Painting:'Sun Being', by  Chris Manvell

Re-embodiment.

In the past it was said by way of consolation that Death makes all men equal. That feeling, which died out of men's minds, now comes back to us again as a riper insight. We men wander together through our existence for thousands of years. I may probably be meeting the man who is standing before me, not for the first time, probably not for the last. That which he outwardly wears is a disguise. His true value may raise him above me, not only inwardly now, but later also outwardly. The king is king for this time, the beggar is now a beggar. Out of such insight into life, if it burns with full power and warmth in the soul, a new deep human feeling must grow. Is not our age, this very age of social study, asking that humanity of feeling shall be established anew on a more sublime foundation? It is easy to preach this humaneness; it is hard to establish it; without a new deep insight it cannot be maintained, still less brought to life again. Every time we meet anyone, we must look at the person, at the ego which is before us, which is travelling through its incarnations. The world is waiting for a thought, for a truth which will re-establish its humaneness'.
~ Rudolf Steiner.

gifted v. regular

I sent my now-35 year old daughter to public school when she started first grade. I had never gone to a public school. We lived, then, in Minneapolis which was almost completely white but the public schools in that city were almost entirely black, latino and immigrants. Mpls had some great, on paper, magnet schools and we scored a spot in one of the city's 'best' schools. My daughter's school was designated an ESL (English as Second Language) site and there were 67 different first languages in that school. I was thrilled to be giving my child such a diversity and, I hoped, rich community/school. I eschewed private school with this reasoning: I had witnessed white flight to suburban schools in my home town of Chicago and in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I decided that if all whites segregated their kids to poor, inner city white schools and communities, the future looked bleak. I decided my white child would not tap into that racist trend

In her first year in that 'best' public school, my daughter scored in the high nineties on her annual standardized testing. Both of her parents are lawyers and, living with me, she had always had an enriched cultural life. That and I sent her to superb day care facilities that were comparable to great preschools.

In her second year in the best public school in our city, her test scores were down in the 80's.

In the third grade, her test schools slid further, suggesting to me that my child, who had been diagnosed as severely gifted before she was two years old by her pediatrician, was atrophying. Oh, she had fun at school but she was not learning anything, Or learning much.

Also in the third grade, a poor black kid named Tony, who actually looked like the shabbiest boy in the whole school, with not just ratted nappy hair but sometimes little bits of stuff in his hair. Tony never had warm clothes on for cold days. Even now, almost 30 years later, I see that stressed out little boy and feel my heart pinch.

Tony may have had a crush on my daughter because she shone like the sun and, and she never could explain this to me, she always played with black kids. Later, in h.s., she told me to expect to have a black son-in-law because she found black people more attractive than white ones. [she is with a white man these days but she's done it all: multicolored men and women, settling in with the, probably no coincidentally, the very rich white guy she is with today].

Tony began to enlist his cousin to help him chase my daughter at recess, so the cousin could hold her down while Tony dry humped her. This greatly upset my daughter, of course. And there were, allegedly, paid union teachers on the playground supervising the children. Yet when I suggested to the principal when we met that perhaps the teachers doing playground supervision could stop Tony from dry humping my daughter, I was told I could not expect those paid playground teachers to see everything. I said "What's not to see? A seven year old girl is screaming with a boy on top of her? How the heck does any responsible adult miss that?" To which the principal responded to me that she had scheduled multiple home visits with Tony's parents because poor little Tony was a problem in all kinds of ways. But, she went on, no one ever answered the door when she showed up. Then the principal, a black woman as it happened, shrugged, waived her hands and said to me "What else can I do?" To which I responded, turning into lawyer warrior mom, "You can do your job and make sure that my daughter is no assaulted almost daily at recess.  She is entitled to be safe at school, including recess, and I bet I could sue the school district for this negligence. You are on notice of her abuse by Tony. You are on notice that your teachers are not doing their job at recess. And you are allowing my child to suffer abuse."  I decided in that meeting that I had to find another school for my kid.

And I did. I had almost enrolled her in Waldorf at the beginning of her educational journey but it was so white, so Western-European-centric. Waldorf turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her or to me (well, I don't know what great things have happened to her since she was a teenager, for she has not talked to me since she was a teenager.  . . )

I had already decided to get her out of that public school when her test scores plummeted. When she was less than two, her pediatrician really did tell me I had a severely gifted child and with that giftedness, he said, came higher responsibilites as the parent. I had to find a gifted school for her. I had to provide her with greater enrichment.  Blah blah blah. I knew being raised by very smart me was plenty of enrichment. And, I swear, as that pediatrician talked, and he even said "I am not kidding here, you don't seem to be taking me seriously. I don't tell parents their children are very gifted very often. I never do." I had said polite things like "Thanks, we're proud of her" and "Thank you doctor, we think she is smart too." I was being polite. What did he think I should have said?  I was being modest, being polite. I knew my kid was a genius. I knew I was and that everyone in my blkood line was. People told me all the time how smart my kid seemed and I had developed a polite neutral answer "Thank you, we are proud of her." and "Thank you, we think she is smart too".

But when that doc said I had to get her in a gifted school, I swear, I intuitively sensed Waldorf. Right in that exam room, I felt that there was a school in the world that would give my daughter what she needed without going gifted. Waldorf, an educational pedagogy that every human would benefit from. I didn't know about Waldorf but I felt Waldorf energy as I instantly rejected the idea of a gifted kid program.

Years later, I met a colleague who had adopted a Vietnamese boy that she often remarked was gifted, exceptionally intelligent. She had him in a special gifted school. We were not friends, just collegial acquaintances, so I didn't tell her that I thought she was unwise to send her kid to a gifted program.

I knew my daughter needed to have her heart and emotions addressed in her education and I knew that most gifted programs teach to a gifted kid's left brain. My kid, I knew, was a right brain, full heart, little girl.

I made the right decision with that wrong turn into my liberal doooder attempt to change white flight.

Hurricane by Mary Oliver

Hurricane
by: Mary Oliver
It didn't behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn't stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn't
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
which is what I dream of for me.
From her book, Wondrous Morning

hot water

I keep swimming daily, of course. Perhaps it is the long holiday weekend that has my pools not-so-crowded. I am amazed by how few folks come out to swim on these very hot days.

I always bring a bottle of chilled water with me when I swim, keeping the bottle on the side of pool, next to whichever lane I am using. Yesterday I left the water in my bag, sitting in the sun. IN the time it took me to do my laps, with my mind increasingly focussed on getting a drink of that water, I considered getting out to get the bottle. I did not want to lose my spot in the pool. So I thirsted the whole swim.

As soon as I got out, I rushed to the bottle.

The water was warm and getting hot. It was buried from sunlight but the ambient heat is so intense that it heated up my water.

Luckily, the pool I was in has one of those slick new water fountains with a place to fill bottles. I love such water fountains. I dumped out the hot water and drew a long, cold bottle full of cold.

Few things are more delicious than cold water. This is true, for me, on any way. I always chill my drinking water at home. And cold water out in the sun in a record-breaking heat wave is even better.

"My purpose was, not to describe human experiences, but to show how a spiritual world is revealed in man through spiritual organs." ~Rudolf Steiner

errands

Library, Social Security office, Trader Joe's, customer service at UC Berkeley Sports/Rec. A friend gifted me the gym fees for a whole year for my birthday. I love this friend. Rode the recumbent stationary bike as my pain specialist presses me to do. Riding a stationary bike is boring. I have found that exercise that leaves me joyful is the exercise I actually do. This week, I have no easy access to swimming so I did the recumbent staionary bike. Yup, it is way boring.

Nothing to stop me from working on my writing, eh? So that's what's up.

white flight from city public schools

Me and my five siblings all went to Catholic schools, which, in Southside Chicago were not usually particularly academic. At my all girls h.s. I don't think the majority of girls wanted to go to college, for example. My folks set the expectation that all their kids would go to college but their Catholic side bogged us down in mediocre schools to prepare for college. Water over the dam. . .

My daughter graduated magna cum laude from an IVY.   I have read that most Harvard grades these day (my kid did not go to Harvard) get mostly A's so maybe graduating magna is not a big deal but, fuck that, I am very proud of her magna cum laude.  

 

When she started school, my divorced ex assumed I'd send her to private schools -- Catholic schools, as he and I had both gone to Catholic schools K-12. . .  but not me. Living in Minneapolis, which was known, back then at least, for its good public schools, I decided to send my daughter to public school. This was in the late eighties. I reasoned that if all the white families pulled their kids out of public schools, and many white families had already fled to suburbs but private schools allowed some whites to stay in the city and live in white bubbles. I decided I had a social responsibility to put my genius daughter (she was 'diagnosed' as gifted by her pediatrician when she was not yet two . . . and she is super smart) in public schools. Sure I took care to get her into a magnet school, which is what public education was doing back then, in the Midwest, to retain white kids. Magnet schools were better schools.All schools should be good and magnet schools seem to magnify educational injustice but one lives in the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be.

My daughter's school was also designated as an English as Second Language site so her school had lots of children of recent immigrants, and some of the kids were immigrants. I was thrilled. My daughter was going to school with a worldwide array of cultures!!!  Over sixty langauges were the first language of the students in that school. This thrilled me. And she seemed to love the fascinating kids she got to know.

and my daughter was a star in first grade. She was bored with classes but her first grade teacher was also smart; she appointed my daughter as tutor to a couple Hmong girls to help them read. This gave Katie, my kid, incentive. Hmongs, as not all may know, were a culture with no reading and writing when they fled Cambodia because of war. Hmongs landed in MN at very high rates because MN, at least back then, had such great social services.

In the second grade, my Katie was placed in the gifted kids program at her school. The gifted kid program, and I wish I were making this up, was comprised of one hour a week in the library with other gifted kids. Hanging out. The boys took over the, in those days, very few computers. My star, a budding feminist I guess, borrowed my micro-tape-record, which I had used when I did some criminal defense legal work: the cops wouldn't let lawyers copy the cop files so lawyers would take their micro-tape-records and dictate the entire contents of the police files so they could use them to prep for trial. My seven year old first lodged protests, complaining that only the gifted boys got to use the computers. The teacher in charge denied her accusation. So my star tape recorded the next one hour of enrichment in the library. I did not tell her that I did not think her tape would reveal much. Nowadays, a girl in her position could video, eh? Apparently her staking out evidence yielded results. AFter her tape recording, girls got half of the time on the computers: 30 minutes of computer enrichment a week. Unsupervised computer enrichment. The tech divide had begun: why did the boys know how to play on those computers but the girls had no idea what to do on a compouter? And why did the paid teacher assigned to gifted enrichment only twiddle her thumbs in the library for that gifted hour? The entirety of programs for bored, gifted kids.

Also in the second grade, Katie cried about how much she missed tutoring those Hmong girls. Cried in school, not to me. So she was allowed to spend part of each school day tutoring her Hmong friends again.  Her second grade teacher had done something right and her first grade teacher let Katie return to tutor new kids that year.  Katie was so proud to be the only tutor at her age!!

She could miss class a lot because she was/is so smart that she knew everything 'taught' in classes.  I was the same way. Each new year in grade school, I would read the entire content of all our textbooks for the year within the first week and then bide my time. The nuns tried to get my folks to enroll me in a, gasp, public school for gifted kids, but my parents demurred:  my one older brother, who managd to be an asshole at a very young age, like age 3 and up, my parents decided, would make our whole family life hell if they let me go to that gifted school. I think they were right but I wondered then and I wonder now: how did my two ineffectual, damaged parents decided to NEVER discipline Chuck the fuck (an endearment I only attached to him in my forties when my much younger sister and I compared notes: Chuck was a fuck to all the kids. Silly me, I thought all my four brothers had at least doted on the baby sister . . but, nope, our three other brothers hid for cover, leaving us girls vulnerable to Chuck's nonstop bullying and frequent violence. Where were our parents? Where indeed:|?*

Two pivotal events lead me to take my kid out of public school and put he rin Waldorf (the best decision I ever made): Tony Kennedy began to enlist his cousin to hold down my daughter so Tony, also age 7, could dry hump my daughter. She complained to the playground teacher supervisors who did nothing. She told me and I met with the principal to insist that my little girl had a right to be protected from being assaulted. The principal, a black woman as it happens, with a PhD, shrugged and asked me what I thought she could do. I said 'I don't know, maybe have the teachers paid to supervise recess actually supervise recess? My kid is screaming for help when Tony jumps on her. Help her?" Then the principal said "For your information, I have scheduled several home visits with Tony's parents and when I show up, no one answers the door. There is nothing I could do."

As I stood up to leave, I said "You could provide a safe envirionment for my kid and all the kids without talking to Tony's parents and I think I could sue you for failing to protect my child from this daily assault."

By the time I got to my car, I had decided my liberal guilt experiment of sending my great white hope to the local public school was over.

And, as an added note: in the first grade, her standardized test scores were al in the high nineties. In the second grade, her standardized test scores were all in the seventies and low eighties: her skills were atrophying in the magnet school, allegedly one of the best schools in Mineapolis.

*Chuck ended up living at home with our divorced father and brother Tom, then age 10, 11, 12, 13. Chuck hit Tom most days, telling him a voice in his closet told him he had to hit Tomy. When I found out about this abuse, I asked my dad to stop it. He shrugged broadly, waiving his hands helplessly and asked "what can I do? Chuck is  a man, I can't stop him." I said "You can tell Chuck he can live here anymore if he keeps hitting Tom." Dad said "I can't do that." He could have done that. And this is how my parents had always responded to Chuck's violence.  And no one needs to try and tell me Chuck was just a bully in general: Chuck knew he could not beat up the children of other adults and he knew he could get away with hurting us, his siblings, our parents lesser children. Only one of us got to be the first born penis.

the cunning in evil beings

I remind you that the nasty house at Hogwarts was called Slytherin and were sometimes seemingly tied to Voldemort, Rowlings' stand in for evil. I note this allusion to fiction because I agree with you, that DonJohn is cunning and manipulative. I happen to believe that evil often comes with evil genius, a deep cunning manipulative talent that is reptilian (slitherin?) to many.

We would be lucky if Trump were a stupid hapless idiot. It takes cunning and intelligence to be truly evil, imo. But I also think evil people can be somewhat analogous to idiot savants only evil savants: so badly wounded, maybe in past lives, that they are able to behave in a manner all decent persons consider despicable but to evil savants, well, their measurement of normal is part of their deep woundedness.

I have a few unfinished novels. My favorite one has evil characters, with Dick Cheney my main character model when I first outlined it, who get sent to Love Camps where it is not really a prison. Persons sent to Love Camps are deemed evil and must stay there to be loved deeply and well, to be guided to recover, using the arts and lots of love. The most gifted and respected members of the society in this novel work in Love Camps, for it is work only the most spiritually advanced humans can do. In my mind, I used Waldorf kindergarden teachers (and, I guess, all kindergarden teachers) who are believed, in the Waldorf tradition and Anthroposophy). Love Camp loving workers are like the most supreme high priesteses on the planet, the most spiritually evolved (and sure they can be males but I can use female centered language if I choose to).

In Anthposophy, kindergarden teachers are widely regarded (revered?) to be some of the most special humans whose karma brings them to work with children at one of the most key developmental points in their lives: lots of good things happens around age five and humans blessed to have angel kindergarden teachers often thrive more than others. So in my Love Camps, very spiritually evolved people, people who have worked through all their own shit and likely have already lived many lives, are entrusted to love the evil who are sent to Love Camps. . . It is not easy to see these characters, the evil ones sentenced to Love Camps, as healed so they likely spend their lives in Love Camps -- but this is their choice. They would be given deep nurturing, deep exposure to art, community, love . . . I think, other than procrastination and a lack of faith in my writing talent . . I think what has stopped me from finishing my Love Camp novel (it is about more than the camps!) is I can't imagine someone like Dick Cheney or DonBoy ever being released. Which would not be the end of the world -- perhaps it could be analogous to places that take in previously abused animals and provide them with good care for the rest of their lives. Love Camps would not be prisons, but richly artistic and spiritual places, saturated in beauty. High thread count sheets, superbly healthy and delicious meals. . . . and 'my' Love Camps are a loving response to both death camps under Hitler and prisons with too many black men. We could convert many prisons to Love Camps but they would be like what we think of as prisons except in the sense no one sent to live in one could leave until his or her healing master deemed them no longer evil. DonBoy is so damaged. I can't imagine him ever healing enough to be released from a love camp.

And, as if I have not already diverged far eough off course here, I will share one more story. I believe my mother was evil. She certainly was intensely narcissistic. I did not know this growing up. I remember the first time I ever saw a psychiatrist -- who only saw me for some med mananagement (I was close to catatonic with depression except, as he and my psychologist noted under oath, in my relationship to my then-infant) he was a dear friend to my first psychologist -- after he did his diagnostic intake with me, he said "It wounds like you were not raised in an environment in which you were able to develop self esteem, in which you were allowed to thrive", to which I responded "Gee, ya think?"

So, I grew up, tried to build a life but I am mostly a failed being. Still, I have had some upswings. And I don't think I am evil -- damaged, a broken-winged bird, but not evil. Once, a close friend of mind, also a PhD psychologist (so many of them in this world or just in mine?) asked to spend some time chatting with my mother just the two of them. This friend was, I suspected at the time, skeptical of my harsh judgment of my mother -- I never abandoned my relationship with my mother, I did become increasingly adept at dodging her cruelty but I showed up in her life as much as I could -- anyway, my friend Joni the shrink met with my mom to suss out whether my assessment of my mother was remotely accurate. In hindsight, I am surprised I agreed; I guess I deeply trusted Joni. After their meeting, Joni told me she had been surprised by how cunning my mother was. Spot on assessment of my mom, one I had not considered before. My mom's cunning, used so skillfully to use me as she offloaded the work of raising her endless stream of no-birth-control Catholic babies, preventing me from doing my work of being a child because I was always responsible for her latest babies, was masterful. I had never noted it for an instant, and I had had a lot of therapy by the time my friend Joni spotted mom's cunning, until Joni saw it.

draft: the roses were not from her

More of the story of my birthday roses. My only child, and only family, lives in Illinois, in Chicagoland. I don't know where she lives for she has shunned me since she was 19. She is now 35. Chicago is my hometown but I raised Katie in Minneapolis. I don't know exactly how she landed in Chicago, for it happened after she dumped me.
I was out when my roses were dropped off in front of my front door. When I got home and saw them, of course I knew someone had sent me flowers for my birthday and I was happy to see the box. When I picked it up, I saw that the flowers had come from Downers Grove, IL, a Chicago suburb. Tears stung my eyes. I fought off my cursed hope that the flowers might have been from my daughter. I know she is gone for good, I feel it deep in my mothering heart, but I am an imperfect human and hope, as Emily Dickinson so aptly put it in one of her poems, hope is that thing with feathers. Hope will float up on its own.
As I rushed into my apartment, putting down my things, rushing to open the flowers, finding scissors and then eagerly digging around for a card to confirm who they were from, I kept crying even though my heart was like a stone, even though I knew they would not be from her.
They were from a dear friend, someone I love very much. Actually, my deep love for her was just as instant as my deep love for my child, the love I began to feel within days of her conception. This friend who sent the roses is special. I met her on an island in Puget Sound. We were both at a four-day, residential weekend retreat. At the end of the first, introductory evening, just about everyone stepped outside to ring a bell in the courtyard outside the venue. It was a tradition to ring that bell, one after another.
like those soldiers in the Wizard of Oz who march in line but then the Lion, scarecrow, and the tinman, who have stolen some soldier uniforms drop out of line to help Dorothy . . . and we can see the lion's tail sticking out as they try to blend in, I got in line to ring the bell but hung back, having no intention of going out. It was fall in Puget Sound so it was raining.
When I ducked out of the line, I noticed a woman I had met a few times before. She was always warm and friendly and I moved towards her, imagining she would be easy company while I hid from the bellringing. I thought she was alone so I walked towards her. When i got close enough, in the unlit room with darkness without, I saw another woman was seated with her. And she saw me. She also saw that I had begun to turn, to change course. I wanted to change course because I felt this woman's great power, great loving power and I knew she would see me.Really see me, you know? So I decided to pretend I was headed to the restroom. I smiled a greeting and tried to scurry away to avoid that amazing woman who, I was telling myself, was too special for the likes of me.
This too special woman, however, stood up and said "I apologize, Jo, for cutting you off, but a special being has just entered our midst and I must stop and greet her" and she introduced herself and asked my name, then began to introduce me to Jo but I said I knew Jo. In the big circle of forty or more, everyone had been asked to say their name to introduce themselves. I, for reasons I don't remember but were likely connected to my profound introversion, had declined to just say my name. so my friend said "I am Maggie. What is your name?" This friend would never call me Tree, only Therese. And every time I hear her say it, even when I only 'hear' her say it in my mind's eye, I feel blessed. I feel love. I feel bigger, brighter, holier when Maggie greets me. She greeted me, that night in Thomas Berry Hall as if I were just as special as she. I am. We all are.
So getting a dozen gorgeous roses from my dear, dear Maggie was totally wonderful. Totally.
And my Katie bruise still hurts. I would be hurting if the flowers had been from her. No roses can repair my damaged heart.
But roses from someone who loves me: a healing balm!
When I cried about my Katie as I opened my flowers, I remembered some of Maggie's losses and remembered how she has borne up so beautifully, growing in love even as she endured loss after loss.
I changed my FB name to Therese because that's what Maggie calls me and my heart feels fuller when I imagine her saying my name. That's a good reason, right?
Katie always called me Mom. My heart always felt fuller when Katie called me Mom. I cannot hear her saying it in my mind now, no matter how hard I try.

a strong, mental dandelion puff

My daughter left me when she was 19. She is now 35. I truly have no understanding of why she left. We rarely quarreled. I made mistakes as a parent, as all parents do but I was definitely not abusive. Perhaps my biggest mistake was overindulging her. And I think she hated that I am poor, have not worked much because of a disability (not my fault, eh?) and she might be ashamed of having a poor mother. But this is all guesswork and it is getting unusual for me to write such defensive thoughts. She left. I did nothing to deserve losing my only child. She's gone.

When she was about to turn 24, in 2006, I decided I would give her what she seemed to want. I had used versions of her name or my pet names for her for all my passwords, so that meant I was typing out names for her all the time, and trying to will her to come back. As a silent birthday gift, I changed all my passwords so I no longer typed any version of her name.

And, gosh this seems so long ago and in 2006 my feelings were so much more raw than they are now, I was getting pretty good at not longing for her.

For her 24th birthday, unbeknownst to her, I gave her my withdrawal from wanting her.

And on her actual birthday, and I planned this, I meditated for an hour. Then I held an image in my mind of a dandelion puff, all fluffy white seeds ready to be blown by the wind to seed new dandelions. My plan was to mentally blow away every bit of that dandelion puff and, in doing so, I hoped, I would be blowing away the way I was trying so hard within myself to hang onto her.

Consciously, I was fully committed to letting her go emotionally. And I really believed the dandelion puff blowing, which was something I made up. would help me.

I did not foresee that I would be unable, even in a mental image in my mind, to blow away many of the seeds on that dandelion puff.

I tried to blow her away. I tried to let her go. And my mind, or spirit, just could not do it.

And here I am, 16 years into her withdrawal from my life, and my longing does not abate.

I shared with a former acquaintance, someone I confused as a friend for several years, my dandelion puff ritual. When I told him that I had been unable to blow away much of the dandelion seeds in my mental visualization he said "That is one tough dandelion."

I gave little thought, back then, to the weed I chose. Now, laughing at myself and loving myself, I am thinking about how ubiquitous dandelions can be and how hard it is to get them our of a lawn. One has to get every bit of the stem and the stem is nearly always longer than one things, to get rid of just one dandelion. It is best to weed dandelions when the ground is very wet. It can feel so lovely to pull a particularly large dandelion and tug it just right and see the entire root come out of the wet ground:  it tapers down to a tiny point but often there is more below ground than above and many miss all the below ground bits, or most of the below ground bits.

say, maybe that was my mistake. Instead of blowing at a dandelion puff, perhaps I should visualize weeding a lawn or garden patch full of dandelions, visualize pulling them up all the way to the end of each root.

I will try this sometime. Sometime soon. I am tired of my grief. It is always hard near my birthday.

that shit is biblical

Hymn by Sherman Alexie
Why do we measure people's capacity
To love by how well they love their progeny?
That kind of love is easy. Encoded.
Any lion can be devoted
To its cubs. Any insect, be it prey
Or predator, worships its own DNA.
Like the wolf, elephant, bear, and bees,
We humans are programmed to love what we conceive.
That's why it's so shocking when a neighbor
Drives his car into a pond and slaughter–
Drowns his children. And that's why we curse
The mother who leaves her kids—her hearth—
And never returns. That kind of betrayal
Rattles our souls. That shit is biblical.
So, yes, we should grieve an ocean
When we encounter a caretaker so broken.
But I'm not going to send you a card
For being a decent parent. It ain't that hard
To love somebody who resembles you.
If you want an ode then join the endless queue
Of people who are good to their next of kin—
Who somehow love people with the same chin
And skin and religion and accent and eyes.
So you love your sibling? Big fucking surprise.
But how much do you love the strange and stranger?
Hey, Caveman, do you see only danger
When you peer into the night? Are you afraid
Of the country that exists outside of your cave?
Hey, Caveman, when are you going to evolve?
Are you still baffled by the way the earth revolves
Around the sun and not the other way around?
Are you terrified by the ever-shifting ground?
Hey, Trump, I know you weren't loved enough
By your sandpaper father, who roughed and roughed
And roughed the world. I have some empathy
For the boy you were. But, damn, your incivility,
Your volcanic hostility, your lists
Of enemies, your moral apocalypse—
All of it makes you dumb and dangerous.
You are the Antichrist we need to antitrust.
Or maybe you're only a minor league
Dictator—temporary, small, and weak.
You've wounded our country. It might heal.
And yet, I think of what you've revealed
About the millions and millions of people
Who worship beneath your tarnished steeple.
Those folks admire your lack of compassion.
They think it's honest and wonderfully old-fashioned.
They call you traditional and Christian.
LOL! You've given them permission
To be callous. They have been rewarded
For being heavily armed and heavily guarded.
You've convinced them that their deadly sins
(Envy, wrath, greed) have transformed into wins.
Of course, I'm also fragile and finite and flawed.
I have yet to fully atone for the pain I've caused.
I'm an atheist who believes in grace if not in God.
I'm a humanist who thinks that we’re all not
Humane enough. I think of someone who loves me—
A friend I love back—and how he didn't believe
How much I grieved the death of Prince and his paisley.
My friend doubted that anyone could grieve so deeply
The death of any stranger, especially a star.
"It doesn't feel real," he said. If I could play guitar
And sing, I would have turned purple and roared
One hundred Prince songs—every lick and chord—
But I think my friend would have still doubted me.
And now, in the context of this poem, I can see
That my friend’s love was the kind that only burns
In expectation of a fire in return.
He’s no longer my friend. I mourn that loss.
But, in the Trump aftermath, I've measured the costs
And benefits of loving those who don't love
Strangers. After all, I'm often the odd one—
The strangest stranger—in any field or room.
"He was weird" will be carved into my tomb.
But it’s wrong to measure my family and friends
By where their love for me begins or ends.
It’s too easy to keep a domestic score.
This world demands more love than that. More.
So let me ask demanding questions: Will you be
Eyes for the blind? Will you become the feet
For the wounded? Will you protect the poor?
Will you welcome the lost to your shore?
Will you battle the blood-thieves
And rescue the powerless from their teeth?
Who will you be? Who will I become
As we gather in this terrible kingdom?
My friends, I'm not quite sure what I should do.
I'm as angry and afraid and disillusioned as you.
But I do know this: I will resist hate. I will resist.
I will stand and sing my love. I will use my fist
To drum and drum my love. I will write and read poems
That offer the warmth and shelter of any good home.
I will sing for people who might not sing for me.
I will sing for people who are not my family.
I will sing honor songs for the unfamilar and new.
I will visit a different church and pray in a different pew.
I will silently sit and carefully listen to new stories
About other people’s tragedies and glories.
I will not assume my pain and joy are better.
I will not claim my people invented gravity or weather.
And, oh, I know I will still feel my rage and rage and rage
But I won’t act like I’m the only person onstage.
I am one more citizen marching against hatred.
Alone, we are defenseless. Collected, we are sacred.
We will march by the millions. We will tremble and grieve.
We will praise and weep and laugh. We will believe.
We will be courageous with our love. We will risk danger
As we sing and sing and sing to welcome strangers.
©2017, Sherman Alexie

til tenderness becomes habit

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit.               

~ Audre Lord

we all have super powers

Museum of Capitalism/Threefold Social Order

A Museum of Capitalism, which would, perhaps, be more appropriately named the Museum of Anti-Capitalism, just opened in Oakland. Even though just about everyone I know sees capitalist oligarchy as the root cause of our dying planet and greed-driven culture that allows so many to be homeless and seeks to deny health care to millions, I have been unable to interest anyone in going to the museum. I googled the museum and read a few reviews. My favorite review points out that industries tend to fade away after someone opens a museum to honor them, citing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Newseum. Here's hoping this new museum is the beginning of the end of Capitalism, eh?

I am fascinated that so many of my very left leaning friends have no interest in a museum dedicated to showing the flaws of capitalism. Of course, there are many real life illustrations of capitalisms failure: homeless camps in our cities, hungry humans, children denied decent educations, the prison industrial complex that uses slave labor for private profit, the military industrial complex that thrives on war (you know, war that kills humans so some may profit). . . . If we are going to pull out of the vortex of capitalism, we have to grasp how it fails to serve human need.

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy (and Waldorf Schools, biodynamic farming and, among so many others, the Threefold Social Order) indicated that humans are threefold beings (thinking/feeling/willing) and human culture is threefold: social/artistic/economic. He indicated that for a health threefold social order, each of the three realms must exist in perfect equipoise. This means that the economic realm exists solely to support the social and artistic realms. Social: roads, schools, water, fire trucks; Artistic: creativity, spirit, invention; and Economic. If we had a healthy economic arm of human culture, we would have an economic realm in perfect equipoise with human and the planet's needs.

How did we get to where we are today, with so much inequity and luntaics devoted to ideologies like Ayn Rand's who want to take away basic human needs so the very rich elite can be richer, to a culture of perfect equipoise? Well, we have to understand how we are off and then course correct. Far easier said than done, I know.

An economic realm of human culture that exists solely to serve human and nature's needs. This is very appealing to me, even though I see we are far off course. I aspire to dwell in a Threefold, Healthy, Social Order.

she bruises too easily

I have always bruised easily. I might get a large, dark, purplish bruise just by lightly brushing up against a door.  My long-ago ex, who was physically abusive (and far, far more emotionally abusive), actually used to angrily complain about how much I bruised when he hit me. He had the idea that he had perfected the art of the 'rubber punch', which, he said, was hitting in just the right way so it did not leave a bruise.

We can't believe he did not know when he was physically attacking me because he adapted to my easy bruising by taking care to not hit me below the knees (I wore dresses more back then) or pulling out my hair and even dragging me around by my hair. Such hairpulling, for those who don't know, is very painful. It hurts like heck while being dragged, all one's body weight tugged along by a fistful of one hair.

The fistful of hair tears off in smallsh clusters of hair roots, leaving small, bloody wounds. For days afterwards, it is painful to brush one's hair, painful to shampoo. And brush hair tends to tear off the healing effort by one's scalp, prolonging the pain. 

I never told my ex about the after effects of his hair pulling. I believe he would have done it even more if he knew about the added suffering it lead to.

Once he dragged me from the entrance into our home from the garage, through the foyer, up three stairs to our living room before he dropped my hair, my head, my body, on the living room floor.

Once, driving from Nebraska to Illinois to visit my dad in Chicago, he headed north on I-80 to go to Ames, IA where an aunt and uncle of his lived, the uncle a doctor.  We drove north maybe thirty minutes when he remembered the softball sized, purple and black, bruise on one of my arms. It was summer so my arms were mostly bare. He said, angry with me, "Dammit, we can't go see them. My uncle will see your bruise and think I hit you."

I silently thought "You did hit me."

And then he launched into his oft-repeated rant about how it was my fault that he bruised me, because I bruised so easily.

When I was growing up, schools received public health services such as eye exams for all students, even at private schools like my Catholic schools. Children even received some vaccinations at school. In high school one year, we all got a shot related to tuberculosis. A week after the shot, the nurse came back to look at everyone's arm. Something about how the arm responded to the shot revealed useful data to the nurse.

When I returned for my tuberculosis test follow up, with the skin around where I had gotten the injection surrounded by a four inch diameter, dark, purple bruise, the nurse said "You need some Vitamin K."  I asked her "how do I get Vitamin K?" and she answered "Alfalfa is a great source of alfalfa.  I thought then, and now, that her answer was somewhat flip. No one sold alfalfa in the grocery stores of the late sixties, not in Chicago. Microgreens, varieties of greens, organic greens had not yet arrived.

When I had my deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary emboli in 2006, I thought of that high school tuberculosis test. Something about how my blood clots is not standard.  And I recalled my long ago husband remonstrating me for 'bruising too easily' when he hit me.

I see my clotting issue as a damned near perfect metaphor for my emotional vulnerability.  I bruise emotionally even more easily and deeply than I bruise physically.

I do bruise too easily.  These days, I often feel like a large gaping wound. I keen for my daughter who shuns me.  I keen for all the suffering the loss of her has caused me and all that it has cost me in life. I keen for myself, for all that I have given.

I feel vulnerable all the time. I am in emotional pain all the time.  I list through life, wounded and alone. I am too raw to form supportive friendships.  My loneliness can feel as vast as an endless, clear starry night, and it's not a good feeling.

fireflies

I miss fireflies.

One of the many great reasons to be back in the Midwest is to see fireflies in the summer night.

And crickets. I miss the sound of crickets. One has to get out of the city to hear crickets. A reason to go camping.

I miss camping, too.  Plenty of camping worlds in N. California but I haven't been camping in decades.

my grandbunny Fluffy

This is the story of how my grandbunny Fluffy came into our lives. And more.
For a Christmas bonus for me when my daughter was five, I got a gift certificate from my employer for Dayton's, the former local, 'fancy' department store in Minneapolis (and other places). It was only for $25 but I appreciated it.

Over that Christmas, something happened to my daughter. She was very upset after the incident, entered therapy, struggled. She had been one of the favorite kids in her kindergarden class. Her teachers had told me "Rosie is the kind of student every teacher dreams of having. She is well behaved, very interested in learning and she sets an example for the other children."  But after the incident, I heard reports from those same teachers about how she had changed dramatically since her two weeks out of town and, thus, not at school. Note:  this was both a kindergarden and day care business. I chose it because as a single mother with a 9-5 kind of job, half day day care didn't work for me.  So she went to that school on days when there would have been no school at 'regular' schools. It only had kindergarden and all day care. It was a good program, actually.

Her teachers began to report that Rosie was picking fights with other children, disrupting class lessons, refusing to pay attention. Perhaps she was unable to pay attention, caught up in her emotions.

Rosie's Sunday school teacher also began to question what had happened to Rosie. Rosie only saw that Sunday school teacher for an hour a week so when that woman asked me, after one Sunday School class, "What has happened to Rosie?" I decided to sit my five year old down and ask her.

Rosie was acting differently in other venues, too. Once we went to a dinner party with some of my co-workers and Rosie stole a piece of jewelry from the hostess.  When I confronted her, she said, in an angry tone that did not resemble the happy angel I had always known, she said "It was your fault because you didn't buy it for me." She was angry with me. Very angry. I had no duty to buy her adult and 'real' jewerry! She did other things similar to the jewelry theft and when confronted, she always said "It was your fault" and she sneered and curled up her face into an ugly grimace. She was angry. Hurting angry.

I had noticed many changes in my five year old but hearing the Sunday school teacher note those changes made me realize something had happened. I assumed that what had happened was that her father had lost his temper during her Christmas visit with him, maybe he struck her.  I was not particularly concerned when I thought "maybe her dad spanked her".  I read her a bedtime story, tucked her in, tried to create a warm cosy environment before I said "Rosie, something has happened to you."  She hid under her covers, started crying and said she couldn't tell me, that 'he' said he would kill me if she told.

I stopped that conversation right there because I knew my antipathy forwards her father could easily influence the conversation. Plus I was still thinking that he had spanked her, and being spanked had shocked her. Or he had shown her his temper. Once when she was in college and I had paid to fly her to see him for a few days around New Year's, she called me from her cell phone, sitting in the cold in her dad's car, crying and telling me he had been very angry, explosively so, frightening her and she had told him she wanted to go home.  Home, for her, was not with me. I think she flew back to Chicago where her then-boyfriend lived. He was her home then.

I didn't know what to do next about my newly miserable five year old, back in early 1988. I said to her "I am going to find someone to help us."  She said "But how, how can someone help us. The court says I have to see him." Yes, this is how the daughter of two lawyers talk.  And, for all I know, her dad had talked to her about court orders around his visitation which, until this incident, I had always honored, of course.

She was sobbing inconsolably and kept saying "how can you help me? I have to go there." so I said, to sooth my child, "I don't know what I can do but I will find out what I can do.  I promise I will take care of you."  I said such things over and over to sooth her. She cried so hard, she snuffled a bit as she first fell asleep. Her soft breath quivering, huffing, tiny sobs.  I sat with her until the huffy sobbing stopped.

Then, the very next morning, when I dropped her off at the kindergarden/day care place, one of her two teachers asked me if I had a few minutes. Then, when I said I had time to talk, both of the teachers (with assistants in with the children), one wringing her hands and both of them appearing very uncomfortable, silently lead me into the kitchen of the little school, closed the door and we all sat down.

The gal who took the lead was literally wringing her hands as she said "I don't know how to tell you this and it is very hard for me but given the significant changes in Rosie's behavior since Christmas, we believe she may have been molested. We don't see such a dramatic change in a happy child like Rosie except for something like that."

To which I responded, glad, at least, that I could make the moment easier for those two good women, "Well, I actually figured out last night that something happened to her over the holidays, I asked her and she said yes but I didn't press her to tell me."

The two teachers explained to me that, by law, they were mandated reporters and they were legally obligated to report suspected child abuse of any kind. They also said they had the name of a therapist at U. of MN. whose practiced focussed on molested children and if I took Rosie to see her, they would not make the mandated report. The therapist would still have to, they said.

And, eventually, Child Protection of Hennepin County got involved, interviewed my little bunny and made a finding of substantiated child abuse. Please note that I was not present for the Child Protection interview, or the MD interview, or the police interview. Nowadays, child who these kinds of professional suspect abuse interview such a child once but back then, it was one interview after another. Plus we went to therapy.

The first day we saw that therapist, btw, she asked Rosie if she knew what a secret was. The little honey said "Yes,  a secret is something you tell your mom."  I cheered up to hear that. I interpreted her words to mean she trusted me. Then the therapist asked Rosie if she ever dreamed when she slept. To my surprise, Rosie, who has always had superb verbal skills, even at age 5, said "Yes. I had a dream last night." Then the therapist asked her what the dream had been about. I was surprised that that therapist had moved so fast with Rosie, surprised at her questions. The therapist had asked me to keep quiet and let Rosie do the talking until the therapist drew me into the conversation so of course I kept quiet.

The therapist asked Rosie to tell her about the dream. "In the dream, I was in our house in Omaha, inside with my dad and my mom was outside the house running around because she was being chased by a monster."

Then that therapist asked Rosie if she could draw a picture of the monster. Rosie said sure. She liked to draw and that children's therapist had a large white board and many color markers all set up. I suppose the therapist used such tools regularly.

Rosie drew a picture of a penis. The penis was the monster and she filled up almost the entire white board with her drawing. She made a long, cylindrical shape, with bushes around the bottom and little spurts coming out of the top. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would probably not have believed that therapist if she had tried to describe it to me. Nowadays, I suppose I'd take a cell phone photo of it. Sometimes I have wished I still had the picture Rosie drew that day because several years later, she erupted in anger and repeatedly angrily denounced me for making up the whole thing.

I still have a copy of the child protection report. I so didn't make it up.

I've never had a lot of money, even when I worked. I was working a job job when Rosie was five. I had saved my Xmas gift certificate, planning to use it to buy myself something new to wear. In those days, I usually bought myself a new, cotton knit, summer dress each spring and I had planned to use the $25 towards my new dress that year.

So Rosie continued in therapy. Sometimes the therapist would call me in for a bit, mostly not.

Easter approached. I began to talk to Rosie, and talk to myself, about how to keep her safe during her next, court-ordered visit. I was afraid to withhold a visit because I had already faced years and many tens of thousands of dollars, fighting over custody.  I did not want to withhold visits and become embroiled in more legal battle with my ex. So I said that I would confront her dad and once he knew I knew about the abuse, he would not do again for fear of being charged.

This triggered new anxieties in Rosie. She must have talked to the therapist about my, I see now, poor plan to confront the ex and send her for Easter visit because the therapist had me sit in for part of a session. She had Rosie talk about her anxiety over going to visit her dad. She told me that I was naive if I thought telling an abuser that I knew about his abuse would stop him. And I was not naive, just blind. No one knows better than I do how abusive her dad could be. Our marriage counselor testified in his deposition that my ex was the cruelest human being he had ever met and that was in over 20 years of marriage counseling.  I was slipping into my abused victim mentality when I tried to convince myself I could stop my child's abuse by just telling her dad to knock it off.

Then the therapist asked me the perfect question. She said "what did you tell Rosie that night you first confronted her about the changes you saw in her?"

Bingo. She had me. So I said "I told her that I would protect her."

Therapist asked, "Do you think she feels protected if you send her for this Easter visit?"

And I knew in that moment that I had to withhold the visits.

There's a lot more to the story. Tears are streaming down my face and have been throughout this.

I actually sat down to write about my grandbunny Fluffy. I always called her Fluffina. "My dear little Fluffina" I would say in a silly, arched tone, playing a goofy impression of talking fancifully.

I decided to spend my $25 Christmas gift certificate on a Gund, white, fluffy bunny.  Easter. A bunny.  Made sense. Gunds are great because you can toss them in the washing machine and keep them clean. Cleanish. They do wear out if your kid makes her the favorite doll. Rosie slept with Fluffy always, even took her when she left for college.

I sometimes made a fuss about Fluffina, my grandbunny, to make Rosie laugh. I would ask if Fluffina, my dear little Fluffina could spend one night with me.

At Christmas, Rosie gave me small note cards with 'gifts' such as "I promise to tidy my room when you ask without complaining." The most important gift guard, which she gave me for Xmas many years, was "This coupon good for one night with Fluffy." But whenever I tried to cash in the Fluffy coupon, Rosie would tell me she just couldn't part with Fluffy, not even for one night, not even to honor the coupon.

I had good maternal instincts when I decided to buy Fluffina for Rosie. My Rosie needed something to comfort her. I was always very aware, when we struggled to cope with the incident (whatever the truth of it may have been, I never fed her ideas and I believed what she told all those experts. With the child protection interview, they gave Rosie anatomically correct cloth dolls and asked her to show what had happened to her.  I was not present, although I was in the building. Her play with the anatomically correct dolls was videotaped and I saw it later. I had no input into what she said to that child protection worker. And I had never asked Rosie to tell me what had been done to her. I read the reports. I read what she told child protection, the therapist, the doctor, and the police officer but I never asked her to tell me. Watched videos of her with child protection, a doctor, police. The only reason I know what she did in that child protection interview is because, yes, the child protection worker's report included it.

There were two anatomically correct dolls in the room. The child protection worker asked Rosie if she could show the woman what had happened to her using the dolls. And she did. She demonstrated the male doll placing his penis in the anus of the female doll.  I had never before had a conscioius thought of anatomically correct dolls. After that interview, I felt a little violated, thinking I should have known about the dolls. I guess they don't tell parents what they are going to try in such interviews so the parents can't plant ideas in their child.

The incident ruined my life. I believe it is the root of why my daughter has shunned me for sixteen years. When she was in the fifth grade in therapy with a man named Paul, she got to a point where she angrily denounced me for making up the incest. Paul said child predators count on the children's memory erasing what happened.

And about Paul. When Rosie was in the fifth grade, she was having serial panic attacks, was very anxious. Her pediatrician referred us first to a psychiatrist for meds. Rosie and I walked out of the appointment with that psychiatrist for he reeked of cigarette smoke and he wrapped her up in a bear hug upon coming to the reception area to call her in for the consultation. He did not get permission to touch her and my little OCD wretched as he actually lifted her a bit off the floor in his bear hug. Both the unpermitted hug and the reeking cigarette smoke had both of us reeling. She looked at me with so much panic in her eyes. I said "Let's get out of here. This is not the doc for us." And on the way home, we decided meds were not the way to go. So we'd try one on one therapy for Rosie.

Rosie said she would only do therapy if I agreed that I would never talk to Paul about the therapy, never ask him about anything she said. And I never did. I wonder if she ever realized, then or later, what a huge thing she asked of me. I agreed to let her see a therapist that I could not talk to about her therapy because I thought my little girl needed to talk to someone and if honoring her demand would get her to go to therapy, I loved her enough to do it. She was only ten. She needed to talk to some adult, I believed.

Paul agreed to Rosie's terms with one exception. He said he had to interview me once to get her social history. Which he did.  That was the only time I talked to him. She saw him for several years, if I remember correctly. I recall that when she developed anorexia and started to see someone, also a male, who specialized in anorexia, she had to let go of Paul. I went  to Paul's office to get her records for the new therapist and, sure, we chatted briefly. He said "I never thought she'd take starving herself so far." "Neither did I." And that was all we ever said to one another except during the initial social history.

I disclosed the incident in the initial social history, the only time I talked to Paul about my daughter. He disclosed that Rosie had not mentioned it to him. She got around to it somehow. Maybe Paul brought it up. I don't know because, coming from a place of profound love, I never asked Paul, not once, about what she talked to him about. And I never asked her about her work with Paul.  I sat in his reception room for all her appointments. He'd say hello when he came out to get her. But it came up at some point and she was cold fury . . . at me.  She screamed, so many times, that it didn't happen, that I had made it up. And I would try to remain calm and remind her that a child therapist, her kindergarden teachers, her Sunday school teacher, a child protection worker, a medical doctor and a couple cops had all concluded the incident had happened. Some of them saw it before I did because, as I learned in this hellish experience, mothers often don't see that their child is being abused because to surface abuse is to surface trouble. It can be a Pandora's Box.

And our incident sure was a Pandora's Box for me.  It cost me my only child. And he, her father, is not only her FB pal but also her boyfriend's FB pal. Her abuser gets to have a relationship with her. And I, who gave her so much, including things she knows nothing about, am shunned. And she lies about me to folks in her life, perhaps to explain why she shuns her mother. She tells people I am severely mentally ill. How sadly funny, eh? Our marriage counselor testified under oath, and he was a man who had initially studied for the priesthood and was a very, very good man, that her father was the cruelest human being he, the doc, had met in 20+ years of marriage counseling. That doctor said her father needed extended psychiatric hospitalization, at least five to seven years, and even then, the doctor testified under oath, her father would likely never be well. The doc said he didn't think her father should have any visits with her, at least no unsupervised ones.

But she has a relationship with her father and not with me.

She can think whatever she wants, but I saved her. And I gave up a very great deal to save her.

And I never got to spend a single night with my grandbunny, Fluffina. Fluffina was wearing out last time I saw her, when Rose set off for college. Like all truly loved bunnies, she's probably not around anymore. Just like I am no longer around in my only child's life. I'm all worn out, bled dry. And her father is part of her life. What? Did she want to show up at some event having a parent and she is ashamed of me but not him?

I'm not surprised she still loves him. She never stopped loving him. I learned that one of the cruelest aspects of a parent abusing their child is that the child goes on loving them anyway. A child's love, like a mother's, does not stop because someone has hurt them.

Well. That's how I came to have the one grandbunny, Fluffy. She had a pink threaded nose for a long time but the pink faded. And so have I.

Sixteen rows of cherry tomatoes, one beautiful Katie Joy

I put it together by myself! My mobility scooter is ready to be ridden!! The hard styrofoam has left little bits of white stuff all around where I unpacked, then assembled it. It was just as easy to put together as the salesperson said. I bought it from a company in Florida because the company offers a five year warranty, including the battery!!

I thought I'd zip out the door as soon as I got it together and the packing debris put in my recycle/trash room but I am wiped out.

I'll take a nap, something I am able to do just about any time. I've always been a napper but lately, I get so fatigued, so totally drained of energy, that I nap more soundly than ever. Except when I was pregnant.

When pregnant with my daughter, who took took took and then shunned me (over sixteen years but who counts? the heartache increases . . )  I wallpapered two walls of her bedroom while pregnant, the two walls with windows, the walls one saw when one stood in the door facing into the room.  I thought papering all four walls might make the room seem small. It was a largish bedroom.

I covered those two walls with rainbows. In a couple spots, where I couldn't quite make the wallpaper match perfectly (I hang wallpaper like a master, truly I do), I cut out pieces of unused bits of that wallpaper and made the seams match. I poured my heart and soul into readying that room, that wallpaper, for my child.

And at the end of the day, I sat down on the floor of that room to behold my masterful work. Then I realized I felt more exhausted than I had ever felt in my life. So I just spread out on the floor on my back (hard to lie on a floor stomach down with a 7 month old fetus inside one's uterus!) and rested until her father came home so he could help me get off the floor.

He said nothing about the wallpaper. He yelled at me because he always insisted that I clean up from any chores I was doing while he was at work. Same when I painted the kitchen cabinets (harder than walls, for I used enamel and had to paint so carefully to avoid enamel drips) or wallpapered the kitchen, or wallpapered the front hall, etc. etc. etc. He insisted the house be in pristine conditon and would not listen to my explanations, which he heard as whining laziness, that it was a whole lot more work to clean up a job over and over instead of waiting until the project was over.

Hell, I bought a power drill so I could install the mini-blinds I custom ordered for my baby's room. and I installed the curtain rods with that drill for the new curtains in our living room.

He liked to brag to coworkers and friends that he had married a home improvement contractor. No one but me heard him hound me to have the house perfectly tidy even when I had spent the day painting and/or wallpapering or gardening (and maybe his family, he talked about every detail of our lives with his mom and sisters and if they voiced opprobrium about anything, he would demand that I abide by their preferences).  I refused to let his mom and sisters approve my wallpaper, wall colors and, and this was a very very big and neverending discussion, the color to paint the outside of our house.

I went with slate blue and cream trim instead of white. Each color seemed softer, more welcoming. He squawked and squawked about how his mom and sisters had never seen a blue house, never seen cream-toned trip. Sometimes, while still pregnant, I'd drive him around our suburban world and show him all the blue houses. True, most of the blue houses had white dream. I took the position that being just a little different distinguished our house. I did get my colors but they cost me.

And then, oh why oh why am I thinking of these unhappy times -- maybe needing the scooter is operating on a subliminal level and upsetting some aspect of my being that longs to be fully mobile on her own. Nope. I don't mind the scooter. What I mind is that I have heart failure, crippling arthritis and my only child doesn't give a damn.

While pregnant, I asked him to plow a patch of our backyard so I could plant a garden. I had imagined an 8x10' patch but his friend Dave, raised on a farm, went out and rented a rototiller and plowed up a sixteen by forty foot patch of sod. Then my ex informed me I better plant every inch of that patch.  When I pleaded that it was too big a garden for me to handle waddling around pregnant and in and out of the hospital several times during that pregnancy (I had a wicked hard pregnancy, I couldn't keep down water much less food so I was hospitalized for long stretches to be fed and given water intravenously. This was more for the baby than me. I lost almost 30 pounds while pregnant but my baby, born a couple weeks early, weighed six pounds eight and one half ounces. All these years later I still love that half ounce. I had never heard a newborn's weight noted up to the half ounce before. or have I heard such a thing since.  My baby was special!

Anyway, I bought a packet of seeds, because my husband forbid me to buy starter plants. In hard winter parts of the country, people don't buy starters to be lazy, as he opined. They buy them because the growing season is shortish.  I intended to have one row of cherry tomatoes and one row of tomatoes. I was going to sneak in tomato starts but I bought cherry tomato seeds. I put the whole packet of seeds in a row, intending to thin them out to have one row, maybe two rows at the absolute most.

Then I was hospitalized  for a week and Dave and my ex saved all those cherry tomatoes. Instead of having a large garden full of many things, I had sixteen rows eight plants per row of cherry tomatoes and only cherry tomatoes. We ended up with a cash crop. If I didn't have a newborn, with my daughter born in June, I joked, we could set up a tomato stand and sell cherry tomatoes. He thought that would be embarassing. I was kidding. We did live along our side yard, along a busy street. I likely would have sold those tomatoes. Or, at least, given them away.

I had no canning supplies and, with a new born by the time those tomatoes were ripe, no time or energy to learn how to can. My husband ordered me -- and his orders were always abusively issued -- to use every single one of those cherry tomatoes. He said it wouldn't go well for me if I wasted any. He forbid me from sharing them weigh neighbors and even forbid sharing them with his relatives.

And I had no other plants. I had asked if he and Dave could plant other things while I was serially hospitalized but he said the garden was full of those cursed cherry tomatoes.

So I simmer pot after pot of those cherry tomatoes, put them in cheap plastic containers, filled our freezer with those tomatoes. And we had a separate, gigantic freezer for his fantasy deer meat I filled that sucker with boiled cherry tomatoes, showed them to him. And, one by one, thawed them and threw them out.

I had a newborn. Cooking gourmet feasts was not on my list of priorities. And he did nothing to help me, not even mow the fucking lawn. He said the price I had to pay for staying with our baby was all the chores. so I would mow our huge lawn (double lot) in bits while my baby napped. I was perpetually mowing that lawn her first summer.

Her second summer, my Katie Joy liked to help me garden. I planted zinnias along our fence that faced the empty lot and could be seen from the passing cars. I planted those zinnias from seed, too, trying to be frugal to justify staying home with my baby. So a time came when I had to thin the zinnias. Luckily, no Dave came around to order me to use every single zinnia start once they got going.

Instead, I had the best helper in the world.  Katie loved pulled little plants out of the ground and throwing them in a pile. She pulled lots of perfectly good zinnias. I loved her so. I can see how beautiful she was, I can see the sunlight, I can see her lavendar Oshkosh by gosh overalls with the ruffles on her suspenders. I see the rose-sprigged sun hat on her head. I thanked her each time she pulled up a zinnia and, when she would not notice, I'd replant the good plants.

Back when Dave and my ex were saving all those cursed cherry tomato plants, I pleaded with my husband from my hospital bed to only save two rows. "If you want to go on working, plant beans, squash, lettuce, herbs". He said "You started these cherry tomatoes. It would be a sin to waste them."

be a transcendentalist

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men — go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families — re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.”

— Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass

flowers make glee

flowers make glee
among the hills
and set the meadows dancing

all the world with beauty fills
all the world with beauty fills

tears are streaming down my cheek
One of my life's happy perfect moments
was being taught this song
as I worked alongside my daughter
the first spring in our house
she learning some gardening at school
and the two of house singing
joyfully and, it sure seemed to me,
happy and loving together

what happened, Katie