Mending Mae

May 31, 2005: When Barbie Plays T-Ball

2013-07-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

Note: While rummaging through a box of manuscripts looking for an edit last week, I came across some writings from journals in years past. What I found were a couple writings from when we were in the process of moving from Pennsylvania to Washington State and our last summer in Sharon, PA. Interesting snippets of a time long forgotten, a time when we were a family of six, not a family of 5 + 2, made me nostalgic. The hardest part of the depiction of these scenes were not the memory themselves. It was my horrid handwriting! I forgot how illegible I was before bed after chasing 4 kids under 6 all day! Wait, aren't I always the one that says to moms of young ones, "I miss mine being that young?" Someone tell me why??? Oh right, that was when he loved me and I loved him and we loved our family for the same reason. It certainly wasn't from exhaustion!

What I loved about this piece was how much alike Hope and Joy still are to their younger selves. When I said that Hope hadn't played softball before, I totally forgot T-Ball, and I wonder if that counts.

May 31, 2005

This Spring, both Hope and Joy played T-Ball and on the same team. Matthew, already a heavy hitter and a great first baseman on a minor league team, was trying to teach his sisters the game he already adored. With Hope, he had the 'little brother' he wanted and didn't get with Joshua. Hope lives to get dirty, to play ball, ride bikes, and she doesn't care how dirty she gets doing it. Joy, on the other hand, is a girl child through and through. How is it at 6 she already has a sense of fashion more than most high school girls? She definitely has a flair for fashion and pink must be in a daily outfit, even if its just a splash of pink, it's got to be there. With Hope and Joy being on the same team, I only had to make it to two games, Matt's baseball game and the girls' T-Ball game.They played on the Sharon Pirates and Matt played on the Yankees.

Wearing gold and black hats were not pink and purple and weekly Joy tried to change that. Whether it was little low pony tails with pink elastics or bows or a Hello Kitty Pin that she put on the hat until the coach made her take it off. Taking it as an affront to her personal style, I think it motivated Joy to be fashionable throughout the rest of the season, refusing to succumb to the jean shorts and t-shirt garb that the rest wore. Hope, on the other hand, could care less. Give her the old beaten up red bat that Matt taught her to hit with and her tiny glove and Hope was ready to play. She'd drag all of us out of the house because there was no way she was going to be late for practice, especially with Mom driving them there.

Today I was busier than usual since preschool was done for the year and Hope was home with me all the time. Joshua is a busy guy, but Hope has endless energy. With her best friend, Sage just next door, the two running back and forth through the houses and keeping track of where the little girls were was exhausting in itself.

By the time I had dinner on the table, Marcus had just walked through the door and I had less than a half hour to get Matt, Joy and Hope to their ball practices on the opposite sides of the town. Asking Marcus for a few dollars for gas when he didn't bring home any cash made me realize that I'd be driving home on fumes and prayers with three kids in the minivan.

Once they were finished eating, I sent them to get their shoes and hats on as well as gather their gloves, bats and water bottles. Four silly questions about Thomas from Joshua, reminding Marcus to give him his after dinner meds, I realized that my dinner plate was still on the table uneaten. I reached for my supper, dumped it into a recycled margarine dish and put the fork in it, grabbed my purse and a manuscript chapter I was editing, and while chasing the three out of the house, Marcus held the door for me and in one hand he had a freshly poured glass of lemonade chucked full of ice. I kissed him and stole his lemonade, receiving a laugh, a kiss and an 'I love you' while adding it to my already overfilled hands. Already in the minivan, the three waited for me, clicked in their booster seats, they goaded me about being late as I put my lemonade in the cup holder and set my supper on the passenger seat with the manuscript.

Having four kids in three years, I learned the importance of just the necessities and anything else was just an added bonus. An hour to edit without four kids in my ear was such a bonus. My minivan was my monastery in so many senses of the word. Not only would I get them to practice but I would get myself to solitude for 60 minutes, and hoped that no chatty mothers would disturb me. I reached into my purse between the seats for the keys attached to two lanyards to the handle of my purse and before another complaint was uttered, I keyed the ignition and we were on our way.

As we dropped off Matt, my eyes do a quick inventory of him. Hat--check, untied sneakers--check, glove--check, bat--check, water bottle--check. Yep, Matt's ready and already on his way to field when his coach greets him and tells him to tie his shoes. On our dash uptown, I'm glad that I have enough time to beat the rush and find a parking spot up against the field so I can watch them play and edit at the same time. I haven't even put the van in park and Hope's out of her booster seat, grabbing her glove, water bottle, and red bat while Joy dawdles out of her own booster seat. Dressed in a pair of shorts and a semi-clean top speckled in mud and the food of the day and sneakers, Hope's already out of the van and rushing towards her coach. Joy, seeing her reflection in my rear view mirror, takes her black and pink cat eye Barbie sunglasses that her GG (Great Grandmother) bought for her from their little purse case and put them on her eyes, affixing the purse to her wrist as she grabbed her water bottle glove and bat. As she exits the van, I see what my Barbie doll was wearing and gasp.

"C'mon Joy," ordered Hope, now irritated that she had to turn around and fuss at Joy to hurry up when Joy emerged from the van. Clad in her ball cap, her sunglasses, she coordinated the gold on her hat with a marigold striped t-shirt that she had cuffed the sleeves up twice. This girl child believed that everything had to be color coordinated, labeled her little sister a fashion emergency and declared at age six that 'life was too short to wear a plain white t-shirt and jeans.' Her fashion sense was sometimes a chore but in comparison to her tomboyish sister and the boys who would wear just about anything they could pull out of drawers, I never had to worry about what Joy was wearing. Okay, most of the time, and this time happened to be one of those times.

Instead of the jean shorts and t-shirt and ball cap, she had embellished her outfit with the sunglasses, an olive "skort" with embroidered pink and orange flowers and instead of sneakers and socks, she stylized her outfit with a pair of white strappy church sandals. I attempted to mitigate her fashion choice with gratitude that I wouldn't be washing grass stains out of her white skort instead. With my tank on empty, the two dimes in my van's change holder wouldn't materialize into two dollars a gallon. At that moment, there was no way I could go home to get her sneakers and socks for safety purposes. Of all the children, she was rarely the child I had to do a once over on the way out of the door. Getting her out from in front of the mirror and out of her room without the floor covered in every piece of clothing she's tried on and tossed onto the floor, was another challenge altogether.

"Joy, you cannot play baseball in that outfit."
With a hand perched on her hip she asked, "Why not?"
"How do you expect to run in those sandals? I'm afraid you'll fall on your way to first base."
Silent, and certain that her look ought to become the norm for girls T-Ball fashion, she wasn't at all frazzled by my rebuke.
"Come On Joy!" exclaimed Hope with her bat on her shoulder.
Just then, Joy got the giggles, knowing that I was right. But there was something I had gotten wrong too. I realized that pushing Joy into T-ball when she was determined that the only sport she wanted anything to do with was cheer leading was a mistake on my part, and not something I would readily make again.
"Well?" I asked her.
"Well, Mom, at least I'll look good doing it."

Self-Afflicted Amnesia

2013-07-07T04:09:00.001-07:00

I suffer from self afflicted amnesia
Repeatedly putting myself in places
With people who treated me poorly--because I let them.

Abandoned by man after man
Held hostage by matriarchs
Forgotten by family who deem me unworthy.
Thousands of miles away I choose to recluse
Fearing another betrayal or judgment.

In my self-afflicted amnesia
I get lost in my situation
Saddened by hopelessness
On the verge of homelessness
Those statistics on hunger are my family.

Beyond the emotional
The physical ebbed over once again
In financial ruination
The accumulation of a snowball turned to avalanche of the last year.

Duct taping the pieces of my peace
Girding myself with a promise
Of change and not regret.
By acknowledging my memory
Leaping over amnesiatic pitfalls
Trusting my intuition
Instead of ignoring my power.

Only then will I stand up
Instead of curl up and cover my head.

Note: When I write it, its part of my work. The above poem was based on an episode of "Iyanla Fix My Life" on the OWN Network. If you haven't seen the work she does, you should. In the last few months, Iyanla has helped me immensely.

April 18th

2013-06-25T13:17:00.000-07:00

April 18
Third Place, Momwriters 2001 Literary Competition

Lyrics and Song Titles by George Michael (and Stevie Wonder*)

April 18, 1989:
"I’ve had enough of dangers and people on the streets, looking out for angels, just trying to find some peace..." the radio wails as I stand before the mirror, my skin lobster red from the shower, I scalded myself again. I do it several times a day, trying to wash the scars from the rape away as I hide from the world in the shower with the radio blaring. The steam covers the mirror. It’s better that way. I can’t see myself then. What became of the beautiful butterfly when she flew into the light? Scorched and ruined. I slide on a nightshirt and reach for what’s left of the painkillers, hoping they will kill me too.

Swiping the steamed mirror with my hand, I see through the condensation that the bruises are gone from my skin and now they are imbedded in my soul. Opening the vial, I look at the six white pills. I break down. The first time since I was a child, I cried real tears. The wetness is foreign to my cheeks.

"I can’t do this, God. I can’t surrender. All my life I’ve survived each ordeal and you know my dreams. I’ve got to rewrite that manuscript. I won’t let her win by tossing it in the trash, but I don’t have the energy to rewrite it yet. Help me, God, help me clear my head and quit dulling my senses. Send angels to help me keep the demons at bay until I can heal."

Tossing the pills down the toilet, I get dressed and leave the studio apartment on that drug-infested corner. With notebook in hand, I’m determined to be something. I’m going to be both a writer and a mom who loves her kids. Someday, when the right guy comes along. If he ever comes along. Please God, I’ve screwed up my life. I’m begging you to give me One More Try.

April 18, 1990:
"How can I help you? Please let me try to—I can heal the pain, won’t you let me inside?"
I stand before my dorm room mirror washing off what was left of the foundation and mascara. I met him, I think. I know he’s in a relationship with another girl on this small conservative campus, but he’s different, I just feel it.

Why can I tell him my secrets? I shouldn’t reveal such things and trust them to strangers. I hardly know him, and he’d never want anything to do with me. Besides, God, he’s got Donna. I’m just the lady from New York, who disguises herself in designer duds and coats of make-up. We met at the Passion play rehearsal. I’m Lady Procula, the wife of Pontius Pilate. Just like her, I’m flighty, vain, arrogant, with a real FINE attitude: F***ed up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical. Yep, that’s us, Lady Procula and me. God, I know I shouldn’t meet him after hours at the library, I just know that we’re going to get found out and we’ll become the object of campus gossip. He’s dating Donna, they hold hands and wear each other’s class rings, but he meets me at the library after hours to just talk. He’s special. Every bit of him. He doesn’t need me to ruin him. Maybe I need him to Heal the Pain.

April 18, 1995:
"…They won’t go when I go. And I’ll go, where I’ve longed, to go so long, away from tears--*"

Standing at the mirror I saw the reflection of a woman I didn’t know. My blonde hair, once styled like Marilyn Monroe, is now straight, dull and dark in its natural color, pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of my neck. Extenuating the puffiness of my face, my green eyes fade from the circles beneath them that even the foundation and concealer fails to cover. I buttoned the black shirt, button by button, covering up my fair skin, shutting my best feature inside of this cleric, while standing at the mirror and attaching the dreaded white plastic tab collar beneath it’s sewed seams. God, I’ve watched too many young men die this year at the AIDS hospice. I’ve recited the prayers of the sick more than I can count, dear Lord, and I don’t want to say them again. So much has changed, I’ve come so far in this life.

I’m married, I got my bachelor’s degree, in seminary and filling my call to minister to the dying. But part of me is dying too. I feel it. This life isn’t what I want, God. I want from my career than holding the hands of the dying and praying for their souls. With each one who dies, a piece of me dies with him, as I relinquish the pains buried deep within my soul. I want babies, one for every day of the week. Let me walk away from my vocation, God. I promise to fill it in other means, just not in word and sacrament. I’ve been writing again, Lord. You know that.

Every night when I come home from the hospice, I write until I fall asleep at the keyboard. I type through my streaming tears and agonizing sobs. I’ll teach the world to love the least of these through my words, but please God, please don’t forsake me when I leave seminary. Life as a minister isn’t for me. I want to be a mother. The church doesn’t want me if I won’t be a parish pastor and I know I’m called to the hospice, but I just can’t go back to watch another young life end from this plague. I’m rescinding my call and turning in my cleric. I sign the withdrawal papers though my professors beg me not to since I have so much potential to teach. The seminary, the church, the world, They Won’t Go When I Go.

April 18, 1997:
"Kindness in your eyes, I guess you heard me cry, you smiled at me like Jesus to a Child."

I’ve been crying for a week now. On and off, just sobbing tears of fear and joy. In January, I gave birth to our son. He’s beautiful, his eyes are bright and I adore him, but I’m not right. The stroke I suffered at delivery left me maimed. I can barely type let alone carry the baby at times. I push him in the stroller about the apartment so I won’t drop him. I have to quit my job. I have no choice. I’m pregnant with twins. How, God, how can I do this? I can barely take care of one. We’ve waited five years for babies, and now you give them to us all at once when I’m not well? Why are you doing this to me? I’m scared. I hate this high rise apartment. I smell pot in the halls. Please God, let them be healthy. Renew me, Oh Lord. Heal me and make me into a good mother. Maybe this is your way of forcing me to heal myself. I have no choice now, do I? I can’t sit and pity myself any longer when simple logic doesn’t make sense. I have to make muscles move because we’ll have three babies this year for Christmas. Three babies! For years I wanted a baby for Christmas, and this year I get my Christmas wish, threefold! Through my tears, I feel God smile at me like Jesus to a Child.

April 18, 2000:
"Don’t you think I’m looking older? But something good has happened to me, change is a stranger you will never know."

Three years later, standing in front of the mirror, my eyes swollen from the lack of sleep, we’re packed to move home to Ohio. Our new baby has a cold, and the three toddlers are confused, the only home they ever knew, this tiny two-bedroom apartment is a mass of cardboard boxes. What will it be like to live in Ohio again? What will it be like to be so close to those who make me crazy with their nagging and manipulations? Promise me, Lord, that you’ll get us there safe. That van, its engine, doesn’t sound right and the baby’s cold worries me. My Baby was sick whole way there, I prayed as we rode through the mountains of Pennsylvania that day. She sounds bad. This is my miracle, God. Our miracle, remember? The baby that wasn’t supposed to be is my most cherished possession on this convoy across the state. She’s so ill. Get her home to Ma. She’ll know what to do. Next day, while signing the lease to our house, we’re called back to Ma’s house. Take the baby to the hospital. She’s laboring to breathe. RSV. The baby and I spend three days together at the hospital as our health insurance runs out. No shower for mommy, no change of clothes. I’m tired. Family’s mad at inconvenience of the three toddlers and left me stranded at the hospital in retaliation. Our lives are still packed in boxes upon a moving truck, but my whole life lies there on that hospital bed. My miracle. Getting her well was all that mattered. The house could wait, and the family could deal with their grandchildren. A little grandparent duty won’t kill them. It really won’t. When you’re well, sweet baby, we’ll move into our house. Don’t worry, baby, Mommy’s stronger than when she left fifteen years ago. Older and wiser, Mommy’s in control.

April 18, 2001:
"It’s a cruel world, you’ve so much to prove, and heaven help the ones who wait for you."

Looking in the bathroom mirror, I watch him towel off in the shower behind me while I wash my face. Hints of gray tease his chestnut brown hair, as he tells me about his evening with the children. He’s given me the best ten years of my life, four beautiful children, and the love and acceptance to last me a lifetime. He’s my support system, my beloved and my best friend. I adore him, the only person who believes in the reality of my writing career when the rest of the family sees it as a joke. You’ve answered my prayers, God, all of them, and now the publisher likes my book. She really likes it. I’m ecstatic, but afraid to show it too much. I’m sitting, where I’ve wanted to sit for the last 20 years. I’ve changed so much. I’ve grown and matured, blossoming past the beautiful stage, I’ve settled into happiness. I’m not a size nine any more, but I’m on my way down again. Dropping the pounds and shedding the inches of weight I gained twelve years ago so no man would ever find me attractive enough to hurt me again. My plan backfired. This one has always found me beautiful, seeing through my pain and into my soul, healing me from the inside out with his love. I’m more beautiful now than ever Life is good. Smiling at him through the mirror’s reflection, my beloved’s eyes tell me You Have Been Loved.

April 18, 2008:
"I don't understand it, for you its a breeze, little by little you brought me to my knees. Don't you care?"

I've lived trapped in silence for the last year. The plan I set in motion, hoping, praying you would stop philandering and focus again on your family and career didn't work. No, in fact, it ended in my own imprisonment.

No longer seen as the woman of the house, I became the victim of my own volition, my paycheck taken, my respect stricken, holes in the walls that missed my head. What happened to us? Why don't you love me any more? Why are you sleeping with so many women and where is all the money disappearing to? What happened to the man who loved God, his family, his wife? I don't know you any more.

Every day it just gets worse. You moved her into our lives, our home. Gave her the money, the power, the control. All because I didn't want to be divorced. I tried the easier softer way and the five of us were worse for it. Now I have to watch for the way to escape. Guard myself as Josh falls apart on a medicinal toxicity, an aggravated hernia, emotionally overwhelmed as I had to walk away from the only job I truly loved--because you wanted more money, but in reality it was more control of me. I beg God for help when I'm forbidden from church. I can't give up hope. Maybe, just maybe, he'll wake up and realize what he's doing and turn a Different Corner.

April 18, 2011:
"Jitterbug into my brain, goes a bang bang bang till my feet do the same..."
I signed the divorce papers today, on my 22nd sobriety birthday. My children about me, we surround each other with love and support now, still healing from the pains of the last three years. Even more so the pain of guilt and powerlessness of the overwhelming grief of loss of the last six months that began with the death of their beloved grandfather, the cat who had always been with them since before their birth, and now their great grandmother.

To them, she was just G.G. To me...she was so much more. She bought me my first Wham! cassette: Make It Big because of one song: "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." I was ironing in her basement when the song came onto the radio and my grandmother loved it. She grabbed my hand and taught me to jitterbug.

She never gave up on me. I just wanted to go home again. I begged her spirit for time, Please Grandma, hold out until May. The divorce will be done, I can get released from this state and come home. Please, Grandma, please hold on. The divorce that should have been over in a year held out for three and with it my lock down into the state. I couldn't go home. She died on April 11th, the day the divorce went into settlement. I sobbed, I threw the papers off my desk. Never again would I see her smile, hear her voice, or give her eulogy that we wrote together for her funeral.

I wore my "Freedom" T-shirt that he bought me at the concert I waited 25 years to see. I yelled "Thank You" to George, I was only a few rows back from where he stood on stage at the Key Arena. I felt so blessed, even thought I knew then it was the last thing we'd attend as a couple. The "Thank You" was for more than just the opportunity to see him sing on stage. It was for being the voice in my headphones as a teenager or coming out of my computer as I write as a mother. Surrounded by my children at a Red Robin restaurant, we promised to always "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go."

Kyrie Eleison

2013-06-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Thank you to hetead on for this great video.

This prayer was written two weeks after I filed for divorce. I found it recently while searching for something. What I hadn't seen for the last two years was finally revealed to me and the pain inside me burnt me deeply to my soul. I spent a lot of time praying and crying then, pouring myself into poetry, going to meetings, holding it all together. It was through my faith and the desire to protect my children that got me through that incredibly tough time. I am blessed by those who stood by me, whose shoulders I cried on, who reminded me that we would get through this if I let go and let God as much as possible. Even after all these years this prayer is still so relevant to me. I don't resent or hate, I left that go a long time ago. You can't hate someone you pray for. ~Mae

Lord have mercy...Kyrie Eleison
I can't stand to look no further
My throat can't take another recanting of another episode
Something I overlooked
Another nail in our marriage's coffin.

Christ have mercy...Christus Eleison
Guard me from hate--bitterness--resentment
Hold me in check
Duct tape me together when all the pieces feel like they'll just fly off.

Spirit have mercy...Spiritus Eleison
Wrap about the children and me with your healing wings
Open us to the love and compassion to others
Shield us from judgment and hate
Fill the void of our lives created by addiction
And the absence of father--lover--friend. Amen

~October 9, 2008

Expresso Ashes

2013-06-21T20:57:00.001-07:00

Anger burnt my throat like hot coffee
Americano, extra hot, no foam--
Forgetting I ordered it extra hot.
Contempt brewed in my mind and fear shook reason
Like attempting to rouse a sleeping spouse amidst a house fire.
My mind drifted from the solemn sadness of pity
To the ire and contempt smoldering like cinders
Breathing, releasing, and raking dirt over the coals
Finding serenity in my solitude
But never truly alone.

An Organic Gardener, a Quilter and an Avid Activist

2013-06-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

I grew up in flared bell bottom jeans, crazy striped shirts and clashing flower prints.

My mother, a flower child of her own right, didn't wear make-up or get her hair done weekly.

Her house a hovel compared to Donna Reed's.

My ma had more important things to do than housework.

Ma was an organic gardener, a quilter, an avid activist.

She broke her water in my Dad's Mustang in '68 at a checkpoint looking for protesters in D.C.

As a chatty curly-topped blonde toddler on a flight full of marines, I bounded about an airliner,

Sat on the laps and chattered smiles from servicemen on their way home from Vietnam.

Holding Ma's hand, my emerald eyes watched their countenances fall from smiles to shame at the baggage claim.

We covered up nuclear bomb testing, hijackings and slayings with the Bicentennial.

No one talked about it in school when full length colonial dresses and 3-pointed hats were all the rage.

My Ma, the activist, made us watch the news.

Dinner always tasted great except on nights with liver

Our stomachs churned and sometimes food didn't matter

Seeing hijackers with guns sticking out of cockpits

Ambassadors assassinated for doing their jobs

Cambodian Refugees--

All those events kids at school never talked about.

Teachers never mentioned.

Where is the education in ignorance?

We played hand-clap games on the playground about Ms. Mary Mack and Miss Suzy

Not learning that women were admitted into West Point and the Naval Academy—

That we could become Episcopalian priests or attend Yale.

Fictional sto

Fiction stories filled our textbooks and

Our teachers didn't revel that Barbara Walters

Was the first female news anchor.

Our little lives revolved around Wonder Woman and Barbies—

Women with great figures and super powers

Not real women who fought for our equality.

I didn't inherit everything from my mother

I am an organic gardener, a quilter and an avid activist.

My daughters know they can be anything

Either could be President if she so desires.

They watch the news with dinner.

They know about Iraq and Afghanistan

They know how many children starve to death every night in our own country.

They wear flared jeans and wild colored shirts,

Braids in their hair and daisy chains made of clover.

They honor the flag and its servicemen whether they agree with the war or not.

Someday, just maybe, they'll be organic gardeners, quilters and avid activists

All Steamed Up!

2013-06-15T23:17:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This is a difficult piece to both publish and explain. I wrote it in January 2009 after a job interview at the Alderwood Mall for a job, I walked through Macy's on the way to my car and through the menswear department. I came home and wrote this piece. Throughout its inception, there's a portion of it that became what my grandmother wanted to be her eulogy at her funeral, something I was not able to deliver and something my uncle refused. We edited it together, she and I, that portion of this piece between the double asterisks. While I'm just now publishing it, this was a painful piece to do so for the measure of grief of the last five years. -- Mae

I miss ironing for him. Bizarre, isn't it? How could I yearn for a chore that others would be glad to be freed from or pay the dry cleaners to press—when I know that his new wife doesn't do either? How could I miss standing two to three hours a week chained to an ironing board with spray starch in one hand, a steaming iron in the other? The spray starch and the steam—my weekly facial—was the only gratis for a burnt fingertip from the iron's point while plaiting that cuff just so or a steam burn from creasing that collar perfectly into position.

For the last twelve years I should have tossed up my hands with four babies to care for, a house to manage, a writing career that could barely pick up speed because of my indenture as the domestic engineer. All of these reasons were opportunities to stop ironing. I didn't have to do it. But I did. I chose to iron his work clothes. A good wife irons her husband's clothes. Through everything else I am or would ever be, he could never walk into divorce court and say 'I had trysts with many other women because my wife didn’t iron my clothes.'

Just what about ironing his shirts and slacks did I desire? Didn't I have enough of my own or the children's clothes to do? It couldn't be the lack of ironing that's for sure, but they don't need me to do it. He did. His Monday morning depended on a freshly pressed shirt and slacks before he left at five-fifteen a.m. to catch the morning bus ride from Bothell to Kent.

I miss the scent of the spray starch, the sensation of the steam as it rose to my face sometimes fogging up my glasses if I held the phone between my ear and shoulder as I ironed. Ultimately I reveled in satisfaction when a whole week's ironing hung from my plate rack before I hung it in his closet. Every pair of trousers cooled in their clamped hangers with perfectly straight creases and cinched cuffs. The shirt collars all faced the same way, the starch in the shirts stiffened the cloth fibers. My Sunday evening ironing meant the completion of another week, another exhausting weekend, and the house was quiet except for the din of the television that he escaped into on the other side of the house.

I realize now that ironing was one of the ways I loved him. I worked hard to make certain he looked presentable all the time in the public's eye. After all, he was a county library director. He had to look good. Even at the start of his career, he did a lot of grunt work, hauling law books and filing opinion inserts. Back then, only heavy starch would do. It clogged the steam holes that I had to flush out with Q-tips and a wet cloth, just to see if I could get another month of life from a pharmacy iron on an already strapped librarian's salary.

He’d always been hard on his clothes. With each piece upon my board, I inventoried the wear of his shirts more than I probably ever did our marriage. Were the collars pilled by the gruff of his stubble? Was the material thread bare on the elbows? Did he snag yet another shoulder on a stacks shelf? Those right triangle rips were the worst and caused the fatalities of more than one shirt in a given year. Typically, it was the most expensive, the favorite oxford with the high thread count. After all these years, I just learned to accept it. I got a reason to find him another shirt, find the best bargain, a gem on clearance, another tie to match it and maybe even a pair of slacks if I could afford it. Always in a rush, not watching where he was going, not paying attention to the clearance between the shelf, his arms full of books, he'd rip yet another dress shirt. His clothes had to look perfect when they came off my ironing board, yet he could abuse them however he pleased. Then again, he didn't treat me much better.

The greatest sin was not that he did it. It hurt me that he didn't say so. That I had wasted the time and energy to wash it, dry it, and then get most of the way through ironing it before I found the hole, the rip, the snag, the ink stain that I now couldn't get out, chastising myself for not looking examining his shirts more before I washed them.

Laundry was always an issue of contention. I would beg him not to do laundry. He'd do it anyway. I'd get mad when he wouldn't empty the pockets and leave pens in his pockets then decide he was running the wash that day only for a gel pen to leak all over the children's and my clothes and ruin them just as much as his own. He wouldn't fold it properly, stain wash it thoroughly, put bras in the dryer, refuse to use hangers, and wash loads and leave it in bins to become a pile of wrinkles I'd use my iron more to make everyone presentable again. It was less work if he would have just left me to it to begin with.

Those plentiful opportunities I lost my cool, blew my top, when that shrill in the back of my throat crept up and and I usually burned myself and make me really angry. It's no wonder he never told me. I scolded him like he was one of the children who left a crayon in a pocket, who poured nail polish down the front of a pair of jeans, who wiped my lipstick onto a jumper while playing dress up in Mommy's room, who still wipes his mouth on the shoulder of his school shirts or using his clothes for a napkin for greasy fingers. My mind always went to the financial part of things: Where am I going to find the funds to replace this? Will he still have a week's worth of long sleeved shirts or do I have to go find him one more? When am I going to have time to get him another? Does he have enough now?

I will openly admit here that I am a serial killer of vacuums and cheap irons. If ever the murder and destruction of either were a crime, truly I would have been sentenced to life in a prison filled with dust bunnies and wrinkled clothes.

**My obsession with ironing and vacuuming comes from my Grandma. Maybe the weekly steam and starch facials kept her wrinkles away all these years for even at eighty she didn’t look sixty.

My grandma taught me how to iron when I was a summer shy of ten. She had enough to do back then. My grandfather was the picky sort who couldn’t lie about the V.A. nursing home in pajamas but wore a pressed button-down shirt and creased slacks. His hair comb-over was a look clearly stolen by Donald Trump and he always had to look neat as a pin: his face shaved, his nails trimmed and filed, even on his bad hand that was debilitated from the series of strokes he suffered when I was a baby.

His shoes were always shined, my grandmother chided by him on our visits—Eileen—No—Lisa—No—Eileen—his mind and voice conflicted by the words he wanted to say and how to say them. I felt so bad for Grandma, who did so much for a man I think she had the right to loathe. All those years she could have left him there, divorced him, not cared for him, lived her life. He was difficult and made life hard on her, yet for twenty-plus years she still took care of him. She laundered his clothes, she stain washed, she pressed them, and shined his shoes. They might have helped him in and out of bed at the V.A., but Grandma took care of him.

Throughout middle and high school, I would go to Grandma's house and press Grandpa's clothes and even hers if she trusted me with them. I'd spend hours ironing, listening to the radio. Most Saturdays I felt penned up in the darkness of that immaculate basement that was as long as a bowling alley without the dust, noise and odors. One Saturday afternoon, while I was ironing, she taught me how to jitterbug to WHAM!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" on her waxed tiled floor, in between the little sitting area with the furniture from the house on Anawan and the rafter lined with laundry for me to press. To this day, I can’t hear that song without thinking of her brown eyes smiling at me as she twirled me about that basement floor, in her little grasshopper shoes and me in my sock feet. At the next family wedding, she’d take me out on the reception floor and jitterbug with me. That’s probably my most precious memory of my Grandma.

I ironed for clothes; my grandma supplied my wardrobe when I was in high school. She wanted me to look nice, have a boyfriend and be socially accepted when I was clumsy and one of those lost girls that never successfully found her way into a clique. I spent a lot of time with Grandma after my parent's divorce and living only minutes away from her house was both a blessing and a curse.

There was nothing worse than a surprise white glove inspection from St. Eileen, the Saint of Everything Immaculate. Clad in her perfectly creased white polyester slacks, with a stiff starched top, white or bone Grasshopper sneakers with blonde jute braids about the soles, you hoped that she left your house with everything on her still white and not covered in black dog hair or dust you'd hear about it for weeks to come for at least twice a day on the phone. She'd scowl in disgust at dishes left in the sink, schoolbags not hung up, shoes on the floor like they flew off your feet in different directions and may heaven help you if your room was a mess. There'd be threats of no allowance that made my brother Bear and I rush about the house like the Road Runner and the Coyote, trying to clean up as quickly as possible. We knew the result if we didn't: there'd be no impromptu shopping trips, no stops at McDonald’s for a double cheeseburger, a shared order of fries (so we didn't eat too much—after all we had our waistlines to worry about) and a chocolate shake.

Many times over the years, Grandma and I would sit in the McDonalds' parking lot beneath the street lights and facing 224 as traffic drove past. She'd suck on the straw of her shake, making her lips thin and leaving behind a fuchsia lipstick print on the white and red striped straw. Grandma would listen as I vented about how unfair Mom was, about how mad I was at my dad and his new wife, how much I hated school, and sometimes crying about a boy who had hurt my feelings. No matter what, a trip to McDonald's with Grandma always seemed to make it better, even if it got me into more hot water with her than what I had already started out with Mom. What's more, Gram wouldn't let go of it. Penance was always a daily nagging, reminding me for days how awful I had been, saying things to me about it that she had thought of days later even after it had all be settled. If I rebut my argument, I'd receive even more chastisement, because her granddaughter knew better than to talk back to her.

After those talks at McDonald’s, I hated coasting down the hill of 224 to Mom's house after Grandma had chewed me out for getting upset with Mom. That chocolate shake crept up my throat, as in my mind I tuned out Grandma's nagging and tried to formulate the words I had to say to Mom to apologize. I had no choice, because she would check up on me. I had to admit that Mom was right and tell her that I love her because "no one will ever love you like your mother." I'd kiss Grandma good-bye and tell her thank you and I love you about three times over and wave bye to her as she gave me my talking points with her head poked out of the driver door window. I'd turn and wait, listen to them all for what seemed to be the third time even if I had to pee really badly and then tell her I loved her once more before I shut the gate going into the back entrance of the house, the clang of the cowbells announcing my presence and my flickering of the porch light twice meant that I was safe and in the house and had locked the door and I would call her tomorrow to fill her in on all the details. Regardless of the lecture I had just gotten from my mother, Gram's words would still echo in my brain even after I trudged up the staircase to bed that night.

Through this divorce, I still called Grandma to fill her in on all the gory details, constantly comparing this divorce now as the spouse instead of the divorce that I experienced as the kid. I still call to vent about my mom, my ex and the frustrations of being a quadruple parent of four kids with a special needs child, a puppy and two aging cats. I was the apple of her eye who wanted nothing more than to go home to her through the past few years. When my moment of freedom came, she had died three days before. I will always regret not being home with her in her last year. It would have been the least I could have done for her.**

Grandma understood how I missed doing his the ironing when I cried today. "At least you still get to iron for the kids," she said. "There's just one less person to iron for." I chuckled, wiped the tears from my cheeks and couldn’t resist laughing as I barely had a moment to reduce Mount Wash-More whose avalanche had overtaken the laundry room floor and the overflowing sea of dishes that always seemed to accumulate even when the kids weren't home (because I was walking around picking them up). My life revolved around homework, intramurals, sports, band practice, his visitation schedule, confirmation classes and requirements, chasing down legal documents and keeping record of daily occurrences in the Daddy Diary, where I record snippets of my ex's mid-life crisis.

The plate rack holds plates I don't use and kids clothes hung on plastic hangers forgotten to take down to their room to put away until someone's searching it out. No longer hanging are the dress shirts spaced equally between the tines of the plate rack, so that a haphazard slip of a hanger didn't crush them. Their long sleeves folded inward with the arm pit seams stuck out, pressed cuffs hung perfectly where his belt would soon hold the shirt in place neatly tucked into his suit pants. Who irons his clothes now? Why doesn't he wear them on Wednesdays when he picks them up? He always changed into dungarees and never wears his work clothes around me. Is he afraid I'll glare at him? That my lips will scoff, that I'll say something? Was I that much of a bitch when it came to how he looked at work? Wasn't I supposed to?

Walking past men's departments in stores is like torture for me. My mind registers the colors that would look incredible with his ties, an eggplant that would be the perfect backdrop for the gorgeous tie I bought him last Christmas. Does he ever wear it? Does it remind him of me? Before I can stop myself, remind myself that we're no longer together, that I have limited funds to raise four children upon and that I have no money to be purchasing clothes for him—the man that's cost me so much by his defiance and second adolescence. I bite my tongue when older women explain his condition with a roll of the eyes, a sigh and the utterance of 'mid-life crisis' as if it should cost me any less legal fees, hurt any less or wish I could just shake him and say, 'would you please just snap out of this and realize what you're doing to yourself, your children, and me?'

I have a hard time walking past men's departments and have learned to park so that I don't have to walk through the men's department to get to wherever I'm going. It takes so much energy to resist the urge to step off the tiled aisle and onto the carpet, not to peruse the racks, fight the magnetism of sale signs and the clearance rack that I had found so many wonderful pieces and bargains on in the past. The scent of the sizing and scotch guard enticing me as my hands caress the shirt shoulders, lift up a shirt by the hanger and give it a glance over with my eyes before I can stop myself in mid grope.

Gently I remind myself and put the shirt back, but not until I check the price and do the math in my head at the sales price. I make a great attempt to leave the department altogether until I see the fanned out tie display on a round table, with the raised platform. Lured in by the colors, I can't help but pick one up, the olive and burgundy hues teasing my lack of sensibility, my longing for love and acceptance from him again. I open the tie to the chagrin of the sales associates on the floor, look at the construction, the stitching, the pattern. I check out the price and nod my head in agreement. "That's cheap for an Armani."

My fingers fondle the silk tie and before I can stop myself, I'm rushing onto the carpeted section again and finding a matching dress shirt and wow, a pair of dress slacks that are sixty percent off. Ooh, they're flat fronts, stain resistant and the wrinkle resistant ones too…for that price? I find a pair of 36 x 30, thrilled to have found his size, and then as if someone snapped her fingers in front of my face and I was no longer clucking like a chicken in a nightclub act, I realized that I didn't know his pants size any longer. He can't be a 36 anymore. He's gained too much weight since the separation. I lost my waistline and he's gained his.

My face flushed with embarrassment. I hang the shirt on the pants rack and drop the tie on a stack of sweaters as I rushed out of the department store and into the Seattle rain before anyone could realize that I was crying. That was a shirt and a pair of trousers that I'd never get to iron for him. I couldn't just pick out a tie and give it to him and expect him to wear it now. He'd probably take it literally as a hangman's noose. There would be no satisfaction of ironing him another outfit and a kiss good-bye as I watch him leave for another day at work.

Throughout the divorce I spent a lot of time at the ironing board. I could cry there and get a facial all at the same time. The week my ex and his attorney decided finally to settle the divorce, within a couple days of trial, my Grandma died. The last years of her life I was locked down in the state by court order, I couldn’t come home to say good-bye to her or my stepfather before he crossed over either. I stopped ironing for a while after her death. I just couldn’t bring myself to put up the ironing board. When I started working full time I had no choice but to iron my dress clothes and as time went on, it got easier. To this day,when I’m frustrated there’s nothing better than a spray starch facial to relieve being all steamed up!

It Was Always In Me

2013-06-15T22:25:00.003-07:00

There were always in me, two women at least,

one woman desperate and bewildered,

who felt she was drowning and another who

would leap into a scene, as upon a stage,

conceal her true emotions because they

and present to the world only a smile,

an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest. –Anais Nin

On the edge of a cliff
Full of despair, anger, resentments, bitterness,
I stared down into the abyss
To succumb to a plunge would ruin me for sure.

Step back, be strong,
Suck it up don’t show any weakness
The weak terrorized
Their bones crushed like toothpicks
Caught in gnashing teeth
Chewing the left over bits
Between their gums and their lips.

Step off and let go
Let them all talk tomorrow
Indecision held me above the abyss
Whispering to step back or step off.
The choice was mine, over and again.

Overload

2013-06-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

I didn't mean to embarrass you at the bowlling alley
The flashing lights
The noise of people and chatter
The ball return clanged and pins pounded over
The grease of fast food and dust from the shoes
Amplified my already over processed senses
My brain got stuck and kept rotating on the same loop.
Wanting something to concentrate on
A fidget--a toy from a gumball machine
Then I saw it--my obsession since the first Toy Story of my preschool years
The claw machine filled with stuffed creatures of animated characters
My lifeblood of movies cartoons and TV shows.
My older brother Matt tried.
Trying to quell the meltdown brewing
Save him from the embarrassment with his friends all about.
Using the last quarters in his pockets
Unknown he would just make it worse.
When victoriously he snagged the lizard instead of Scratt the Squirrel
I threw myself down onto the floor
Ignoring Mom's Rules: No kicking, no hitting, no throwing yourself on the floor
Kicking that machine in frustration
That scream rattled the back of my throat until I bit my hand leaving marks
Hitting Matt as he tried to get me to my feet and out of there just when Mom rushed through the door
I WANTED THE SQUIRREL!!!!

Mom and Daughter Book Review: The Art and Power of Being a Lady

2013-06-10T09:37:00.001-07:00

The Art and Power of Being a Lady

In 2009, at the brink of my divorce, I found this book, The Art and Power of Being a Lady by Noelle Cleary and Dini Von Meuffling, a small 8x8 square book and was instantly drawn to its title. Since I arrived here in the Pacific Northwest, I've come across women who are definitely not 'ladylike.' They come across very slovenly, rude, and crass. My goal was to not be like them. This is not to say that I'm perfect. Unfortunately, my mouth still gets me in trouble on occasions, but I strive to honor others with grace and compassion. As I read this book, I began to acknowledge in myself my own ladylike shortcomings, and decided that only I could do something about it.

A couple days ago, Joy came to me and said that she still needed a non-fiction book to complete her Honor's English reading requirement. I went to my bookshelf, pulled off the book I've wanted her to read for 4 years now. She loved how short the book was, that it was filled with quotes by famous and popular women who embody ladylike tendencies.

As she read it, I could tell in many ways that it resonated with her. As I read over her shoulder as she wrote the review last night, I realized that Joy was in many ways already the lady that the authors described in the book. She's not perfect by any means and she does have room to grow, but to see that she has come so far makes me feel as though I've done something right as a mother.

"I want others to read this book," she said to me. "I love the quotes in it, and that so many women are in it. Not just celebrities but women who really have made a difference in our world." I wish this had been the book she had done the 'book talk' on instead of a book review. I have to say how impressed I was that book resonated with her beyond a word/page count, even so late in the school year.

If you are looking for a gift for a girl graduate this year, I suggest this book. What better gift could you give her? Okay, slip a 20 in as a bookmark, but this book could impact not just a young woman as a graduate, but as a future mother and professional as well.

From the words of Joy:

"This book represents a hundred women from Hollywood, politics, and society at large that express their own perception of a lady. My favorite quote was from Paula Zahn, “I think ladies expect people to treat them with respect and in return that’s exactly what they get back. In order to be considered a lady, I think you have to treat people with grace, sensitivity, and dignity.” There are so many great and inspiring quotes in this book that most of the book was compromised with quotes. From Jennifer Aniston to Eleanor Roosevelt, their input helps portray what being a lady is all about. The two sections in the book that I really enjoyed are, Manners That Matter and Friendship: A Lady that Delivers.

Manners are very important part of being a lady. In today’s society, people forget to use manners when it doesn't even take that much effort to do and say them. Like saying ‘thank you’ or ‘please’ is very simple and lets the person serving you feel appreciated. One of the rudest things is being late. Tracey from Seattle, Washington said “One thing that has helped me become more conscientious is the realization that when I’m late, I’m stealing time from other people. And stealing is never ladylike.”

A lady expects a lot from her friends but delivers the same amount too. When the going gets tough a lady is not a fair-weathered friend. She is the person other people look to when they need help or when a friend doesn't have the courage to ask for help. It’s important for any relationship to be truthful and trustworthy. A lady knows that the truth may hurt but whatever the controversy may be the relationship between friends will withstand any kind of conflict that is thrown at them.

I thought this book would just be about the do’s and don’ts of being a lady but it was so much more than that! The inspiring quotes and helpful tips on being a lady opened my mind to what a lady in society really should be like."

The Quilt

2013-06-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

When I received a dilapidated and ripped crazy quilt in the summer of 2009, I examined it and realized that I had too many stressors in my life to attempt to tackle the mending of this beautiful piece of history. It kept getting pushed aside, unimportant and not even upon my list of priorities in the bottom of my closet in a box. The week of my birthday, I pulled it out, wanting to make room in my already small closet.

With it spread upon my dining room table, I examined its state. This quilt had to be over fifty years old from what I knew about the age of fabrics since my mother is a restoration quilter. The brocaded taffetas had ripped at the seams from the magenta wool knots strewn throughout destroying the fabrics due to an improper tying technique and an ignorant attempt to launder this quilt in a washing machine, the shrinking wool yanked it through the fabrics tearing them. The destroyed antique fabric bits spoiled the simple stem and chevron stitched embroidery in the seams.

Resolute to cut it in more manageable panels for wall hangings to embroider and embellish, I started cutting away the holes with scissors and seam ripper in hand, considering the ire and pain left by my current separation and the ongoing legal tug of war. I was determined to keep that flag on my side of the mud, always wanting to be right and in control of what caused more chaos than peace, spilling over into the emotional turbulence in my home. Exhausted by this stress, I tried the advice of an old timer, known in these parts as “Al B.” whose solution was simple: “Yeah, okay, works just fine.”

I balked at first about the release of control I deemed a necessary element for emotional survival. Encouraged to try it, I gave it a chance, knowing that my attorney would bark at me later for acquiescing, not realizing that my need for serenity was paramount and just for today—that moment—that “yeah okay” relaxed my senses and gave me an opportunity for momentary peace instead of leading into hours more of chaos recounting it to girlfriends and family. I was so full of destruction and chaos when I walked into the rooms of AA twenty-four years ago. My obsession with my own obliteration pickled my brain with and organs with a fifth of Wild Turkey that had followed Rum & Diet Cokes.

The holes in the center of the quilt saddened me as I forged about searching for an easier softer way of cutting it out completely. I couldn’t throw it away. It would be easy. Put it in a garbage bag and haul it out to the trash, I could have been done with it and had the extra room in my closet that I wanted. But I couldn’t part with the luscious silks, the lavender taffeta, the perfect embroidery stitching just as I longed to save my marriage that was too far gone to repair. As I determined which parts of the quilt I could cut into three foot by two foot panels, I still had bits of fabric that were ripped in the midst of them, including a ribbon embroidered butterfly, a creative repair that would be skillful and time consuming. It would take patience, the one quality I lacked, and the shortcoming I still held onto because it’s easier to cope with than to change.

Like the memories of good times, there were pieces of the quilt that I had to cut away for the sake of the creation of another panel. A floral silk that I sat and stroked justifying where in the fabric I would cut to preserve a flower, knowing full well that with salvage, only a corner of the flower would show.

The loss of community and friends that sided with him meant the letting go of friends I had for years, leaving me with a sparse support network in a city three thousand miles from home and my family. Frustrated by a friend who just wanted benefits and would come around just to get his rocks off, I decided that I was finished being his willing quarry and quit acquiescing to his desires. Just like when I was newly sober, I had to give up my old life and discover what really mattered to keep me sober after I rid myself of the basic acquaintances of changing people, places and things. I changed how I dealt with the toxic drunks in the family, the ones that only encouraged my sickness and were not pleased by my desire for wellness and wholeness. I moved back to them and when I was stronger, I found the means to walk away from them, realizing the understanding of “There are those too, who suffer from grave emotional disorders but they, too, have the opportunity to recover if they can be completely honest.

Those painful holes, the ones that fray and grow larger with every hearsay cut into my heart as it was stabbed with pleas from other family members to reconcile, I held fast to my resistance and cut away the hole, only to discover the priceless pattern upon a 1910 flour sack beneath. Like the destroyed quilt, I had to cut away that was destroyed to rebuild the essence of me. As I examined the embroidery panel on what was once wrapped about flour and lined inside this depression era quilt with scraps of work clothes, I realized that I am blessed. I was a ripped and dilapidated quilt when I walked into AA. Slowly I released myself from the chaos, and cut away the angst and destruction that started my own internal resurrection. A few holes remained and the ones from this divorce still needed patching that only spiritual healing would provide.

As I basted the new cut pieces with needle and thread, connecting the crazy patch work top to the receiving blankets, work clothes and flour sacks that lined the inside beneath the bed sheet backing, I prayed for peace. I just wanted to be released from the pain inside me and find a way to say “yeah, okay,” and not “But…no…” I just had to remember one thing: that I said “yeah, okay” when I walked into the rooms of AA and every time I said “but,…no” to God I stepped in my own way of my recovery. The same rang true with the divorce and my own recovery from it. I grieved over the loss of my marriage, then the death of my cat, stepfather, and later my grandmother who died the week my ex decided to settle the divorce, keeping me from going home to Ohio for her funeral. Just like the panels I cut away and made into fresh canvases for my embroidery in years to come, I was able to let go of that destruction. Now it’s time to build on beauty. I wasn’t ready in 2009 when I found the quilt. Now, in 2013 I’m ready to create beauty for me.

Live. Breathe. Thrive. Dream.

2013-06-04T05:51:00.001-07:00

Live. Breathe. Thrive. Dream.
Beneath the quegmire in stasis I am entombed
In saddness fear and remorse.
Saddness bogged down where happiness belonged.
Resolutions forgotten the year is half gone.
I'm no better off than where I was.
In fact I feel worse.
Feel, surprisingly not numb, is progress for today.
I'm still stuck in the muck
Between the longing to be happy
And the infestation of fear and worry.
It's hard to look out at the sunshine through a boarded up window.
I just need to step out beyond the driveway.
Walk the dog.
Inhale the scents of an oncoming summer.
Live. Breathe. Thrive. Dream.

Bill the Bull

2013-06-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

When I was 10 I got sent to my Aunt Alberta's farm in Zanesville, Ohio for the summer. So much had happened that school year. My mother had four strokes in a matter of a weekend, and no longer was she the head nurse and absent parent--for even when she was home, she wasn't there. My life as a little kid changed that year as I grew up in more ways than one. My dad was awesome when I was little. He was so present in our lives. He took us to the Taylor Public Library so much that Bear and I had read through the children's section of the library before I was in the fifth grade. It was hard when he traveled for work. We were left with her and she wasn't him.

When I found out that I was going to the farm for the summer, I had this idyllic fantasy attached to it. I wanted to be Rebecca on Sunnybrook Farm. After all, I was Lisa who lived on Sunnybrook Road. But what I didn't realize was that I was being 'sent' away for the summer. This would be the first of many summers I would be sent away. I don't understand it, even today, how it was that I was such an abominable child that my 'families' didn't want anything to do with me and would 'send' me away. I realize now that their disregard left me with a feeling of abandonment and why I never feel like I could ever or will ever be able to rely on them. Even today, when I need them, they aren't there. Maybe that's why that summer, I became friends with Bill the Bull, because even at 10, I realized that I was just as shut away and forgotten about as this bull who was just too friendly for his own good.

Bill was a Guernsey Bull with brown and white spots. Like I said before, Bill was very friendly. He was a ladies' man too, and he had a way with the ladies. Left to his own devices one winter, Bill broke a fence on my aunt's property and traveled around to the neighboring dairy farms and impregnated as many Holstein heifers as possible. Well, in the scheme of things, a Holstein and a Guernsey mix does not make good milk for a dairy farm and my aunt was in hot water with her neighboring farmers, and her way of reining in Bill was to imprison him in a stall in her barn. He didn't get to leave it.

I became one of his only visitors besides the barn swallows, the cats and the chickens. He was so friendly and would swing his big head over the side of the stall just to get his head scritched from us kids. I loved feeding him field corn and he'd take it right out of my hand with his big tongue. Bill had the most beautiful brown eyes. I loved the way he looked at me, how I could tell him anything and I would hide out in the barn just to hide out from everyone. He would be my Wilbur and I was his Charlotte. Any words or threats of butchering him for all the trouble he caused my aunt upset me and made me beg her not to consider it.

I named all of the animals as if I was Adam. The chickens each had names even though they were for laying and sometimes she'd butcher them. I remember crying over a chicken and refusing to eat my supper, only to get switched afterward and sent to bed both hungry and smarting from the stripes on my backside. I went to bed that way more days than I didn't, but that was something no one ever asked me. Nothing I never told my parents. I learned early on that I couldn't really tell them how it really was at Alberta's. She was my mother's favorite aunt and I was the child she resented. At 10, I was cooking while standing on a milk crate in front of a gas stove. I was so short I couldn't reach the stove. Then again, I had milk crates up against most of the cabinets and counters and sink. I stepped from crate to crate and did things my mom wouldn't have let me do in her kitchen. Aunt Alberta was different. She'd tell me what to make and when I screwed it up, she might eat it after she got done yelling at me or laughing at it. When what I made was a disaster, she'd laugh at it and they may have eaten it or it would be a can of cold packed sausage dumped in a pan and cooked up with some eggs for supper.

No matter how badly I cooked, I found out that it tasted fine as long as I took the pitcher out to the garage and filled it from the cold keg of beer out there. I got a shoe thrown at me for bringing back a pitcher full of foam and was taught by a field hand's daughter who was 2 years older than me how to to tilt the pitcher and do it correctly. A couple months shy of my 11th birthday, I learned how to tap a keg. I probably should have learned to crochet that summer or something more age appropriate, but in a family full of alcoholic women, I realized later that to them it was probably was age appropriate.

Alberta looked like Minnie Pearl when she was cleaned up. She could play gospel hymns on the organ and I remember her and my Aunt Freda playing her organ when they were all in town for canning. Most of the time she wore work clothes and she stank of cigarettes and beer. I knew she had a hard life. She had been a bar owner and from what I understood then she wasn't doing it any more. She had one son who was successful and absent from her and Uncle Archie's lives. He lived in Texas and once a year, his wife and the boys would come to Ohio for canning. He didn't.

Because I would get sunburned badly I didn't get to go out to the fields. I was left at the house to do laundry, clean and cook. I'd go out to the barn to see Bill and complain about the chickens and the peacocks shitting on my cleaned off porch. I had marks on my butt and thighs from getting switched and sometimes she'd be mad enough at me when I was outside to throw her work boot at me. I hated being there.

Seeing Bill and gathering the eggs were the highlights of my day. When Pete the Peacock would perch and call out his "help" as I laid in bed that night, I'd wish someone would hear him and save me from there. I missed my dad, my books, my dolls. None of that was there at Aunt Alberta's farm. There was one other girl, Sheila, who disliked me because I was an annoyance. I wanted my Daddy. I wanted to go home. I felt as though I had been forgotten about since they didn't even call and talk to me. Aunt Alberta wouldn't let me call them because the long distance call costed too much.

One afternoon, Aunt Alberta got mad at the puddles I left behind when I dumped the foam off the top because that was 'wasted' beer. So I sucked the foam off the top of the pitcher and the pain on my backside and thighs didn't hurt so badly. I slept better and the evening 'numbing' made me miss home easier. It just didn't matter. Because I didn't matter. Like Bill the Bull I was forgotten about. Locked away so not to be an inconvenience for anyone. Bear got to play baseball and be with his friends, and I don't know what else they did at home. For summers though, he got his wish. He was an only child, spoiled by his parents while I was sent away. They didn't tell me what summer was for them. Where they took him, what they did. I just know what it was for me, and when I tried to say so, I was a liar. I think it was attached to their guilt. It was easier to say that I was a liar than to listen to my truth. They didn't want to know the truth. To quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, they essentially couldn't "handle the truth." So they didn't want to know.

I got beat for lying at Alberta's house. One day, Sheila and I went out to the barn to see Bill. As we entered, a black and white spotted banty hen, "Henny Penny" was sitting between his back hips. She did this regularly, and he never minded. We said that she was his pet chicken. When Penny would sit there Bill would acknowledge us but he wouldn't move to visit so not to disturb her. We'd move on, and gather the rest of the eggs and feed the ducks. However, when we reentered the barn a while later, we were laughing and disturbed Henny who stood up and there, between his hips was an egg. If only there was such a thing as a camera phone in 1978! The only proof we had was our own eyewitness account. That and an egg! We had to get the egg! Sheila told me to 'talk to Bill' to keep him still while she wallowed through the manure in the stall to get that egg. When she had it in her hand, it was as if we had an egg of gold! We couldn't wait to tell Alberta. We ran up to her and she was mad that we hadn't started supper yet. What she didn't understand was that we were on a very important mission for a 10 and 12 year old.

We told her our story and she looked at the egg in Sheila's hand, certain that we were telling her a tall tale trying to get out of why the supper wasn't on the table. She grabs me first and wails on my butt with her large hand until I fall away from her. Then she reached for Sheila and gave the the only spanking I ever saw her give her. The egg broke in her hand and yolk oozed from her fingers in the midst of it as we picked ourselves up and rushed off to the kitchen. We hadn't lied. We had told the truth and the two of us whimpered and said nothing as we peeled potatoes there at the sink, our backsides still smarting. Throughout supper we are berated for our story and not doing as we were told, everything.

When the beer pitcher is empty, I rush out to refill it, and make it foamy on purpose. I suck it down and finish filling it, then carefully carry it back to the house, spilling a little on me as I always did being that I was an eternal klutz. We finished the dishes and went to bed early that night. The next night, we went to her dad's house. Going to James' house was like something out of the 1800's. It had no running water, no toilet. If you had to go, you used an outhouse. It had electricity but no TV or radio. We didn't have TV at Alberta's house either. Radio was for the weather and news only, not for music so Aunt Alberta said. I didn't know anything that happened in the outside world those summers. I just looked forward to canning week, because after it, I'd go home and back to school.

Canning week was a week long Floyd sister reunion. My mother and brother would be down with one of his friends and Alberta's grandsons would be up from Texas. My aunts from Indiana, Freda and Edna, would be there as well my grandmother who would make a surprise and unwelcome visit by her sisters. My grandmother was not well liked by her sisters. The youngest of the family, they would accuse her of things I never understood, but as a young girl I figured they were jealous because my grandmother was the most beautiful of all of them. She had a nice car, a beautiful house, and two husbands where most only only had one. When she left, it was with a box of things carried out by her second husband, Carl. In it was my aunt's new towels and some of my great grandmother's jewelry that they fought over. I'd hear about that for years to come. I never said what I saw, only heard the conjecture from the rest of what I knew was already true. I never told any of them. That in the midst of their last battle there in the road, I wanted to climb into the back seat of my grandma's white Cadillac and go home with her. I knew she'd have a fit because I was filthy and barefoot and covered in dirt. I stood there wanting to go with her, but any words to my mother and I would be terrorized the rest of my week there and for the weeks to come. I just wanted to escape the farm.

This year, my Aunt Edna has brought her granddaughter Chrissy and daughter Cathy with her. Chrissy was a big whiny girl. She was just plain irritating and for once, there was someone more annoying than I was accused of being. Bear and Kirk enjoyed poking fun at her as did the farm hand's daughter. She whined and was afraid of everything and would get the rest of us in trouble at every turn. Finally, with other kids there, I could be a kid again. We played hide and seek, laughed and ran around the farm. There were adult women to cook in the house, not just me. There were adult women to peel potatoes and work in the garden and other kids to weed it. I was ready to go home. Chrissy whined about everything. While we kids were in the garden weeding it, or schucking corn, washing dishes or making beds, she'd whine and cry to her grandmother and wouldn't have to do anything. She'd tattle on us even when we weren't getting into mischief. One evening, we kids had enough of her and Chrissy was afraid of heights. We told her that there was a nest of baby chicks in the hayloft and then we led her up there. When she went to see them, we left her in the hayloft and ran off towards the house. She wailed and screamed bloody murder and her grandmother, sitting on the porch with the others heard her and chastised us kids. Her mother went out to the barn and got her down from the hayloft and we got a talking to and Cathy demanded that we be sent to bed instead of being left out to chase lightening bugs that night.

My visits out to Bill were with others, but I still fed him a cob full of corn shucked into my hand, though the others found it quite fun and I had to share him with them. One evening, we had left Chrissy in the house with her grandmother and had sneaked out to barn. Our Aunt Cathy said she was going out tripe hunting with another farm hand who was this young guy who had bad teeth, squirrely hair and he smoked Camels. We kept asking what a tripe was and we had no idea, so we thought that we would follow them and find out. So we ended up in the barn, and hid there, knowing that they would probably come in there before long, since there were no other buildings on the property. Besides, it was too early for lightening bugs and we all had our mason jars that we hijacked from the milk crates full of them that we got to wash the next day. When the lightening bugs came out, we left our post to go catch them not seeing that Cathy and the farm hand had come back into the barn.

I went back in to say good night to Bill and I heard some rustling. Fearing that it was a fox, I looked around and didn't see anything on the barn floor. Still hearing it in the hayloft, I was scared and rushed out of the barn just as Sheila and Bear saw me. I told them that something was in the barn, and the two of them led the charge. They asked me where and I pointed up at the hayloft. Quietly, Kirk and Bear climbed the hayloft ladder and there was Cathy kneeling before the farmhand screaming at us kids to get out of there. We all went running back to the house laughing and when we broke into the kitchen, we told them all what we saw! We were not chastised, but rewarded with the stories we all told about it. Not long after us kids were upstairs did Cathy come back into the house. Sheila and I perched near the staircase in the nook by the organ where we couldn't be seen. They all lit into her and teased her terribly through the night. We sat there smirking and trying not to laugh too hard and remember it all to report to the boys in the morning.

Hide and seek seemed to be one of the best games at Aunt Alberta's house during canning week. The farmhouse had 3 floors so there were all these closets and for 7 kids, it was awesome. We were in the middle of a great game of hide and seek in the middle of a rainy day and Aunt Alberta had just come in from the field covered in mud and in need of a shower. Bear and Kirk were trying to escape from being found and Kirk ran for the bathroom closet, where there was the laundry chute, knowing it would lead into the laundry room in the basement near the kitchen. Well, when Kirk popped through the laundry chute at a naked Aunt Alberta, her scream was heard all the way to the third floor where I hid. Poor Kirk went running out of there as fast as the rest of the household went running towards the bathroom. For years we would talk of that story.

The summer of my wedding was the last time Aunt Alberta would be a part of my life. She and Edna were both dying of reproductive cancers and my mother decided to take care of them in Zanesville than plan my wedding with me. Instead, she decided that she was sewing the dresses, making the food, doing the flowers and anything else she could hijack without me. I waited for weeks, not knowing what was going on or what to do. She died a couple months after my wedding.

Front Lines (when home is an autistic war zone)

2013-05-29T03:46:00.001-07:00

Every day is another misconstrued battle of exhaustion. I live in a house of broken windows torn off doors and holes in the walls. Today's casualty is a toilet. The only toilet in our house. My reward for coming home from working so hard. A broken toilet stuffed with baby wipes because he uses them at dad's apartment. I'm not even sure how he found them. Where they were or why now all of a sudden he decided to use them. He just did. Then the emblazoned battle. Josh's meltdown broke the only brand new piece of furniture I ever owned--my beautiful dining room table. Demolished on one side, it's destroyed. Collapsed and broken. And I did likewise. I sat on the phone with a crisis specialist who felt that it was just a table. It wasn't. It was where I fed my children, painted banners, baked cookies. It was where we were six. Now we are five. It's gone. All gone. As I sat there I saw the destruction of my americana painting. The canvas ripped. Hope cried. Joy shut off. Matt hurt. The dog was even scared. And done with his destruction--josh went to bed.

Burnt Heart

2013-05-28T03:57:00.001-07:00

"Love is a burning thing...I fell for you like a child--my flame went wild." -- Ring of Fire, written by June Carter Cash

My heart smoldered for years, reigniting with each of his trysts, the betrayal of vows by the love of my life.
I'd sweat with my hair singed with no quick spark to end my pain by combustion,
I held on like Shadrach, Meeschach and Abendago, but I won't dance.
My body lingers in the furnace but my soul is on fire.
I torched my soul with bitterness brought on by mistrust and hate.
Once more in my life I had been replaced.
Covered in soot my soul yearns for life afresh out of the papery ashes that shred and float away.
How I loved him.
How I miss the man he was before his heart was consumed with hedonism.
His judgment disintegrated with every orgasm with another.
I lost top billing in his life.
No fireman can extinguish my smoldering heart, longing to rebuild and protect it from future arsonists.
I hold the hose.

"We're Okay, Everything's Gone"

2013-05-21T02:58:00.000-07:00

I heard a woman on CNN say that tonight. Her home obliterated, her animals gone. Her family safe. Things gone. The tornadoes that came today destroyed so many. They ripped and roared and raked over the land like a a vertical rototiller. It made me think of the tornadoes of my life. The actual ones. The running into the basement when the sirens went off, and the leading of my own little ones down the cellar stairs when I saw the wall cloud when we lived in Sharon, PA.

The one tornado I will never forget was when I was 10. We were riding down the interstate to Zanesville, Ohio in our Ma's big red Econoline van. We were going down to do canning with Aunt Alberta. The weather had been crappy all day long. We had a CB in the van and Ma always had her first aid kit in the van. Even though she had strokes a couple years back and walked with a cane, she was still an RN. We knew there was tornadic activity in the area, the weather systems alerts kept going over the radio.

The Econoline van had four seats. One for Bear, one for me, one for Molly and Mandy the two black Labradors who emulated black Angus cows in their girth. Ma could see the tornado coming up the other side of the interstate. She yelled at us, "Get the Dogs and Get Under the Seats and Hold On!" Bear and I did as she said and we could feel the van rock from wheels to wheels and at one point, I thought for certain we would be rolling over. I buried my face into Mama Mandy's fur, held onto her and didn't let go as Bear held Molly. Ma kept driving. FAST. She barreled down the road until the storm past on the opposite side. When she slammed on the brakes it was to devastation. We climbed up from under the seats and saw the jack knifed trucks, the cars that were in accidents. It was a mess. Ma didn't let her strokes or a cane stop her. She had me call on the CB for help while she had Bear carry her first aid kit. She started doing triage before the ambulance got there. I stayed with the dogs and kept saying the mile marker where we were at, glad when emergency vehicles finally showed up. I remember having to pee and it being humid in the van with panting dogs who were distressed enough as it was.

If she had stopped, we would have been in that wreckage. Tonight, Matt called her. I sat here and listened to her voice. Wanting to open my mouth, to say hello, to say how good it was to hear hers, that deep down I loved her, I knew where it would go. I think its just as hard to not speak to her than it is to do so. I don't hate her. It's the same way with my brother. I dislike how they treat me.

For years I was "gaslighted" by her, my grandmother, my uncle, my own brother. I was belittled by people who just wanted to control me. I wasn't supposed to go to college. Bear was. I wasn't supposed to have a family. I wasn't supposed to be successful in a career. And heaven forbid, don't you become a writer and tell all our our secrets! I was never good enough for any of them. When I graduated from college with honors before he did, when I had four incredible children, when I became published and had plays produced, and have been successful in advocacy, work and motherhood, I still wasn't good enough for them. I'm in good company though. My kids aren't either. My beautiful and amazing kids aren't good enough for them. Whatever. I'm glad that they don't want us in their lives. My children won't become the collateral damage of their toxic narcissism and abuse and greed. It's pretty bad when their great uncle steals all 36 of their savings bonds that their great grandmother bought for them and locked in her safety deposit box in her granddaughter's bank. I'm perfectly content leaving all of the Bishops to their nasty lives.

They asked a little boy what position they told them to get in. "We got down on the ground and we covered our head with our hands." I assumed that position in schools when it came to tornado drills and for most of my childhood trying to protect my hair from being ripped out of my skull. I remember wondering why social workers and teachers didn't care about us. Especially in the Denny year. I came to school in bruises. I wore a turtle neck in late May from where he tried to strangle me. I was failing almost every class. No one heard what we weren't saying. I kept having seizures from having my head hit every night. Nobody heard us. Even when I called for help--no one heard me.

For years I wanted to return to Ohio but I don't want to go there anymore. I'm finally content with Seattle being my home. It's very expensive here. Gas is almost 4 dollars a gallon. The view is great, mountains and eagles. Yes, we have rain and it rarely gets over 80 degrees. We get a snowfall maybe once a winter. I don't live in a fancy house. I rent a little house in a good neighborhood. My kids go to the 11th best school in the country. We do our best together. I try my best to shelter them from the tornadoes in this world. I just hope that they trust me enough to listen to me when I tell them to hold on and that I have the wisdom and courage to drive through the storm rather than succumb to it. While there are no tornadoes in Seattle, there are earthquakes and tsunamis and windstorms. I'm sure before this project is complete there will be many more storms to come. Just for tonight, its good to hear the rain and the kids, dog and cat sleeping.

Work Too Much, Write Too Little

2013-05-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

It's very simple. I don't write enough. It used to be what completed me but when my ex stole my writings to put into court's evidence against me, I quit. Just putting my hands on the keyboard is painful. What used to soothe me causes my fingers to itch. What I know is that I have to find the ways and means to put them on the keyboard and just spew. Just let the words flow out. I never did say why I stopped writing. I just did.
So here's what happened. I think the reason why I stopped writing was because I felt guilty.

What I wrote wasn't horrid. I wrote a farce on polyamory called "Room" and a historical one act play called "The Bounty." They were produced at the Little Red Studio, which at the time of the divorce filing was a thriving theater troupe. We were amazing, the work we did together. I had the opportunity to write and perform. I honed my ability to write and perform "performance art poetry."

When my ex's now wife contacted the artistic director and 'stole' my writings not for a book for my 40th birthday but to enter in as evidence against me into family law, I felt violated. I've always felt guilty, wondering if this act and the court papers that followed involving them ended our amazing run as a troupe. It wasn't my intent. My attorney told me to stay away. Contact no one. I lost not only the community I had built with my ex who sided with him, but now the troupe who I loved more than family. I entered into the separation alone. Somewhere I would remain for the next 5 year even after its finalization. Right now, I feel that its time for me to come out of isolation. To finally start writing and submitting my works again. I want to know what it feels like to be a writer and playwright again and not something I consider 'what I used to be.'

There's a memoir in me that begs to be read. When I put the pen to paper to write, I end up sobbing before I finish what I'm working on. Sometimes its easier not to write. I just know that until I do, I'm going to stay in this place of solitary and sadness. There's three novels that have sat in the computer since 2005. They're done. I just need to do something with them. I'm looking for a little encouragement, prayer and the burning chutzpah that I used to have.

Update on Josh

2011-10-15T23:10:00.000-07:00

"Tomorrow, I take my autistic son to a doctor who is willing to write medication scripts for him. The first one in 17 months. Why? Because his health insurance is through S.S.I.. When we lost the private insurance, his doctor dropped us. So did their pediatrician and their dentist. It shouldn't take me 17 months to get my disabled son in to see a doctor."

So, I took Josh to his new doctor. Who, told me when she entered the examination room, that she wouldn't be writing any scripts for him. That AUTISM was Mental Health, and she only did Medical Health. To whit, I told her to consult her DSM-IV and see that Autism isn't listed in it. It is a neuro-biological condition. Then she said, 'get a neurologist.'

So I said, write me a referral. She gave me a bloodwork order and what do I get on my answering machine? A message from her nurse for a referral to children's hospital. How nice. I've been on their waiting list for the last 5 years. 3 times I've done the paperwork book.

I'm NOT 99% -- I'm 100% Certain

2011-10-13T01:08:00.000-07:00

So.. This gives me pause: not because I've been one of the unemployed and on the lower end of the poverty level for a year (thank God I finally got a job) or who has spent a retirement just to make ends meet, or am uninsured. I'm not one of those who goes out and protests (I hate crowds). I've read the 99% letters and pleas, they've even resonated with me on so many levels, but I'm not in favor of the movement per se. But this made me think of it on a grander scale, because truly, I'm tired of the "new normal" as well.

>>>Stolen from David Trotter/Mary Fox:
Michael JJ Messer: ...We are tired of the 'new normal' where one bad illness or accident can leave you homeless, where we expect to work until we die because 401ks are destroyed via the fraud in the stock market, where our voices do not matter to our elected officials because of the money pumped into their campaign coffers are from corporations, both foreign and domestic. We are not here for handouts. We stand up because we are tired of the constant manipulation of our political process, and the incredibly negative effect it has on us and our progeny.

Be the change you want to see in the world. We are the 99%.<<<<

No, you're not 99% of us. You're the same lot that bought into the propaganda boosting in 2008 where you criticized others of different opinions, who reasoned more critically, maybe because of history, and judged them as racists. The labels you use under your "99%" is just another divisive election year ploy to keep our country from uniting and pooling together to make it through this tough time. We teach our kids in school that to be culturally diverse, you have to break down your own mental barriers to stereotypes, and that is all this movement is doing. Building up stereotypes, creating factions and promoting whining instead of encouraging compassion, unity, and gratitude.

Tomorrow, I take my autistic son to a doctor who is willing to write medication scripts for him. The first one in 17 months. Why? Because his health insurance is through S.S.I.. When we lost the private insurance, his doctor dropped us. So did their pediatrician and their dentist. It shouldn't take me 17 months to get my disabled son in to see a doctor.

Yet, all these politicians carry on about all the benefits seniors are getting and the ponzi schemes of SSI. And senior citizens? DO you have ANY IDEA how bad off so many of them have it? How every time they get a letter in the mail from their insurance, how the fear makes them fret and panic? How many food bank lines are filled with the elderly, because some months they have to pay for their medicine instead of food? That's what has become of the greatest generation.

Unfortunately all it used to take was a trip to a ballot box to change the outlook of government. No longer do we as a community come together, in a basement of a church or a town hall and cast our ballots for our community. Now our ballots are mailed and tossed aside with the rest of the junk mail that doesn't matter. Face it, who really cares anymore? Even to change your community or your school board takes buku bucks just to toss your hat in the ring. There's no room in government for average Josie's anymore. Only those fat cats born with silver spoons in their mouths, who lived the life of privilege or when they get to Washington, enjoy the benefits of lobbyists so much that they forget the faces of those who once considered them an advocate.

You want to picket Wall Street? Then maybe you ought to march down to Washington to Pennsylvania Avenue. Right, it wouldn't matter anyway. The man in question, he wouldn't be home. No, he's on Air Force One spending billions of our taxpayers dollars flying from state to state to extend his stay in the White House for another 4 years.

The "Wrong" Lord's Prayer

2011-05-03T15:59:00.000-07:00

Church shopping is tedious enough with a typical family. It's even more interesting when you have an autistic who doesn't care much for change. Okay, he doesn't like change AT ALL. Not to mention, on my weekends, I always have a houseful of kids, and 7 of the 8 that spent the night with me went to church as well. In between songs, I silenced the commercials on the radio to remind everyone of the rules. No hitting, no kicking, no picking, no running out to the bathroom every two minutes, no fussing... and just for Joshua, no throwing yourself upon the floor. Before we pulled into the church parking lot I gave them the seating arrangement and made them repeat it to me twice. Lined up, and walked in, and we went in to a pew and filled the whole thing up.

So, Josh settles in and falls asleep before the first hymn is over (at least he doesn't snore or drool on my shoulder). As typical, I wake him right after the sermon hymn and the prayers of the church, in time for Eucharist (communion). So he gets up and immediately folds his hands (praying hands) and replies in the prefaces and then we say the Lord's Prayer. Well... they use the red book. The NEW RED BOOK... and they use it LITERALLY. So... Josh is annoyed during the Lord's Prayer when they said "Sins" instead of "Trespasses" and decides that not only is he going to say it the original way and loudly, he's going to take it to the big man, the pastor, in the communion line.

Mind you, Pastor Sundberg, is really an amazing preacher. He held the attention of 6 teenagers between 11-16. God bless you, Rev. Sundberg for laughing at the boisterous red head who chastized, "you did the Lord's Prayer wrong. You said sins, instead of trespasses and Jesus wrote it with trespasses. Next week, you got to fix that. Don't forget, all right? Amen." He took the bread from the pastor who is restraining his laughter. Then he goes to the next woman to intinct the bread into the grape juice chalice and he says to her, before she could even get 'the blood of Christ shed for you' out, "remind him to do the right Lord's Prayer next week. He's old, he might forget." He dips his bread into the chalice and then he said "Amen" and walked back to his seat. With a reddened face, I intinct into the wine and cross myself, and utter to them, "I'm sorry, he's autistic." They nodded, still laughing.

Freedom Is MINE! I know how I feel....Sing it, Nina!

2011-04-17T23:20:00.000-07:00

In a little less than an hour, I will be 22 years old.

Well, I'll still be 42, but I'll be 22 in Sober years.

In 18 hours I will sign the divorce papers.

Freedom is mine, I know how I feel!!

It's a new dawn

It's a new day

A new life for me!!!

AND I'M FEELING GOOD!!!

SO GOOD!!!

Squirrel Caging

2011-04-16T01:25:00.000-07:00

Twisting thoughts of tangled fears that trick my mind into the control it shouldn't have, the questions and intrusions it shouldn't ask and the refusal to let faith have any part of my calming processes. Trust is not something I ever accomplish though I make plenty of steps to really try. Progress not perfection...progress not perfection...let go and let God are easier said than done by someone who fears the simple act of floating on the water. There are questions I should ask, information I should know, but we don't know each other well enough yet and I'm still trying to get used to the fact that someone as nice as you is in my life without an agenda. Just for today I'm going to trust that everything is fine, that you will share in time when you can trust me and I will share in time when I can trust you. No procrastination intended. Just waiting.

Bridal Songs

2011-04-16T01:13:00.000-07:00

August 17, 1991 My McClintock Gown

Upturned smile from another expectant bride
Her excitement contained in diamonds and pearls
You Raise Me Up as I heave another couture gown behind a velvet curtain.
Taffetas and Silks and Nights in White Satin
Gently tugging each zipper pull down
Guarding the material around
Forlorn reminiscing of your touch
between wet kisses upon my neck while humming
Our Song as you unzipped my McClintock
and each kiss dipped down my spine.
I Can't Make You Love Me
But wish that Freedom
Was as happily sought as the day
When we vowed until death do you part.

Voracious Minutes

2011-04-16T00:58:00.000-07:00

Voracious
Wet Kisses
with breath drawn
between rash passionate stirrings
hushing another, teenagers won't hear
Though approvingly they giggle knowing already
Peeking around the corner whispering through suppressed laughter
Low murmur loud enough to stop in mid-kiss
Our eyeballs to pop open and stare
"It sure is quiet in there!"
Embarrassed giggling recovered the moment
Winks and pecks exchanged
Lips tangled in seconds lasting minutes.

Looking Forward Dedicated to Margie, Beloved Aunt, March 21, 1990

2011-04-15T00:09:00.000-07:00

How I adored my Aunt Margie. Going to her home in Struthers was a treat as a kid. Her favorite word was "See." "See, see..." she'd say when she was agreeing with you. She had three amazing daughters who are brilliant and beautiful and I wanted to be just like all of them at once. Brilliant Marisa, Beautiful Marcella, and Blessed Marla, who I adored the most because she gave me the greatest clothes that she grew out of. My favorite by far was a knitted Mickey Mouse sweater with a pink Mickey Mouse on front.

When my youngest daughter, Hope was born, she was named after two Margarets. My Aunt Margie and a little nun who was so inspirational in my early sobriety, Sister Mary Margaret of Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Rochester, New York. Sometimes when Hope laughs, I can hear Aunt Margie's laugh. When I was pregnant with Hope, the pregnancy was fraught with complications. With complications come prayer. During the last month, Aunt Margie came to me repeatedly in dreams, telling me that Hope will be all right, you'll see. And she was. I woke up the next morning hearing Aunt Margie say "See, see?" as Hope wailed to have her bottle.

I wrote this poem for my Aunt Margie the night I found out that she had died. I was at Malone College at the time, and had a little under a year of sobriety. I had met Marcus and he wanted to date me and I kept putting him off. Her funeral was the morning of the opening night of our play. I gave this poem to Uncle Mickey.

The crocuses are breaking through the hard winter ground,
If you look real hard, you can see the orange and purple blossoms.
But in Ohio you have to look through the snowflakes wiping across your face,
Even when the sun is shining.
The snow falls down upon the daffodils
Spring can't decide if it wants to come and winter doesn't know if it wants to go.
But I'm looking forward to the day and waiting for it to come,
When I can look into your eyes once more.

The time we spent together seemed so short,
But maybe that's the way it was planned.
I look in your eyes and I see His face,
The one who came to save us.
And I know, yes I know, that you loved Him.
And I know, that He lives within you.
But sometimes my heart needs a running start
To find if He is there within me too.

So I'm working harder and becoming stronger
Living in this new life I've found.
I'm trying to listen to Him and always walk with Him,
And not to leave Him behind wherever I'm going.

But sometimes, the Lord's in people,
You know it when you meet them.
In your eyes I felt Jesus
And a sea full of praise.
But you are special, my Auntie,
Because you are an example of your faith.

But there comes a time, my Auntie,
When it's time for you to go.
I can't stop you from leaving,
The Lord has a path for you to follow.
In my heart, I know you can't always be here.
But the Lord who lives within us is always near.

And the snow falls down upon the daffodils,
Spring can't decide if it wants to come and winter doesn't know if it wants to go.
But I'm looking forward to the day and waiting for it to come,
When I can look into your eyes once more.