Freestyle Week 13

I am a woman – touch me under the lace.

These days I feel less like a woman than an “it”. My passion, once so dominate, lies dormant and mostly in the background if I notice it at all. It isn’t about the sexual creature in me. It’s about the passionate one. The side of me once so full of ideas and fanciful notions is so distanced that I can hardly reach it anymore.

I don’t worry that it’s lost to me. I know myself better than that but I get lonely for that part more and more these days. I like to think of that as a sign that I’m getting closer.

Tonight, for example, the words just haven’t stopped. They flow from me undeterred and unbroken. I came in tonight to polish some ideas that I had put to Word and found that I didn’t need my own prompts. Everything that I wrote wanted to be said. I didn’t have to force a single nuance of a single passage. They don’t resound with brilliance but they are true and they are mine and they came easily.

For tonight, that’s enough for me. I can put this away, shut down the puter and go to bed feeling a little more confident that I am still in here even if a little muddied. Maybe that part of me that lives in the lace will find her back into my skin.

Certainly, the words offer hope.

Prompt Week 13

Nothing says spring like daffodils in my book. Every year it happens the same way: it’ll be a day like any other. I’ll be getting in my car, or taking out the dog or just opening the door and suddenly, where the day before there was nothing, there is a beautiful, little patch of daffodils across the street all golden and soaking up the sun. In the days immediately following, the buds start to appear on the trees and the lilac bushes start looking more alive than dead.

Daffodils signal spring cleaning both indoors and out. They signal that that time is nigh for my camp list and for the unpacking of spring attire. They bring confirmation that winter REALLY isn’t coming back and it’s safe to contemplate the fanciful days of summer.

It takes all of my reserve not to cross the street and pull them from their home to bring them into mine. Every year I say that I’m going to plant some in my square foot of yard so that I can have them on my table the minute that they blush with their blooms. Instead I settle on waiting for the rogue lilac bush that has insinuated some of its branches into my yard. One year, though, I am going to go get those daffodils. Maybe this year…it’s not over yet. Besides, they have a crowd, a host of golden daffodils. Surely there’s enough to share.

Freestyle Week 12

My house is trashed. Oh sure, the dishes are done a couple of times a day and the clutter gets shuffled around enough to give the appearance of cleanliness but it’s just plain trashed. Don’t open any of the closet doors or peer too closely into the corners. It’s spring so Sagan is shedding 3 pounds of hair a day. Even with regular brushings he leaves a cloud of hair every time he moves. Those stray hairs gather in the corners like naughty children and mock me when I catch a glimpse of them. I don’t wear my glasses in the house anymore unless I’m watching TV. It’s too much to see all the cobwebs and layers of dust.

The windows are covered with a film of winter. The porch has puked up its winter clutter which lies strewn end to end leaving hardly any room to go out and sit and enjoy these first breaths of spring. There are stacks of papers all over my desk in varying degrees of importance. I have no idea what’s in there anymore but I’m certain that it’s mostly garbage. Duplicates of bills I just haven’t gotten to, catalogues that I’ll never open and last chance invitations for magazines that I’ve never even read.

May is coming though. This time next week we’ll be staring straight down the throat of it. I’ll spend the end of May catching up on all of the chores neglected here before I go and tackle the “chore” of opening camp.

For now my house is trashed and is likely to stay that way until May 15th. I will say that I’m finding it easier and easier to live with. I couldn’t tell you if that’s a good thing or not and frankly, I’m no more in the mood to analyze it any further than I am to clean it. What do I look like - the maid?

Effect Essay - #6

I’m coming back around to me a little. It’s slow and I’m certainly not saying that I’m at 100% peak efficiency physically, but I am feeling much better and am getting a handle on my ailment - not a minute too soon and, hopefully, not a minute too late either. A lot has suffered in these last weeks. I’ve learned first-hand the devastation that a debilitating illness can wreck on a life. The emotional, physical and psychological effects can leave a path of destruction before one even realizes that it’s happening.

The emotional effects are none too subtle. My feelings lately have been raw and achy. I feel like a loser for not being able to control the symptoms enough to manage any semblance of a normal life. I feel guilty about all of the things that I’ve not been able to do and I feel weak when I compare my own illness to those of a more serious nature. All of these feelings bring on stress which exasperates the emotions which leads to more guilt and anguish. I spent hours crying on the couch in the middle of the night alternating between feeling sorry for myself and feeling disgusted with my self pity.

Physically, I’m exhausted. Between the lack of sleep and the terrible cramping and bloating my body feels beaten and a waste. I’ve tried catching up on my sleep but there’s so much to be done. There’s so much that I had to put off that I can’t afford to sleep when I know that I should. My skin is different. It seems older and depleted of its vitamins. It’s the same with my hair. My body hardly seems recognizable to my own eyes which have dark circles shadowing them. I’ve neglected doing anything that I used to do for me. No walks, no long showers, no exercising except the movement between the couch and the bathroom. Physically, I feel like one of Hagen’s train wrecks.

Psychologically, I am changed by the whole experience. It’s brought home to me the inevitably of the body’s breakdown. Intellectually, I know that I’ve a lot of years left to me but those years are going to be different years than the ones that came before. Things that I didn’t worry over now have to be considered carefully. My diet has to change, my habits, my vices all have to be reconsidered and redesigned. I also have to think about my family in a different way. I actually went online and looked at a life insurance policy. I suppose that as a mother I should have taken care of that before now but I just didn’t think about it really. At least I didn’t think about it as being immediate. It’s taken on a new sort of urgency, which depresses me a little, I’ll admit.

I am a different woman because of the last few weeks. I haven’t assimilated all of the new emotions. My body hasn’t recuperated completely from its battle and the psychology that I “run” on is in the process of being reformed leaving me at a loss for the moment. I feel certain that I’ll grow just fine through this stage in my life and understanding and I feel truly lucky that I’ve not had to deal with the implications of a more serious disease. Still, I am a different woman – my definition as yet, undiscovered.

Prompt Week 12

My son, Hagen loves trains. It isn’t an ordinary fascination with this child as I found out a couple of weeks ago when the train derailed in Bangor and three trains were trapped in the Penobscot. My sister, Hagen, Aska and I were coming home from Old Town and happened by the traffic jam of workers and onlookers at the intersection where it happened. It was raining but Hagen really needed to get up close and personal. It was, after all, a break-down train with crane and flatbed. Oh, we just had to see that in action.

I parked the car illegally on the slope of a hill and we trudged down in the rain and stood across the street from the workers. Hagen was very upset about the way that they were going about it. He kept screaming at them to get down there and get those cars out of the river. Had they never seen Thomas?

We didn’t have a great view of the real action but I spotted a house across the river that I knew was empty and for sale. I told him that I’d take him to see after I took Auntie and Aska back to the house. He reluctantly agreed to go back to the car but not before he yelled a couple more orders to the guys. One man turned around in his yellow rain gear and I swear he made a face at my little three year old. I was smiling as we plodded back to the car, Hagen babbling the whole time.

I didn’t even take him out of his car seat when we got back to the house. I grabbed a refill of my coffee, cut the front page photo of the trains out of the Bangor Daily and got right back in the car. Away we went up route 9 to the empty house. It was directly across the river from the derailment. We had a full view of everything. Though nothing was happening, Hagen stood with his nose practically pushed against the windshield holding his picture from the Bangor Daily like it was a blue print. He kept telling me that they really needed a boat and a caboose and for that breakdown train to go into the water to get those cars out. We sat there for a good half hour and then I had to insist that we go home. He didn’t like that at all and fretted all evening about those train cars in the river.

The next morning I told him that we’d go back and watch while they took the blue car out. Daddy got off to work and we jumped in the car and headed back to our post. Still nothing had happened as far as I could tell. There seemed to be a lot of milling about but all three cars were still in the water. Hagen was disgusted. He wouldn’t even leave his post long enough to eat his sausage sandwich. The newspaper picture was still in front of him and another, from that morning’s paper had joined it.

We sat there for a total of 6 hours that day watching them pull first the blue car then the red car out of the water. We watched them weld on the blue car (which subsequently caught afire) and we saw them hook the red car to the breakdown train. It was honestly the most boring and fulfilling day I’ve spent in a lot of years. I didn’t tell him about the other red car immersed so deeply as not to be visible. I couldn’t stand another day while they figured out how to get that one out.

The whole adventure lasted about 3 days with occasional stops at the empty house even on the fourth day. When the whole thing was finished, I’ll admit that I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t imagine spending another minute watching an inch by inch rescue.

Just when I thought it was over, my time done, Wednesday’s paper front page color photo - a train hit a truck in Hampden. My son’s eyes lit up and looked straight at me. “You’ll have to ask Bampi to take you.” I said. “Momma’s got too much to do to go see railroad cars scattered all over the landscape like toys.”

Bampi did take him that day but he fell asleep in his car seat before they got there. I have to think that it’s really a good thing. I understand that it was closed off and no way to really see anything. Bampi likely would have acquiesced to Hagen’s pleading and found a way through. I don’t know that the workers would have appreciated Hagen’s input and that would have broken his heart.

I’ve put the newspaper clippings away for now. They’ll go in his scrapbook when the time comes. For now, we’ll just continue to walk around the toys scattered all over the landscape like…well, not railroad cars.

Prompt Week 10

Tonight I’m sitting in the dark trying to type by the light of the computer screen. I don’t want the neighbors to see that I’m still awake. I’m afraid that one or the other of them might tap on my door hoping for some respite from their eternal fighting. It starts the minute that she pulls in the driveway after work and doesn’t stop until one of them tears away in the little red car. I hate that I have to sit and listen to the horrible names that they call each other and the brutal threats that they make against one another.

Every day is another battle in their war. The same shots are fired with the same precision as the battle before. The voices get raised to the same crescendo in the same manner. Even their physical positions are unchanged. She stands in their doorway with the yellow light behind her and he paces betweens his broken down truck and the stairs. Occasionally, one of them throws something in the other’s direction and whatever it is will lie there through the night like a soldier’s boot on a deserted battlefield. In the morning their three year old daughter plays with it while her mother loads the car.

The bluebird of happiness flies over the battlefield and lands on a boot left behind.

Division Essay or was it Example? I'll get back to you.

Alright! Alright! Alright, already! I get it! I’m old. Enough of the fates or the gods or the fairies proving it. I’ve been saying for years that this wouldn’t happen to me. Oh, I’d see the look in the eyes of anyone over 40 when I’d declare it, but I was determined, dammit! I didn’t give in to the vanity of it all without quite losing the shadow of the 30’s. Until recently, I still half expected to need my id when I bought booze or went to a bar. Yeah…until recently. Age is an interesting thing now, like a compound under a microscope. I don’t quite know what I think of it, other than that I do now think of it. What it does to the mind amazes me down to my purple painted toes and demands my thoughts. My mind skips beats and stumbles and makes unannounced u-turns quite frequently these days.

I was talking to my son last week while I was cooking. We were talking about the Halo tournament at Geekzilla. I was going to have to take them and pick them up and oh - would I mind getting Aska before Matt was done with the tournament and – well you get the idea. In the meantime, I was browning sausage and chopping black olives and draining spinach and shaping the pizza dough and making sure that Hagen wasn’t doing chemistry experiments with the dog’s water and it happened – I looked at my son of nearly 15 years and forgot his name. Absolutely forgot for more than a minute. I can’t trust myself to remember much of anything though there’s so much that I need to remember. If it isn’t written down and carried with me, and sometimes even when it is, I can’t be expected to know. I didn’t realize that I needed to keep my son’s names in that same little binder. I know now.

I’ve known for three weeks that we’re out of tea bags. Several times I’ve gone to Doug’s specifically for tea bags. I come home with bread and cereal or milk and fish but still haven’t gotten the teabags. Twice I’ve gone to the cupboard in the last two days and, realizing that I STILL haven’t gotten tea bags, I immediately go to the desk and write them on what’s meant to become my shopping list. Both times, when I actually sit down to write the list' I pull out a different sheet of paper. Neither time have tea bags appeared on the list. I go in Doug's knowing that I’m forgetting something and stand in the aisles like an idiot hoping that it will come to me. It doesn’t do any good. I don’t ever remember tea bags and wouldn’t a cup of tea be lovely right about now?

Keith and I were having a discussion about meditation the other night. I was thinking about getting a set of cd’s to help me learn to relax and breathe better. I ardently defended my need to have someone outside of me (I simply can’t trust myself right now) to say over and over the words that would bring me to that quiet place…or something. About 10 minutes into my spiel I did a u-turn and adamantly, vehemently berated his thinking that I needed them. I don’t think he even had much of a chance to say anything at all either way. I don’t know even now which side of the fence I landed on. I can spend weeks bouncing back and forth and not in a quiet, questioning sort of way. Either side I’m on, I’m right and damned be those that think otherwise! Bet I’m a real joy to live with, no?

Okay. I’ll admit it. Age, no matter how I walk up to it, whether it’s full faced and open armed or cowardly pulled kicking and screaming into its greedy arms, is going to win. It’ll take pieces of my mind only subtly at first. Then - BAM! - one day, maybe I’m cooking supper or standing dumbstruck in Doug’s or in the middle of a conversation - I’m older and I can feel it in my eyes when I hear some 30 something woman say she intends to age gracefully. Yeah. The minute she figures that out, I’m buying the book.

Prompt Week 11 (out of order)

What God has put asunder let no man repair. Certainly the fates, the gods, the whatevers have placed us asunder. There is no recreation for that sort of oblivion. To attempt, to tease at it, to pretend is an injustice. There is no repair for this boat as it lie sunken in the middle of this ocean of discontent. Why bother? Why send words that pry at my life and test my fortitude? Cruelty. More of it. That place is gone to us and good riddance. I have not the time or inclination to set again those pieces in that particular order. You swiped that board. I’ve long since collected my men and retreated. What now would you have me do? No. What God has put asunder let no man repair. Enough of the attempts. Be gone. I am done.

Freestyle Week 11

There is a change that’s brewing in me. I can nearly mark its daily passing, ebbing but closer and closer: two feet in, one foot out. Each foot that comes in offers resolution of sorts but leaves questions in its wake. I’m left to wonder about the significance of age and understanding. I want to keep my ears pricked constantly so as not to miss a single decisive moment. It’s not like a crystalline experience filled with new age purples and wishing stones. I don’t have the stone jingle of the runes in a leather pouch tied to my hips. Most of the “crystalline” comes in the breakdown of the body and in the impatience for a sense of that reality. This change is growth. I know that and, as a snake sort of woman, the sloughing off of this tired skin is one of those rare and magnificent moments that I treasure - as this sort of woman. However, the affect of this on my daily life has been dramatic, upsetting and tumultuous. To have this happen at this precise moment has turned my life on it’s ear at a time that my ear needed to be steadily and solidly pinned to the ground.

My schoolwork has been an unfortunate casualty. Oh, it’s not dead but it lies piled and nearly abandoned on the outskirts. The body has allowed for no more pushing. I am no longer able to make it do my bidding lest I console it first with wanton sleep. It acts like a spoiled child with its whining and tantrums. I dream its questions and, though written on the blackboard with scientific symbols and renderings, it asks me to define my goals and refuses to continue until I am certain of them completely. Physics becomes like the idea that it was months ago. It is far removed and something that other people do. I know that I have to fight to retrieve its place in me. It is the same with my writing.

My thoughts are jumbled, incoherent though fully visible on the inside. I can feel them. I know them and they comfort me but they are outside of the reach of display. They come in shadows or twisted in their meanings and my mouth contorts itself around their pronunciation. I sound uncertain when the certainty exists. When I try to explain what is happening to me I feel a bit insane. My family worries after my health and the onset of depression. I have my moments with those thoughts but they aren’t more than moments. I understand the importance of this step into the insanity of thought even as I’m stepping over the clutter.

The house begins to reflect the upheaval. I have changed and rearranged the furniture. I am giving things away right out from under my family. It is too much clutter for so busy a mind. I plan and I scheme my world around the sparse tidiness of my mind’s goal. I need less, and fast. I’ve moved my study space away from the window. The swaying of the trees in spring’s first breath cannot distract me. I am not yet in the birth canal, only recognizing that I am to be born. To rush now would be to come into this unprepared and disorganized. The timing is everything.

I know that this time is passing. This uncertainty of my self in this body with that goal using those words in a place that reflects the cleanliness of purpose is short-lived. And if I am to grow and be committed to that growth, I must suck the life and lessons out of this time quickly. The meaning will come back. The words have never forsaken me for long and the house always manages to stand. This time, this now belongs to something greater. To ignore that would be to bully the body, mind and spirit and to forsake my future in the process. This time belongs now to the spirit. The rest of us have naught but to wait.

Freestyle Week 10

I’ll admit it, I didn’t want to even think about IBS. That’s some girlie disease like PMS. I don’t begrudge anyone (male or female) their right to any of those sorts of things but it just wasn’t going to be me. Well, it’s me. I won’t beg for forgiveness or excuse myself for my political incorrectness. Believe me, whatever vengeance has already been dished upon me.

So, I walk through the halls of my doctor’s office with those three letters plastered across the top of my chart (IBS) and I face the fact that I am a girl. I had to face it, admit and now I want to cure it. Make it go away. I don’t want to spend another half second thinking about my belly, planning my strategy holding it in. I just want to exist on the planet.

As I sat in the waiting room I read an article about menopause. Those symptoms were recognizable as well. Doesn’t matter that I just started school or that I have a 3 year old. Fact of the matter is that all of these issues are to be mine. The body is wearing down.

Oh, it was easy to sit comfortably at 35 and declare that I could go into the age thing gracefully. 35 was a breeze. It was also nearly 8 years, a pregnancy, two surgeries and a lifetime ago.

I put the magazine down and decided to watch Hagen. He makes me feel young and strong – vital even, sometimes. I consoled my feelings of wretched age and sagging everything with wisdom and lessons that I never need learn again. All those years of angst given up for happier pursuits. I am a student. I’m going for my doctorate in physics. I have a lot of living to do that really is only just beginning.

I checked my battle gear…I’m well armed. I have a great sense of myself and my place. I have learned enough about me to choose wisely my battles in my moral, familial and political lives. I’m working on getting my health squared away and a lot of bad things have been ruled out. Yep. I’m real. I don’t dye my hair to cover the grays. I think of each gray strand as a gray badge of courage. I’m proud of my age and my wrinkles. I can do the graceful aging thing.

The nurse called me in just as a smile was forming on my sullen face. As I walked past her holding Hagen’s hand and smiling she said “Oh, he’s so cute. Is that your grandson?”

One fell swoop and my armament was defeated. I was a fallen soldier on the battlefield of hope and graceful aging. I picked up my bruised and battered pride, got through the appointment and stopped at the drugstore on my way home. I’m thinking that I’ll go for the light brown hair coloring and how’s that whole Regenerist thing work? Who’s got info on Botox? To hell with grace. This is war.

Freestyle Week 9

Wow. Everything is behind. I’m fighting/fending off frustration on an hourly basis. Still have to make my momma rounds and the student stuff and the house just doesn’t clean itself ya know. I feel like I’ve been absent for weeks. I’m looking around at all of the half crackers in my wake and wondering who the hell’s been in my shoes.

It’ll pass. Always does. Meantime, by the grace of some sympathetic god, it’s April break. Time to play a little catch up.

I’ve not been well for a couple of weeks. Not sleeping well has led to not much production in any area of my life. Tonight I had to give a friend a ride home, got that late half coffee/half hot chocolate concoction that I love so and settled in to a long night with the keyboard when I got home. Figured it was time to get myself back on my schedule. Hit me just as I lit the candle and set the music that Randy will be calling at 6 am. I have to go get the kids off to school tomorrow. No sleeping in. By the time I get home, Keith will be leaving for work and Hagen will be ready for mommy games. It seems that I've lost 3 hours for every hour I gained by not having to go to class. My math skills are on temporary leave of absence but I'm pretty sure I'm going to owe hours by the end of the week.

Well, good news is I can cross freestyle week 9 off my to do list. First off and the list has been running for 5 days. Not lookin good for the home team, boys.