Thursday, March 21, 2019
Ma Petite Memere and the Swimsuit of Destiny
"Hey, Poppy! Do you have any new stories for us? We need some new stories." Whaaaaat? You're clamoring for new stories?! Yes! I do have another...
Sunday, February 24, 2019
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Saturday, May 28, 2016
The Shark Bite and Other Stories
Hello, friends.
A long, long time ago I had a boyfriend who was a big fan of Michael Ondaatje. Maybe you recognize this author's name, maybe you don't. He is the author of the book The English Patient. I was so glad that this boyfriend was so ga-ga for Ondaatje because I managed to read the book before the movie came out and everyone insisted I HAD to watch it. (That is likely a subject for another post - how I feel about being told I "HAVE TO" or "MUST" read or watch something. Spoiler alert: I don't respond well). I fell in love with Ondaatje's prose, and then I fell in love with his poetry. In the book The Cinnamon Peeler there are two poems that hit me in the solar plexus: "The Cinnamon Peeler" and "The Time Around Scars". Here is a link to "The Cinnamon Peeler".
And here is "The Time Around Scars":
A girl whom I've not spoken to
or shared coffee with for several years
writes of an old scar.
On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,
the size of a leech.
I gave it to her
brandishing a new Italian penknife.
Look, I said turning,
and blood spat onto her shirt.
My wife has scars like spread raindrops
on knees and ankles,
she talks of broken greenhouse panes
and yet, apart from imagining red feet,
(a nymph out of Chagall)
I bring little to that scene.
We remember the time around scars,
they freeze irrelevant emotions
and divide us from present friends.
I remember this girl's face,
the widening rise of surprise.
And would she
moving with lover or husband
conceal or flaunt it,
or keep it at her wrist
a mysterious watch.
And this scar I then remember
is medallion of no emotion.
I would met you now
and I would wish this scar
to have been given with
all the love
that never occurred between us.
***
I have a scar on my back that I love. I got it nearly three years ago when I had a fatty tumor removed. It is about two thirds of the way down my back on the right side, nearly to the side of my torso. There is a lot of emotion around this scar. On the day that I had the surgery, a time in which I joked nearly constantly with the surgeon, I came out of her office to find I had received a job offer for teaching. I was so excited, I wanted to jump up and down but couldn't because I had just had surgery. This was the job that eventually led to me becoming a shell of my former self, so now there is another layer of emotion in retrospect.
Later I had such outrageous pain in the incision site that I went back to the surgeon and found out I had blood clots developing there. She cut open some stitches and squeezed out them out. It was unbelievably painful. I might actually compare it to the pain of squeezing one of my children out of my body. I'm not exaggerating. And, just like when I squeezed out my kids, once the clots were out, I felt such euphoric relief that I nearly swooned. She kept the stitches open so I could take care of the clots on my own.
I could tell when a clot was developing when I felt a tingle of tightening and then a growing pressure. When one did (which happened about once a day at first, then became less often as time passed), I admit to being a bit excited. I would go to the bathroom to watch in the mirror as I squeezed my fingers along the incision to push the clot to the open end. And when it came out? Hoooweee, boy! The clot would pop out first, followed by a small burst of blood thinned out with some other bodily liquid. I would watch it run down my back, and then I'd clean it all up. Each time I experienced the minor agony of the clot moving inside my body and then the minor euphoria of release. Steve observed once or twice when I thought I needed a little help. He didn't enjoy this process in quite the same way I did.
Eventually the clots stopped developing and my skin knitted back together. The scar that was left is not very pretty. I call it my "shark bite", and I love it. I love it precisely because of what Ondaatje says in his poem: it is a medallion of emotion. I tend to have a lot of emotions anyway, but this shark bite on my back is a localized, physical reminder of pain, pleasure, humor, and excitement. It still tingles a bit to this day. Maybe there is one last tiny blood clot still trapped below the surface. (Don't worry: they are not the kind that could go traveling to my lungs and cause a pulmonary embolism; I asked the doc about that).
I get the sense that Ondaatje wishes that he could have had more involvement with his wife's scars. I don't quite feel the same way. Steve has a scar on his upper arm from climbing through a trap door in an elevator and one on his thumb from filleting a red snapper. I love the image of him with his fish knife and the red snapper and the slice and the blood and holding a towel to his thumb on a ride to the hospital for stitches. I don't need to tell him about the shark bite because he was there, but I can tell him about the first time I tried to shave my legs and took off a huge strip of skin.
It's such an amazing thing that we carry our bodies around in this world with their beauty and their pain and their stories.
A long, long time ago I had a boyfriend who was a big fan of Michael Ondaatje. Maybe you recognize this author's name, maybe you don't. He is the author of the book The English Patient. I was so glad that this boyfriend was so ga-ga for Ondaatje because I managed to read the book before the movie came out and everyone insisted I HAD to watch it. (That is likely a subject for another post - how I feel about being told I "HAVE TO" or "MUST" read or watch something. Spoiler alert: I don't respond well). I fell in love with Ondaatje's prose, and then I fell in love with his poetry. In the book The Cinnamon Peeler there are two poems that hit me in the solar plexus: "The Cinnamon Peeler" and "The Time Around Scars". Here is a link to "The Cinnamon Peeler".
And here is "The Time Around Scars":
A girl whom I've not spoken to
or shared coffee with for several years
writes of an old scar.
On her wrist it sleeps, smooth and white,
the size of a leech.
I gave it to her
brandishing a new Italian penknife.
Look, I said turning,
and blood spat onto her shirt.
My wife has scars like spread raindrops
on knees and ankles,
she talks of broken greenhouse panes
and yet, apart from imagining red feet,
(a nymph out of Chagall)
I bring little to that scene.
We remember the time around scars,
they freeze irrelevant emotions
and divide us from present friends.
I remember this girl's face,
the widening rise of surprise.
And would she
moving with lover or husband
conceal or flaunt it,
or keep it at her wrist
a mysterious watch.
And this scar I then remember
is medallion of no emotion.
I would met you now
and I would wish this scar
to have been given with
all the love
that never occurred between us.
***
I have a scar on my back that I love. I got it nearly three years ago when I had a fatty tumor removed. It is about two thirds of the way down my back on the right side, nearly to the side of my torso. There is a lot of emotion around this scar. On the day that I had the surgery, a time in which I joked nearly constantly with the surgeon, I came out of her office to find I had received a job offer for teaching. I was so excited, I wanted to jump up and down but couldn't because I had just had surgery. This was the job that eventually led to me becoming a shell of my former self, so now there is another layer of emotion in retrospect.
Later I had such outrageous pain in the incision site that I went back to the surgeon and found out I had blood clots developing there. She cut open some stitches and squeezed out them out. It was unbelievably painful. I might actually compare it to the pain of squeezing one of my children out of my body. I'm not exaggerating. And, just like when I squeezed out my kids, once the clots were out, I felt such euphoric relief that I nearly swooned. She kept the stitches open so I could take care of the clots on my own.
I could tell when a clot was developing when I felt a tingle of tightening and then a growing pressure. When one did (which happened about once a day at first, then became less often as time passed), I admit to being a bit excited. I would go to the bathroom to watch in the mirror as I squeezed my fingers along the incision to push the clot to the open end. And when it came out? Hoooweee, boy! The clot would pop out first, followed by a small burst of blood thinned out with some other bodily liquid. I would watch it run down my back, and then I'd clean it all up. Each time I experienced the minor agony of the clot moving inside my body and then the minor euphoria of release. Steve observed once or twice when I thought I needed a little help. He didn't enjoy this process in quite the same way I did.
Eventually the clots stopped developing and my skin knitted back together. The scar that was left is not very pretty. I call it my "shark bite", and I love it. I love it precisely because of what Ondaatje says in his poem: it is a medallion of emotion. I tend to have a lot of emotions anyway, but this shark bite on my back is a localized, physical reminder of pain, pleasure, humor, and excitement. It still tingles a bit to this day. Maybe there is one last tiny blood clot still trapped below the surface. (Don't worry: they are not the kind that could go traveling to my lungs and cause a pulmonary embolism; I asked the doc about that).
I get the sense that Ondaatje wishes that he could have had more involvement with his wife's scars. I don't quite feel the same way. Steve has a scar on his upper arm from climbing through a trap door in an elevator and one on his thumb from filleting a red snapper. I love the image of him with his fish knife and the red snapper and the slice and the blood and holding a towel to his thumb on a ride to the hospital for stitches. I don't need to tell him about the shark bite because he was there, but I can tell him about the first time I tried to shave my legs and took off a huge strip of skin.
It's such an amazing thing that we carry our bodies around in this world with their beauty and their pain and their stories.
Saturday, May 21, 2016
All the Pretty Detritus
I wrote this one 3.5 years ago. I made a couple edits for clarity, but otherwise it's untouched. Perhaps my favorite part of this piece is the title. That is some good stuff I thought of all those years ago.
***
Last night I picked the nighttime book to read to Beckett, who is six and a half now. Night time reading is not consistent these days. Sometimes he wants to read independently, and I am okay with that. I still feel really strongly, though, that being read aloud to is incredibly important. I've been reading a book to him titled The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson, and I've been loving it. Beckett thinks it is mostly great, but there is a major plot point of mistaken identity that gets him really worked up. He hasn't been wanting to read this lately, so last night I picked a different book instead. This one was called Covered Wagons, Bumpy Trails by Verla Kay, illustrated by S.D. Schindler. In a nutshell, the book is about some of the first covered wagon trains to cross from the midwest to California in covered wagons.
Covered Wagons seemed like a good choice as it looked unlikely to cause undue agitation. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It is a lovely book: the verse is well-written, the illustrations are good, the background information given at the front of the book is informative and brief. The road the settlers take, however, is perilous and difficult. There were signs early on that this would be difficult to get through for my sensitive kid. Things were manageable until...until those poor settlers had to discard a bunch of their possessions while pushing their covered wagons up the Rocky Mountains.
Beckett felt the loss of things so acutely that he instantly sprung tears and could hardly breathe. He thought of what it would mean to lose his Legos. I thought about distracting him from this thought to get away from the pain, but I couldn't. It felt important to stay with this and talk it through. Here are some of my initial thoughts: how can he not notice that I get rid of things around here all the time? We live in a one bedroom apartment, filled with four humans and their stuff. I am the gatekeeper, the editor, and the judge. I am sentimental about things by nature myself, but I've gotten to a point where I can manage this without letting things get stuck. Our home is not minimalistic by any stretch of the imagination, but we have managed to get it to a point that it actually feels more open and less overwhelmed than some other, larger homes I've been to. (That is not a criticism of other people's choices; I don't want to live with so much stuff, but I don't judge anyone else for doing so. If it's causing them problems that they are not dealing with, then that's a harder one to hold judgment on).
***
That's where I ended it 3.5 years ago. Today Beckett and Sammy were reading over my shoulder and Beckett exclaimed that "of course" he didn't know I got rid of things all the time - he was only 6.5. At which point Sammy exclaimed, "You get rid of things all the time? Really?" So, I guess that's not quite something they've noticed.
It's harder. They're bigger. They're more attached to things. But periodically we go through their things together. Sometimes it's a big deal (sit here for 1 hour while we touch every toy on the shelves) and sometimes it's more casual (let's see how which pants really fit you and you actually wear). But we still manage to fit ourselves in this little apartment. Lately I've read a few Amish romance novels, and there's nothing like a glimpse into a Plain household to put things in perspective.
Let go of the pretty detritus. At the very least, you will get to use that turn of phrase.
***
Last night I picked the nighttime book to read to Beckett, who is six and a half now. Night time reading is not consistent these days. Sometimes he wants to read independently, and I am okay with that. I still feel really strongly, though, that being read aloud to is incredibly important. I've been reading a book to him titled The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson, and I've been loving it. Beckett thinks it is mostly great, but there is a major plot point of mistaken identity that gets him really worked up. He hasn't been wanting to read this lately, so last night I picked a different book instead. This one was called Covered Wagons, Bumpy Trails by Verla Kay, illustrated by S.D. Schindler. In a nutshell, the book is about some of the first covered wagon trains to cross from the midwest to California in covered wagons.
Covered Wagons seemed like a good choice as it looked unlikely to cause undue agitation. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It is a lovely book: the verse is well-written, the illustrations are good, the background information given at the front of the book is informative and brief. The road the settlers take, however, is perilous and difficult. There were signs early on that this would be difficult to get through for my sensitive kid. Things were manageable until...until those poor settlers had to discard a bunch of their possessions while pushing their covered wagons up the Rocky Mountains.
Beckett felt the loss of things so acutely that he instantly sprung tears and could hardly breathe. He thought of what it would mean to lose his Legos. I thought about distracting him from this thought to get away from the pain, but I couldn't. It felt important to stay with this and talk it through. Here are some of my initial thoughts: how can he not notice that I get rid of things around here all the time? We live in a one bedroom apartment, filled with four humans and their stuff. I am the gatekeeper, the editor, and the judge. I am sentimental about things by nature myself, but I've gotten to a point where I can manage this without letting things get stuck. Our home is not minimalistic by any stretch of the imagination, but we have managed to get it to a point that it actually feels more open and less overwhelmed than some other, larger homes I've been to. (That is not a criticism of other people's choices; I don't want to live with so much stuff, but I don't judge anyone else for doing so. If it's causing them problems that they are not dealing with, then that's a harder one to hold judgment on).
***
That's where I ended it 3.5 years ago. Today Beckett and Sammy were reading over my shoulder and Beckett exclaimed that "of course" he didn't know I got rid of things all the time - he was only 6.5. At which point Sammy exclaimed, "You get rid of things all the time? Really?" So, I guess that's not quite something they've noticed.
It's harder. They're bigger. They're more attached to things. But periodically we go through their things together. Sometimes it's a big deal (sit here for 1 hour while we touch every toy on the shelves) and sometimes it's more casual (let's see how which pants really fit you and you actually wear). But we still manage to fit ourselves in this little apartment. Lately I've read a few Amish romance novels, and there's nothing like a glimpse into a Plain household to put things in perspective.
Let go of the pretty detritus. At the very least, you will get to use that turn of phrase.
Hurricane Preparedness
I wrote this in August 2011. I have no idea how I was going to finish that last sentence. This was before Irene, let alone Sandy, so it's kind of wild.
***
We are looking down the barrel at Hurricane Irene. I tend to not listen to, watch or read the news. I used to get my news from E! Online, but now I get it from Facebook. It's like a large-scale combo version of Phone-a-Friend and Ask the Audience. There is always a crackpot or two with wildly out of scale information, but it evens out for the most part.
I also don't tend to panic about impending disasters. I will worry the shit out of whether I've applied to enough Kindergarten options for my kid, but I was feeling pretty blasé about the hurricane until this morning. So I went to Target. People were all well-behaved, there was no pushing and shoving. The only real sign that something was doing down was the unusual number of
***
We are looking down the barrel at Hurricane Irene. I tend to not listen to, watch or read the news. I used to get my news from E! Online, but now I get it from Facebook. It's like a large-scale combo version of Phone-a-Friend and Ask the Audience. There is always a crackpot or two with wildly out of scale information, but it evens out for the most part.
I also don't tend to panic about impending disasters. I will worry the shit out of whether I've applied to enough Kindergarten options for my kid, but I was feeling pretty blasé about the hurricane until this morning. So I went to Target. People were all well-behaved, there was no pushing and shoving. The only real sign that something was doing down was the unusual number of
A new layer of life
It's really wild to go back and read what I last blogged. Apparently five years ago I thought I'd write regularly. Interesting.
Let's catch up quickly:
-I finished my degree in English for secondary education and got my teaching certificate
-I became a middle school teacher at a school in Brooklyn for two years, and I became a shell of my former self
-My kids got a lot bigger (Beckett is almost 10 and Sammy is almost 6.5)
-I realized that early childhood is a better fit for me, and I now teach at the same preschool both of the boys went to
-Steve and I are still married
-We got two cats
I'm going to concentrate on that last one. Our last cat (the awesome Little Cat!) died shortly before Sammy turned one year old. We were overwhelmed by life, and it was a relief to not have the responsibility of a cat or to have to cede space to it. Every once in a while I would casually mention getting a cat, Steve would say something grumpy, and I'd let it go. Then, a little more than a year ago, I realized that I needed a cat with a passion. Remember that part above where I became a shell of my former self? That sucked. I needed a warm, breathing, furry being that would make noises and sit on my lap sometimes to help fill up the shell of my existence. I promised Steve that I would take care of the litter box. I got the kids on board. We harassed him until he said yes. Hooray! And then it took another year to get a cat.
We got two. They might be brother and sister. They were captured living on the street, being fed by a woman who cut a hole in her door so cats could come in and out, but then she moved to Florida or something.
The girl cat, Delilah, likes being patted. When I pick her up and put her on my lap and rub her vigorously under her chin, she almost purrs. The boy cat, Julius, not so much. He hisses if we come too close (within 2 feet of him) or when we startle him with a noise. He might be just a little too feral to ever let us touch him. And I'm okay with that. I admit to feeling sad for a week or so when I realized that it might never change. I would love a couple of sweet cats who rub their heads against my legs, beg for space on my lap, and drape garlands of flowers over my shoulders. But it turns out that I really love this cat who won't let me touch him. When the kids go to bed, the two cats come out in full force to chase each other and play in the living room. He may not purr, but he makes really cute, high-pitched "mew" noises when I put the food down. Sometimes when I'm on my bed reading, I can hear one or both of them moving around underneath.
We opened our home to these cats because we needed them and they needed us. I happened to be reading a book about outrageous openness at the time they came to us, and I thank the Divine Light for that because it helped me move past the regret to get quickly to the good part: free, unqualified love of these animals with whom I share space. There is an extra layer of life in our home now, and it is both smelly and glorious.
Let's catch up quickly:
-I finished my degree in English for secondary education and got my teaching certificate
-I became a middle school teacher at a school in Brooklyn for two years, and I became a shell of my former self
-My kids got a lot bigger (Beckett is almost 10 and Sammy is almost 6.5)
-I realized that early childhood is a better fit for me, and I now teach at the same preschool both of the boys went to
-Steve and I are still married
-We got two cats
I'm going to concentrate on that last one. Our last cat (the awesome Little Cat!) died shortly before Sammy turned one year old. We were overwhelmed by life, and it was a relief to not have the responsibility of a cat or to have to cede space to it. Every once in a while I would casually mention getting a cat, Steve would say something grumpy, and I'd let it go. Then, a little more than a year ago, I realized that I needed a cat with a passion. Remember that part above where I became a shell of my former self? That sucked. I needed a warm, breathing, furry being that would make noises and sit on my lap sometimes to help fill up the shell of my existence. I promised Steve that I would take care of the litter box. I got the kids on board. We harassed him until he said yes. Hooray! And then it took another year to get a cat.
We got two. They might be brother and sister. They were captured living on the street, being fed by a woman who cut a hole in her door so cats could come in and out, but then she moved to Florida or something.
 |
| Can you find the cats? |
The girl cat, Delilah, likes being patted. When I pick her up and put her on my lap and rub her vigorously under her chin, she almost purrs. The boy cat, Julius, not so much. He hisses if we come too close (within 2 feet of him) or when we startle him with a noise. He might be just a little too feral to ever let us touch him. And I'm okay with that. I admit to feeling sad for a week or so when I realized that it might never change. I would love a couple of sweet cats who rub their heads against my legs, beg for space on my lap, and drape garlands of flowers over my shoulders. But it turns out that I really love this cat who won't let me touch him. When the kids go to bed, the two cats come out in full force to chase each other and play in the living room. He may not purr, but he makes really cute, high-pitched "mew" noises when I put the food down. Sometimes when I'm on my bed reading, I can hear one or both of them moving around underneath.
We opened our home to these cats because we needed them and they needed us. I happened to be reading a book about outrageous openness at the time they came to us, and I thank the Divine Light for that because it helped me move past the regret to get quickly to the good part: free, unqualified love of these animals with whom I share space. There is an extra layer of life in our home now, and it is both smelly and glorious.
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