Terrible Mother

Poem of the Week

PRACTICE

Love, my faith is vague. When others speak

of how they practice it, I think of kung fu

and plywood destroyed by pajamed banshees,

how they always say you learn

such force through practice, pain repeated until

pain isn't pain. It's the piccolo

with its reed humming slivers

of sound that won't ever be music

no matter the fervor of practice,

no matter the pursed poise

of your lips. When I write you, when I peel

away the stamps one no longer

need lick, I'm careful. Careful

for ounces of ink and pulp

and minutes shaved from time

if it exists at all and these words

I strung together beyond needful elaboration

only to say I thought of you

today beside the humming fountain

and had no change to wish

you some better life,

some cloud of shade to be

at your infinite beck, your always and immediate

call. A form of faith I follow

is the sky because it never falls,

despite the testimony of chickens

snuffed by hail, ragdolled by the rain

and through my window

I'm watching the last of summer

as the leaves begin to curl

in invisible fire

and I want to tell you

one thing which has within it no urgency at all

over and over again.

-Paul Guest

Listen Here

Thanksgiving afternoon, whilst cooking turkey and whatnot, I had a cell phone conversation that went something like this:

Friend Omega: I have a question for you.

Terrible Mother: Okay, shoot.

Friend Omega: How do you make fabric stiff? And don't say starch. That won't work.

Terrible Mother: I don't know. How stiff do you need it?

Friend Omega: Pretty stiff.

Terrible Mother: How big is it?

Friend Omega: Pretty big. Four feet by ten feet or something. And a person has to go in it.

Terrible Mother: Jesus Christ, Omega. What the hell are you building?

[It is at this point that Rock 'n' Roll History Scholar and Friend R realize that this is not a conversation about food.]

Friend Omega: I can't tell you.

Terrible Mother: Christ. Okay. Christ. Lemme think.

Friend Omega: We really need your help.

Terrible Mother: Okay, what kind of fabric is it?

Friend Omega: polyester.

Terrible Mother: And how long do you need it to last?

Friend Omega: About a month.

Terrible Mother: Jesus! It would be so much easier if it were cotton and you only needed it to last a few hours.

Friend Omega: We called you because you're the only housewife we know. Or sorta housewife.

Terrible Mother: I hate you.

Friend Omega: What! Isn't this what they teach you in Home Ec.?

Terrible Mother: How to field holiday calls from aspiring filmmakers building sets and needing to make some aspect of said set without fully explaining it? Yes, Omega. That was my entire eighth grade year.

We talked for a little while, and I gave him a few ideas. I hope the ideas worked, though I was worried about them. And the rest of my crew and I laughed a little over the call, which ended with me saying "Happy Thanksgiving, " and Omega sighing, dramatically, saying, "Yes, Happy Genocide Rememberence Day to you too." But then yesterday, Omega posted a great entry on his blog called "Projects." I can relate, can relate so well. As the person who recently sent off writing samples to a dating website, hoping to be their newest columnist and Q&A girl, I can relate.

So, Omega, Happy Set Building Day. And Happy Moviemaking. I hope it all went well.

*tm

Thanksgiving Photos

Friend R was house sitting for our mutual friend, Hunter/Writer over the holiday. Hunter/Writer has an amazing hand-built log cabin outside of town so it was only natural that Friend R decide to hold a Thanksgiving celebration there. As Friend-in-Residence, he invited me to come out Wedneday night. I picked him up after getting the Things off with John, and we loaded up the car with clothes and cooking items, various foods, and then stopped at the grocery store on the way out to the cabin.

That first night there, Friend R first practiced with the various butchering implements:

after which, he made a very tasty venison stew:

We ate late (very late, Spain late), but listened to music, drank gin and tonics (mine, regardless of what Friend R days, were better), and talked.

I went to sleep in the basement, where it was freezing, but settled under three down comforters and awoke, the next morning, toasty warm and quite happy. It was raining outside--I could hear the thrum on the roof--and above me, Friend R was busy in the kitchen, and everything felt homey and comfortable.

It helped that Friend R let me sleep until 11 am, a time which I cannot remember sleeping to since...well, since. There are a whole lot of things I could end that sentence with, and one of them would be "since Bush was in office. No, the first one."

After sipping coffee, Friend R and I busied ourselves with the preparations, which involved messing up the kitchen, repeatedly:

We took time out to drink coffee on the porch overlooking the valley:

and to pose for a photo:

before we got down to the serious business of turkey:

and it wasn't too long before we were eating:

and enjoying the house:

Rock'n' Roll History Scholar came out, as well as Sqeaky Clean Poet, Tim-Tim, and the girl he's dating, Smartly Quiet and Calm. We ate a lot, drank more, and I spent a few hours knitting my scarf (which is, as of twenty minutes ago, done. DONE!).

Thanksgiving, as it turned out, was not half bad. Not by a long shot.

*tm

Poem of the Week

FIRST LOVE

They say
the first love's most important.
That's very romantic,
but not my experience.

Something was and wasn't there between us,
something went on and went away.

My hands never tremble
when I stumble on silly keepsakes
and a sheaf of letters tied with string
— not even ribbon.

Our only meeting after years:
two chairs chatting
at a chilly table.

Other loves
still breathe deep inside me.
This one's too short of breath even to sigh.

Yet just exactly as it is,
it does what the others still can't manage:
unremembered,
not even seen in dreams,
it introduces me to death.

-Wislawa Szymborska
from Monologue of a Dog

(Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak)

*tm

The Mysteries of Humor

On the phone yesterday afternoon, Jon gave me the final diagnosis. It's the fourth version of final--the first being high grade, aggressive sarcoma, then possibly a very rare infection, and then low grade sarcoma. The final, most definitive, and hopefully last diagnosis is a cancer of the deltoid muscle, called a desmoid tumor, the same kind of cancer Dave Dravecky was diagnosed with in the 80s. Jon won't need chemotherapy or radiation, but he'll lose his arm about 5 inches below the shoulder. His surgery is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

It was no more than a minute before we were joking about it. He was talking about getting the arm off and he said, apropos of nothing, "but you know, amputation. It's no big thing. It's like a Tuesday night in front of the tv for me." Then he added, "but no chemo or radiation! Damn it! I wanted to lose this last bit of belly." I joked back, and it wasn't long before we were laughing together.

"Are you taking time off of school?" I asked.

"Well, I have to miss one day. But I'm going back the next week."

"That's like a guaranteed 'A'," I said. "'Hey, I had my arm amputated and I only missed one day of class!' How could you not do well this term?"

One of the best things about us was the shared sense of humor we had, how we'd both make things okay by joking about them. I didn't mention it on the blog, but when Jon and I were dating, he dumped me often and repeatedly. Lots of times said dumping would last no more than forty minutes, but it was exhausting, kept me on my toes, made it impossible for me to evaluate the relationship because I was always in recover mode. It was a bad way to go, and it tells me now that there was something seriously wrong with us, some foundational aspect that would have never been fixed.

The first time he broke up with me was maybe a month in*. He wanted to meet up at a restuarant for dinner and "a talk." I drove 30 miles north to do this, missed a class (because he insisted it was that important), and met him at a Red Robin in the middle of nowhere--his choice. I had never been to Red Robin, and was a little taken aback by how bright everything was, how forcefully cheery the staff was (our waiter sat next to me, in the booth!, while he told us the specials).

So when Jon started in with the "I don't think we should see each other anymore," right after the waiter had brought me my iced tea, replete with doll-sized paper umbrellas (plural), I was thinking "there is no way I am doing this in a giant, well-lit burger place in the presence of paper umbrellas," told him so, and promptly left. This was also because I was going to reach across the table and strangle him (I missed class, drove for 30 minutes, for this?) if I didn't walk out right. that. second.

Red Robin has door people--and around these parts these people hand out balloons--and as I was leaving, all bent out of shape, angry and sad and thinking of all the verbal attacks I could launch on Jon later, someone opened the door and offered me a balloon, saying "thanks for coming!" I took the balloon, it was a jaunty purple, and then realized that the person handing it to me was a little person. Also, he was wearing a jester hat**.

It was like I was stuck in a romantic comedy of not-my-own-choosing.

But the best thing about this story is the way that I spun it, much later, to his family, and how we acted out parts, took on roles. "This is how I got dumped," I said at a big family dinner, once. "Jon had me meet him, meet him, as in 'drive 30 minutes,' at a Red Robin. Red Robin. Otherwise known as the brightest place on the Earth, to do it."

"I'm sorry!" he would say, not at all sorry, laughing.

"It's brighter than the sun in there! All those pieces of flash! And the happy waiters!"

"I'm sorry!"

At this point, everyone would be laughing, leaning in, elbows on the table.

"So he dumps me, right, and I get all angry and leave," I'd continue, "and as I'm leaving, this guy hands me a balloon. And I'm about 3 seconds from crying, I mean, I've just walked away from a table full of shiny objects and paper umbrellas where I've gotten dumped, so I take the stupid balloon and then I realize that this guy is a little person. And he's wearing a jester hat."

On cue, Jon would say, "I'm really sorry!" while everyone roared.

"It's practically a violation of the Geneva Conventions!" I'd add. Then I'd take his face in my hands, and say, with only a little faux frustration, most of it being authentic but funnelled into the long joke, "if you get only one thing from this relationship, it better be this: you are never allowed to break up with someone at Red Robin. Never!"

His parents loved this story, laughed heartily at it. They wanted to like me more, I know, but couldn't bear the idea of one more painful thing happening to Jon, so they held me at arm's length, as though they knew I'd be the harbinger of some terrible loss. So they loved me best when I was telling a funny story, especially when it was something painful I had spun into something humorous. It was the only time they trusted me. Maybe the times I made everyone laugh, they thought I'd be the person who could finally help Jon best his pain. Maybe they saw in me then a form of caretaking no one else could give him: better than a wife would be an alchemist capable of turning loss into episodic tales, humorous and manageable.

Sometimes I think if I could just have told funny story after funny story, they would have accepted me.

Mostly now when Jon and I talk, I hear what he's asking for, what he needs. So I tell him he'll be fine. I tell jokes, stories about my job and the Things. He is, I am certain, going to be ultimately fine. The cancer has a very low rate of reoccurence once amputation is done, and he has a good, strong family. It's just that they can't give him this one thing. And maybe that's my role in all this. That I let him call me, or I call him, make jokes as if it's my duty to do so.

*tm

*At some point in the relationship, I started deeming the constant breakups "putting the relationship through feats of strength." So then, when Jon would break up with me, I'd say, "Oh God. Not another feat of strength!" Is every relationship this insular? I think it is.

**Beyond Red Robin merely being a bad place to be dumped, any restaurant that would hire a little person to stand at the goddamned door and hand out balloons--in a jester hat--should be boycotted. Seriously. I don't care how many stupid paper umbrellas they put in their unsweetened ice tea.*

*I really do have a thing for the paper umbrellas. Also, this is a footnote of a footnote. Is that allowed?

Hey, Your Chocolate Is in My Peanut Butter!

Just in time for Thanksgiving, we, the good people at Terrible Mother, meaning me, are bringing you this new category, Hey, Your Chocolate Is in My Peanut Butter, named because it is a combination, a hybrid, if you will, of Conversations With No One Important with and Missives from the Mailbag:

Yes, I could have called it Email Exchanges but where the hell is the fun in that?

******

From: Fort Awesome

To: Terrible Mother
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:10 AM
Subject: I must break up with him

I know how to do it. I'll use the objective correlative: his assumption of mutuality is unfounded in the text so far ( i.e. in what has transpired). he is reacting in a way that doesn't make sense given the circumstances- if he was a character in a story d. bradley would be all over him - too much negative space!

thank god for t.s. elliot!

From: Terrible Mother

To: Fort Awesome
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: I must break up with him

I am never dating you, LOL

From: Fort Awesome

To: Terrible Mother
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:13 AM
Subject: I must break up with him

you over use the lol- i think you should just say L from now on - i seriously doubt there is that much out loud laughing

From: Terrible Mother

To: Fort Awesome
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:15 AM
Subject: Re: I must break up with him

You want I should start using the smilies?

From: Fort Awesome

To: Terrible Mother
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:16 AM
Subject: I must break up with him

curse you- you are the kind of people who knit sweaters for thier pet ferrets and dot their "i" s with hearts and stars

From: Terrible Mother

To: Fort Awesome
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:16 AM
Subject: Re: I must break up with him

I didn't say that I wanted to use the smilie. I'm just asking what my other options are.

From: Fort Awesome

To: Terrible Mother
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:17 AM
Subject: I must break up with him

this is going in your god damned blog, isn't it?

From: Terrible Mother

To: Fort Awesome
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: I must break up with him

it's ALL going in the blog. One way or another.

:) :) :) :)

From: Fort Awesome

To: Terrible Mother
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:20 AM
Subject: I must break up with him

i feel used- and moderately titilated- those are probably related. writers- we are all cannibals: when i have a blog .....

From: Terrible Mother

To: Fort Awesome
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:21 AM
Subject: Re: I must break up with him

When you have a blog, what...?

From: Fort Awesome

To: Terrible Mother
Date: Oct 31, 2006 9:22 AM
Subject: I must break up with him

are you trying to start something, tm? beware my rapier wit.

shit, I'm pretty sure i spelled that wrong.

*tm

Under Construction

Over the next few days, I'll be working on the blog trying to get a working "Cast of Characters" sidebar going, per Kari's request. There's one right now that I'm fiddling with, and if you have any ideas (Freak? Where are you Freak?) of how to configure such a thing, let me know.

However, I'll be still be posting, and everything should work fine, except for said sidebar.

*tm

Miscellany

In the past few months my AWP plans have suffered more ups and downs than the Republican Party. A month ago, I was certain I couldn't go, as I was pretty much told that by my employer. Friend One had something approaching a meltdown when I broke the news to her.

"Just call in sick!" she said.

I squelched the urge to tell her I was no longer 18 and employed at Round Table Pizza and instead mentioned how that might not be a good idea. She sighed, dramatically, which she is wont to do, and then said, "But Friend Two won't come if you don't come."

"Pshaw!" I said. "Of course he'll come."

Two hours later, Friend Two's email read: There is no way I'm going unless you're going.

Besides knowing I could not be the weak link in the Holy MFA Trinity of Friend One, Friend Two and me (myself? I? They are all interchangable, right Omega?), I was looking forward to hanging out with Lynn, Kevin (Kevin!), Stoic but Socially Inept Writer, Squeaky Clean Poet, flirting with random poetry editors and telling them, drunkenly, "You're going to publish Friend One, right?" while ordering another Bombay Sapphire and tonic, and meeting The Nefarious but Adorable Poet, formerly known as Huckleberry, perhaps the worst name ever used on my blog. Ever.

So, I did what any girl in my situation would do--that is, what any single girl with three kids, a secretarial job, an MFA, and an old score on the LSAT in the 99th percentile burning a whole in her pocket like so much loose change would do. I got out my union contract and read that mofo from front to back. And I discovered the Holy Grail of government employment: the loop hole.

And, now, weeks later, I am officially allowed to attend said event.

Friend One owes me at least one drink, I think. At least one. In fact, you all owe me something. Except Friend Two who has spent the past few weeks gnashing his teeth trying to talk Singing Love into going as well.

********

On ThanksEarly, Friend Two and Tragically Hip Single Mom were in my front room with me, hanging out. THSM was teaching me how to knit, and the Things and THSM's daughter, Feral Child, were running in and out of the house, playing. Then Thing One pointed at Friend Two. "You," she said, "should date her." And instead of pointing at me (THANK GOD) she pointed at THSM. There was a moment of embarrassed silence.

"Thing One," I said, "Friend Two has a girlfriend, remember?"

"Yeah," said THSM. "And I have a boyfriend, Dark Horse. Remember?"

"Well, you can just dump him," Thing One said. "And you two can get married."

So, from now on, I think I should call THSM "Mrs. Friend Two."

*******

I have to take a Power Point class in the morning. For three hours. Just kill me now.

*******

After meeting and hanging out, Friend Two proclaimed that Tragically Hip Single Mom's blog name should be "Fatally Hip Single Mom."

I didn't tell him that she had already zinged him but good, saying, "he looks like he's super-high maintenance."

He is FHSM. He is.

*******

FC and Thing One were in the backseat of the car tonight on the way home* when they started talking about a substitute that neither of them likes. One of them, I could not tell which one, said, about the substitute, "She has really bad handwriting because she's so pretty."

Best non sequitur ever.

*******

Fort Awesome came over tonight to drop off cash for Thing One and Two's fundraiser at the First Name School and she brought her new boyfriend, Way Too Bashful to be a Republican**. At one point, Thing Three was trying to talk to someone through one of the Superman walkie-talkies in the house. Way Too Bashful to be a Republican pointed out that, while she was talking into one, the other was sitting in front of her, turned off, so she couldn't talk to anyone.

"What?" she said loudly.

"The other one is right there," he said.

At which point, Thing Three made a guttural sound, much like a wildebeest***, grabbed both walkie-talkies in her fists, and put the antennae--plural--in her mouth.

Because she is feral.

*******

I am becoming addicted to knitting and Buffy. Tonight I watched an episode of Buffy while working some alpaca wool from Chile into something resembling a scarf. It's like I'm 60. A really hip 60, but still. 60.

*******

I just realized I am going to be alone for 8 days. In December. During the week of my birthday. No kids. But also, all friends will be out of town. At the holidays.

Kari? Where are you Kari?

*******

Fort Awesome tonight at my house said, "Family dinners were always uncomfortable at my house. No one talked." Then she visibly brightened. "Unless the dogs were there!"

*tm

*Often, I pick up FC for Terribly Hip Single Mom and bring her home with us, where she hangs out for 20-30 minutes until her mom gets out of class. THSM thinks it's a big pain in the ass for me to do that, but it's really no big deal. Seriously, THSM. Look, I've posted it publically, even.

**I was going to say "Way Too Nice to be a Republican," but then I thought that bashful was actually more unusual. He's sweet and kind and articulate. And voted for Bush both times. GAH!

***Yes, it is spelled that way. I looked it up.

Poem of the Week

Ballade of the Troubled Mother

She was only trying to unlock the boredom a little.
The days stretched out from the bed to her son.
She tried singing songs. She could hear the fiddle
in the back of her mind. The chores left undone,
she would wander all the way to the fence. The sun
going down would remind her of blood. How could
a woman be content with such silence? Was she the one,
who might do what only a woman would?

She was only trying to unlock the boredom. A little
bruise here or there. His hand, his soft palm, a won-
der to behold. She held it, firmly. In the middle
of the day, the heat might lead to many con-
templations. She might just without meaning to. The son
cried and cried. Who would ignore such sorrow? Could
a woman who did so be considered good? None
of the other mothers would do what a woman should.

She was only trying. To unlock the boredom, a little
cunning was needed. The invention of games: one,
two, untie his shoe. Three, four, shards litter
the floor. Was this the story, the way it was sung
from mother to child? Was she transmitting it to her son
when she wept, silently, into his hair? Should
she bind her own mouth to staunch the tune?
She would do just what a mother should.

She was only trying. To unlock the boredom a little
requires a few instruments, a hammer, nails, wood.
She was the key, sang silver, knew the true song of metal.
She would love him the way only a mother could.

-Lynn Kilpatrick

*tm

Life Like

from Toothpaste for Dinner.

*tm