Don’t Mind Me –

– I’m just going to post some stuff I wrote a ways back.  Because, well, I want to.

This one I wrote back in the day (and by back in the day, I mean last year),  when I was in the worst of the ppd. I thought I’d post it again, because I was praying about a friend and her parenting struggles, but then I started thinking about six other friends, and all the things they go through every day, and I thought it could use some reading again.

April 7, 2010

April is a month set aside for poetry, and I stumbled again, on this clip of a mother who cares less about what others think of her than I am capable of. I want to be this mother – sign me up for the tattoos, the sweater, the cropped haircut, even the skull and cross-bone broach. If it means, that I can stop caring about what people think.

Out of my system.

Ten days after I got back to MA, ten day after my dad’s memorial service, the message came that Gram was about to pass. And for eight weeks, I had thought I was going to be okay with that message, that after everything we had gone through – I was going to be okay with that message.  But I wasn’t, and ten days after I had been home in MA, I was packing up and heading to CT. Again.

An aside-

-there about fourteen stories I have to tell you in this one post to get to the ending, so please hold on, I’ll get there.

When Papa was in the hospital – I had a lot of new CT area code numbers in my phone.  And one day when I mean to dial my mother – I dialed my grandfather.

the ramblings

Ten days ago, I was dipping my toes in the Mediterranean,  and soaking up the sun of Barcelona in an outside cafe, while sipping coffee, in a square a few hundred years old, and  watching my students learn to love a new place.

Seven days ago, people on the other line of a cell phone who sounded a million miles away, told me there was only a fifty-fifty shot my father would make it through the night.  They told me to come fast.

Six days ago, they told me he would be off the vent in a day.

Three days ago, I held my son while they drew his blood, from his tiny little arms, because the peanut, is getting lighter.

Two days ago, a nurse started being more straight with me than all the nurses before.  The pneumonia is menacing, the vent isn’t going anywhere.

Yesterday, I was told my gram might just have days to live.

Today, I was told maybe it might be longer.

And so –

Dear . . .

Dear trees,
feel free to keep all your branches tonight.

Thanks,
the homeowner who enjoys both her slate roof and her electricity

Dear Gods of snow days and delayed openings,
any other time of the year you are most welcome, but during exams, you make everything wonky.

Yours truly,
the teacher who enjoys things unwonky

Dear food, stop being so good.

No seriously,
the woman who would enjoy wearing some of those old size eight jeans.

Dear children,
Today when I said I quit, and my name wasn’t mommy anymore, it was Tara, and you would have to go to the Mommy Store and pick out a new mommy– yah, sorry about that. After you went to bed, I totally stashed away some money for any therapy you might need in the future.

kisses and hugs,
your mommy, who promise she won’t ever quit

Ready

Clothes that fit have been bought.  Supplies to organize, and spruce up have been purchased and put in place.  Day care papers are filled out (almost). I have lunches planned, and grocery lists ready.  Syllabi  drafted, policies written.  And yet, today, I feel like I’m five, letting go of my mama’s hand and walking onto the bus for the first time.

Christmas

today is like christmas.

what a wonderful day. i tell baby, the world is a little less scarry today!
though, what is it with states opposing gay marriage?
We’ve been doing it here two and a half years, and guess what folks, the sky, it has not fallen down.

Lately, I’ve been writing with my kids (that is my students, you would be surprised to know I have 90 kids wouldn’t you?)
I’ve been writing with them a lot. It is easier to get them to do something if we do it together.

I wrote this in response to a vingette from Sandra Cisneros’ House on Mango Street, and I thought I would share.

Eyes.

My father has clear blue eyes- a perfect mix of his parents – Gram’s are a lighter, milkier, mother of pearl blue, like jewelry in old fashioned movies – and Grampa’s are steelier, harsher, hard, like he’s still in a ship in the pacific, during wwii

My eyes are dark — chestnut brown and almond shaped. They are the eyes of my mother, and her mother before her, and her father before her, and his mother before him. I am the fifth or maybe more generation of these eyes. I know since I have seen the pictures of my great-great-grandma Isabelle, who must have stood strong with these eyes, with her infant son in her hand, a widow so young, her husband gone form a hunting accident, while they auctioned off her farm—five generations of eyes see much.

I wonder what the next generation of eyes will bring– will my baby have blue eyes or dark, or maybe like my love, sweet green-grey eyes that catch golden flecks, like leaves in late September – though, I only wish for my baby, eyes that will see clearly the whole world around.