Terrible Mother

And Now, As Part of a Distraction

I need something cheery, so I'm posting more pictures from Whidbey Island.  However, this will only work as a distraction if you post severely cute and/or subtly caustic comments about my children and/or the photos.  So, I hereby announce The First Annual Caption Photo Contest. 

Rules:  All photos will be numbered.  To caption a photo, post a comment and first indicate the number of the picture.  Also, include the caption.  Also, you must hit "enter."

My favorite top 5 will be posted in 1 week, and the winner will be selected by you, fan base.  The first place winner will receive the following:

One (1) bag of tootsie rolls midgies

One (1) Fiction, a Pocket Anthology book*

One (1) cartoon, drawn and autographed by the Things

Undying adulation and respect from the rest of the readers.

To be elligible, you must post your caption by next Thursday, July 6th at 12:00 noon, PST. 

Photos to follow this post. 

*tm

*May not actually fit into a pocket.

Photos 1, 2 and 3 (in that order)

Photos 4, 5 and 6 (in that order)

(a montage, if you will)

Holding On

The break-up has been worse than I thought it would be. 

By that I mean I'm just sorta holding it together.  It started when we got to Whidbey Island Monday evening.  I walked through the beach house--it was perfect, not fancy, but laid back, relaxing and big, with huge windows all along the side facing the water.  The sky was perfectly blue, the water lapped gently at the beach below us, where there driftwood was piled against the rocks.  And The Sweet Boy wasn't there.  While the kids played and wrestled on the hammock, I sat on the back porch--huge, beautiful, perfect--and sobbed.  He was supposed to be here, I kept thinking.  If he were here right now, we'd be laughing about the kids fighting over the hammock, and the weird 70s carpet, and we'd be making plans for the week.  Instead, I was alone. 

The Things have all cried over him, cried that we broke up, which has been the worst.  And every hour or so on our vacation, they brought him up.  "Do you think that motorcycle was like his?" "Do you think that he'd like The Mad Crab?"  "If we bought him a gift, do you think he'd come back?"  "Did he not like us?"  "I thought he said that he loved us."  I try to answer their questions, but it's awful, gut-wrenching having to pretend like it's all okay.

I hate The Sweet Boy for this. 

Right now, I've hit an all-time low.  My friends are all sort of busy with their own lives, I'm alone with the kids going on a week, the house is a mess, I have to find a job, and there is no grown up to tell these things to. 

*tm

Whidbey Island, Part I

On the ferry ride over, Things One and Two ham it up:

On the first night there, Things Two and Three comb the beach by the house: 

Then Thing One found mussels and a crab:

More to come, but Whidbey Island was wonderful.

*tm

At The Farmer's Market

Friend One, buying starters:

Friend R, looking sweet:

These pictures were taken at the Farmer's Market on 6-17.  Friend One and Friend Two and others (Friend R, for example) have been great taking care of me.  This is because the Sweet Boy and I broke up.  It's been a little rough, but I'm doing okay.  It was similar to last time--eerie in fact--and he cried and told me he loved me but that he was afraid.  I began to understand him this time in a way I hadn't before.  And I realized, despite the fact that I love him and that he loves me, it isn't going to work.  I'm working on letting him go. 

More to come, now that I'm done with school.  In the meantime, the Things and I are off to Whidbey Island for a few days. 

*tm

The Straw

What would be a bad thing to plan to hold the weekend before your final week of graduate school?

A slumber party for a bunch of eight year old girls.

Thing One turns 8 on the 9th of June, so I threw her party early, since I'm reading that night as part of the MFA Candidate Reading, and then I graduate (!!!) on the 10th.  She wanted a slumber party, I felt like a bad parent since I've been hiring a sitter twice a week to watch the Things while I work, so there was not even an attempt to dissuade her. 

And because the Law of Graduate School dictates that whenever you plan something where a group of ruthless and strawberry-scented eight year olds will roll their eyes at you in unison, you will suddenly be loaded down with copious amounts of work, even if it requires an act of God.  Enter the Sunday Seminar at the Advisor's House, stage right. 

So, here it is folks:  I've planned and prepared and cleaned up from a slumber party, and now must write a 7-10 page paper by tomorrow at 11:00am, drive to my advisor's house about 45 minutes away, and then have a 5-hour seminar. 

But, see, this is the last thing I have to do before I graduate.  So it's sort of like the dark before the dawn.  Or the slumber party before the crucifixtion.

*tm

For People Who Also Need Breathing Lessons

From the Popular Mechanics webpage entitled "Worst Case Scenarios, How to Survive A Volcanic Eruption"*: 

"If you are in the path of lava, try to get out of its flow in any way possible."

Thanks guys.  That was helpful.

*tm

*I just edited this after I realized that, horror of horrors, I had written "How to Survive and Earthquake."  Anyone who lets me graduate from anything beside "Comatose, Vegetable Style" should be fired. 

Poem of the Week

Skin

Lake Mendota, Wisconsin

Have you said everything
you were going to say
about skin, Kevin? How about
everything you were going to say
about obscurity & loss?
These are the things you know—
There has been a key
for every lock you’ve picked
& when you picked the locks
the keys lost all their weight.
You know your name
is tattooed in black letters
on the asphalt of I-90
somewhere between Madison
& Pittsburgh. You know
wherever it is you are today
is not where you were born
& the girls to whom you give
your number have no idea
not a single ending in your life
has been beautiful. When you see
your father’s name on the Caller ID,
a shot of whiskey spills suddenly
inside you. For a time
you were younger
than your older brother,
& the only reason
you are older than him now
is because you kept on living.
You don’t know who the rowboat
that is moored in the middle of the bay
belongs to, but you know at night
it dreams about the oars
it lost to the mud
at the bottom of the lake. You know
there are things which are genetic
& things which are learned
& then, there are the things
from which you will never be detached.

This is what I’m trying to say:
I miss my brother. I’ve missed him
ever since that train wreck
inside the tunnel of his vein,
a tunnel which instead of openings
had thick walls paved with light
on either end. Once,
he shoved me off a dinghy
& when the propeller bloomed
a wake over my head
he called it my baptism.
This is why my father
concieved an imaginary son
who writes better poems than I do.
This is why I am so far
from the place where I was born
& why every morning when I shave
I want to crawl
into the angle of the mirror
that most resembles childhood.
I take it back: I have no idea
what that rowboat dreams of.
I don’t know the last wishes
of those oars that sunk
to the bottom of the lake,
or even if there were any oars
in the rowboat to begin with.
I don’t know the size
of the scar inside my father
or how a chain link fence
must have begun to rust
around his heart. I don’t know
what made my brother do it.

But back to what I know:
tonight there is a star in the sky
for every period that has been
forgotten by a suicide note.
Because the phone would not stop
ringing, I have locked myself
out of my apartment
& come to this pier
to see how the waves
cradle a dinghy to sleep.
I don’t return my calls
because I have learned
the brief spittle of last kisses
is always a kind of bleeding.
I have grown
into my brother’s Timberlands
& when I walk on gravel
I know he’s in the gaps
between the pebbles. To die
is to leave the keys inside the skin
& lock yourself forever
outside the body. Tonight
this is what remains:
a stationary keel,
the unstirred petals
of the propeller.
                       Father,
I don’t care if this is earned:
I have just caught myself
rehearsing your eulogy.

Kevin A. González