Forsythia...
is in bloom all over this town...I just love that word...forsythia...and I love the plant. It looks so spindly and ragged all year, but come spring, it outshines every other plant that's beginning to bloom.
Forsythia, anemome, sycamore, peony, lavendar, honeysuckle...those are just words I love to speak and read and think about...what are some others? Hmmmm....caramel, tangerine, marmalade...

I really was going to write something about all the roadkill I passed on the way to class last night. Bad, bad couple of days for lots of four-legged creatures and some web-footed ones as well. On a 19 miles stretch of road, I passed 3 dead deer, 1 huge Canadian Goose, 3 skunks, a red-talied fox, so many squirrels I lost count, a duck, at least 3 oppossums, 2 raccoons, and 2 rabbits. It was just almost too much to think about.

I do have a roadkill poem running through my head, but it's going to have to wait.

Time to go get Wes from school and then get back to work and get some work done! Busy, busy time of year in this office. Summer school starts before too long, I have at least 25 students graduating from various programs, I have more folks coming in to see me to determine their eligibiity for training assistance, one of our local factories announced that they are closing and laying off over 300 hundred people so we'll be doing all we can to help them, and a new plant is going to be opening some time this summer and will be taking applications for positions in 2 weeks--so...busy, busy, busy.

Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
L. Cohen



Everyone who Reached Out for Me

When I was 12, it was Carole Sue, only
she made the first tear, really, when she
called me uppity white girl (though she was whiter
than a North Pole ice-cap and my skin was Mediterranean
golden olive or some such golden color). For two

years, we were blissfully happy in our mutual discontent.
We became best friends when she nearly lost her arm
in a tangle with my kitchen storm door. That
was long before safety glass and 911, so I grabbed
the closest piece of cloth I could find (which happened
to be momma's favorite linen table cloth that was stretched
over the line in the laundry room) and by golly, I stopped
that bleeding long enough for the ambluance to get there.

And I think we might have made it without ever a bump
in the road, but she did a stupid thing--the stupiest thing--and kissed
Matthew Hawkins, who was just a little bit more than a bump in the road
(and a whole lot less than a best friend though I didn't know that then).
So I tore into her pretty white face with my hard-clinched
little uppity fist and showed her just how mean a golden girl could be.
That' s when I decided there was something to be said for tearing
things apart without actually making a tear, without really hearing
something rip or break, without making a sound sometimes. Knowing
was enough.


Good old Carole Sue. I wonder where she is these days. I really want to do something with the whole tearing idea because, well, because it's not just an idea. It is real. It has been a pattern of mine. I feel like I always do something to sabotage a relationship. I want closeness and I fear it. I know what it is to be close and I love what I know, but there is so much fear in closeness. Fear and pain and worry and having to have faith. Faith is the most difficult, I think, but fear is what grips me most of the time. I think if I had some faith, then I wouldn't be so fearful.

Geez am I tired! Still not sleeping well. Still having to deal with my raging hormones. Still feeling somewhat bored with myself.

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free.

Listening to Leonard Cohen on the way to work this morning. My 15 year old son and his friends that ride to school with us every day always say, "Wes's mom has the coolest music!" That is, until I put on L.C.! Give them time and they'll love the man!

I feel like that bird on a wire--more like the drunk in a midnight choir...oh, and those lines in which he says, "Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn, I have torn everyone who reached out for me."

Yep, I feel like I've done the same damned thing--torn everyone who reached out for me. We're all just trying to be free. It's a hard thing. It's hard. It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard rain's gonna fall....circling round like I do when I listen to music.

When I was listening to Cohen, I was thinking about Buckley's version of Hallelujah, and then once I started thinking about Buckley, I started thinking about Nina Simone--Lilac Wine

I lost myself on a cool damp night
gave myself to that misty light
was hypnotized by a strange delight
under the lilac tree

I make wine from the lilac tree
put my heart in its recipe
it makes me see what I want to see
and be what I want to be

well, I think more that I outta think
do things I never should do
I drink much than I outta drink
because it brings me back you

Lilac wine is sweet and heady/like my love/lilac wine, I feel unsteady/ where's my love?

or something to that affect

And then from Nina, I go to Cat Power (she covered Wild is the Wind on her covers CD)

and then I start thinking about my daughter and wondering how she and Ville (pronounced Vil-la) are doing.

Then I start singing some of Ville's songs off the Mattoid CD "Hello"
Funeral Party
Rat Poison

Then I start thinking about the rain and I am back to Cohen and searching for the CD that has Famous Blue Raincoat on it. Then I want to be anywhere except driving my car to work. Well, no, not really anywhere. For example, I don't want to be in the Muhlenberg County Jail!

A poet from M'ville has a chapbook called "Counting Down the Days in the Muhlneberg Co. Jail". I lost my copy and don't know where to get another, and he and I are no longer in touch, so I probably won't get another, but it was a damn fine chapbook.

And so round and round go the thoughts and I can't get any work done and I am way behind!!!!

Was listening to Jonny Cash on the way to work this morning singing Sunday Morning Coming Down


Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An' I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An' stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

Made me think of a Lucinda Williams' song--

Sundays

I can't seem to make it through Sunday
I can't seem to make it through Sunday

Monday through Saturday I get by just fine
Every other day of the week I feel alright
But I don't know why
I don't know why

I can't seem to make it through Sunday
I can't seem to make it through Sunday

Sunday's supposed to be the day for kicking off your shoes
But how come that's the day I always get the blues
And I don't know why
I don't know why

I can't seem to make it through Sunday
I can't seem to make it through Sunday

Ever since you had to go I just carry on
But deep down inside I know there's something wrong
And I don't know why
I don't know why

I can't seem to make it through Sunday
I can't seem to make it through Sunday
I can't seem to make it through Sunday
I can't seem to make it through Sunday
I can't seem to make it through Sunday
I can't seem to make it through Sunday

Today feels like Sunday. If I don't start getting some decent sleep I don't know what I am going to do. Sometimes I feel that I am literally falling apart or losing my mind (well, hmmm, most folks who know me would say I lost it a very long time ago).

The world has lost one helluva man. B.Q. died Saturday. I can't really write poems anymore--brain just can't make those metaphorical leaps at this time in my life. Not that poetry has to be all metaphorical. Just needs to have some lyricism and a certain perspective, but I don't have it in me now. But, I had to write something for B.Q. He will be missed. He was 87 years young. Here's to you, B.Q.


For Barney

This one's for the guy who carried a slice
of potato in his pocket at all times
to pull the pain from his bones,

an old remedy he learned somewhere
along the way. Long after he'd wrecked
himself paratrooping onto the shores

of Normandy. This one is for the man
who pulled quarters from his ears
and magically pulled them from my children's

ears too, their eyes wide with wonder.
This in my kitchen, 15 years ago now.
Thousands of miles from a kitchen in Amfreville

that shletered him and offered its
own sort of magic to a young man
far from home, deep in the heart of France.

This one is for the man who loved
the Boy Scouts and took under his wings
a bunch of rag-tag little boys

and shaped them into wonderful
men, caring human beings, good
husbands and fathers. From the battlefields

of Shiloh and Chickamauga, to the woods
of Lake Malone, KY, to star-filled nights
spent cooking chili over an open fire--

he was there with them. Through
their transition from boy to man, he was there.
From Cub Scouts, to the Order of The Arrow,

and from Life to Eagle, he was there.
In the best of times, and the worst.
This one is for the man who was there

and in our memories will always be.




That's about all I can do right now. Visitation tomorrow night and funeral Thursday. I have called my oldest son home. My husband will carry B.Q's body along with other former Troop 11 boys from 67-73. Men now who will never forget everything he did for them

Ate lunch with my coworker (and friend), Ashley, today. She will be 28 in April--just a few months older than my oldest child. It's interesting to me that our interactions don't feel like mother/daughter as I sorta thought they might (what with having a child her age and all--yes, yes--that is Kentucky-speak!!!!). She's great fun, makes me laugh a lot, and is interesting to talk to.

So, after we ate and went our seperate ways, I passed the grocery store I used to shop in when my older two children were little ones. All of a sudden, an image of me in a yellow summer blouse, white cotton shorts, sun-tanned body, long, healthy hair, flip-flops, etc popped into my head. I was pushing the grocery cart through the produce section. Someone I knew from high school was there and she said,

"You look great! Being a mommy really suits you. And look at your kids! Oh my, they look just like you!"

I thanked her for the compliment and turned back around to look at my little girl. She was about 18 months old at the time. She was sitting in the cart, and while I had my face truned toward my friend, she had reached into the cart and gotten a green pepper out of the produce bag. She had already eaten about 1/3 of the pepper! She just looked at me and smiled and what could I do but give her a great big smile right back? And then there was my little boy over in the fruit section looking for the best bunch of bananas on the planet. He brought the biggest bunch he could find and put them in the cart.

And I thought then, as I think now, that I could not have been doing anything of any greater importance than what I was doing. I was being a mom. I was loving being a mommy and loving being a stay-at-home mommy at that.

And as all these images popped into my brain in the short little time span of a few seconds, tears started streaming down my cheeks. By the time I got home, I was full-blown sobbing. Ok...I guess we can chalk it up to hormones, but I think it's something more. For as hard as those days were in many ways, they were happier days, and I miss them.

And, I don't want to live in the past. I couldn't even if I wanted to. I can't go back. No one can. I only have this moment, and I want to fully embrace it. It just doesn't seem real or right to me that 30 years have gone by so quickly.

Yeah, I know it sounds kinda "Peggy Sue Got Married-ish", but it's how I feel today.

What are needs?

They are conditions within the individual that are essential and necessary for the maintenance of life and for the nurturance of growth and well-being.

So says my psych book Understanding Motivation and Emotion

Of course, there are different types of needs: biological (thirst, hunger, sex)
psychological: competence and belongingness

When I read the chapter on the three psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), my worst fears were confirmed! Though I feel I have the autonomy and competence thing down, the relatedness is just not there.

The book says:

Relatedness is the need to establish close emotional bonds and attachments with other people, and it reflects the desire to be emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved in warm relationships.

Of course, I feel I understand and know relatedness in regard to my children, but it seems it has become very difficult to know it with anyone else.

and more:

When a person feels emotionally connected to and interpersonally involved with another, he or she believes the other person is truly looking out for his or her welfare, relatedness is high, and internalization occurs willingly. When a person feels emotionally distant from and interpersonally neglected by another, relatedness is low and internalization rarely occurs.

Emotionally distant. That is where I am. There was once a time in my life when I felt I had many friends. I married young. I had children young. I had friends then who also had children. Many of my high school friends left for college, and that was basically the end of the friendship. Little by little, the friends I had when my children were younger starting drifting out of my life.
I know I had much to do with that.

I was changing, and though they were too, they couldn't see their changes as they could see mine.

I started going to college. I was working full time, taking care of my kids, and trying to go to school. Things I had been doing no longer seemed very important. There's this really inane dice game people in these parts play. It's called Bunko. It's more for socialization than anything else. It had gotten to the point that every time I played with this group of women, someone had just had a boob job, or nose job, or liposuction, or any number of cosmetic things done adn they would go on and on about it or show the group their new bodies. Or they would discuss their sex games (or lack thereof) or any number of things that are just meant for idle, meaningless conversation. One particular night, I had had all I could take. I just kept hearing Bob Dylan's voice saying:

"You can't even sense if they got any insides, these people so pretty in their ribbons and bows."

And that was that. I couldn't sense if they had any insides. I left in the middle of the game and I never went back. Not to say I want to go back now. I don't belong to that any longer. I just want to belong somewhere. I want to sit around at the writer's group and feel a part of the group. They are great folks--all MA's and MFA's in English. All witty and funny as hell. All decent writers. All of them most welcoming. But I feel on the outside. So, I don't belong there.

I go to writer's retreats. Take my poems and review them with the group. Some there are better than I am, others not as good. The fellowship is good. The food and wine are great. The readings are interesting. But as the weekend comes to a close, no one asks for my address or indicates they'd like to stay in touch.

Relatedness. It just ain't happening for me.

Mostly troubling dreams last night. More of the sanitary napkin symbolism stuff going on as well. Someone was having a baby. At first, I thought it was me, but I was watching the woman, so I am not sure. Maybe it was me watching me. My husband said he knew what to do to get the baby here. The woman said she was going to take part of the roof off the house as she needed the shingles to help with the birthing process. I watched her lift a portion of the roof off (seems she removed the roofing over a dormer window).

Next, my husband starts cutting into her abdomen and removing these slabs of what appear to be fat as he's cutting them(no blood anywhere), but whatever they are, they are very firm to the touch and made of roofing-like material. It's as if her abdomen had been covered in these (these pieces being in the shape of large sanitary napkins) strip by strip in preparation for birth. I look at my husband and the woman and tell them that is not the way to have a baby, but they keep on working. Then, she starts cutting these same things from my husband's abdomen, as he is now the one carrying the baby. After that, the scene flashes to the woman breast-feeding the child. She, my husband, and the baby are sitting on the roof. She has long black hair and she's wearing a very bright flannel shirt. They looked like a family of large birds perched on the rooftop there with their newborn.

Next dream was of tornados. I know where that one came from. In November of this year, an F-4 hit the town I live in. I was at work at the time. I had picked up my son from school (he's a freshman), taken him home, and returned to work when things started looking bad. We had tornado watches in effect all day, so before I headed back to work, we went through the drill about what to do in the event of a tornado warning. At around 3:25 that afternoon (roughly 10 minutes after I got back to work), I called home and asked him if he was in the basement. He said he was. A few minutes later, he called and told me he couldn't see much down in the basement because it had gotten very dark outside and the power had just gone out. He wanted to know where I thought he should go. I told him to go to the corner we always go to, but I could hear panic in his voice. I kept telling him which wall to go to, but he kept saying "There are lots of walls, Mom, where do I go?" Then he said, "Someone's in the house...I can hear them upstairs" and then we lost phone connection. Needless to say, I was was terrified. I couldn't leave the building I was in as the sirens were going off and I would have been driving straight into the path of the tornado, but as soon as I could, I left work and drove home. When I got there, he was sitting on the back steps. I got out of the car and he said, " I'm sure glad you're ok, Mom." And I said, "Are you ok?" I was trembling and so angry at myself for going back to work that day. Turns out the people who came in the house were our next door neighbors and their black lab, Katie. When I found out that it was bad enough for them to come over and bring Katie to boot, I knew it must have been bad. Thankfully, our neighborhood was spared, but hundreds of people in this community lost everything. A few weeks ago, I read an article in the paper about the 2005 tornado season, and the F-4 that hit M'ville was the worst one on record. We were very lucky that there were no fatalities.

So, last night, I dreamed that a tornado was hitting our home, only we weren't in the house we live in. We were actually in a facility that looked like some type of medical facility. In the dream, my children are with a nanny on another floor, and I remember saying, "Why can't I be with my children? I want my children!." And then the wind started roaring and I could hear things hitting the building, and I woke up.

So much for trying to get a good night's sleep!