4 Little Blue Monsters, A Hallow's Eve Poem

Oh curse the dawn, with its
black skies and heat-seeking winds
when all else sleeps on this Hallow's Eve
and I stumble madly in the cold,
hair wild and crushed beneath hat,
heedless of pajamas and slippers
peeking out from my coat like a homeless child
through the desolate lot of a half-lit gas station
in desperate search of 4 little blue monsters.

Funny the things that can make me wax poetic.

Mini-Respite

What heavy things weigh on my mind at 5:30 in the morning as I roll out of bed to take my newly minted freshman, O, to 6:00 a.m. swim practice?  Honestly?  I wish I could say I was having profound thoughts, bringing with them clarity and a sagacity that I seem to have sought all of my life.  But really what I'm thinking is, "Oh God, do I have an energy drink in the refrigerator? NO? Do I have enough time to stop BEFORE I drop him off?" and "should I shower after I pack Roy's food, do some math, and then take E to school or should I shower after I drop her off, before I have to make it to class?"  And all the while I'm distracted by the 3 boxes and downed whiteboard in our study, calling to me like the ghosts of abandoned children; I can hardly shut my mind off to their whispers to even begin studying. So what do I do?

Well, isn't it obvious?  D: None of the above (except the food - already packed the food).  And 6:30 hits, alarm goes off (again), I hear the stirrings of E's alarm signalling shower time and it is time to start the ball rolling, my tiny bit of calm and quiet before the storm of the morning ritual ends almost quicker than it began.  I'm sure I will sit down again today and breathe.  Maybe.

A Hundred Years of Solitude...

...would not be enough, if you were to ask me at the moment.  But that is just this very moment, when the sky is still dark with cold, late fall, morning rain, and I am the only one awake, procrastinating that daily ritual I call personal hygiene.  We all have our lows, I suspect, at least once in our lives.  While I'm far too superstitious to say that I have hit mine, I'm pretty damn sure that this is as close as I ever want to be to it and still be conscious.  I'm sure that deciding to buy a house directly on the heels of those little things like marriage and death and the beginning of what has become the Semester of Unfortunate Events has not helped the situation at all.  Not that I regret the house - in fact, I don't think that I have ever been so in love with a home before; it just has that kind of energy to it.  But it has been overwhelming.  In fact, if I could sum up the way I feel with one image, it would most likely be something like this:

And I'm sorry, but if you feel like that, there is something definitely not going right in your life.  A hundred years of solitude seems awfully nice at the moment, in the quiet, semi-darkness of my study (yes, I actually have a study... a REAL study, to do some serious studying in) and if you were to ask me right now, I might actually take you up on it.  But I have a feeling that tomorrow I would wake missing all the people that have become so important to me in my life and want to click my heels together and go home.  Because even if home means that I'm taking 5 different kinds of medication just to keep my shit together, it still contains the only thing (aside from aforementioned medications) in my life that gets me through the days at all.  The love of the people who hold me up through it all and don't complain about my sweaty armpits around their shoulders or the deodorant stains I leave behind. And that is surely what love is all about.

I AM MY MOTHER'S KEEPER

Ever beautiful.

Not in the way that I ever thought I would be - not sandwiched between my mom and my daughter for a day of shopping, or for a baby shower, or any of the number of things that I was fortunate enough to do with my mother and her mother, or that she was fortunate enough to do with her mother and grandmother. 

Love notes to Mom, 1988

But I keep her in so many other ways.   I am blessed that I was given an acute sense of mortality at a very young age because I keep finding her everywhere I turn.  Much like when I left on my exchange to Venezuela for a year and hid small notes all over the house for her to find as a reminder of my love for her while I was gone (seriously, I thought it was a good idea - it never dawned on me that instead of making her smile, it would make her cry every time she found one), as I pack up my house and get ready to move into our new home, I am surrounded by little reminders that she is with me always in spirit. And now I understand exactly how she felt as she came across one of my little love notes randomly. 

Autograph album, 1979 Mom and my Mamaw.

    I am her keeper and it feels right.