I found a huge, large, really big earthworm in my bathroom the other evening. Where did that come from? P the cat was sitting in front of it, idly tapping at it. It writhed. I picked it up with my back scratcher; I carried it outside. Slightly unsettling event.
I finally fixed my front porch light. The bulb had blown and the rust on the screws holding it all together was remarkably strong. Amazing what a bit of WD-40 and some borrowed pliers can do. Slightly empowering event.
These people running for President and all their talking heads scare the crap out of me. Some of them more than others--like, the old man former POW and his babe. And, I don't understand the economy. No, really. None of this is pretty. I actually wasn't even going to vote this year, as I feel there are nefarious behind the scenes manipulations of the democratic process going on and that our votes are but a puppet show, shadow play, a diversion while the truly evil ones, obsessed with holding power, force outcomes on us. Just like the terrorists manage to attack us in ways we might never expect, we decent people, because they are so unimaginably awful, these behind the scenes manipulators make things happen the way they want it to happen and cover their tracks very well. They are very good at throwing shit. And, you know what? I don't care if you think I am unreasonably paranoid, or if you think I sound crazy. Anyway, I do plan to vote this year, and what changed my mind about that was the old man former POW's babe. She scares the beejeezus out of me. I will vote even if it is like throwing pebbles at tanks. I have to do something. I got the mysterious earthworm out of my bathroom. I fixed my light, and changed a 20 year old bulb previously imprisoned by strong old rust. I don't believe God involves himself in our political process, but I do believe good people have to keep trying even when it seems futile.
Crows are survivors. They survive by not being fussy eaters, by delighting in shiny things, and by laughing: laughter light as star shine, laughter dark as men's hearts. Have you ears to hear?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Getting Back to Jamaica
This past July, I made my 4th trip to Jamaica, to stay and work for a week at a home for children up in the mountains -- approximately 2 hours northwest of Kingston. Overall this year, we had a very good week there. Our difficulties came primarily during our travels. N, a 16 year old from our church making her first visit, was traveling with only a green card for ID. She had no passport. Her parents insisted it would be fine. Sometimes it was, and sometimes it wasn't.
We had little trouble leaving from the airport closest to home, since N's step-mom convinced the bag check in people it was okay for her to travel with just the green card. It did take her 20 minutes to do that, however (and what she knew then, and never told us at the time, was that once when she traveled back from the Caribbean with N, they were detained overnight in Puerto Rico because of N's scanty documentation). Once we got to North Carolina it was a different matter. The descent into Charlotte was long and bumpy and made me quite nauseous. I spent most of that time breathing deeply and slowly and holding on to the seat in front of me, hoping not to vomit. I was regretting that can of spicy tomato juice I drank earlier -- it had seemed like such a good idea at the time! Once we landed, we had to scurry fast to our next gate, where our plane was already boarding. What I needed most was clean, cool, fresh air, but that was not possible in the airport. What I smelled was stale recycled inside air and diesel fumes. I kept walking, and tried not to think about it.
We got to our gate and lined up to board. I was almost to the door of the plane when another of our travelers called to me, telling me N, our 16 year old, was being refused boarding. So, several of us tromped back to help out with the situation.
N is native to the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia. She came to the States 6 years ago to join her dad, step-mom, and half sisters. She was already talking to him on D's cell phone, and I could hear his deep, emotional voice from where I stood talking to the woman behind the counter. I told her N was cleared at the first airport. She told me the first airport dropped the ball and they were sending her back. Five of us from our group stood there looking at the woman, and she refused to look back at any of us. She did consent to call a supervisor, as we were not going away, a large group of us, holding up the plane. N asked me to talk to her dad. He was irate, but in a nice way, insisting she could travel just on her green card. I replied in frustrated yet consoling tones. What could I do? I wished I could hand the phone to the airline employee and let him harangue her. But, she was busy talking to her supervisor. Who said that Yes, N could fly on her green card. Yay!!! So off we went.
Everything went smoothly for N after that. She passed through customs in Jamaica with no problem, though others of our group weren't so lucky, and we had to wait for them while they answered innumerable questions about our plans and destination. We spent the time admiring the changes to Sangster International Airport, most of them begun when the Cricket World Cup was played in various Caribbean nations 2 years ago.
Finally we were all together again, all 9 of us, and we got our bags, and then had only the last hurdle to clear, getting those big bags full of donations and supplies inspected and approved. Some of us got through easily, some of us not. I did not. The woman who inspected the big bag I carried full of donated clothing, balls, crayons, pens and candies insisted I unpack everything. This was a very large green canvas duffel. She had me unwrap every bag, open up the boxes of crayons, and explain to her what we planned to do with these items. Were we selling them? What was their value? And I sweetly, albeit obsequiously-- in the hopes that'd gain me a measure of mercy (it didn't) -- explained the items were donated, for the ORPHANS, as gifts to them.
Finally we came to a box of ballpoint pens. What are these, she wanted to know. Pens, I told her, purple ball point pens. Purple!? she exclaimed, I need blue. (I had already seen her take away some toys from the suitcase of the Jamaican family who had preceded me in the line -- for her grandkids?)
And so it went, until finally she signed the paper and let me through, leaving me with lots of clothing, balls, and crayons all disassembled and falling all over and needing to be somehow put back into the duffel.
My predicament was proving to be somewhat of a spectator sport for the younger members of our group, who watched me struggle but did not lend a hand. Finally, B, the group leader, came over and helped me. She had had her own problems in her own line because W, the man traveling with us, had gotten angry and nasty with the custom's people. But finally! Off we went, outside into the heat and air that smelled like burning plastic, hazy smoke hanging low over the hills rising up from the coast at Montego Bay. The area outside the airport doors is always crowded with people. I love it. I love Jamaica. I love how there are always people everywhere, hanging out, talking on cell phones, eating, being.
We found Peat, our bus driver, loaded up, and off we went. Our trip went smoothly on the newly resurfaced and paved Queen's Highway that traverses the northern shore of the island (another legacy of the World Cup). B wanted to stop at the food market in Ocho Rios (Ochi), and so after several hour's drive time, we pulled into the familiar parking lot beside the Straw Market and went over to General Foods. B wanted to get popcorn and oil and a few other food items. I followed along, always happy to check out the stuff in the store. B was already in that place of losing her mind and I already had no patience for it, despite my best intentions to be a support to her. Every suggestion made to her to help her resolve perceived difficulties was met with 5 or 6 reasons why that would't work either. She is always that way. I knew it but already couldn't deal with it, and yet, thankfully, M, 21 and full of youthful vigor, was up to the challenge. She replied to B's whining with the same answers I had already given B and B had already shot down, and I snickered to myself while also admiring M's efforts. Finally B decided that she had to have a certain size bag of popcorn and that market simply did not have it. Maybe Seow's across the street would have that certain size bag.
So. N and M and B and I all tromped across the busy street to Seow's. I really didn't want to go in and decided to wait out front with the bags of oil B had bought at General Foods. N decided to stay with me and M accompanied B. As N and I stood there, watching the busy life of Ochi going by, a young beggar woman, dressed like a boy, smelling of pee, and seeming fairly mentally ill to my eye, insisted we give her money. Just give her some money so she can get a patty. I kept apologizing and saying no, I had no money (white! American! of course you have money! who are you trying to fool! was what was in her eyes). This went round and round until another woman came over and told the young begging woman to leave us alone. To go away and leave us alone. She went away down the street a bit.
I decided to cross the street and stand someplace else to wait for B and M. The woman who helped us had also crossed over and I thanked her. She told me that the young beggar woman would have finally begun taking off all her clothes to get us to give her money. And she was still there, across the street, watching us, and following us. With the clear instinct of the crazy, she knew she had unnerved me. I decided to go stand by the bus. B and M would find us there, and B would simply have to understand why we walked away from Seow's.
I felt a little guilty about not giving the woman any money. And this guilt tagged along with me as I walked back to the bus and was met by a drunken, angry vendor from the Straw Market. He insisted I come in and look at his wares. I said No (again!) and he harangued and harassed for for a little bit. I looked him in the eye and answered him very directly and he got angrier and I got scared but I wasn't backing down. Finally he abruptly shifted his focus away from me to D, a woman in her early 40s from the other church, and he was nice to her! Why wasn't he nice to me? I had had it. All tangled up in crazy emotions, tired from being up since 3am and traveling all day into now the early evening, being sick and all the rest of it, I got into the bus to hide.
B never found the 'right' sized bag of popcorn she wanted, but M convinced her to buy what was there. They returned and gave me a funny look for going away. When I explained why, I felt like they didn't believe me. But my emotions were all messed up by then, and probably my judgment was a bit skewed too. We sat awhile longer there in Ochi, way longer than we had planned to, while B and some others tried to get the cell phone to work. It never did work, not in the way she wanted it to. We couldn't call anyone in Jamaica, only back home in the States. Not that she ever let us use it!
But sitting there for what felt like forever made us late for getting to the children's home. Much of the drive was in the darkness, and once we turned up into the mountains at Port Maria, the road became very, very windy and bumpy. As usual. Usually it doesn't bother me. M has the problem with motion sickness, but she was well dosed on Dramamine. As the journey in the darkness progressed, I started feeling sick again, sick like I had felt on the plane. That really was a wonder to me, because it had never happened before. I couldn't figure out why it suddenly bothered me so much, but I felt progressively sicker and sicker, despite my attempts at deep, slow breathing and staying very still. I finally got to a point where I was deciding where I would vomit: in my denim shirt? In my carry on? Wasn't there a puke bucket under a seat somewhere?
And then good sense somehow prevailed and I simply asked Peat to stop the bus because I felt sick. So he did. And I got out and sat on these concrete steps that smelled of dog pee and bus exhaust and thought, This isn't much better, is it?
But at least I wasn't moving anymore. I gathered myself as best I could, and then got back on the bus. There was a small building just up ahead where Peat said he could get me some over-proof rum if I wanted, and I could rub it on my head, it would make me feel better. Mostly the suggestion made me laugh. I told him if he got me rum I certainly would not rub it on my head. He continued to speak consolingly and calmly to me in his beautiful smooth voice, in his good natured way. We were actually only about 10 minutes away from the children's home and seeing the familiar lights and pale colored limestone gravel driveway distracted my mind away from my nausea and lifted my heart up high. We were there! I felt happy; I felt excited, eager to see cherished friends, and to make new ones.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
We had little trouble leaving from the airport closest to home, since N's step-mom convinced the bag check in people it was okay for her to travel with just the green card. It did take her 20 minutes to do that, however (and what she knew then, and never told us at the time, was that once when she traveled back from the Caribbean with N, they were detained overnight in Puerto Rico because of N's scanty documentation). Once we got to North Carolina it was a different matter. The descent into Charlotte was long and bumpy and made me quite nauseous. I spent most of that time breathing deeply and slowly and holding on to the seat in front of me, hoping not to vomit. I was regretting that can of spicy tomato juice I drank earlier -- it had seemed like such a good idea at the time! Once we landed, we had to scurry fast to our next gate, where our plane was already boarding. What I needed most was clean, cool, fresh air, but that was not possible in the airport. What I smelled was stale recycled inside air and diesel fumes. I kept walking, and tried not to think about it.
We got to our gate and lined up to board. I was almost to the door of the plane when another of our travelers called to me, telling me N, our 16 year old, was being refused boarding. So, several of us tromped back to help out with the situation.
N is native to the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia. She came to the States 6 years ago to join her dad, step-mom, and half sisters. She was already talking to him on D's cell phone, and I could hear his deep, emotional voice from where I stood talking to the woman behind the counter. I told her N was cleared at the first airport. She told me the first airport dropped the ball and they were sending her back. Five of us from our group stood there looking at the woman, and she refused to look back at any of us. She did consent to call a supervisor, as we were not going away, a large group of us, holding up the plane. N asked me to talk to her dad. He was irate, but in a nice way, insisting she could travel just on her green card. I replied in frustrated yet consoling tones. What could I do? I wished I could hand the phone to the airline employee and let him harangue her. But, she was busy talking to her supervisor. Who said that Yes, N could fly on her green card. Yay!!! So off we went.
Everything went smoothly for N after that. She passed through customs in Jamaica with no problem, though others of our group weren't so lucky, and we had to wait for them while they answered innumerable questions about our plans and destination. We spent the time admiring the changes to Sangster International Airport, most of them begun when the Cricket World Cup was played in various Caribbean nations 2 years ago.
Finally we were all together again, all 9 of us, and we got our bags, and then had only the last hurdle to clear, getting those big bags full of donations and supplies inspected and approved. Some of us got through easily, some of us not. I did not. The woman who inspected the big bag I carried full of donated clothing, balls, crayons, pens and candies insisted I unpack everything. This was a very large green canvas duffel. She had me unwrap every bag, open up the boxes of crayons, and explain to her what we planned to do with these items. Were we selling them? What was their value? And I sweetly, albeit obsequiously-- in the hopes that'd gain me a measure of mercy (it didn't) -- explained the items were donated, for the ORPHANS, as gifts to them.
Finally we came to a box of ballpoint pens. What are these, she wanted to know. Pens, I told her, purple ball point pens. Purple!? she exclaimed, I need blue. (I had already seen her take away some toys from the suitcase of the Jamaican family who had preceded me in the line -- for her grandkids?)
And so it went, until finally she signed the paper and let me through, leaving me with lots of clothing, balls, and crayons all disassembled and falling all over and needing to be somehow put back into the duffel.
My predicament was proving to be somewhat of a spectator sport for the younger members of our group, who watched me struggle but did not lend a hand. Finally, B, the group leader, came over and helped me. She had had her own problems in her own line because W, the man traveling with us, had gotten angry and nasty with the custom's people. But finally! Off we went, outside into the heat and air that smelled like burning plastic, hazy smoke hanging low over the hills rising up from the coast at Montego Bay. The area outside the airport doors is always crowded with people. I love it. I love Jamaica. I love how there are always people everywhere, hanging out, talking on cell phones, eating, being.
We found Peat, our bus driver, loaded up, and off we went. Our trip went smoothly on the newly resurfaced and paved Queen's Highway that traverses the northern shore of the island (another legacy of the World Cup). B wanted to stop at the food market in Ocho Rios (Ochi), and so after several hour's drive time, we pulled into the familiar parking lot beside the Straw Market and went over to General Foods. B wanted to get popcorn and oil and a few other food items. I followed along, always happy to check out the stuff in the store. B was already in that place of losing her mind and I already had no patience for it, despite my best intentions to be a support to her. Every suggestion made to her to help her resolve perceived difficulties was met with 5 or 6 reasons why that would't work either. She is always that way. I knew it but already couldn't deal with it, and yet, thankfully, M, 21 and full of youthful vigor, was up to the challenge. She replied to B's whining with the same answers I had already given B and B had already shot down, and I snickered to myself while also admiring M's efforts. Finally B decided that she had to have a certain size bag of popcorn and that market simply did not have it. Maybe Seow's across the street would have that certain size bag.
So. N and M and B and I all tromped across the busy street to Seow's. I really didn't want to go in and decided to wait out front with the bags of oil B had bought at General Foods. N decided to stay with me and M accompanied B. As N and I stood there, watching the busy life of Ochi going by, a young beggar woman, dressed like a boy, smelling of pee, and seeming fairly mentally ill to my eye, insisted we give her money. Just give her some money so she can get a patty. I kept apologizing and saying no, I had no money (white! American! of course you have money! who are you trying to fool! was what was in her eyes). This went round and round until another woman came over and told the young begging woman to leave us alone. To go away and leave us alone. She went away down the street a bit.
I decided to cross the street and stand someplace else to wait for B and M. The woman who helped us had also crossed over and I thanked her. She told me that the young beggar woman would have finally begun taking off all her clothes to get us to give her money. And she was still there, across the street, watching us, and following us. With the clear instinct of the crazy, she knew she had unnerved me. I decided to go stand by the bus. B and M would find us there, and B would simply have to understand why we walked away from Seow's.
I felt a little guilty about not giving the woman any money. And this guilt tagged along with me as I walked back to the bus and was met by a drunken, angry vendor from the Straw Market. He insisted I come in and look at his wares. I said No (again!) and he harangued and harassed for for a little bit. I looked him in the eye and answered him very directly and he got angrier and I got scared but I wasn't backing down. Finally he abruptly shifted his focus away from me to D, a woman in her early 40s from the other church, and he was nice to her! Why wasn't he nice to me? I had had it. All tangled up in crazy emotions, tired from being up since 3am and traveling all day into now the early evening, being sick and all the rest of it, I got into the bus to hide.
B never found the 'right' sized bag of popcorn she wanted, but M convinced her to buy what was there. They returned and gave me a funny look for going away. When I explained why, I felt like they didn't believe me. But my emotions were all messed up by then, and probably my judgment was a bit skewed too. We sat awhile longer there in Ochi, way longer than we had planned to, while B and some others tried to get the cell phone to work. It never did work, not in the way she wanted it to. We couldn't call anyone in Jamaica, only back home in the States. Not that she ever let us use it!
But sitting there for what felt like forever made us late for getting to the children's home. Much of the drive was in the darkness, and once we turned up into the mountains at Port Maria, the road became very, very windy and bumpy. As usual. Usually it doesn't bother me. M has the problem with motion sickness, but she was well dosed on Dramamine. As the journey in the darkness progressed, I started feeling sick again, sick like I had felt on the plane. That really was a wonder to me, because it had never happened before. I couldn't figure out why it suddenly bothered me so much, but I felt progressively sicker and sicker, despite my attempts at deep, slow breathing and staying very still. I finally got to a point where I was deciding where I would vomit: in my denim shirt? In my carry on? Wasn't there a puke bucket under a seat somewhere?
And then good sense somehow prevailed and I simply asked Peat to stop the bus because I felt sick. So he did. And I got out and sat on these concrete steps that smelled of dog pee and bus exhaust and thought, This isn't much better, is it?
But at least I wasn't moving anymore. I gathered myself as best I could, and then got back on the bus. There was a small building just up ahead where Peat said he could get me some over-proof rum if I wanted, and I could rub it on my head, it would make me feel better. Mostly the suggestion made me laugh. I told him if he got me rum I certainly would not rub it on my head. He continued to speak consolingly and calmly to me in his beautiful smooth voice, in his good natured way. We were actually only about 10 minutes away from the children's home and seeing the familiar lights and pale colored limestone gravel driveway distracted my mind away from my nausea and lifted my heart up high. We were there! I felt happy; I felt excited, eager to see cherished friends, and to make new ones.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
Saturday, September 27, 2008
fits
a white bear sits
on the green side of the hill
holding a red
red
rose. 'my heart,'
cries the crow
as she leaps into a sky
torn open by flame. the bear
glances aside
and feels her shadow fall
onto the silence of grass
stretching upward. 'where
does my life
fit into all this, where
does my life fit?'
who asks this? not crow,
nor bear,
nor rose,
nor sky,
and grass sings only
what the earth
might wish
to speak,
(just as a dog
might laugh as he trots aside
to shit on a well tended
lawn) and yet,
who might be so uncertain
as to where her life
might fit into all this?
who?
for even if white bears
might sometimes wish
the red roses
they hold were instead
rainbow dappled ice,
they sit tight anyway and
the crows yelling
while leaping
into skies aflame with yet
another day
bound to become falling ash
never question whether it
(the leaping, the yelling)
is worth it --
they know where they are -- they know
how they fit --
encompassed inside them
is this knowing. it rides
their blood tides, it shines
from their eyes, it tints
feather, fur, leaf edge and cloud
tendril. there is simply
no room
for questions as vain
and silly
as this.
so,
who asks?
foolish human, naked
wanderer, lost
and yet found, blind but
not deaf, willing and yet
unable
to get it, to get this, what all
the rest of it knows without thinking,
without pausing to ask.
for in the pause
is the losing, in the asking
is the losing, in the thinking
is the ridiculous loss
of what every living being
is born with, given by earth, by breath, by sun shade and
star fall.
moon hovers and shelters every last single one of us, and so
to ask, 'where do i fit'
is to refuse the banquet spread before you,
to scorn the feast, to be boor,
fool.
crow is no fool. crow,
bear, even dog knows
the world
is one big sandwich. they do not question.
they eat.
grass eats earth
and sky breathes plant and
sun feeds moon
while quenching itself.
we
are it
and it
all fits.
on the green side of the hill
holding a red
red
rose. 'my heart,'
cries the crow
as she leaps into a sky
torn open by flame. the bear
glances aside
and feels her shadow fall
onto the silence of grass
stretching upward. 'where
does my life
fit into all this, where
does my life fit?'
who asks this? not crow,
nor bear,
nor rose,
nor sky,
and grass sings only
what the earth
might wish
to speak,
(just as a dog
might laugh as he trots aside
to shit on a well tended
lawn) and yet,
who might be so uncertain
as to where her life
might fit into all this?
who?
for even if white bears
might sometimes wish
the red roses
they hold were instead
rainbow dappled ice,
they sit tight anyway and
the crows yelling
while leaping
into skies aflame with yet
another day
bound to become falling ash
never question whether it
(the leaping, the yelling)
is worth it --
they know where they are -- they know
how they fit --
encompassed inside them
is this knowing. it rides
their blood tides, it shines
from their eyes, it tints
feather, fur, leaf edge and cloud
tendril. there is simply
no room
for questions as vain
and silly
as this.
so,
who asks?
foolish human, naked
wanderer, lost
and yet found, blind but
not deaf, willing and yet
unable
to get it, to get this, what all
the rest of it knows without thinking,
without pausing to ask.
for in the pause
is the losing, in the asking
is the losing, in the thinking
is the ridiculous loss
of what every living being
is born with, given by earth, by breath, by sun shade and
star fall.
moon hovers and shelters every last single one of us, and so
to ask, 'where do i fit'
is to refuse the banquet spread before you,
to scorn the feast, to be boor,
fool.
crow is no fool. crow,
bear, even dog knows
the world
is one big sandwich. they do not question.
they eat.
grass eats earth
and sky breathes plant and
sun feeds moon
while quenching itself.
we
are it
and it
all fits.
Friday, September 26, 2008
A Bit of Weirdness
I stepped into a time machine today. Inadvertently. Maybe it would be more precise to say a trap door opened beneath my feet and I fell into the past.
It happened like this.
I was at work. The phone rang. I answered it as I always do, "Good Afternoon, blahblah blah blah...." and the voice on the other end, a man, knew it was me but I did not know who he was. After a bit of confused and unbalanced verbal back and forth, I realized it was an old friend of my parents'. He and his wife are visiting my mother for the weekend. It was hardly 2pm, but my mother and his wife had been drinking. I knew that. I simply knew that. And as I heard them in the background while the man gently harassed (gently, and yet, with a trace of menace) me for not knowing who he was, I suddenly was the 8 year old kid with the crazy drunk parents up to who knows what chaos creating madness. Them over there, sitting and drinking and verbally harassing us kids. I always knew, and know, those people could explode at any time.
Those friends have 3 kids. We'd spend weekends together, us kids being kids while the adults sat around and drank and drank, marathon drinking sessions lasting from early afternoon until well after midnight. My mother can do that, sit and drink and talk for hours, hours, hours, and then go to bed at 2 am and get up in the morning and function, and even do it all over again. Back in the day they'd be smoking cigarettes too, and maybe playing cards. And, they probably wouldn't explode on us all gathered together for a friendly weekend like that, but afterwards, after we left, on the trip home.....
As a child, I was well acquainted with catching hell in the car. I was well acquainted with the terror that lives in private family spaces.
This might sound like a simple thing. But I was catapulted back into a bad old past, a place of being bullied and harassed and prodded by guilt. Of adults who acted badly towards children, then blamed the children for their bad behavior, and laid guilt like a blanket soaked in gasoline over us if we dared speak up for ourselves, dared call the bad behavior by its true name. I heard all that in the man's voice today. I heard the uncomfortable heat of that in the laughing banter behind him, of my mother and her friend, already tipsy by 2pm and still hours of drinking yet before them. I didn't try to feel like an 8 year old again, I simply did, despite the fact I am 50 and I talked to him in the smoothed polished voice of a woman skilled in handling crazy people, the very polite, measured cadences that keep the volatile calm. Saying, "I really need to get back to work now, but it is so great to hear from you. Thank you for calling." Smooth as satin kid gloves, smooth as pearls. I have left that world behind and I will do anything I can to keep it far away, over there.
The thing is, I have had 2 good talks with my mother lately. She wasn't drinking and our emotions never ran the conversation. We said things that needed to be said, and a bridge of toothpick sized trust was built between us. Something after nothing for so many years. But after that call today, to me at work, of all places--part of my mind kept insisting, "This simply isn't appropriate'--I remembered, she still is crazy, and I still need to keep her far away, over there.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
It happened like this.
I was at work. The phone rang. I answered it as I always do, "Good Afternoon, blahblah blah blah...." and the voice on the other end, a man, knew it was me but I did not know who he was. After a bit of confused and unbalanced verbal back and forth, I realized it was an old friend of my parents'. He and his wife are visiting my mother for the weekend. It was hardly 2pm, but my mother and his wife had been drinking. I knew that. I simply knew that. And as I heard them in the background while the man gently harassed (gently, and yet, with a trace of menace) me for not knowing who he was, I suddenly was the 8 year old kid with the crazy drunk parents up to who knows what chaos creating madness. Them over there, sitting and drinking and verbally harassing us kids. I always knew, and know, those people could explode at any time.
Those friends have 3 kids. We'd spend weekends together, us kids being kids while the adults sat around and drank and drank, marathon drinking sessions lasting from early afternoon until well after midnight. My mother can do that, sit and drink and talk for hours, hours, hours, and then go to bed at 2 am and get up in the morning and function, and even do it all over again. Back in the day they'd be smoking cigarettes too, and maybe playing cards. And, they probably wouldn't explode on us all gathered together for a friendly weekend like that, but afterwards, after we left, on the trip home.....
As a child, I was well acquainted with catching hell in the car. I was well acquainted with the terror that lives in private family spaces.
This might sound like a simple thing. But I was catapulted back into a bad old past, a place of being bullied and harassed and prodded by guilt. Of adults who acted badly towards children, then blamed the children for their bad behavior, and laid guilt like a blanket soaked in gasoline over us if we dared speak up for ourselves, dared call the bad behavior by its true name. I heard all that in the man's voice today. I heard the uncomfortable heat of that in the laughing banter behind him, of my mother and her friend, already tipsy by 2pm and still hours of drinking yet before them. I didn't try to feel like an 8 year old again, I simply did, despite the fact I am 50 and I talked to him in the smoothed polished voice of a woman skilled in handling crazy people, the very polite, measured cadences that keep the volatile calm. Saying, "I really need to get back to work now, but it is so great to hear from you. Thank you for calling." Smooth as satin kid gloves, smooth as pearls. I have left that world behind and I will do anything I can to keep it far away, over there.
The thing is, I have had 2 good talks with my mother lately. She wasn't drinking and our emotions never ran the conversation. We said things that needed to be said, and a bridge of toothpick sized trust was built between us. Something after nothing for so many years. But after that call today, to me at work, of all places--part of my mind kept insisting, "This simply isn't appropriate'--I remembered, she still is crazy, and I still need to keep her far away, over there.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
Saturday, September 20, 2008
MotherGuilt
So, everyone says, How was your trip to Boston? They ask me that with an excited gleam in their eye, as if I had fun, or should have....
...because that was the trip to bring my daughter to college. And here is my truthful answer: it was emotional, it was exhausting, I wanted to go home. The trip was expensive, and I had left the dogs home unattended. Overnight. Bad mother. Bad dog mother.
And I felt so guilty. I felt guilty because we aren't wealthy. I couldn't really afford the trip out there, couldn't afford meals out, couldn't afford to buy her little tables and shelving units for her room. Couldn't afford to stay out there 2 or 3 nights like the other parents, in the fancy hotel right near the college. Couldn't afford to spend the afternoon after she was all moved in out wandering the city shopping, buying lunch and then dinner out. Couldn't afford to then stay the entire next day after to attend day long parental orientation events. (Parent orientation? I kept thinking, Why? I am not going to college. But there we were, surrounded by the newest sociological phenomenon, 'helicopter parents', hovering over their kids' lives like the TV news team, noting, recording, commenting, and shepherding.)
And yet, what did I do every time I felt guilty? I gave her cash, the cash I had brought with me to buy us meals and whatnot. Just handed it over. Here take this, and I pray you will be okay. I pray you won't be homesick and you won't be mad at me and you will find friends immediately and will fit in and everything will work out gloriously well for you. As for me, this city is making me crazy and tired and all these emotions rushing around inside me like a crazed herd of unmilked Holsteins are leaving me exhausted and wishing I was in my little house drinking tea with soymilk and yelling at the cats to leave me alone.
So, there's the truthful answer to the question, How was your trip to Boston?
I hope you all still like me.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
...because that was the trip to bring my daughter to college. And here is my truthful answer: it was emotional, it was exhausting, I wanted to go home. The trip was expensive, and I had left the dogs home unattended. Overnight. Bad mother. Bad dog mother.
And I felt so guilty. I felt guilty because we aren't wealthy. I couldn't really afford the trip out there, couldn't afford meals out, couldn't afford to buy her little tables and shelving units for her room. Couldn't afford to stay out there 2 or 3 nights like the other parents, in the fancy hotel right near the college. Couldn't afford to spend the afternoon after she was all moved in out wandering the city shopping, buying lunch and then dinner out. Couldn't afford to then stay the entire next day after to attend day long parental orientation events. (Parent orientation? I kept thinking, Why? I am not going to college. But there we were, surrounded by the newest sociological phenomenon, 'helicopter parents', hovering over their kids' lives like the TV news team, noting, recording, commenting, and shepherding.)
And yet, what did I do every time I felt guilty? I gave her cash, the cash I had brought with me to buy us meals and whatnot. Just handed it over. Here take this, and I pray you will be okay. I pray you won't be homesick and you won't be mad at me and you will find friends immediately and will fit in and everything will work out gloriously well for you. As for me, this city is making me crazy and tired and all these emotions rushing around inside me like a crazed herd of unmilked Holsteins are leaving me exhausted and wishing I was in my little house drinking tea with soymilk and yelling at the cats to leave me alone.
So, there's the truthful answer to the question, How was your trip to Boston?
I hope you all still like me.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
Where Have I Been?
Let's just say the computer company that is named after a fruit (and in my case that fruit should be re-named Lemon) will not be asking to me do a commercial for them very soon. If ever. Their competition might, however, should they ever learn of the twists and tangles of tech support and the repair processs I have been traversing. I was ready to go over to their side, by last Saturday, as I was on the phone yet again with tech support.
I told the person there, "I am going to put this thing in its box and drop it in the river. And then I am heading to Best Buy to get an eMachine."
And he replied, with a faint note of horror, "Oh, no. Don't do that."
And I thought, what is this -- a computer company, or a cult?
And now, after replacing nearly all the parts, and even failing to put some of them back in--yes! the repair service center, their very own, failed to replace my RAM! (honestly, I am not imaginatively gifted enough to be making this shit up), the machine seems to be fixed, seems to be working better than it ever has in the 2 years I have owned it. But I am still not ready to say, Yes, it's fixed. Time will tell.....
So, soon I will return to the mindset of this blog. I can only say for certain that the mornings are cool and foggy, with the sun golden, set high like a brilliant softly rounded topaz gem amidst a bright blue clarity of sky, all of it floating above the tangles of soft grey mist. I hear Canada geese up there, wending their way back south, but taking their time about it as they always do. The leaves on the trees are all still green.
Here on earth, I see a mother deer and her twin older babies out amongst the meadow grass at the tree's edge, the youngsters foolish and curious and unaware of the potential threat of human and dog. They are that intense orange color of summer's end. Their large ears flip and flap as they stare at us with big, dark eyes, so beautiful, so beautiful.
As I turn up the hill again, back into the mist sprawling beneath the old trees, I see a large crow, inky black, perched atop a large grey gravestone. The crow is babbling and chortling to itself as it preens its shining feathers dappled by beads of early day fog. The sunlight pierces that fog in pale golden shafts at random angles and in crazed patterns of new day light.
I emerge from the trees and stop and stand and look out and up at the very top branches of a venerable old tree, its leaves vividly green and tipped by amber gold. The sky is that devastatingly bright September blue, a northern shade, truly.
All this tells me, softly, fiercely, how deeply I am blessed.
May you know that too, today and any day, in whatever way the message comes through to you.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai
I told the person there, "I am going to put this thing in its box and drop it in the river. And then I am heading to Best Buy to get an eMachine."
And he replied, with a faint note of horror, "Oh, no. Don't do that."
And I thought, what is this -- a computer company, or a cult?
And now, after replacing nearly all the parts, and even failing to put some of them back in--yes! the repair service center, their very own, failed to replace my RAM! (honestly, I am not imaginatively gifted enough to be making this shit up), the machine seems to be fixed, seems to be working better than it ever has in the 2 years I have owned it. But I am still not ready to say, Yes, it's fixed. Time will tell.....
So, soon I will return to the mindset of this blog. I can only say for certain that the mornings are cool and foggy, with the sun golden, set high like a brilliant softly rounded topaz gem amidst a bright blue clarity of sky, all of it floating above the tangles of soft grey mist. I hear Canada geese up there, wending their way back south, but taking their time about it as they always do. The leaves on the trees are all still green.
Here on earth, I see a mother deer and her twin older babies out amongst the meadow grass at the tree's edge, the youngsters foolish and curious and unaware of the potential threat of human and dog. They are that intense orange color of summer's end. Their large ears flip and flap as they stare at us with big, dark eyes, so beautiful, so beautiful.
As I turn up the hill again, back into the mist sprawling beneath the old trees, I see a large crow, inky black, perched atop a large grey gravestone. The crow is babbling and chortling to itself as it preens its shining feathers dappled by beads of early day fog. The sunlight pierces that fog in pale golden shafts at random angles and in crazed patterns of new day light.
I emerge from the trees and stop and stand and look out and up at the very top branches of a venerable old tree, its leaves vividly green and tipped by amber gold. The sky is that devastatingly bright September blue, a northern shade, truly.
All this tells me, softly, fiercely, how deeply I am blessed.
May you know that too, today and any day, in whatever way the message comes through to you.
Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai