A day of nothing,
that’s what I need to jazz me.
To recharge and kick start the engine.
But there’s always the danger of a day of do-nothing
leading to lethargy,
sad, morose thoughts.
Of not enough energy to do anything productive,
but enough guilt to keep away any enjoyment.
Where do hummingbirds go in winter?
I think I was brainwashed as a child. Ha ha, weren’t we all? But I’ve been meditating on the concept of three lately. For some reason, it’s cycled back through my subconscious – and this song came up.
A man and a woman had a little baby,
yes they did,
they had three in the family –
that’s a magic number.
Those lines cycled around my subconscious on an endless loop growing up. It was always those lines.
Apparently I didn’t absorb the other math concepts in the song, because instead of 1+1=3, I decided to go for three kids rather than three total family members.
But three always did have a special connotation for me. As an only child, it was always three of us in my family and what a nice little tight-knit crew we were. I was assigned the number 3 jersey when I played CYO basketball for several years. And speaking of spiritual organizations, there is, of course the ultimate – the Holy Trinity.
Revisiting this song in the context of today’s antiseptic if tolerant culture, I was super-surprised that the lyrics alluded to the mystical trinity. Whoa.
There is a reason comparable concepts cycle through the universe’s subconscious. There’s that, and the super catchy ditty that gets stuck in one’s head like an ear worm. But all kidding and brainwashing aside, there is a magic to the way things grab onto us and won’t let go. My man and I could have had a little baby and stopped, but I wouldn’t see the sparkle in each of their magical little eyes.
A few years ago for Christmas, I chose a card that said peace, joy, and love to accompany a photo of our three girls. Each of my girls has one of these characteristics at her essence. There is no measure to that number.
I’ve reentered the world of Writer’s Market,
that world where dreams dash against the rocks of phrases like, no unsolicited manuscripts, no unagented material.
A maze where magical words lose their luster amidst the dark shadows of procedure and proximity.
Where you wonder if you’ll ever come out the other side and almost wish you’d never gone in,
wish you’d stayed in that bright, open space where not necessarily certainty, but at least possibility, bloomed in big clouds above your head and in your heart.
Now my writing consists of queries and quandries, of spin and specious matter.
If only I could stay in that imaginary world of my own making
and not try to sell it in the real one.
Today, I am unhappy to say that I know what Katniss feels like when she unleashes that nest of mutant killer wasps.
It all started innocently enough. My three girls had joined forces with two neighboring boys for a game of Cops and Robbers. As our little vigilantes sought justice in the woods behind the house, their mother and I watched from the patio. Alas, the true offenders would not be brought to justice.
The youngest boy suddenly started screaming. At first, I thought a branch had broken on him or he’d gotten caught up in a pricker bush, but the screams got louder even as he exited the woods. Two of my girls started screaming and crying and the older boy started yelling. His mother ran to the youngest to assess the situation and calm him. That’s when we both noticed the several yellow jackets swarming around the top of his back, head, and neck. My girls swatted and pulled at their skin as others attacked them. In a frenzy, we all ran in different directions, swatting, swinging, crying, and pulling. Even almost to the front edge of the house, the yellow jackets followed and continued stinging. We ran to the street to escape. My neighbor and her boys went the opposite direction, around and eventually into their house. My only daughter who had escaped the assault, stood well away, no doubt petrified watching what befell her sisters. We all ran to our house a few doors down, where I stripped clothing as needed, applied witch hazel, baking soda paste, and benzocaine, administered antihistamines – all while trying to ignore the stabbing pain in my own thumb where one had gotten me and not start sobbing and repeatedly tell my daughters to stick out their tongues to see if they were swelling.
After checking in with my neighbor (her sons were okay – thankfully), comparing notes, and sharing some antihistamine, I settled my girls in front of the TV with ice packs to take their minds off the emotional and physical trauma (yes, soma for the masses). By the time my husband arrived home from work, I was a limp dishrag hunched over the laptop researching for the next best bee sting remedy. I recounted how I couldn’t tell if I was shaking as a reaction to the venom coursing through my veins or the surge of adrenaline. In any case, the adrenaline had left its host a quivering mass of nerves and worry.
I don’t know if it was the unexpected nature of the event, the anguish I felt for my children’s pain or my own, the dreaded anticipation of an heretofore unknown allergic reaction – or simply the mama bear effect, but the whole experience sucked. I watched the snot run down their faces and mingle with their tears, heard their wails of distress, even ran to their aid to take those striped demons out, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. The one yellow jacket I saw bent and broken, its bright yellow in contrast against the black of my cell phone on the ground where it got thrown, was only dead because it had already driven its sharp stinger into the precious flesh of my children.
My one daughter who didn’t get stung didn’t want us to open the windows. My neighbor said her sons didn’t want to go outside. I myself had shuttled them up the hill and into the house as quickly as I could, slamming the door behind me. Trying to catch my breath in the aftermath, the only words I could form for the helpless feeling I had watching my children in pain was, ‘parenting is scary.’
It’s a wonder any of us want to leave the house, a host of dangers lying in wait. Unexpected. Uncontrollable. Unwarranted. Oy vey.
I decided to pack a more comprehensive first aid kit to keep in the car or in our backpack on hikes. I’m trying to come up with a plan to keep my children from being afraid to explore outside. I’m trying to take away the positive that when the stinger hits its mark, I can and will step up to the parenting challenge.
May the odds be ever in our favor.
A strip of skin
crisp to the touch
kissed by the sun.
An out of context reminder
that summer is falling away.
Flowers bloom
but look sad next
to the heads of wild grass
bowing low
laden with seeds.
Vibrant yellow,
brown edges
creeping closer to the center.
Soon,
all will be dry and brittle
like a strip of sunburned skin.
Happy Monday morning, all! As I decipher whether or not that vise grip of a headache is the effects of withdrawal, my newest post has gone live on A Canvas of the Minds. Go visit for more info! Thanks!
We must leave the house at 3:45
No, wait, the bus arrives at 3:45
Aah, rinse the soap out of my hair and showering is done
Wait, did I wash my feet?
When there is a bullet of fog
lodged
in your brain,
it’s very easy for thoughts to get lost in translation.
The tricky part is remembering what the hell they meant in the first place.
A new mother, five week old strapped to her abdomen, stood nearby as I spoke to another returning preschool mother as we all three watched our little ones play.
My anxious hackles were actually down, since my daughter had had a few play dates with this other mother’s daughter between the end of last school year and the beginning of this one. I knew her well enough that conversation seemed to come easily – a small miracle for me with nearly anyone other than family or close friends.
Seeing this new mother navigate a newbie preschooler with infant in tow brought me back to my own first experience with preschool – a time otherwise known as the year that shall not be named.
What a difference between the easy, breezy tenor of today and the hell on earth that nearly every morning was as I unwittingly struggled with postpartum and getting three children out of the house each morning.
Forgive me as I recite the Virginia Slims cigarette commercial catch phrase.
from a t-shirt of the same name
I try to tell myself that as I ease my muscles down from the twitchy edge.
I try to remember that time – only to make any morning issue seem that much easier now.
I try to recall just enough to vindicate my survival – not send me down the path of PTSD.
And I try to share the short version of my story, not to scare young mothers or one up them, but to provide a sympathetic show of support. Even if it’s just a knowing smile to show them they are not alone, that they are not the only one who struggles with such pedestrian endeavors.
And to remind myself that yes, I have come a long way.
Dinner at our house can be a little trying. That is, if you’d like to eat without acquiring indigestion, without running to the kitchen after two bites to refill the glasses of milk the wee ones finished in 2.5 seconds, leaving no room in their tender bellies for the food they wouldn’t eat anyway because it has green stuff on it – but I digress. (See Dinner with Kids for further clarification)
In an attempt to keep them at the table for longer than the 0.5 seconds they usually last after finishing their milk, I bought packs of cocktail napkins (at the discount store) with conversation starters on them. We started with the jokes and riddles. Even funnier than the corny jokes was my middle daughter’s uncanny knack at figuring out the punch lines. Hmmm . . . perhaps that’s why she wanted to pass out the napkins. After a few nights of that, we graduated to life’s important questions. If you could invite any one – living or dead – to dinner, who would it be? Again, the middle stole the show – and my heart – when she replied, without missing a beat, Grandma Julie, my beloved grandmother and her namesake whom she never met.
from seasonedkitchen.com
Another night, we had to reveal which superpower we would want as a superhero. I piped up with my response first. “That’s easy, definitely flying.” Like with a cape? Flapping your wings like a bird? “No, just with my arms out as I floated above the trees.” My answer came easily because I automatically remembered my most favorite dreams – those where I soar above the tops of the trees and roofs of neighbor’s houses behind my childhood home. The psychological conclusions one can glean from this dream are fodder for perhaps a whole series of posts, but the upshot today is what my oldest daughter said with a look of impressed surprise on her face.
I think that says perhaps more about my existence right now than my thwarted desires of dreams. All sorts of high-falutin’, politically feminist, empowering responses came to mind, but I simply said thank you and took it as the compliment I’m sure she meant it as.
What a strange psychological experiment parenting is – for all parties involved. I suppose mind-expanding conversation – even if they need be started with paper squares we smear across our faces – is one way to navigate the maze and see the different paths available. If not, there are always our dreams and unbridled imagination – even for moms.
I’ve been trying to let my heart be light,
let hope buoy it
as it inflates the cavity in my chest
where I think my soul would reside
had it a physical home.
The human mind is a fickle thing.
We think,
thinking we control it,
but it controls us,
foiling every good procedure we know we need to follow.
Our minds psych our selves out –
of our minds.
There must be some outer guidance,
some supplication,
if our insides are not to roil about,
acidly eating away from the core, out.
A gentle hand
A supernatural help
There but for the grace of God, go I
where my heart floats lightly in the center of my soul.
Chopping Potatoes 