Bless-ed

Frost gathered in each corner of the window's 6 square frames. She was in the basement, baby in a carrier on her back, gathering water in a bucket from the main. He had taken out all the piping. It was black, corroded, and unfit for drinking water. They didn't have the money to replace it quite yet. He was working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week in the factory 30 minutes away for 200 dollars a week. They were saving what they could. Until then, it was just going to be this way. She quietly hummed as she carried the bucket upstairs and heated it on the stove. Once it was warm enough she took the water, and dumped it in the bath tub. 5 more trips and she'd have enough for baths. The baby was fairly content just to be against it's mother. Her toddler played quietly in his room.

The babies bathed in the clean water. Warm water. He and She took turns being last. When baths were done it took another bucket to boil water for their dinner. Oatmeal. The babies got milk. Yet, there was laughter. Lots of laughter. After dinner, she'd sing those babies to sleep "The water is wide. I cannot get or' And neither have I wings to fly. Build me a boat that can carry four, and all shall row my loves and I"

Eventually, she'd finally get the call she had hoped for and start working. Then, it would only be a matter of weeks and they'd have water again. For a time after that, running water was a marvel to them, a quirk most of their family wouldn't understand.

Winter 2003-2004


Ya know, Casey and I have been through hell and back. In 10 years, we've had two kids, finished college, moved 8 times in 4 states, and that's the good stuff. When our kids were 3 and 10 months they were living on raman noodles, plain oatmeal and milk. We've had to do that two more times since then, and even lived in a motel. There have been multiple times when, if chance hadn't provided hand-me-downs the boys little toes would've been curled up and blistered in the ends of their shoes, and they would've been wearing sweatshirts and sweaters as coats for winter. We've had times of prosperity too. Yet, I wouldn't trade "those" times for anything. Seriously, I told Casey just before we were married that I wanted my kids to grow up poor so they'd learn to appreciate the little things. I am glad they have gotten that opportunity. Everything seemed to workout in the end. Recently, when I asked the boys what one of our family traditions were they responded, "love. We always have lots of love in this house." However, Casey, the over achiever that he is, couldn't take another year of these ups and downs. He joined the Army.



At first I was TERRIFIED. Then I realized, "damn, this is a perfect fit for him". Mr. overachiever just got used up and spit up in the corporate world. Now his talents will be utilized, and his work ethic rewarded. Our hardships were, to him, a neon necklace with an arrow pointing at his head that said, "douche bag". It's not going to be easy, but that's sort of been a theme in this family. I think we'll be just fine.

People have asked me, "how are the boys going to handle it?" Sure they'll miss him, cry for him, and probably act out a bit. However, we've been apart from him before, and they've weathered far more arduous circumstances (by a child's yard stick) with tenacious optimism:



She stands outside the school. Crisp air cuts up her coat sleeve. No one talks to her, but they all stare. She shuffles her weight so one knee can bend itself in a gesture of cosmetic confidence. Secretly, she wishes she had mirror to check and see if a little snot snuck down onto her numb upper lip. She runs her mitten under her nose just to be safe. FINALLY! She sees a pair of smiling blue glasses with little blue hat, an unruly strand of blonde hair sneaks out the bottom. "I dot dis foh you, Mommy", a crumpled paper by way of a hug. Now, to collect the brown hatted observer for the walk home. She does so and gladly walks away from the crowd.

"So are you guys excited to get a house?"
"Wioh we get to have Cwistmas pwesents?"
"You get a house, and if we can move in before Christmas you will get to have a tree too."
"So, mom, is Santa going to visit or not?"
"I'm sure he'll bring you something"
"I's wanted one of dose big noeff guns"
"I think Santa was planning on bringing small things for your new room"
"We get to have our own rooms?! Well Okay!!"
"So we won't have to be all in one room anymore?! Can I have a dragon room?"

So the three of them chattered themselves back to the motel room they shared with Him. The paneling smelled of someone's cigarette smoke, a reminder that this was not theirs (thankfully). She made them a dinner of microwaved raman noodles and hot dogs, then homework, bath and bed, all four of them together.

Friday December 23rd at 1pm the 4 of them unlocked their new home. A container in which to treasure their laughter. Each of their exclamations was trailed by a little puff of smoke. She hurriedly, harassed the gas company and Stanley Steamer so that her babies would be warm and safe before bed. Otherwise, it would be a long cold weekend with painful reminders of the previous owners cats Once all was quite she set up a small 2 ft tree, wrapped the paint brushes, a few small toys. She paused to absorb the enormity of this small tree that dared to occupy such a large empty room all by itself. Fitting. Then She crawled up next to her family on the floor. This might end up being her favorite Christmas yet.

That Christmas she felt like an alchemist.

To my Monkey Hamunan

Poor
little
monkey no
one loves. Sky
walking and
carrying the world on
fingertips. A
freckle in the
white. A
blemish punished by
perfection. Stupid
happy
monkey not
knowing he can't
walk on
air, can't
carry the
world without getting
squished,
an
oozey
red
pancake invisible under
ice, his smile
distorted
flat
and unrecognizable.
This straightens my
vertebrae one
by one, and makes
the edges of
my lips
curl
pushing up
my cheeks until
my eyes
disappear, and
my face
gets sore.
Stupid
happy
monkey.

Blue Print

I never dreamed about my Wedding. I didn't care where it happened, or what kind of flowers were used. I didn't even care about the colors. My wedding was, to me, an annoying formality. A necessary evil required in order for me to move forward with what it was I DID fantasize about. My life.

I could describe in detail what my future life would look like. A small house with a big yard, a large garden of vegetables and wild flowers, smoke spiraling out of the chimney, children laughing in the yard. You can't very well accomplish that without a husband, so a wedding was a necessity. After I found the right guy, of course. Not just any ol' guy would do. I also thought all of this would occur after my stint as a revolutionary.

Modified over the years, but the basics were the same. The house, the kids, me having a purpose outside of motherhood/wifehood. Always it seemed effortless to provide this life, after all I wasn't asking for much. I've always been pretty low maintenance.

Here I am nearly half way through this life. In a house near the woods, with children laughing in the yard, my best friend to wake up with every morning and go to bed with every night. Now, in an effort to provide a future for the kids we are thinking of giving it all up. I cling to it with big, jumpy eyes.

I watch the news every morning. When I hear about fallen soldier on the news my eyes well up for their families just before I think to myself, "thank God I don't have to worry about that. If there's one thing I couldn't do it's throw my best friend to chance". Yet, here we are. I am NOT ready to crucify this dream just yet. I am not ready for the daily news to be a weight that squishes my chest until my breath runs away from me. What if I never catch it again?

Letter to my Nephew's "mother"

First, thank you for giving him life, for chosing to let him grow inside of you. However, that in itself, does not make you his mother. Now, everyday, chose again to let him live. Find in yourself the mother's love you've yet to know. The love to put your child's needs ahead of your own desires.

He was ripped from you because you made him an addict before he took his first breath, nursed back to a soulful life by others, and now, now that he can feed, and dress, and wipe himself you want him back? He hasn't even slept at your house, not once, and you want to put him to bed? He barely knows the sound of your voice, because you haven't called, and now you want the privilage of soothing and scolding him?



You gave him life (thank you dearly), but you are not his mother. His mother got up every four hours for years to deliver medicine needed to heal the damage, you caused, to his lungs. His mother worked tirelessly with Occupational Therapists so that he would develop normally, inspite of what your drugs did to him. She loved him even though he, like all children, was a vacuum sucking in her energy, time, love, and giving nothing back. She loved him even though he wasn't hers. Now he is smart, now he can breathe, now he has the opportunity to be ANYTHING. If you want to be his mother leave him where he is. To take him back would be to suffocate him, to place him in a box, to hand him a warrant for his arrest. He's old enough now to know it. If you take him back you will prove that you were never really his mother. Just a woman that gave him a life you planned to use to your own benefit, exactly as your mother did to you. She wronged you.

You ARE beautiful, you ARE intelligent. She condemned you to be just another mom on wellfare, and your daughters will be the same. Your son has the chance to BE something. If you want to be his mother get out of his way, and work to overcome the injustice your mother did to you so that your daughters have a chance to live. You are your daughers only chance. Your son, he has had a village around him his entire life.

From this mother to you, leave him where he has the best chance at the best life and he will love you for it. Take him back, whatever your reason, and when he is grown he will know what you stole from him, and he will hate you for it. His life isn't a social security number, a paycheck, it doesn't belong to you. Just as my children's lives do not belong to me. Some day they will be men (if I succeed), other wives husbands. We are guardians of their futures, and nothing more. Some of us have the luxury to be best suited to be both guardian and teacher. Some of us are best suited as guardian to let some one else be the teacher. That has nothing to do with money, or class, or education. That has to do with LOVE. A mother knows which one she is, and puts her love of her child, her duty as the guardian of his future, ahead of her desire to be his teacher. What exactly do think he'll learn from you, what makes you best suited to teach him to be someone elses husband? The only men, only husbands you've ever encountered were actors on sitcoms. Your daughter's do not know their fathers. You do not know their fathers. Your son's father has been there with him his entire life. Tell me how you'd be better at teaching him to be a man/husband?

WOMAN

I am wearing bear skin. My shoulders sag 

beneath the weight of it. The space inside 

filled with 

tight lips, and stern intolerance. I wonder if my 

mother gave me this.

An Heirloom? 

I see other mothers light, and knowing. As if they were made for this cloak. They carry it with straight up spines. Soft faces, and warm words. I am awkward among them. Quazimoto.

This is my mother's legacy.

I hated her. I hated her fishing. Making me stick hook through worm guts. I hated her roofing our house where everyone could see her dirty, and working like a man. Nawed dirty nails. I hated her, telling me not to care what anyone else thought. I hated her yelling at men in charge. Loud mouth didn't know her place. I hated her not wearing make up. I hated her being hard, not tolerating excuses. I hated her.

I am her.

I watched my mother, Quazi-femella. I know that it takes a stong back to carry such a cloak.

I am glad I am her.

My strong back, precious heirloom.

emergence

It’s been a long while living like infant pines huddled in the snow. Words that won’t come to me, always my mind left to slumber alone. And I am in that twighlight place, that purgatory. I am not living and I am not dead. The revelry and misery of life ricochet off me and I am immune to feeling. I reflect fondly on the girl who pledged to live deliberately enough to make Thoreau blush. But, now she has become me.

I’m not sure who is right, me or her? I know the path that brought me here would be treacherous to most. I thrive on treacherous journeys. They, gratefully so, remind me I'm alive. Each adventure has its consequences. This last one was bumpy enough to leave me numb for a while, and concussed. I can’t honestly say when this adventure started? 1998? 2000? 2004? 2006? 2007? Each of those a dark ring in my flesh marking some significant event.

For the last three months I haven’t had an address. Living, albeit unofficially. My entire life in storage, waiting to be unpacked, rediscovered. It may take an anthropologist to put it all back together and let me know who the hell I am again. And ya know I may reject the findings, and scream “put it all back in boxes.”

The idea of the big house with the white picket fence has always left me claustrophobic, like the idea of being buried alive. Funny I have two kids and a dog. In typical idealistic fashion I thought 10 weeks of 4 people living in one hotel room would be nothing more than an adventure. The potpourri of shit, dust, and dirty sheets changed my mind after about 6 weeks. I was surprised when the laughter of my children became torturous. Some days I hoped that my husband would stay late, just so I wouldn’t have to cooperate with yet another human. One less person’s breath to breathe. Many days I hoped I’d awake to find I had evaporated somewhere between the fake seams of the paneling.

Now we have our house, and I still feel like I’m putting out a stranger’s belongings. Relics of someone else’s life. An Amnesia patient. There is one thing that is familiar. I still love things raw. Don’t insult me by feeding me some pre-packaged bullshit. Just hand me everything still palpitating, and let me figure it out myself.

Only when I am running on the hilly dirt roads by my house can I both escape and find myself. I am at home running through the trees, feet in direct contact with the earth (excepting my soles) like all other primal beasts. This is the only thing of late that is familiar to me. Give me the unexplored, the unpaved, the raw… Keep the pavement, the neatly cut trails, those safe paths for yourself. I am not comfortable there.

I’m not sure what has left me numb. I’m not sure I care just as long as I still have my moments of liberation. Maybe it’s more that I don’t quite belong in this life of mine. I am an awkward leading woman in the play I’ve written for myself. Whether I like it or not, my role requires a bit of the white picket fence life. Honestly, as much as I resist it, some part of me seeks it. While I’d be happy in a trailer in the woods, the mother in me, the little girl that went without, wants to provide for my sons. The yard stick; do they have what their friends have? Me, endlessly repulsed by the confinement, of a typical life is fished into the lukewarm water by this question. Aren’t we all?

We are all on a quest to define ourselves with our belongings. To reflect our inner selves outward with the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the house we live in. We wear them like trophies, or shameful reminders of our failures. It’s all just stuff. This journey to acquire things that define us, or show status keeps us from really knowing ourselves. It over powers us, makes us unrightly proud, or unjustly steals us of our dignity. Yet, it can all be stolen away in a second. Make believe happy. Manufactured bliss. The only things we own, are our memories, our productions, our thoughts. Only the intangibles belong to us, the rest is BULLSHIT that distracts us from what makes us happy. I am definitely not immune… and I think I know now what was making numb. I was almost reformed.

This crazy adventure has come to a close at the foot of our 10 year anniversary. I can't help but remember the day that I "KNEW" what I wanted for my life. Casey and I stopped at the bait shop, he picked up a 40oz bud for himself and a 22oz bud lite for me, some worms. We went to Hawthorne park (a swampy lake). I sat barefoot on the bridge next to him. We sat, talked and threw worms into the water. I thought to myself, I can handle this. This can be my life. It's the pursuit of "stuff" that complicates our lives. I didn't NEED much then and I don't NEED much now. There is a fine difference between the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of possessions. They are not to be confused without dire consequences. Do not become possessed by the misconception that to have not is to be not. I think those dirt roads have led me back to myself finally!

Last night I asked Casey if he remembered that day. "How could I forget?"