We made the most beautiful memory this morning. We made love early and took our ritual shower together. Both in towels we began padding back to the bedroom, the dog leading the way, when I said, “look there’s the sun”. Gazing out the picture window, he turned and watched me for a moment and came to me. As he wrapped his naked arms around mine he said, “I love you”. I could feel the warmth in the texture of his voice. I replied with, “I love you too” as we stayed there for just a moment the sun winking at us between the tress off the east point of the island. The water was soft and glassy in the pink and blue light of dawn. With his arms and smell around me, his smooth skin on my sunburned shoulders I thought to myself, “I will remember this moment for the rest of my life.” As a promise to myself I kept this memory because in the July dawn, I knew true love. Of all my memories, it is still the best.
Letter to an absent mother March 28, 2009
Mom,
Why wasn’t I ever your little girl or your baby? Who was I all those years that you never called me, “yours”. You never ran your fingers through my hair to put it in braids before school, Dad did that. You didn’t stay home with me when I was sick. You didn’t come when I was hurt. Where were you? Making dollars to pay the bills? You were always sleeping when you were home. Or you weren’t home at all with us, you were working overtime.
I remember sleeping bags at church and in the bank lobby with juice boxes and snacks. Most of my childhood was spent waiting in the car. We’d get up early for day camp and pray to Saint Theresa on the way for more money, a new house, grandpa’s soul, to see you a little longer on the ride home. Neighborhood ladies seemed to have more time for children, even us, but not you. There was never any time for us, to watch a movie, a girl’s day shopping, even when you knew how much it meant to us. It felt like you didn’t care; never making lunches, never around for good times.
Now I’m all grown up and I try to tell you I need more, need you around. You say I don’t see your work to pay my bills, that’s how you show your love. Now you complain I don’t see you when I’m home. I don’t make time and I don’t care. I’m ungrateful. I say I sent a card.
Expectations for a son March 28, 2009
I’m a painter. It’s just what I do. When I’m upset, I paint. Bored, I paint. Excited, I paint. It’s not a hobby, it has become a part of me. An extension of my personality and my being, it is constantly a part of my day. No matter how long I shower I can’t shake that turpentine scent. It’s in my hair, behind my ears, all over my clothes, like I said it’s part of me.
My dad doesn’t like that I paint. He thinks I should find myself a cute wife. A girl who will pop out a couple of grandkids and convince me to find myself a respectable desk job and grow up. “Finger painting” is what he calls it. And every time he speaks about my work it’s as if I am unwillingly catapulted to the boy I was 30 years ago. In his eyes I am a child making a mess of his kitchen table. To him, the work I do now is no more than the shit my mom hung on our refrigerator. He just thinks that now I’m grown up it’s just more expensive.
It’s funny because as an artist who’s still living I make a pretty fair salary. I live in a studio and have a show twice a year or so and I love what I do but I still feel the nagging voice of my dad calling me a finger painter. I’m sure other sons have heard worse from their fathers but regardless of the phrasing the sentiment remains the same, I am a disappointment to him. He imagined something different and in his eyes, “better” for me. Every day that passes I become less of the person he hoped I would be and more the delinquent he feared I might become.
Kind of sad that all through school they pump you up, full of the song and dance of, “get a job you love and you will never work.” I believed that shit. I do what I love only now because of that, my father won’t speak to me. Nice huh, I sacrifice my family for my passion. The real question is if I quit, I don’t know if I’ll miss the paint more or less than the family. What’s most perplexing is how in my life this is a choice. So many other people go through life enjoying both simultaneously and yet for some unforeseen reason, I have to choose.
Rachel March 28, 2009
Small driblets of energy
Caress her dainty soles
Tickling in between each of her ten toes
Wiggling each attempting to hold the earth
As she sinks into the sediment
Her eyes question the ripples
Only to dance away without answer
Spritishly on light feet
Her hair grasps the wind and sun
In glowing yellow strands
Hands attempt to clench
The mysterious as it turns in pace
He quickly snaps a shot before she looks us
Her curious innocence hanging in the living room
learning from mistakes March 28, 2009
It is difficult to have patience with yourself. So many days I wish away time, I wish this was over, I wish I was already there. I wish it was next week so I could be doing something else. It’s hard to see that all along I may be learning something. For every time I’ve wished to be done with something, ten times over I wish I was back in time doing it again. It’s difficult to rejoice in times of trial and self discovery because in situations where change and growth are inevitable, it’s sometimes difficult to see what it’s all worth. Only later do we see how truly far we’ve come in our personal journey.
Hope is a tricky thing. The very force that gives us the strength and audacity to reach for the impossible is the same as that which crushes the life within us when the expectations we create for ourselves are not met. Imagining the future is a wonderful gift. It allows us to see our own potential. Unfortunately we can only see what we want and never know what tragedies are yet to befall us. The futures we imagine are limited because what we are able to see and what will actually manifest are two truly different things. Do we learn from our mistakes? Do we learn to make new ones? Or are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes until the outcome is the right one by some stroke of fate?
I’d optimistically like to think that we learn from our mistakes. I hope that when I screw up, I mourn the sadness of loss, but learn how to avoid making that same mistake again. Unfortunately, that isn’t always true. There are times when I look around and realize I have just made not only the same mistake again but I have created the same situation again. In relationships, I feel as though I rush to the same point with different people. Possibly in an attempt to fix the problem I was unable to remedy last time. It could also just be that I don’t know how to get out of the cycle. When I find myself happy or dissatisfied I react in the same way and choose to surround myself with people who will respond and interact in the same way as those I failed to satisfy before. Not paying attention to the patterns, I have managed to subconsciously recreate the same dead end situation. Ideally would learn how to resolve the first or second time around. Instead I continue to find myself in the same rut. Wearing different clothes but still quarrelling over the same things. Something different versus more of the same, if there is a better or a worse of the two I have yet to find it.
Just like clockwork March 28, 2009
Looking around lately there are children, babies and pregnant women everywhere. Perhaps it’s just the biological clock ticking or I’m suddenly opening my eyes to what surrounds me but conversations of, about and between children mesmerize me. I’m taken in, where before I would just be annoyed or bored. Typically I look for an escape, but then again, typically these children are crying, throwing tantrums or being obnoxious. Children now seem sweet, quiet and endearing. It’s a good thing I’m going to spend some quality time with my niece and nephew, I need to be reminded of what children are like, and not that I don’t adore them, I honestly do. I am probably the most maternal person you will meet who does not have children of their own. And yet, I am twenty-five and still fear the relationship commitment that a parent needs to have with their spouse in order to start a family.
I have the hope and the faith that someday I will be a mother, and yet I still wish away the days and push myself into school, work and a social life that doesn’t allow me the opportunity, freedom or time to devote to another person. When I find myself in a relationship that really could progress in that direction my fight or flight instincts click into high gear. The strangest part of this ordeal is that I am not a man. Usually, it is a masculine reaction to fear commitment or relationships. Yet, in my relationships it has not been my partner who suffers from these symptoms but myself. Making the same mistakes and repeating the same patterns I cannot hope to change or progress. My personal hope is that I will find the strength to mature and grow as I need to, it is also the realization that I need to give myself time to grow up. Even though I feel I am in a position and prepared to take on these changes and challenges. It is much like my own childhood, I must learn to accept the advice of my mother and realize that I am confusing what I want with what I think I should have. This does not mean that I will never be ready for these things. Or that the day will not come when I am satisfied, fulfilled and settled as a wife and mother as well as an independent career oriented woman. It simply means that I am not there yet. I’m on my way and will eventually get to that place I just need to stop staring at the clock and make the time to enjoy the ride.
