Memory Jar 2021

8 YEARS!

8 years of memory jars!  wow...and it's been a year, that's for sure.  the kind of year where I found myself saying to my kid, "I know it's been shitty, but let's sit down and make the effort to think of a few good things to put in our jar so we have something to share on New Year's Eve.  maybe we have enough space from the trauma of it all to appreciate the experiences?"  hopeful as I was, I suppose I was bound to be disappointed, especially since my Teen showed more interest in the process last New Year's than he has in the past, by insisting on designing our yearly star himself.  it was a pretty star, but his enthusiasm for the project didn't carry through.  read on to find out what was good for us in 2021:

 

Me:

new running shoes!

birthday week lunches, gifts, ice cream, cake, dinners, cash, salt bath...

playing Yahtzee w/Grandma (Mom)

Grandma laughing at the movie Slapshot

Teen:

got a new hat

ok, well...there were significantly less happy moments in our jar than there have been in the past, but as I've said, and I'm sure we can all agree, it's been a pretty rough year all around (unless you're a billionaire that got richer from all the collective suffering, in which case, karma will get you my pretties).  the 'awful' was not just pandemic related in our case - I mean, my mom died, and then we lost our housing and had to move.  it's been utterly terrible, and we've had quite a rough time navigating it all, but I think we're coming through it a bit, one way or another.

 

for myself, even though I fell off my running game after Mom died, the gift of running shoes was/is a blessing, and definitely made the journey more fun (not to mention easier), and when I'm ready to get back to it (soon, soon), they'll be waiting for me.  and since I spent the year responsibly keeping mostly away from people, it was wonderful to spend time with two of my close friends who made the effort to help me feel loved and cared for around my birthday.  my mom spent two blessed weeks visiting before she died, for which I will forever be grateful, and during those weeks we had a lot of fun together, because she was moving away, and we didn't know when we were going to see each other again.  sigh...it wasn't supposed to be 'never'; she was planning to come to the Teen's high school graduation this summer.  anyway, Slapshot was one of her favorite movies, so I've seen it about 5,678 times and know it by heart - but I wasn't really watching it that night, I was watching my mom laugh harder than she had for a long time, and it made my heart happy.  and she kicked our asses in Yahtzee so bad, the Teen accused her of cheating, lol!

as for the Teen...he had it rough.  more than a year of remote learning, not being able to go anywhere or do anything with his friends...they did stay in touch through online gaming, but...it wasn't ideal by any stretch of the imagination, and I feel all their relationships were hurt by the separation.  he needed to get out so badly he ran away from home for two weeks and sent me spiraling even further into depression as if losing my second parent and my housing wasn't enough.  he was similarly affected, and more.  we worked through it well enough to be on a somewhat even keel now, and honestly, I don't feel like it's my place to talk about him so much on my blog any more, as he's past old enough to have a say in such things, and I know if I asked him, he'd tell me not to write about him, so...I (mostly) won't.  I can speak to the fact that he had some truly wonderful moments this year, but I recognize that there's some real healing he needs to do in order to feel ready to acknowledge them.  I truly hope he does.

 

some things that didn't make the jar but should have, include (for me):  taking part in the Roma Women's Poetry Project writing workshops sponsored by ERIAC, having one of the pieces I wrote included in Wagtail, the first anthology from Butcher's Dog magazine, and taking part in the online launch event.  spending time with friends, going to my son's gigs, and reconnecting with my tarot practice were also highlights, as well as going on a few dates, even though they didn't pan out into anything worth writing about.  during a time in history when things could be so much worse, I'm exceedingly grateful for the privilege of continuing to have opportunities to create my life in the ways that nurture and sustain me, mind, body, and spirit, and to have the means to offer compassion and understanding to as many others as possible.  I hope absolutely everyone gets to feel similarly blessed this year ~

check out our memory jar posts from years past, below!

2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 - 2020

"To David" - from my mother

my mother died 7 1/2 months ago, and today is her birthday.  she would have been 77.  my brother has been sending me random boxes of her things (well, his wife is probably packing and shipping the boxes), and in the last box, there was a folder of Mom's writing both from her school days, and after.  in particular, there were several poems to and about a man named David, and a letter to her father begging to be allowed to come home.  I wish she were here to tell me about what must have been a difficult time in her life, but she chose to take her secrets to her grave.  I hope she found David in the afterlife - whatever that might have looked like for her - and I wanted to give voice to her longing.  she deserved at least that much.  I mean...there could be a reason these particular poems found me, whether my sister-in-law or my brother picked them purposefully out of a pile of other useless crap, or it happened organically, it feels like I was meant to see them, and as is my way, share.

To David

Do you remember, darling, our love?

I do - always, but especially tonite.

We were having a campfire to celebrate harvests end,

And as we sat - I began to sing and strum the guitar.

The people said I was great -

That I sang with real feeling

For the tears stood in my eyes.

I sang, "We Shall Overcome," and they thought the tears were for the Cause.

But they were not - they were for you.

For as I sang I remembered - 

Our days on the picket line, the nite in jail, 

Our first date and all of those thereafter.

I thought of what might have been - 

The children we might have had.

And then I thought of how you left me

And you said, "You'll forget me, but please, not too fast or easily."

I turned away then to hide my tears

And you went -

I watched until you got your first lift

In a chain of many, which took you away forever

Now, the seas separate us

But darling, I'll always belong to you even when I sleep beneath the Israeli sod - and you beneath the the Louisiana soil.

In death, if not in life, we shall overcome and live again to love.

    - Sue Meistrich, 12/5/63, 6:30pm

13 Feb. 1964

I am 19, an upper middle class, white girl.  The only thing that makes me a non WASP is my jewish religion and culture.  I suppose my normal pattern would have been college, job and marriage to a "nice jewish boy", a family, etc.  I would have lived a secure life, nice and easy with no disruptive influences.

I have, however, already broken with the pattern.  The whole thing began on 19 Sept. when I was arrested for civil rights in Syracuse.  At this time I met a man - David - who I fell subsequently in love with.  Now I am faced with a decision.  I have a choice to make between two lives.  The life I mentioned above, conforming to the "normal" pattern and the life I see ahead as David's wife.  I see a life much closer to the raw elements of life.  The element of drink, pot, sex, etc.  I see pure love, but sorrow, misery and heartbreak because of differences of background.  I see a man who loves me, but can offer me nothing in the material senses, a man who is mad at the world, and who must sometimes take out his frustrations on me, but thru it all I see a man in love who is tortured by this love.  I see a life with no security, only love to hold it together.  Children who grow up angry at the world as my husband is.  I see myself cut off from my people and relatives.  

I can now choose between this life of love and the other, a life of security without as much meaning as the other.  my problem - do I come back penitent, to my accustomed life and try to be a person in the "normal" pattern, or do I break with tradition to follow love wherever it leads me.  I cannot make the choice myself and yet I have no one I can turn to who is not prejudiced for one side or the other.  I wait for an event which will make me decide - in the meantime I am in a hellish limbo.

DREAMS  (8 April 1964)

I see the trains in

the yards going- 

god knows where.

And I long to jump

on one and go with it,

But I go home - to a bed

with sheets.

I hear my man- broke,

Saying

Come with me,

I have nothing but- come.

But I go home- where the dog

eats better than him.

I read the poet who tells

me to catch the winds of

destiny wherever they drive

the boat-

But it is too late.

I am a solid citizen- shit!!!

11:30 PM Aug. '70

When does it stop hurting - if ever?

When do longings die - or do they?

Why must I stop seeking

How long will I cry.

If tomorrow I see David

What then will I say

Look out poss - whats to ya

Come lets go away

 

But, now I have a husband - proper

Now I have a son

And a daughter - also proper

Will I never, ever win.

When I feel youth around me

With their psychedelic colors

Searching, crying, learning, trying

Then my heart cries from within

Come and hear what I have suffered

Hear of battles never won

Know that I will feel forever

Tho the things be dead & gone.

Its a long way till we finish

All the things that we must do

And in the end are only

things so dead & gone

 

memories will I cherish

in the dark & secret nite

but never will I give up

the long & hurtful fite

in my pillow will I smile

at a face that's long gone by

but mostly I remember

and in the dark I cry.

My Mother

My mother died the other day, and while going through her papers I suddenly found the reason for the far away look in her eyes she had every July, my mother hated July, I learned the reason for the black mark on the calendar in her private date book every July 16th.  

My mother was once beautiful, I know I have seen many pictures of her.  She was a brilliant woman and none of us knew why she had never finished college and become a plain housewife.  Now I know.  I have read her diaries and now I understand her as I never did when she lived.  

She was a free girl beautiful and reflective, able to find the beauty in the everyday things of the world we all take from granted and never really see.  She saw them, she could be transfixed by the trees against the sky, or sit up all night and watch the play of the air and the stars.  She loved storms, wild storms, when the snow and the wind and the trees lash at each other and the forces of nature threaten to overwhelm us.  She loved to watch a hurricane or a tornado and often would not take shelter but watch and revel in the passions of the world.  She found in them an answer to her own passionate nature, unbridled and untamed.

My mother loved then, she loved a man, she loved him with all the force of her nature and she allowed her passion to rage unchecked.  But she always knew that if they were to marry they would destroy each other.  She did destroy him in the end, he followed her to the city and became an addict, I don't know what became of him for she suddenly stops writing of him and yet every once in a while she mused in her diary about meeting him again and she admits to herself that she would once again follow him and leave her family, her husband and her children.  As I said she loved with all her being.

It was after she left this man that she met him.  The other one.  she never loved him. that she knew, but she conceived a child by him.  She was too proud to marry a man she did not love and so she bore the child and the burden of unwed maternity alone.  She left him with her head held high, and he never saw the scars on her soul.  He never knew how her arms longed for the child she could not have, the child she saw only once in her life, the tiny infant daughter we never knew about.  Never once during her life did he say anything about it, but her eyes grew dark every July and she cried.  

She wrote about an Independence Day weekend that she walked the streets of the city, finding no one to speak to, no place to have a meal, her large belly and unringed hand prevented her from going in to a nice restaurant and her pride prevented her from asking assistance.  She wrote how she slept in a downtown fleabag hotel until the time came to bear the child she had suffered for, and how when it was over she prayed for help to live the rest of her life without the child.  She wrote of the long days she spent looking at each baby she came near wondering if it was hers and knowing that she had no right to think of it, no right to wonder about its new parents or its life.  She wrote each July of what her daughter would be doing now, and followed the age of her child faithfully all her life, but she never said a word to me.  

The following year she met and married my father and settled down to an outwardly respectable life.  She had children who she raised with all the love she had left in her but something had died in her and she was no longer the wild girl she had been before.  She was a good mother and a good wife.  She and my father lived together in peace and happiness for many years and never a word to us about the weight on her heart, the burden she bore alone.

My mother died the other day and now I know why she hated July.

*it's a little weird to hear her write in what's supposed to be my voice, and assume my feelings.  I never noticed my mother liking or hating any month over any other, and I never knew the 16th was a hard day for her.  I does happen to be my half-sister's birthday, so I guess that answers that one.  Mom eventually finished college and ended up with two Bachelor's degrees and two Master's degrees, and there's nothing shameful about being a housewife, 'plain' or any other kind, in my opinion (Mom also had a long and lucrative career as a librarian).  she did not strike me as someone who cared much for the weather, past being inside when it didn't agree with her, which was often, though she did enjoy waking up in the early hours of the day when meteor showers tend to happen, and I did appreciate that about her.  while it sounds to me like her friend David came with some serious red flags, I can respect that from 19 through 26 she thought he was the great love of her life.  did she continue to pine for him after all the long years?  or did there come a point in time when the 30 years she spent living, loving, and fighting with my dad eventually overshadow David's memory?  I wish there was more to read, but what I've shared here is the bulk of what I was given, aside from a few other poems and letters.  she did eventually tell me about her other daughter, probably just over 10 years ago when my own baby born out of wedlock was in Kindergarten, and she had found her.  she wanted us to meet, and so we did.  I think she's a cool lady, and I call her my half-sister.  her mom, the woman who raised her, thanked my mom for completing her family.  I think it's sweet, I'm glad it had a happy ending for my mom, and I hope it brought joy to my half-sister and her mom, too.  it's sad to think how much more we could have shared with each other if my mom had managed to parent more from a place of love than a place of fear, but she did what she could with what she had, and she did her best, just like most of the rest of us.  so many lost chances, so many missed opportunities for understanding, healing, and communication.  people - talk your stories.  you never know which ones may make a difference in someone's life.  I wished I'd known more about my mom...I wish she'd felt empowered to tell me more about who she was.  either way, I loved her.  

💙 💜 💙 

Shabbat Community Tarot Reading #4

wow, what a crazy week it's been for me - how about you?  so much upheaval and emotional drama!  even though we're 'through' the eclipse, we're still feeling its energy, and will be for a few days (weeks, months), and as we all know, the cosmic reverberations just keep circling out forever...  

I'm not sure where to start this week, as the reading I did was very personal, and specific to my circumstances.  I feel like if I'm going to read for the community, I can't pretend to be 'love and light' all the time, and like nothing ever goes wrong in my life because I'm claiming to offer to help people focus on doing their own deep work, so I have to show how I do mine.  

 

so - let's just say my child needs their community now in the form of a strong support network to help them navigate away from their current situation into something healthier for them in the long run.  the evil rage monster that lives in me has decided it's time for them to be free, rip off the band-aid, they're ready, I've done my job of preparing for this day well.  why postpone the inevitable?  they've embarked on their own underworld journey now, plumbing their own depths...the astrology would blow them away if they cared to look.  it's not my job to tell anymore, it's my job to love and let go, now.  but they don't want to leave, is the thing.  they wants to make demands of me, threaten and lash out.  they want all the benefits I've always provided - few though they may be - and to act indignantly while taking advantage and bringing so much conflict into our daily lives, I've been triggered back to my father throwing the kitchen table at me when I told him I was moving out (with a great deal more resources than my child has at the moment, though his daddy certainly had a lot less).  

the running away started with the tenuous stirrings of what might become first love.  now that there's 'someone else', I've become obsolete overnight, and have been shut out, and shut down.  so the arguments have escalated to where we're both teetering on the edge of violence, neither of us wanting to cross that line, and for years now, I've been sending them outside to deal with those feelings to get them away from me - it's my house, I won't be disrespected - and get them moving to physically help cycle that energy through.  so we argued, I told them to get out, and they demanded a therapist, so I called in mental health.  they called in CPS.  so now I'm under investigation for abuse, exacerbating an already intense housing crisis (impending homelessness), and did I mention my mom died two months ago?  it's fine...I'm sure I deserve all that and more, don't I?  but the bottom line in my opinion is that they've hit their wall - as have I - and it's time to figure out how to get them what they need from the support network they will build with the help of the authorities they've called in.  we can't live like this anymore.  it would have been nice to have the clarity to handle it on our own, but...oh well.

yeah, it's time to get out of their way, and leave them to it.  I caught a bit of a reading a day or two ago (I wish I could remember where!) that spoke to a wisdom coming in from the side, somehow...that it was important to pay attention to snippets that may come from random sources, and that was the kid yesterday - three times in the midst of the chaos they spoke honest truth, though I doubt they recognized the importance of what they said.  and between my own shadow work, Lorelai Kude's talk of overwhelm, and protecting what you've mothered, and Sasha's speaking of needing to let go of something anything, and 'where do we go from here' energy aligning with true direction and drastic change that has been a long time coming...I'm hearing this message loud and clear.  as hard as it is to focus through all the emotional turmoil, miscommunication, power struggles/control issues, change/liberation/chaos cycles, I'm doing my best to simply survive each day, which in the moment mostly looks like me trying to drink enough water, and failing, repeatedly.

so some cards for me.  some wisdom on how to step out of this dance.  help the kid get what they need to move forward and move along.  there's no coming back...things are irrevocably different and damaged now, so it's time to change course, and let life flow on by without me.  for this reading I used my oldest deck,  and this spread Meg @3am.tarot posted for the New Moon & Solar Eclipse in Gemini (June 10).  here's what we got:

 

image shows an antler, a crystal ball, a small metal goddess figurine, three cards from The Tarot of the Witches tarot deck (The Lovers/The Magician/The Chariot), a quartz crystal, and a garnet on a pastel colored cloth with silver stripes.

 

reflect on:  The Lovers - one rose reaching towards the sun, while a briar entangles the moon.  such a strange card...look at the two of them, dispassionate mannequins entangled in her weird hair, that half dead-or-alive hill they're standing on.  a meaningful relationship...aside from all the love, beauty, harmony, deep feeling, trust, honor, physical attraction, there's the dynamic of sacred vs. profane, and a testing of theories.  an expansion - taking what we've learned, and re-centering from a new vantage point in a spiral progression.  widening the heart.  coming out of isolation into exchange - an act of radical vulnerability; a moment of truth.

revisit & explore:  The Magician - creative Source.  imagination, self-reliance, skill, willpower, curiosity, cleverness, unity in thought and feeling.  deeply connected to, and aware of, the resources surrounding us as well as the magic within them.  an expanding sense of possibility, the first step in a journey - packing The Fool's satchel.  confidence, awake to possibility, throwing open the doors.  expansion, opportunity, courage, tapping into potential.  knowing we are the magic.

seek truth within:  The Chariot - as soon as that expansion happened in the The Lovers card, the fool on their journey recognized their power, and met adversity with resolve and determination.  alert and ready for battle - horses charging forward, his foot on the yoke, he's prepared to balance his mental and physical strength in working towards greatness, as soon as he can get his emotions under control.

there is great significance to me in these cards, considering where my teen is currently holed up, and with cards 6 & 7 - The Lovers and The Chariot - showing up together like that, with only the Magician's spark between them.  there's that pattern of being pushed into things too early, before they're ready, because I'm already holding more than I can safely handle, and something's got to give.  this is my child, born three weeks early.  this is my child sliding down my leg because they won't hold on, they simply trust that 'I've got them'.  this is my child selling off their trains to pay the car insurance that one time.  this is my child's path to freedom - their first steps out on their own.  I'm not going to read their birth chart, or check their horoscope or anything because they didn't ask me to, and I respect people's privacy...but I can see what I see, you know?  all that trauma I tried so hard to avoid passing on, that I made sure to pass on.  our ancestors' hard-won aspirations now crushed beneath my personal failures, and it hurts to live here.

 

thank you for coming along, commenting, and sharing - this reading is for anyone who wants/needs it!  as always, I hope there's something in here for you, personally, and feel free to contact me for a private reading.  

💙💜💙

 

resources:

3am.tarot

good vibes binaural beats

Shabbat Community Tarot Reading

Shabbat Shalom, all!  this week, while lighting my candles and sending out my prayers, there was a lot on my mind.  as the mother of a teenager, I know a few other mothers of teenagers, and it seems a lot of us are stressed to the max.  that's probably because our kids are stressed to the max, given the collective trauma we've all been living through, and even though my relative American poverty pandemic experience might look like paradise on a popsicle stick to someone in India right now, we've all had about enough of isolation and disconnect to last us a good while.  so I thought I'd do a reading for the kids, and by extension, for all the struggling moms (parents).

I didn't want to ask "how do we best support our children" because the answer to that is always "love them" (I mean, love is the answer to everything, right?).  so I asked "how can we best help our children learn to support themselves?"  and then for us, the moms, why ask what we need to survive, thrive, and lift up our families because the answer to that is also always "love" (and a robot slave).  so I asked "how can we best refill our wells right now as both caregivers, and bodies needing care?"  and finally, to tie the reading together (the way a rug can really tie a room together, lol), "how can we ensure we're doing our best to protect our Earthly legacy for the generations?"  here's what we got:

image shows three tarot cards - The Emperor reversed, The Hermit, 7 of Cups reversed - surrounded by a small metal goddess figure, quartz crystals, polished rose quartz, garnets, magnolia & wisteria seeds, a bear tooth, a large white feather, and a small red and green feather, on a light colored iridescent scarf with fringes, and a dark fuzzy blanket.

"how can we best help our children learn to support themselves?" - The Emperor reversed - well that message is pretty clear...Smash The Patriarchy!  The Emperor is a powerful leader representing authority and structure, who is focused and disciplined.  he's all about setting those firm foundations and boundaries, and standing in our power, but here he's in the reversed position, which speaks to an abuse of those powers...a sure sign that his rules and systems are no longer working.  a loss of focus in a bid to keep his tenuous control finds him failing those he swore to protect.  so the best way to help our children learn to support themselves could be through leaning into their creativity, teaching them to speak up and out when overreaching community leaders/teachers/parents/authority figures/clergy attempt to silence them, let them feel ALL their feelings (boys especially) and then rewrite the rules.  it's their world, now, and they have to live with the messes we leave them, so we should probably just get in the back, learn to trust their wisdom, and let them invent it all anew.

"how can we best refill our wells right now as both caregivers, and bodies needing care?" - The Hermit - I guess we all need some alone time, huh?  a cave to run off to where we can ponder the deeper mystery of ourselves, and plum the shadowed depths of our souls?  I know I've surely been doing this...have you found yourselves retreating from the world a bit to clean up your own head lately?  and doing your best to give those around you space, too?  it seems weird that in an almost-post-pandemic world, what we might feel a need for is more space, but I think it's a different kind of space.  space to do work in, to look at our actions and reflect on who we are and what we do; how we interact in the world, and in what ways we connect to our higher purpose. it's a place of contemplation and meditation, self-reflection and solitude.

"how can we ensure we're doing our best to protect our Earthly legacy for the generations?" - 7 of Cups reversed - this indicates coming back into focus after a period of confusion, or feeling hemmed in by a lack of options.  in the context of the question, I read this as we humans realizing we're at a point of no return with our environment/planet, and making some sound choices to change our behaviors to address those pressing issues rather quickly, out of necessity.  I wonder if many of those solutions will come from the minds and hands of those teenagers we'll be handing the reins to, after our period of retreat and self-reflection?  maybe they'll learn to integrate their various energies in ways that will help them work together, share intelligences, and build more collaborative and sustainable futures?  isn't that always the hope?  well, it's mine anyway, and maybe some of yours, too.

thank you for coming along, commenting, and sharing - this reading is for anyone who wants/needs it!  as always, I hope there's something in here for you, personally, and feel free to contact me for a private reading.  

💙💜💙

I'm not as good a parent as people think I am, but I'm probably better at it than I think. (content warning for frank discussion of abortion, and swear words)

since many of my friends seem to think I'm 'god's gift to parenting' (joking, but lots of people tell me what a good mom I am pretty often), let me tell you how I came to it.

the first time I got pregnant, I was 22, living in Florida, with a bunch of us irresponsible young adults sharing a house together that was a filthy mess, and I had 50 pot plants growing in my closet.  my boyfriend was a self-possessed asshole who wanted to have sex with just about every woman he laid eyes on, so I thought long and hard about whether having a baby at that time, in that place, with him, was the right thing - while my idiot boyfriend spent a lot of time screaming at me that I COULDN'T have it, that he wasn't ready to 'ruin his life', and I had no right to ruin it for him.  he tore my favorite tapestry into shreds and kicked the door off the house to illustrate his sincerity, at which point, one of our roommates came into our room, yelled at the boyfriend to leave me alone, and took me off to Key West for the weekend, where we slept on a beach, and woke to discover that we had laid our blankets out on a massive field of goose shit.  after spending the morning in the laundromat washing our blankets and clothes before wandering around town not able to go in anywhere because we were barefoot, we headed back to the house where I devised a ritual involving two apples - one with an 'x' carved into it, and another with an 'o' - that I placed in a paper bag, and took with me to the ocean beach on a full moon. after communing with the waves and the night, and calling on the Goddess to help me choose, I reached into the bag, drew out an apple at random, and saw that it was the one with the 'x'.  I would have an abortion.  I ate that apple, tossed the other one into the ocean waves, and informed my crappy boyfriend that he needed to come up with half the money for the procedure.  he called his mommy, and she sent us the whole amount because, as she explained to me when I questioned her choice, "your instinct as a mother to save your children is very strong".  I told her he'd have been better 'saved' by having to get a job and come up with the money to take care of his responsibilities himself.  the roommate who took me to Key West drove me to the clinic where I was given a shot of demerol and valium, then had my uterus scraped out with an iced-tea spoon, and vacuumed.  after the drugs wore off enough, I was sent home to recover in my own bed.  I have a vague memory of the shmuck boyfriend sending his underage girl-crushes to keep me company, because I'm sure I didn't want to see him, but I sent them away, because eww.

the second time I got pregnant was not long after that (less than a year), after we three roommates had moved to New York, and I was so stupid, I was still 'dating' that asshole, even though he treated me like garbage, and cheated on me constantly.  he refused to believe it was even his (because if he was sleeping around, it meant I was, too, right?  wrong.).  I made an appointment with the abortion clinic straight away, and loser boyfriend made a big stink about having to take the day off of work from from his shitty, minimum wage job at the deli making sandwiches, to ride his bike to where I was living, to drive me - in my car - and pay his half for this second procedure (no calling mommy this time).  we had fun terrorizing the Jesus-freak protesters that were terrorizing the women trying to get into the clinic, but after having the same injection, and the same scraping and vacuuming, and he had driven me home (in my car), when he left to get to his all-important job, he did do a decent thing and called my best friend to tell him I had just had an abortion, and could probably use some company. my bestie did come over with his girlfriend, and they spent the afternoon with me, which was nice of them, and almost made forgive the boyfriend for being such an asshole.  I hope I broke up with him, then, but I probably didn't...I mean, I did eventually (obviously), but not that day.

I managed to not get pregnant for awhile after that - not until I started dating my most serious boyfriend to date, when I was 28 or so, who I got pregnant with in the first few months of our relationship. I was furious at him, and remember showing up at his house in the middle of the night to yell at him about it, and throw one of my wooden clogs at his head.  but he paid his half, and took me to Planned Parenthood to have my third abortion - I had just met this guy and started going out with him - I wasn't going to have his baby!  he sat anxiously in the waiting room because I told him I was going to make him come in and watch the process, but the clinicians who performed the procedure talked me out of it quickly by telling me that most men passed out during the process, and then they would have to deal with him and his nonsense, rather than tending to me and my needs, so why bother.  this procedure took place in Vermont, where they Don't knock you out, and I was a bit apprehensive, but the pain wasn't bad, and I made it through ok.  when I came back out afterwards and told this boyfriend that I was ready to go home, he had the deer in the headlights look to him, saying he'd been sitting there sweating it out, waiting for them to call him in, and I thought 'good, that's fine with me'. we broke up for awhile after that, but then moved back in together, and I got pregnant Again - I may have tried to convince my guy that we should have the baby and get married, but he was Not into that idea, so there was a fourth abortion, and another eventual break-up.

several years later, when I was 34, there was a murder-suicide involving two friends of ours in the small town we lived in, and I went to visit my now ex to tell him about it (he had moved a few towns away for work), and we coped with the stress by having sex.  guess what?  yeah...the orgasm went through me like a lightening bolt (like the lightening path through the Kabbalist Tree of Life) and I knew instantly that I was pregnant again.  I said as much to ex-boyfriend, but he didn't believe I could know that.  I continued to 'know that' for the next two weeks as I drove past Planned Parenthood every day, twice a day, on my ways to and from work, and I didn't want to go and get the pregnancy test until I knew for sure what I wanted to do about it (because I knew I was pregnant, you see).

I thought that on the one hand, I was pregnant with an ex-boyfriend who I cared about deeply, even though we had moved on from each other, and not some loser I picked up in bar for a one night stand.  I thought about what a good and decent person this guy is - his work ethic, his heath, his heart and soul, his music. I thought about how I used to tell myself that I would never have kids period, because I loved my freedom to move through life as I chose, and how a baby would ruin that for me - that I was selfish person and didn't much like kids on the whole.  I used to think that if I ever did choose to have a baby, I would only do so if I were married to the love of my life, and lived in a nice house with a picket fence, and the whole 1950's bullshit American dream story, and I also knew that my life was never going to look like that.  I didn't want another abortion, for fear of turning my womb into Swiss cheese, and I had had enough of death, and wanted to embrace life, so I chose to have my son.  he knows this story.  he knows that I was in no way prepared to have him, but that I CHOSE to. he was wanted.  I finally went to Planned Parenthood, got the pregnancy test, told them I was going for it on my own, and had them set me on the right path with a prescription for pre-natal vitamins, and lots of literature to read up on what was about to go down in my new life, as a 35 year old impoverished single mom.

my ex didn't ask to become a father.  my son didn't ask to be born.  it was chance, or circumstance, or coincidence, or synchronicity, or whatever you call it, but ultimately it was a choice I made that involved the lives of three people, two of which weren't me.  so I made another choice - I chose to let my son live his life the way he chooses.  I thought, 'if I'm going to bring a perfect, innocent being into this world for no reason other than not wanting to have another abortion because I was irresponsible about having sex without using proven birth control methods, than I was going to do my best to let that being lead me in knowing how to parent him'.  I saw/see my role as a sort of body guard - prevent the child from doing himself severe harm (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually), but past furnishing the basic necessities of life (food clothing shelter), mostly just asking open-ended questions to help him chose how to raise himself.  even on my best days, I manage to screw it up somehow, but the child is growing, learning, achieving, and making me so proud in general because he's such a great person.  not the smartest, the fastest, or the strongest, but smart enough to know what it means to be a decent person, fast enough to know slow and steady wins the race, and strong enough to shoulder his own burdens (of which, I hope there are very few). I've been lucky, in the sense that I was prone to saying that since 'the Universe is said to only give you what you can handle, than it gave me the world's easiest child to raise because it knew I wasn't up to the challenge of anything else'!

so, to all those folks who tell me what a great mom I am - I'm not.  I'm just a person who has a fair amount of resentment about some of the ways in which I was parented, and made some adjustment to what I think my parents did that worked, and what didn't.  like I said, I mostly let the growth process happen on it's own, and steered my kid away from things that might cause him bodily harm.  when he was a baby, I'd say "ah ah ah!" instead of "no", saving 'no' for truly life-ending dangers.  if he did something I liked, I would praise him in a high pitched voice - for something I didn't like, I'd use low tones.  I would pay attention to behaviors I wanted to see repeated, and ignore those I didn't.  it's kind of like training a dog, really...I am naturally creative, and would rather play inside my imagination that do most other things, so I was great at stimulating a growing baby's natural curiosity and wonder, but completely useless at teaching anything about how to shave, or, say, 7th grade math and science (I chose to leave that to professionals, with more or less success, given the individual educators).  in any case, if you're one of the folks who thinks my kid is great, then feel free to use these techniques yourself.  the BEST possible advice I can give to potential parents is this - DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN UNTIL YOU FEEL READY TO DO SO.  by that, I mean think about how ready you are to come so close to the edge of wanting to kill yourself and everyone else, including your children, and then somehow mange to Keep Your Cool and Not Do It, then maybe you can handle it.  now, I only had one kid, without a partner, so take that into account, too.  I didn't have another relationship I was trying to navigate while raising my child, and I can't imagine that's easy, let alone doing that with Multiple kids!  parenting is no joke (though it IS supremely important to laugh, a lot), if you plan to do it right, and never at any point do I think I'm doing it right.

and when I screw up, I APOLOGIZE.  that's really big too, because my mom, to this day, has Never apologized for any of the many things I could (and in some cases, have) legitimately ask her to apologize for.  just do your best to love them for all your worth.  treat kids like people because they are.  I have been asked, "why do you ask for your son's input on things?"  and I respond, "because he's a person, and has opinions, and I like to take that into account when making decisions that affect him".  I did this as soon as he was old enough to talk, and know his own mind...4?  maybe 5?  I mean, I didn't consult him about major life decisions, but I'd ask him what he wanted to eat, or wear, or how he wanted to wear his hair...or who he wanted to play with, or let touch him.  and by most accounts, he's a pretty great kid - a little goofy, always ready with a joke, but if that's the worst anyone can say of him, than that's not too shabby in my book, all credit to him.  also, Don't Have Unprotected Sex Unless You Are Ready And Willing To Live With The Possible Consequences.  that is all.  just keep it in your pants, and don't rush into anything you can't handle.  and just assume you can't handle parenting.  it's crazy out here ~

ABC Wednesday Again? Sure, Why Not!

click the logo to go to the blog

A is for...

come on, you know you want to say apples, unless you want to sing "Alligators All Around", like I do right now!

but that's only because I saw it posted somewhere recently, and didn't play the video, so the chorus has been ringing in my head, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to listen to it.  I've been thinking about doing another round of ABC Wednesday for awhile, and now that's it's back around to 'A' (I've been watching it), I jumped right in, completely unprepared.  but as I mentioned above, a great many of us 50-something Americans think 'apple' when someone says 'A is for', and to follow on the theme started by Roger, who is hosting this round, I thought I'd take us back to The Unused Portion's humble beginnings:

Good to the Core!

aww!  if that isn't my little monkey about to take a bite out of that Empire Apple!  back when he was still just a mini-Vermonter, trying to figure out how to get along in NY, even if Mama did work at an apple orchard.  and that t-shirt...it was a dress on him for years, but once he grew into it, he grew right out of it.  it's long gone, now...this picture was taken the summer before he started kindergarten, when The Unused Portion was 4 months old.  now he's about halfway through his first year of high school, and this blog has been active for 10 years running!

so, the history of this blog and ABC Wednesday is that I first jumped in in September of 2012, on the letter 'I', skipped 'Q', and made it all the way to 'W' before I gave up.  in 2015, I gave 'A' & 'B' a go, but didn't go any further until 2016, when right around this time, I started another round on 'A', in which I commemorated the recent death of David Bowie, and that was the end of it.  until now.  so in the interest of getting this entry into the linkup before there's 4000 people in there, that's all I'm going to post, and start thinking up something for next week!

*and Roger's post isn't about apples, after all - it's about Alaska.  I guess it's the intro post he writes for the ABC Wednesday site that was about apples.  he says his favorite is the Macoun, which I always pronounced "ma-COON", but when I worked at Soons Orchard, Mr. Soons said it "ma-COW-an", and it was his farm (through his daddy and grand-daddy), so that's how I said it, too.  I'm not sure about a favorite...the boy ate an Empire a day back then, so I was always flush with those, but I also liked the Gala, Winesap, Braeburn, Cameo, and Jonagolds!  not working on an orchard, you kind of have to take what you can get, and at my local store, that tends to be Galas and Honeycrisp.  I'm a bit biased against the Honeycrisp, though, so I never buy them!  how do you like them apples?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall..?

I said I was going to do this more often.  I said I was going to make a commitment to myself to post about once a week.  I said I needed to remember how to write.  remember?  remember when it was like breathing?  remember being at parties, and not having anything to say to the beer-swilling guests?  remember trying to find a pen in that house?  remember wondering how people didn't even have pens or paper?  remember tucking into a corner at the top of the stairs and making poems "on the paper bags we brought the alcohol home in"?  remember D asking to hear that poem, staring blankly for a minute, then commenting "well, at least you can still use the bag."  bitch.  I wonder if She ever wrote anything worth reading...or anything at all.  like that mama yesterday who said, "I never made any money when I used to write."  like writing is something people pick up and put down, like it's a hobby, or a whim.  well, it is to some, but to others...but to me...  maybe that mama wasn't very good at it.  maybe because she thought she'd get paid well.  maybe she was romantic or something, I don't know.  whatever she is (she's a pretty right on lady), she isn't a writer.  not like me (unemployed and unpaid?  my inner critic sneers).

Inner Critic by Ana Bettencourt Tirolese

have I lost my muse?  did I ever have one?  was it youthful idealism, or a 'fire in the belly' to express my longings and desires?  was it using my artistic expression to categorize my trauma and figure out a way to heal?  remember how it just came right out of me, unbidden and undeniable, how it ached to Not get it out?  obviously, I'm talking to myself, here, the 'masses' that aren't reading any of this have no knowledge of the volumes I've written in the past, the dusty chapbooks sitting on my shelf, unread, ignored, unpublished, other than a few sloppily made artist books shared with the wrong people for the right reasons.  remember fingers flying across the typewriter (Yes, Typewriter) so fast I could barely keep up?  remember the typewriter, also collecting dust in my bedroom closet?  god, how I love that machine...

this is a stock image of the actual machine I own - isn't it gorgeous?

I read the drivel people turn out and call writing.  it's awful.  yes, I'm talking to You, now.  I love you, dear person, but your writing sucks.  it's awkward and blocky, lacks imagination, and your editor should be ashamed of themselves.  and you, less-cared-about person, your writing is Way too wordy, says nothing, is historically inaccurate, and frankly boring.  you, valued acquaintance, I must admit to not having read anything you've written in awhile...have you written anything lately?  ugh...dear soul who I care for, your writing is...ugh...I can't even say.  oh, but there IS You dear heart, whose writing fills me with delicate images I want to touch, but am afraid to shatter - gorgeous feelings of connection that take me away...  and you, new friend, your writing reminds me that I used to write...I used to...the way you do.  in some way, you all inspire me (and Keep Writing!).  to what, I wonder?  post on my irrelevant blog 'at least once a week' to keep the face-shnook insights engaged?  to keep myself 'in practice'?  to force my own hand to live inside the muscle-memory of fingers flying across the keyboard, the unsatisfying thumpity of the computer as compared to the clackity of my old typing beast?

I have spent around 15 years wrapped up inside this concept of being the kind of mom I needed to try and be for my offspring - from the first moment I knew I was pregnant, to hustling for money/places to live/food during my pregnancy, to working at home so I could stay near my baby, to putting him in daycare so I could work outside the home, to having him get off the school bus at my job so he could work that last hour with me.  then the next job, which had me rushing back and forth to work and home between putting him on the bus in the morning, and getting him off the bus in the afternoon.  then came the homeschool years, when I worked from home again; and when I didn't, bringing him to work with me.  when he went back to public school, there came the day when I found myself unemployed (again), and I sat on my couch staring at the wall, wondering what to do with the freedom of hours stretching out before me - and remembered that I used to Be Someone, and that someone Did Things.  what were they again?  ah, yes...I used to write, and make jewelry, and paint, sew, crochet, knit, weave, sculpt, play music, sketch, make pottery, shoot and develop film...but more than anything, I used to write.  All The Time.

by Henriette Brown

my teen barely needs me anymore - and soon, when he starts driving, he'll need me even less, if at all (other than a thing to rebel against in his quest towards autonomy).  and who will I be then?  still his mom, sure, but what else?  one of the middle-aged ladies working at the grocery store, earning the same minimum wage for the same job I had when I was in high school?  so what all have I managed to accomplish since then?  what social standing have my achievements lent me?  what form of wealth?  is it for money that we artists sell our souls?  is it for status?  I guess the successful ones do...  how many times have I heard "you could write a better story than that" about some multi-million dollar book series that got made into several multi-million dollar movies?  more than once.  more than twice, actually.  I need to believe that I can still succeed at my dream, no matter how many times it's been put on hold, or set aside for the 'here and now' of having to survive in this world while raising a kid as a single mom who can't succeed in the mainstream work force.  I truly suck at 'having a job' because I hate pretty much everything I've ever had to do to earn money, other than selling my own crafts at markets.

but where did my creative flow drain off to?  it's supposedly a bottomless well, that one only needs to feed in order to be filled.  so I tell myself I have to post to the blog once a week to get that flow going.  I tell myself I need to send cards out to the friends I owe letters.  I tell myself to get off my ass and Move My Body to jump-start the energy I need to tackle the task at hand, which should be easier now that it's almost Spring in the northeastern 'united states'.  I need to nourish myself, physically, mentally, spiritually, and figuratively (artistically).  I read every day.  I watch movies frequently.  I'm working on getting back in the habit of meditation and ritual.  I need to remember to feed myself food, because single people often don't care to cook for 'just themselves', and I graze through the kitchen, trying not to get any dishes dirty to avoid having to wash them.  I guess I need to set up a schedule for myself, the same way I did for the kid, to 'raise myself right', now that I've mostly done a good job with him - though he still needs to be reminded to brush his teeth twice a day, every day (guilty secret:  so do I), along with other teenage imperatives.

long before I read Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way', and learned her concept of 'filling the well', I referred to myself in my writing as a vessel created by the Universe to be filled with its desire to express itself through me.

there are at least a million motivational tools available to everyone with an internet connection and a computer, but I don't to use them, because I'm way too cynical to have sunshine blown up my ass by anyone other than myself, and I'm more into the 'tough love' approach, anyway.  the teen and I joke that my skill-set is more akin to what we call the 'Cotton Hill School of Parenting', in reference to a character from the animated sitcom 'King of the Hill'.  if you're familiar with the show, let me remind you - I said JOKE.  Cotton is a despicable character, though he is funny in the context of the story...but I digress.  motivation is 'the reason one has for acting or behaving in a particular way', or one's general willingness to do something.  OR - like I stated earlier, when the ache of NOT getting it out hurts more than keeping it in.  and motivating oneself will produce momentum.  science shows that setting schedules and building rituals around tasks are one way to make getting started and keeping going easier, so my coming to the page 'once a week' (at least) is a very small step towards reminding myself to do what I love.  isn't it weird that I need reminding?  I chalk it up to life being about cycles - I've been so wrapped up in my day-to-day, I didn't realize I let my 'raison d'etre' got lost under the piles of monotony.

cook, clean, laundry, dishes, trash/compost/recycle, shop, drive to activities, work, socialize, help others, keep pets, pay bills, bathe, handle emergencies, eat, raise a human (which comes with it's own sub-set of activities), celebrate holidays...sleep?

ah, well...it's no wonder with all I've got to do that something had to suffer, somewhere - too bad it was my creative outlet, and being able to take part in a romantic relationship!  well, back to work, then...the creative outlet part, not the relationship.  I still don't quite have the bandwidth for that.  I've gone on a few dates recently, and I wasn't really all that impressed by any of them.  but we are kind of living in the age of 'most men are trash' right now, so that part of my life can wait a bit - I need to be working on Me, and I don't have any extra energy to give to anyone that can't show up Whole when I have So much to offer (I'm really kind of fabulous, but I tend to keep it under wraps, because most people don't deserve to know, shallow gossips that they are).  so Monday is what passes for a day off in my world, and I was all set to write this post then, but I got side-lined writing cover letters and sending out resumes instead.  I did come to this page on Tuesday, but there were so many other things that needing doing (Not a day I 'take off') I wasn't able to finish it.  now it's Wednesday, and I've spent most of my morning attempting to finish this up so I can take care of my other responsibilities (hello business taxes) that got neglected yesterday.  where are my single moms at?  I know you hear me...

hope to see you here next week ~

Memory Jar 2016

the tradition we began in 2014 continues here – a list of things that made us happy over the past year, which we wrote on slips of paper, and put in a jar to share together on New Year's Eve.

the boy's list:

experiencing virtual reality

sleepover with G and A

having A and G over

having G & A over for b-day sleepover

sleepover at A's house

sleepover with G

G

A

Zoom Flume (w/G & A)

Ms. A's party/food

Beltane party

being a part of the haunted house at Woodstock Music Lab

Ramones and more Ramones x 2 (playing in a Rock Academy show)

Maiden vs. Priest Running Free EPICNESS (Rock Acadermy)

Iron Maiden vs. Judas Priest x 2 (RA)

seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show @ Woodstock Music Lab

seeing Hedwig and the Angry Inch

first visit to the United Nations

robotics x 4 (learning to solder circuit-boards to program robots he built)

LIFE x 2

T! (Dad)

punkador haircut

Magic Tournament x 6

winning 1^st in the Magic Tourney

building an epic Magic deck

cool Magic card

10 mythic rare Magic cards

getting a tablet (at the end of last year)

tablet case

mom's b-day

Spanish rice

Dungeons & Dragons

Z-ish (an old friend of mine-ish)

Nahiri (his kitten)

shrimp (riffing on the 'shrimp' theme from the movie Forest Gump)

last night of Hannukah/New Year's @ W's

*swimming and having dinner at the house of a person who no longer makes us happy to mention x 6

my list:

Maiden/Priest! (so much fun) x 2

Ramones x 2!

Hedwig vs. Rocky Horror!

PORCELAIN HELMET! (adorable local boys' metal band)

hearing my child laugh

trimming the plants for Spring

Nahiri-face! Meow

smiley heart

New Year's with the former co-op crew

my 47^th b-day party (I think we hosted a game day?)

the boy's b-day sleepover

the boy's b-day game day

April Game Day

Beltane w/the former co-op crew

4^th of July weekend with Z, Y, B and W

Thanks-taking day of rest

Pizza and meatball epic sleepover party

perfect moment stretched out on the rug in front of the season's first fire with the kid and the cat

having friends who have us over for dinner

finally getting the car inspected

first paycheck from the new job

last night of Hannukah/New Year's @ W's

*our weekly dinner with the person who did me wrong '16

things we thought it was weird we didn't add to the jar, and mentioned after:

him - Billy Joel (playing at Levon's Barn), cuddling with kitties, playing in the snow, Hannukah, learning algebra, getting a new tv, Star Wars 3.5, sleepover with the W kids and watching Invader Zim.

Me - Billy Joel, Yenteprise (new-to-us car), alone time, Hannukah, new laptop, baking Rosh Hashanah Challah.

It seems our list grows every year, and we learn to be more grateful and notice the things that are important to us closely. Sometimes, when we're lucky, they notice us, too. With thanks to the friends that appear in this list year after year, and to the new ones we will make in the coming year – here's to a great 2017, and hopes for all the strength we need to get through whatever comes our ways! Love ~

Memory Jar 2015

     Tonight we decided to review our best memories from our special memory jar, a tradition we started last year (Memory Jar 2014) - here is the list of what made us happy in 2015:

meeting G

homemade chocolate truffles x 2

guests for my b-day

making a bow, arrows, and moccasins

1st stitches & removal

the boy's b-day party x 4

Writer's Festival Story Slam 

1st Glam Rock rehearsal

Glam gigs x 4

Thomas O'Malvin (new cat) x 2

In the Voice of Our Mothers writing workshop x 4

dinner @ L's

Challenger Space Center mission

Passover

Spring!

planting annuals

baby plants

growing plants

magnolias, lilacs, irises, lilies, red raspberries, black raspberries, mulberries, morning glories

roasted veggies

learning the whole Hebrew Aleph-Bet

homeschooling!

seeing Jurassic World

getting Magic cards

Pixels x 2

Inside Out

seeing a bald eagle sitting on the beaver dam

a bald eagle sitting on a tree branch 

a bald eagle on the wing

homemade pizza

chicken skewers w/peanut sauce

Will Lyttle's cartooning class

music at Bard College

roasted veggies, steak, and steamed brocolli

Shakespeare camp

 - Two Gentleman of Verona

 - Comedy of Errors

KISS gigs x 4

not-back-to-school picnic

going to the Card Vault

Ramones rehearsal

random $100 gift card

Thanksgiving @ D's

monthly game days

meeting a cool new mama friend & her family

warm chili on a cold night

watching my boy open a pile of donated gifts

hanging at G's & playing 'Rebels'

giving the kitchen a deep-clean

free book day!

1st visit to B's house

hanging @ W's 

B's b-day party x 2

Channukah

     ...and even though it hasn't happened yet, I'm going to add the New Year's Eve party we'll be attending tomorrow, with some of the people whose names grace this list of happy-making memories, so I feel it's not a far stretch to consider we will have a Great time with them then, too!  Also, the Ramones gig is sure to be a knockout second weekend in January event, and I'm willing to bet it will top the list of 2016 memories next year!  I hope you all had a wonderful trip around the Sun, and that your lows weren't too low, but that you're highs were wonderfully high!  Here's to more of what's good in 2016 ~ see you next year!

Stacks, Pizza & Beer, Random mythological rundowns, and posturing.

     About a year ago, sitting under some of the oldest trees in town (on the library lawn), their towering crowns carried my sorrowful soul up to the sky.  I wondered what that small piece of land would look like when the buildings had crumbled and fallen, when the trees were back in charge, when the forest reclaimed the space from us.  Would it feel holy to what came to tread there after?  The soil, worn so smooth, barely there for the deep roots I imagined, spreading out beneath the sugar maples; countless footsteps having drummed out the ancestors' rhythms, passages in time.  The land there feels sacred to me, in contrast to the land of the apartment complex I had just moved from, which I feel blessed to no longer live on - the fresh wound of the Earth reaching up and choking us all with its newness, like a ragged scar picked at, and not allowed to heal.  With the melancholy of being between homes, it was from the library lawn that I pried two stones up out of the mossy soil, working my magic through the trees rooted so deep to the land in which I was trying to belong - how long had those two stones lay beneath that tree?  Did I feel guilty?  I filled the holes with different rocks before I carried the old stones away, one for me, two stacked for the boy (leaving room for him to grow).  It put me in mind of how 'stacks' make me feel safe, be they of the library, or of stone.
     For some reason, it made me think "I'll be a traditional Romni for Halloween" to let them see what it really looks like, when it's pulled off by one of our own, and to give them a taste of what the stereotyping looks and feels like.  The flowered skirt, big earrings, diklo and braids, put on my bangles and beads, thick black eyeliner, and show them what it means - I'd offer to read fortunes, even bring my crystal ball...say things like "you know, Romani women have no closer connection to the divine than those fortune-tellers from other cultures, right?"  Or "I predict you'll say something bigoted and insulting in the next five minutes."  Do it right there on the library lawn, attract a crowd, and hit them with some truth.  Pop said that blood had to pool somewhere...by resisting the stereotype, am I causing myself more harm than good?  Muffling the Me that wants to sing and dance, get lost in duende?  I get so tired of having to prove that I'm something other than what they all think we are, because while some of us are doctors, lawyers, educators, business people, many of our talents truly do manifest in song, dance, fortune- and story-telling, and we shouldn't have to be ashamed to express that - to put it in my pipe and smoke it, so to speak.  I like to say I come from the 'wrong' kind of Roma, just to point out that their are the 'right' kind, as well.
     So that side of my family were thieves and scammers, that doesn't define us all.  So what if I can pick a lock and rob you blind while you're out getting groceries?  So what if my grandfather's brother did those awful things to my cousin...well, no, that's Never ok...but it has nothing to do with our ethnicity.  There are good and bad of all types of people, and we are no exception.  Pops himself was the best kind of man, in spite of (or because of) his horrible upbringing.  I met that nice lady who loves our culture because it was Us who forged her family's papers and got them out of Eastern Europe before all that awful history went down. Good for us.  I haven't forged anything since I didn't want those progress reports in Junior High to reach my parents, but if something Truly Awful goes down in this country, and it would help save a life?  You can bet I'd do it again.  Honestly, there are so many instances where 'the better angels of my nature' remind me that I am a law-abiding citizen, and to perform a task it crosses my mind to contemplate would not only constitute a crime, but would jeopardize my standing in my community as an upright and trustworthy individual, and undo the good work I put in upholding that notion.  Is there a way to use my less-than-honest powers for good?  I hope to find out one day.
     The boy and I didn't dress up for what I like to call Samhain that year - last year - as that was the night of our transition from 'crappy apartment on scarred land' to 'acquaintance's small house in a more rural area, much more to our liking', where we stayed for a month.  Then we were homeless for another month before finding our current abode, which is working out just fine.  Sometime after moving in, I wrote "At this moment, everything is alright.  Is that what I need to come to the page, now?  Is it that putting myself out there is more dangerous than it used to be?  Are the things I type and choose to share dangerous?  Define 'dangerous'...what am I afraid of?  That's not the point.  The point was that everything is all right.  The rent is paid, the bills are paid, there is food.  There is clothing, even though it is all in a gigantic laundry pile that I dread having to take the day out of my life to haul down to the laundromat, spend the 2 hours washing and semi-drying, then hanging it all around the house for two days until it dries completely, folding it, and putting it away.  At least the boy is old enough to help, now, and pretty much handles his own.  What a nothing to complain about.  So, on the base level, things are good.  I am in a comfortable place.  Today.  What's next on Maslow's Pyramid?"
     The next draft was apparently rather similar:

It's not that I can't write, it's that I don't.  I could sit down in front of this machine and kick out a jam at any time, it's that I don't make the time to do it.  To put it on the calendar, to compartmentalize the creativity...  We got pretty creative yesterday, with all the art supplies out.  I'm glad - I've been wanting to shift that energy around for a long time, but it took 11 months (already?) to finally settle in enough to get with the proper organizing for this space.  There's still lots of work to do, but the process is 87% complete, at this point, so maybe there isn't 'lots' to do, but more at the fine tuning of making it all pretty, now.

     So, I 'kicked out a jam' and wrote:

There was a certain nostalgia in the air last night...it was a warm, coastal kind of evening, Floridian to me.  In November!  And the radio was just ON, which isn't the norm.  Made me want to run away with my own circus.  The night where you call that old friend not to say anything, but to just have the line open between you, but because there is such a thing as propriety, you try and fill the space with words.  Why can't we be quiet together?

     Once again, I don't know quite what I'm going for, here, I'm just throwing all my thoughts and feeling out into the ether, working through my own issues, and catching up with a bunch of blog drafts that I never finished, attempting to weave the disparate ends of my life together as a means.  Do I add a tip jar to the blog as an attempt to pull in more scratch?  Do I 'monetize' it, and clutter it all up with ads?  Would that really generate any income?  Do enough people enjoy what I slap down 'on the page' for it to make a difference?  Could I figure out how to make it so?  I've never done anything because it made others happy - I've lived my life singularly for my own enjoyment and personal, spiritual fulfillment...until I had a kid, then I added his relative joy to my equation, because, really, that's what parenting is about, if you do it with any level of competence.  He's like my own personal Jesus (with apologies to Depeche Mode and Jesus freaks) - taking into account how I was homeless while I was pregnant, and all the doors of the 'inns' I knocked on were full, and wouldn't let me in.  Since his birth, he has saved me, time and time again.
     During my healthy yet impoverished pregnancy, I developed the theory that the Jesus mythology was supposed to make Marys of us all - suffering in holy silence while the war mongers murdered our sons by the thousands in their bloody, useless battles against themselves.  Well, I wasn't going to buy into it.  No one was/is going to hang My son on any cross for such nonsense.  We are warriors for peace and harmony, love and community.  Highly vibratory individuals who choose coming together in understanding as a way to elevate us All.  Are you with me?  Feminism is (finally) back on the rise, and the energies are balancing.  'God', in my experience, is gender-less.  An all-encompassing energy that swirls around us, which can be moved with concentrated will towards a particular goal.  There are Goddesses walking around in my Earthly domain, and I have seen them in their bodies of flesh - you have too, if you are open to their energy, women who stop you in your tracks the way they carry themselves, the power of their being radiating out from them in a powerful enough miasma to knock you off your feet with a longing to curl up in their laps, and return to that place where we all felt completely and securely nourished, protected, and loved.  And where are my Gods?  Hunter S. Thompson is dead, and he was the closest anyone came to that title role for me, other than my dad.  I can only hope they are being raised by women like me, and the aforementioned Goddesses.
     We need these children of balance in order for things to get better for us in a whole, global way.  As a well-educated poor person in the Northeastern United States, I can tell you how tiring it gets to sit in a roomful of moms who have the privilege to talk about the tens of thousands of dollars they have to spend on their next car while my old clunker is sitting out in the lot with a smashed windshield and the front end about to fall out from under it.  Or how locally grown organic food is the better choice all around, when I'm living on low-grade pasta, canned food, and half-rotten veggies (if I'm lucky) from the food pantry.  These are lovely people, and I like them all.  Neither am I judging by saying these things, I'm merely putting the situation in context, to show the disparity between our situations, and how it feels to sit among them and not be one of them, even though we are similarly engaged in bucking 'the system'. So they married well, or came from money, or worked hard, saved their pennies, and invested wisely.  So some of them had a better support system, or a more advanced skill-set.  It just strikes me that I end up in these situations where I am rubbing elbows with folks who are obviously so far out of my league, and that I'm trying to give my kid the same advantages as theirs.  Sometimes it works, sometimes not.  No matter how much of an outsider I am - or maybe because of it - I nevertheless insist that the world's problems will be solved by taking a wider viewpoint that includes All members of a community/society, because the next great thinker may just be some kid who had to figure out how to rig some duct-tape fix to keep his single mom's fridge running, or his shoes from giving up the ghost, or some other small crisis that ends up having larger, global significance.  Can you feel me on this?
     That's enough random rambling for now, and I have two other pieces I was going to work on to share, as well as another piece I wrote for a different venue.  Let me know in the comments which you would like to see first:  a continuation of the comical werewolf story I was riffing on for The Sunday Whirl, or a more personal essay concerning my experience with child protective services?  Thanks for following along, and I hope you enjoyed the ride.  Also, feel free to share your thoughts on either monetizing or adding a tip jar to this blog, or both.  Which would you prefer?  I wouldn't prefer either, personally, but a girl's gotta make a living if she wants to fix her car so she can get her kid to all those fancy classes that will give him a chance to compete with those who have all the advantages with which he wasn't lucky enough to be born.  Selah ~