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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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How Can We Fix This?

A child was lost.

A child lost.

The world beat him

Battered him, bruised him to breaking,

And – go figure —

He broke.

 

His spokes gave out.

His wheels flew off.

His handlebars torqued.

And he tumbled.

He’d been tumbling awhile. 

But this time, 

He tumbled so far

He could not,

Would not –

Refused –

To get back up.

 

On the front end of a warm Tuesday 

At the ass end of a cold month,

Sick to death with hurt,

He took charge.

With a discharge that fixed 

And dilated 

His pain

In a huge, gaping hole.

That opened to a ravine 

That swallowed a family

And shook a school

And rattled a community.

 

His mother unhinged

His father undone

His siblings unstrung

His promise unsung

 

His lyrical, beautiful, 

Guitar-humming

Soul-strumming 

Sweet promise,

That could make this place beautiful

– so, so beautiful –

Left unsung. 

 

How can we fix this? 

 

Not this, that’s impossible —

Fixed forever in a curled dark hole

Deep in his family’s ribs 

Howling unchecked —  

But this? 

 

This brokenness

This curled dark hole

Deep in society’s rib

Howling unchecked

… and ignored.

 

How?

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The Butterfly Effect

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has and these are of them. Whither have they vanished? ~~ William Shakespeare

 

When I read this week about six people from Missouri, four adults and two children – 

read about the metaphysical-and-quantum-physics-spouting cult leader spinning chaos

from a prison cell, proclaiming his targeted victims “carbonated beings,” I couldn’t help

but think of Banquo’s quote from Macbeth. Because those six people, like ginger ale fizz 

and the three weird sisters, all vanished into thin air.

Kind of like me at sixteen – a victim of a cult, but a victim in reverse. My father, a chaos

physicist, teaching the science of surprise, the science of the nonlinear and unpredictable, 

while mourning the loss of a father, found evangelical fundamentalism, fusing love of

subatomic principles with an unbending rendering of scripture thanks to a ramrod patriarchal penis-head

stirring butterfly wings with bible verses, and unspooling

a teenaged typhoon in Tennessee. All because I refused to walk as a sheep. Me, who used to 

trail after my father like the dust trail on a comet, shimmering in his presence, preening as he 

presented to my fifth-grade class all the mysteries of our brave overhanging firmament, fretted with

golden fire and planetary motion, his faith never faltering, even as his faith failed me. I learned the

science of surprise, how lines of scripture can become prison bars

destroying free will and families alike. The mother of one of the missing mothers in Missouri, when

interviewed, says she’s “holding on by her faith” to the hope that her daughter and grandchild will be

found. Ironically, that’s exactly how her daughter vanished – by holding on by her faith. As did my

father’s daughter — his faith a soothing balm for the ache of a father’s loss in his heart, which then created the ache of a father’s loss in my own.

The flutter of faith’s metaphysical wing – so fair and foul a thing I have not seen. 

 

 

. 

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A Thousand Twinkling Sparks

I’ve always loved starlight.

The dusty sprinkle of the Milky Way,

the brittle glitter of constellations,

the renaissance glow of old and new,

of reds and golds and faintest blues.

 

And the flames of candles, too.

The shimmering flicker of a haloed wick,

the undulating liquid light that peaks 

and flattens, fizzes and flares, 

always moving, yet still so still. 

 

So, of course I love Christmas — 

the dotted-light stitch of houses

and trees. The starry-night feel 

of them, as if we’d dredged the 

heavens with a honey wand and

 

pulled its sweetness down to our

hearths and homes, our hearts and 

bones kindled with a thousand twinkling 

kindnesses, a thousand twinkling well 

wishes, a thousand sparks of love

of comfort.

of joy.

 

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Mamaw’s Love

Mamaw facetimed me yesterday afternoon, via my youngest daughter. Her voice twanged hard through the screen. But then, it’s always twanged hard. On a plane once, someone asked if she hailed from Australia. But it’s Appalachia that’s made her, stamped her with the crags that line her face, the hair that curls like the eponymous gray smoke off her mountains.

She loves those mountains and everything that flows and grows from them:

She loves a good muddy creek and the fish that swim there. Give her a worm and a hook and she’ll perch on the bank for hours, casting and rocking and listening to birds.

Oh, how she loves birds. All around her house, feeders saddle porch rails, hang from soffits, suction to windows so she can watch finches sling birdseed like laughter, hummingbirds spin air to blurred magic.

She loves a vegetable patch full of pole beans and cabbage and maters. She cooks fresh in the summer, then her own canned all year round. You’ll always find a pot of pintos on the stovetop and a hodgepodge of sides on the table. Drop in any time of day and she’s ready to feed you – or sit you down for a game of spoons. She loves a good game of cards.

But she especially loves BINGO. One of the first times I met her was in a Moose Lodge with a bingo cage rattling and a slew of daubers at the ready. She slid a card and dauber my way and told me to play.

But even more than BINGO, she loves babies. Hand her a newborn and the lines in her face vanish, the twang in her voice softens, and she’ll coo, “Good… Good… Good…” for hours on end — the only person I’ve ever heard do this. I’m convinced that’s why my girls have both turned out so very good, good, good.

And most of all, she loves family. And whomever she loves becomes family for life. I ought to know.

Because even though we aren’t technically, legally family anymore. she called me yesterday from her hospital bed to tell me she loves me, the rest of her family gathered tight like quilt squares bunched warm round her heart. Because last night, she gave us all a good scare.

Last night, she went to see Jesus. She told me so this morning when she called me yet again — to tell me she loves me and to tell me she saw Jesus, and her mama and daddy too. Her daddy was running, and her mama was singing, and she wanted so badly to stay. But Jesus told her to go back home, to go tell it on the mountain. And so she did. And so she is.

Mamaw was my mother-in-law for almost twenty years. But she’s my family forever. Our lives are stitched together not just through my girls, her granddaughters, but through that boundless, timeless love of hers. Sweet as birdsong. Binding as pintos. Eternal as Jesus.

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Tired of Lockdowns

’m really tired of lockdowns.
I’m tired of hearing we’re in Code Red and to assume the position.
I’m tired of pulling students I may or may not know into my classroom.
I’m tired of ushering them into a dark corner to hunker down.
I’m tired of hearing my voice shake as I tell them to be quiet and take it seriously.
I’m tired of watching them choose their coping mechanism this time around: tears, frustration, nonchalance, humor.
I’m tired of telling them to put away their phones.
I’m tired of making them sit, uncomfortable and uncertain, for hours.
I’m tired of watching them squirm because they have to pee.
I’m tired of me squirming because I have to pee.
I’m tired of girls bleeding through their tampons because they can’t go to the bathroom.
And I’m tired of being grateful that someone didn’t bleed out from something far worse.
I’m tired of squad cars pulling fast and furious into our parking lots.
I’m tired of SWAT teams running armed and aggressive inside our halls.
And I’m tired of being ever-so-grateful that they were here.
I’m tired of hoaxes and crank calls.
And I’m tired of being grateful it was “just a hoax.”
I’m tired. My students are tired.
We’re okay.
And we understand that just being tired after a lockdown is a luxury many haven’t had.
But that doesn’t make it okay.
This has got to stop.

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Summertime — suck it up, buttercup — for tomorrow, it ends

There’s a reason I hunker down on my porch in the summer – the only season of quiet that exists in my life.

Through June and July, I sip at the slow, sultry, syrup of summer like an addict, soaking my marrow in its sweetness, doing my best to bottle it in memory so I’m sustained when it’s gone — which happens tomorrow.

Tomorrow, summer leaves me.

And I pray there’s enough liquor of peace in my core to help me remember that it won’t always be like it’s about to be —

where time (and I) will take a beating:

a brutal, full-on assault of seconds bruising and buckling into

minutes, bleeding into pulpy, pulverized

hours, shredding to hard, dusty

days, bled dry into

months completely exsanguinated, drought-fed, and strung out like jerky, tough and leathery and jerking me around, seeming without end.

And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow spins out in its frenzied pace of work and

acting class and

football practice

followed by homework somehow and then

work again and lesson plans and

voice lessons and

football and

homework somehow somewhere and — I forgot about dinner! and

again work and lesson plans and teaching and

piano lessons this time and

football and homework where? when does it get done? and dinner how? and

here’s work once more and lesson plans and teaching and

Wednesday afternoon laundry and help me Jesus! homework and maybe dinner for real, a table and everything and

dance class and

football and maybe homework and maybe snacks instead of dinner and – showers dang it! we can’t forget showers – and

God help me, I’m going under and I forgot all about grading and feedback and

now it’s time for the Friday Night Lights that stretch and twist and warp like an elastic band thinner and thinner until they catapult us finally into

Saturday and more football and laundry, and

hair appointments maybe? and grocery shopping somehow? and selfcare, is that even a thing? HA! and

… and Sunday, bless-ed, blesss-ed Sunday – breathe in, breathe out on thank God for recovery Sunday, but

no husband, no daddy, no real time with just us at all and then, oh God! here we go again and

rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.

And tomorrow, it begins.

I’m scared y’all. This year, I’m really, so very afraid that I’m not ready.

So here I sit on my porch shot-gunning as much of the final sweet seconds of summer as I possibly can. And trying my best not to panic and and and andandandandandandandand…GULP!

I don’t think it’s working.

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The Song of a Mother

My son swims in jell-o-bright water,

a nine-year-old Achilles dripping blueberry syrup 

from sanctified limbs. 

Fluid and free to flip his hair, sashay his tail,

he bobs along, suspended in color-soaked dreams.

Sweet honeyed daylight dapples his skin in flashes

and splashes like sequins (not chainmail) like scales

jazzed

and

pentatonic

daring swift-footed heroes to dance and sing

eat peaches or figs

whatever they like.

He’s not like most boys. I know this.

And he knows this too. And because he’s not,

monsters lurk in his idyll. 

Charybdis and Scylla cast shadow and stone in his bright jell-o water,

stretch tentacle to tendon, would cleave him in two:

half oil-slicked wreckage half solar eclipse

Claim he’s the monster here –

not dazzling and daring, 

but different and dangerous, 

contagious, blasphemous,

wrong. 

A sinister sign of the times. 

I pray he sees the truth – how sinister and wrong they are;

masquerading their message of love 

that’s not love.

Love is celebrating your bold, burnished child 

(any child, every child) 

and love is providing the armor 

(why must it always be armor?) 

to help your child live out his love 

(any love, every love). 

Not the love you would prefer he live –  

a love dipped in non-Styx Teflon, 

safe and colorless, sealing him in tradition because: 

it’s easier (not because you believe it’s the right way);

it’s smooth (not because it’s straight);

you love him (not because love is love is love is love).

But love IS love is oh-so glorious and personal and… love.

So, you do love him 

and affirm him. Tell him he is alright. 

That who he is, is not wrong. 

Or I do. Not you…

You wrong and hurt him. 

Tell him he is too colorful. With too much sashay.

A boy’s light should glint with steel, not sparkle with glitter, 

be myrmidon dark, not technicolor twinkle.

Should be sharp, uncompromising, heroic, brave. 

To be otherwise is unwise.  

Like some problem to solve correctly.

A choice on some standardized test.

Answer A or B. 

There is no C.  You were born how you were born. You have no choice.

At least on that we can agree—

I mean, would anyone choose something as hard as this?

in a world that hates heroes so flush and plush with sparkle? 

then again, if we could — why would anyone not choose sweetness and light?

not want to live somewhere beyond bedeviled and bewildered?

beyond haunted or hardened? 

somewhere

weightless and fluid and free,

my son

floats in jell o bright water,

a nine- year-old Achilles

dripping blueberry syrup

from sanctified limbs.

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Which Loss is More Catastrophic?

Millionaires chasing dreams to explore the depths of the ocean and failing?  

or

Migrants chasing dreams to explore the depths of democracy and failing?

Both sets determined to know the unknown.

Wanting more.

Entitled to more.

Pushing the limits of possibility.

Risking it all:

Children

Families

Futures.

And both paying dearly for their audacity

with catastrophic loss.

The fact that this is even a question

shows how deeply we have suffered 

a catastrophic loss

of humanity.

** Like most of the world, I’ve been caught up in the Ocean Gate submersible saga with no knowledge of the refugee ship sinking in the Mediterranean until now — nearly a week-and-a-half later. The revelation has left me gutted, yet (in a sad, self-loathing paradox) still hungry for more Ocean Gate details.

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The Class of 2023

These kids.

These beautiful, incandescent kids

Floating from grad party to grad party 

In bright dresses, pale shirts,

Cowboy boots, and sneakers.

Lightning bugs in their element,

flickering among the tree-lined, sloping lawns.

Fire flies from their mouths

In arcs of energy,

Crackling while they sip soda, crunch crackers and chat

— about fashion, gaming, senior trips, and the beach —

One final, carefree summer,

While on the horizon, shimmering and soon:

Medicine. Engineering. Economics. Design.

A glittering nebulae of promise

drifting in the space between now and later.

Truly the brightest, most beautiful,

Highly-nuanced, and oh-so-noble group

of students I’ve taught in a generation.

They work hard, dream big, take no prisoners

And still play nice. They are Wunderkinds,

These mid-May lanterns

Bobbing, breezy and effortless, and

Soon to scatter the planet as stars. 

Their souls stoked with passion,

Their brains hardwired for change; but also

(thank God for the also),

Hearts breathlessly buoyed in goodness.

And in light.

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