A Little Journal Entry on Homework, Blues, and Gratitude

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Back in the day, when I was reading every book I could find on infertility and adoption and…well, babies, I came across a story (somewhere in there) about a new mother — thanks to in vitro or some other modern miracle — with a cranky baby. Her friend comes to visit, and the baby is howling. The new mommy, at her wit’s end, says, “I know, I know, I asked for this.” And her friend says, “Honey, you begged for it.”

My daughters are no longer babies, but the last few months — with all three living at home — have somehow managed to remind me of the intensity and difficulty of having infants and toddlers and preschoolers underfoot. This summer, as much as I ever yearned to have children, I have yearned for them to grow up and move on. 

A lot of this feeling stems from Em’s summer on-line classes. “I can’t work at home,” she tells me. “I hate the library.” What she likes to do is to go to a coffee place and drink iced black-tea lemonades or fancy coffee drinks that look like milkshakes. But sitting at Tully’s or Starbuck’s, I can usually get her to focus for an hour or two…or more. Bit-by-bit she has worked all the way through an algebra class and part way through U.S. History. Wish us luck in getting through to the final exams (in both classes) by Sept. 6.

It’s so easy to complain about our lives, about diapers and crying babies and laundry and homework and housework and even book deadlines. But the other day, while supposedly working on a class, Emma wanted to talk about the our recent Mukilteo tragedy, the shooting of four young people who were Kamiak high school graduates.

I listened to Em as she reported on all that she and her friends have been processing, and what she has been told about the funerals. She concluded with something one of the fathers said: “I was supposed to be driving him to college. Instead, I’m attending his funeral.” And, looking old and wise, gravely shaking her head, she went back to work.

That was all it took to flip my blues off and the gratitude on. All the petty drama we’ve gone through in the last few months — the clutter and sugar and road trips for family stuff and the mess (which I am always complaining about) — is so worth it, with all three of my daughters. They have big hearts and they are fiercely independent in spirit, if not quite out of my house yet. Someday (I truly believe) they really will be grown up and ensconced in their own lives. And I will miss the hell out of them.

I have been reading a friend’s memoir about the decline and loss of her parents, and she shares this quote:

“Those who can perceive eternity in the sea understand there is no death,

only change, there is no loss, only difficult gifts.”  -Maryanne Radmacher-Hershey

I am not sure that I’m evolved enough to fully take in what Radmacher is saying. I only know that it resonates with me. (See the blog, Spirit Stones, for more from my friend).

Meanwhile, I’m so thankful that I get to hang out with this kid. It’s been a great way to spend my time this summer.

 

(One of the young people killed had been in choir with Emma, and was planning to become a nurse. If you would like to donate to the Anna Bui World of Hope Scholarship, please visit this link: https://www.uwb.edu/advancement/annabui/give-to-anna)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rethinking Regret

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regretsLast night I couldn’t sleep. This morning, I was thumbing through a notebook, from 2004, and I found this poem by Elaine Sexton. I had copied it out without noting where I found it. On-line, I learned that it was first published in American Poetry Review.

Rethinking Regret

Let’s thank our mistakes, let’s bless them
for their humanity, their terribly weak chins.
We should offer them our gratitude and admiration
for giving us our clefts and scarring us with
embarrassment, the hot flash of confession.
Thank you, transgressions! for making us so right
in our imperfections. Less flawed, we might have
turned away, feeling too fit, our desires looking
for better directions. Without them we might have
passed the place where one of us stood, watching
someone else walk away, and followed them,
while our perfect mistake walked straight towards us,
walked right into our cluttered, ordered lives
that could have been asleep, but instead
stayed up, all night, forgetting the pill,
the good book, the necessary eight hours,
and lay there — in the middle of the bed —
keeping the heart awake — open and stunned,
stunning. How unhappy perfection must be
over there on the shelf without a crack, without
this critical break — this falling — this sudden, thrilling draft.

To hear Elaine Sexton read this poem aloud, follow this link.

say goodbye, say hello

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Seattle’s poetry bookstore, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, invites you to stop by after hours on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, August 26, 27, and 28, 2016, to say goodbye and thank you to longtim…

Source: say goodbye, say hello

Crazy Brave

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This past week a friend of mine invited me to go to Portland and write poetry. My mother was stable, my kiddo was home from camp and getting caught up on her on-line classes. My husband would have to do without me for only three days and two nights. We were staying at my friend’s daughter’s apartment (she was in Iceland!), so there was no cost other than a couple of meals out (and a trip to Powell’s Books, of course). How could I say no?

image borrowed from bryanpattersonfaithworks.wordpress.com

Because it was 90-95 degrees in Portland, and I don’t do well in heat, I woke one morning with a migraine. Once I’d recovered, I decided to take a short walk, got lost, and walked two miles. But I proved surprisingly resilient. Even without the right meds in my bag, I recovered. I went to movies (ah, air conditioning!), and enjoyed wonderful meals. I drank lots of water. I took naps. I wrote and wrote and wrote. My friend and I took breaks to read to each other, our own work, and poems by favorite poets. I bought Joy Harjo’s memoir, Crazy Brave, and read the first 50 pages in no time flat.

My life has been about 1000 times easier than Joy Harjo’s, but I’d like to claim that it was a little brave of me to drop everything and go to Portland. I know for certain that writing is brave, if it’s any good, if it’s true. (Joy Harjo’s poetry is crazy brave.)

One theme of my new poetry manuscript is loss, and life keeps very happily offering me examples to draw from. A good friend has gone through so much loss this year that it looks as though she’s cutting loose from everything familiar — from God, from me, from all that she can’t seem to help feeling betrayed by. I tried this week to write about her, about my complex feelings, my huge longing to do something about this situation. My inept attempts to do anything effective.

Another book I was reading — not coincidentally to everything else I’ve been thinking about — is Rita Dove’s Mother Love, a retelling of the story of Demeter and Persephone. I thought a lot about my friend, but also about my mother and me, and my daughters. For my postcards, I wrote some very short poems in a Demeter voice. I’m not sure they were very good, but I mailed them anyway (which was sort of brave). In my journal I wrote questions.

  • What is it exactly that I’m afraid to do?
  • What is feeding my fears and how do I stop feeding them?
  • What small acts would move in the opposite direction of fear?
  • What might I do now that would feel just a little brave?
  • What would be crazy brave?