Winter Daze
an update and/or mothering under ADHD/mothering while genocide continues
I’ve started and stopped to write more times now than I care to count…
Some thing/s keep holding me back.
My therapist advises one thing- yes it’s sound advice- but not when every where you turn is someone needing something - an ass to wipe, a nipple to pry from a mouth, a bank account to transfer money, a school to be paid, a tank to be filled, a medical alert system to be researched and procured, a house sitter to prepare for, a chicken coop to be tended, recycling to sort, orders to pack, interview to be conducted, email to be read, emails to be deleted, emails to be unsubscribed from, ripped princess dresses to mend, socks to darn, emails to respond to, emails to forward, insurance claims to file, rain barrels to research for we are in the end times or are we in the end times, lost keys to search for, cloth diapers to be stripped, rain boots to be dried, molded lunches to be tossed out, fresh lunches to be made, breakfast to be made, lunch to be made, dinner to be made, dishes to be scrubbed, cast irons to re-season, children to make up stories for, buy markers for, diapers for, stussy eight ball and Nikes and black hoodies for, and the other day I felt my chest sieze up as if I was about to cry, and I thought- wow I can’t remember the last time I cried, and I think I might feel better if I could cry- but I couldn’t cry, until the new physical therapist I am seeing who does not also take my insurance so I am paying cash once again $110/session presses on the right side of my misaligned post third child pelvis in such a precise but firm yet kind and steady way that it’s like he’s pressing on my sternum and finally some tears are released and a tiny sigh of relaxation unwinds from my body. And I know that this is what bodies in America so often feel like- slightly calcified all over, unable to cry, misaligned and pent up underneath it all simmering rage stifled grief - utter exhaustion
or
Is it simply The Dark that settles here in northwest washington this time of year…. where I shudder at driving past 4pm but also because driving past dark right now means I am putting my baby and my toddler into a car and why?
or
Is it the weighted sand buried feel that kept me in bed for hours after the nightmare of a presidential election followed by the arms wide spread and gleeful exclamation by the father of my firstborn’s father “welcome to Trump’s world” when we met for son transfer and so shocked was I despite knowing how fox news addled he and his wife’s brains are, all i could muster was “are you kidding me?” and then my son had to bear witness to my rage for the duration of our 25 minute drive home- “why do you care so much?” he asked me and I said “because those girls are my daughters/ b/c those mothers bleeding out to death because they can’t get a life saving reproductive procedure are also me/could have been me/because i have a heart.”
meanwhile I am single parenting three children for a brief spell-three weeks- and I am about to lose my mind from the whining and the crying and the breastfeeding and the hair pulling/the baby wants down no the baby wants up but only this way and now the baby is wating down no up down no up and what the hell do you want baby and there is no one within walking distance to just come pick up this wailing baby and now the toddler is wailing and it’s 2am in the morning and there was a week of that and how can i write how can I feed myself or even take a breath when that’s what’s happening on top of the never ending ways I am needed always on call and always being reminded and never knowing quite how to explain or get through that even though YES I MADE THIS CHOICE what is a choice when the choices are what the choices are? what is a CHOICE when the choices are what the choices are and yes I still CHOOSE this every single day but what does choice even have to do with the sacred unpaid labor of MotherhoodParenthoodCaringforeveryone? and some people grow up to be emergency room doctors and and police offers and like how? praise them yes even them have mercy on their hands.
the rains have been heavy the frost delayed, but still coyotes howl and barred owl cooks-for-you and occasionally still a lone frog here or there and my daughter says “WOW LOOK AT THAT SUNSET” out the windows at the morning light/breaking dawn/waking sun
and on top of it all
a poet I have loved loved loved for years and years and years is dead
Nikki Giovanni is dead
Nikki giovanni has died
Nikki praise your word ways/ praise your passion /praise your virignianess/ praise your blackness /praise your poems for lovers and love and sex especially
“so she replied: show me someone not full of herself
and i’ll show you a hungry person”
(from poem for a lady whose voice i liked)
and a place i loved in columbia sc, a place i went weekly for $5 jazz on thursday nights and hoppy-cold thick-in the mouth fresh brewed beer in a place where unlike here there is not a brew pub on every single corner it’s a joke now, has closed; i remember that thin woman with the pixie cut holding her baby up in the balcony and everyone said she was crazy and maybe she was so what? she was in a bar with her baby and yeah that was kinda weird, but know i understand and wish I’d known she needed a break some cash, someone to say “let me watch you baby so you can go out and dance and be alone in your body that is your bodynow for a temporary moment uninhabited by anyone but yourself;” and Dave cried on his haunches againt the brick wall in the parking lot the night we heard elliott smith was dead - and andrew felt me up under the table and i wore an olive green denim skirt that i loved and another man cursed me while everyone looked on and did nothing
then the summer after i graduated dragons 1976 played there and it was a wonderful show what more can i say you really should have been there -they’d played the night before at the whig- also rip, and yes i was there too, so then on the set break he sauntered right over, came up to me, smiled said “i was playing for you” after i took him down to the riverside where we were eaten alive by mosquitos. now he is a bush pilot in Alaska and doesn’t know i know this why am I telling you this?
and man
yes i do
sometimes wish
i could turn it off
this time skipping
this thin skin
this information age
where it is coming
coming
all the time all the time all the time
all the time
and can I even remember what it was like to wait?
not hours not days but weeks
for your handwritten letter?
why did no one tell me that
this mothering/this aging
means every little thing present/ every little thing past/ every little thing magic
that you can go back here to there and back again as if no time has passed/while knowing full well you can never go back
and as we all know - going back
is not always the thing you think it will be
how’s that for walking into the darkest season of the year?
and ps
I do have some wonderful people I cannot wait to introduce you to starting in January 2025!
Interview series is starting then. Stay tuned. Please tell your friends.
Until then I’m gonna hunker down and relish this dark time and I sure hope you can too as well as you are able. xo