Poem #4

Today my dad and stepmom came down and painted our bedroom while Jeff and I "helped" and kept the boys from touching the paint. I love the new look.

Brush strokes
on the bedroom walls
all painted now
no hint of mint
the sky of spring equinox
long ago eclipsed
by summer and now fall
fall into darkness
and wetness
outside
but inside,
inside my room
spring blue skies

Poem #3

Just three poems in and I find that the poems are now arriving in my head fully formed, just like they did in the past when I poemed every day! They may not be brilliant, but they are flowing so I am taking advantage of that while I can.

I am living
in a Star Wars universe
surrounded by
Storm Troopers
and Han Solos
(or is that Han Plurals?)
and I am Yoda,
short
and possessing great wisdom
but unable to
fully articulate it.


Perhaps inspired by the fact that I have now seen every Star Wars film repeatedly (thanks to Jude, who has become a creepy little Star Wars savant). Regardless, this poem experiment is fun.

Poem #2

A haunted breakfast
Count Chocula darkening
my breakfast bowl
chocolate-shaped bats
like tiny Pac Man ghosts
reminding me of a time
when everything was sweet

Poem #1

So here goes a first attempt. They'll all likely be free form; I'm not much into rhyming poems, though I may change my mind at some point over the next 100 days!

Trying to make it just right
just write
when once it flowed freely
now forced somehow
is it inside
just blocked somehow
or is it gone?

maybe the muscles have atrophied
from years of neglect
it doesn't seem right
it doesn't seem write
but write
just write
and maybe
in the end
it will be
just right

That's it. No editing. Just wrote what was in my head. Not a great first attempt, but I have plenty of days ahead to redeem myself.

Summer Breeze Makes Me Feel . . .

NOTE: This blog was half-written on September 6 and is being finished on September 30. Where the hell did September go??

So May 3 was my last blog. May 3. As in before summer even started. Now here I am, celebrating the end of the summer by eating Chinese food and watching Wait Until Dark. The food is tasty. The movie is suspenseful. All should be right in the world. And things are mostly right. But far too quiet. The boys -- all of them -- are elsewhere. Oh, and the peace and quiet and general solitude are wonderful -- for a brief time. Then I miss them.

I was once a very solitary person. I read lots of books. Saw movies alone. Ate in restaurants alone. And none of that bothered me. Now, if I am able to finish a chapter of a book without being interrupted with a loud "Mom!" I feel like something is very wrong. I watch "family-friendly" movies and every restaurant experience ends in someone spilling milk on the table. Somehow this is all right. I wouldn't have it any other way.

This summer has flown by in the way in which summers do. Jude and I took a kindergarten reading readiness class for 6 Saturdays. We read books and learned letters and I was able to see first-hand Jude's eagerness to learn. He has learned to write his name and he does so all the time. Seeing the pride he has in having learned something new is incredibly amazing.

Jude has started kindergarten. That is such a huge, huge step.

My typical introspection has hit all new heights this summer. I have decided that 35 is the age at which I need to start having the experiences that I always intended to have "someday." No sense waiting any longer.

Independent of that, though, is the need to jump back into writing (not just the "writing" I do for and through my website, but novel writing and poetry writing and all the writing I have always loved but which has gotten shoved aside lately due to life.

So the next post will be a poem. I have decided to write 100 poems in 100 days, starting today. I totally stole the idea from Facebook/someone else's blog and should you find that site, you'll probably find more capable poetry on more literate subjects but I think this project will be fun.

Or frustrating.

Either way, read at your leisure. Or feel free to skip. After all, 100 poems means not every one will be a gem. Including, I'm sure, number 1.

An Hour, A Shower, A Complete Lack of Power

It was my own fault really. I leaned over and looked into their tiny faces and asked for ten minutes during which to take a shower, explaining in very simple terms that we needed to get ready for the party. I was selfish for wanting ten uninterrupted minutes of warm shower.

I went into the bathroom and closed the door and, oh, maybe thirty or forty seconds went by when I heard a blood-curdling scream (yes, my blood turned into cottage cheese)coming from the living room. I ran from the bathroom to find Jude lying on the floor, crying. He was sobbing so hard that he couldn't catch his breath.

"What happened?" I asked, holding him and trying to calm him.

"I fell," he said. He didn't elaborate.

"How did you fall?"

"I climbed up there," he said, pointing to a chair. "And tried to jump to there." He pointed to the computer chair -- a computer chair with wheels that sits upon a hard wood floor.

I assessed him and found no broken bones or bleeding and really was quite interested in finishing the shower I'd started so I began anew. Then I heard the bathroom door open and when I looked out, I saw Sully smiling back at me from the other side of the shower curtain. I turned back around and the shampoo bottles fell off the rack and landed on my foot. I let out a couple choice words, as the full bottles managed to land just right on my foot to cause pain. Oh, fun.

I limped out of the shower, certain that this was the weakest injury any human has ever suffered, got dressed and threw both boys into the tub for their bath. I rarely give them baths together and about three seconds in, I remembered why. I set Sully into the water and then helped Jude get his ear plugs in (ear plugs are a must for the next several months because of Jude's ear tubes) and he climbed into the water. He wanted to play with Sully and Sully's response was to begin to cry. Then cry a bit more. Then hold his breath and turn purple so I yanked him out of the tub and began drying him.

I sat on the bathroom floor, holding Sully, drying him, calming him as Jude played in the bath and before Sully was dry, he was sound asleep in my arms. I didn't trust my foot to stand upon as it began throbbing and was bruised so I sat on the floor. Jude told me I could go get Sully dressed and I assured Jude I wouldn't leave him in the bath alone. His response: "Mom, I'm not scared of monsters."

That made me laugh and made the wait on the bathroom floor more comfortable. Sully slept on me. Jude dressed himself and we spent the next half hour waiting for Jeff to come home.

Footnote: (Ha! See what I did there?) My foot is sore, bruised and not broken. Just another silly/stupid injury but not even close to the whole car door concussion thing.

To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time

I apologize in advance for the very "Carpe Diem" tone of this blog, but it has definitely been that kind of a month. It has been a long time since my last post, far too long and I have missed the interaction of girl and computer, just sitting down and composing thoughts via this medium.

The title of the blog is, of course, ripped from the Robert Herrick poem which begins "Gather ye rose-buds while ye may." I have spent countless nights in my life worrying. Concerned. Stressed about work. Worrying about money. Concerned about getting older and yet not really growing up and that is time lost, time I won't get back.

My computer crashed. It happens. All of the data contained within was lost and that makes me sad. I am trying desperately not to focus on that, however. I lost the same novel I have been working on since before Jude was born. I still hadn't finished it, and was never completely satisfied with it and now it is gone. But the idea isn't gone, and I have decided to take the novel fragments I have retained in written form and turn them instead into a screenplay. Uncharacteristically, I am turning something negative into something positive.

Pictures of the children were lost, as were stories I had written. But there are so many pictures of Jude and Sullivan that have been printed or sent to grandparents or friends or that live on in other ways so I am trying not to focus on that aspect of loss either.

It has been a time of loss. Strange loss and funny loss and sad loss. Jude complains sometimes about loud noises outside and I just smile at him, so happy that noises that he had not heard before are suddenly apparent to him and even annoying to him. He had a successful surgery and is a very happy, very loved and very loud child.

Every day, Sully loses a bit of his babyhood. He is running and has a whole mouthful of teeth and is even talking some (a handful of words, but I dearly love each one). I hate how cliche it sounds, but I really just want to enjoy every moment with them.

This week, my grandpa died. It was sad, but not unexpected. He had been very sick with cancer, suffering. In pain. Of course those who witness such suffering always say in their most honest moments "I don't want to go like that. When I die, I hope it is quick." Of course agonizing pain is not a goal for anyone except the most masochistic among us, but there is something to be said for the ritual that is "saying goodbye." Consider the alternative.

Thursday morning, the day after Grandpa passed away, I went into work. My boss got a phone call and ran out. This was not an unusual sight; he is extremely busy working for the firm and for the city and has a lot of meetings to attend. However, it was not a business meeting that drew him from the office. It was a call that his wife had been in an accident. She was a pedestrian, crossing a street when she was struck and killed by a school bus full of children on their way to school.

I had met her on social occasions and my impression of her was that she was nice, friendly. And my boss is certainly the nicest of all bosses I have ever had. I can't stop thinking about it, though. The idea that perhaps they had breakfast together and then he came into work early and she went for a walk and that was it. They would never see each other again. Never talk again. Never hold hands or kiss. I looked at Jeff when I got home that day from work, filled with every emotion that such an incident produces and he looked at me and we made those promises to one another never to take the days for granted, to always say "I love you" and to not let anger linger.

Of course we felt this way. It was shocking and sad and there was no chance for him to say goodbye to her. Certainly there is no good way to go. Cancer is ugly and horrible. Swift deaths are ugly and horrible.

I feel like Renton in the opening monologue of Trainspotting, the whole "Choose Life" speech -- well, up until the heroin part! I am feeling the urge to embrace my husband and my children, my new friends from work, my old friends living their own lives, my parents, my siblings, my writing.

Because I was horrified to read the obituary for her: she was survived not only by her husband, children and grandchildren, but also by her parents. No parent should ever have to bury a child, even a child of 57. It isn't right.

No clever ending to this blog except a promise that you'll see me soon because I have much more to say. For now, I am off to hug my monsters and kiss the tops of their heads, breathing them in while we're all still here.