You

Let me tell you Girls something.  You have that little voice deep inside of you that tells you things.  And it might be really quiet right now if you haven’t listened to it in a while.  In fact, you might think it is gone completely.  But I bet you still hear it every now and then.  It might pipe in just when you least expect it and try, once again, to remind you that you are good enough.  And it might be really hard to hear it at this point because you have let all of the louder voices on the outside drown it out.  It might be really hard to hear because you have spent so many years listening to the other noises.  Like the noises that tell you over and over again that you are not good enough.  The noises that tell you that you are selfish and lazy and not very smart.  The noises that tell you that you are not doing enough.  Even though you feel like you are doing a lot.

And a lot of these noises might come from the men in your life.  And you may have been told your whole life long that all of the men in your life, they speak for God.  And so, I guess you think you should probably listen to all of the men in your life if they speak for God.  Because, well, wouldn’t God know what he’s talking about?  So you might find yourself listening to all of the men in your life, even though you still have this voice in your gut that really wants to tell you something else.  You have this voice trying to tell you that you are good enough.  But believe me I know how hard it is to listen to that voice, when all of the other noises are telling you that you are otherwise.

When you have been taught your whole life that you are a woman and these men they speak for God so you should Bow Your Head and Say Yes, it might be really hard to believe that little but persistent voice inside of you.  But girls, you listen to that voice.  Because that voice is You.  And you, of all people, know what you are talking about.  You know that you are good enough and you know that you are not selfish and you know that you are doing enough.  So girls, even if you are women now and should know better than to listen to all of the other voices, you listen to that voice inside of you.  Because it is right and it is true and it is you.  And You are the only one who really knows.

To the Man at the Baby Pool

This is a belated letter from the mother who sat quietly watching from the side of the baby pool that hot sunny day last summer.  You may not have noticed her watching, but she was.  She noticed the little boy glued to your side.  She watched quietly as over and over again he wanted to show you his tricks.  She listened as he talked to you; this little boy who just kept wanting to talk to you.  And she noticed that even though you already had your hands full with a newborn and a toddler of your own, you acted like you cared about this little boy who would not leave your side.  The mother sat by quietly noticing as you watched him, and you listened to him, and you smiled at him.  And you acted like you cared.

And I hope, that even though she didn’t come over and say it, because it is really hard to say it to a stranger at the pool, but I hope that you could see the thank you in that mother’s eyes.  I hope you could feel the gratitude in her heart.  I hope you could sense the good you were doing for the little boy you didn’t know at the baby pool who wanted to show you everything.  Because that little boy whom you watched and patiently listened to, and didn’t seem to mind that he was stuck to your side, that mother watching is his mother.  And he has no Daddy.  And there are many things that mother watching can do for her little boy.  But she cannot be a Daddy.

No Fairytales

I cannot finish the story of the Boy and the Girl; of You and Me.  For that would mean an ending.  My heart cannot bear another ending.  Not now, not if I can help it.  So for me, for my heart, and for now, I must leave the final chapter unwritten.

I would love to write my own ending, a happy, fairytale ending for us.  But we both know that fairytales are make-believe; that there are no happy endings.  That life is full of dark and light in-between.  Sometimes the dark is overwhelming and seeks to smother us until we think that it will.  Until at the very last moment, somehow, a tiny crack of light breaks through.  And somehow, sometimes, when you least expect it and don’t even really believe there is light anymore, a giant gush of light will burst through and smother the dark.  Surprising the Dark, even.  And then you can breathe again because you remember what it feels like to be bathed in light, in warmth, in love.

And sometimes you even smile, and that is when you remember who you really are.  You find your soul again and remark to yourself at how the dark has changed you, but that when mixed with the Light at the end you are pleased with the change, amazed at the strength you find, that neither the Dark nor the Light could have bred on its own.  You smile because you remember how it felt at the bottom, thinking you could never surface, but knowing that you had to, somehow.  You smile because you know how it feels to know that you are okay.  You smile because you know how it feels for your heart to bleed tears, and how deeply and truthfully you can feel pain.  You smile because you feel alive.  You know what it means to live.  The Dark and the Light have taught you this.  You have been this light for me.  So let that be our Ending…for now.

A Poem Kept Waiting

I wrote this poem twelve years ago.  It was a formula poem where I had to follow a pattern. It was an assignment for a teacher training.   I cannot remember what the pattern was, but I followed it precisely and this is what I made.  I would not have admitted to you, or even to myself at the time, that I was the girl in the poem.  But it is undeniably right there for anyone to see.  Who knew there was a little ole me in there?  “Wow,” is all I can say, when I read this now.  Because it is so True and so Me and so “Ten-Years-From- Now”.  And at the time I didn’t even know it…

                         Waiting

She sits in the silence of her own heart beating

In the shadow of herself cast by a solitary bulb

Silence lulled by the surety of the steady drip

of a faucet, reminder of a broken promise

never kept.  Still it leaks and resonates in time

With her heart and she remains waiting.

Counting on her fingers, time spent waiting

She taps out the rhythm, beating

minutes absentmindedly; a mourning song for time

When love warmed her more than the bulb

Overhead.  What is that again, a promise?

She is brought back to now by the drip drip

drip.  Fingers drum the table to the drip

drip, drip, her eyes intent on waiting,

glazed over by the cloud of promise

forgotten.  A still heart beating

in tempo: drip, tap, beat and a faintly swaying bulb.

She never meant to be captured by time

Blaming herself this time

She turns from the table, her pain, the drip

To see in the light of the naked bulb

The door knob, unturning, it seems to know she’s waiting

And teases her in the glare of stillness beating.

I will not turn again; to herself this promise

And she rises to a promise

of her own:  forgotten for the last time

aware of her own heart beating,

Racing, she walks toward the drip

and turns the faucet-in-waiting

to a steady flow of resilience dancing under a bulb.

Cool water splashes, hands wet by water, tears.  The bulb

overhead illuminates her face; a new promise.

Fresh hands dried on a towel kept waiting,

hers is the hand turning the knob this time,

door left open behind her and the sound of a drip

growing fainter, her feet carried by her new heart beating

She wonders when time took charge of their promise.

Chasing and beating her shadow lengthened by the bulb

on the street.  no more drip, no more waiting.

Guidebook

There is no guidebook on how to tell your children that their father is dead.  Nobody has written one.  Because you would not have time to read it, anyway.  That news comes to you in a cruel and bitter flash, from complete strangers, and then you are expected, as all good mothers are, to know how to tell it to your children.  And in your first moments of grief and desperation and agony and anger you cry and scream at all who are in the room (the complete strangers who brought you the news), “How can I tell my babies?!  How do I do this??  Please, NO!  I cannot tell them this.  How can I??” 

And just in case this happens to you, I will let you know in advance, that no one will tell you how.  They will stare at you blankly and shrug their shoulders slightly and look uncomfortably down at their shoes.  Because they don’t know, either.  And they, as parents and/or lovers of others themselves, cannot begin to fathom how it can be done.  You see the sorrow in their eyes and you know that even though they don’t know you, they understand.  And you can tell by their eyes that they wish they did not have to bring you that news.  They wish they did not have to ask you into the room and gently guide you into a chair.  They wish it wasn’t their job to convince you to sit.  And before you even have the chance to wonder why they are at your school and why they want you in a chair and how they already know your name, they start in on the news. 

And when they are done speaking they wish they did not have to watch the aftermath.  Because they are parents and lovers too and they don’t have any answers.  And you can see it in their eyes that they care but they are helpless, like you are, because nobody wrote a guidebook on how to tell your children that their father is dead.

Crack it Open

My heart and my subconscious tell me that it is Time to write.  But how can I listen?  How can I do this?  For that is too much to bear.  How do I open my heart onto this paper, for if I open it up, even just a crack, it may break and my life, my pain, my loss, my love, my light, may all come gushing out, flooding the paper, the room, the world with so much…so much of Everything.  But my dreams tell me it is time and my body tells me that I cannot hold it all in any longer.  

So here I sit.  To write.  And who will want to listen?  Who will want to read of loss and hurt and loss and pain and loss and hurt again, and again, and of all the love and light in-between?  Readers like to read of Springtime and of Love and of Walks on the Beach and Barefoot Babies who coo and laugh and smile.  And who wants to read of the baby who never got to laugh and of the mother who had to decide when this would be so?  Of the mother who laid herself upon a table and allowed the doctor to use the needle that would stop her baby girl’s beating heart?  And of the baby who came after her whom the mother allowed to live, until she too, also died, a sad and broken death.  Who wants to read of the same mother who held her children’s hands as they walked to say their last goodbyes to their father, who was already gone?  And of the story of the Brothers who are also already gone?  Who can bear to read of such things…?  Maybe the same who have also lived and know that there are always cracks of light in-between.  Maybe they are my readers…  

So, no, this is not a story of laughter and rainbows and sunny walks on the beach.  But, this is the story of the Light in-between.  So, if you think you are my reader, then I will write for you...