Poeming: Dear Sis

The prompt for Saturday over at Poetic Asides was to write a post poem. Here's mine.


DEAR SIS--


You know that recipe Mom

used to make, the one with

the carrots in it that she got

off the ketchup bottle? I made

it for dinner the other night,

remember how much I liked

that one when we were kids?

The note she wrote at the

bottom made me giggle

again and I wanted to call

her, but she’s gone.

And then I remember,


so are you


and there’s nobody to

call in this post-family

world of mine.



jle 2013

Poeming: Hold That Moment (remembering Patti)

My sister Patti in the Vail mountains.
 See why i thought she was the pretty one?

HOLD THAT MOMENT
(remembering Patti)


Hold that moment

two girls laughter

dust-drenched 

sun-drenched

mountain trail

Hold that mem’ry

toes in ice cold

stream now

close my eyes


I’m there.



jle 2013

Once upon a time, on the first day of Spring...

a boy and a girl were married.

 

From the day the Boy had first seen her, he knew she was The One. So exactly 2 years after they first formed their household union, they were to make it a permanent one with signatures and flowers and a solemn ceremony.

This ceremony was to take place high in the majestic mountains of the magical faraway land where they lived called "Vail Colorado." There was snow in its mountains, even on the first day of Spring, and the Holy Man who would perform their ceremony was out in that snow performing a different sort of ceremony with 2 poles and 2 flat pieces of wood. His Holy Watch was apparently broken, causing him to rush in late wearing muddy boots.

The Boy, the Girl, a friend named Mildred and the Girl's young and beautiful sister all passed secret smiles amongst themselves on observing the man's muddy footwear, it being irregular indeed to wear such attire to perform this solemn ceremony, and didst bring them a chuckle.

The Girl's younger sister with the naturally occurring dark hair played a stringed instrument and sang a moving ballad to the young couple. The Holy Man attempted to lead the ceremonial participants in a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Again they passed secret smiles amongst themselves while mouthing words that may or may not have been correct, as the raven-haired sister of immense beauty was the only person besides the Holy Man familiar with the words. And didst I mention she sang like an angel?

In time the Boy grew into a Man, knowing all the more surely that, indeed, she was The One.Their union was strong, unusual in the fickle and self-serving times in which they lived. Their time lasted into 4 decades,  cut short only by her untimely death. The Man and the now unnaturally raven-haired sister still grieve, but as they share the story of The Old Days and the Holy Man of the muddy boots, and of the first day of Spring all those decades before,


they smile.


Skimmer's Recap: Canst thou tell who the young sister may have been? The Girl Bride was actually the pretty one, but she would have found the shameless younger sister's telling of this story amusing.
(Hi Keith! i love you!)

Poeming: Process of Moments

PROCESS OF MOMENTS

 
We drove
around Wyoming and Nebraska
in a great big car hearing tales
of my uncle’s days on the range
as a real life cowboy
sounded like a novel to a city girl like me
and there was never another moment just like that

I sat
trembling on the hospital bed
after giving birth to a baby girl
I couldn’t believe I was holding her
I was a real life mom
seemed like I’d done an impossible thing
and there was never another moment just like that

We went
to Australia and sat by a lake
where turtles swam and lizards as big
as my arm sat on a log next to me
in a real life rainforest
felt like a dream to a suburban mom like me
and there was never another moment just like that

I watched
my first grandchild being born
waiting to say hello to
a brand new generation
I was a real life grandma
it seemed unreal to the girl in me
and there was never another moment just like that

I talked
to my brother-in-law on the phone
he said she was gone
suddenly in that morning
real life meeting real loss
how could I never hear my sister’s voice again?
and there was never another moment just like that

each moment
shaping me
each moment
who will i be
each moment
I have the choice
to grow, to learn, to see
each moment
matchless
new
making me.

jle 2012



This was written for the poetry prompt of "matches" at Poetic Asides.

My random poem for the day.

KINGDOMS.

She never looked up.

the cigarette dangled from her fingers

graceful as a Hollywood starlet,

smoke soldiers guarding her head

as I passed

her kitchen table kingdom.

She never spoke.

so I ran outside to the park

where the swings called me to fly

where the leaves waved

dappled sun greetings

smiling at me to stay.

Later she spoke loudly

from boxed ashes in Nebraska

aided by a paid representative

who heaped on me her words

in boxes full of annotated

memorabilia.

I cried hard.

Reading multiple signed notes

 in truest “Mommie Dearest” fashion,

her disappointment guarded

more tightly than she’d ever

guarded me.

I’m learning to look up

from the ashes of my dreams

back to the green-ness of the trees

back to the welcoming sunlit leaves,

to learn to guard my joys more tightly

than my hurts.

 

 

jle 2012

Good Grief: Stuck on a Song.

My sister's been everywhere lately: in the whimsical cosmos flowers she loved that i see alongside the road, in the things that make me think "Oh! i need to remember to tell Patti about this!" In the stories i tell new friends. In a song on the car radio.

A few days ago i was sitting in a parking lot listening to the radio, and my ears caught the words, "I still need you. I still miss you." and my heart answered Yes I Do! The song was "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton, and sounds like a song about a lost love. But then i guess my sister is a sort of "lost love," i mean, i loved her, and now i've lost her on this earth.

The words "I still need you. I still miss you." struck deeply. And my heart attached itself to the song. So i looked it up on You Tube when i got home. The sad bit is, Vanessa, no matter how talented i think you are, you whine when you sing, and at 58 perhaps i no longer have the patience for whiny singing. i'm sorry.

So i went on a You Tube hunt.

i watched videos of other artists singing the song, including a prepubescent boy named Jared Cardona (nicely done!) a collaboration by musician Alex Goot and the Boyce Band (i'd never heard of either, but they are on iTunes so they must be real, right? Anyway, a beautiful version of the song) and a version done by a band called The Directive (metal-ish? very loud and aerobic and fun and actually quite good!)

It was time well spent--i was feeling slightly guilty for doing so little Of Importance like ______ (fill in the blank with any of the eight million projects/chores/etc i could be doing.) But i'm learning, this grief is good. i still need her. i still miss her. i've never been a fan of pain of any sort, emotional or physical, but the pain just builds up if i don't express it.

Anyways, good song, look it up.

Skimmer's Recap: "And i still need you, And i still miss you, And now i wonder If i could fall into the sky, do you think time would pass me by? Cause you know i'd walk a thousand miles if i could just see you tonight." Well said, Vanessa Carlton.

Memorials and Memories.

I sat listening to stories about a friend's father, being bathed in the loving laughter of those around me. They were good memories, strong memories, the kind to bring back out and savor when you need to smile. One told by my friend was of her childhood, of when her father would be ready to leave for church in the morning but the rest of the family wasn't. He would announce, "I will be leaving for church in two minutes and thirty-six seconds!" His exacting times to push the family out the door became an inside joke to those who knew him and loved him.

I also saw the tears of those who would now miss him, for we sat in pews of the church he'd attended for his memorial service. Memories of his strong faith in the God who created him and the ways he kept that faith strong were shared by those he had touched. He memorized scripture and sang hymns, and urged--maybe even nagged--those he loved to do the same. And they were going to miss it all.

I can't pretend to know what other people think, but being Queen Of The Navel-Gazers, I tend to feel self-reflective after memorial services: what have I done to be remembered? How do I want the rest of my days to look?

How do memorial services affect you?


Skimmer's Recap: Julie, who attended her friend's father's very positive memorial service, decides she would also like to be remembered with laughter and cake.

The Problem With Mother-Pain.

Papa Jean, my stepdad, in his horsey days.

Recently my aunt sent me an album my mother had put together in 1999, just a year plus before she died of cancer in January 2001. My mother had wanted my aunt to have it after her death, but now, 10 years later, my aunt felt I should have it as part of my family history.

I feared looking at it, so let it sit for days on the dining room table. With a relationship as complicated as mine was with my mom, many emotions come into play, not all of them belonging to Grown Julie. So I waited. But today I decided to Take The Plunge, Dive Right In, phrases that oddly refer to another fear of mine: water.

The album is the story of a life, Margie's, from childhood through marriage and parenting, back around to single-ness, and then into the last third of her life with the love of her life, Jean.

The photos are amazing--of her family and my father's family, of our family and of Jean's family, and some I'd long hoped to see of Jean in his cowboy garb on a horse. There are photos of the new "family" she gathered in her new life in Nebraska where she moved to be with Jean at about the same time I was getting married in California.

It's her edited life: "Margie's Life, Lite." Without most of the anger and pain and accusations that colored big parts of the Full Fat version. I marveled at all the smiling faces, the photos of outings and birthdays and holidays. Pretty pictures of the decorating and remodeling she did in the house I grew up in, not of the broken pieces of dishes and punched in walls in the photos she had sent to me after her death to remind me of things my father had done. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was all a pretty happy story. Looking at the pictures I can imagine her as the kind of mother I could call to chat and tell her something funny one of the kids said, rather than calling and ending up defending myself for not being willing to say my father did not do those things to my sister or me.

I finish the album and sob. In my head I'm writing the thank you letter to my aunt: "Thanks so much for the album, the pictures are great and let me into some parts of her life I wasn't there for. I always wished I was a stronger person: strong enough to see the person beneath the harsh words, stronger than her desire to hurt me, stronger than many things that kept me from being a part of Margie's life in her later years."

I don't know what I will really write. Will I mention the victories I have felt in my struggles toward Sound Mental Health over those same years? Will I mention how I finally feel the Mother-Pain will no longer cripple me for weeks after contact, but hopefully only hours? Will I say sure I regret that I wasn't always The Good Daughter, but I knew I would never be the Good Enough Daughter? Probably not. Probably I will thank her for the photos and for her thoughtfulness in sharing them with me.

The problem with Mother-Pain is that no matter how far I've come in life, it will apparently always be waiting to jump out and bite me. But at least now, after enough therapy and prayers and time, the pain doesn't last as long.


Skimmer's Recap: Just when Julie thinks she's getting a handle on that whole Mental Health thing, she realizes "a handle" is but an illusion, and there's always more to learn.

Mother thoughts.



That's a very young me on the right, holding three-month-old Corinne, and my
mother Margie. "Windy Hill" is what my mother named the acreage in the midst
of wheat fields in Nebraska where she and my stepdad lived. 

 Ten years ago today my mother died. Two days later I found out.

Not the sort of mother/daughter relationship a friend of mine had where she lay in the hospital bed with her mother, cradling her in her arms as she died. But is that the typical bond between the daughter and the mom who nurtured her? I don't know. The relationship between my mother and me was anything but typical.

Her cancer had come back. She mentioned this to nobody, not even the Replacement Children in her more recent life in Nebraska, the three women of the approximate age of my sister and I. My sister and brother hadn't spoken to our mother in years, and though my dealings with her had grown more and more strained, I was still trying to keep in contact from states away. But I'd been replaced by less complicated relationships with those she hadn't birthed.

Her lawyer called me because a next-of-kin was needed to sign the cremation certificate. Without that need, would I have heard at all? I suppose I would have figured it out once the boxes of my mother's "treasures" started arriving, filled with items from her life, all with notes attached. The notes must be nostalgiac explanations of the when and where of the items, you might think--wrongly. No, the notes explained my failings as related to each item, and were dated and initialed, apparently so I would be aware of the many years she'd been planning this After-Death-Surprise for me.

I was destroyed by the box after box of Post-It noted pieces of her life. How could the mother who gave birth to me and who was supposed to love me without condition and protect me be the one who attacked, who torpedoed my personal worth? How could the woman seen in happy photos with my baby be this cruel person?

Therapy followed, since my wise husband could see me falling down a deep, dark hole. It saved my life and my sanity. For years I had tried to make sense of this woman who could be so bright and happy sometimes and so mean and hurtful others. I won't ever know what all was at play in her head or heart, what undiagnosed illness she may have had. I can see from here that she was always at a distance from me emotionally, and her happiness or unhappiness really had nothing to do with me. I wanted her happiness to be because of me, but I think she was much more at the mercy of whatever demons lived in her head.

I've kept some of the things she sent--in fact, some are still tucked away in the same boxes they arrived in. These items and their notes hold a fascination for me, since I still wonder at the workings of her mind. What did it feel like to live inside her head? What ruled her, what drove her decisions? Was there an underlying sadness like I thought I saw at some times in her life, or was that just me trying to make sense of what couldn't?

Humor doesn't come easily around this subject, even though humor has always been my friend. One small smile that's come of it is that my mother even died on a date I can never forget. "Jean loved house numbers with 1s in them," she had told me about my stepfather. Her address had recently been redone by the county and now included 1s. Why my brain chose that bit of information to remember, I don't know. But when she died on 1/11/01, I muttered to the bit of her that lives in my head, "Hah! I bet you planned that."

So on this date I remember her with a mixture of fondness and sadness, much like my life with her played out. I'm finally learning that our relationship makes as much sense to me as weather, and was simply what it was: somedays thunderstorms, somedays sunshine. And I think I've learned from both.

Talking life more than politics.

This election year has fascinated me.

i must admit to being pretty uninterested in years past. Partly that was a function of the party going on in my head, filled with parental voices and doubts that i could indeed live a viable adult life. i couldn't hear myself over the noise until my 3rd round with a mental health professional. (i view this process of understanding myself as peeling off the layers of an onion. It appears i'm a slow peeler, still peeling after 55 years.)

This year i have finally been able to watch and learn and listen to the issues. i have people around me voting opposite sides for various reasons. Problem is, i've been unaware of so many of the issues it's been a huge undertaking to try to understand even a portion. Foreign policy, wars, environmentmental issues, pro-life, pro-choice, issues of the economy as it heads for the Big Flush, and much more. i "get" more than i did, but i still understand merely a crumb from the cookie.

Foreign policy: i know little of foreign policy, other than the fact the U.S. has apparently ticked off a lot of other nations with our adolescent superiority. Not a good thing for getting along with the rest of the planet.

War: i know only a tiny bit more about war--and only from a personal-life basis. Between the war's effect on my father and the imbalances of my mother, my siblings and i grew up in a domestic war zone. i never heard of my father's training time in Australia, i only knew the horrors of combat in Korea. i knew the man who sat us down in the living room with a gun and threatened to put us all "in the ground." My sister tells me he was a bright and accomplished student. i'm sorry i never met that man--that would be a good memory in the mix.

Environmental issues: Again, a tiny bit. i grew up in the lush beauty of Portland, Oregon. When i see the green of a forest or woods my soul sighs with happiness. i'm pro-happy-environment. Now, at 55, i have many things floating about in the attic of my head--one is the childhood memory of building a snow woman (complete with breasts) in our front yard, another is the Snoopy on his doghouse i snow-sculpted one winter. i could honestly think i'm losing big chunks of brain cells, because now if i talk about the snow of my childhood, people act as if they should humor the crazy lady--it doesn't snow in PORTLAND. So my personal experience says the environment is changing. i don't know much other than the junk in the air bothers my asthma, AND IT DID SO USED TO SNOW IN PORTLAND!

The Economy: Experience tells me it's hard to get by. Partly because i'm not willing to give up satellite tv and other niceties, admittedly. Partly because our adolescent country is in that "I want to learn it the hard way!" stage. Two hundred years plus is pretty young as countries go, but the bad part about that? What takes a teen 4 years to learn takes a country decades. The me-first mentality hasn't been curbed in our adolescent economy. People are suffering, and not just the big guys who have to make do with two vacation houses instead of three, but the regular folk who just need to see a dentist but have no coverage and no extra money beyond their day to day costs of living.

Pro-life, Pro-choice--always an issue for me. i know my sister dealt with a childhood that was far less than affirming. Mine wasn't so great, but i was the baby and skated by more easily. But having grown up in an environment filled with the toxicity of cigarette smoke and anger, i still don't regret having the chance to live. i'm thankful i've been on this earth long enough to go to school, make friends, give birth, adopt, do foster care--and oh yeh, marry a really good guy.

Though formerly a girl who thought marriage was for suckers and child raising frightening, i had the chance to meet someone who changed my view on marriage. Then i learned i loved the nurturing-growing-teaching-loving parts of child raising. i know that none of them have found the path to adulthood a peachy-keen-no-sweat road. But they're all amazing, and make my soul sigh with pleasure, almost as much as those forests and woods. (KIDDING!) i'm beyond thankful for the opportunities i've had to nurture those lives.

i'm grateful for the chances i've had to care for foster babies and teens in distress, hopefully giving them some sense of self-worth by being loved without condition. Our son, now 20, was born nearly 3 months premature to a cocaine addict. 28 weeks gestation, a big 3 pounds, he fought for 5 months before being released from the hospital. He was the age of pre-born children some would still consider disposable. He's a tender-hearted boy with learning disabilities and his share of difficulties. And like my other children, i cannot imagine my life without him. i do worry about some of the changes in the U.S. Some have been a long time coming, but i do worry about the issue of "choice." Whose choice, the baby's or the mom's? i'm thankful, even with the difficulties i've faced, to have had a chance to live and grow.

Anyway, if you've made it this far through my mental life/political purge, congrats. If you had to skim a LOT, just read below.

Skimmer's recap: i'm glad i had the chance for this life of mine. i don't understand a whole lot about world issues, but i've gotten to do some pretty great stuff. And that includes building snowmen in Portland. Seriously!! i can show you pictures!

Mother moments remembered.

Things i recall from childhood:

My mother, letting me lay in the bed on the bottom sheet while she "made" the bed, me giggling and happy.

When she let me use shaving cream on the bathtub to draw and finger paint with.

Washing the dirt out of my eyes after i stupidly looked up when my big brother threw a dirt clod in the air.

Her pushing a chest of drawers to block the top of the stairs with us upstairs, after she and my father argued when he was drunk.

The sight of her chain-smoking at the kitchen table, a distant look in her eyes.