Writing · on · the · Wall

I could have made a far better living panhandling than I ever did taking care of developmentally disabled adults. If I was a little short on money for the bus I'd ask a stranger for a quarter and they'd give me a dollar after they'd offered me five. Homeless people tried to feed me, and one woman succeeded because she made me feel like I was acting too good for her peanut butter and crackers. It was a point of pride for her to offer me some hospitality while we sat and talked about her life. Who was I to deny her that?

I used to ditch school on a grand scale. I'm not entirely sure my junior high knew I was enrolled there. When I had a bus pass to call my own I'd get on busses just because I didn't know where they went. I often spent the first half of my day getting lost and the latter half finding my way home again.

It was on one of those lost in L.A. days that I came across an older gentleman who wanted to sell me something. I was worldly enough to know that the cloudy, amber chunk of what looked like a landscaping rock in his hand was surely some sort of drug, but I have know idea what drug and he never told me. He showed it to me and asked if I was interested.

"No thank you, sir."

He told me it was really good, top quality. It still looked about as exciting as a pet rock to me.

"No thank you, sir."

He told me he'd charge me half his usual price.

"That's very kind of you sir, but no thank you."

He said I could have a little bit for free, and then I'd know what a great deal he was offering me.

"I appreciate that sir, but I'm really not interested."

"How old are you?"

"Fourteen."

"Why aren't you in school?"

"I ditched." I answered sheepishly

"Where do you go to school?"

"Richard E. Byrd Junior High." This was during my very brief enrollment there.

"Where's that?" the gentleman with the lovely drugs seemed confused.

"Sun Valley?"

"Where?"

"In the San Fernando Valley."

"What are you doing in this neighborhood, on a school day?!"

That man took me by the elbow and marched me to the nearest bus stop lecturing me about the importance of education the whole way there and telling me he never wanted to see me in his neighborhood again. Normally, I might be offended at such banishment, but it was sweet. Even random drug dealers tried to take care of me.

Don't get me wrong, bad things have happened to me over the course of a lifetime. I can write out my sob story in epic volumes. Can't we all? Still, I'd rather count my blessings. Even people who seemed like they had nothing have given so much to me.

On October 18th I will be participating in AIDS Walk L.A. It's their 25th anniversary and I want to do my part to make it special. This is my shameless call, to those of you who know me, to consider making a donation. It's an experimental attempt at virtual panhandling. There is no minimum donation amount, every dollar helps. It goes to a good cause and you can donate directly online.

I am getting rid of an old friend today. Nothing dramatic, just a book. I didn't own a lot of books when I picked this up at a thrift store in San Rafael. It's an 1892 printing of "The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning." On the spine it simply states "Mrs. Browning's Poems." I enjoyed the various discoveries I made throughout it's pages. It's such a pretty book, filled with such pretty words. I think we've outgrown each other though. I almost never open it anymore. I look at the spine and smile at the memories. Good times. Yet, what has it done for me lately? I don't have room in my life for pointless stuff. Despite the memories, a book is just a thing, and I think I've read this one as much as I'm ever going to. Time to let go. Still before I do, there is one poem that stands above all others. So today I'm going to share my favorite E.B.B. poem with ya'll.



Amy's Cruelty

(  by Elizabeth Barrett Browning )

I don't care who you are. This poem is not about you, and it's not about him either. Yesterday I woke up with someone else's song in my head, today I woke up with this poem. It doesn't mean anything. It is just a composition of the subconscious mind of a girl who reads Rumi when her state smells like a campfire. That's all.

I am consumed by my hunger
always longing for you
It leaves my throat dry
incapable of petty conversations
I feel brittle and raw
sun-bleached from within
I am useless without you here
So I promise myself you will come
like a cooling cloud
to shade me from my hunger
Your fingers will find my skin
like warm fat raindrops
turning the dry-grass fields of my spirit
sweet and green again
I am useless with you here
you rise into my night like the sun
And by your arsonist touch
I am set ablaze

He says he loves me. He says nothing matters more than me, and our kids, "our family." He has a strange way of showing it. I tell him again and again and again what I want, what I need, as if it could still make a difference. He works so hard at giving me what he thinks I want, what he thinks I need. He seems wounded that I don't appreciate his deciding that he knows better than I do, what it is I want and need. All the love in the world cannot make up for the jarring lack of respect he has for me.

There was a half-dead cat convalescing here the last week or so. I dubbed him Gandalf the Stray and allowed him to rest peacefully in a dogless dog crate in a quiet room until he got some strength back. He got better, never quite well, but better. Gandalf's health improved enough that he was too restless for life in a quiet crate. So we let him join the zoo that I call home. I swear in two days of freedom that cat has sprayed more than all the other cats I have fostered put together. I've taken on a lot of feral, un-neutered beasts and no one has scented my home with the same fervor.

My Florence Nightingale devotion to the broken things in my care does in fact have limits. Gandalf doesn't live here anymore. Now if only he understood this. He's been in the front yard, and he's breaking my heart. He gives me those sorrowful looks as he rushes the door meowing to be let in when I go out to take out the trash, the recycling or to bring in the mail. I gave the emaciated critter a dish overflowing with cat kibble and I pet him every time I'm out there. I even had a neighbor come to my door to retrieve "my" cat from under his mom's car. I feel like a schmuck, a Grade A heel.

He doesn't understand what went wrong. He liked it here. He let me feed him and pet him and give him soft, clean towels to sleep on. He was even willing to tolerate my other cats and those horrific dogs. I'm sure Gandalf cannot grasp why he isn't welcome here anymore.

I think petting the cat makes it worse somehow. These little bits of affection make it more confusing, planting seeds of false hope. I like him, I really like him. I just can't live with him. He's gonna be who he is, and that's well within his rights. It's just within my rights to not live with that, isn't it? I mean I know that I initiated sharing a home, but if it didn't work out, it just didn't work out. These things happen.

So why do I feel like some kind of villian? Why do I feel cruel for caring, but not caring enough? I can go through the motions and pretend like I'm okay with it all. I think I owe it to myself and my children to set some boundaries though. This is my life and I have the right to demand some share of happiness. I have the right to decline the burden of other's behaviors, even if they really aren't at all personal, even if I'm the only one who finds them bad.

I'm feeling weary, a bit worn down by it all tonight. Every little ache taps into a deep well of other aches, such that rejecting a cat and rejecting a marriage all seem like one wound under the hemorrhaging mess. Nothing for it really. Time to take a deep breath and do some more laundry and crank up the music until I can't hear the meowing at my bedroom window.

I started walking when I was nine-months-old. My mother doesn’t drive, so we walked a lot when I was a kid. We walked to the store, and we walked to school and if something was so far away we couldn’t walk to it, then we walked to the bus stop. I used to get really excited about getting rides places. Now I’m so grateful when I have the chance to go for a walk.

It’s not about getting from point A to point B, there are better ways to do that. It’s about losing myself, losing my thoughts. If I think something I don’t want to think I immediately step away from that thought, one step after another until it’s gone. Here in the desert I lose my thoughts to ravens, and tumbleweeds. What a blessing it is to be away from my thoughts. Sometimes it’s just the relentless to-do lists that I am walking away from, sometimes I am very calmly running away from my fears and my pain.

I walked miles when I was in labor with my children. Just pacing, never far from the beds I birthed in. I didn’t care for lamaze, instead I exhaled on the exertion, years of yoga applied creatively. I walked and I walked and I walked. Somehow the contractions weren’t as bad once I’d moved a few paces away from them.

I walked through my miscarriage too. I brought a nine pound baby into this world with less pain and blood than ended that twelve weeks of pregnancy. And still I did it like I do everything else, one step at a time. I paced as quietly as I could, trying not to wake anyone in my cramped two-bedroom apartment. Walking has seen me through it all.

When I don’t know what else to do, I walk. It shouldn’t surprise anyone then, that I’ve put on some serious mileage walking through my divorce. It’s done wonders for my thighs, and it keeps me one step ahead of the tears. I think I need new shoes.

I couldn’t wake up this morning, or maybe it’s that I couldn’t sleep. I was tangled up in vivid dreams full of problems I was sure I had to solve. There was the matter of duplicity in myself, and in others. My devotion to seeing the best in people was battling against my desire to not appear the fool. I mean I love to be the court jester, but I don’t want to be genuinely foolish. And in addition to dealing with various wolves in sheep’s clothing, throughout the wonderland of my dreams, I also had to deal with my own shortcomings. I am not as good a person as I want to be. I’m not a bad person by any stretch, but I lack the discipline and the wisdom to be all that I endeavor to be. That and the realistic, attainable expectations thing, I really lack that. So it was that my dreams this morning were riddled with trap doors and fun-house mirrors.

I can kinda reconcile myself to all of that though. I have given myself permission to love and trust others in all their flaws. More than that I am determined to try to love myself just as much. I can love a flawed person, but if those flaws are dangerous I have the right to love them from a safe distance. It’s hard for a girl who’s long been trying to throw her arms around the world. Still, it’s not a bad idea, this safe distance plan. So yeah, that part of the dream was difficult, but not haunting.

The hard part for me to shake off was the stray dogs. In this dream my neighbors had a chicken coop that had fallen into disrepair, such that chickens roamed the street at all hours of the day and night. I can’t even begin to describe what passed for my neighborhood in the kaleidoscope real estate of my subconscious. This part was very surreal and reminded me of the way chickens randomly roam the streets of the Goblin City in Labyrinth. More close to my reality were the stray dogs. My neighborhood is prone to stray dogs. Chickens make good food for stray dogs. So I spent much of this dream chasing hungry stray dogs I didn’t particularly dislike away from chickens that I didn’t particularly like, because I have no stomach for death. This interfered considerably with what really needed to be dealt with. This dream was a riddle that needed solving, but I was constantly pulled away by the need to deal with stray dogs.

The dogs should not have been my problem, but as long as the chickens roamed loose dogs would come after them. The chickens should not have been my problem. And yet I have such a soft spot for all living things. I still haven’t forgiven myself for the dalmatian I had been petting moments before it ran into the street and was killed by a careless motorist. I was fourteen and I had never been there when something died before. If I had ignored the dog in the first place maybe it would have crossed seconds earlier and lived. If I had held onto the dog when I had a chance, maybe it never would have crossed the street at all and it would have lived. At that age I just wanted to pet the cute dog and then go about my evening. I hadn’t thought of any consequence to my action until I heard that horrible crunch of a metal hood crumpling and canine ribs crushing and a breathless yelp and the squeal of brakes too late and tires spinning faster as the car fled the scene.

Yes, it seems that ever since that night twenty years ago my mind has been plagued with strays that should not be my problem. Imagine what energy I would have to apply towards my goals if I could let go of the stray dogs of my mind.

I am trying to learn the ancient art of storytelling. I am being a good student, reading, studying, absorbing everything that I can find on the subject. It’s supposed to be simpler than this. People live their lives in story, don’t they? Getting your kids dressed in the morning is a story. Having a fight with your significant other is a story. Surviving a crowded grocery store and coming home again, with everything on your list, is a story. Life is a series of stories.

Maybe there is a story to going to get routine bloodwork done, because my D.O. is concerned about certain things, in women of a certain age, with certain family histories. If there is such a story I did not find it. Oh, but how the poetry flooded the whole experience for me. The phlebotomist in her unassuming scrubs might have seemed a little plain. Which isn’t to say she wasn’t a pretty woman, but that her professional countenance stripped her down to framework. No make-up, no perfume, no color to mention in those unassuming scrubs. Oh, but her nails, painted vividly in pixie green. I could see them sparkling even under the sanitary shroud of latex gloves. She hadn’t picked out that green. It was a friend, but she didn’t mind. She told me this as my blood rushed eagerly into neat glass vials, pouring towards her, like even my platelets were thirsty for her story. That unlikely color matched a shirt that she has yet to wear. She was going to wear it on Memorial Day. That’s why her friend had picked that color. And that’s as much as she told me before she had taken as much blood as she needed. I was dismissed to go about my life before I’d heard the story, but after I had been infected with the poetry. Pixie green nails and garnet flowing blood, and all the promise of a shirt that’s never been worn. The poetry in that experience is limitless I tell you.

And that was just my trip to the phlebotomist. Think of the poetry that could spring from finding yet another dead sparrow in the duck pen, the macabre optimism that makes me hope my ducks are homicidal because that is better than fearing some avian epidemic that might take them from me. Or just to write of the sadness in something so fragile, broken beyond repair, or the thousand and one funerals for such found corpses of my childhood. How many dead birds have I smothered in flower petals and sealed like masking tape mummies in small cardboard tombs? Is it the hardness of age that makes me simply wrap them in paper towels and drop them in the outside trash now? Or is it a sign of my superstitious youth that I cross myself, in the name of the father, the son and the holy ghost, when I deposit these birds, mice and lizards, even now. The poems of faith lost, found and invented I could write around the single act of disposing of animals I’ve met postmortem.

Then there is the rain. How many songs have been written about rain? And still it inspires. The way the lightning cuts through the sky, the way thunder rumbles into my chest and grabs hold, if only for a moment, of my heart. The smell of water and dirt consummating their hunger for each other. The sound of poppies bursting forth their seeds. Yes, rain is a tireless muse for poets.

Yesterday was filled with poetry, as are most of the days I live. If only I could work past the heady aroma of verse to see the stories. I hear that people live in stories. I live my life in poetry.

I think loneliness is my native tongue. I used to think it was because I was an only child. No matter how much fun my friends and I had playing we always went our separate ways when the streetlights came on. Dibone and I could be grounded for the same mischievous infraction, but it was never the same experience. When she was grounded she still played Barbies with her sisters. She still had her brother sneak her treats from the kitchen. As far as I could tell her life was a slumber party every night. When I was grounded I played alone in my room while my mother was busy downstairs cooking and cleaning and devouring the printed word. I was lonely.

When I was a teenager I thought it was because I’d never learned to be that girl. I used to read Cosmopolitan when I was ten. I know that if you want to catch a man you are supposed to have an air of mystery, you’re supposed to make them chase you and force them to dwell in the agony of a prolonged maybe. That’s not me. I’ve always been more of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get girl. So I watched enviously as my beautiful friends commanded the attention of men with the effortless ease that flowers bring bees in swarms. Sometimes I got attention too, almost always discreetly, and I embraced those moments with great enthusiasm. When all was said and done it wasn’t that different from being kids. The streetlights no longer illuminated our curfews, but the playing always came to an end and the men who’d kissed me went just as surely home. I was lonely.

For a time that I thought it was because I was stuck between generations. One of the best friends I’ve ever had is my uncle Fang. I am close to my mother’s siblings. I pestered my poor uncle Michael something awful when we were kids, coloring in his comic books and other little-sister-like horrors. I have spent a lifetime trying to catch up to these remarkable people. That is not my generation. My generation is my cousins. I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to catch up to them in different ways. Nancy, Rachel and Rebecca are each so much cooler than I’ll ever be. Maybe it’s because they aren’t trying to straddle the divide between the generations. Maybe it’s just some innate thing that you either have or you don’t. Either way I’ve grown up feeling perpetually out of sync. I was too young for the older generation and too old for the younger generation. I was lonely.

I did not realize at the time how young I really was when I “finally” settled down. It seemed like most of my friends had already had some combination of babies, engagement rings, or marriage. I felt out of step as always. Then I found a great guy who was willing to love me and who didn’t care who knew about it. After being the girl that guys treated with such a dispassionate take-it-or-leave-it, I was thrilled to find myself enmeshed with someone else’s beating heart. He loved me and he was willing to keep me and he didn’t hide this fact from anyone. There were a lot of good years between us, but over time I grew up and he broke down. Life had intruded upon our happy dream. We reached a point where we were barely lovers and not at all friends, and I kept trying to fix it, but I couldn’t bring his love back. I couldn’t glue it together as good as new. This was the most bitter, cold loneliness I had ever known. In every other loneliness I could at least find myself. I was a wife and a mother and never ever alone, but I was evaporating. I couldn’t reach him and I couldn’t find me. I was lonely.

Now I am single again. I’m still not that girl. I don’t think I’ll ever date. If you want to play Scrabble, I’m your man, but if you want to play at courtship, no thank you. Nothing to see here folks, move along. I have my friends and I have my family and I have myself. I’d love to throw some wild naked abandon into that mix, but not enough to pay the cost of admission. I don’t want to be the dirty little secret again and I don’t want belong to anybody else’s heart anymore. So it is, that I am alone. Now I am drawn to lonely poems and lonely songs. I find myself loving the sound of a singular piano or guitar slowly leading into a sad song plucking at the strings of my heart. I like imbalanced compositions, a single joshua tree silhouetted against a desert sunset, or a flower growing alone, up through the barren sidewalk. There is something sweet and complex to the flavor of this new loneliness, informed by the spice of all my previous heartbreak. It still aches, but there is something familiar and comforting to this pain. I am happy to be with myself again. I’ve missed me and this is who I am. I am lonely.

My grandmother has been dead for two years and two days. I can't decide if it has been a long time, or a short time, really. I think it has taken me about this long to come out the other side. It's not that I don't miss her anymore, but I am far less surprised by missing her. The woman she was in her prime I had missed for years before the death of the frail being she had become. How surprising it was to find that I could miss that second Grandma too. Her final decline was not a pleasant experience for either of us, but it was such a huge part of my existence. Believe me, I know now what it is to grieve something even when you know that you are better off without it. It's been months since I thought I heard her calling me, and it was never as frequent a hallucination as I had feared.

I've gone back through this modern marvel, my online journal, and tagged the entries from the end of her life. It's funny how two years can twist memories, ever so slightly. The new truth is not unrecognizable to the old, but it is not the same. I remember the things that made me laugh, and the friends and family that I laughed with, so clearly. I'd forgotten just how weary I really was. There was something sadder and harder to the journal entries than I'd expected to find. Thank you all who commented your encouragement and support. It had just sort of washed right over me in that stunned state. Now that I've stepped back from the experience enough I can appreciate your kindness even more. Thank you.

I'm putting the notes together to create some dark comedy fiction out of it all. Writing is my favorite form of therapy. Grandma would not approve, but I'm not exactly asking her permission. I need to purge these thoughts into something that feels like I can finish it. I want that solid closure now. It is not a role any of us would wish to be cast in, but it is nevertheless a role she played in my life.

There was a time before she was Grandma, before she was Mom, that she was surely a more easily flattered muse. She had beauty, intelligence, intensity and always a little bit of crazy too. I appreciate the inheritance that younger woman passed on. Her daughters and granddaughters are not for everyone's taste, but I don't think any man ever forgets dating a Van Lydegraf woman. There is surely poetry in that legacy, but I am not that writer. May Grandma forgive me, but I am going to write down the surreal and absurd, painful hilarity of her final days. I'll call it fiction and I'll tweak it here and there so I won't be lying when I do.

Well, anyway, this is where I stand two years later.

He called it grown-up, I'd call it death
working ourselves dry 'til we take that last breath
We work for the mortgage or we work for the rent
Just keep working for money that's already spent
Play is for children and self-centered fools
All the good grown-ups follow the rules



I just found this unfinished note for a poem while looking for something far more practical. I kinda like it, I wish I'd finished it. I never seem to be able to find my voice again once I put a poem down.

My Tivo will not do writer wishlists, which is a shame because I am a great fan of writers. Instead I use director wishlists to follow writer/directors, such as John Hughes. I enjoy him well enough as a director, but it’s a slightly different film selection than I would get if I Tivo-ed his writing career instead.

I’m particularly frustrated with the Nora Ephron results. I’m in the mood for her more scathing observations of love and marriage, i.e. Heartburn. I could settle for witty, cynicism with a romantic ending, i.e. When Harry Met Sally. What I’ve got in my Now Playing List, right now- Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail.

I’m in the early phases of divorce. We officially broke up about a week ago, but we have no idea exactly what we’re going to do about this break up. We want to change our children’s lives as little as possible. So the Sword of Damocles, continues it’s ever present sway above my head, while I wait and see. How much of me can The Husband stand to be around, now that I am the ex-wife?

This is not a time in my life where I am thrilled with movies that take me on a two-hour journey of near strangers, almost, but not quite hooking up, before finally, shortly before the credits roll, realizing they’ve found The One. I am so tired of fatalistic love stories. And I am terrified as my nine-year-old comes into embracing such. Love is not a game of finders/keepers.

I grew up looking for love, thinking that there was some sort of arrival into my real life once I’d found it. Love is not for finding, it is for making. I’m not talking about some quaint euphemism for sex. I’m talking about a lifestyle choice; to choose, daily if possible, to foster love between yourself and another person. You choose to see with kinder eyes, and to extend your hand as often as needed to help that person. Love isn’t sitting back and admiring the stars, it’s rolling up your sleeves and doing work that is hard and dirty and unpleasant, because it makes life better for the people we care about. And if you find two people who are willing to nurture their love continually it is one of the most beautiful miracles I’ve ever witnessed. The work you put into your love will make it or break it, but I am certain no real love is just lying around waiting to be found.

Don't talk of stars
Burning above;
If you're in love,
Show me!
Tell me no dreams
Filled with desire.
If you're on fire,
Show me!
---Eliza Doolittle (Show Me from My Fair Lady)

Personally, I think I’ve gone more the part-time lover route. Which isn’t to say that I have taken a lover, just that I am one who loves, but only part of the time. When my friends need me, I am there ready to give until it hurts. There are the friends who I will loan money I don’t have; who I will stay up for, when I need to sleep, or out with, when I need to work, and listen to; who I will forgive, and accept forgiveness from, without fussing over apologies. There are people who I love a great deal. Some I talk to every day, some I can go a year without a word passing between us. Still there is a natural and graceful intimacy between us. Yes, I love and I am loved and it is an incredible blessing. But I don’t do it every day, aside from as a parent. I am single and it feels good to be pulled in one less direction. I am no one’s partner. There is no adult who goes to me first, or exclusively, for their needs.

Love is never absent, nor is it central to my life right now. The Husband and I have been an item for the better part of fifteen years now. Fifteen of my thirty-five years have been spent with this man. Before that I was single for almost two months. Yes, two months (almost) is the longest I’ve been single since I was barely seventeen. The woman I am today has never been single before, and the last thing she wants is a Tivo full of stories about finding love.

I have a candle encased in a red, glass cylinder on one of my office bookshelves. There is a print-out of some mid-twentieth century, pulp-fiction cover, hugging it’s curves. An image of a woman in a scandalous, clinging, red dress swoons into the arms of a man, who I’m sure was handsome by the clean-cut standards of the day. The title across the top is “Why Get Married?” I know Kelly gave it to me as a present. I think I was engaged at the time. I had no idea all the ways I could take that question.

Yesterday The Husband and I were discussing a pair of sisters I used to be quite close to, in that “whatever happened to....” kinda way. To the best of my outdated knowledge the older sister has a beautiful daughter who she is raising somewhere in the Pacific Northwest without the institution of marriage looming anywhere on the horizon. The younger daughter is happily married without any intention of the convention of child-rearing in her life’s plans. I’m cool with this, if all parties involved are living the lives they want and need. Then The Husband said one of those things that makes me wonder how we could possibly be on the same planet.

“I don’t know what the point of marriage is, if you aren’t going to have children.”

So quickly did he pull the needle across the record of my mind. What?! So, did he only marry me for my uterus? Would our marriage have been pointless if our reproductive organs had failed to be fruitful? How romantic. I chose not to get into the personal what-ifs and maybes though. I’ve had enough disputes in our nearly dozen years of marriage to know better than to bring my feelings into the debate.

Marriage creates legally recognized kinship, as in “next of kin.” It gives lovers the right to sit next to hospital beds, and sign papers and inherit things that may have been theirs to begin with. If your beloved is lying in a coma, their second cousin, three times removed, is likely to be given more rights and more power than you are, if you are not married. In addition to wanting those rights, I chose to have a wedding as a way of bringing our separate friends and family together into one community. I know why I got married when and how I did.

At this stage in my life, I’m not a big fan of marriage, personally. I’ve come to view it as a gilded cage. It encourages people to take some of the most liquid, intangible feelings they’ll ever know and stamp them with a seal of finality. Love has no shelf life to speak of but, once legitimized by marriage, there is a tendency to stash it in the pantry. It makes you feel a little more secure knowing that it’s there for the next time you’re snowed in. Ignore love at your own risk, it is perishable and once it turns bad the results are toxic. Enough bitter metaphor though.

There are things marriage does, i.e. create a legally recognized partnership and rights as next of kin. There are things marriage does not do, i.e. make that in-love feeling last forever. The pros and cons are infinite when taken to a personal level. I can barely work it out for myself, I can’t imagine daring to declare whether or not somebody else should be married.

I just can not wrap my head around why children would be a deciding factor. If your name is on the birth certificate then you have rights as a parent. The kinship there is pretty direct and is not effected by marriage to the other parent, as far as I know. I would not marry someone just because their spawn was swimming in my belly. I would not refuse to marry someone just because we were never going to be parents together. I don’t get it. Can anyone explain to me what on this great, green earth children have to do with marriage?

For the record, I don't write "free verse." I don't understand it. I need structure; I need rules to break or follow. I grew up on Emily Dickinson's tidy rhyme and meter. So I'm not really sure if this is a poem. It's just what I had to say today. And I figure if you can't follow the rules and structure of basic English grammar you can always call it a poem. That's all.

Becoming

The writer I’m reading
says he explodes every morning
and spends his day putting himself together again
The writer I chat with
says that he takes time to hatch
every morning emerging over his coffee
The writer I’m becoming feels fragile
like she may need a hug to hold her together
or like a hug might collapse her
ash to ash and dust to dust
But maybe this breaking feeling
is freedom, is change
Maybe I am not the chrysalis
but the crumpled wings
that are straining against it
splitting my old skin apart

Broken Home

Broken homes are shelter
for growing broken things
and she’s gonna give her babies better
in spite of the fear it brings

She grew up feeling so unworthy
utterly forsaken by her father
and a little too grateful for the attention
of any who would bother.

She made herself such promises
her own kids would have it better
When she made a home she’d keep it
and she kept the first man who let her

She was so in love with love
she never thought she’d sober
But then somewhere in the suburbs
she learned the honeymoon was over

She never could do good enough
and he was quick to let her know
Yet, in spite of all their loneliness
he could not let her go

And she was sure he was right
even though it felt all wrong
hobbled by her broken vows
she surrendered to belong

She tried to hold it together
closing a heart that should be open
falling through the cracks she sees
there’s more than one way to be broken

Broken homes are shelter
for growing broken things
and she’s gonna give her babies better
in spite of the fear it brings

There was a critical failure in our communication when I told my husband that I want to be a housewife. The word I should have used was governess. I want to spend the bulk of my waking hours teaching, and caring for, children in a private household. Light housekeeping duties are acceptable to me, but I should like weekends, evenings and two weeks paid vacation off to pursue other interests. That is what I should have expressed back in the courtship phase when I knew he was listening. Instead I said that I wanted to be a housewife, and that my primary responsibility would be looking after the children and that his primary responsibility would be bringing in an income, and that we would each contribute to the housework as we were able. When I said that, I fully intended to communicate the governess job description above. What he heard was that I would be in the house all the time with the children and therefore I would be the one “able” to do the housework and occasionally he would pitch in to “help” me, proving that he is far more enlightened than the cavemen of his father’s generation. What I meant is not what I said, and what I said is not what he heard and many a fight has flared up from the coals of this crucial misunderstanding.

I think we are each very confused by the other’s desires in this matter. How could you possibly think I would have agreed to THAT? I have spent much of my decade, or so, as a housewife alternately flabbergasted with each of our positions. A part of me is sure that if I were a good wife and mother I would be that magical Mary Poppins I used to be with children and I would dedicate my evenings, weekends and two weeks paid vacation to keeping the house tidy and preparing an infinite variety of nourishing, frugal meals from scratch. I love my incredibly patient and domestically capable mother dearly, but I curse her for being content with her role as a mother. She was good at it, and that was enough for her. I feel horribly inadequate that it is not enough for me.

I want more. I want to be a great mother, but I also want to be a great writer, and truth be told I should very much like to be a fine dancer as well. So I feel like a very bad mother when my dishpan hands pound feverishly on my computer keyboard trying to get a just-so turn of phrase in place before it evaporates into the ether and I’m shooing away the darling children that are attempting to derail my creative process. I don’t want them to think that there is anything more important to me than they are. It’s just I have to claw out some space for my needs too. It started when they were toddlers and I fought first, to be able to empty my bladder as needed and ultimately, to be able to do so alone. Writing, and yes, I admit, sheepishly, dancing, are also things I am fighting to do with a frequency and solitude that they do not approve of. Somewhere in the wife and mother gig I have got to find that woman I was previously accustomed to being.

Math has never been my strength, but I’m pretty sure it’s not adding up. How many hours a week do I have to dance to a) improve my skill, and b) improve my health? How many hours a week do I have to write to a) improve my skill, and b) improve my odds of going pro someday? How many hours a week do I have to devote to being the governess who teaches, and cares for, children in a private home? How many hours a week do I have to address laundry, dishes, vacuuming, dusting, budgeting, bill-paying, gift buying, menu-planning, meal preparation, baking, holiday plans, pet care, home repair, sweeping, mopping, wiping counters and tables and sinks, cleaning mirrors, scrubbing tubs, scrubbing toilets, taking out trash, recycling, compost, bringing in mail, scheduling classes, scheduling appointments, scheduling piano tuners, scheduling playdates, picking up stuff off the floor, off the tables, off of every horizontal plane in this house, cleaning lint traps, cleaning dryer vent hoses, replacing filters, tightening things that are loose, loosening things that are tight, soaking, scrubbing and drying the miscellany, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? Oh, and could I fit in some yoga, a few phone calls with friends, reading for pleasure and learning new skills too? On occasion, I’ve almost managed to fit it all in, but after a while my body goes on strike until I get some sleep. So something’s gotta give and time after time I give up all those things I do for me, until I get fed up and then I give up all the things I do for others and then we’re all miserable.

So I’ve been thinking about how it all boils down. I could be a full-time housekeeper, but I won’t. I could be a full-time hedonist, writing and dancing and socializing to my heart’s content, but I won’t. I will however spend as much of my precious time as I have to keeping myself healthy with things like sleep and exercise and yes, writing. I need it, I can’t explain how it is that I NEED writing, but I do. Above these needs, I have a habit of discarding falsely as wants, I will do some domestic duty. More than anything though, I want to be a governess and I am going to take the time to go over my syllabi and my lesson plans and make sure I have the time and supplies for all of those hands on activities that thrill me as much as they do my children. And frankly that means that my schedule is full, so someone else is going to have to push the vacuum about occasionally, and run a load of dishes, and scrub whatever needs scrubbing and so on and so forth ‘cause there are simply not enough hours for me to do it all and I’m tired of getting all the crappy assignments by default. This is not up for negotiation. The housework is not MY job, the children are MY job. The housework is the shared responsibility of all those who intend to live here. So you can not “help” me, it’s NOT mine. I will graciously pitch in, but you can have your pox infested blanket back now, I’m done being that kind of housewife.

So I live in these days,
but I still have my old ways
’Cause the future, somehow, has yet to arrive
And I see all around me the women on time,
kids and divorces and crisis in midlife
And do I surrender and give up my dream,
for a brick in the wall and a washing machine?
Grow up and get real
for a kid in their teens,
who won't care what I've done,
where I've been, what I've seen?
And I wonder why I tear myself in two,
over who to be, how to be, and what to do
---Concrete Blonde

When I was twenty-seven I had two people, who did not know each other, give me the same compliment, in the same week. I have every reason to believe that they were both sincere, even though I have never been given this compliment before or since. They told me I was complete, I believe one of them even told me I was the most complete woman they’d ever known. I wasn’t unappreciative of their kind words, but I was confused. I couldn’t figure what exactly they meant. It’s clearer now that I am so incomplete.

I just haven’t had enough time, or energy, to refuel, so I can have more time and energy. I know that I have to take care of myself, but I seldom get around to it. I know every cliche there is about sharpening the axe, filling the tank, and putting the oxygen mask on myself first. I just can’t seem to live it.

The Johnette Napolitano song Everything for Everyone refers to the oxygen mask wisdom, it also says “today I married myself, and became my own wife.” My children think this line is very silly. I’m beginning to think that it is exactly what I need. I need to give myself some of the attention I give so much of and crave so deeply. I spend a lot of time anguishing over the affection I’m not going to get. I keep coming back to the realization that I have to find a way to be what I need.

I am still that little kid saying “look Ma, no hands.” All day long I want someone to bear witness, someone to share in my excitement and frustration. It ain’t gonna happen. So I have to learn to celebrate and sympathize with myself and to get over myself too. Sometimes it’s so much easier to get over something once it’s been all talked out and heard first.

One way or another I need to move taking care of myself up higher on my list so it stops falling into that category of things that I’d like to do, but never get around to. I will cry on my own shoulder, and applaud my own victories and revel in my own sensuality. Yeah, it would be nice to share all that, but I’m done with needing it from another person. Because that’s the thing about when I was so complete people commented on it, I had a lot of wonderful people in my life, but I didn’t need them. I didn’t wait in stasis for somebody else to prove to me that I still existed. It’s high time that I got that back. I miss being me.

I recently saw Revolutionary Road. It was brilliant. It was almost invasively real, like the scriptwriter’s must have been hiding under my couch and taking notes when they wrote it. There are of course some distinct differences; but to illuminate which things I owned, and which I didn’t, would give away too much of their story. Ultimately all I want to say is that I keep seeing promotional moments talking about what a great period piece it is, as if housewives are an anachronism, but it is not some abstract history lesson. It is a searingly honest look into marriage; maybe not all marriages, hopefully not all marriages, but my, oh my, has my marriage been there.

If flirting is a way of saying “I see you and I like what I see,” then marriage must be a degenerative eye disease. We grow increasingly blind to each other and see our memories and impressions of each other more often than we see the person standing in front of us.

I’m so tired of hearing his complaints, I accuse him of never seeing the good in anything. I tune him out. He’s so tired of hearing me prattle on adding a torrent of trivial information to his already overloaded circuits. He tunes me out. So he complains more, because he’s sure I don’t understand the burden he bears. I babble more because I’m sure he didn’t get it, and maybe I didn’t make my point and maybe if I try it from another angle I’ll have said it a little better, but I’d better talk fast before he shuts his mind. Why can’t you hear me?

In the courtship phase it’s always so nice to find somebody who is fascinated with all our little quirks, you know those same quirks that turn into, not so minor, vexations later. It must be possible to have a long-lasting relationship without getting tired of paying attention to each other. So why is that I find my self standing metaphorically naked with my arms outstretched wishing he would make the time to love me? Is it really such a horrible chore to pay attention to your wife? Why don’t you feel me?

I should have been a mistress. Being a mistress is easy, all you have to do is love and be loved. Then I could listen and not need to talk about how much money is in which account and how soon he’ll be able to make a transfer. I wouldn’t need to discuss the budget, or home repair, or our children’s education and behavior. Maybe then I would still be alluring. I’d have some mystery left, something worth the effort of pursuing. Instead I feel like the same leftovers I’ve been serving for nearly a dozen years, just another serving of wife. Why don’t you want me?

I want to steer this thing together, but I feel like too often we’re pulling it in different directions. It’s no secret that I love him, but at times I wonder if it’s possible for either of us to be happy building a life together. This is who I am. Why don’t you see me?