...and the crazy motherhood cycle continues...
I have just this moment found out that one of my library babies, one of the first ones that I got really close to, is going to have her own baby.
My head is reeling. I honestly feel faint. This VERY young lady is an amazing artist. She did a huge portrait of me at my desk that not only was in her very first art show, but won an award and touched my heart eternally. When she wanted to drop out of school her freshman year, her mother recruited me to help talk her out of it, and she stayed in. She was dealing with anxiety and agoraphobia issues, and she got some treatment for that, too. That helped with school.
I talked to her about going to on to college, at least Community College, or tech school and working on her art and computer skills, and about seeing some world and some life. I remember saying "before you settle down here with some redneck guy* and have a bunch of babies, get out first - THEN come back and do all that if you still want to..."
I guess I knew. I've thought about it many times since she started dating this guy - the first guy she ever really seriously dated. And I realize now that the last couple of times I saw her, there was a tiny little niggling question at the back of my mind... I realize now that I knew she was. I wonder why she hasn't told me. Maybe she thought I'd be disappointed - and I am... but not in her. Just disappointed for her, I suppose. But I know I shouldn't be. Her friends, who are all a good bit older, are marrying and having babies. If she is happy, then I am happy. Who am I to judge what "having a life" is? I sincerely hope and pray that this IS the life she wants. And maybe, when the baby is older, she will return to her art...
...and I guess the fear of that not happening is really where my disapointment lies - or at least a big part of it.
When I first came here, she was a pre-teen. Snub-nosed, freckle-faced, shy. Now the library is four years old (as of Dec. 1), and this little girl is more than half-a-year younger than my own baby mother was she had me.
Goddess bless her, goddess bless the baby - goddess bless us all.
-s
*not an insult, she like me, knows who she is and where she comes from and is proud of that
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Friday, December 03, 2004
Today is the 54th* birthday of the woman who carried me, albeit reluctantly in her tiny body.
Every day I am trying to come to terms with the fact that we will probably never speak or hold each other again. I can give myself the small comfort that she is happy in love, that my brothers and she still have a relationship, that she is young and healthy and beautiful and strong, and that maybe she is comforted by the fact that there is an ache and void in me that will never be filled by anyone else. It's sad to say and to think that someone might be pleased by your pain - especially your mother - but I know this woman fairly well and I can imagine that the thought of that particular pain might bring her pleasure. If there's nothing else that I can give her on her birthday, nothing other than spending the day with my usual constant loss of her magnified to the point of unavoidable sadness, then so be it. It is an honor and a recognition of a sort. She is never forgotten, but especially not on this day.
I have a picture of her, in black and white, she is about 8 maybe, and she is standing on a chair in her mother's dining room. She is wearing an angel costume, a long white shift and a foil halo above her almost white hair. She is beautiful, of course, and has a sweet, proud smile on her face. I joke about the irony of this photo when people see it in my album, but it is dear to me. I also have one of her and her sister standing beside a helicopter. She is younger, maybe 5, and she has a big bandage on her skinny little leg. She is squinting a little, and looking like any child made to pose for a photo when they'd rather be looking at - or knowing my mother, flying in - the helicopter. In this picture it is the bandage that touches my heart. I wonder how she got hurt, and if it left a scar, and if it did, did I ever see the scar as a kid and wonder what happened.
I suppose in time I will have wondered about all these things, her as a child, a teenager, a woman, until she is real to me in some other way and not just this constant ache and lifetime of painful memories. Maybe by being apart we can love each other in a way that our real lives never made possible. Who knows. For now, it's just hurt.
I looked hard to find these poems, and I posted the lyrics to a John Mayer song that means a lot to me too.
Anne Sexton - The Breast
This is the key to it.
This is the key to everything.
Preciously.
I am worse than the gamekeeper's children
picking for dust and bread.
Here I am drumming up perfume.
Let me go down on your carpet,
your straw mattress -- whatever's at hand
because the child in me is dying, dying.
It is not that I am cattle to be eaten.
It is not that I am some sort of street.
But your hands found me like an architect.
Jugful of milk! It was yours years ago
when I lived in the valley of my bones,
bones dumb in the swamp. Little playthings.
A xylophone maybe with skin
stretched over it awkwardly.
Only later did it become something real.
Later I measured my size against movie stars.
I didn't measure up. Something between my shoulders was there.
But never enough.
Sure, there was a meadow,
but no young men singing the truth.
Nothing to tell truth by.
Ignorant of men I lay next to my sisters
and rising out of the ashes I cried
my sex will be transfixed!
Now I am your mother, your daughter,
your brand new thing -- a snail, a nest.
I am alive when your fingers are.
I wear silk -- the cover to uncover --
because silk is what I want you to think of.
But I dislike the cloth. It is too stern.
So tell me anything but track me like a climber
for here is the eye, here is the jewel,
here is the excitement the nipple learns.
I am unbalanced -- but I am not mad with snow.
I am mad the way young girls are mad,
with an offering, an offering...
I burn the way money burns.
Stevie Smith - Mother, Among The Dustbins
Mother, among the dustbins and the manure
I feel the measure of my humanity, an allure
As of the presence of God, I am sure
In the dustbins, in the manure, in the cat at play,
Is the presence of God, in a sure way
He moves there. Mother, what do you say?
I too have felt the presence of God in the broom I hold,
in the cobwebs in the room,
But most of all in the silence of the tomb.
Ah! but that thought that informs the hope of our kind
Is but an empty thing, what lies behind? --
Naught but the vanity of a protesting mind
That would not die. This is the thought that bounces
Within a conceited head and trounces Inquiry.
Man is most frivolous when he pronounces.
Well Mother, I shall continue to think as I do,
And I think you would be wise to do so too,
Can you question the folly of man in the creation of God?
Who are you?
Daughters - John Mayer
I know a girl
She puts the color inside of my world
She's just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change
And I've done all I can
To stand on the steps with my heart in my hand
Now I'm starting to see
Maybe it's got nothing to do with me
Fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
Oh, you see that skin
It's the same she's been standing in
Since the day she saw him walking away
Now she's left cleaning up the mess he made
So fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
Boys you can break
You find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong and boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without warmth of a woman's good, good heart
On behalf of every man, looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world
So fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too.
I am hoping that today finds you close to your mothers and your daughters, and wishing you happy birthdays and
Much love,
-s
* I think.
Every day I am trying to come to terms with the fact that we will probably never speak or hold each other again. I can give myself the small comfort that she is happy in love, that my brothers and she still have a relationship, that she is young and healthy and beautiful and strong, and that maybe she is comforted by the fact that there is an ache and void in me that will never be filled by anyone else. It's sad to say and to think that someone might be pleased by your pain - especially your mother - but I know this woman fairly well and I can imagine that the thought of that particular pain might bring her pleasure. If there's nothing else that I can give her on her birthday, nothing other than spending the day with my usual constant loss of her magnified to the point of unavoidable sadness, then so be it. It is an honor and a recognition of a sort. She is never forgotten, but especially not on this day.
I have a picture of her, in black and white, she is about 8 maybe, and she is standing on a chair in her mother's dining room. She is wearing an angel costume, a long white shift and a foil halo above her almost white hair. She is beautiful, of course, and has a sweet, proud smile on her face. I joke about the irony of this photo when people see it in my album, but it is dear to me. I also have one of her and her sister standing beside a helicopter. She is younger, maybe 5, and she has a big bandage on her skinny little leg. She is squinting a little, and looking like any child made to pose for a photo when they'd rather be looking at - or knowing my mother, flying in - the helicopter. In this picture it is the bandage that touches my heart. I wonder how she got hurt, and if it left a scar, and if it did, did I ever see the scar as a kid and wonder what happened.
I suppose in time I will have wondered about all these things, her as a child, a teenager, a woman, until she is real to me in some other way and not just this constant ache and lifetime of painful memories. Maybe by being apart we can love each other in a way that our real lives never made possible. Who knows. For now, it's just hurt.
I looked hard to find these poems, and I posted the lyrics to a John Mayer song that means a lot to me too.
Anne Sexton - The Breast
This is the key to it.
This is the key to everything.
Preciously.
I am worse than the gamekeeper's children
picking for dust and bread.
Here I am drumming up perfume.
Let me go down on your carpet,
your straw mattress -- whatever's at hand
because the child in me is dying, dying.
It is not that I am cattle to be eaten.
It is not that I am some sort of street.
But your hands found me like an architect.
Jugful of milk! It was yours years ago
when I lived in the valley of my bones,
bones dumb in the swamp. Little playthings.
A xylophone maybe with skin
stretched over it awkwardly.
Only later did it become something real.
Later I measured my size against movie stars.
I didn't measure up. Something between my shoulders was there.
But never enough.
Sure, there was a meadow,
but no young men singing the truth.
Nothing to tell truth by.
Ignorant of men I lay next to my sisters
and rising out of the ashes I cried
my sex will be transfixed!
Now I am your mother, your daughter,
your brand new thing -- a snail, a nest.
I am alive when your fingers are.
I wear silk -- the cover to uncover --
because silk is what I want you to think of.
But I dislike the cloth. It is too stern.
So tell me anything but track me like a climber
for here is the eye, here is the jewel,
here is the excitement the nipple learns.
I am unbalanced -- but I am not mad with snow.
I am mad the way young girls are mad,
with an offering, an offering...
I burn the way money burns.
Stevie Smith - Mother, Among The Dustbins
Mother, among the dustbins and the manure
I feel the measure of my humanity, an allure
As of the presence of God, I am sure
In the dustbins, in the manure, in the cat at play,
Is the presence of God, in a sure way
He moves there. Mother, what do you say?
I too have felt the presence of God in the broom I hold,
in the cobwebs in the room,
But most of all in the silence of the tomb.
Ah! but that thought that informs the hope of our kind
Is but an empty thing, what lies behind? --
Naught but the vanity of a protesting mind
That would not die. This is the thought that bounces
Within a conceited head and trounces Inquiry.
Man is most frivolous when he pronounces.
Well Mother, I shall continue to think as I do,
And I think you would be wise to do so too,
Can you question the folly of man in the creation of God?
Who are you?
Daughters - John Mayer
I know a girl
She puts the color inside of my world
She's just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change
And I've done all I can
To stand on the steps with my heart in my hand
Now I'm starting to see
Maybe it's got nothing to do with me
Fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
Oh, you see that skin
It's the same she's been standing in
Since the day she saw him walking away
Now she's left cleaning up the mess he made
So fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
Boys you can break
You find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong and boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without warmth of a woman's good, good heart
On behalf of every man, looking out for every girl
You are the god and the weight of her world
So fathers be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too
So mothers be good to your daughters, too.
I am hoping that today finds you close to your mothers and your daughters, and wishing you happy birthdays and
Much love,
-s
* I think.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Just like life, some good stuff, some bad stuff...
I said I was going to try harder to be more positive - and I mean it, but I also have to be honest and tell y'all that FALLING THROUGH MY BATHROOM FLOOR A COUPLE OF NIGHTS AGO REALLY SUCKED. Not the most cheerful thing to happen to a... rubinesque woman a few days after Thanksgiving, lemme tell you...
To add to the overall suckage of the situation is the fact that I cannot use my bathtub (and I have no shower), because between the weight of the cast-iron tub, the bajillion gallons of water that it holds and my baby-elvis butt, we are talking close to 1,000 pounds, on a floor that is slightly stronger than a melba toast. It was bad enough that my foot just crashed through the floor (and was hanging down in the the VERY scary and cold darkness of the Below the House - with the scary caaaaaaaamel crickets! *shudder*) and left me with a sore ankle (just bruised - thank god for no insulation - I was wearing two pairs of thick socks, some leggings and flannel pj pants) . I think that if I were in the tub and it crashed through the floor and that didn't kill me, then I might have died of a heart-attack. And if THAT didn't kill me, then the embarrassment of some rescue squad having to come pull my big, naked, wet, and most likely badly injured @$$ out of a hole in the crawl space would do me in for sure.
So, we can't do laundry for the time being, and we are having to go to other peoples' houses to bathe right now, and as soon as they start the repair work we'll all have to move to someone else's house altogether. And it's three weeks to Christmas.
*sigh*
I also fear that my landlord is going to attempt to just patch the floor again (it has more patches than it has actual floor as it is, and there are leaks EVERYWHERE...) and that he is also going to raise the rent in order to afford the repairs. Yuck.
I guess it is becoming obvious that we really need to move, but Chris and I just paid almost 500$ to fill up the gas tank, and frankly we couldn't afford to move right now if we wanted to. It's misery.
Sorry.
OK! Positive stuff. George is doing well. He's Luna's new personal trainer. They are having so much fun together. I knew it was all going to be okay when George fell asleep skwunched up to Lu, and when he woke up and started to take his little kitty bath, he also cleaned Luna some and then tried nursing! Luna looked at him like he was crazy, but she didn't move, and when George realized that he was, uh, barking up the proverbial wrong tree, he gave up and went back to bathing and napping.
Also in good news, I am going to be in the sketch comedy show next week! Chris got a guest-star spot last week, and next week we'll both be in it! Yay! FYI, this is a show that happens every-other-Wednesday at Fred's Speakeasy in Asheville at 8:30. It's a sketch comedy ala Saturday Night Live, it's free, and it's funny. COME SEE US!
Well, we stayed up 'till a million o'clock (well, I did. Chris went to bed at like, 995, 000-thirty. Hmph.) last night trying to completely clean out the bathroom and get the house in condition for the work to commence, so I am going to go away and sit somewhere and turn into turnip woman for a little while. I promise, when my brain is not so tired and stressed and furiously trying to just COPE, I will get back to the good stuff.
Much love,
the really not THAT fat - Sam
I said I was going to try harder to be more positive - and I mean it, but I also have to be honest and tell y'all that FALLING THROUGH MY BATHROOM FLOOR A COUPLE OF NIGHTS AGO REALLY SUCKED. Not the most cheerful thing to happen to a... rubinesque woman a few days after Thanksgiving, lemme tell you...
To add to the overall suckage of the situation is the fact that I cannot use my bathtub (and I have no shower), because between the weight of the cast-iron tub, the bajillion gallons of water that it holds and my baby-elvis butt, we are talking close to 1,000 pounds, on a floor that is slightly stronger than a melba toast. It was bad enough that my foot just crashed through the floor (and was hanging down in the the VERY scary and cold darkness of the Below the House - with the scary caaaaaaaamel crickets! *shudder*) and left me with a sore ankle (just bruised - thank god for no insulation - I was wearing two pairs of thick socks, some leggings and flannel pj pants) . I think that if I were in the tub and it crashed through the floor and that didn't kill me, then I might have died of a heart-attack. And if THAT didn't kill me, then the embarrassment of some rescue squad having to come pull my big, naked, wet, and most likely badly injured @$$ out of a hole in the crawl space would do me in for sure.
So, we can't do laundry for the time being, and we are having to go to other peoples' houses to bathe right now, and as soon as they start the repair work we'll all have to move to someone else's house altogether. And it's three weeks to Christmas.
*sigh*
I also fear that my landlord is going to attempt to just patch the floor again (it has more patches than it has actual floor as it is, and there are leaks EVERYWHERE...) and that he is also going to raise the rent in order to afford the repairs. Yuck.
I guess it is becoming obvious that we really need to move, but Chris and I just paid almost 500$ to fill up the gas tank, and frankly we couldn't afford to move right now if we wanted to. It's misery.
Sorry.
OK! Positive stuff. George is doing well. He's Luna's new personal trainer. They are having so much fun together. I knew it was all going to be okay when George fell asleep skwunched up to Lu, and when he woke up and started to take his little kitty bath, he also cleaned Luna some and then tried nursing! Luna looked at him like he was crazy, but she didn't move, and when George realized that he was, uh, barking up the proverbial wrong tree, he gave up and went back to bathing and napping.
Also in good news, I am going to be in the sketch comedy show next week! Chris got a guest-star spot last week, and next week we'll both be in it! Yay! FYI, this is a show that happens every-other-Wednesday at Fred's Speakeasy in Asheville at 8:30. It's a sketch comedy ala Saturday Night Live, it's free, and it's funny. COME SEE US!
Well, we stayed up 'till a million o'clock (well, I did. Chris went to bed at like, 995, 000-thirty. Hmph.) last night trying to completely clean out the bathroom and get the house in condition for the work to commence, so I am going to go away and sit somewhere and turn into turnip woman for a little while. I promise, when my brain is not so tired and stressed and furiously trying to just COPE, I will get back to the good stuff.
Much love,
the really not THAT fat - Sam
