The Brain & Art

Stand Up Tall

Grandmother said

dress your best when you go to town  

hold your head high 

driving 7 miles from the small house at 

the edge of the cotton field 

Granddaddy plowed rigorously 

when the field dried 

& he could no longer plow 

he became a magician 

making school children laugh until 

he lost his mind & was institutionalized 

Grandmother, the most righteous

her father, a missionary to Indians  

her ancestors, slave-owners  

in ’38 her husband, his money lost to

crooked bankers

that never recorded his payments 

drove that dirt lane in their black cars 

family possessions - passed down  

heirlooms & old quilts 

saved for decades 

were hauled away. 

When we have community we share memories & they become stories & art.

As kids we visited the small 4 room house at the edge of the cotton that field Granddaddy plowed rigorously. 

( I am now practicing Transformative Resistance, make art write now, to calm myself. I need ways to resist darkness & despair whenever there is something I cannot control. This is my self care.)

Granddaddy plowed rigorously. That was his work.

Grandmother cooked & sewed. That was her work. She taught us cousins to sew. That was her gift. That was her transformative resistance. That’s what kept her in the moment so poverty would not overcome. Today, I find old clothes in colors I like, cut them up and fuse them together to make new fabric. I am always surprised. And happy with the results.

I am reading “Your Brain on Art” by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross. If you want to meet to discuss some of their ideas, let me know and I will reach out when I have a date.

I know the transformative power of art, getting lost in music, in a book or project. I used to think it was frivolous. Not important. Now there is have scientific proof that the arts are essential to our very survival.

I am learning that “art and aesthetics will improve your health and well being and enhance your ability to learn and flourish. “ pg.3

Even brown plastic bottles can be used to create artful bags. Anything is possible!

Shibori Linen caftan dress

And shibori dyeing silk can feel magical. Just like

when the cotton field dried & Granddaddy could no longer plow 

he became a magician 

making school children laugh.

Amanda Bridges and I, in collaboration with Levee Collective, are creating an exhibit and discussion on how art making has made a difference in our lives during difficult times.

Transformative Resistance make art write now

Opening Reception July 26th 4-5 pm Discussion 5-6 After party at Levee Collective begins at 7

Come fall, I will start Sunday Zoom Writing Practice. If you want to join us, let me know.

Sunday Dinner, 1955

We are in Grandmother, Stella Tilson’s, small kitchen in the west Texas rent house. 

All the adults are squeezed around an oval table.

Everyone is dressed up.

Stella, wearing an apron, with hands on her hips

is leaning against the sink.

She is proud of the meal she has prepared. 

Fried chicken

mashed potatoes

green beans 

melons

sweet iced tea.

Granddaddy adds more sugar.

Mother is sitting next to aunt Barbara.

They both have wavy, luxurious hair

& are wearing dark lipstick & earrings.

Mother’s posture suggests she is reaching towards someone. 

Because I remember this house, 

I know that she is sitting near the doorway 

to a room where a card table is set up for six grandchildren.

This pose is a nurturing gesture. 

There is tenderness in the way she holds her arms. 

This is a portrait of my mother.

This is what she did, solely, and to the best of her ability.

Let me know if you would like if you would like to talk more about Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross’s book, “Your Brain on Art.”

Take Care,

Laverne

Reset Love Poem to Myself

My darling, you take my breath away, the way you think, the way you move, the voluptuous woman you are, the glow in your face when you wake up,  after your hot, candle lit bath right before you fall asleep. 

My darling, remind me to tell you in every way I love the way you love those who cross your path, the happy, the lonely, the struggling. 

My dear, I love how you are relentless & never give up, I have seen the evidence of that passion to serve written in your journals & poetry from over 50 years ago. 

My love, how did you know you would be so hot, so passionate, so beautiful, still today the sensuous old woman you’ve become,  you don’t back down.

My dear, that crack in your voice when you speak, then tears you swallow down, some people feel everything, darling,  that’s you when the man on the street, hungry,  you late for your meeting.  I love how you didn’t back away when you had no answers for where he could go to get warm, you with love in your heart asked him, may I buy you a cup of coffee,  a sandwich,  a donut, of course he said yes,  as you stepped inside the coffeehouse you felt the heat drench your body & his.

My love, let everyday bring you more joy despite the pain and sadness you see.

Bowel Care

Awake at 5:50 before the alarm

       turn it off to avoid its intrusive screech 

       survey the progress of the headache 

       first noticed at 3:30 a.m. 

       still pounding.

walk slowly in the dark past his door 

       shuffle into the kitchen to claim my 

       early morning, put water on to boil for tea. 

haven’t had coffee for four weeks

       an effort to rid myself of headaches & eliminate 

       two to six daily Excedrin. 

I hear my name & don’t respond 

       not yet. This is my time to write 

forgive myself for selfishness & justify solitude 

only the low lights are on over the fireplace 

my recent painting hanging between them 

I contemplate its completeness—

dark violets and purple shades,  subtle yellows. 

Does it need more light?

 I wash my face, brush my teeth & enter his room 

open the blinds, even if it is still dark 

light can ooze in at its own pace

gather supplies; suppository, gloves, chucks, 

& open the window needing fresh air. 

I pull the draw sheet, underneath to turn his torso 

reach into places 

never imagined 

reach for what 

I can’t find 

pull the past out, fold my latex glove around 

& discard it into a plastic container.

amazed at his surrender & patience & calm voice 

asking over & over, day after day  

can you get the sports page? 

do we have any muffins? 

will you get my architecture books, please? 

berate myself for getting angry

even now

light a scented candle on his dresser.

Self vs Indie vs Traditional Publishing

Making the decision to self publish or indie publish is the same as making the decision to publish traditionally. Your  intention is to make your writing public. The main difference is how much control you want to maintain in the publishing process. And sometimes how much money you make, if that’s your goal. 

Either path chosen takes the same amount of work. If it is for the money, to be managed as a business, some call that Indie publishing. You intend to  market appropriately. 

If it’s to share your work more intimately with family and friends and specialized groups that are particularly interested in your topic some call it self publishing. Self publishing is often criticized because it does not have editorial intervention. This is when someone has read your work, likes it and is willing to put their money on the line and take the time to set your words to print. These days that doesn’t mean they have the resources to promote your book extensively. You have to be willing to do that work yourself and aggressively. 

Also, these days the art of storytelling has increased and there are more writers than there are publishers. So waiting for publishers to “pick you up” can take a long time and may move your book into the realm of ego 

You write of  because you have something to say. Many of us have been writing for many years. Ultimate the intention is to share what we have written. Age is  upon us and time us  of the essence. It is imperative we take publishing into our own hands.

Layering Flow

Smelling lavender 

Shiloh says “stinks like trash can 

with a pie in there”

By layering everything, as it occurs I let the thread reveal itself.  And it always will if I stay true to myself, my ideas. I embrace the mantra "go with the flow." As ideas arise, I layer them onto my many canvases; my work, my art, my writing. I allow them to be part of each composition. I trust the process. Amy Krause Rosenthal says, "Pay attention to what you pay attention to." I listen to my body and pay attention. 

It’s become a discipline, going into my studio at 7:30 each morning when it’s quiet and do something. Organize fabric into piles of colors I like, perhaps. Or pay attention and craft a text into a haiku then search for the perfect photo from this summer’s beach trip.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes this flow in an interview with Wired magazine as, ". . . being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost." 

Our community has waited a long time for a place like UK's mental health emergency room | Opinion

August 14, 2024

Laverne Zabielski

It’s been a year since the Lexington Opioid Abatement Commission (OAC) was appointed by Mayor Linda Gorton. At their first meeting on September 15, 2023 she said, “We need to have a plan to use the funds for a sustainable solution. . . being creative and looking at how we can make Lexington even better. . . . I trust you are going to find a good path forward to recommend to me.” 

The OAC has been listening to professional presentations by organizations and to personal stories from the public for several months. They have hosted two Town Halls. These Commissioners are charged with making opioid remediation suggestions to the Mayor. This is not an easy task. They will have to make distinctions between what is necessary and feasible now and what is part of a long term sustainable vision. In other words, what can we have in place, should our grandchildren fall prey to this horrible social disease?

 The Commission has been divided into two workgroups: one focusing on Prevention and Treatment and the other on Recovery and Support. Their meetings will be open to the public. I encourage the public to pay attention and attend. The time for standing on the sidelines, being judgmental while offering facile solutions is over. This disease is affecting families from every socio-economic class. 

Recently I have learned about EmPATH which stands for Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment and Healing. Their website, https://ukhealthcare.uky.edu/services/empath, states “UK HealthCare EmPATH is the first program of its kind in Kentucky. It is specially equipped to quickly treat adult patients undergoing mental illness and substance use crises.”

 Wow! This has been in the making for a long time and I have been wishing for such a place these past five years as I struggled with my adult daughter’s addiction. How many times have I driven around Lexington wondering where we’re supposed to go? She is now in recovery, but why did it have to take four years to find help?

You would think, by now, some sort of office for those with substance use disorder (SUD) or opioid use disorder (OUD) would have been created, with one central number addicts or members of their family could call to ask where to go for help. It sounds so easy, all of these different detox and rehab places opening up advertising 24-hour access. But it’s not really like that. 

The hardest part of entering a recovery program is the concept of being “willing.” If this willingness to change and join the program is essential, and it is, why don’t we have specialists who concentrate on helping the addict become willing? Those suffering from opioid use are not stupid. Yet they are constantly bombarded with conflicting messages. For instance, it has been said that it takes two years to rewire their brain. And then they are told they have to be willing to make up their mind to go into the program. How does one become willing when their brain has been totally rewired? Who and where are the specialists who understand and know how to communicate with people with a totally rewired brain? 

Part of what happens in such a vulnerable time, is that when they do seek help and enter a facility there is so much waiting and wading through paperwork and insurance gathering that their courage and willingness wanes. Recently, when my friend had a stroke she was immediately taken in when she went to the ER, even though she had let her insurance lapse. They didn’t make her wait for hours to figure out how it was going to get paid for.

Those suffering from OUD need a central place like EmPATH, described on their website.  “. . . an evidence-based model of crisis care that provides trauma-informed, compassionate treatment. It is an alternative to traditional emergency departments, whose long wait times and sometimes overwhelming environment can worsen mental distress.” 

People with OUD need a calm, therapeutic environment where specialists can guide them through their internal conflict with willingness These specialist would help them sort through the maze of services, facilities and agencies to determine what kind of places they would qualify for and how it would be financed. 

Even better, a good path forward would be to be create housing where those with OUD could live, even though they are not yet fully committed to recovery, but they are seeking more information that they can trust and are willing to be accountable by attending classes to learn more about the science of their addiction. And in exchange, they would have a place to sleep and eat. This is what it means to treat those with OUD with the respect they deserve while they figure out the right path for their life.

To find out more about the OAC meetings email opioidabatement@lexingtonky.gov ,call 859-258-3834 or go to https://www.lexingtonky.gov/boards/opioid-abatement-commission

Published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, August 14, 2024

When I Can't Sleep

I’ve taken to just going ahead & getting up in the wee morning hours when I can’t sleep – a neighbor’s dog is continuously barking at 1 AM – what kind of a person leaves a dog out at night ?  – late like that – a dangerous one for sure making seeking neighborly confrontation risky – & which neighbor? – it’s coming from the backyard but I can’t tell which house – I would have to get up – get dressed – turn off the alarm & walk or drive the next street over – stop & listen to see if I could make a determination & then what ?  – call the police ?  — I stared out my dark window towards the barking dog – I still hadn’t determined the location – I got up and made hot almond milk with some adaptigen tinctures  &  sat in the dark sunroom  & stared at my reflection framed by Christmas lights in the glass sliding door – from this room I could not hear the barking dog – I began reading an article in the New Yorker about the Bloomsbury group – underlining references to fashion & home decor & color & texture – searching referenced artists & writer’s names on my iPhone when I heard this faint beeping – repetitive – I could not determine where it was coming from – I held my phone up to my ear to be certain it was not in there – I started staring out all the windows into the dark yard slowly turning the inside lights off so that the prowler – if there was one – could not see me – as I looked out the driveway window I thought the faint beeping was louder – I was considering waking Larry in case someone was stealing our car but he would not want to come into the dark sunroom naked – & it would take him too long to get dressed.

Finding Privilege

In the introduction to Healing Justice Lineages by Cara Page and Erica Woodland, they write, “2020 accelerated a reckoning that forced us to confront all that is buried beneath the facade of “America” and this so-called dream that many of us experience as terror. . . .2020 was the beginning of an awakening. We are living in the midst of a growing global resistance to fascism, white supremacy and all systems of domination and ways they collude and build upon one another in service of the ruling class.”

For me this was the beginning of my acknowledging the ways I am privileged. At first it showed up in obvious ways. Then little things began to reveal my privilege, just a word or a phrase. For instance “settled.” How may times have I told the story about my ancestors in the 1800s moving west and became “settlers in west Texas?” Only recently did I pause as I spoke the word settled and asked my self, “settled what, whom?”

Today I look at the above photo that my dad took in 1956 when we were living on Tachikawa Air Force Base in Japan. I see elements of race, class and gender waiting to be deconstructed.

The Sensuality of Mind

That place where thoughts & ideas penetrate   theories develop    implementation set   instructions given   acquiescence prevails   submission overtakes   takes over   power & release   excitement   fruition   yes, please   do me do me do me   becomes   tell me tell me tell me   I deep listen 

Is being an artist or writer elitist?

The Trials and Triumphs of Writing While Woman

https://www.newyorker.com/.../a-life-of-ones-own-nine...

Elise gave me this article, “Letting Go” which asks the question what women give up and ends with “If the personal is political, it must be literary, too.” While there is much analysis about the situation, my favorite response was from Toni Morrison when as a single mother is asked the question, how does she find the time?

She said her life was filled with the joys and troubles of writing, and the needs of her boys. “I couldn’t write the way writers write. I had to write the way a woman with children writes. I would never tell a child ‘leave me alone. I’m writing.’ That doesn’t mean anything to a child. What they deserve and need, in-house, is a mother. They do not need and cannot use a writer.“

I would tend to answer the question, “Is being an artist or writer elitist?” yes, unless a woman has the strength to make the choices she needs regarding her situation, which may or may not be letting go, may or may not be getting a divorce. I remember in 1977 meeting a woman artist who was very much about telling me how much time it takes to be an artist. At that time, just beginning to take my writing seriously, I felt discouraged when it was at that moment, I said I would not let the children stop me. I would simply only write 10 minute poems if that’s all the time I had.

Mom Knows Best

While daddy had a strong 

      work-outside-the-home ethic

      sometimes two jobs

it was our stay-at-home-mom’s commitment 

     I was most inspired by 

     her raising seven kids   

     supper at five.

That summer in the late 80s 

     maybe it was the need for more money 

she got a job as city secretary

     in a small west Texas town, population 300. 

When we went to the family reunion

& walked to the one-block downtown

into a small office

she sat at her desk

attentive 

hands folded on top.  

Mom!  What are you doing?

She quit the next week. 

What Daddy Saw

Photo:  Tachikawa, Japan

Photographer: Sergeant Ray Zabielski

Subject: Homes, August 9, 1955

In the countryside along the edge of Tachikawa Air Force Base there is a dwelling in the lower left side. Children are standing outside, posing, five boys. Three girls are on top of the curved concrete roof, partially covered with grass. There is an empty clothesline.  The shadow of the photographer is in the lower right. Above the shadow are the base barracks—long, two-story structures with eight windows across each floor. It has been 10 years.

Acknowledging Privilege

You would think, by now, so many of us would not come up against a brick wall when it comes to acknowledging privilege.

A collaborative poem from Writing Workshop on Privilege

With empathy

we begin to understand 

the urgency for change

that charity begets kindness 

With gratitude 

and heightened awareness

redemption is possible 

atonement necessary 

With regret we acknowledge guilt

for all in proximity

and challenge 

our belief system. 

Thanks Marianne Peel, Carri Lucier, Constance Grayson, Kevin Nance, Lois Gillespie, Francesca Corsi, April Taylor, Soreyda Begley and Larry Vogt for your words and stories.

Privilege

Privilege seems to be something one has but often does not know they have until it is acknowledged. Privilege comes in many forms; race, class, gender and more. Not having privilege is also not known until you experience not having it. I discovered I did not have class privilege when I didn’t get the secretarial scholarship in high school because I lived on an Air Force base and the school did not want to give it to a “transient.” I discovered I did not have gender privilege when my dad said girls don’t need college to raise babies.

I thought that because I was not privileged in some areas of my life growing up and had to work harder, that left me immune to thinking that I would have any privilege regarding race. It’s only been by writing, or sharing stories and listening to others’ response to my stories and how they reveal my privilege as a white woman that my awareness has increased. Where I ever got the idea that I did not have race privilege, I have no idea, and that may be the most serious privilege of all.

Mother Contemplating Listening

Opioid Op Ed, Herald Leader, March 17, 2024

The Lexington Opioid Commission has been meeting since October, 2023. Chairwoman Stephanie M. Raglin and Vice-Chair Tara Stanfield,  met with Mayor Gorton. Gorton made it clear she does not want a recommendation from the Opioid Abatement Commission at this time. She wants them to do the important work of listening. It never hurts to review the purpose of any project and its current strategy at any given point. 

At the most recent meeting on Feb. 9, Stanfield talked about Gorton’s expectations and the art of listening. Stanfield related her own past of not listening, of bringing “expertise” that did not fit with her clientele. 

“I keep thinking about being a young therapist getting started and out of school, on fire and ready to change the world. . . I had all the answers,” Stanfield said. “I went into practice and I realized that none of my answers were working and the patients didn’t like my answers. . . . I would tell people what to do and they wouldn’t do it. I would feel frustrated. I could only imagine how frustrated they felt. 

At the time, Stanfield was working in Eastern Kentucky in a town already ravaged by opioids. 

“We talk about the opioid epidemic{being} for the last 5 to 10 years but it’s been way longer,” she said. “Back then I was struggling. I would come in every day with all the answers. Tell people what to do; they wouldn’t do it. Sometimes they felt like they needed to tell me they were doing it, when they weren’t.”

As an impacted mother, I, too, have felt I had answers gleaned from my personal experience and I wanted action. I would listen, but only with the intention of giving advice which was not always accurate. At times I was losing hope that anything would ever change. 

Stanfield had the same experience, but then something happened. She was invited to do a training in an evidence-based practice. 

“It changed my career, it changed my life, it changed the way that I talk to patients; honestly, it changed the way I talked to people in general,” she said. “The number one thing that it did was take me out of any expectation, it took me deep into my soul that I was not an expert on somebody else’s life. 

“You can’t be. You don’t know where people have been, what they've been through. And I’m not the expert of exactly what it’s going to take for them to make a change and find their way out of the path that who knows how they got into to start with. I’m never going to know all those things. My job is to be there with them, support them, and work with them directly to find the way, whatever that way is going to be for them. The reason that this relates is when we think about substance use in a community, as bad as the problem has become, it is so complicated, just the same as it is when you think about a single patient.” 

The more OAC meetings I attended the more I learned how large this crisis was, that it was a community disease. And how important it is to hear everyone’s story. Stanfield makes the point that it needs to be treated the same way an individual is treated. We need to take the time to do it right. Listening and assessment come first. 

“When I met with Mayor Gorton it was so nice to hear that the only thing that she expects from us right now is to bring her suggestions and she doesn’t want one tomorrow because she knows it’s a big complicated topic and we’ve got 18 years of these abatement funds,” Stanfield explained. “She really wants something that will work in the community, be sustained in the community and have a shot at matching the complexity that addiction is on an individual level and on the big macro level of an actual city.

“All of us have our expertise that we’re going to bring to the table. We’re really just in the phase now of assessing the patient. All we’re doing now is to put it out there to the community to hear from our community partners, to hear from people who have experienced tragedy, because of addiction, and to really get a feel of what’s out there. Talk about expertise, that’s where a lot of it will come from.” 

The next Opioid Abatement Commission meeting is Friday, April 12 at 10 a.m. in the council chambers. In the form of your stories, bring your expertise to the table. You can sign up to speak during the public comment time. Or you can email the commissioners at opioidabatement@lexingtonky.gov.

How I learned To Focus

shibori dyed silk using he shade colors

FOCUS

In 1998 a friend suggested I learn to dye fabric, then I could cover my books in silk. I enrolled at the University of Kentucky. Six weeks after starting classes my 26 year old son had a paralyzing accident.

When I first received the call from the emergency room nurse on September 11, 1998, I assumed she was telling me the worst so I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up. I listened as she stated Donnie's condition: collapsed lung, paralyzed, no brain damage. I knew he would pull through. And I knew I was strong and in control.

I marched through those steel gray emergency room doors as if to say: Come on Donnie we can handle this, let’s go on home. Of course we couldn’t—not with all those tubes and that paralysis. The first thing he said to me, the very first thing was, “I’m sorry.” That was before all the tubes were inserted and I’m sure neither one of us knew it would be weeks before any real conversation would take place and that I would learn to read lips and tell him things from some place inside me that could only be spoken then.

Several weeks later as he became stronger and only a few tubes remained in his arm and his throat and other hidden places under sheets that I could never see, we moved on to the mundane. Who will care for his dog while he’s in the hospital and can he live on his own, even if he is paralyzed? I didn’t even ask, can he? I simply assumed. 

"Should I quit school to take care of him," I asked myself. When I realized this was forever and we both had to learn to deal with it, I decided to stay in school and learned the most important lesson of my life: focus.

The only way I could manage classes and intensive care was going to be by picking one thing. I chose the Arashi Shibori technique for dyeing fabric. Not only did I make books, I began designing collections to wear at my performances. What I discovered was that when you wear art it changes your stance. No matter how you wear it, or fold it up in your lap, it is beautiful and has energy. 

ruana using old clothes in all the shades of shade.

Threshold of Perseverance

Rearranging furniture, hanging pictures, and art the way I did after Donnie‘s paralyzing accident. After his death. I persevere. 

I saw him yesterday.  Only he was black. He was in his chair at the bus stop. 

He was leaning on one elbow to the side, the way Donnie did. 

He had a grocery bag looped across the back of his chair, the way Donnie did. 

He was sitting on a pillow to make it more comfortable, the way Donnie did.

I parked my car, took $20 out of my purse and walked toward him. 

I stood by his side to say hello and I couldn’t speak. 

My voice quivered and cracked. I wanted to let him know I cared. 

I had the 20 wadded up in my hand. I could barely get the words out. 

My son, I said, slowly, was in a chair for 20 years. 

The man nodded with an understanding smile. 

Still, my voice cracked more than usual. 

I wanted to say more but I knew my body would not allow it. 

I want to give you a gift,  I said, and handed him the 20. 

At first he resisted with the standard, Oh, you don’t need to do that, 

as I reached for his hand. I was at the threshold.

He took the 20. His voice cracked and smiled. He had beautiful teeth. 

Thank you. He  could barely speak. No  one has ever done this. 

You deserve it. 

My threshold dispersing, have a great holiday, I said. 

I  would have lingered if my body would have allowed it. 

It did not. I walked into the store to do my shopping. 

I see Donnie everywhere. I saw him at Anna's memorial. 

When I see him, there is a nauseous feeling that settles in my gut. 

The gut. That place near my uterus where he once grew remains tender. 

This threshold, this point of re-entry reveals itself so slow. 

All The Books on the Table

All the Books on the Table, Laverne Zabielski

I had a friend, an intellectual, highly feminist, well read friend. We went to writer’s conferences and feminist theory workshops. Gloria Steinem showed up at one event. Virginia Wolf was discussed and I thought I had arrived. All that searching for the deep down conversation. My friend had bookshelves filled with books, and there were books on the table and more on her fireplace mantle.

I arranged them in a pile. Like a sculpture according to title, as though each title was a line in a poem, and after the pile was complete, the poem was revealed. 

She was an icon of the academic institution. I thought she was the smartest woman I ever met, and probably was. Yet as the friendship developed, even turned to an element of love, she began  to reveal the emotional wreck that she was. Hysterical and impossible to deal with. Came from money, spent her inheritance, and spoke about the values of women and, yet, was clueless to the real work of mothers.  

It became a pattern. 

Some of the most passionate women for women’s rights had very little understanding of what it was to truly live the mother’s life.  All  the books on the table remained.

I cared less and less about  rhetorical intelligence and became more interested in the kitchen table. Coffee talk, when husbands went off to work, and women gathered their buggies and strollers, walked the neighborhood streets, ending up at another mother’s kitchen table. Small talk they called it. Was it? 

We were devoted. The books, nonetheless, all of them still became and become a draw. A habit I must break.  I must stop buying books. I think that if I buy them their contents will seep in if I lay them upon my chest and inhale.

I am pursuing my own books. My latest, the most beautiful. The crafting and placement, arranging words on the page, choosing the font, the size, when to use italics has become the new home decorating, the art by design. And while this book is for mothers dealing with addiction of children, so much of it applies to the letting go aspect of parenting. Letting go of the dream for our children, which is not their dream. 

My book will become part of all those books on the table. I will put it on top because of its beautiful cover. I will hold it in my hands when I want to remember.

Question: What are your thoughts on the hierarchy of intelligence I’m trying to express?

1988 Mothering

1988

I want to go back to the dumb days, before I had something to say. When I was happy washing tomato soup mixed with crackers out of my little girl’s hair after she dumped it there, the whole bowl of it, turned it upside down, flakes of soup soaked crackers stuck to her face.

There wasn’t anything to discover back then, in the dumb days, but get a rag and wash it off, snap a photo if the camera was near. Now, everything has to mean something. Something I ponder and sigh about, write pages about. . . . They levied my account today. The IRS took out all my money and I’m overdrawn.

I used to think there wasn’t anything else to worry about except when the final car payment was and would that Ford Custom last until then. Now I worry about how I put words down on paper, how I spread blue on white. . . I’ve got no credit and the baby got sick. Took her to the doctor and the doctor said, need my money today, Lady    . . . Sometimes I don’t even remember what I was trying to make sense of.

DJ and Johnny are screaming and fighting, carrying on. I holler “I’ve had enough! Your bed time behavior is going to change! You got it! It is going to change, NOW!” I crawl on my hands and knees picking up specks of lint while they brush their teeth and look for pajamas and toss dirty underwear into the garbage by mistake because I moved the dirty clothes hamper. 

There wasn’t anything to do back then in the dumb days except worry about making more cents, more dollars and more babies. If I had known how many cents are needed to care for a baby, I wouldn’t have made a one. But that’s assuming I would have listened to my intuition. I don’t seem to do that now, so what makes me think I would have listened to it then?

All the preaching and talking doesn’t do a damn bit a good. Your kids are watching your every move. You holler at them, they holler at you, and the bedroom stays a mess. I slam the door, sweep Cheerios off the kitchen floor, throw dishrags in the sink and the telephone rings. I sink down in my chair and quietly, softly say, Hello. Is your mother there? They ask. I AM the mother!

My Life, 1st Qtr

Base Housing, Japan

The First  Qtr 

1956 Back in the states from three years living in Japan. New to a one room country school in Perry, Kansas, we were teased by the kids at school. My brother & I told Mom. She left after dinner, went to see Mrs. Nichols, the teacher. Nobody teased us after that.

I remember 

watching the lights of the car in the gravel driveway as it pulled out onto the lane. It felt good seeing Mom to have been so strongly moved to leave that very moment after supper, teaching me a sense of advocacy. Knowing what’s right or wrong and calling it out when necessary. 

Those early days Mrs. Wisin was the alcoholic mother of my best friend Francie, fast Francie, I would eventually find out. And her sister Tina, a cheerleader & lesbian, I would eventually find out. A fact I had no understanding of its meaning.  The alcoholic & her glass of tinkling, ice, & Tina with all her girlfriends riding in the top down convertible. 

A  friend in Topeka lived two doors down in the working class neighborhood we’d moved to.  There were a bunch of kids in her family like ours, & there were fried potatoes on their stove for supper every night. The house was dark with the shades drawn, no light, not cozy & bright like our house.  

I remember the move to Rome, New York, right after falling in love with Gene Wittmen when he held my hand during the Elvis Presley movie during the Wisemen Say song & I felt for the first time the tingle of a crush that went eventually nowhere. That summer another nowhere crush on Dave a lifeguard at the public pool I walked to regularly & swam in the water beneath his lifeguard stand, me flirting & not knowing that was what I was doing. He gave me a ride home & walked me to the door & told me, standing on the sidewalk, we couldn’t date because I was a Catholic. 

Catholic & a transient from the Air Force base which I would learn my senior year in high school when I didn’t get the secretarial scholarship because of this fact. My dad called the base commander. I got it, proud, again, that my parents stood up for me.  It was the right thing to do & he did it. 

When  President Kennedy was assassinated Dad cried, right there in our living room while I hosted a sorority meeting. It was a big deal because I was the first daughter of a sergeant to be invited to join the sorority. All the other girls’ fathers were officers. I learned I could step out of my social economic class & be friends with anyone, including Lorraine a Mexican. She loaned me a sexy white dress so I could wear it to the dance on the base & flirt with the guys I’d be going to school with in September. 

And,yet, I had an attitude about the greasers in the shorthand & typing class, like I thought I was better than they were. It didn’t take me long to figure out in 1964 that going to college was not in the plans, but finding and marrying a good man was. So I did & he was good & uncomplicated & we had our first child, a perfect pregnancy. You were built to have babies, the doctor said. Of course I breast-fed. It was not a discussion. It may have been the first time I walked with attitude. I know what I’m doing & don’t tell me what to do.