In the dark
I see
you wanting another thought from me
I walked in circles
and bought the wrong thing
again.
Twenty nine boxes of soup
and a carrot
I thought I'd make something
like the things I always make
but I couldn't remember the recipe.
The pet store opens early
but not early enough
To walk the bird aisle
Talk to some quality
people
get some words.
Tomorrow is a Tuesday
I dreamt it was a Sunday
I was prepared for something like church
And delivered rain.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Returning
It has been one year since I decided to throw away many ideas about myself. It didn't happen intentionally. I started last summer, pretty much like every summer since age 12, with a big plan for my transformation. This one was going to be big. Bigger than last year, and the year before that, and, you know, the year before that. Some summers have gone "better" than others. There was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college when my boyfriend had broken up with me and I travelled to Long Island to spend time with my college roommate, to get away, the reinvent myself. My father had pushed $150 in my hand and a train ticket home and in my life in 1991, that was a lot. I had gone running everyday while on Long Island. I didn't eat and I listened to these strange Long Island women talk in a funny accent about making themselves smaller. I wondered what was small enough.
I made it home that August a little person, tanned, hair topsy turvy all around my smiling face. I was smiling to hide the tired. I was so tired all the time. I got the boyfriend back, found my friend alcohol again and moved onto the next time.
There was the summer in 2009 when my 57 year old step father went on oxygen full time and we watched him wither away to an old man before our eyes. I took up road racing and stopped eating. I spent that summer turning into something while people celebrated the new me. I knew there was something wrong with me to begin with and this reaffirmed those thoughts. You thought I looked more healthy, happier, better, thinner. I must have been pretty bad off to generate such a strong social reaction.
He died anyways.
And I spent years trying to get something back. I'm still not sure what.
There was the last big time in 2015 when I went through my divorce and fell in love with Jeremiah and literally changed everything, my life all topsy turvy all around my smiling face. I was high on the challenges, pushing all hard things away. I signed up for a triathlon. I spent the summer running and biking and swimming. I shrunk myself into a new normal. My heart rate got down to 38bpm when I rested. I went to the emergency room because my heart was all jumpy and the doctors laughed at me. I was a worrier, maybe it was anxiety. I was a triathlete. I was in great health. I hadn't had a period in months. I was living on carrots, pickles and coffee. Maybe I was wrong.
Last summer I emailed a friend. I asked him to be my runner in a half Ironman triathlon. I figured this would be really good for me. I would spend another summer reinventing myself. I was going to get healthy after all. But I wanted to go camping and to have cook outs, and there was the beach, and we had friends over. I spent the summer biking, probably, definitely obsessively, but I ate. I ate things like ice cream and birthday cake (I turned 47) and hamburgers. I tried meals that friends prepared for me and I tried on different types of clothes. I continued to hide my legs and I watched as my 47 year old body took up more space.
The real change came in October. I got invited to a weekend away with some relatively new girlfriends. I wanted to go. I didn't want to go with my own packed food, my measured out and planned salads, my gum, my yogurt and apples. I wanted to eat our shared meals and to share snacks while we watched movies and to drink coffee with cream AND sugar and to think about other things aside from what I put in and what I put out.
And I did.
The pandemic has made for an interesting time to stop dieting, to try to reinvent myself. It seems the PERFECT time to do this! I could come out of hiding a whole new me, metamorphosis.
Maybe I will.
Maybe I'll try eating all the different kinds of food with as many or as few people as I feel like on a given day. Maybe I'll eat ice cream every single night and then maybe I'll get sick of ice cream and move on to a scoop of pudding or maybe I'll feel full from dinner and go to bed.
Maybe I'll bike too many miles, injure myself a little and do yoga until I can't stop my anxious thoughts. Or maybe I'll decide to read an entire book in two days and sit by my garden.
Maybe I was ok all along anyways.
Maybe when I was six years old with Good Humor ice cream melting down my chin, at the park, in July, and I felt so much happiness, it was like a glittering explosion and I didn't notice my thighs or my belly and I laughed loud. Maybe I'm returning to this.
I made it home that August a little person, tanned, hair topsy turvy all around my smiling face. I was smiling to hide the tired. I was so tired all the time. I got the boyfriend back, found my friend alcohol again and moved onto the next time.
There was the summer in 2009 when my 57 year old step father went on oxygen full time and we watched him wither away to an old man before our eyes. I took up road racing and stopped eating. I spent that summer turning into something while people celebrated the new me. I knew there was something wrong with me to begin with and this reaffirmed those thoughts. You thought I looked more healthy, happier, better, thinner. I must have been pretty bad off to generate such a strong social reaction.
He died anyways.
And I spent years trying to get something back. I'm still not sure what.
There was the last big time in 2015 when I went through my divorce and fell in love with Jeremiah and literally changed everything, my life all topsy turvy all around my smiling face. I was high on the challenges, pushing all hard things away. I signed up for a triathlon. I spent the summer running and biking and swimming. I shrunk myself into a new normal. My heart rate got down to 38bpm when I rested. I went to the emergency room because my heart was all jumpy and the doctors laughed at me. I was a worrier, maybe it was anxiety. I was a triathlete. I was in great health. I hadn't had a period in months. I was living on carrots, pickles and coffee. Maybe I was wrong.
Last summer I emailed a friend. I asked him to be my runner in a half Ironman triathlon. I figured this would be really good for me. I would spend another summer reinventing myself. I was going to get healthy after all. But I wanted to go camping and to have cook outs, and there was the beach, and we had friends over. I spent the summer biking, probably, definitely obsessively, but I ate. I ate things like ice cream and birthday cake (I turned 47) and hamburgers. I tried meals that friends prepared for me and I tried on different types of clothes. I continued to hide my legs and I watched as my 47 year old body took up more space.
The real change came in October. I got invited to a weekend away with some relatively new girlfriends. I wanted to go. I didn't want to go with my own packed food, my measured out and planned salads, my gum, my yogurt and apples. I wanted to eat our shared meals and to share snacks while we watched movies and to drink coffee with cream AND sugar and to think about other things aside from what I put in and what I put out.
And I did.
The pandemic has made for an interesting time to stop dieting, to try to reinvent myself. It seems the PERFECT time to do this! I could come out of hiding a whole new me, metamorphosis.
Maybe I will.
Maybe I'll try eating all the different kinds of food with as many or as few people as I feel like on a given day. Maybe I'll eat ice cream every single night and then maybe I'll get sick of ice cream and move on to a scoop of pudding or maybe I'll feel full from dinner and go to bed.
Maybe I'll bike too many miles, injure myself a little and do yoga until I can't stop my anxious thoughts. Or maybe I'll decide to read an entire book in two days and sit by my garden.
Maybe I was ok all along anyways.
Maybe when I was six years old with Good Humor ice cream melting down my chin, at the park, in July, and I felt so much happiness, it was like a glittering explosion and I didn't notice my thighs or my belly and I laughed loud. Maybe I'm returning to this.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Air hits my face
like traffic stopping suddenly
to let a baby
and a fast dog cross.
You are standing on the other side
Rain falls up
running away from us people
down here
small people
most people are sick today.
The ground underneath my feet
startles me.
I thought I was in air
I was looking up
glasses on
For you.
Parakeets and cockatoos
fly past and I think
you are in danger
you need a cage.
Eagles hold onto the bars.
I have my moon boots on.
I am a little girl.
1978.
The snow is in my way.
Christmas has come and gone.
The reindeer stands frozen
in my garden
eating carrots
from my hand.
Yesterday I saw a spark
on my walk
in the dark
by the trees.
Today I smell smoke
and I hear the small cry
of a coyote
a fox
a deer.
Mothers cover their sleeping babes
And sleep, child
And sleep
And sleep.
Pandemic
March 2020 has turned out to be the weirdest month of my life. I wouldn't describe it as terrible, although for people who are sick or destitute it certainly has become terrible. For me, this Coronavirus pandemic has forced me (and lots and lots of other people) to take a look inside, under the hood of a person and poke around a bit. I find myself, now that I have literally nowhere to go, waking up at 330 or 4am every morning, wandering around my house like I am looking for someone. My children are now at their dad's for the weekend and so when I awoke this morning it was especially quiet. There was no need to creep in to Jonah's room to make sure he had put his cell phone away. There were no girls, ages 17 and 19 now, to check on as well.
These last few days have been filled with children again. These children come in another form than the children I knew many years ago. The pitter patter of their feet down my stairs is replaced by my 6 foot 1 son screaming across the house for Alexa to play that stupid SpongeBob song again while his sisters yell, "Alexa STOP!"
Its homeschooling over here because all of the schools are closed now. Sadie's back home for good for her semester and in five days it is like she never left. She is like an extension of us, a part of the machine that doesn't necessarily make the thing work but when it is in place that machine is so so much better. Nora has so much school work to do and she has turned in to such a good student, a good person. Standing in line at Richardson's two days ago she's worrying that a brownie sundae is seven dollars. She is her grandmother, frugal and worried.
And I have decided to teach Jonah how to cook but in reality what I am actually trying to do is keep him off his phone for at least an hour a day.
I felt instantly back in my element. I revisited days gone by so quickly. These weren't little children anymore but they had all the flavor of their little children selves.
The real truth is I was my best when my children were young. The little person in me that was such a lonely little thing for so many years, she got to come out and play. She helped me be the mother that climbed up the slide at the park and made sand castles at the beach. She went in to the water to swim and was just as excited to see Finding Nemo and countless other movies when they came out in the theater. She enjoyed all the Harry Potter books and playing cards and drew pictures.
Yesterday we went for a hike with my friend and the three teenagers were way behind us. We were chatting away and I kept looking back to see these three laughing or chatting in rhythm with each other. A large group of teenagers approached and walked past us. I watched as my teenagers kept with each other, protected in the umbrella of a family. I used to envy them this, I was such a lonely teenager, didn't they know how lucky they were? But now I know, they know, even if they don't admit it. They know.
Today I am alone, 4am, coffee in hand next to the laziest dog on the planet. It's so quiet in this house and I have very little to do today.
All of the movies that we watched growing up didn't prepare me for this kind of quiet. It's a wondering quiet. The dog isn't phased by the silence at all.
March 2020 has turned out to be the weirdest month of my life. I wouldn't describe it as terrible, although for people who are sick or destitute it certainly has become terrible. For me, this Coronavirus pandemic has forced me (and lots and lots of other people) to take a look inside, under the hood of a person and poke around a bit. I find myself, now that I have literally nowhere to go, waking up at 330 or 4am every morning, wandering around my house like I am looking for someone. My children are now at their dad's for the weekend and so when I awoke this morning it was especially quiet. There was no need to creep in to Jonah's room to make sure he had put his cell phone away. There were no girls, ages 17 and 19 now, to check on as well.
These last few days have been filled with children again. These children come in another form than the children I knew many years ago. The pitter patter of their feet down my stairs is replaced by my 6 foot 1 son screaming across the house for Alexa to play that stupid SpongeBob song again while his sisters yell, "Alexa STOP!"
Its homeschooling over here because all of the schools are closed now. Sadie's back home for good for her semester and in five days it is like she never left. She is like an extension of us, a part of the machine that doesn't necessarily make the thing work but when it is in place that machine is so so much better. Nora has so much school work to do and she has turned in to such a good student, a good person. Standing in line at Richardson's two days ago she's worrying that a brownie sundae is seven dollars. She is her grandmother, frugal and worried.
And I have decided to teach Jonah how to cook but in reality what I am actually trying to do is keep him off his phone for at least an hour a day.
I felt instantly back in my element. I revisited days gone by so quickly. These weren't little children anymore but they had all the flavor of their little children selves.
The real truth is I was my best when my children were young. The little person in me that was such a lonely little thing for so many years, she got to come out and play. She helped me be the mother that climbed up the slide at the park and made sand castles at the beach. She went in to the water to swim and was just as excited to see Finding Nemo and countless other movies when they came out in the theater. She enjoyed all the Harry Potter books and playing cards and drew pictures.
Yesterday we went for a hike with my friend and the three teenagers were way behind us. We were chatting away and I kept looking back to see these three laughing or chatting in rhythm with each other. A large group of teenagers approached and walked past us. I watched as my teenagers kept with each other, protected in the umbrella of a family. I used to envy them this, I was such a lonely teenager, didn't they know how lucky they were? But now I know, they know, even if they don't admit it. They know.
Today I am alone, 4am, coffee in hand next to the laziest dog on the planet. It's so quiet in this house and I have very little to do today.
All of the movies that we watched growing up didn't prepare me for this kind of quiet. It's a wondering quiet. The dog isn't phased by the silence at all.
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