starry crown

what if I woke up with a lotus on my head

filled with golden sun

and I could even type it with my eyes closed

and all the world made sense

my children whole and filled with golden light (they are you know)

the dark places and spaces, splaces if you like, filled with golden light (funny bits are welcome and are sometimes hard to summon in a person with cancer)

the light of god? not if you don’t believe in god, but it doesn’t matter because all are filled with light (no, I know, there are sick and damaged people beyond, seemingly beyond, the help even of their parents, beyond us….yesterday’s news and that father talking about his son and the sickness in our country, and I whisper in my head may it never be my children, never, and then, never any of my friends’ children and then any child I know and then anyone, let it not be anyone. WE ARE ALL CONNECTED. My network of helping friends is greater than those whose names I know. But this violence happens to someone we know, it is always one of us. We are kin.)

When I am filled in this way, I can forget

the house I haven’t adored or enjoyed for 14 years (too long) and maybe the house is metaphor for my own body and my own being and it’s tragic but true

so now if I don’t love my house, it’s okay; I still I have to love my body and my self, fully. I have to make do and not hate my house yes, hope and work for a better house, but make peace with myself and allow light

I have to Wake Up

we live in the darkness of bustling cars and news and the internet it is wonderfully connecting but we are not well in it we are on overload

My body is filled with chemicals so I have to take other chemicals to counter them, to live

sending the light—did you? because last night, after 2 am, I woke up bathed in it, filled with it, smiling, soft and peaceful, warm and content, feeling whole

I would not wish my diagnosis on anyone; there is no one to blame, so the alternative is to get mad. I haven’t gotten there yet. I need to see my anger and touch it and chew it to bits because I want to be free from it. I know it’s here when I ask “why me?” and when I can’t connect the person who I thought I would become (one who would always be free from cancer) to the one who I am, who has cancer in my body right now. Is it the power of the word cancer, from its history in my life, from the way it swirls around us as if it only happens to other people, takes ones we love, or is it something more?  The power of the word must diminish and it will diminish, but it may take a while. There will be better healing medicines and approaches. I believe every year there is progress and maybe a leap every 3 years, every 5, every 7, every 10.

Maybe I can reframe the meaning of the word. I want to hear it differently in my mind. cancer. multiple myeloma. treatment, recurrence. All the scary words. Can you help me? I want to face them first with a brave warrior stance and then let them lose their power so they are words I can allow to exist without me cringing in fear.

♥

I want to show you my daughters. How mysterious their lives are when I see the photos of them when they were little and simply young; and now, in their lives as they separate away from me and Paul. The mystery of birthing them, nursing them, raising them, but they grow anyway and have a force within. They have to leave and it’s a good thing. It is what we want for them, to thrive and make their own lives with their own, new people.

Cleaving. To split.

Yes, give me a new house where I can be freer and have quiet from the road and constant cars, where the bedrooms are not next to the kitchen, where the ceilings are high and air and light crosses through the rooms. People say you don’t need a bigger house because my kids will leave soon, but that is beside the point. Not much bigger, just better laid out and off a busy road. And who doesn’t expect them to need places to come home to for many years nowadays? It takes a while.

I can feel the empty nest on the horizon and that’s not a mixed metaphor because that is how I can explain to you my experience of its approach.

I will have a new house. I will go into remission from multiple myeloma by god by hook or by crook by the golden light, by gum, as best I can making the best choices I can at the moment with the best information and help and friends doing research on the scary bits. I want it gone for a long while and then I want better options should it peak in again. I want to live. To wear a starry crown, but not a way over yonder like the hymn says; here on earth. To wear a starry crown. I woke up with one, so why not?

Thanks for your food, your prayers, your help, the beautiful flowers; your sending of light and visualizing all sorts of places inside of me, intimate spaces you never thought you’d know in yourself let alone in me. The interior of my bones, my perfect ribs, curving and white. We have little space in our bodies, our bodies are filled with cells and molecules and atoms. Fill mine with healing light. Calm blue waters. Do the same for yourself. Whatever colors work for you. Then receive some light and vibration from someone far away. You leave yourself alone, you sit still, even for a split second, and you receive the light of the universe coming to you. Don’t even try to be perfect, because in this practice, you already are. Leave yourself alone!

We are the light of the universe, how can the light fit into our very tightly-packed cells? Because we alone can conceive it and see it and make it so. It is a thought, a fantasy, a creation of the mind, but it imbues the body. It is a wish. You feel this when you meditate. It is mysterious but real, like not being able to put my finger on the passage of time.

I know, this is out there and sappy for me, but I woke up like this and I don’t give a shit right now. All the signals are telling me to re-read it, to hold it until morning, to wait, to judge. You know what happens when I judge myself? Yes, you are right, I become a better writer. But that’s wrong, that’s only judging something I produced. I can judge my work and make it better and I do and I want to and I should.

I’m going to let this silly sappy piece go

hold it in my hand and blow on it from my lips, right out into the world

all you have to do is receive

kiss the spark that is in you, the same spark that started the universe

there are rogue cells, there are bad chemicals in our air and water, I know. I have known for a long time because I was born in the sixties.

Say with me that these rogue cells must turn off the dirty work they started in my body. no party for them. off, be off with ya.

 

shoo fly, don’t bother me, for I’m in love with somebody

my beautiful daughters, summer 2013

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Happy Birthday little bug!

Happy Birthday to my little bug!

Seventeen! Unbelievable

So glad I’m here with you

XO, Mom

(ginger molasses cupcakes with whipped cream frosting courtesy of the 14 year-old)

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Music Monday–speaking of lullabies

Y’all know I am not a fan of The Grateful Dead and enough said about that.

But several years ago, I picked up a CD of Not For Kids Only, with Dave Grisman and Jerry Garcia. It was then that my classical-guitar playing friend said how much he liked the Grateful Dead. I was fairly shocked, WHY? He said Jerry’s playing and singing is soulful; and finally, I too found it to be so.

My kids grew up listening to this CD pretty frequently. Thinking about Freight Train of late inspired me to dig it up. Right away, my eldest started playing the CD over and over. I used to sing some of these songs as lullabies and I asked the girls if they remember them very well. Yes, of course.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, sometimes as a parent, you do something right.

CD or no, the music is in them.

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estrogen anyone?

I know a lot of families who have only daughters, my household included.

Was a time we had two female cats, one female dog.

We got a a fish, one of those Siamese fighting fish, a betta. I would joke with Hubby that that was the only male companion in the house for him. Not much personality or ability to interact, that betta. Still, one needs allies.

Not much today, my usual mental musings. Is this a poem? It’s a bit silly, I know. I now see all of my repetitions, the words and images I love to use over and over. Not gonna censor myself right now. Not yet.

Just as I strongly dislike blogs and websites with white words on a black background (only forgivable on erotic content sites or sites run by folks under 21), I also HATE censorship. If I apply this to my writing, it backfires a bit because changing habits requires saying no to them. It’s not censorship, but discipline I need. Like I said before not yet. Let me be as free as a betta.

All We Have; What We Are To You

The estrogen pulses through us,
through the house

We ring with progesterone
the house rings with us

Later,
oxytocin
softens the ligaments
loosens the ishia, ilia, pubis

Milk concentrates and pours

My man is surrounded

Resistance is futile

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Thankful Thursday–ain’t no thing

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my loves!

 

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glory be! I think I’m writing again

A new piece, very very rough

A Mother’s Gifts

I’d say it was stark

the way the student drove
on the wrong side of the road
side-swiping my mother’s Toyota

She pats its dashboard
like a schoolboy’s head
there, there; good car, good car

We listen daily to the story
of her first driver’s test

new to America,
fresh from her Nazi father

bribing the proctor
with a twenty
while her hands shook

She’s slipping
and
I’m slow to wake to it

When I finally see,
I want 50 bucks
to bribe my way out

I want my one call
from my cell
not to a lawyer
but to God

to shake his shoulders
and ask why
he left her alone with me

The car still needs to be fixed
the college student stays ignorant and votes for Romney

I live the hell unimagined
the one dream in which
my mother
does not know
who holds her in the death bed

I have to wake in an hour
and send my daughters to school,
my Flower Girls,
and me in the middle

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Happy Birthday, Annie Rose!

We moved to Amherst, Massachusetts from Kent, Ohio in August 2000. Within 2 weeks of our arrival, Annie had her 2nd birthday. That seems like forever ago.

This week, she will be entering the 9th Grade.

When my kids were just little, I remember a grandfatherly man telling me don’t blink ’cause you’ll miss it.

Annie as one of Tatania’s fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Hartsbrook School, May 2012

Happy Birthday to our dear Annie Rose!

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maybe you’ve noticed

These last few weeks have been no exception to a sea of changes that seemed to coincide with the start of my blog, January 01, 2011.

You may recall that my youngest graduated from the 8th Grade less than 2 weeks ago. You may recall that I am peri-menopausal, if not outright menopausal (don’t hold your breath, you have to go a WHOLE YEAR without a period before you are considered good enough to be fully old, crone-like, ancient menopausal). You may remember that we had 2 cats get killed within 6 months of each other. You may also remember that Hubby and I celebrated 21 years of marriage recently.

Completing 8th Grade in a Waldorf school is a BIG DEAL, I have stated before. I mean to write a nice, long, lovely post about this, but in some way I am uninspired.

To be honest, as yours truly is want to be, 20 years, and now 21 years of marriage, has been a monumental time of change for me and Hubby. We have always striven to make our relationship better and stronger, to dig deep in when things haven’t worked, but some remnants of old stuff have been getting in the way so Hubby and I find ourselves delving again, deeply and fundamentally. Why do I tell this here? For one, it’s a cultural taboo to talk about these things, at least until you’ve earned about 40 or 50 years in. Then, everyone is all ears about how do you make a marriage work and how did you do it and what is your best advice to young newlyweds.

Sometimes I think my poetry has dried up, but it’s not true, I write quite a bit. Sometimes I think I’m a bad mom. Sometimes I think that the garlic scape growing out of the compost bin is the loveliest thing in my life. Not only because garlic scapes are beautiful curled green things, but because there’s some accident there—I did not plant garlic in my compost bin.

I want to post poems here, I want to save them, I want to gnash my teeth. I want to scream at the poetry that gets published in respectable journals, I want to shout fuck you to name-dropping authors who are full of themselves and whose essays barely touch the surface of human experience.

I wanted to tell you about the ladybug that hitched a ride on the top tube of my new bike yesterday, my virgin ride on it, how I felt blessed, but how I was just trying to find an excuse that the world makes sense.

I did want to share about my cracked rib, but I didn’t want to divulge how it happened. I told a few people as the subject came up, but I hemmed and hawed with most people who asked.

I am not shy, so let’s say it involved a massage table, which has a very hard surface after all, and let’s say it involved sex and let’s say I’m being honest.

My right side has been feeling pained, deep intense pain like when you get the wind knocked out of you.

the solar plexus

When I was a little girl, in preschool or maybe kindergarten, at the little private school I attended for kids with high IQs in a suburb of Detroit, I remember getting the wind knocked out of me and going to see the nurse. Her name was Mim, we called her that at least, and I remember a white nurse’s hat and pink stripes, maybe even white shoes; somehow I associate her with the color pink. I loved her. I remember a stick of ammonia, smelling salts. I remember lying down in the nurse’s room more than once. How much I loved her and now, when I think of that time, how small I see myself, tiny and sad of heart.

I will write again. I will post poems, but maybe not my latest poems. I will save them for the waters or maybe for paper.

Sometimes poems reveal things and sometimes poems hide things and sometimes the time for either has not yet come.

This is me, one of the first photos I ever took of myself in a mirror (I found another one from earlier, when I still lived in the dorms at Kent State). This photo is from October, 1983, in a house I rented with 4 other people, Lake Street, Kent, Ohio. We found out my father had cancer in August 1983. One of many beginnings of growing up too soon and also one of many times when I wasn’t ready to let go of that tiny girl inside.

Remember to pay attention. You might miss something otherwise.

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what angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

First, maths: Your children’s need for new clothes, because they have NOTHING TO WEAR, MOM, is directly proportional to the week of school in which they have a Shakespeare play and [had] a dance recital.

And in which you, as the mom, most need to expend some excess and erratic chi, but you are busy, busy, busy doing prompt sheets and picking up bobby pins and mascara and labeling paper bags for backstage.*

And if you don’t get to your !@#$% yoga class tonight you JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN!

(the author is keenly aware of her entitled and easy life and she wells with gratitude in spite of her rant)

*I am not actually very involved in helping out with my daughter’s class play this year. I have a very small helper role, perhaps the easiest and least work I’ve taken on in the last few years. Many other hands are doing much more work, just so you know.

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Thankful Thursday, finally thankful

I do feel like complaining a little and this is exactly the point of Thankful Thursday

So let’s have at it:

Last night, I went out. BY MYSELF. Yeah, me. What did I do? I went to a poetry reading held at the Eileen Fisher store in Noho (that’s Northampton to y’all who don’t reside in the Commonwealth).

Anyway, the space was lovely, all wood and white and brightly, yet soothingly, lit. Sumptuous colors and yummy textures of clothing. A spread of cheese and crackers and strawberries and little bottles of Perrier (I had 2 of those).

The reading was given by 2 local poets, Patricia Lee Lewis and Diana Gordon. I had seen the websites of each of them, but I don’t know them or their work. Now I know a little bit more. I even bought 2 books, had them signed (TO ME!).

While I don’t want to diminish the quality of the evening and of the poets’ work, because everything was truly wonderful, the thing for which I am most grateful, aside from the aforementioned just being able to go out on a date by myself, is that the second poet, Diana Gordon, finished her portion of the reading with Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat.

This is one of the earliest and most familiar pieces of writing of my life. It is like a part of me, my heart, by heart. My father gave me a few books of poetry when I was young, one an over-sized book of Edward Lear’s nonsense poems. Maybe he read the poem to me then, maybe not; I do not remember. I later lent away the book to my good friend’s daughter who was like a little sister to me and who I grew up with when I was 21 and she was 3 and my father was dying. I never saw the book again, as is the case with so many books we love and which we know are out-of-print. Even then, when I lent it out, the cover was coming away from the binding, I remember the gap and the white stitching, the blue pages at the front and back where there are no words.

When Diana was about midway into the first stanza, my eyes welled up. I do believe that in all of my years of reading this poem out loud to others—myself, my father, my two beautiful and amazing daughters at many bedtimes, this is the first time I remember anyone reading it out loud to me.

And that is why we keep trying one more day

I found this charming illustration on google images and with a little research, discovered that it is by Mary Ellsworth, from The Colorful Story Book (New York, The Saalfield Publishing Company, 1941).

This style of painting feels quite right to me for the poem. A little European, more detailed and grown-up and proper than later styles of children’s book illustrations, somewhat distancing, but simultaneously engaging, inviting the viewer to be right there on that hill in the bright day with the three of them; we are party to their wedding and so it shall ever be.

FIN

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