On edge

I am participating in the
 Slice of Life.  
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, 
on Tuesdays.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!

On edge.

Growing up,
with a bipolar mother,
I never knew what her mood would be.

I'd be laying on my bed,
immersed in a good book,
reading quietly,
and she would throw open the door, without knocking,
demand to know what I was doing,
remind me that idle time was the devil's workshop, and
insist that I do the dishes or iron or vacuum.

We'd be at the checkout in the grocery store,
unloading the cart,
and,
unprovoked,
she would sneer at the cashier,
demand to know what was she looking at,
what was her PROBLEM?
and all eyes would be on us,
and I would empty the cart quicker,
and speak soothingly,
and want to disappear into the floor.

A neighbor,
or worse yet,
a friend,
would knock on the door,
and she would either ignore the door,
or open it, and then
slam it in their face.
Yes, really.

I just never knew.
Would she be flippant, giddy, silly, sarcastic?
She had two extremes:
depressed, sullen, and removed, or
bitchy, suspicious, and jeering.
I just never knew.

I learned to stay clear,
keep my head down low,
placate, be nice, and put on a fake smile,
living in fear,
not wanting to set her off.

On edge.

Here I am,
sixty years old,
feeling healed by both therapy and time,
yet
certain voices overheard,
or looks on people's faces,
maybe a sharp response to someone's question,
whether friend or stranger,
and I am immediately
transported,
back in time,
on edge.

Step into trust

I am participating in the
 Slice of Life.  
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, 
on Tuesdays.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!

Step into trust
(poetic thoughts about trust)

It begins with self.

Can I?

Will I?

Should I?

Do I?

Yes, I.

My toddler granddaughter takes tentative steps, 

just one, then two, 

now about six,
before she's back on her knees and crawling,

not entirely convinced that she can walk. 

She's learning to trust herself, 

her body, 

her abilities.

Trust.

Often,
perhaps most typically,
trust is intertwined with others.
I remember vividly
my early lessons
of broken trust. 

Best friends, 

until, one day, in that bathroom stall,  

overhearing her unkind words about me,

to another so-called friend,

and trust

was broken.

Or,

first love,

until, one day, my brother saw him 

loving on another girl,

and trust

was broken.

Me. Them.

It feels, for awhile, impossible to trust,

impossible to know how.

Is this, mutual?

Trust, myself and them.

Trust takes courage,

a blind move towards something more.

Trust is essential
amongst groups of people,

in families,
communities,

organizations,
with colleagues,

as citizens in this nation,

inhabitants of this planet.
Trusting,
sharing,
bonds, goals, mission, rights,
system.

The more the circle of people widens,

the slower, more complicated, more difficult it is

to keep trust,

to move towards a common goal.
Trust grows with
hope,
conviction,
dreams,
together.

I know people who've given up trust.

Given up trying.

Now, locked within.

I feel lucky that

so much of the time

trust has been good for me.

Over time,

I've come to see,

it can feel that trust is dependent on others,

certainly it is a leap of faith,

a step to the unknown,

but,

I wonder,

if it is still

all about self.

finding the courage within.

Can I?

Will I?

Should I?

Do I?

Yes, I.

Step.

Word play

I am participating in the
 Slice of Life.  
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, 
on Tuesdays.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!

In recent days, there have been several moments where I have found myself puzzling over words, and I decided the mini-stories behind the words would make for today's slice. I'm not sure that these snippets have any real connection, except for the word play involved. Just a fun write!

1. Daughter-in-law's parents

I puzzle over what to call my daughter's in law's parents. There really is no word in the English language. There is something about these long phrases -
daughter-in-law's parents,
relative by marriage,
co-parents-in-law,
that seems distant, formal, keeping someone at arm's length. They all feel stilted. Funny, I don't think I wondered about this at all for the first years of my son and daughter-in-law's marriage...I mean, we were all new to one another, and I found the terminology fine, normal. However, something has changed with the grandbaby - she has brought us closer. I don't feel any distance to the 'other grandparents,' except for the fact that I have to say OTHER grandparents. I mean, whoa - a grandchild - we are forever connected to one another now. We equally love her. We are equally devoted to her. We need a better term for one another, something shorter and kinder, something that is easy to say. My Google search revealed that other languages have a term for this relationship:
Spanish "consuegros,"
French "belle mere,"
Malay "besan,"
Yiddish "machatunim."
There are probably many others. Isn't it funny that English doesn't have one? Could I make one?
I started playing around with possibities - how about "mamadil" (mother of daughter-in-law), and correspondingly, of course, mamasil (mother of son-in-law), daddydil (father of daughter-in-law), and daddysil (father of son-in-law). Or maybe you could follow the same pattern in reverse: dilma, silma, dildad, sildad.
I was sharing this wacky train of thought with my son and daughter-in-law at brunch one morning over winter break, at a restaurant, when my daughter-in-law exclaimed "pecan roll!" I looked at her with great surprise and delight - yes, that's a silly and unique suggestion for the word! But, a mere moment later, I realized, she was simply nudging my son to order these for the table. We all had a good laugh at my confusion.
So, now, I find myself thinking of her mother as pecan roll.

2. Evening.

I was reading some inconsequential article in the newspaper about a cooking recipe, which noted the need for 'evening the ingredients.' This got me musing about how rarely I say 'evening' in this way - how I almost always think of evening as that time after my long school day, that time when the sky darkens, that time before bed. However, to 'even' things is to make balanced or leveled or same...I think of a teeter-totter, how it goes up and down, and there's this lovely, rare balance in the middle, when the seats are evening. Evening. What if I thought of my evenings as a time of balance? That is the magic of the very best evenings, isn't it? When we regroup, catch our breath, reflect on the day, put our feet up - ah, the great evening. Tony and I have taken a step towards 'evening' with a new year's resolution to sit together at dinner with the television off. There is no TV news blaring at us. For too long now, I have felt as if I needed to 'catch up' on the news when I got home from teaching. [Ha, 'evening news' - there's a contradiction in terms...I am by no means calm and balanced after watching.] Now, instead, we light candles and sit together at one end of our table, and talk. Or, go quiet together. Connecting, after our long day apart. Evening. This is a very nice, inspiring way to look at this time of day in this new year.
Evening.

3. Uh-oh.

Frog is fourteen months old now and has discovered the word/sound/utterance "uh-oh." She notices when things drop or bump, when we struggle to get a diaper on her, or a tight shirt over her head, and she and we will say "uh-oh!" Now she has claimed it for herself as she eats. When she is full and no longer wants to eat, she starts flinging extra pieces of food or the spoon down onto the floor with a rowdy "UH-OH!" Her parents had warned us about this new 'trick' of hers. It did not take long to see it in action. One night recently, Tony and I were eating dinner with her, alongside her, taking turns feeding her and feeding ourselves. She seemed to be slowing down in her eating, and I was slowing down in giving her food, trying to avoid the "uh oh" show. She gave an insistent "mmm-mmm!" which I took to mean "I do want more," so I put a couple chunks of sweet potato on her high chair tray. Immediately, she grabbed one, threw it to the floor with vigor, and exclaimed "UH OH!" Tony and I looked at each other and then looked right at her and said, practically in unison, "It's not 'uh-oh' if you do it on purpose." Poor Frog! She didn't like that - her eyes watered and her jaw quivered. When had her grandparents ever reprimanded her? Then she grabbed the other chunk of sweet potato and threw it to the floor.
No 'uh oh,' though.

4. Patient.

Whenever I visit Dad (age 90) in his nursing home, I take stock of his decline. He has Parkinson's, and this means a whole host of other things - weakening muscles and increasing immobility (he is confined to a wheelchair now), dementia (his is mild, but growing), depression, and ever increasing inability to talk or to recall specific words. It's a pretty horrid disease, the way it ravages a once strong body and mind. On my most recent visit, I was there for his lunch time, and assisting with his meal. We were nestled in the back of the dining room, at a window that looked out onto some beautiful trees. It is my favorite place to sit when I visit him - it cheers me, and, hopefully, cheers him a bit. That's my minimum goal, typically - to cheer Dad a bit. He can be very quiet and sad these days. There he was with that lunch, wrestling with his fork, trying to 'catch' a bite of chicken (and I had cut up this chicken into small, manageable bites - much like I do with Frog. Yeah, it's depressing). As he played 'cat and mouse' with his fork and food, I noticed and (inadvertently) said aloud - "Oh, you don't have anything to drink...I guess they haven't brought drinks around yet." I scanned the room to see if other residents had been served. He stopped eating and said - "You can get up and take care of that yourself." (That was SO one of his parenting lines - 'quit your complaining and just do it'.) I teased him back, with a big smile - "Oh no, I am very PATIENT. I learned that from my Dad - he's a very, very patient guy." He stared right at me for a moment, we locked eyes, and he said "THAT was NEVER said about me. No way. No one ever called me patient." And he chuckled.
Patient.

Happy New Year, 2020!

I am participating in the
 Slice of Life.  
All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, 
on Tuesdays.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!

Every year, for several years now, Tony's brother boxes up a big big box of pecans that he collects from a friend's backyard trees. A huge box. Pecans, still in their shells. He even sent us a fancy nutcracker - almost a small machine - to make the work of breaking them open much easier. May I admit to you, honestly, how I enjoyed this box at first and how much I have resented it in subsequent years? How is it possible to use up all these pecans? How patient must I be to crack open pecan after pecan? Hear me on this - it is such abundance, we simply cannot get through the pecans in a single year, and here comes more! The pecans themselves are hit and miss - some years very good, some years not so much. We give pecans to neighbors and friends, and still the box doesn't empty. I said to my husband...are we allowed to throw some out? can we at least get rid of the large cardboard box? I cheered myself up by getting a pretty glass cookie jar, and filling it to the brim with pecans - only to realize I needed two or three of these jars. I filled a pretty bowl. I became annoyed. I am so tired of looking at containers of pecans.

This Christmas, Tony cracked open pecans and declared - "These are a little dried out. I don't think we've really got any good ones left."

Silence.

You see, my brother-in-law died last summer. We didn't get a big box of pecans this year. We only have the dwindling number from last year's box. 

How sad I feel that I got so frustrated about those darn nuts.

Wouldn't we have loved another box of them this year?

Why did I waste time with frustration and annoyance? 

Soften.

As well you know, it's that time of year when one thinks about New Year resolutions. I've been going back and forth as to what should be my one little word this year...what one word describes my focus, my goal, my hope? 

Soften.

There's a beautiful meditation that I read in a book by Steven Levine, called the 'Soft-belly Meditation,' with these phrases that jumped out at me:

Take a few deep breaths...

Soften the muscles that have held the fear for so long...
Let the awareness be gentle and allowing...
Have mercy on yourself...

In soft body, in soft mind, just letting it be there...

Let thoughts come and let them go...

Let the healing in...

Soften.

When my children were young, I used to love to read parenting advice from Marguerite Kelly. I remember her suggesting a litmus test for things to get aggravated about  - Will it matter in 100 years? If not, let it go. If yes, do something about it.

Soften.

I'm tired of getting myself into knots during my teaching day, due to a zillion different "adult-initiated problems" - lack of subs, lack of planning for required meetings that end up feeling like a waste of precious time, lack of clarity about certain mandatory to do's, etc. (I don't typically get frustrated by young children - it's adults that make me crazy ;-) I think it is high time I realized that things rarely go as expected! I'm going to try my best not to take offense.

Soften.

This morning's sunrise seemed to cheer on this word choice - no bright colors, just muted, gorgeous streaks across the early morning grey sky. 

Soften.