Hell yes I’ve been published again!

I know I’ve been absent for a while. I expect I’ll write here again, get my mojo workin’. I’m not going to try to do it though, at least that’s not a plan for now. When I think of things to write, or more rarely, when I draft something, it seems inconsequential to me.

This is a happy occasion. I submitted some poems in 2013 and heard from the editor of Literary Mama in August 2014. Usually, one gets a response much sooner, so I had forgotten I’d even submitted to the journal. I am thrilled that they accepted my poem.

It’s good to have an excuse to post. I’m here. I’m still here.

http://www.literarymama.com/poetry/archives/2014/10/miscarriage.html

Read Full Post »

damsel fly

If you have been a reader here for a while, this piece may not be particularly different or surprising; but maybe somewhat so. In any case, I am not writing to panic you or make you think I am not going to come out on the other side of my multiple myeloma treatment with anything but my life intact. I expect a full remission. On the other hand, I try not to project too much about particulars at this time. I don’t expect to know a lot of things, and I am learning not to be too cocky any more. I was really cocky, thinking I’d never get cancer: that will never be me. It had no place in my vision for myself or my life force. Now I won’t show such hubris as to project ages and dates because I think they will not have the same meaning to me that they used to. Now I don’t get too far ahead of myself. This is a piece about just what it is. If if helps, think of it as fantasy.

Also:

If you are going to comment, please do not put forth your own beliefs about how I am doing or whether I am doing the right or wrong thing. That is not what this writing is about. You may send your love and light and wholeness, your chi, your prana, your aligned and lit-up chakra energy. I know you are sending images and colors and calm and I love it all. I am filled with love for you and from you. You may pray to Jesus for me, to God, to Buddha, to a tiny pea seed hiding in the darkness, waiting for spring. You may bless me and love me. But I do not want your judgment, for that belongs to you alone.

♥ ♥ ♥

I lie on the table, looking out the window into winter. I am weak. The room is warm, too warm, making me give in further to my weakness. The effort to shift my bones is too much so I don’t move. I sink. To smile at the male cardinal cracking seeds in his beak is too much. I feel Victorian and gauzy. I am the weight of a square of gauze. If I had to wear anything but a silk gown next to my skin, I would surely break into pieces.

I want to fade away, but I would fade into misery. Do they talk about the pain? The exhaustion of hauling around a shell, the ghost of my formerly strong body. When was the last time I could take a deep breath without it getting caught at the sides of my ribs? When didn’t I gasp for air to come in or to wince in slight pain when it went out?

Now I know that lo these 9 months (and then some!) I was never being dramatic. I never had a low pain threshold. Au contraire. I wish I had listened with a non-judgmental ear to that pain. I never thought of myself as stoic, I thought I was whining. I thought my pain was a bore to those around me. I popped ibuprofen like it was candy. Ibuprofen and ice, sometimes dancing or vigorous hiking would give relief. So it must not have been that bad.

I birthed two babies, hard labors, at home. Especially my first birth was long and hard—21 hours of active labor on top of 2 days of early labor and I started out with a flu which had left me sleep-deprived and dehydrated. Baby had the cord wrapped around her body 4 times and was born with a compound presentation (her tiny perfect arm wedged up against her head). I did that without pain medication. Still I’ve thought of myself as weak in the face of pain.

Yet here I am and here I have lived for over 9 months, painful fractures throughout my bones.

Time is not time. Time is weariness is pain is too much. Time has to end now. Time is too much for me to bear. How can I stay alive through this? What if I get worse tomorrow? Surely I don’t have the reserves of strength this will take. Surely I need a pillow to be carried on, a sedan chair, does no one see this? Why aren’t the hospitals equipped with silken pillows and nursemaids who will bathe and oil and dress me. They have to carry my arms, move my fingers for me, lift water to my mouth. I am too weak to manage my own body. I am fading but no one sees.

Read Full Post »

Thankful Wednesday–we got the power and a “going commando” update

Electricity was restored to our house last night at 1 am. Such relief I feel, oy! Can I get an “AMEN?”

Going commando update:

I realize that my attempt at fitting things into the category of going commando was fraught with false turns. It began to sound more like a Thankful Thursday than a post about underwear and nakedness. But it reminded me of a great story my mother tells from her childhood.

My mother grew up in Germany during the war. Her father had some relative–an aunt, a grandmother, a sister–I don’t really know and have never gotten the detail right on this–who had a farm away from the little Medieval town where my mother lived with her parents. They would send my mother to get fattened up because they had no food during the war. Rationing and what not.

My mother was particularly impressed with the woman at the farm. This woman, my mother says, was the hardest-working person she has ever met or seen. My mother has a memory of the woman working in the fields and lifting her skirt, squatting to pee and going back to her work. Lifting her skirt, no pulling down of any undergarments, squatting, peeing, and moving on. Almost like the women who work in the fields, squat to birth a baby, wrap it up, and keep working, the rhythm uninterrupted. How do they cut the cord? Where does the placenta go? Probably just hack it with a scythe and let it fall to fertilize the soil. Totally commando. Wow.

Two Peasant Women in the Peat Fields, Vincent Van Gogh, 1883

Read Full Post »

Music Monday–February is Birthday Month

We are blessed in our household to have 2 February birthdays, my Hubby’s and one of my daughters’, who just turned 15.

Long ago, when I loved Facebook, I would often send a silly birthday video around on friends’ birthdays, but I gave that up after Facebook morphed into something beastly and uncontrollable and generally not to my liking.

Here’s one of my favorite birthday songs. A perfect rendition doesn’t seem to exist on youtube, which is fitting because birthdays aren’t about perfection. Even I can’t sing this song, of course because I can’t do all the different parts by myself, and partly because my daughters haven’t learned the other parts to sing it with me. You have to bear through about a minute-and-a-half of jabbering at the beginning, but then it picks up okay. It’s a little too white for me, but I do think it was written by a white guy, so there.

Of course the best birthday songs around here are the ones we sing out loud on the actual day (this includes not only the traditional birthday song, but also the Waldorf-learned “We Wish You a Happy Birthday,” which is refreshing and can be sung in a round, like so many songs Waldorf).

I posted a poem the other day also in honor of my oldest daughter’s birthday. The poem was certainly prompted by that yogic body memory, stored inside my intelligent cells and brought to the fore by some deep posture, but also by my daughter’s not infrequent plaint “Why did you have kids if it’s so hard?”

Read Full Post »

Protected: Worthy

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Read Full Post »