Monthly Archives: May 2011

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Memorial Day (or A Reason to Be Grateful for Facebook)

I was five when my family was moved from Levittown, PA to Ridgefield, CT.

I remember Levittown like flash cards. I hold them up in my mind and have some clear, some shadowed memories. Metal yellow kitchen cabinets. Running around naked at two so my mother could toilet train her last child. Blind-man’s-Bluff with my brother which led to getting stitched. There is a clear memory of kissing the television when JFK was on because my older siblings told me it was our Dad and I believed them. I remember singing to my mother’s flower beds. And the peach tree which oozed goo that stuck to my small hands, and face, and clothes.

Then my parents needed to find a house and since my brother and sister were in school already, I got to go on a trip with my parents all by myself. Stayed in the Danbury Motel and to keep me busy as they drove around looking for a house I got to pick out my first book (all mine, no one else had read it, fresh pages, stiff binding). Dr. Seuss’ A B C’s.

From the age of five until I was sixteen my family and I lived in Ridgefield, CT.  In the mid-sixties we lived in a nondescript ranch on over an acre of land. My playground was a bunch of lawn and trees and boulders. And there were others around to roam creeks and swamp. . . whisper tales about the doings in various houses. . . sledding and bikes and hills. Very hilly town, very steep hill we lived on. . .and I’ve the calves to prove it still.

It was years of CCD and Girl Scouts and small town (when I was young) schools with the same bunch. In Junior High we drifted a little and then in high school a little more, but there was those formative, innocent years that tied us. After my parents split up, I moved to Fall River with my mother which was a big cultural change. I suddenly had cousins, older but cousins around. An aunt who didn’t like me at all. An aunt who loved me. A grandmother who became a confident over the years.

But built inside was this block of memories, some my mother had captured in her photography but those are her visions of what was, not mine.  I lost physical contact but held inside whole field trips, craft projects, camp outs, sleep overs. All two-lane roads, draped in summer shade or that new green of spring make me feel the ride to town. Ice storms and black outs. Yellow school buses. . . and for these I have double memories as I took yellow buses to summer day camp.

The other day a Geoff asked to be my FB  friend with great enthusiasm. And with my fuzzy brain I’ve been trying to place him. I knew the name, remembered his personality but I had to make this geography of faces to figure out where he fit. He sent me a note just today and all the pieces fell into place.

But even writing out, “sent me a note” makes me smile for that’s what we did in school, passed notes (so now they text and it cost money!) and we were a community all our own. In late 2009 I was plagued by a deep, bleak depression. I lost, for a while, that feeling of a future and a sense of the past. I felt very alone, even in groups here in Austin. Austin is only 7 years of my life and I’m 50 (51, actually). My parents are both gone.

Then I started finding ‘friends’ old, lost, dear, found, never-lost-really, friends. I posted photos my mother took and found more friends. . . and then a town and a couple of teachers who truly shaped my life.

And these old-new-rekindled friendships, we get to be grown ups together. We are different and connected. We remember and then mention our children.  And in this, I found my footing, a way of being with the past but not lost to it, nor regretting any of it.  I still struggle with the concept of the future. I can feel tomorrow but not much more. I know in July I’ll go to Boston for family stuff and (hopefully) respite from Texas heat.

There’s much about Facebook that I don’t like, and even don’t trust fully. But Nina, Patti, Sharon, Karen, Tim, Cindy, Pennie, Eden, Cort, Geoff. . .and Tom B. Thank you for being my friend, you’ve made a difference just by showing up.

 

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Still Life

I was fortunate to be able to stay home for the first year of my son’s life. Thank you taxpayers, for which I gratefully pay, I was on Welfare. Yes, I was an unwed, Welfare, not-quite- teen mom. I was twenty when he was born and most of the women in my mother’s family got married (ehem) first and then had babies, late for their generation or our cultural sensibilities. 20 was young. Single was unthinkable.

I remember the first time I heard the term single-parent as applied to divorced women.  I took that term and pasted in my heart and mind.  It was 1980 and shouldn’t our culture have changed enough to move from being unwed to single. . .and lift from my little boy’s life the uglier words like illegitimate. . .he’s mine legitimately and I got the proof. Neither does the word bastard work for so many reasons, including it’s downright Dickensian.

(Long pause, oh let’s say two days just for giggles)

Mother’s day night, sipping a Gnarly Head Old Vine Zin and full of myself I started typing a post. My kid is 30 and he’s got a kid. And I’m a grandmother and two of the best experiences I’ve had in the last seven months are the following.

First, when I waiting in the waiting room in the company of the other new grandparents, I paced. Literally. I also wanted to smoke. . .and I don’t. So I drank coffee. . .and when we finally got to go in the birthing room, there was a bright little boy. I decide not to put a camera between me and the event. I wanted to feel it. Then I saw my son pick up his newborn like he’d been handling babies for a long time. Not one shed of insecurity. He held his son and said, “Hi Lincoln, you know me, you know my voice — I’m your Dad!” Stunned, I just watched. The baby went back to the mom, to the other grandmother. . .all the while I”m remembering the first think I said to my new boy was the exact same thing: “Hello Michael, I’m you’re Mom. You know me. You know my voice. . .You’re my Michael.

Then a little over three months later, I returned to the northeast, a conference and friends in NYC and the grandchild, now three months old.  I was only mentally ready for how cold it is up that way in February and I don’t believe there’s away to prepare physically, except to pack layers, and then buy a hat because some how yours got lost somewhere between DC and Boston on the Bolt.

Then I came to my son’s home. He was working from the dining room. The baby slept in the swing and I watched the baby wake up. Then I watch my son handle this baby and diaper and feed him. Calling him silly names. Telling me baby information, updates that sounds the same but he’s a new parent. Then the sweetest wrinkled brow when I said my grandson’s name.  He looked at me with blue eyes intense, focused, I don’t know that voice. He looked back at his dad and then at me and decided I was ok. Yet no smile.

I then spent time holding him, we just looked at each other. I told him who I was and then he broke into a toothless smile. A bit more time passed, he fussed and he went down for some sleep. It was a big day. I was sleepy so I curled up in the corner of the couch with a book and pretended to read. I watched him sleep. I watched my son at work. I grew quiet inside for it had been a long time since I’d been alone, quiet with my son and there was this new life that is some how attached to me.

Holding my grandson is like every hard obstacle I overcame because I don’t seem to know how to take the easy way out of anything. . . the baby woke up and my son went to him, doing little baby play saying over and over, I love you. I love you. And I knew he didn’t say that for my benefit, that’s not my son’s way. He said because it’s the truth.  And all I could feel was wonder knowing I did something right in the world: my son loves his baby so fully.

Then I got to feed him and as I did, I said the thing I said to him at birth: Didn’t know you’d be the prize but you are so worth doing chemo.  This baby may have blue eyes like I do, may be nearsighted, crooked teeth. May sing or write or understand quantum mechanics, but he doesn’t carry my FAP gene, nor does his father.  I know this.

(time for tea and acknowledging the post is a bit schmaltzy)

Now the hard part is  learning how to be a long-distance Grammi.  I have no role models for this. My mother was around. She helped me out, gladly.  My sister and husband remind me, guide me because my life is in Austin and that’s not going to change any time soon.  Still life.


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I Owe Aliki A Blog Post

One of the things that I find most amazing about my life right now is the depth and breadth of friendships I have with women.  I’m fifty-one and while there have been years in my life where there would be one ‘best’ friend at at time or in high school when my parents were still married when I was a clump of friends called “The Fearsome Foursome plus One”. The original four each has an older sibling in the St. Mary’s Folk Group, then another joined the group so we added her one.

Each of us in that group has a strength. I sang. Mary S. played piano as did Sharon R. Elise had leadership skills and Karen was nice. We all sang. When I think back on those days, I think it’s remarkable that as an entire group we were self-regulating, self composed and rehearsed without supervision. I cannot speak for the rest, but I rehearsed because it gave me somewhere to go on Thursday nights and I got to sing. I loved singing and I still do.

But then as a single mother, when the more familiar term was “un-wed mother”, I had no friends my age. I had people in my life but no intimate relationships other than the men I dated, and since I was in my 20′s, with no self-esteem, I did my best. Then I worked, like all of us, men or women, and went back to school to finish my BA. And time passed.

In that time, I had women friends, a few very close ones that I did not seem able to keep going. Since I’ve been married for 16 years (almost!) I’ve come to understand that it takes two to make a relationship work. I’ve learned things here and there.  (Well, duh, Ann-Marie you’re 51, you should have learned things.) But my sister and I have had to learn these things from nothing. Our mother did not have sustaining friendships. She didn’t do ‘girl talk’.  She did art. She worked hard. We learned those lessons early and often.

But today, my life is alive with woman of many ages.  And I am grateful, for each and everyone of them. Lately I’ve been saying so: “Thank you for being my friend” or “Thank you for accepting me, just the way I am.”

So why the title to this post? One, is I think she’s an amazing poet and woman. I heard Aliki Barnstone first at the Vancouver AWP conference and remembered her name. She was on a panel that was supposed to have Grace Paley, but Grace had been ill and didn’t make the conference.  At other conferences I looked for her name on panels. She was fresh, and smart, and near my age and working at her craft.  I picked up (used) an anthology she edited, “A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now”. One of the few anthologies I recommend to others.

This past February I found myself at the NEA table, at the most recent AWP conference in DC. I looked in a box on the table and there was a new and selected edition of Aliki’s work, “Dear God, Dear Dr. Heartbreak” “OOH” I said, “where can I buy this!” and she said: “This is mine!” as if she were protecting her little ones. So I introduced myself, gushed a bit and gave her my card.

“Can you wait a moment?” she asked and I nodded. We moved to an empty booth and Aliki asked: “If I give you a book will you blog about it?” And of course I said of course.  I was thrilled. I’m getting free stuff that I would have paid good money for! And we chatted, well she chatted because her daughter called just as she was signing the book to me. I was a single-working mom, and from the end of the conversation, she was lovingly trying to be in two places at once. (Note: I tried to walk away as to not eavesdrop but she wouldn’t let me.)  Then she took me over to UNLV booth and introduced me to an editor there, a friend. He started catching up with her about his health and stuff. He turned to me and asked if I was grossing him out. . .to which I, so graciously blurted: “I did treatment for stage 3 Rectal cancer. You cannot gross me out any longer!” Aliki burst into laughter, as did her friend (yes I cannot recall his name) she hugged me and said, “Oh I love you!”

I owe her a blog post. A critical look review of her book. I have not done this but I am recounting how we met. And I”m talking about her work. What I’ve come to know, after working my degree and reading, I’m not great at critical thinking. And I want to say, for now, but it’s not for now. I make stuff. I make stuff up. I repair things. I am only critical about myself, and my work and there, I am hard on myself.

It is May. They are moving the house outside my window. I have Aliki’s book here beside my keyboard. I read bits and pieces and I love the work. It resonates with in. I hoped to write and post this during April, National Poetry Month, but I didn’t.  April was something of a fog in a drought. But I made stuff. I wrote.  And I did volunteer things a friend asked me to do. I did a baby shower and the momma-to-be, dear friend Nadine and her husband asked me to be the god mother. Another friend is here to learn how I needle-felt.

My mind and heart are filled with women-friends, they encourage and support and say, ‘what are you thinking?” and “Man could you be harder on yourself?” How blessed am I?