Friday, February 14, 2014

Images of My Mother


I can still feel the bottom of my feet on top of yours that were covered
with white socks while you danced me around in the basement on the black and white
linoleum floor
while my big brother waited his turn
and little sister slept in her crib upstairs
We twisted to Chubby Checkers, you in your madras shorts
and crisp white blouse
your wavy, auburn hair swishing against your back 
eyes closed so you could feel the music
God, how you loved to dance
There was always music
on a radio or the blonde wood stereo 
with records stacked beside it
 mix of opera and polkas,
blues
rock and roll that you hid from our father
 You knew all the words to Creedence songs
 You sang off-key but it didn't matter as much as how it felt to belt those songs out from
deep inside

On summer days you baked in the sun covered in oil out in the back yard, the chaise lounge
smelled like coconut, the pages of your books, stained 
your shiny skin freckled and your nose with that slight crease that never
changed color was as pink as your cheeks by the end of the day 
We'd play in the yard or wade in the rubber pool beside you, run inside to fill
your glass with iced tea, ice cubes chuckling all the way 
to your chair

I loved looking at your year book from high school
that wavy haired girl with the mock white turtle neck sweater smiling 
from the page covered with signatures and good wishes of classmates and teachers
Your perfectly plucked brows and red lipstick lining your lips that curled up at the corners
Images of you playing basketball
Pictures of you in your prom dress, strapless and elegant
Dancing, of course
I liked thinking of you as a kid, maybe someone I might have hung around with
though I never got your gift for dancing

One of my favorite pictures of you was taken when you were about twelve
Skinny, leggy kid with crooked braids in your hair and a goofy expression on your face,
half smile half grimace
wearing saddle shoes with no socks, that look too big, probably hand me downs from 
one of your many sisters
It was taken at the farm where you grew up and couldn't wait to escape,
but a place that you had deep and beautiful memories of as you grew older
and more sentimental about those barns your father built
and the smell of fresh baked bread
Hide and seek in the orchards
under violet skies

The last time I saw you I said,
"I'll be back in a few days"
and you raised the one eyebrow the way you could, you said, "Stay"
Music was on but I can't remember what

 Your
 soft embrace remains
as does the dizzy feel of spinning around with you on a basement floor
keeping my feet steady on top of yours
Still my favorite way to dance.








Thursday, February 13, 2014

not a milestone, but a moment.

It is the night before another Valentine’s Day (a holiday permanently marked in our family’s memory, as it coincides with the death of Norma Lenore, my grandmother).
Six years ago, we wore red to her funeral, laughed and cried over the special experiences we shared with her, and I celebrated my 25th year on this planet.

Tomorrow we will pay our respects, reach out to one another, say our “ I love you’s”, and reflect in our individual ways—remembering those who we have loved and lost, and those who we continue to hold close.

There’s snow in the forecast for the next few days, and though it is my night off from work, I won’t be braving the slick roads, freezing rain and snow drifts, to see a movie or have a dinner out. Instead, my Valentine sits at the kitchen table deciphering the philosophy of Marx, sipping on our shared bottle of wine (and eyeing the cupcakes I just frosted), as I listen to the whir of the extra space heater, the intermittent wind, and think about how much has happened since Norma’s passing.

There are little things that remind me of her daily. Like, just the other evening, I was flipping through a book of poetry and out fell a couple of photographs and the prayer card I kept from the services. Place markers for this poem:

Sacred Heart
Lee Ellen Briccetti

Even as a girl I knew the heart was not a valentine;
it was wet, like a leopard frog on a lily pad;
like a lily pad it had long tube roots

anchoring it in place.
And smaller roots too, like the lupine and marigold
and bleeding hearts’ roots I traced with my finger

while transplanting in the garden.
I believed Jesus had a thousand bloody hearts
planted in our flowerbeds beneath the pink flowers;

they could see us through the ground.
I had a book about a girl who lived in the earth
near the tree roots, who cut off her finger

and used it as a key. I wondered if I could love like that.
I studied the painting of His chest peeled back
to show light around the Sacred Heart.         

And in the bedroom at my grandmother’s where I slept
Against the tree shadows, I was the spirit
inside the room’s heart, and my life was inside me
like something that could leave quietly through the window.



I didn’t fall for a man who makes a ton of money, like Norma would jokingly advise my sisters and I to do when she was alive. But I did fall for a good man, who doesn’t seem fazed by how sentimental I get, emotional at times, and occasionally obsessed with morbid things like subtle violence and death. If she was around still, she would probably comment on how handsome he is (and of course, I would have to agree). And also, she would ask if he makes me laugh (because she loved to laugh—big belly laughs at the table, occasionally dripping some sort of sauce of her nice clothes, which would just make us laugh harder).

On Monday, I turn 31. And such a weird age it is to process, because it falls into that “just another day” category, as Valentine’s Day once did for me. There will be no milestone passed. No bar hopping or major celebratory event will take place. No piƱatas or clowns or pin the tail on the donkey, either (Sorry Mom. Though, you could probably still swing it with Molly).  

I suspect that maybe this is a sign I’ve embraced adulthood, that my idea of a perfect birthday is renting a room in a quaint B&B in some small Northern town, and doing exactly the same thing that me and my Valentine are doing right this minute: simply, enjoying each other’s company, our casual goofiness, and the love we have for one another.

So, to end this thought, I would like to say:  enjoy the holiday—not through the giving and receiving of material gifts (the diabetic, fabricated, wasteful stuff). But through the giving and receiving of mutual respect. Compassion. And of course, that beautiful, magical, red-stained love.



Tuesday, February 11, 2014

I Look for Quiet Places

Rilke said that as we get older our partner's role is to help guard our solitude
a big change from youth when we think we need to fill our days with bustling about
getting things done, making plans, little thought to horizons, rather, pushing past them
finding new ones
and conversations
the constant sound of others clattering about in our ill defined spaces
with push pins on the walls
Ideas or images held onto pock marked sheet rock with carelessly cut edges
Rooms with poor lighting and beer stained carpets and 
collections of found objects meant to become art
some day
Shared or lent, communal places without the rules
Noisy running refrigerators with nothing but condiments 
and no one ever filled the ice cube tray
Bookshelves filled with textbooks and journals we purchased
with interesting paper inside them, sometimes handmade, or cheap ones decorated on the outside so as to invite us to those blank pages waiting for 
a dose of insight
about moments that stacked together to make a day
or late night rants describing the pains
and ecstasy of casual encounters
that started off with a spark of something that felt like
possibility

It's quiet space I value now
and I find myself looking for windows of
opportunity to open those journals that have been dragged around
for decades, now with empty yellow paper
that I can fill with this life 
grateful for better walls which hold art I made or collected, photographs, simple works
that have become old friends who speak softly
and who find their way to the pages.


Monday, February 10, 2014

Early Evening Rant

Sometimes it's easy to convince myself that the doctors were wrong
that these cantankerous muscles that scream at me in the middle 
of the night are just missing the bananas that I didn't have time
to eat each morning
My toes curl and I can feel my calf separating from the bone
All I know to do is stand up
Keep moving, walking around on the smooth wood floor, craning my neck to see out, pushing my face against the cold glass of the bathroom window
looking for stars falling against that blue-ink sky
Thinking there is one more wish to make
and the wish always has to do 
with more time
I want time more than I want anything
Time to waste on foolish things
Wandering new places
Sunday mornings of not much
To read
To write
To paint
To hold those that I love close
God, how I hate the idea of losing track
That look that my girls give me when I have said the same thing over and over
Just to make a point
Sometimes distracting them from the fact that I can't stand up without tilting over
I lean into them just as I lean towards the window 
looking for the bright spot in the sky,
certain that a star will appear.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Use Your "Big Girl Voice"

My Sar has always had a gentle voice. Even when she was a little girl. People often had to lean in to hear what she was saying. I remember sitting outside of a cafe in Keene, New Hampshire when she was not quite three years old having lunch and every time a stranger walked past, she said hello to them. It was like she was conducting her own little social experiment. (No surprise that she was a cultural anthropology major as an undergrad). Some people responded, some did not. It was likely that the ones who did not say hello back could not hear her. An interesting thing that happened to Sarah's face when she greeted people was that her eyebrows came together and her mouth stayed in the "o" at the end of hello and she never took her eyes off of the person's face. Her head tilted to the right and her chin followed that "o".

It was the place that that voice came from inside her that I knew even then was very sincere. And the response from others was important though she was not discouraged by being ignored. She was patient with people. When she was acknowledged she offered a grin and was satisfied with that.

When Sarah was in high school one of her teachers, a math teacher, had become exasperated that she would not raise her hand in class, despite knowing the answers most times. He created a behavior plan in which she was rewarded for offering answers. He said, "I really need to hear your big girl voice, Sarah!"

On Monday night my grown up daughter gave a public reading of her writing in a jam-packed venue in Portland, Maine, wall to wall, lights low, a small and humble podium. She read one of her poems and then a short essay. She and two other writers were invited to share their work. Sar was first.

My daughter has spent her life speaking quietly, gently, careful not to disturb others, covering her ears when the noise around her was just too much, and there she was leaning into her own words as if sailing, with the attention of others as her wind. Her chin followed her words and I watched the crowd leaning back. She remained steady with their focus and the power of those words resonated from wall to wall. At the end of the poem there was enthusiastic applause. At the end of her essay, there was silence. It seemed that the audience wanted more but then I realized that they too were stunned by the importance of what they had heard. It was a brave and powerful piece, not gritty but thick with poignant observations about a group of people in a particular place, a harsh environment. Then, came a deeper, longer applause, thick pawed, perhaps some cheers.

Sarah has found her voice. While it is not necessarily louder, she has reached deep inside to find words to describe her experiences, some of them painful. Sometimes it makes me sad that I could not have protected her from those people who didn't respond kindly, but mostly, it fills me pride that she continues to reach out, is not bitter or angry, and that she is not deterred by what is hard. She pushes forward, making art of the life she has lived. It was a beautiful thing to watch so many people listening to Sarah Caouette speaking with confidence in her beautiful, powerful "big girl voice".