I thought of you with love today
But that’s nothing new
I thought about you yesterday and the day before that too
I think of you in silence
I often speak your name
All I have is memories
And your picture in a frame
Your memory is my keepsake
With which I’ll never part
God has you in his keeping
I have you in my heart
Charlotte VW Greer
11.6.13
When in doubt
Make a list
Don’t suffer or pout
Do it quick!
Put down your wants
Put down your needs
When life does daunt
Make it easy to read.
Organize your middle
Haunted out in black and white
Don’t retreat to a corner to huddle
There are dragons to smite!
List of concerns
Note your displeasure
When everything around you burns
Write down what you treasure.
11.3.13
Despair is the ultimate sin, and I don’t mean that in a religious way. I mean that once you
despair you are done for. Take a drink, take to chicanery, tell lies, cheat… all active living
things, whereas despair means giving up, it means death.
I have fended off the spare many times, evaded it’s noose. I shall continue to for all my time. I
will set an example for my girls to follow.
Mac said to me the other day when a girl at the store upset her when she made an effort to
make friends. (Mac really had her feelings hurt) I told her of the millions of times I had been
hurt- but she said: “But mama, you are always happy and smiling” I told her how your skin
toughens up with age and you learn to shirk off the mean people and focus on the positive.
When a facade breaks there is rubble; and the better and more elaborate the facade, the more
rubble there is. For facades take work, and beget hopeless belief over disbelief. The crumbling
can be hidden at first, but eventually, the most ornate of facades will tumble.. leaving its
architect shattered somewhere in the rubble.
11.2.13
11.2.13
So Halloween has come and gone. Chris, in an effort to look magnanimous, acquiesced to
bring the girls to Auntie Nan and Uncle Carl’s per tradition… but with one stipulation.. “The girls
so wanted Trish to come”; Nan responded dryly “Well isn’t that a bit like oil and water?”; Chris
never responded.. but oil and water indeed. Which got me thinking.
When you make a salad dressing, you shake oil and vinegar together and they mix temporarily,
but in no time at all, and under no outside influence, they are separated again. Not through any
fault of either of them, simply the laws of nature.
And so went Trisha’s visit, or maybe we should call it an invasion. The most polite, even
welcoming yet unsatisfactory visit she could have. And Chris’ little dig at me lost in the unlikely
mix.
4.4.2020
As I sat here transcribing the above little piece that I wrote I’m thinking that some contacts might
be necessary. This was after my marriage had fallen apart because of this affair. I must admit
that behind their backs and certainly nowhere near the children we simply referred to Trish as
the paramour because that is simply what he was. We could have told her and Chris the fuck
off to Oblivion. But that only with a confused and hurt my girls and without ever having to say a
word about it Aunt Nan knew exactly what to do and how to respond. If I’d only known what the
future would bring, and how without any regard to the girl’s feelings or mine Chris and Trish
would act to alienate our side of the family. Maybe we all would have been less polite and more
cutting.. but what good would it do?
10.31.13
There’s a healing virtue to soil. It accepts the most revolting things and by some miracle
transforms them in two lovely flowers of trees, crops, flowers most ornate. The soil even takes
on the most blackened of souls, and hold them fixed. Keeping their victims safe, like a buffer
allowing for time to take precedence. The soil has nothing but time.
Life Demands a rational approach. But the last thing men and women will be is rational. They’ll
be martyrs, saintly or devils, brave or cowardly, intelligent or stupid, but rational? No.
Modern verbiage calls them mixed families. Old fashioned hearts decree it dovetailing. Whatever
metaphor likens to mind, there must be plenty of love to go around. If I only had one apple and
four children, I would quarter it equally and dole it out just so… regardless if they came into my
heart via womb or marriage.
It’s times like these I am embarrassed by my own inability to weep. I feel grief in my mind, a
constriction in my chest, even a hard painful lump in my throat, but the release of tears of
denied me. Years of not daring to cry, telling myself feared played said if I once gave way, I’d be
done for and never stop.
Enough of tragedy on the news. Of evil step parents and their views. I just happen to know that
if it were me in that place, they have to come through me to abuse anyone of my children.
2013
10.2.13
I live my life on the cusp
A lingering precipice
Beating back all I trust
Silently waiting for trespass
Whether it's wax or waned
the sky is empty of moon
look what the night has claimed night birds sing there empty tune
I was supposed to rise above
but I sink into the ocean
waiting for one more shove lingering with the notion
empty house
empty room
the voices in my head
doubting Thomases makes me swoon
every cusp has its edge
razor sharp an achingly dull
so I wait on this ledge
fear of unknown crashing in my skull