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Friday, July 07, 2006
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I have missed this rectangle. This blank space just waiting for my words to fill it and send it off to total strangers who somehow miraculously give me strength and hope and faith in myself.
I have no business sitting here with my laptop when there is SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO (get the picture)much I'm already SO SO SO SO SO SO late for. But this morning I realize there is such a hole in me that felt a tiny bit filled when I was blogging and I feel like the hole in me is getting so big I'm going to cave in, the center of me is going to get just totally filled with the stuff from the outside and there won't be any center place left for me to fill with myself.
The miracle for today is that I let myself sit down and write. And this fabulous song from Transamerica that I'm listening to- it is good for the soul. Travelin' Thru by Dolly Parton...I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find what feels like home...questions I have many, answers but a few...God made me for a reason and nothing is in vain, redemption comes in many shapes with many kinds of pain.
Redemption. Where's my dictionary? That is the miracle I truly need: redemption. What shape is mine?
8:28:39 AM 
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Friday, May 12, 2006
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Such a loss
One of you out there linked me to the blog of cancerbaby and I have followed her faithfully and read today that she has died. I cannot believe how absolutely profoundly I am devastated by her death. Her writing was so powerful- so brave and true. So raw and real. I am reminded tonight that for all the hardships I think I face, I have the luxury of being alive to face them, have the strength still to complain about them, the opportunity to still hope for a richer, fuller life. My heart goes out to cacerbaby's husband and family and good good friend who has kept us posted in the last months. The world of blog is a wonderful, but tonight cruel, thing. How do you properly mourn someone you really don't know and yet have come to care for so deeply?
Prayers everyone please for the peace of Jessica's soul at last, and strength for her husband.
8:00:49 PM
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Wednesday, April 05, 2006
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Have you ever heard anything like it?
My husband is trying to lose some weight, so I- his 300 pound wife- have joyfully been making him beautiful, fabulous salads for supper- nice mixtures of spinach, romaine, radicchio, that gorgeous purple cabbage, bean sprouts, shredded carrots, finely chopped cucumbers (he doesn’t really like cukes but I figure they’re easier to bear in smaller pieces). One night I sliced Cortland apples and green seedless grapes and topped the salad with walnut pieces. He was clearly grateful for my efforts. But then, last night, it hit me that though he was appreciative of his salads- even mentioning their eye-pleasing presentations, he was still grumpy and snappy and tired after his long day. I jumped up from the table last night, pushed my chair in just hard enough for it to be noticeably too hard and stomoped over to get busy at the sink. My husband said, “What’s the matter with you?” which was irritating and painful because of course he should know.
“What’s the matter with me?” I asked incredulously? “I made you that wonderful salad and you’re still crabby.”
My mate looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.
“I said thank you. It was great. I said I really appreciate you making me a different supper?” his voice went up at the end. Clearly he was clueless.
“Well that’s great. You appreciate it but it doesn’t even make you happy!!” I spit this in his direction, making clear his inability to ever be happy.
I will never forget the look on his face. It was such a mixture of things, so painfully complex. I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was feeling. Then he said sadly, “Kay- food doesn’t make me happy.”
Have you ever heard anything so fucking crazy in your life? What the hell kind of man did I marry? It’s like a veil was lifted. 26 years later and I finally understand why I have no idea how to please this complicated man. Food does not make him happy or unhappy. I cannot even imagine such a thing. How the hell does he get out of bed in the morning? What keeps that man going? What does he look forward to, what does he grieve with, celebrate with, suffer with, silence himself with? How does he show his love to friends and strangers and family? I know it’s not a guy thing because growing up with my big jock older brothers and my father of few words, I knew before I knew much else, how to make them happy with food. Brownies, fudge, spice cake, mayonnaise cake, peanut butter cookies, whoopee pies, homemade donuts, and more, more, more. So it’s not a guy thing. I think it’s just a crazy weird thing.
If food didn’t make a person a happy- what would?
5:22:02 PM
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Monday, March 20, 2006
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Smithwick’s and Chips
I am a Lenten failure. Let me just get that out of the way. Unless Smithwick’s Ale and Lay’s Wavy chips are on my Lenten meal plan and count as lunch, then I am way off track.
Which I know I am. Because, God help me, if I am not right in church kneeling with a priest nearby or worshiping at my laptop altar, I cannot seem to hold onto anything but my compulsion for food that hurts me and makes me feel sick and hateful- to myself and others.
I am in a bad way. I am hoping it’s that menopausemonster rearing it’s monthly head and that this will pass and I will be able to hold onto hope again before I think too many more crazy thoughts. But in the meantime I would not want anyone listening in on my internal dialague. I can’t tell which comes first- the crazy thoughts or the crazy eating, but they sure as hell go together.
Why can’t I just say no like Nancy Reagan drilled into us for eight ineffective years? Say no to drugs. Say no to Smithwick’s at noon and yes to tea. I have found a favorite- cranberry apple zinger. Nice and sweet with a little bite to it. But when I drink it now I feel all depressed and miss my blogging back in November when I truly believed that tea and blogging would help me save myself. Now I don’t know what would be more compelling to me than my bad eating- maybe it’s the self-hate I’m addicted to- not the food. Maybe it’s not the donuts but the painful indigestion and self-loathing, the punishing it provides, the familiar feeling of failure and powerlessness and if only…. The hope of waiting- knowing that someday, when—something or other finally happens- my life will change and I will be the healthy whole person I have always secretly known I could be. I’ve been waiting like this for as long as I’ve had the ability to think such thoughts. Most definitely since first grade when I realized my whole life would be wonderfully different if Mrs. Rye my first grade teacher, the Baptist minister’s wife, would just adopt me- take me home and be her gentle, quiet, steady self for me. I followed her around like a puppy- around the classroom, stood next to her instead of playing when she had playground duty, ate my lunch in my classroom, brought my paper to her desk first, finsished first, worked the hardest, volunteered to go get the milk, empty the trash, erase the boards, walked the long way everywhere I needed to go, huffing and puffing my chubby little self up the hill past her husband’s church hoping to catch a glimpse of her, have her see me out there not looking like I was looking for her.
I was so manipulative already in first grade. Already perfecting my good girl persona, my “let me help you” self. Knowing, without knowing I knew, that looking needy would turn people away, but that being smart and good and kind and helpful and never saying what I really wanted was the route to maybe getting a little bit of what I needed.
What is it that I need now? I am not in first grade, there’s no Mrs. Rye out there to make my life better, to model something I knew I was missing. Whatever that was I was looking for then I am not going to find now. And yet I know, in my heart of hearts, I am still waiting for it in some way. I don’t know what I think I’m doing when I eat. What hole I’m trying to fill, what sin I am trying to punish, what flag I am trying to wave, but it is not getting me anything that I want. Quite the opposite. Or do I not really know myself. Am I so unconscious that some part of me is getting exactly what I want? Am I that badly damaged? How do I make myelf whole??
I know this beer is not the way, though I love the taste of it in my mouth. It’s bitterness. I feel very masculine when I drink it. I’ve loved beer since I was a little girl. It was a huge honor whenever my father would let me sip some Budweiser from his can. I remember when I was very little and my dad was sitting around drinking with some of his friends who I found so scary. I was loitering, trying to take in their conversation, enjoying the smell of the outdoors on them, loving the way they laughed their huge loud laughs and told and retold their funny work stories. I remember my dad once gently putting his arm around me and pulling me into their circle and asking if I wanted some of his beer and I knew it was a great privilege and the men were all watching and I sucked down a big gulp and I hated the taste on my tongue- it wasn’t at all what I’d expected but I knew to moan and lip my lips and make a happy sound and ask for more and get a big laugh out of all the big men and for years to come I was proud that I learned young to drink beer like a man. I learned to drink like a man, eat like a man, burp like a man, fart like a man. My 3 older brothers had nothing on me. It would make me glow with pleasure when one of my parents would say oh, she can keep right up with the boys. As if eating, drinking, burping and farting big, are goals to aspire to!!
And here I am in my family of new boys. Once again feeling so alien and yet knowing exactly how to make myself fit in the place I find myself.
Maybe I haven’t always been looking for a mother as much as I’ve been looking for womanhood. For some idea of how I could be a woman in the world. Not how to mold myself to fit where I find myself, but how to be myself in a world I so often feel I do not fit, where I feel foreign.
How do you find these really basic things when you’re almost 50? Therapy was great for the first 20 years, but you know, at some point I got the picture that what I was missing wasn’t something I was going to find talking to someone. What does that leave??
Time to eat some food to soak up the Smithwick’s.
I will keep looking for today’s miracle. I have a sneaking suspicion it would have been easier to recognize if I weren’t slightly foggy with beer…
1:08:53 PM
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Monday, March 13, 2006
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Finding Home
I grew up in a little tiny town in New Hampshire where in first grade, when I kissed my “boyfriend” in the alley behind Joe and Tony’s corner store- my mother knew about it by the time I walked the 2 blocks home. There was very little you could do or say that the whole town wouldn’t know within days, if not hours. I grew to find this closeness stifling. It was the late 60’s and I couldn’t wait to escape the eyes and ears of my little town. Eventually I did.
When I moved in 1980, my parents fretted. My mother warned me about how “different things are in a big city”. My friends and I would laugh at my parents’ fears and over-protectiveness and hum an under-the-breath chorus of “Beverly Hillbillies” when the family station wagon would visit from New Hampshire- my parents climbing out shaken, raving about driving in "the city". I loved my little city partly, I am sure, because it so frightened my parents. Much to my mother’s dismay I insisted on walking downtown late at night and befriending strangers. While my mother waited for me to come to my senses and move back home I dug my roots in deeper and deeper and began to dream of buying a house in the city, someplace where I could walk downtown and see at least a piece of the ocean.
Twenty-six years later I am still here, having bought a little house with a second floor trianglular view of the ocean when the leaves are gone, and a perfect walk to the library, the market and my favorite café. My mother has pretty much given up on me ever returning to my rural roots. Instead she comes to visit often and though the “crowds” bother her, the traffic horrifies her and she marvels that we can stand living on our “postage stamp” of land, in the end she always says at least once, “I guess I can see why you love it here. I guess this is your home now.” And she is right- twenty-six years later, this is finally feeling like home. Not because of the shops I love, or the restaurants I savour, or the local heatre I’ve enjoyed for three decades, not even because of the ocean. It is because of the people.
When my son Walker was born with Down Syndrome in 1997 I told my mother, “That’s it, now I’m coming home”. I wanted Walker to grow up in a little town where everyone would know him and watch out for him. But then Early Intervention right here in town was fabulous and we were so close to the clinic at Children’s Hospital where Walker got his care, and then the local school was so welcoming of him and now it is eight years later… Many people we know have headed north for bigger houses at smaller prices and more than a sliver of a backyard. I have a piece woods in New Hampshire just waiting for me but I cannot go. Not because it is a dream come true to be stuffed in my 1300 square feet of living space with two very active sons. But because last night when Walker went missing for almost 30 eternal minutes, neighbors from several streets immediately went out looking for him and they went looking because they love Walker and they care for us. Despite the fact we can go weeks (and in the winter- months) without actually conversing- we are neighbors- we are bound together by proximity and by more than that- by history. Walker is building his history in this little city and that is why I will stay. In his first school they called him “the mayor” because of his morning greeting for every single person he passed. At his current school he loves “my fwiends” and knows all his classmates names by sight before the first week of school is over. When we push our cart through Stop and Shop he is something of a celebrity- gathering schoolmates or their parents as we go. Walker has far more friends in town than I will ever have. And last night many of them turned out to search for him. Amazingly, it was two older children from the Hannah School who spotted him, recognized him and took him to their house. They knew his name and their parents looked us up in the school directory. Walker returned home to us safe and sound. And another layer of history was laid: our neighbors shared those terrifying moments of waiting with us and the bond I felt in those moments- watching them scour the streets calling Walker’s name- made me know in my heart of hearts, that home is not the size of the house or yard or the view from the windows. Home is where we are known and loved and kept as safe as possible. I am grateful to live in a town and a time when a child with Down Syndrome can get lost and be found by friends who truly know know him and care for him. This is my home now and it is Walker’s home probably far more than it is mine. For that I am grateful.
11:35:38 AM
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Wednesday, March 01, 2006
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Ash Wednesday
I am sitting here, ashes in the shape of the cross etched on my forehead. Christ Church this morning- my annual pilgrimage to receive the mark of death, followed by the Eucharist- the promise of hope and life, of possibility, the victory really, over impossibility.
I am well acquainted with impossibility. I must have drunk it with my mother’s breast milk. Steeped in it, I was, like a helpless little tea bag, reminded again and again of all that cannot change and how to make do. Make do, do, do. God will give you the strength. That was our hope- the God-given strength to bear what sometimes seemed unbearable. I do that well- bear things. “Take up your cross” Jesus says and people used to quote that to me as if it explained so much shit in my life and yet today waiting for my ashes I felt certain that that is not the cross Jesus meant for me to take up- the make due cross.
Father Lias read a wonderful quote by Somebody Holloway that I wished I could have written down but I had purposely taken no pen so that I wouldn’t be writing in my head, but rather be open and listening and yet as I listened and tried to stay open, I was also writing in my head faster than my head could follow.
Mr. Holloway had a simple, yet profound, thought about the fact that we are physical beings who live in a state of waiting to die- of dying right from the start really. And a state of marvelous grace with the hope of transformation and life. He talked about the tension of living a truly spiritual life. The sometimes painful pull of living both toward death and glory. There was something that rang so true to me about the juxtaposition of ashes and glory, death and transformation....
I am terrified of dying. On the purely physical level I am terrified of it. When I was little I would try to stay awake so I wouldn’t drift off toward death when I drifted off to sleep. I would lie awake and fret about what if there is nothing after life, what if after all is said and done I will just have been a speck of dust, a box of ashes and bone fragment, what if there is no life after death, no reconnections, reunions, “better place”. I still worry like this if something scary has happened or if I need a med. adjustment! Now I mostly agonize over this in relation to my children. The thought of not being alive to love my boys can bring me to my knees on a good day. Never mind on a bad day.
This morning started as a bad day. My husband and I spending yet another morning misunderstanding and feeling misunderstood and not being able to get past what seems all hurts past and present. I went to church with that hurt heavy in my heart. In my gut really. It was churning around in there with all the crap I’ve eaten lately. The Oreos and Suzie Q’s, the cupcakes, whoopee pies and Friendlie’s Forbidden Chocolate ice cream.
I wished for confession at church today. I tried to create it in my own head but things always get so crazy and confusing inside my own head. It’s like a maze and once I get started I seem to come upon little zigs and zags that I can’t help but follow and I end up all over the place and kind of frantic. I was having a hard time concentrating today. I was trying to listen about ashes and dust and lent and self-denial and fasting and discipline and doing without or adding works of mercy and I loved what I could hear but it’s like there was interference and my own voice kept talking over Father Lias’ and it kept talking about food. About sugar and frosting and chocolate and donuts and ice cream and brownies and chocolate croissants from Cassis and I felt like I almost couldn’t kneel or pray there was so much food in the way. And I realized what an ENORMOUS distraction food is to me. Not the food itself but my feelings about it, my need of it, my fear of it. I hear “self-denial” and I think “HOW?” I am denied so much and feel like I have been since birth how the hell am I supposed to give up whoopee pies too and yet dear sweet Jesus I can tell you that a whoopee pie has never done anything good for me nothing, at all. Not one blessed thing. Well- that’s not true. They connected me to my father. The gift I always made him so that he would know- despite all we would never say- that I remembered everything and forgave everything and my perfect whoppie pies stuffed with the very best whoppie pie cream you ever tasted were the proof. Whoppie pies are the tie that binds me to my father who I feel so sorry for it pains me. But now-in the past 30 years or so anyway- I’d have to say whoppie pies and the like have given me nothing but the clogged vein and artery I am now stuck with. So being denied of whoppie pies- why does it feel like a death sentence when really it would be more like a life sentence??
A life sentence. That is what Jesus came to give us. I believe that. I heard it today during communion and when I was kneeling there listening I could taste hope. “Bread of heaven, broken for you”. A sliver of hope, a wafer thin taste of glory fading quickly on tongue-tip. Followed by the bitter wine drunk from pottery goblet. “Blood of Christ, shed for you”. Crazy. Crazy. In my head I cannot believe it. In my head it makes no sense at all. In my head I am mortified to be kneeling there so desperate to receive. And yet, in my heart, in my gut, something tries to rise up, tries to find ground, to stand. It is hope. It is faith to believe that I am not called to “make due”. That actually, I was made, given life, to be so much, much more.
I am all about excess. Extremes. And so today I knelt and prayed and promised to give up sugar (except my bedtime hot chocolate), coffee (because it goes with sugar), and CNN and Psychic Detective (ouch). I contemplated NPR too but realized I couldn’t go quite that far. And I decided to add, as my commitment to works of Mercy, to think first of what my husband is feeling before I obsess on what he is making me feel and why and blah, blah, blah. But as soon as I prayed and promised I felt torn in half- crazy with hope and fear. Through the haze of my own little Lenten extravaganza I heard Father Lias saying, “feed on me with your heart and mind” and it was like I heard it on a loud speaker and it got through all the static of my internal drama and I kept saying it over and over. “Feed on me with your heart and mind”. And then Father Lias talked about excess- excess eating, drinking and smoking and how many of us have problems because of taking these good gifts too far. He is giving up drinking for lent which I found pretty damn funny- I’ve never heard a priest give up booze for lent- times have changed since I went to my Christain college, pledged not to drink, smoke or have a boy in my room with the door more than half closed on open dorm night! Father Lias made it seem so natural. That this season of Lent lends itself to the death of old habits and the journey toward newness.
Can I take this season- this Lenten time- to feed in my heart and mind instead of my tongue and stomach? Can I take one day at a time from now until Easter to try and live in the moment, present enough with my own self that I will know that I am a grown woman with children of my own and that a whoppie pie is no longer a conduit to any kind of love it ever even really was. That the lard filled, artery clogging frosting sitting immoveable on top of my Stop and Shop cupcake does not bring back the little girl fantasy of baking in the back right corner of the kitchen with my mother, wearing my little matching home-made apron, throwing back my head, falling against my mother- laughing and licking our spoons and sharing that sweet, sweet place of sameness, of belonging.
In November I was lucky enough to get a warning that I am headed for serious trouble. And as long as I stayed home and did nothing else I could drink my tea and look for my miracles and imagine the changes I would make as soon as- as soon as I got a nap, as soon as my husband did something different, as soon as I stopped working so much. And now it is March. It is Ash Wednesday and soon Easter and then summer and then fall and then November again, and hopefully November again and again and Jesus it is terrifying, but what kind of miracle would it take for me to really break free from the food gods, the false god of sweetness so that I might have all those future Novembers?
I don’t know what kind of miracle it would take and that is what is so frightening and I am not really much of a believer in miracles although when I began this blog I did start to become a believer in everyday miracles and I suppose those are the miracles I will need to make it through Stop and Shop and past Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s and the bakery and Coffee Time Bake Shop and The Hot Spot at work.
I am generally most motivated by fear. I imagine most people who grew up surrounded by violence are pretty much hard-wired to respond instinctively to even the thought of fear. That is a pretty great instinct and it served me well. My brother- who sadly, lacked that gift of instinct, paid the price. I feel incredibly blessed that I was able, as a child, to head off so much trouble. Unfortunately, in middle age, living in anticipation of, and reaction to fear, is not terribly conducive to creating a happy life for oneself or one’s family. I fake it for them a lot. And I am not nearly so afraid as I used to be of all life’s little suprises. But I am still afraid of myself. Of my own inability to choose health for myself. To really choose life.
It just seems to me today that God is trying to tell me something about Lent and choosing that which could really sustain me, vs. the old crap that in my childhood stood in for real sustenance. There was so much I gave of myself in exchange for what I knew didn’t feel like love but I needed to believe somehow was love of some kind or at least of being wanted and needed and I know that there is some way that there is a huge circle and in that circle is the abuse I withstood, physically and sexually, and the food I ate and the love, love, love I tried to get and give and could often really really feel and taste and then so often I couldn’t. And when you are a child how the hell are you supposed to know what love is supposed to feel like when you are just god damn hungry for it and starving and just want to cry like a baby without a bottle or a binky or anything except there is frosting and there is touching and there is being close and hurt but also loved.
Every year when I get ashes at Christ Church, I somehow end up back in my childhood heart, being hurt again and thinking of food.
This is not the Lenten journey I signed on for. I’m going to take a nap.
1:42:00 PM
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Thursday, January 26, 2006
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A Good Night with Walker
Playing "shish" with Walker tonight-
his first pretty much
played right
card game.
Princess Fish-
Jasmine,
Snow White,
Ariel,
Cinderella,
Belle,
Sleeping Beauty,
Mulan.
"My girls"
he calls them.
"Mommy have
Ulan?"
He asks,
all seriousness,
grasping slippery new cards
in his fat little
sausage fingers
with the tell-tale
bent pinkys.
"No Belle mommy-
go shish".
Go shish.
My miracle for today-
A full ten minutes of playing
a REAL game
with my 8 year old
angel face struggling to manage
"go shish" and "ga wa I wated, go gen."
A Good Night tonight
with Walker.
AMEN.
9:31:28 PM
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Wednesday, January 25, 2006
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I Give Up
I've commented like an idiot 3 times on Rosies blog and NONE of the times did my blog address get on there right. When you click on my name it just says blah blah can't display this page or whatever. I give up. Despondent, Going to bed.
8:46:16 PM
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What the hell, what the hell, what the hell
Here's my big chance and I'm blowing it. I'm on Rosies comment thing and she's reading them and when I put my blog address in the comment box provided it doesn't work. If you visit her blog (rblog) and click on my name it won't open my blog. It opens other peoples. What the hell?? Is it a sign from God? A sign I'm stupid??? Go visit her blog and try to find my blog from it. Tell me if it works for you, OK? Thanks .
7:37:55 PM
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Who's Out There Tonight?
Leric, Megancy and Jane- anyone out there reading tonight? I am a wreck. Someone post if you're out tonight. I went for my daily visit to Rosie's blog and actually got on to comment at the beginning of her comments. Which is no small thing. I've never visited her blog while comments were still open and there are always a couple hundred comments. Anyway- she is obviously at her computer reading comments because she responded to one rude guy so I commented and asked her if she got my letter and gave her my blog address (and all her readers too I guess. Yikes.) I'm afraid she thinks I'm a loser. I'm not. Right?
Right????
Say something!!
PS. I resigned from my job today which I know is the right thing to do but I'm scared out of my mind.
PSS. Do you like your combined names? That's how I've been referring to you in my mind for a while now, so I decided to make it official. Thanks for being out there.
7:29:00 PM
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Sunday, January 08, 2006
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Desperately Seeking Rosie
I have a confession to make. It is pretty embarrassing. I can’t decide if it’s as embarrassing or more embarrassing than admitting to being ah honest to god born again Christian when born again Christian is- to my mind- a swear word, not to be uttered in polite company; akin to admitting I eat small children for breakfast -no small thanks to George Bush, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell , et al.
But here it is: On Thursday I overnighted a letter and a bunch of my writing to Rosie O’Donnell c/o the Minskoff Theatre where she is in her last performances of Fiddler on the Roof. I asked (translation: begged) her to read my blog and the children’s story and volumes of other stuff I sent along. Like she asked. Like she cares.
I read a book she wrote a few years ago about some crazy fan who duped her into an intense save-me-please-save-me relationship that went really bad and I can only imagine she doesn’t even read her mail now and even if she does will probably either pee her pants laughing or say “Oh no-not another one” and throw my from-the-gut letter in the trash. And I certainly can’t blame her as she is a total stranger with a life of her own and millions of people who probably send her crap all the time.
But you know, I’ve always thought we’d be great pals. And isn’t that the magic of Rosie- the gift she has- to make so many, many women feel like she could sit right down in their cheerio-strewn kitchen, drink out of a glass with dishwasher spots and be right at home sharing a swiss roll and some chocolate milk.
So what is it with me? Why all of a sudden am I willing to mortify myself to get someone to READ ME??! Because if Rosie doesn’t read my blog and email me and at least say,” you crazy woman leave me alone will you please??!” then I have other famous people I think would like me, really like me, if only they could read the real me.
Maybe this has something to do with feeling like I’ve always been hiding in these pounds and mounds of flesh. Ever since I was- well- ever since I felt like people could be right on top of me- literally- and have no idea I was even there. So that pretty early I knew that me- the me I desperately wanted someone to encounter and love- was not connected to the me that someone was bearing down on and well- I think I’ve been looking for that INSIDE me for about 40 years now and somehow this “heart event” has compelled me to reach way inside and reach back, back, back to where I used to be able to feel things and what I keep coming up with is this little girl who just wants to be really really seen and even more- really, really, heard. So God bless poor Rosie O’Donnell who if she receives her own mail will be holding my gut in her hands, I suppose I am not desperately seeking Rosie at all, but am desperately seeking me.
10:25:04 AM
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Miracle of Blog
What magic
What inexpensive
Marvelous
Therapy at
$40 a year
Radio User Land
SalonBlog.com
EricLizMegNancy
And Jane.
A dear, good
Generous
Always-there-for-me-friend
Feels I no longer
Carve out
A place for her
In my
She-understands-it-is-busy
Life.
I long for the
Women friends
I used to have so many
Pieces
To spread around with
They made me
Richer
Fuller
But now I can’t even find
A piece of me
For myself.
You wanna a piece of me?
Get in line-
I get a piece of me
First.
It is snowing softly,
My angeldevil with the
Extra chromosome
Will be scuffing down the stairs soon to
Look out the window,
Eyes Wide
Shouting
“Snow, Santa, Presents,
Yee Hoo”
Raising his arm above
His head
Swinging his imaginary
Lasoo.
My little cowboy
Who loves the snow
And all things
Christmas.
He gets the
Biggest
Piece of me
No doubt
How could it be
Otherwise?
I thank God for
Trisomy 21
And the fact that if
I am brave enough
I believe
I will
AT LAST
Learn to find
Enough
Inside of me
And then
Please-god-let-it-not-be-too-late
Maybe have the
Courage
To get
Smaller
And Believe
That somehow
Someway
there would
miracle of miracles
be enough of me
to go around.
May it be so.
Thank you God for
Snow and
Blogging
And waking up before the boys
And Elliott coming downstairs
Just now,
Lifting my hair up
And
Kissing the back of my neck.
Wonder of wonders.
I hear the footsteps coming
My Down Syndrome cowboy draws near
To rope me in
I am all his
8:19:22 AM
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Pass Your Plate
Carve me up
Like a side of
Beef
Rump roast here
Tenderloin
There.
Shouldn’t there be
Plenty
Of me
To go around?
But there isn’t.
No where near
Enough.
Too little of
Me
Isn’t it ironic?
How much of me would there
Have to be
For there to be
Enough?
7:35:31 AM
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Thursday, December 29, 2005
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Death by Donut
I am feeling more than sorry for myself. I haven't found a miracle in days. I'm too tired and too discouraged. I don't want to write because all I can seem to do is whine and complain. But not writing has led first to cookie dough, then to the actual cookies, then brownie dough, then some pop tarts, then some sugar wafers, then some chocolates, then some more cookies, a little pie, and then today- the bottom of the barrel- Dunkin Donuts. I bought munchkins for a family on my caseload. I felt I had to take them something because my sitter has been sick all week and I had to take Walker with me to work today while I visited them. Talk about feeling like a loser- I am going to have to quit this job and I am so worried about how I will be without it. Not just the money, which is so out of control now I don't even try to make sense of it. Elliott is always saying we're going to lose the house so I guess my piddly little income isn't exactly saving the day. But before babysitting became impossible to find I felt like working had saved my sanity. But now- this week was the straw that broke the camel's back. Every day has been a nightmare of juggling- Elliott staying home from work, me going in late, leaving early, begging friends, neighbors- mere aquaintances- to watch Walker. Because I can send my older son to a friends house, but people aren't lining up to watch a busy little 8 year old with Down Syndrome and a developing behavior disorder. You know how they say "it takes a village?" well when you have a kid with special needs it takes a metropolis and the irony is that there isn't even a street. If Walker is going to go somewhere (with the exception of a few good friends who can occasionally watch him) it is going to cost me 10-15 dollars an hour. It really hit me last winter when Blair and I had to pay about 40 dollars to go to a wake. When I go to a doctor's appointment it's 15 dollars for the copay and then another 30 for the sitter. Who can go out to a movie or out to eat when you have to save all your money to pay for the pleasure of going to a funeral or having a pap smear??
See what I mean about the whining?
Not to mention the screaming. I have been so nasty to the boys tonight. I hate it when I'm a crappy mother. I just feel so alone and I take it out on them. It's not their problem. They are just being kids. It's not their fault I can hardly ever find a sitter anymore, it's not their fault I have to pay the sitters I can find more than I actually bring home after taxes, it's not their fault the Lipitor I'm taking seems to be giving me terrible muscle and joint pain, it's not their fault their father wishes he were traveling the world not living in our stinky little house, it's not their fault the toilet is broken, that the caulking has peeled off the tub, that the tub is now leaking into the kitchen, that the house is falling apart and that I don't know how the fuck to make any money and take care of myself and take care of these children God must have thought I could take care of. That is if God has anything to do with anything which sometimes I just really doubt. And if Hesh* does then I think Hesh is sometimes just the slightest bit cruel or at the very least inept. I know I shouldn't say that and it's just totally against my find-the-miracles program to be so negative about God but I guess I'm just pretty pissy today.
*Hesh is what my older son decided to call God today. He had the nerve to say to me that since God made Adam first and made Eve second- AND out of Adam (what a stupid, patriarchal story)then God is obviously a man and the earth is obviously male. I threw quite a little fit and said not so fast there future misogynist. I explained as sweetly as I could muster that in Genesis it says that God created Adam AND Eve in his image. I said to my son- if we are ALL made in the made in the image of God then God is both male and female. Which he found perfectly reasonable and then said, "Well then- shouldn't God be called HeShe instead of He. No, wait- it should be Hesh(that's a long e, as in He)he decided. I liked that. Hesh. Sometimes I just can't find God. Or the miracles or really much of anything except worry over money and so many, many regrets and a deep deep wish that I could make my husband happy. I love my boys- all three of them- and yet I seem so powerless to help any of them. May God help me if that is how hesh works!!
7:39:11 PM
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Wednesday, December 21, 2005
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Fake Christmas Tree, God Forbid
Last night my husband FINALLY climbed the ladder to the attic and brought down our- it's hard to even write-fake Christmas tree. I never in my entire life thought I'd have a fake Christmas tree. Not only did I grow up in the country where we grew and cut our own trees off our own ancestral land, we also sold Christmas trees- nice tall, thin, elgant ones. And now I have a Christmas tree my husband bought on clearance one year. I finally gave in that year after a huge fight over my lousy housekeeping, pine-needles-stuck-in-the-rug-still at Easter, well-your-family-is-so-tacky-anyway, well-your-family's-tree-might-have-been-perfect-but-it-was-all-a-lie. After that text book, leading-up-to-the-holiday-stress-induced-marital-blow-out, I agreed to a fake tree while we still had a child who couldn't resist the temptaions of a real tree: playing in the water, putting things in the water, shaking the needles off the branches, etc. I think we're finally past that point now actually. And while my older son still longs for a real tree- having had them before, Walker is more than satisfied with the fake. Last night he "helped" his father put the tree together. This always makes me a bit queasy to watch. It's like watching one of those surgery channels. Some things I just think we're not meant to see. One of them is the sawing into the skull of a person lying on an operating table. Another is a naked pole covered with a slight green fuzz of something that I guess is supposed to suggest a trunk. Except for being green instead of brown.?? It's kind of an embarrassing sight- I just wanted to throw a blanket over it or something. However, Walker was absolutely delighted. He knows most of his colors now and some of the branches are color-coded so he could help his father. "I elp you daddy, here daddy, here ellow. Yea tree. I elp. I big man elp daddy." Yes I got out the camera and actually recorded the assembling of the fake tree for the first time. Walker is like that. He is always turning things around for me. Last night I was so glad my husband had the foresight to get a tree his little boy with Down Syndrome would be able to help "build". Now Walker calls it "my tree" which makes his brother less than happy. But I know it's not my tree. I can take no credit. This years tree- fake though it is- is perfect to Walker. And that's more than good enough for me.
6:45:26 AM
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Friday, December 16, 2005
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Can you spell M-O-O-D-S-W-I-N-G??
Whoa- sorry about that. Menopause is not a pretty sight up close is it?? So sorry to have written on my worst hormonal day. However, I think it did save me from killing myself slowly with donuts so, thanks for bearing with me out there.
And thanks to those who suggested I get professional help. I haven't had a med. adjustment in almost a year so I think it's probably time for the annual tune-up...
Part of what feels so awful, so bound up, is that when I started this crazy blog I was so desperate it wasn't even a rational act, it was just a hand thrown out to the universe and then it blew me away there were actually real live people out there who would give a damn. And now, well, now I'm all self-conscious and haven't been able to just free associate at the keys the way I did at first. I'm afraid I'm going to be a bummer since right now there's so much confusing me. And also, I suddenly got worried about who might find my blog. It doesn't help that I was SO impulsive at 4 in the morning when I suddenly decided to set up my blog, that I didn't think it through and I put some of my real name there and the other day when I went back to work someone said, "Hey- do you have a blog?" which I sure as hell would NOT have wanted co-workers to know. And they said, "We were googling our names and an email you sent out asking for help getting your real name off your blog came up on google. Do you have a blog? Can we read it??" etc. etc. etc.
I felt sick. So, how do you all handle the blog thing? The last thing I need is one more secret in my life. My blog is not secret, it's not like I'm ashamed of it, but there are a lot of people I wouldn't want to read it if I could help it. I suppose there's no way I can get myself off google is there?? Experienced bloggers- tell me the inside scoops on the world of blogging and help me not make anymore stupid mistakes...
I've been feeling too frightened and sorry for myself to find my miracle a day and I find I am thinking and missing junk food a lot. Plus, I work with all women and I hate to sound ignorant but women DO talk about food a lot, especially chocolate and of course they eat it, and of course my dear, dear clients are giving me chocolate for Xmas because EVERYONE in the world knows how I love, love, love it, but just imagine if you tried to stop drinking and everyone around you was popping Champagne corks all day and expounding on the marvels of feeling nicely tipsy. It makes me tired. I have to spend so much energy visualizing and mantra-ing and centering and trying to be very eastern in my mind and imagine myself sipping tea in a tub, choosing health and life and light instead of donuts and the dark of chocolate and slow death. But it's hard to meditate on The Light at work because I'm supposed to be- you know- working, and because I have to call government agencies a lot and that is just about the antithesis of The Light and is enough to make you want coffee, a donut AND a cigarette. If there are many things that can make you feel more powerless in life than trying to maneuver through a state agency I don't know them.
On the other hand, I love the clients I work with. Most of my career I've spent working with families of children with disabilities and I always found it heartbreaking and inspiring but now I find it moves me at a level I don't even have language for. I have mothers on my caseload who have given nearly every waking moment of their llives since having a profoundly disabled child caring for that child: suctioning, doing chest PT, tube-feeding, changing diapers, wrangling and battling on the phone and at meetings to make sure their kid gets what they need. And some of these moms have just about broken under the weight of all they must do but most have no | | | |
