Hail! Greeting! Mazel tov! Konichiwa! Maki leaky taco!

As you know, it’s been a busy year in the Barely Knit Together household. We finally got rid of the “rat problem,” for those of you who were praying about this scourge that we didn’t want to be specific about – THANK YOU. Like everybody else, though, we got stink bugs too; thank god I don’t have the gene that lets you smell them. Everyone was going, “What IS that stench?” when I was around, but I just sniffed and shrugged my shoulders. How was I supposed to know?

Speaking of plagues, The Good Lord should have considered sending a plague of camel crickets! Every time one of them jumps out at me from behind the couch I scream, they are just like something from an apocalyptic, futuristic, rapture alien monster movie, with those giant back legs and those fat, round bodies. When you kill those suckers it’s like stepping on a cat, or even a small dog, except for that crunching noise, but honestly, what else are you gonna do? And really, how scary are grasshoppers and frogs? Not at all, I always say.

But enough about me. We’ve been working hard on our 1907 house, and finally (after four years) removed a single upper cabinet from the kitchen we need to completely gut, re-plumb, and rebuild. Progress! On a sour note, our beautiful new fridge on which the seals work and which has (gasp!) an ice maker won’t fit up the stairs to where our working kitchen is, and since we haven’t taken the lower cabinets off, it won’t fit into the future kitchen either, which is really okay, because we have to tear out the wood floors anyway, so who wants to move it twice?

We put the fridge in the library. The room is the perfect temperature for storing red wine, and now we have a place to put it. I will let you know if the refrigerator works as soon as we get some grounded outlets in there at floor level!

We are on a health kick here, too! Working hard to get rid of the mold and mildew from the rotting wallboards in the basement, all while  praying that the radon detectors I bought two years ago and haven’t installed yet aren’t strictly “necessary.” We drink soy to counteract the cancer risk.

In an effort to reduce our carbon footprint and use less fossil fuel, we didn’t turn on the heat until December, except for Thanksgiving, so my in-laws wouldn’t complain. We have lots of space heaters, anyway, we just have to be careful not to turn on more than one, or anything else while one is running, and it limits our ability to move from room to room, as we only have two grounded outlets. Pesky UL and CPSC! If I want to get electrocuted by a hairdryer or torch my home, it’s my own damn business!

What’s great is that viruses can’t survive temperatures less than sixty degrees Fahrenheit, so after I kick this lingering cough, I’m sure I won’t be sick again all winter! I think being cold makes my kids tougher, and it makes the outside seem not so much worse when the kid with sensory issues won’t wear a coat because the “arms are too round.” Haha! Silly kids.

So that’s pretty much life in our little neck of the woods. I like to think of all this as baby steps toward a fabulous life. As soon as we rebuild the porch my son dismantled, I’ll have company and I can give you the grand tour!

Just watch out for camel crickets.

What do you call it when you melt your phone in the oven while trying to drive the water out of it that was spilled last night, and at the same time the delivery men are telling you your wonderful, new refrigerator, which is a gift from your mother, will not fit up the stairs, which is where your kitchen is since you live in bizarro-house?

Send in your punchlines, no purchase required.

I laugh, and the more I laugh, the more grumpy the man gets because he sees his house falling down around him and there is always one more thing to fix, and one more bill to pay, one more child whining at his feet.

Can I fix any of these things in the next five minutes? No. I cannot. So I make lists, devise plans, set aside money, and laugh.

Because how silly is it? A phone melted in the oven. Really. These things don’t happen to normal people, because normal people do not put their cell phones into ovens.

He is lucky to have such live entertainment in his home every night, and I am lucky to have come so far that disaster elicits giggles instead of tears.

I’m alive! I’m alive!

I think by now no one is listening.

Ah, back to basics.

Today was Thanksgiving, and filled with thanks, and angst, and work, and the sadness of transitions.

My daughter brought her boyfriend over, and he is much older, but so young, so very young. Full of excitement about what lies ahead, and who am I to explain the truth to him? Let them have their hope. For me, I settle for wine, more and more as the weeks pass, and I question its danger, its slippery slope-ness, but I don’t feel it anymore. I could sleep longer each night and not miss the daylight hours.

I realize this could go badly, but I’m at peace, mostly.

Except sometimes I feel my heart struggle a little bit to beat, and I think, what if this is it? What if I never do anything more than this?

And it’s not enough. It’s not enough at all.

If I do this a lot, I’ll get better, if I don’t do it at all, I’ll get worse.

This is me, getting better.

This blog appears to have exhausted itself while I have been busy writing actual things in hopes of making actual money. Oh, I mean – it’s my art, it’s all about my art. I’m working on the craft, you know? And if I make some money some day, so be it.

I will maintain a light presence over at my new home space, mostly writing about writing, words, and books, and occasionally putting my neuroses on display.

I have enjoyed the pleasure of meeting all of you through this most strange medium, and appreciate the feedback, the laughs, the pulp fiction, and the marmosets, more than I can express.

Godspeed, best wishes, and all good things to you, my readers.

Warmly,

Barely Knit Together

We traveled by car.  My grandparents left upstate New York and drove the eleven hours to my home in Virginia, where I waited, impatient and seven years old, for them to pick me up and continue the drive to Florida, to Disney World.

I spent the entire journey reading, so immersed in words already that I often didn’t hear my grandmother, grandfather or aunt try to break through with their comments on scenery or questions about hunger or bathroom breaks.

In northern Florida, at least, that’s where I think we were, we stopped to visit some family and attend a reunion of sorts. My seven year old self, anyway, believes this is what it was. Cousins, second cousins, my mother’s aunts – it all dissolved in a haze, much as it does even now at these functions.  A confusion of blood, like a flock of birds or a herd of cows.

But there was another young girl there, maybe related to me in some way. She pointed out a bushy, palm-like plant, whose name I still haven’t learned, and warned me away from them, telling me, in her small, six-year-old way, that they would cut me, slice into my flesh and leave welts like paper cuts, stinging and colorless. And she told me her mother was dead.

I had no context yet for this thing, “dead.” We played with her delicate rag doll, sitting by the pebbles that surrounded the landscaping plants in this jungle, this foreign clime. We dug a hole and sang and said childish prayers, before we lay the doll in the sandy earth and covered her with rocks to weigh her down, keep her here for a time, anyway.

This reenactment haunted me. I was already a sensitive child, attracting tragedy like other children collect grass stains and mud. Perhaps I read too much. But I’ve imagined this event many times over the years, pulling it apart for meaning and sense, pictured other children performing the ritual of death with dolls, cars, even the hollow bodies of found insects. I wish I could remember what it meant to me at the time.

Now, of course, having come so close to that place just a year ago, I imagine my own children, their miniature hands placing beloved toys in the dirt and burying them, submerging them in the earth. Singing songs of mourning with no words, praying over a dead mother.

And I fill with something like hope.

I hide behind beautiful words. I hide truths that are more difficult to wrangle with than even I know, and though I like to think I’m facing things, I know there will be more, more and more things, stacked like cordwood, like bodies, just waiting for me to face them, that is, to put faces on them.

I will be the object of disappointment, confusion, for adding a friend on Facebook today. There, doesn’t that sound junior high? Doesn’t it sound so…what is the generation called these days? I’m an X. What comes twenty years later than that?

I lack the courage to give detail to the drama. I fear offending, defending myself, abandonment at its heart.

Here are the truths I know:

Families are a confusion to me. They lack a sense of immediate connection, whether by my nature or my upbringing, I have yet to figure out. And yet, and yet…who knows me? Maybe only someone who’s witnessed it, or pieces of it at least. Someone who can pick apart the betrayals, the hurts and the charade to get at the things that make up the whole me.

And also, we will be dust. This I know, and so why not make amends, why not get the explanations I need, why not tell how it hurts?

I’m not good at this thing, and sometimes I’m grateful for the shortness of it, the fleetingness of human life.

Other times, I wish for forever, to learn all there is that makes up a heart.

I used to own this body, like a pair of shoes, like a yo-yo, swung comfortable (falsely) in this flesh, walked with purpose with flair with con-fi-dence.  In my bones I knew myself desirable, though my eyes refused to see it, my mouth to voice it.  Thigh-high boots, short skirts, leather, zippers, spikes, flowery dresses and combat boots, chains, chains – a slave to an appearance I thought wasn’t pleasing but knew was the subject of want.

Now the flesh hangs off, is places I didn’t expect it to be, product of depression, of building infant bodies, construction, demolition, scars, I’ve made the outside match. It matches now, the complete and utter despair that is in it.

These are the things no one tells you:

The birthing is easy. It brings you to your knees, of course, if you do it right, and I don’t mean without meds because by god – it’s still a rending. It’s a splitting open, a metamorphosis, leaving the shell of your old self behind. You crawl out and view the devastation, but you can’t find what’s missing yet. You count it all as whole – fingers, toes, perfectly blue eyes in vernix covered skin.

No, that’s not the hard thing. And for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks if you’re lucky, they bring food. At evening meal time comes hot bread and casseroles, sometimes a salad mixed right there in front of you as you watch, dumbfounded and silent with awkward, weepy gratitude.

Those meals fill you, fill all of you, with contact, with continuity and grace, and give you the idea that you are special. When can you be waited on so well, so perfectly without the guilt of the undeserving? You have just made a human being – and you are still overflowing with emotion and amazement no matter how many times you’ve done it. You are a creator, or at the least, a catalyst. You’ve become holy.

And people bring meals that are complete, separate courses – no one cooks like this at home, but for the miracle of birth there is fresh bread and dessert, even. “You need this,”  every plate cries.

But then, and here is the thing, the meals stop and you are expected to go on. You are left floundering and impotent with a baby, a small person to nurture for weeks, months, years on end and no one brings you meals when you are facing the imperfect, the flaws of children, the foibles of mankind. There is no sign-up at the church for “Mary has a child who bites her, leaving bloody holes, and she’s afraid she might run away from home.” There is no Hallmark card that says “Sorry to hear you live in a house with a stranger and a potential serial killer,” and I’m not even saying who is which, because a change of wind could force it in any direction.

These are what no one speaks of, because there are no words that form themselves completely around the things, no idea that can cause you to own it, this embracing of failure again and again.

Tread cautiously, and gird yourself well for the journey. Here there be tygers.

It’s strange to walk into a place and see someone whose words you know, whom you follow in a strictly world 2.0 way.

It makes you hesitant.

Then you consider all the things you put out there, all the soul-emptying smudge of language on the pristine pixels, the things you would never, ever say to someone in a voice out loud that makes it too real, too immediate, the vibration of timbre in the bones of the ear that are like drumming words, marking them forever in a direct connection to the brain.

No. You would never let someone see this part of you that you don’t look like at all, this person you are inside. You would remain a persona forever, rather than a person.

But…there he is. And here I am. And it’s nod, avert eyes, and pretend we are anonymous still.

It could be in

the name…orderly…

tidy beds no

decorative pillows

drapes blinds ties

that could bind.

Every day the trays

come

at the same time.

Droning television mutes

the hum of voices real

and imagined.

There is no one

to care for but myself

so I do -

make bedbrush teethwash hair

every day, even.

What else is there

to do?

Outside

the mind must hold

tenuously

grip the edge hold up the

buttress

of Important Things.

Inside

we’re

Free.