kind of child my parents expected me to raise.  He is a beautiful thing in this world, and I couldn’t be more proud of him.

He said goodbye to that school as only he can, with his girlfriend, jumping into the campus pool with their clothes on.  May there be many more wet, beautiful days to come for them all.

He Is Not Here.

04 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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father, Ostara, son

Ostara has come and gone, quietly in this corner of the world.

Passover and Easter have yet to arrive, and they will, dates entwined.

Did they teach us that King James was not the tongue of Jesus?

Or did I just miss that part during a boring mass, too busy wiggling on a waxed bench seat hard on my ass?

Magic words and rituals.

Many years we prepared an Easter basket for my son, filled with some sugar treats, but also little cars and coloring books.

Grandfather faithfully brought him the softest, sweetest, snuggle bunnies because he loved him.

What would he say to me and my son if he were here today?

Do we use the shadow of the dead to keep us in line?

A year has begun

21 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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breathe, fear, insomnia, mother, son, Yoda

There was a moment in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke prepared to go inside a dark place.  He asks what’s in there, and Yoda tells him it’s whatever you bring.  I am 49, and I have discovered this truth over and over again.   Whatever we walk into, we’re already carrying with us.  Scoff at me for taking a life lesson from some fictional muppet, but it’s been helpful to me over the years.   The dark is only awful if I take awful in there with me.

My apartment is small and furnished only with what I need.  There isn’t a corner of my life that makes me feel afraid. I can sleep naked and walk to my sink for a sip of water in the dark because I know I’ll not trip over anything. I can open all my windows and scroll back all my shades because I don’t care who goes by. You will be anonymous players in the poems I write, the stories I build.  This is my home, a shell on a hermits back, where I am free and happy. I sleep alone in an apartment that is so silent all I can hear is the raining down bells of tinnitus and very little more.

Last night in the house I made, I could not sleep because I felt something else was here with me. I made a wonderful dinner for myself, then tucked into bed at an appropriate time. I read a few pages of an old fantasy novel, then turned out the little light. I slept on my side because when I sleep otherwise the heartburn dragon sets off the fire alarm. I watched a planet rise in my windowpane. I counted the leaves growing on my sill. I slept eventually, but then a loud noise. I awoke, heart pounding, adrenaline. My mind worked overtime to identify the sound. At first I thought it was someone throwing a rock at my window, but I knew that was silly. Then I thought about the back brush I bought and hung from a hook, and what the brush might sound like if it slipped from the holder, dropping into the tub.  Yes. All right.  Adrenaline dissipated and I went back to sleep only to be stalked by a nightmare: It wanted me to get out of bed and walk into the bathroom but I was terrified, I was unable to move, I couldn’t call for help, I was paralyzed, just turning over and tucking under the covers was a threat to the thing that held me captive, I felt like I weighed a million pounds.   After the adrenaline left me, I reminded myself that I am in charge of this life, this room, this darkness, and I stared out the window trying to breathe peace.  Then I slept.  But then a crow called, a really loud sound of a crow cawing, right here in my bedroom, and I know it happened, how could it not have, because it woke me. I woke to the sound of a crow cawing in my bedroom.  And my heart worked out again swimming in adrenaline.  I was frustrated and annoyed that something was in my room that wanted me to not sleep, so I got up and went to the kitchen for water, and no ill fell upon me.  I piled the covers back on me and felt my body build up its heat, a heat that’s only begun recently, I assume menopausal.   I asked the world to please let the light come so I could sleep in the light instead of fear.

I spent the night tossing and turning, back hurting, heartburning, wondering if the crow would come back and caw in my room, wondering at the shapes on the ceiling, the bathrobe on my bathroom door that’s been there for a hundred years but scares me now. The phone that went off at four in the morning.  Everything an adrenaline rush of fear, and not knowing.   I know a crow was in my bedroom and cawed.  I know the brush fell off its stem and hit the bathtub and scared me. I know that my fear is what I bring with me.   So today, I hope to regroup.  To reclaim my space here. That there is no reason to fear the rooms where I walk. I slept eventually.  I examine my insomniac fears.  The sun has risen and the day has given me new challenges.

In Praise Of…

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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change, father, inspiration, Mermaids, mother, politics, son, Universe, woman

  • Michelle, Megyn, Kellyann, and Hillary for your grace under pressure.  You didn’t get where you are today because you were shrinking violets. Smart, strong, fearless women. 
  • Melania who was born a creative, who worked to succeed in her chosen field of modeling and found herself in a world I’m not sure she wanted. She is apolitical, a devoted mother, and does what she wants on her terms. 
  • Ana Navarro, another strong woman who represents Republicans with a centered voice. 
  • My neighbor who is raising a thriving, happy, little boy in the face of “mommy shaming.”
  • Me for getting involved in a domestic dispute because it’s not okay to look the other way
  • My son for taking steps to get healthy and feel better
  • My husband (who I left) for being there when I need to vent, and for being a steadfast father to my son. 
  • Bookstore gift cards so I can get immersed in positive things like Trevor Noah, inspirational poetry by Mary Oliver, and (finally) an in-depth history of Mermaids. 
  • The universe, that consciousness, that awesome opposite of everything. I am reminded and humbled to know that it’s not my place to throw a tantrum, trying to fix everything and make it “right” in my own eyes.  Nothing is fixed. We are all passengers, and we shall all pass. How we treat each other, and help each other into the next flight is what matters.  

A Morning for Wonder

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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brother, morning, ocean, rain, son, sunrise, wonder

I awoke to the sound of the sky changing color.  I almost set my alarm clock to give me just 15 minutes more, but instead I swung legs over the bed and dressed in the dark, eyes half-glued shut.  My favorite weather app tells me it will begin to rain in 8 minutes, and I decide to wear my hoodie instead of a rain jacket, it’s warmer after all, and what does an app really know, anyway?

I believe the sun lured me out of bed this morning with a little dare. He said, “If you come for a walk I will show you something that will make you glad.”  I hustled down to the sand looking for ocean and there it was, right where I left it. I turned east, looking for Juliet, and the sun let a few wide bands of gossamer, in rose, come through the clouds. I stood still, and I know for sure the sun said, “See? Aren’t you glad?”

I trespassed ten steps through Werner’s sand (you know he loves his fences and his signs), keeping my eye on the sunrise but it faded rapidly.  The 10th street stairs haven’t been repaired from the hungry bite of hurricane Matthew. When did this graffiti arrive on the hanging wood, and why hadn’t I noticed it before?  Six large flocks of crows flew past heading northwest. I wonder why.  And it begins to rain.  I think of the chores I have this morning, and the spell of the sun is broken.

I am typing in a dark apartment waiting for the bathroom to warm up.  My hoodie hangs from a hook on the door, soaked.  It sounds like a creature has come to live in the ceiling above my kitchen. Perhaps he or she thought it was a good time to move in while I was gone. Meanwhile, in the back bay, the soaking flag clings to its white pole trying to escape the cold rain.  A mountain-sized bee has been sounding the bay, but it has gone quiet now.  No other sounds but little laptop typing, no light but what the sun can give behind thick layers of gray sky. I wonder if I will feel a door slam soon and will I embrace it as proof of life and let it go with a smile, or will I greet it with rolling eyes and gritted jaw, proof that I just can’t let things go.   I wonder when I will reply to my brother’s email, another ocean I must cross. I wonder if my wax plant will continue to thrive since I had to give it a new place to grow.  I wonder when I will finish reading that book, and what will I do with the notes I’ve been taking, or will I leave it unfinished because I never want it to end?   What will I do with the word “transformation?” It’s everywhere now, unleaving me like the soundtrack for Red October that’s been playing in my head for weeks.  Well.  I couldn’t ask for a better sound in my head while getting things done.  My son would approve.

Two Worlds, part II

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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broken circle, brother, life, son, woman

Sun sets early now.  I turned the outside lights on so you could see when you pull in the driveway.  Just like the old days.

The dishes are washed and put away, places set. They are waiting.

My son tells me physics bedtime stories but he doesn’t know where to put things away.  He is waiting.

My brother, brave and deep, sits on his bed and watches another episode of the same episode again.  He is waiting.

My personal things are packed, but the balance will be stowed away with me tomorrow. I am not waiting.

 

In Two Worlds

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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broken circle, life, season, son, woman

I wore sandals and a tank top on the drive to New York.  My clothes were packed in a gorgeous piece of luggage that once belonged to my dad, as opposed to last time I drove here with everything in a gorgeous backpack.  Towards the end of the marathon drive I draped an ivory shawl around my shoulders while filling up the tank, body shaking in the cold. I felt no warmer when I walked into the house.

One dark morning I lay in bed restless in mind but body-tired.  I allowed the spirit to swing my legs over the brink and pull myself into layers, ungloved hands carrying coffee out into the yard, twenty nine degrees.  I walked the neighborhood next door to wait for sunrise.  Frost everywhere.  Someone’s Corvette is warming up in the cul de sac. I stood by the side of the road and watched squadrons of mallards in groups of four make their way due west, flapping furiously.  They never fly casually in any season.  Sunrise colors are muted here, dusty rose patchy and barely visible.  Later as I stood chatting with my brother we watched a small flock of starlings heading northwest-ish.  The sky will be black with them soon, the lawn a hopping black cacophony, but I won’t be here to see it.

This morning my Virginia neighbors tell me it’s raining, and I wish I could see it.  The first night I slept in New York the room smelled dry with a dash of dust. In Virginia my plants are turning to find the sun on the sill, the tides manage themselves every six hours and I miss the moisture today. This morning I contemplate all things wild, feathers, roots, whitecaps, hungry cats, a manchild, and myself.  Everything does what it needs to do, even that manchild of mine who is still figuring it all out. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut and palms open.  There are better ways to handle growing pains.

Spouse brought me the boxes I asked for so I can dispose of these few things where they belong: donate, discard, or bring home.  Are my actions instinctive like mallard or like the probing tendril of a plant?  I.don’t.know.  We are hurting in different ways, but everything does what it needs to do.  Today is today, many things need doing, and I will do the best I can with these tender, beautiful hearts.

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