More and Less

Starting over
is possible even
with this cloud
the way it is
its shape
more middle than
beginning
and wearing pink
the baby girl color
I've grown to like
on you
less
and more
on me.

Fire

Sometimes there isn't anything to say, except that the problem is bigger than we are. Bigger than all of us. I cannot expect them to respond to his crisis in the way that I'd like them to--in the way that he needs them to. It's unrealistic. They are people rendered incapable. By circumstances not chosen. By ignorance. By disbelief. By their own pain. By fear. By a belief system that focuses on prayer and hope to move things along--as people lay dying, suffering in the wake of such. People are busy. People work. People have lives, responsibilities, bills to pay. People have five grown children. People wouldn't know crisis, or how to prevent it, if it kicked them in the face.

I'm tired of the hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is everywhere. I know. I get that. But I'm angry, in particular, with this hypocrisy. The preached dogma that family is important, the most important and then this. The clear message that family doesn't come first. Not him. Not her. Not me. Not any of us. Family comes first when it is convenient and fits into the schedule and doesn't interfere with previous commitments. I have learned that family only comes first when someone cries "fire." And even then it's debatable. And even then this is better than nothing. I think.

A Laugh

I don't watch the guy--I don't watch much of anything lately except old Buffy episodes and children--but TDS-Secretary's Day made me laugh. Laugh out loud.

Out

crawling up, out of muck
old as the beginning
like fish growing legs
and lungs
to walk out water
leviathan, beast
I am

Winter Color

More, more, more

Everyone should clean under and behind large appliances at least once a year. Or, lest it be thought that I actually do this, a person should clean behind appliances when and if a child (not to be named) pours nearly half a gallon of milk (the expensive kind) on the kitchen floor. The milk then makes its way like a stream, a milky stream, to the most logical and downsloping place in the kitchen--beneath the refrigerator and beneath the stove, leaving me to wonder which would be worse--the stench of the dried and soured milk if I do not clean it properly or the debris, the dusted, crusted food that has accumulated over four years.

I chose to go where no man or woman has been since the purchase of our home and I was not disappointed, the terrain lovely, the crust the finest quality, and the dust sculpture enough to make any woman long for more--more pools of milk spilled on kitchen floor, more crusts of bread lodged between cushions of couch, more of the dried, more of the solidified and petrified. Oh the richness of color.

More. Give me more, more, more.

Not a turtle

For some reason this gets me right in the place where people get gotten.

And by the way, according to Aidan, it's a dinosaur not a turtle.

For Want

Time. There is little of it. Seems, for some, better to do something without care, than nothing at all.

What does it mean to care for someone, to be cared for? How many ways to listen, or not? To say the same thing, saying nothing?

Nothing at all.

He's a man you don't meet every day

This morning my brother called. He called to tell me that I'm a good mother, that he'd watched my interactions with my daughter for a couple of hours during our recent visit to Utah and that yes indeed, I'm a good mother, despite and perhaps because of comments about my daughter being a book s-l-u-t (of course I always spell it, what kind of a mother do you think I am?). Book s-l-u-t because of the way in which she sidles up to ANYBODY, ANYWHERE who is reading a book aloud. He was sincerely touched by Aidan's intense desire to be present, right next to him, while he read with his theatrical flair Manners Can Be Fun by Munro Leaf, a book that my grandmother read to us in childhood. If you haven't read it I recommend getting yourself to the nearest computer (perhaps the one in front of you) and ordering up a copy if only for the section on "whineys" and "me firsts," and to see the large lump in the whiney's throat and the sad state of the "me first" who "wore his arms off grabbing things first and wore his legs off pushing in every place first..." Smash, Rip and Ruin, Touchey The Snoopers, and Yawner are also very funny and worth the $15 the book might cost.

This call may not sound like a big deal, but it is and here's why. I never know what my brother is going to do until he does it--which--in spite of my love for whims--is not a joy. I've spent too much not-well-spent time waiting for a return call to one of 10 that I've made, or for him to show up for a lunch date or a wedding. I've wondered, more often than I thought possible, whether he's alive or dead. And most of the early morning calls I receive from him are desperate pleas to be plucked from misery--so that talking to him for 45 minutes this morning, delightfully lucid, about parenting, Mormon homophobia, and the Netherlands’s Black Peter celebrations, made my day. It fucking made my holiday, my Kwanzaa, my Hanukkah, my winter solstice, my Christmas, my New Year's and all of the holidays that come before, after and in between.

Bananas, death and love

At 6:40 this morning Cole climbed onto my bed and pressed his cheek to mine and said, "Wake up sleepyhead." After a minute or two of snuggling and love he said, "Do you want a "manna"?; translation--banana or Amanda. I took it to mean banana because for a few weeks now I've been eating one banana before I get up to try to quell nausea resulting from, um, pregnancy (the first time that I've said this here). I answered, "yes" and "please" and then Cole walked downstairs to find a banana, climbed upstairs and onto the bed with the banana and asked, "Mama, you die?"; translation--Are you dying? Aidan, now in the room and listening said, "Honey, she's not dying, she's just sick because she's going to have a baby." Cole said, "oh" and that was the end of it.

I have a couple of questions here: First, how does a two-year-old know, without prompting, to ask his nauseated mother if she wants a banana? Second, how does a four-year-old know to explain to her two-year-old brother that his mother is not dying--that she's having a baby, though I've hardly talked with her about it? And how does my two-year-old know what dying is? No one he knows has died, except Henry and he slept through that. And I haven't killed anything in his presence, on purpose, yet.

Last, and aware that I've asked more than two questions: How does a mother keep from crying uncontrollably over beautiful, perfect moments such as these? How does she? Not even the screaming and fighting over a raw, wagon-wheel pasta necklace a few minutes later can stop it--the emotion, the fiercest of motherly respect, and the not-oft-enough realization that these little beings are wise and loving in a way that a mother may never understand no matter how many questions she asks.

Anyone need an apartment?

Hyper

I wish that I could describe smell. Pleasant aroma or foul odor. It changes, depending on time of day and mood. Wet soap after Tad's shower or coffee grounds in trash or eucalyptus when I go for acupuncture. Fish from Vito's. Lemon drops from Walgreens and peppermint Altoids. Sautéing onions or garlic for soup or chili for dinner or no dinner. Peppers on a Mike's or Mikes' pizza. Poop, nonspecific. Wet towels that need washing. Sheets that have been slept upon and in and around. Cole's blankets. Someone else's laundry, the soap, I think. Newspaper, pulp. My mother in law's perfume. Smoke wreaths. Babies. Pine. Exhaust. Outside. The smell of outside.

Letting Go

Sometimes people need to let go, a little. And it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Oh Henry

Swimming, swimming in your tank
blue and green
like water
following your reflection
fighting with your reflection
you ate
you swam
you pooped
you died
and we will miss you.

created by Aidan Elise and Jane no-middle-name to be recited at the ceremonious toilet flushing on the occasion of the death of one Henry Betta blue fish arrived beginning of May, 2004, died December 7, 2005

Last Year

Last year I
learned to look
beneath her bed
for dust
to watch it
dance
with the sweep
of a bedskirt
and settle itself
differently
every time.

Unlike the way
paint dries
to bristles stiff
and unwilling
to bend even
for art's sake
or push into
that
which cannot
be, the dust
resolved
to dull
the brightness ever
for want.

Making it Mine

Memory crawls in like a scorpion, tail flicking, whispering. This place is the same but with a condo instead of a parking lot. And without the box of wine, or whatever we could find. It is close to the mountain, cool of autumn, dry heat of summer and nearly colorless brush that the neighbor boy set on fire, half a dozen helicopters to douse the dry flames. Later, I smoked my first cigarette. Her backyard, stolen from the secret pack of a quiet smoker, few knew until he quit.

A drive around the block, from here, reveals slick pavement on bicycle at age six, yellow and banana-seated with basket. I hear screaming and see blood and a woman whose face I do not recall collecting me like a postage stamp, crumpled and running to a house, any house, telephoning my mum, a scar for remembering.

Now it's our old house, new folks there. Paint. Making it theirs, slowly, but unable to remove memory. Mine. The hole in the bathroom ceiling in the basement. My basement. Upstairs oblivious to what went down. Stairs. Creaky, but not creaky enough. A hideaway beneath the landing. For siblings and such. Girlfriends. A boy balancing on a railing. Falling. Falling in love. Or thinking about falling in love.

In the car again this time to Indian Hills Elementary School. New, but same name. With Aidan. "That's where Mommy went to school, like you'll do next year." She wanted to know about the playground, the slightly ominous building now squatting where we once ran ourselves to pieces, boys chasing girls. Girls screaming. Jungle gym and monkey bars. Metal, not plastic.

Breakfast to George's with sisters, niece and daughter--George's was Nick's now it's Demetri's. Waitress wanted to know what language "they" speak in New England. Didn't order a roundhouse--hash browns that Susan cannot find in Massachusetts, eggs then cheese, then meat. A pool of grease, a school day's hangover cure. Wood-paneled walls, no smoking now. Seems like these walls should ooze stale, high school smoke and grease, but they don't. Used to be once a week with the boys--one's in Texas now. One's in Colorado, as far as I know, with a wife and a couple of kids, devout. One married an ex-Mormon girl and started painting and sculpting--enough art for both of them. One went on to meet his wife at a Dead concert, happily married? And my boy, railing boy, the second of six boys and with a mother still breathing, ex-Mormon, now National Guard boy--wondering if he and his wife are in Iraq, but too scared to ask. For a roundhouse or a roundhouse and a half. And today, it's the girls. My four-year-old girl.

"This is the place," Brigham Young said while retching over the side of his wagon as he gazed upon the Salt Lake Valley--or so I've been told.

This is the place. My place. Whether I want it or not. Returning proves that I want it, that I want to own it. Returning is figuring out how to own it, to make it mine. It is making the voices mine. The air. The leaves. The foothills. The snow. The smog. The hymns. Church and religion. Winter sunlight. The whispers. All mine. Returning is the settling of the scorpion tail after its sting, the flow of memory. Paralysis, then ownership, but not death. In this case, there is no death. Temporary paralysis, maybe, but no death.

Now I Get It?

Virago comes from Latin virago, "a man-like woman, a female
warrior, a heroine" from vir, "a man."

Is there a word like 'virago' for men? I'd like to know.

Virago

Should I be surprised by these differing definitions? The inner feminist says no. Who comes up with these words, anyway? Must be viragos. Male viragos.


Word of the Day for Wednesday October 26, 2005

virago \vuh-RAH-go; vuh-RAY-go\, noun:
1. A woman of extraordinary stature, strength, and courage.
2. A woman regarded as loud, scolding, ill-tempered,
quarrelsome, or overbearing.

In Honor Of

This and That

Occasionally,
if you ask me,
a lie is better
than this.

Send flowers
I'd have told you
if you'd asked
because that
is what people do.

They lie and lay.
They ask of love.
They this
until
there is that.