tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19399163068338036182024-03-05T15:39:25.448-05:00My mother makes hats... Schizophrenia, hat-making & some other stuff too.a Blog and guide for living mentally well, on <b>both</b> sides of the caregiving spectrum.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-78122039724771385772012-05-07T15:19:00.001-04:002012-05-07T16:11:09.755-04:00Literalistically Speaking.<b>I'm 32.</b> If you've thought I was younger, it was most likely because I lied about it. <b>Age; this heavy meal</b>, carried around from the outside in. Perhaps some wear it well: like my grandmother. She just turned 93 and is mad as hell that she is, but (rumored to be) happy that she's made it this far. She cringes at her numbers; would rather invert the nine for a six, and in a fantasy that only she will ever be witness to: imagine herself again 39.
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I don't blame her. And not because <b>she'd whup my ass if I did</b> (no kidding, this Gram don't take no bs), and not because I'm some sage (yet), but admitting to the defeat of lines, of downhilledness is some hard shit. Now, the alternative (death) is harder, necessary but still...you got to age if you want to live. This is a hurting reality.<br><br>
Some other realities are just as caustic. Take for example the <b>volume lost post-breastfeeding </b>(umm, wow), the reduced metabolism post 31 (holy shit), and the more <b>serious reduction of emotional buoyancy</b> (FML). I'm paddling harder now than I did in years past, when I had (seemingly) more to paddle from.
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Life is as hard as people say it is. <i>Sometimes harder.</i>
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I tried to explain to <b>my 3 year old, a very emotionally-learned little creature</b>, that if you are going to stare at someone, you must say hi. She took it literally: grimacing and forcing her hellos on people living on the fringe. Most are as curious as she is, looking back, wistful, wondering.
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She asked me, after one of these <b>DAMMIT HELLO </b>sessions, why some people live on the streets, her fledgling logic demanded a clean response (she hates gray) <br><br><i>Why Mummah? They have to go into a HOME Mummah</i> she continued. I explained that <b>for some folks, this is all they got, and for some, this is all they get, earn, lose all the way down to.</b><br><br>
I explained, that <i>we are kinder to them because their lives are harder in most ways.</i> <br><br>And she asked me how I knew that. Most likely trying to figure out if this was like the time I told her she'd get <b>bugs in her bum if she sat on a cold floor, or kept wearing THE Tinkerbell undies.</b> No. This <i>wasn't</i> a Mummah fib, not a fake ID, this won't get me a second look by a flirty bartender, or a compliment from a matronly sales woman. This was a truth Mummah lived. And Nana, and Papa too.
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We lived on Huntington, and sometimes on Mass Ave our addresses wandering, fringe, lacy in their transparency. Fluid.
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<b>There are somethings only a literalist can understand</b>.
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Some reality is ugly, and not really worth lying about.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-55580346834025904612012-04-09T15:39:00.000-04:002012-04-09T17:11:35.995-04:00Got $10? Give 10.Two years ago, I found out about <b>NAMIwalk</b>, a special walkathon coordinated by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (<a href="http://www.nami.org/">NAMI</a>). I walked with my then 19 month old daughter, my purpose was simple: raise funds and awareness of mental and behavioral health; as a means to reduce stigma and break unnecessary silences. And this year, I plan to do it again.
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As you know, mental health is a topic very close to my heart, and my mother carries a very serious mental health diagnosis. That said, having a family member or loved one with a chronic mental health condition is no easy task, and it certainly isn't something people should go through alone.<b> NAMI</b> provides peer supports, community based education and skill development, and more. Please consider sponsoring me to ensure funding to the programs and supports provided by NAMI remain available to people who need it most.
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The walk is here in Boston (Artesani Park in Brighton) on Saturday, May 12th (rain or shine). I have a fundraising goal of $320, which averages to about $10 dollars per day until my walk date.
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<b>To donate</b> please go to my walk page: <a href="http://www.nami.org/namiwalks12/MAS/Dianneshats">http://www.nami.org/namiwalks12/MAS/Dianneshats</a>
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To read more about my journey, please check out links to the right.
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To learn more about mental and behavioral health, please visit NAMI: <a href="http://www.nami.org/">http://www.nami.org/</a>
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Thanks for your friendship, and for your support.
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Diane & Zora. Walking for Nana.
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We’ve each plugged ourselves in, found our respective ways to be. We know joy. We share fears.
Some of the time.
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I like to call this <b>logic</b>.
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I recently started a new job... One I wanted and knew I could do. One I’d be happy to let define me for a while. Stretch me, even.
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And so: <b>I prepared. I read books,</b> bought outfits. I put away all my flats to ensure I was/am always 6 feet tall (heels). I listened to the vocabulary of the hierarchy and made it mine.
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<b>I met my staff, my colleagues, my team.</b> I admire them in how tentative some were, how open, how distrustful. I let the hierarchal speak go. Their accents captured me to listen to their own stories.
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One day, when I came home I called my mother to tell her how important I was/I am. I was/am proud of myself. I was certain she'd be too. And she was. She started making connection: <i>New job, new location?</i> <i>Yes, Mummi.</i> She then asked me if I was doing data entry... I’m a director at a state agency serving refugees, immigrants. I manage 1/3 of all staff there. <b>But she’ll never know that.</b> Never,ever understand.
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<b>I try not to sink.</b> I said in a very small voice “<i>No, Mummi, no data entry”</i>. My chin quivered. It would have upset her to hear me cry. It upset me to know how few people I have to share this with.
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Something specific about having a parent, a mother who makes hats, a mother with a chronic mental health condition:
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<b>There will always be this separation. I will always be a hungry island. We’ll likely always have this grabbing-at-air –but-not-reaching each other thing. </b>
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<b>We find ways to each other, most days.</b>
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But, as my 3 year old likes to remind me: <b>Sometimes we don’t.</b>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-52143472356808895872012-02-14T11:41:00.000-05:002012-02-14T11:48:00.076-05:00A Valentine's Request: Lie to me.There is something my <b>littlest valentine, Zora</b>, and my <b>longest-held valentine, Mummi</b>, have in common, something that erupted in our shared genetic code, results in a sameness. Lays there with our common features: wide foreheads, deep set eyes, bowed lips and rounded noses. We tell stories. <i>Lies</i>, my Gram used to call them.
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<b>My mother fibbed about goldfish.</b> Declared his bowl paradise. Made me see: everyone is a character, has a name, a place to be. I kept (and keep) an open ear.
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<b>My daughter talks plenty. </b>Her stories involve alligators, her being in my tummy, when she’ll be a Mama, having to get to work and so on. Sometimes, they involve falls where no one really gets hurts, where “<i>cooker-men</i>” come to life from soft ingredients she can recall easily. Where her logic is <strike>logical</strike> magical.
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<b>She; this soft-ingredient wielder, loves to hear about when I, her own Mummah, was a little girl.</b> I spin, but don’t go far from the truth. I tell her about cats in easter baskets. Being a forceful 2nd grader having my mother spin and dip me all the way home from school. I told her about the franks and beans dinner I had to endure for 2 weeks straight, and how during its tenure, I ate not more than one, perhaps two beans, our faded floor catching the rest, my stubborn behind bearing it's share of benign spankings.
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<b>She responds in her own fits of laughter,</b> their winding and shrieking pleasure stories of their own. I worry for how long I’ll be able to tell her stories that don’t scare her from her secure slumber. I know I'm running low on warm-hearted tales, though I've plenty of other stories to tell. I warn her gently: “<i>Not all of Mummah’s stories are happy, Tweetybird.”
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She’s surprised me once by responding: “<i>I know.”
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And so, on this day, I hope everyone who may be reading this, and perhaps too, everyone who can’t to continue to spin your stories, share who you are and who you were with people who will listen, and listen yourselves too. Let your age be told in the brine we may have bound into our backs, like that of aging books. It doesn’t have to be pretty. <i>Franks ain’t. Beans ain’t</i>. <b>But it does have to be yours.</b> Let your stories be held and stored with someone who finds your lettering delicious…
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And perhaps too, let that someone be you.
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<b>Celebrate yourself (too) today.
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Much love, muchly.
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DDMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-49650761862666548552012-02-06T09:46:00.000-05:002012-02-06T09:46:04.093-05:00Short stack: say it (too/instead).<b>As a kid, I didn't say much.</b> I thought much, but: I lived in my head, I zoned out. Much of the time, I still do. But I've lost the relative shyness I had. I'm not a person anyone would likely call quiet, but I'm not a <i>total</i> <b>stage-hoe</b>.
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I like to think I talk as much as I listen. In some places that ain't right, and in some places <b>I'm likely considered a sage.
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Hmm.
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In any event, I have a hard time separating what I hear from what I see. And I'm not so certain I should. Words weigh a lot with me/on me. I am semi-dense (yeah, I admit it). You can buy me (please buy me) gifts, Monday through Sunday, but can't say why you bought them, or that they were expressly for me... and, well, I'll never know. #shrug Genetic emotional defect I say.
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<b>My mother bought me strange things.</b> Still does. Some'd consider it junk. Sometimes I do. Sometimes it smells a lot like smoke. Sometimes it's strange; think: hair weave when (for now) I don't do that. Items I wanted as a kid but never got: an electric toothbrush (likely used), a AA bra (I'm thankfully bigger'n that now), and a damn g-string. For serious. A g. All wrapped up in a bag my mother hands me with a hug. How can you laugh? How can I be anything other than thankful? She does, after all have so little. She does, week by week, simply refuse to hear me (beggingly) say: No Mummi. Please, no more gifts. I'm good, Mummi. I am.
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But the woman says, outright and without fail: <b>I love you.</b> Be safe, Diane. <b>Don't get to be more than 200 pounds (giggle).</b> Eat breakfast, Diane. Your hair looks pretty.
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This woman with little, extends a hug. <b>Talks to me, eye to eye</b>, and never fails to touch my cheek. We position ourselves sometimes like grooming monkeys. It's pretty damn cute. It's pretty damn vulnerable. It's pretty.
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And it's pretty hard to see, when ones heart is so <i>vulnerable</i>, when ones intentions are <i>so bared</i>, to understand: <b>what the hell are those of us not plagued with such immediacy waiting on?</b> Why is it so hard for those of us who don't have it so hard?
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Love now. Because we can. Talk now, because we can/should.
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And because all the other things: expensive gifts, while nice, don't say it as clearly, as succinctly.
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And we likely need them/it to.
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<b>We do. </b>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-57968692983403816282012-01-18T13:30:00.000-05:002012-01-18T21:35:04.454-05:00My Princess Girl’s Princess Boy (and an “armadino” too)...I like to preach equity. Believe in access. Believe in leading my child in a place where difference isn’t so different after all.
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<b>I’m not into color-blindness, in fact, I’m incensed by it </b>for two reasons: 1. it just sounds stupid and blind people can hear it, and 2. We are brown, and brown is decently awesome. Why pretend not to see it/us?
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I tell folks a lot about my mom, mostly because <b>I’m apple-eyed and she’s my Braeburn</b>, but in part because I learned about my world through her perceptions, her experiences. Perhaps, more one than the other.
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Case in point: <b>Gender Identity.</b>
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<b>I grew up (at least half time) in Boston’s South End in the 80-90s</b>. Folks who know the area now, know it’s gorg, <b>half gay, a quarter Chinese and very Puerto Rican</b>. I grew up within earshot of the parties at the <a href="http://www.villavictoriaarts.org/">Villa</a>, close enough to catch pizza at <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/boston-house-of-pizza-boston">BHOP</a>, near enough to see my father on the stoop at the <a href="http://ymcaboston.org/huntington">Huntington Y</a>. It would have been idyllic if we weren’t broke and bartering for time with Mummi’s diagnosis.
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<b>I had a sometime babysitter. She was trans, male to female; long legged and had gorgeous hair. </b>I realize now she was in an abusive partnership, could hear Claudio beating the joy (among other things) out of her tiny frame. She was very sweet, albeit very unsafely vulnerable. I never had to ask my mom what my sitter was. I knew. And she was wonderful. Period.
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When Mummi would talk about gender ID she had one simple thing she’d say (still says it): <i>We’re all gay, Love. All.</i> She thought of love and who you love as a continuum versus a binary: as in I can love him and her and him and her, or I can love them and them and them (too). I’d have to say I agree. I<b> shruggingly agreeingly agree.
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<b>Fast forward to my daughter. A burst of articulateness and non-slick ponies. </b>A small adult some days, others, my baby, my babiest baby. We went to the library and picked out some special books, one about an Armadillo who is different, who is defiantly not a bunny and isn’t totally pink in a homogenously pink and bunnied environment. “<i>I think I would want an armadino, Mummah. We can buy it</i>” she suggests, strongly.
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We pick up another book too, about a <a href="http://www.myprincessboy.com/index.asp">princess boy</a>. It’s very sweet, if curiously illustrated. The characters have featureless brown faces. The main character is a boy seemingly <b>between gender lines, or not: perhaps not</b>. He wears dresses, loves ballet, thinks himself pretty. He cries when he is taunted. His Mummah cries too. I<b> want to cry a little when I read it to her.
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</b><b>He has lots of triumphs.</b> His parents appreciate him. They let him know he’s cute too. He has the birthday he wants, unabashedly pink and princessed out. They carpool with his older brother on the way to his baseball practice. <b>It’s non-fiction.</b> The author's take on her kids experience, on theirs together. Righteous, right? But I have an obvious bias.
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My child, dear child, <b>loves</b> the story. We made a mural of said boy-princess that hangs near our front door. Daddy cheered us both on as we worked. He's a steward of inclusion too. Zora shared her own thoughts:
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<i>“I think it's ok if him wears princess outfits. I would not laugh at him.”
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When I giggle out of pride and perhaps something else, she scolds me strongly “<i>Don’t laugh Mummah. Princess boys are NOT funny!” </i>I stop. <b>Hide the joy in my eyes at her open mind.
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She finishes: “<i>I would have a princess boy for my friend… <b>if him had a face</b></i>.”
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Baby-girl is all about equity, all about friends with fly outfits, could give two hard boiled eggs about if "him a him, him a her" <b>but she ain’t having that anonymous, no face, shit</b>.
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Nah, yo.
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<b>That’s my girl.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFRFJxYbfDLqCUQF_kA-s6WlCLJRHETnQe910Lfhjrxm4p2RCVNenZ0GBEvnxsO_gzfvFEBUHsyL53Z_R0CXv_OUKCTAjxUDN9VnSk5aKK833KD6cuK0z_2g9OQGOhiAXkr4rg5e0g9B0/s1600/cleo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFRFJxYbfDLqCUQF_kA-s6WlCLJRHETnQe910Lfhjrxm4p2RCVNenZ0GBEvnxsO_gzfvFEBUHsyL53Z_R0CXv_OUKCTAjxUDN9VnSk5aKK833KD6cuK0z_2g9OQGOhiAXkr4rg5e0g9B0/s200/cleo1.jpg" /></a></div>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-32951648408267748952011-12-27T12:17:00.002-05:002011-12-27T12:49:53.476-05:00Autobiographical moment; picture this: Christmas<b>In the summer of my ninth year, I went to a psychiatric ward.</b> I saw my mother’s eyes wide, wider, her fear a physical thing. She whispered something private into my ear; something like “<i>Save me</i>”. I couldn’t. <b>She was kept. I was left to the care of others</b>.
<br><br>
I was driven away in a small brown car. My grandmother and uncle moved me, room to room like one moves a wilting plant. Chasing sunlight? Finding a favorable shadow? Looking for some sense of viability? I went blank. I let the forgetting begin then, that much I recall.
<br><br>
<b>In time, I relearned most of the things I lost.</b> I learned how to cry, with real tears and not will death in my own taut beige skin. I learned to write what I meant, what I felt inside and not what I expected others would look for. I learned to answer, though this was a newfound trait, the many psychotherapist's and family member's inquiries I met as the year went cold: to hug my stuffed animals affectionately to give the impression of adjustment, to cast my eyes downward when I wanted to prove myself chaste and well-intentioned. It seemed to work.
<br><br>
<b>As the Christmas season coursed its way down the snowy streets that arteried Roxbury, I was able to see my parents again.</b> My taller-than-most father with the freckles and hazel eyes. His loud voice and <i>I-will-kick-anyones-ass </i>temperament. My mother with the lilting voice (much like my own in adulthood) and beautiful burnt sienna hands. We rode in a rental, went from discount store to discount store, my father carrying on a family tradition of Christmas. Ensuring, as my Nana always did, everyone who was from or rumored to be a Randolph got a gift. <b>Every one of the 9 siblings, the 26 grandchildren/nieces/nephews, everyone got a gift.</b>
<br><br>
<b>My father was and is the greatest steward of this tradition.</b> Uncle Randy’s claim to fame (positive one at least) is his entrance on Christmas night: one, maybe two garbage bags in had, handing out whatever comes out of the bag, to whomever is closest to him. My cousins and I joke about what the hell may come out. But, truth be told: we all get something.
<br><br>
This year, for the first time since I was nine, I went Christmas shopping with my parents. I went into a <a href="http://www.building19.com/">Building 19</a>! I scoured the aisles at <a href="http://www.oceanstatejoblot.com/locate/">Job Lot</a>! I found myself eyeing (for purchase) no name body wash! I even smiled at my father smoking a Newport outside of the car I use (almost exclusively) to pick up organic groceries, to ride my suburban commuter train, and/or to attend mommy and me yoga. <i>Ain’t that some shit?!
<br><br>
</i>At the end of the night, I brought my parents (against their remaining will) to my house. They’ve never been. They live in an apartment roughly the size of my kitchen. Smaller than my 375 square foot studio when I lived in Harlem. And a lot rougher around the edges. It’s a hard life. They have a roof over their heads, and a lot of determination. But they live a <i>very</i> complicated life. When they came in, my mothers eyes were wide, this time, with awe, happiness. She sat comfortably on our couch. Mundane for most. <b>My mother hasn’t sat on a couch in someone’s home since 1990.
</b><br><br>
<b>My father, lord is he my father.</b> Wandered my house taking inventory. Coursed down into the basement. Counseled me on my loud ass toilet, the creaking doors, and how the house should have been built on some kind of thing I’ll <i>never</i> remember the word for. He told me to get the dry cleaning <b>off</b> the damn couch in the bedroom. To not let the cats go into Zora’s room, or get in her bed. Some other stuff too. I know he meant to say he was proud. I know him enough to know that’s what he was saying. He also drank Brian's rum. Nervy stubborn man. Thank God we left before the dishwasher starting rumbling.
<br><br>
On our ride home, <b>everyone was quiet with contentment</b>. I dropped them at the door of the brownstone, sped off and crept back to make sure they didn’t forget anything, and didn’t have to see me cry.
<b>It’s been a lot of rough years since 1988 when my mother and I were originally split.</b> A lot of years (23) to be exact since we Christmas shopped as a family, and a lot of time in which, I didn’t want to do <i>any</i> of that shit.
<br><br>
But I got to. This year. And <b>that</b> was the greatest gift.
<br><br>
It really was.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyEV18-bIVIrhNH0qSbUUm_uA-Wa80NqiseYBZw8kUouK2e2nRoJAiLy8rOB5x8qjKl_zcBoiocc86wAO7h8GNRLfTIYHXhIsRLxYgFXKELkEdQNtNcRYQNofcbjxWYDjRZNjt-HoHOew/s1600/xmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyEV18-bIVIrhNH0qSbUUm_uA-Wa80NqiseYBZw8kUouK2e2nRoJAiLy8rOB5x8qjKl_zcBoiocc86wAO7h8GNRLfTIYHXhIsRLxYgFXKELkEdQNtNcRYQNofcbjxWYDjRZNjt-HoHOew/s200/xmas.jpg" /></a></div>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-43412066845802411462011-12-21T15:00:00.000-05:002011-12-21T15:14:34.997-05:00six word story: Phoenix<b>Cat-shopping, I'll bring money, you name.</b><br />
<br />
So, I cheated, added a dash. The idea was semi-cute. <br />
<br />
Nine 9/11 ago-es, my mother and I, pre-Zora, pre-Brian, pre-job and NY, pre-damn near everything, went looking for a cat. Perhaps she wasn't but I was, hoping to find Eve a friend, more so, hoping to find someone to befriend my night-wailing lonely tabby.<br />
<br />
Most of my cats have come from the same place, the <a href="http://www.arlboston.org/site/PageServer?pagename=new_homepage_1">Animal Rescue League of Boston</a>, and, yes, I said most. <b>I've had as many cats in my life as they have lives</b>; a strong herd of 9, not at the same time of course, though we maxed out at 4 in '08.. but that ain't the point.<br />
<br />
I was getting a new cat.<br />
<br />
<b>I've been told I approach love in the same way that I cat-shop.</b> I think any likely can do as long as I've chosen them, love them first, hardest, and they'll fit into a small box. Sounds about right. This one didn't fit in small boxes. Wailed like a background singer in the taxi ride home. Hid everywhere one can and can't hide: a box, a well-stuffed study. In a plastic bag.
This one was my favored and favorited.
I loved her like a child, like my child, in that <b>strange catlady type of love </b>most likely. <i>In the way I think, we deserve to be loved</i>, but most times, can't recognize that we are, that we're not, that we may not ever, or that we will be soon.
<br />
<br />
<b>There is no way to credential it</b>, to figure it out, unless it drops out of the sky and into your lap and says: "<i>I've got you. Loved. Life-long. Not to worry.</i>"
<br />
<br />
But it doesn't. That time it did. But most don't approach love in that whole <b>cat-buying-by-the-catlady </b>type of way.
<br />
<br />
My mother loved her too. They had much in common. <b>Passively accepting love from their low-laying-ports.
<br />
<br />
</b>
Perhaps they got it right, <i>righter than I ever likely will</i>.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-40444221956547168682011-12-14T15:14:00.000-05:002011-12-27T15:44:57.457-05:00Memory like a(n)...<b>Elephant.<br />
<br />
A small child with/without limits.<br />
<br />
A heart-broken survivor</b>. <br />
<br />
A person enamored, savoring each moment. Awaiting,<br />
their night/knight in shining underarmour.<br />
<br />
Mermory like a<br />
Sunday morning, repetitive in spite of logic<br />
<b>A repetive type of logic, more if-thans than the <br />
LSAT,</b> PSATs, an chronically obtrusive mother<br />
to an only daughter, because well<br />
<i>"You never know, baby"<br />
</i><br />
Memories that won't fade. That do hope<br />
for change, for much of the same, for<br />
things that do and won't go bump in the night<br />
for lasting love, whatever<br />
the hell that means.<br />
<br />
<b>For joy in a bottle</b>... and say: <i>Holy shit,<br />
I remember remembering that. I remember wanting that<br />
I remember that being <b>what I thought I wanted</b></i>.<br />
<br />
Large and looming like an elephant (<i>if they should loom</i>)<br />
in a small room, a bedroom perhaps;<br />
someplace intricate and intimate (<i>if you know what I mean</i>)<br />
is reality: this is what it is. <b>Out of your head and in <br />
my lap.<br />
<br />
</b>Perhaps I'll forget it for what I wanted to recall.<br />
But, right now, today<br />
<br />
<b>I see it/you.<br />
I'll know.<br />
</b>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-54669774781825975002011-12-02T13:11:00.004-05:002011-12-02T15:55:52.896-05:00Who is that white man in the chimney? Fantasy Bias towards the null...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLjgxg4CClnOYWPfl4C4kMVZWET1-HLL2lFzxmosBGoXHd7lHPVHQWNuHO3sGcwgHywPvP-o-nnqAM3_-NtXlSs4WZoHtMcmivQQL63fp6EOKKkvtonWVJvC7JRc6-OlxN3p_W4BeB4NA/s1600/santamovin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="133" width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLjgxg4CClnOYWPfl4C4kMVZWET1-HLL2lFzxmosBGoXHd7lHPVHQWNuHO3sGcwgHywPvP-o-nnqAM3_-NtXlSs4WZoHtMcmivQQL63fp6EOKKkvtonWVJvC7JRc6-OlxN3p_W4BeB4NA/s200/santamovin.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Sigh. <b>So, I won’t start with the trite “<i>it’s that time of year</i>” opening I was planning on getting this party started with.</b> The reality is, the time of year really matters little. Yes, there are lights. My daughter is <i>very</i> intrigued. She gets all stuttery when we drive past the way-way-wayindeer. All <i>can we have some Mummah</i> and whatnot. <b>Glitter and gum-droppy </b>when we see all the Christmas toys on display, seemingly everywhere: on TV, at the malls we rarely go to, in the doorbusters ads of the Sunday papers. <b>She swoons sheepishly when we talk about one particular character: Saint Friggin Nick.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8AIMQvdq92bgQeSTSKqw3tZXiy_-EbTsTK7ZsOLE3QxBJjfgvMsSeNExB05LPjYPo6LawOn9_FTO8i4yZh-nYM_5O_hLub1u1jP32q6h2DbMmMSM5NLn8r0JmIt3pio70jaZ7ybSgFJ0/s1600/santi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8AIMQvdq92bgQeSTSKqw3tZXiy_-EbTsTK7ZsOLE3QxBJjfgvMsSeNExB05LPjYPo6LawOn9_FTO8i4yZh-nYM_5O_hLub1u1jP32q6h2DbMmMSM5NLn8r0JmIt3pio70jaZ7ybSgFJ0/s200/santi.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
</b><br />
As former (but forever) New Yorker <b>I’m not talking about the cross road to 1-2-5th, </b> But Claus himself. Sinter. Noel. <i>Yeah, him.</i> I’m not nearly as Grinchy as I likely sound. I like fun, bells, holidays (<i>mine is Valentines day, if you need know</i>). I even go hard for the tree, its smell, <b>my cats covered up to their whiskers in fir quills </b>. It's very <i>outside meets inside</i>, which is nearly smutty. What I have a problem with is the fantasy of it all, the fantasy of him. <b>I'm finding problems with the Santa clause.</b><br />
<br />
Now ain’t<i> that </i>some shit? I am all about fantasy. Case in point:<br />
*I have a <a href="http://www.lesley.edu/gsass/creative_writing/">masters in fantasy </a>(i.e. poetry)<br />
*I think disparate health outcomes (the difference in disease rates in brown people versues everyone else) can be not just reduced but eliminated by <a href="http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/default.aspx">2020</a>.<br />
*I heart Disney World so much I CRY at the end of every Disney movie.<br />
*I have a favorite Disney princess<br />
*I named my child after a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neale_Hurston">folklorist</a> with a pearl handled gun and a inclination to fib about her age...(Ding-ding-ding)<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSTTl0TrxIIzFnWGypDT2Q_F5Cm4YBkGZrzb77uIYRopow1YaXus4MOxdiNsQ8nseCzzEEXDy8g4RkioJ46f6d51Gq3wjJbTw6tp9NuIG6T6saHTkIx7eOl_0WC0xIDME153BkJEwgurs/s1600/ZNH.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSTTl0TrxIIzFnWGypDT2Q_F5Cm4YBkGZrzb77uIYRopow1YaXus4MOxdiNsQ8nseCzzEEXDy8g4RkioJ46f6d51Gq3wjJbTw6tp9NuIG6T6saHTkIx7eOl_0WC0xIDME153BkJEwgurs/s200/ZNH.gif" /></a></div><br />
<br />
I shan’t go on.<br />
<br />
<b>The issue <i>isn’t</i> Christmas. The risen Christ. The cherubs and spiked cocoa. The tinsel, Rudolph, misfit toys or the doorbusters. <i>It’s Santa.<br />
</i></b><br />
<br />
Perhaps it goes back to my up-from-the-bootstraps belief system. <b>You want something, you get it yourself.</b> Earn it. I mean can you earn something by being good, or by going to work? Is it truly your ethic if you’re doing so for the once-a-year reward? <b>Pfft.<br />
</b><br />
<i>Perhaps it has more to do with God.</i> <b>I once mistakenly prayed to both Santa and Jesus for my Cookie Monster clock to run without batteries at age 4. </b>It didn’t work and me and Jesus Claus were at odds until I figured out one of ‘em wasn’t real.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_RVG7mbRYqDiiqA4O-p7YonPeu8kJz0gfZ2_yEPszeDuIEsxHKxqa6V0WukwScdT9_RHNU4OKJXnAd8H3s3bs8-KOdq8e_td3tvO35nL0_c35UusWwcsRA_wQbzmvVVpT8qRHkNP7AAw/s1600/Cisforcookie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="200" width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_RVG7mbRYqDiiqA4O-p7YonPeu8kJz0gfZ2_yEPszeDuIEsxHKxqa6V0WukwScdT9_RHNU4OKJXnAd8H3s3bs8-KOdq8e_td3tvO35nL0_c35UusWwcsRA_wQbzmvVVpT8qRHkNP7AAw/s200/Cisforcookie.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<b>Perhaps it’s my racial and/or ethnic bias meter…</b> I mean, honestly, the idea of a <b>red suited heavy white man essentially breaking into my house to give my child toys of unknown origin “If she good” is a freakish, hellish, and disturbing thought.</b> #Barfwothy even.<br />
<br />
And then there is the highly principled part of me: <b>I travel 54 miles rountrip daily to pay for her childcare. Brian works 7 days a week as well to ensure we’re housed, roofed, and can easily order gourmet Chinese.</b> That said, the gifts didn’t come from ole homeboy SC, but from Mummah and Daddy with the grit of the commuter rail, and the sweat of the dining hall on our hands and in our hearts. <br />
<br />
<b>So, I did it. I told her Santa was fake.</b> I said something like... Babygirl, you know he's for pretend right. Wide eyed, she said, Huh? Uhhh, yeah. We moved on. I did anyway.<br />
<br />
And on Xmas eve when that first gift is in her beautiful brown baby hands, sweet surgar pie dumplin girl will know this: <br />
<br />
<b>I bought Barbie. ME.<br />
</b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW5PzeeN-vvvJe0y_Dk-foun7xZ503VECDcGb7OfHoObgTBuS5md12o1WSFAp6zRTkMr3272TKsQA7ilpwhCjoLBmYUqEOTQXd1HRPLqFQYzR2uGmzJk0JuvIgH75naLerZZxA_zRe_ZU/s1600/afrobarbie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="133" width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW5PzeeN-vvvJe0y_Dk-foun7xZ503VECDcGb7OfHoObgTBuS5md12o1WSFAp6zRTkMr3272TKsQA7ilpwhCjoLBmYUqEOTQXd1HRPLqFQYzR2uGmzJk0JuvIgH75naLerZZxA_zRe_ZU/s200/afrobarbie.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
Merry Xmas,<br />
<br />
DianeDMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-45994675898309084302011-11-22T18:05:00.002-05:002011-11-22T18:09:24.052-05:00I am a native daughter. I know/don't totally know crazy.I <i>suppose </i>I know a great deal about mental health. There <i>are</i> folks who know more than I do. I say that both with childishly (intonation) and authoritatively (though, that's semi-childish too).<br />
<br />
<b>I can't/don't diagnose.</b> I'm too flexible, inflexible for that.<br />
Not that they are cousins, but I think most of us are crazy, as I think most of us are, well, other things too: inter-ethnic, gay, existing on some continuum for which there aren't clear cut distinctions. <b>Sue me.<br />
</b><br />
<b>However, I get lots of folks sharing with me.</b> I get friends who disclose. I sit hollow eyed, feeling willful as I hold my breath. I want to say: Hmmm, you sound a little like you are [insert diagnosis]. I want to ask about meds. I question my chosen field. And sometimes I don't.<br />
<br />
<b>I'm no doctor. I don't play one on TV.</b> I'm a painfully terrible actor. I wouldn't be able remember lines. I balk at the DSM V, VI, IV whatever the hell it is now. I call it vee instead of five. That elicits laughter in true doctor circles, even the mental ones'd likely titter.<br />
<br />
<b>I am a native daughter. I know crazy.</b> I like to think I ain't, but, I think we all are. <b>I am displaying my own evidence of inconsistency.<br />
</b><br />
I was thinking, recently, about what folks could consider a poignant moment; the day I disclosed my pregnancy to my mother. I was in my 7th month; a quirk of genetics (mostly height) that kept me barely showing. My soon to be daughter was a fit of movement beneath my ribs. It was raining. I was as usual, a ball of nerves: of anticipation, some would say anxiety as I approached their brownstone.<br />
<br />
<b>Ring of a doorbell, doors opened, shut. The news was told.</b> Awaited/waited: an episode. A shriek. Anger. Perhaps she'd throw something. I received a warm once-over. A hug. My mother startled, as any grandmother-to-be at what was being revealed to her. <b>A new line; a new place for her to be. A new person I was growing. <br />
</b><br />
I nearly <i>erupted</i> from the brownstone. I carried enough love and acceptance from this once source of unknowingness, an experience the word pain is too trite/too separate to be lent to; I left feeling so accepted and connected, so part of a family, and I hadn't even labored yet.<br />
<br />
I cried; filling a long narrow tube within me with individually lain tears; they fell with the a sense of precision, of exactness that tears can't typically pull off. It was unrealistic. I a<i>nticipated</i> a logical outcome: this woman with reality issues, my news, how it required a level of organization her diagnosis likely wouldn't/couldn't accept. The reality: my mother hadn't come undone.<br />
<br />
I supposed and was supposed to know a great deal about mental health, about my mother, about people with like diagnoses. But, thankfully there are folks who know more than I do.<br />
<br />
<b>Thanks Mummi, for being one of them.</b>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-88335097968192165472011-11-21T10:50:00.001-05:002011-11-21T12:35:30.989-05:00Vulnerable (strength).<b>I had a conversation with a friend today</b>; a good friend, a noble friend. She like me has a family, a small one, a miniature-mirror in her child. <b>They argue, fret. Mostly in unison, definitely in awe of the other.</b> I do that. I understood. <br />
<br />
<b>I told her a story about my three year old</b>; spirited in her freshness, vulnerable—she once cried (ok, thrice) when a cockroach was left behind by his master returning to outer-space, in some movie. And again, when she watched me nearly retch over an argument with a loved one. <i>Put those tears away Mummah. The sun is out</i>, my baby girl once said. And I love her for that and/but you know what: <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL__9YXILwjfavH56gbH5Dpw7deN0WjcwFHxJraxAJZd-7oC3oLY8f95qv6QH2urEKF8QIJ7h8A1tWTiBADHi5dcPR3G0Raf6RyJr7EdrCVDuIAWF9dl8e5VO9j-1H53LCl2_ofE1SUIg/s1600/kelsey.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="125" width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL__9YXILwjfavH56gbH5Dpw7deN0WjcwFHxJraxAJZd-7oC3oLY8f95qv6QH2urEKF8QIJ7h8A1tWTiBADHi5dcPR3G0Raf6RyJr7EdrCVDuIAWF9dl8e5VO9j-1H53LCl2_ofE1SUIg/s200/kelsey.bmp" / ALT= "Kelsey"></a></div><br />
<b>My child makes me nuts.</b> I have a nutty if her Kelsey Kounters are strewn across the floor. If she refuses to pay attention when she’s making the letter Z with too many arms, or if she forgets her name ends in A and not her favorite letter of the week. I am what my positive parenting book boasts as authoritative. I want to throw that damn book in the <i>trash</i>. <br />
<br />
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<br />
<b>My child makes me proud. </b>I’ve grown to not give a complete shit if people don’t want to hear how she speaks with the level intonation of a learned adult, that she recognizes the varying hue ethnic difference can and does lend to people, that she knows Santa is fake and God is as real as she is. I am what my positive parenting book boasts as supportive. <b>I want to throw that damn book in the trash <i>and write my own</i>. <br />
<br />
</b>So, conversation with friend had me thinking. And a lot of times we start with us; as in, I can hear what she’s saying, what reality does this spin for me? How can I draw from what I know (about me) to share with her? And I realized, in the advice I attempted to share with her, I needed to press my ears to my own palms; to make sense out of the own song of my faintly thumping heartbeat. <br />
<br />
I told her to <b>be kind to herself</b>, to understand that <b>vulnerability is too, it’s own kind of strength</b>, that <b>good intentions most definitely do count</b>. And, to recognize that you get what you get because you’re supposed to and can handle it. And, perhaps somewhat less tritely, that she is good, great and doing right by her kid.<br />
<br />
<b>Sometimes, we have to listen to the advice we give others</b>, give it to ourselves. Remind ourselves of how hard and hearty our lives can be, at 7 AM, on the way to the school dance, making sandwiches for a play school lunch, declining ice-cream for breakfast. <br />
<br />
And I hope that makes sense, and perhaps more than that, I hope she/we realize how much right we do, when we intend to. <br />
<br />
I'm thinking, at least, I have some work to do.<br />
<br />
So, if you see me doing said work with my hands pressed to my ears, I'm likely finding my own rhythm in the drumming song between palm and a pulsating inner ear/heatbeat. <b>Though this is a blog about mental health, so, you know, don’t rule anything out.</b>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-44020308787490518252011-10-11T12:53:00.003-04:002011-10-11T14:09:06.165-04:00Yes. Him Again.The Stories our Bodies Share/With-hold.I wrote once about my father; my dad. About the things he made, namely me. About the things, besides life, he's given me. <br />
<br />
We've been all over the place with gifts, emptiness, stories, more.<br />
<b>I love him</b>. I can admit that now.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<b>A week ago, my daughter turned three.</b> We go hard for birthdays, extremely hard. We see parties as gifts we give to everyone, in celebration for how wild in love we are with our child. This year, it was an African Drumming Party. <br />
<br />
<i>Jam on a D'jembe... Don't laugh (or do).<br />
</i><br />
We danced, accepted gifts, sweated out our respective perms and/or roller-sets, fogged up our glasses. We laughed; old laughter, young. Fortunately no one wet anything needed to stay dry.<br />
<br />
All kinds of people came; black, brown, pink, beige (me). Some folks didn't.<br />
<br />
<b>Zora barely noticed the non-comers.</b> Her cousins were there. In her 3-year-old world, that fact was both <b>the joint and the jam</b>. Her favoritist part. <i>Her love her cousins.<br />
</i><br />
Day ends. Two days stealthily passed. I wondered where <b>he</b> was. How come he kept being a no-show to these events? We'd spoke the night prior to the party. Auntie So-and-So was going to bring him from the city (his) to the burbs (ours). He even semi-joked he'd convince Mummi to come. I was even semi-ok with telling him it'd be ok if she just couldn't make it. We both knew and know: she never ever will.<br />
<br />
<b>Just this weekend, I learned he'd had surgery before the party. No details needed.</b> None I'd like to share. But he'd had a surgery, an incision, perhaps blood, pain. And he hadn't told <i>me</i>. And he had walked, by himself, to the appointment. And he... had extreme moments along the way. My mother even confirmed his tears, the pain he experienced in the short days of recovery he'd had. He didn't ask for help. Didn't beg a glass of cool water. And I... I didn't even know.<br />
<br />
<b>And this has affected me deeply.</b> Selfish, I know. Unselfish, I know.I had planned a party, held one, debriefed, and my father, my dad, was hurting.<br />
<br />
We went to visit him this weekend. His daughter, his grandaughter. We peeked at him sideways, straight on. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFiSYdfMngopngg1NOOjoLhEVBAMsdAB5g7vOql_mkyG1N7xmdawKRFx4zohpgQ30iomyoS7X8gbuFOlFDctBu_LKirXFkrNkHRWMBF_pFowRhUFXaYqy-uSFzKJurGTZfsSemNOepbEI/s1600/IMAG0617.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="120" width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFiSYdfMngopngg1NOOjoLhEVBAMsdAB5g7vOql_mkyG1N7xmdawKRFx4zohpgQ30iomyoS7X8gbuFOlFDctBu_LKirXFkrNkHRWMBF_pFowRhUFXaYqy-uSFzKJurGTZfsSemNOepbEI/s200/IMAG0617.jpg" /></a></div><br />
I counted freckles. Hugged him more closely. And I don't hug. He doesn't either. He was his usual self more or less; gruff, sweet, sarcastic, humble. Half-way crazy yes. Side-eyeing me back.<br />
<br />
Leaving, he long-leggedly approached my short-bodied car, leaned into the passenger-side window, crimping all 6'4 inches of himself into a very low frame, Boston, the Vineyard, and years of public transportation all up in his accent, and said : <br />
<br />
<i>"Kid. You're a nervous wreck. You're going to get sick. Come on."<br />
</i><br />
<b>Prideful DNA. <br />
</b><b>The stories our bodies both share and withhold.<br />
</b>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-39999806447944251802011-09-14T15:56:00.002-04:002011-09-14T16:17:23.505-04:00Safety Net. My first/perhaps only.<b>I like to think I've not asked for much,</b> at least not muchly.<br />
But it's likely that I have, in wanting the basics.<br />
<br />
<b>I have wanted <i>wantedly</i></b>, my mother to be present. My father to be capable. My... well you've heard this before.<br />
<br />
I don't know if these things are a safety net. I mean, I am an American with American expectations: <b>I want what I deserve, or I deserve what I want. Whichever.<br />
</b><br />
I won't go into a tunnel, a hole, a dark place I must earn, work, churn my way through. I am implicated by who suffers where, I have an allowance of reality that reminds me: bad things happen, worse things even, in ways and in places I may never see. To people who may hurt more than me. To some who can't endure.<br />
<br />
I imagine it's like what my daughter means when she says: "<i>We share the sun, Mummah</i>." Pain of expectation rises here and sets elsewhere. It's how things work, <b>how the world tinkers and goes</b>.<br />
<br />
So, I recently recieved as close of a safety net as I have ever. A loved one, super-loved even, said to me: "<i>Whatever you need from me in life, just ask. Maybe I can, maybe I can't. Don't ever be afraid to ask.</i>"<br />
<br />
But (and there are many)...<br />
<br />
<b>I hate asking.</b> Hate the open hole at the end of the question. Question mark as a bungie cord. As an opportunity for no. As an... well, place where I need to have faith, and hope and space for yes as well as no.<br />
<br />
But, the net has been cast. And I <strike>think I</strike> can jump.<br />
<br />
When and if I need to <i>of course</i>.<br />
But it/he will <strike>likely</strike> be there. <br />
<br />
Waitingly (perhaps). But t<b>here</b>.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-87832707580165558862011-09-08T11:22:00.002-04:002011-09-08T19:42:24.827-04:00D- for Effort. Mine and Hers.<b>Case scenario:</b> <b>Brilliant child.</b> 2 going on 3. Goes to an awesome (if expensive) school. <b>Great parents.</b> Perhaps they're having a bad week. Perhaps brilliant child watched too much tv while parents spoke, hushedly, some feet away. But still, away.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Mother, a loving one. Me, even.</b> Picks up scenario-ed child from school. Day two, she won't eat my food. I don't curse, I coddle (this time). "<i>Baby girl, we can go to the grocery, with the mini-carts, and pick out the food you'd like to each for lunch</i>" She's nearly willing. I nearly win.<br />
<br />
<br />
Moments away, Baby-girl kicks off her shoes. <b>Demands</b> I put them back on. Real-me-Mama (<i>in my mind</i>) is like, <b>Oh Hell No</b>. This time I'm curt. No to yelling, but base is reintroduced in my voice: "<i>Get up. Get the shoes ON. Walk your body to the door. Say goodbye to your friends</i>". Near compliance.<br />
<br />
Near.<br />
<br />
Shoes, again are kicked off. I threaten to let her walk <b>to</b> the grocery in one shoed foot, one socked one. <i>She laughes at the idea.<br />
</i><br />
Moments later Baby-girl is pushing the cart through the over-priced-organic grocer. <b>She's temporarily one inch taller on her left side than her right.</b> The padding of that same foot looks from afar like a kitten paw, perhaps a large puppy's mitt. It ain't. It's a wet, and likely cold, socked foot, paired with a princess sneaker on it's partner. <br />
<br />
<b>Yesterday, a small child learned: Mummah loves me, but she might could be crazy.</b><br />
<br />
Moral of story: Baby-girl and Mummah were both pushing it. <i>Keep your MF shoes on.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
And... just in case you were wondering, she yelled at me in the car too.<br />
<i>Bed began PROMPTLY at 8.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
xoDMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-53077364140688578292011-09-07T09:52:00.000-04:002011-09-07T09:52:57.804-04:00Nearing 9/11Be good to each other. Even if for the memory of people you never met. To fill the heartache of survivors, of onlookers, of remains that have never been picked up because they couldn't be identified; honor each other.<br />
<br />
<b>Life is, in fact, hard.<br />
</b><br />
And some anniversaries remind you of that.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-54079007852298373612011-09-06T16:53:00.001-04:002011-09-06T16:59:43.224-04:00Some Kind of Perpetual State.<b>I'm in a worrying phase.<br />
</b><br />
I don't know if fear is the right word anymore. It's very passive, blase. The definition just doesn't accurately summarize the empty ache I've been carrying in my right hand. The ever-present flutter of my outermost lash. <b>That </b>shit is bugging me. Fear seems so... fearful. Inactive. Lazily present.<br />
<br />
<b>And perhaps that ain't what I'm feeling. </b>Worry seems lame too. Anxiety is too much of a diagnosis. I'm not there yet. No.<br />
<br />
I been thinking about those closest to me. My mother, my lover, my child, few others. My legit-short list.<br />
<br />
Some thoughts get more of my attention than does my work, my play, court-tv.<br />
Some get more of my anxiety than others. It's the difference between lost sleep over love, and lost footing over a misplaced doll. It's a new kind of math, perhaps. <b>Some things simply can be more easily over-come.<br />
</b> Out-run. Over-thought. #shit.<br />
<br />
But... I won't be long-winded this go round and I need progress.<br />
I think it's <strike>safe</strike> accurate to say: I'm feeling <i>a certain kind of way.<br />
</i><br />
My mom is too skinny. My job is a job. My man is uncertain. My child is observant. My ... other stuff too. Some ain't bad. This ain't (that) bad.<br />
<br />
But I'm feeling some kind of way.<br />
<br />
Right now. Today.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-42608375538920612482011-08-31T19:54:00.000-04:002011-08-31T19:54:29.229-04:00Baggage.I <i>hate </i>that word, <b>effing baggage</b>. Hated it most in the months nearing Valentine's days, anniversaries with (now) exes, in conversations with friends as we scoured the bony remains of an ex-to-be. "<i>that [expletive + adjective + noun] had baggage...</i>" <br />
<br />
<b>I certainly had baggage.</b> And so, I'd hold my nose up sheepishly. Pretend whomever we were ranting about really wasn't shit. A hater, even. Guffaw.<br />
<br />
I'd cringe hearing the phrase when given my "<i>it's not you, it's me speech</i>" by <b>whatever long-legged wave cap wearer</b> I was in love with at any given moment, explaining how my clingyness was the sole contributor of our demise. Most times it wasn't. Most times however, they were right, at least, about my baggage; my clingyness. <br />
<br />
<b>Baggage pretty much sucks.</b> It inhibits relationships to come; professional, personal, and if these relationships ever occur at all. Sometimes they scare love away. Sometimes it ain't the love you needed it to be anyway. Sometimes though, a love that could have been. A love that should have been.<br />
<br />
In the height of Mummi's illness (<i>1987, or thereabouts</i>), she had this thing going on about <b>race, ethnicity and separation</b>. I listened as she explained what sounded like the creation story. She wanted me to get that I belonged in a <b>certain</b> place, with <b>certain </b>people. She wanted me to earn discernment, community. <i>Kind of.</i> She wanted me to understand placehood, a genre of being. <i>Kind of.</i> She interpreted hierarchy in race, class and wanted to put me in a safe place. Perhaps <b>that</b> was it mostly.<br />
<br />
She also had a theory on relationships. I'll spare this story simply to say: it would have been a dangerous path if I stayed at home, spent my adolescence as a prophet of this kind of reality. I was made for more. <br />
<br />
<b>Reminder: Mummi wasn't on meds. </b>She was again in a heightened state.<b> <strike>Some</strike> All of her analogies were off.</b> Confusing. And I was young. Small. Struggling. <b>I accepted what she had to say as a type of truth.</b> The best she could muster. It involved self-loathe of blackness, self-loathe of mixedness, self-loathe of bilingualism. And a promotion of all three at once. <b>I accepted it in that way that a small child accepts the words of his/her mother. </b><br />
<br />
I gauged that perhaps every third word of her relationship theory could have been right, maybe. I sheared her story of it's violence, it's sexual shame, its fearfulness. I extracted what seemed to be the most approachable of her analogy as truth. <i>Clingyness seemed ok enough.</i> Maybe that was how a woman should be. <br />
<br />
I accepted her other truths, the ones about race and class, embarrassedly. I deferred to others who were "blacker", "more mixed", more functionally bi/trilingual. There was nearly no room for me to be enough of much. This feeling of not-enough-ed-ness evolved into fear of those who were enough. I moved away from Mummi and to a more homogenous environment that was nearly entirely black. I went to a school that was nearly entirely white. I was so uncool in both places I became self concious about clapping off-beat and speaking grammatically incorrect, depending upon where I was, with whom, when. <b>No one wants to be an oreo.</b><br />
<br />
Race became my baggage until it became my obsession/fascination. Relationships remained a curious thing. They still are. Even as I've grown up and into myself. <br />
<br />
<b>My arms get tired, all this damn baggage.</b> I accept that I'm still working through what I learned en route. <br />
<br />
And it aint Mummi's fault. It kind of can't be. But its my baggage. Mine.<br />
<br />
<b>And someday I hope I get it right. Drop it off, and move the hell on.</b><br />
<br />
DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-18074096063526061342011-08-17T22:23:00.000-04:002011-08-17T22:23:01.218-04:00Vacationing on Vacation.We went away. Far and away... well, kind of.<br />
<br />
Our unit-of-three vacated Mass for warmer climes... no seriously, we went to <b>Disneyworld</b> in FL in the <b>DEAD</b> of <b>Hot-As-Hell-Hurricaine Season</b>. *Wiping sweat thinking of it.<br />
<br />
Ask me how it was.<br />
<br />
Ok, wait. First, lemme provide some background you may, if you're a semi-reader of this blog, already know or be able to appropriately assume:<br />
<br />
<i>1. I am 31.<br />
2. Our daughter is 2 (and fresh).<br />
3. I've never been to Disneyworld.<br />
4. I've got that "bad", "good" "kinky" <i>in-between hair</i>.<br />
5. I've developed an affinity toward <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woP1GRsvfjg">Princess Tiana</a>.</i><br />
<br />
<b>So effing what.</b> Lots of folks, parents in their 30s haven't taken their fresh ass kids to WD. And who cares about a friggin princess... Well, in all my 30+<b> kinky-headed years</b>, ain't a one of them princesses been brown, had two jobs, missed a parent with her whole heart, or set an example for always aiming to do the right thing, if self-righteously so. It's an understatement to say: <i>I get you girl.</i><br />
<br />
<b>I grew up in a time when kids, brown kids on brown kids, called each other African Booty Scratcher. That ish is funny, but it ain't.</b> And if you're part-time homeless, or look like you might-could scratch your booty (as um, I'm assuming I did as a fuzzy headed part-time homeless kid) brown princesses, or some other animated or real character maintaining the whole you are somebody steez would have been a great aside. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In any event, I cried, and I'm a crier, so I cry-cried at the meeting of said princess, and at the parade when my daughter; a child who lives a very different life than my own, received a full-faced smile and hug from said character. <br />
<br />
I cried when we got on the plane and I realized I was going somewhere not out of necessity, or for work, or in running away, but for whimsy. <br />
<br />
I cried when I realized how thoughtful the place was; sitting under a shorn hedge shaped like Minnie Mouse. <b>Not a heavy cry, but a whimper.</b><br />
<br />
I cried a little at the beach, at the silence of the shoreline, no houses blocking the view of the sea.<br />
<br />
And, perhaps not as much as I cried at the castle, I held a heavy lump in my chest that this is an experience my parents likely will never, ever experience. <b>And part of me doesn't know what to do with all this "understanding". </b>I got a full two weeks of it.<br />
<br />
Perhaps I'll learn more at the cusp of my next vacation to Disney World. <br />
Which, I'm hoping is next year.<br />
<br />
XO<br />
<br />
D <br />
<br />
DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-25949718430011908842011-07-26T17:21:00.003-04:002011-07-26T17:25:22.608-04:00Status Update; I know who or how I am. #perhaps.A blog aint a place to revise your status, or your e-bio, but it is today. Cause I'm feeling down. Cause I'm feeling in betwixt places. Because well... because.<br />
<br />
<b>I like to think of myself as accomplished, if moderately so.</b> You're entitled to think otherwise, but it won't matter much. <b>This here is mine, my otherwise.<br />
<br />
</b>And so, otherwisingly so, I am: a Simmons/Lesley/Tufts woman. An educated micro-economic-maximizer. A failed spend-thrift. An easily agitated-yes man. I have big legs and a wide smile. My forehead is without wrinkles (yet). I frown often and hold uncompromising grudges. I smile sheepishly. <b>I am intermittent.</b> I work less to change that than I did when I was young enough to agenda set my growth.<br />
<br />
I like to think of myself as: a writer. An emotional and emotive logician. A love-hating lover.<br />
<br />
Mostly cause (that latter at least), I knew love former and fleeting, semi-permanent and pushy. I've known love lazy. Indulgent. Too curious and intense for its own good.<br />
<br />
<b>I've known angry love too. He was a hard one, him. I've known love gentle/nervous. He was a hard one, him.<br />
<br />
I've both known and shared mother-love. <i>It's hard, harder, hardest sometimes.</i> Like now. <b>Right-very-much-now.<br />
</b><br />
</b>But I can say in the end I <i>knew</i> love.<br />
And so that makes it <strike>easier</strike>, <i>demandingly difficult and necessary</i> to <i><b>be</b></i> love. <br />
<br />
(perhaps) I say whisperingly.<br />
<br />
Perhaps.<br />
<br />
And there really ain't much left to report besides that.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-11390605187878213702011-07-22T11:04:00.000-04:002011-07-22T11:04:06.848-04:00Heat waves, brown outs, dead cats & other crude accompaniments to life<b>It’s hot as hell.<br />
</b><br />
<i>I mean, damn near.</i> Which causes me to question, how folks in “other” countries do this. I mean, we don’t have flies in the eye crevices kind of thing (<i>not to poke fun, but seriously, we don’t</i>) and so why am I nearly dragging myself from air conditioned point A to B, particularly during my un-air-conditioned moments (<i>which last approximately 3 minutes at most</i>) so painfully.<br />
<br />
When it gets hot like this, and its been in the upper 90s with a ridic amount of humidity for days (sa<b>ve me</b>), I get worried about black outs/brown outs and just not having any damn access to the AC. And less for me than my parents. <br />
<br />
<b>This fear is a lot less superficial than it sounds. </b>I’m not (necessarily) worried about getting hot, or my daughter or boo sweating it out, but my parents. My father is a macho man. I’m sure even if he woke up one day on the tippiest top of the sun he’d not say a damn thing about it being hot. He’d probably just say, Boston drawl drawling: Whaddya-gonnnnna-do. Ehhhh? And he’d be right. Nothing.<br />
<br />
<b>But I remember when my mom was, for the first time in my life hospitalized. It was the summer before 5th grade.</b> We’d received her “summons” letter that essentially said, hi, you’ve been abusing your kid. We have concluded you’re mental. It be best for you to come in, stay here, and said kid will live elsewhere. It was hot that day too. Or I was. Whichever.<br />
<br />
<b>So we walked the 1.3 miles south-west to what was then Mass Mental. </b>I was sweating. We left our two cats Kitten (Pepper as her gov’t name) and Lady (she was my fav). Mummi was admitted and I became a temporary ward of the state. Hot.<br />
<br />
Fast forward two weeks. I stop bed-wetting. My grandmother’s AC hits me perfectly from my new spot on the couch. A light bulb goes off when the dust in my 9 year old mind starts to settle: My cats!<br />
<br />
<b>Anxiety is reintroduced.<br />
</b><br />
<b>I quake, nearly sieze. </b>I need to get my cats out of the apartment, get them fed, watered. It will ruin my mother. They were my only friends, hers. Our only “things”. Forces rally slowly. We return to Huntington Avenue. We walk up the two steep flights. <b>My father enters first, solemnly as if he’s (again) failed me. Motions authoritatively, the way a man who is 6’5 can, that I should remain outside. </b>I push past him. Hell, I’m 9 and I love my cats. I expect them to be dead, both from lack of love as much as air, lack of food, lack of human everything for more than 2 weeks.<br />
<br />
<b>I find two skinny love starved cats.</b> Alive. One with a dry tongue and a pronounced ribcage. The other looking bright and strangely ok. <i>Kitten (Pepper) was industrious.<br />
</i><br />
<b>I don’t know what to extract from this memory</b>. <b>But I have lived with a life-time of fear of things dying when I no longer see them. Fear of letting my mother down. Fear of things/family/pets feeling unloved when I can’t be present to say, hey: I love you/ need you/ want you to thrive. <br />
<br />
</b>I also hate when it gets too hot, but I am, after all, a New Englander.<br />
<br />
Which leads me to today, and an impromptu prayer to the AC God.<br />
<br />
<i>Dear (AC) God,<br />
<br />
Do not let there be a brown-out in Boston proper, (Back Bay). I don’t want Mummi or Lyman to get hot. I love them. Please send it to Concord instead. Uberbia can handle it.<br />
<br />
</i>XOXO,<br />
<br />
DMR.<br />
<br />
<b>Fingers crossed it works.<br />
</b>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-53504930873060722652011-07-18T13:47:00.001-04:002011-07-18T15:08:28.945-04:00New growth; nappy edges and when friendships (need to) fade.So: analogy time...<i>if you're up for it.<br />
</i><br />
When I was a kid (<i>ok, even now</i>) <b>the collective we</b> had names for <b>overgrowth</b>, for the <b>sparse and kinky sections of hair </b>that would grow up and against the relaxed, chemical treated sections. The portions we went over attempting to smooth, smother, slick against humidity, against inevitability, against, well, poetic nappiness. It would work until it rained. Until the growth overtook it's six week pledge to be well behaved. <b>Then it would erupt, realness, frizziness, in a fit of kink and candor</b>.<br />
<br />
Over time, well, you just cut off the treated and "good" shit. Commit yourself to Sundays at the Dominican salon. Adopt other riturals to let your hair be who it could and should be, in any weather. Or you continued that strange and startlingly un/complicated relationship with perm until further notice. <b>#shrug<br />
</b><br />
<br />
Neither approach was/is wrong. Neither made you (or me) a higher powered person, more moraly stable or lovable (I think), but a choice you made on your head and in your mind about what your mane would look like.<br />
<br />
<b>And lately I'm realizing there is some carryover.</b> Friends aren't buckshots, but they can be just as hard to work with... Case in point, I have a close friend. We formerly referred to each other as sisters. <b>Fighting-@$$ sisters, I'll tell you that.</b> But what sisters aren't?<br />
<br />
It was one of those relationships where she hurts your feelings, and I came off as a know-it-all. And it's deeper than <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frenemy">frenemies</a> cause y'all do care for each other and the goal isn't to bring each other down. Y'all think: I can get this joint smooth. I can deal for another six weeks. You can't. At least we couldn't.<br />
<br />
And like clockwork, our typical exchange went its necessary route, starting playfully, then superfically, moseying into someething markedly less official. We talked about hair, to hoes, to family. Perhaps health. Mental health even. We later fell over the deep end. It became very #teamWTF<br />
<br />
The expectation on one side was that I'd provide unwavering support, perhaps a yes or two. Perhaps I was supposed to remain quiet. However, in order to do so I'd have to sacrifice something I strongly believe in, uphold myself to. I'd have to be the lady version of a yesman...<b>But I couldn't/can't/won't.</b> Love is one thing, <i>right </i>is another.<br />
<br />
I semi-realize now my homegirl wasn't wrong, our <i>rights</i> just didn't see eye to eye. Not for years I think now. And perhaps not for years to come.<br />
<br />
So, like a fade, like a good barber, the lines have started to taper, not abruptly, not cuttingly sharp or fierce, but subtlely into the skin of silence that is very necessary and for the time being. And I've not ever been one to speak to forever. So I can't/won't go there.<br />
<br />
That, and I'll admit, sometimes I miss her. <b>And sometimes I want to pull over and scream (I'm damn near always in my car) and say how selfish of you not to let me be the friend I can be/must be/have been...<br />
<br />
</b><i>But I'm realizing, I didn't let <b>her</b> be who she was either. And I perhaps, can't.<br />
</i><br />
And what is this life if we have to be who another makes us be? Or crafts us into? <br />
<br />
Nothing very zen about that.<br />
<br />
I said goodbye to my mom once (ok, five times). Our goodbyes lasted years. they were angry and coarse throated. People say it's different with family, that you can't ever truly let go or truly move on. You know what, it actually isn't. I just decided that I didn't want to do let go or move on. I very much just wanted to see her age. I decided I would attempt growth, indifference, but still me-ness with the time each of us has left. <br />
<br />
And this committment has worked, if bumpingly, if nappily so.<br />
But you make a decision, as an adult, as a grown-@$$ whatever you are, and sometimes your sources of support aren't necesarily supportive, or relective, or reflexive. <b>And sometimes you need some of those -ives more than the others. <br />
<br />
</b>And so for now, and for my own mental stability, I won't be continuing with that strange and startlingly complicated relationship until further notice. <br />
<br />
<b>Goodbye friend.</b>DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-89641071118444552702011-07-13T14:59:00.002-04:002011-07-13T15:34:31.375-04:00I get's it from my Mummah, and her Mummah (in-law) and her...So...<br />
<br />
<b>Once upon a time </b>...I had a friend. A good friend. A friend who I loveded. He was sweet, sugar-pie sweet even. We had simple lives. Well, not really, but we were young(ish). I like to think we still are.<br />
<br />
<b>We game-played.</b> Talked about life when you could do so from afar. When talking about life didn't need to occur in a scheduled sort of way. When life just went on or stopped, but it didn't matter cause you were still broke-ish and happy-ish. I think I was having a bohemian phase. <i>I wear pearls now #deadedthat.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Anyway, yes. Friend.</b> We shit-shot. Talked about love in that sappy sense, in the real sense. I made up a story about how my grandmother viewed love. It was really only half made up now that I think about it. And I learned it more through my cousin than through Nana. And heard it most (or internalized it through my very hard/very large head) only recently.<br />
<br />
<i>Love someone who loves you more than you love them.</i><br />
<br />
So, you're reading this and headnodding. <b>Perhaps you are on that #teamWTF status.</b> It's cool. I'm there, in both places too.<br />
<br />
But here is the story:<br />
<br />
I advise said friend re: Nana's knowledge. He coos, coolly. I continue:<br />
<br />
<i>Well, my Nana used to say, if she could do it again, she'd let her heart choose someone who loved her more than she loved him.//Someone who didn't mind that she cursed like an unpolite sailor.// Who didn't find irony in that she was too educated (for a woman)// that she carried herself regally.// She had too little patience and too many kids.// She would choose this time to devote herself to a man unlike the man who became my grandfather.//She would let this man, this man that may or may not exist// love her profoundly, deeply, rushedly sometimes.// Maybe he'd be uneasily distracted. Too deep.// He'd be strong, stronger than her and his love would show up needingly.//<br />
</i><br />
<b>Crazy, right? Well, I continued</b>:<br />
<br />
<i>He'd be a different man from Papa.//Perhaps none of us would be here because of it.// She wouldn't regret what she didn't know.// The lost devotion to a man less hungry than she needed him to be.// The lost pain of expectation that never occurred.// Or occurred infrequently at best.// The lost pain of being too tall, or too polite, or too everything, because at any given moment she was all of those things, and at any given moment,// she was not enough at all.<br />
</i><br />
<br />
And so, I shared with my sweet friend with the soft heart and the sharp wit. If you fall in love, or walk, or tread into it, love someone who listens hungrily to your stories, even if they make her sad. Love someone who bends her ear and her back to your humor, even if, at times, she realizes the underlying pain your brand of humor embellishes. Love the woman who holds the razor as you shave your face clean as a young boy, even though she'll likely love your face older, more masculine, telling of your place as a man. And read from her actions as you can, what you can, when you can.<br />
<br />
As for me, <b>I want to grow older.</b> Have few facial lines that aren't from laughter or sun. <b>Maintain my posture.</b> I want to smile at my child when I can. Chase her when I need to. <b>Sometimes I'll curse.</b> Sometimes I'll admit, I have too much education, too much pride, too little patience with people that aren't inclined to jazz, or heels, or incense. <br />
<br />
And I want/like <strike>to love a man </strike>to be loved by a man who puts up with this crazy shit anyway. My long winded stories. My overdone posture. My over the top recollections of my childhood, my Mama, my tall-tales and low ones. My overdone overdoneness. Love my everything. Hungrily so. <br />
<br />
<b>I thank my mummah, my nana, and the divine for all this crazy shit</b>, this good and bad fortune, this capacity to question, all of it.<br />
<br />
Question: Do I have that kind of love? Am I like my own Nana in that I'd choose otherwise?<br />
<br />
#hmmm.<br />
<br />
xo,<br />
<br />
DDMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-60359990006171422442011-07-05T21:36:00.000-04:002011-07-05T21:36:45.077-04:00Confined Body I (and 3/4ths) #imjustsayinWe went to NJ for the holiday (July 4th) weekend. It was fun, particularly the NY portion.<br />
<br />
I lived in NYC for a few years, and found that it was the onliest place I have ever truly felt at home. And if you've seen me report otherwise, I was lying.<br />
<br />
No drama here, #justsayin... <b>race is real</b>, <i>the mental anguish of it is too</i>. Being asked every day for much of my life what/who I am, to being asked a host of other ridiculous questions, none of which question my ethnicity, was like a gritty 3 year vacation. One filled with shiny and/or loose teeth, dark and/or light skin, men and/or women (yes) just wanting to flirt, to have conversation, to... well, spit ridiculous game.<br />
<br />
And I miss that.<br />
<br />
<i>Sometimes, when I look around</i>... ok, dramatic moment, <b>I actually don't look around anymore.</b> I just hold my head up as if I am, I position my eyes (sometimes) as if I'm making eye contact, I walk around "being" like it's ok being the only brown/beige/black person in many of my meetings, in the commuter rail ride to my suburban paradise, in the local public library, in my saditty hangouts. <br />
<br />
It's decently lonely; a privileged lonesomeness I've earned with my degrees, and my telephonic prefix. Our polished ruralistic main street. Our emotional and physical distance from here to there.<br />
<br />
I guess I could go to the hood. And do. I do so once a week, barely fitting in. Barely able to retrace the streets I walked once I lived with my grandmother, mostly because I don't remember them; I was, now, recalling in my adulthood, not allowed to wander/wonder. I know those streets from her 17th story vantage point. <br />
<br />
<b>I damn near didn't go outside for 8 years, ages 9-17. </b><br />
<br />
<i>And sometimes, even now, I still ain't outside.</i> Still am not wandering or wondering. Still haven't gotten back to the steady gait I had in a City that does in fact sleep, and where brother/sisterhood does in fact cat-call, and in a place where sometimes you like that shit.<br />
<br />
And I guess I'm admitting it now: <b>I miss that shit.</b> That place. That grit.<br />
<br />
From my lonely-ish piece of privilege.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1939916306833803618.post-34445403509341148282011-06-25T16:14:00.000-04:002011-06-25T16:14:24.781-04:00Confined Body I.<b>I went to prison on Thursday.</b><br />
<br />
Yes, really to <i>prison</i>. A close friend of mine (Hi <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/tikva">Tivka</a>!) and her awesome guide-dog connected me with an awesome <a href="http://www.puppiesbehindbars.com/">program</a> that supports <b>future service dogs for returning and injured military veterans</b> with significant needs that can be supported by these dogs. <br />
<br />
Which is where prison comes in to play.<br />
<br />
Certain inmates, largely those who are <b>incarcerated for life</b> raise these puppies. <b>WTF</b> I'm sure most are thinking. But the business model is a smart one. The human service model perhaps is smarter.<br />
<br />
In this prison, the <b>inmates are all women</b>. Based on a number of the stats, most have suffered some pretty horrific events early on in their lives: <i>survivors of child abuse, sexual abuse, or domestic violence; one or both parents have a mental illness, they themselves have a mental illness</i>. They've committed crimes (many have anyway). Some made criminal mistakes. Some don't know what they've done in that I can think and process it kind of way.<br />
<br />
And some were undergoing severe detoxification during our time in the prison. We didn't get to see them for obvious reasons.<br />
<br />
<b>But there were dogs</b>. Little black puppy dogs. Medium size golden labs. <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/tikva">Tivka's</a> lab/poodle mix. Me. Others interested in this <a href="http://www.puppiesbehindbars.com/">program</a>. Hope was present too. <b>Eager and hungry hope.</b><br />
<br />
So we sat in on this program. Were served cookies. Cried a little. Listened to survivors who are also lifers talk about how their lives were changed by being able to give back. To raise the puppies.<br />
<br />
We walked the campus of the prison on the tour. I met and shielded my eyes from women; some who wanted to be ignored (<i>I think</i>), some who were oblivious to me (<i>I think</i>), some who were so vulnerable due to their diagnoses that the prison was both the safest place for them and the most dangerous of all.<br />
<br />
<i>I tried not to hyperventilate. I over-thought my foolish outfit of shiny beige heels and knee-length skirt. My posture was nearing defeat. I was aware of eyes. Of closed in spaces. Of TVs, everywhere. I've never (ever) seen so much plexiglass. </i><br />
<br />
But there were dogs. And women. And some smiled. And some women had pallor return to their cheeks. One testified smilingly "That dog, she's my old lady." <b>And some didn't say shit.</b> And why should they?<br />
<br />
And before I turn you loose reader, friend, auntie-cousin someone residing somewhere... before you wonder at the audacity of confining a dog to a prison, or worse, a team of dogs who'll learn to lead and to help and to aid a person injured in combat, or on base, or pre-deployment, <b>scroll up</b>. Look at that list of atrocities these women have faced, have endured, have suffered themselves to. And ask yourself, really ask yourself, how many have you faced? Homelessness. Assault? <i>Go ahead, scroll up.</i> I myself have counted <i>at least</i> three out of six. <br />
<br />
<i>But I the one in the silly tan heels. The one working at the health department. The one blogging about it on a Mac. The one with the space to think it through, to wonder at my privilege. To think how close I am to being in, than out.</i><br />
<br />
<b>A close friend calls it survivors guilt.</b> Some may read it otherwise. I don't know. <br />
<br />
Perhaps.DMRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18329472344665402412noreply@blogger.com3