Monthly Archives: December 2012

Christmas Card

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I once gave someone I loved a copy of Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost.

I am not sure she read it, but I know she did not appreciate it because she told me–

you sent me a book when you should have sent a card!

I am not a card gal. I wrote Fierce Angels as a Christmas card, Just Words was a wedding gift and Just was a PSA.

I used to tell friends I did not do Christmas cards because ours would be crazy weird. Really depressing.

But then I believe as humans our lives are all marred by grief and pain. It is this very reason we need the wee child in the manger.

He came to save us from ourselves.

Today I got a Christmas card from a precious friend. We know each other only because both of us have lost daughters and grieve for them.

Her friendship is treasure to me. The gift of Magi.

Telephone Call

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Um, so you are pregnant?

Yes.

We are worried about you-about the baby.

Why?

Well, no job, no church, your boyfriend does not want to marry you?
We need money!!! Mom should get dad to send money. They are so judgmental. If they wanted to help they would send us money.

Mom is worried you will do something stupid…to the baby.

What?!

You know, like putting your cat in the fridge?

The cat is fine. The cat wanted to be in the refrigerator.

Promise me you will not put the baby in the fridge. Or the washing machine or dryer. No appliances. babies do not belong in appliances.

Seeing Ghosts

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The hotel is the same
The furniture is different
The name has changed
But the steps

In the pool where the babygirl
Hurt her foot
Are the same.

I remember

The way the road snakes around
Hills/river oaks
I once ran up and down
But don’t remember
How old her little sister was or
The specific children
Who trailed violence in their wake

We have all gotten
Old since then.

Hi, I am the Narrator…

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Hi, I am the narrator. Elea was annoyed with me for napping on the clock so she is giving me extra assignments. Typical.

She wants me to discuss nature versus nurture.. Claims the subject is too close to home for her. Says I am the professional and she is the amateur so, yeah, show her how it’s done…

Team Nature argues for the biological expediency of our genetic code. Nature says, basically we are all just a sequence of predetermined impulses and urges and we are what we are–Darwinian productions, all water and code.

Team Nurture says, no! Humans are more than a sum of our chemical parts. Love matters. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, all that…

Why the flippy intro?

Well, H and C have rather wantonly stirred their genetic material in the petri dish of human determinism and Elea says I have to give you–sparse and gentle readers, a crash course on the odds.

Or whatever…

The Narrator Naps

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Hey. Wake up. You know you came highly recommended and you need to do your job (bozo).

N (sleepily). Huh? Did you just call me Bozo?!

Yes. I did (albeit sotto voce). You have decent hearing.

N. Light sleeper.

Whatever, you are on the clock sista. Where did those two knuckleheads go?

Last I saw them, they were headed for Miss Havisham’s.

Miss Havisham’s? I did not write a character named Havisham. That was Dickens. You know, Great Expectations?

N. yeah, I know. That is my nickname for the extenuated older female relative that they are traveling to scam cash from.

Um, how exactly?

Well a basic combo–Honey Bunch will shop her impending delivery of a child, Cowboy will back her up with some well-played humility and yes ma’ams and both will suggest that if Miss H can’t spare the ducats they could sleep on the futon.

She has a futon?

Oh, yeah, it is buried under 20 years of laundry and a bag of high-end dog food.

How can you sleep through all of that trudging/scheming/prevaricating?

N shrugs. I am a professional. Seen it all.

The Narrator Ruminates

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There is nothing more monotonous than watching someone think. Well. One more thing–reading about a person thinking.

As in–the narrator thought. She chewed on her dilemma. She explored scenarios in her head. She plotted, schemed, planned. Ultimately she just sat and thought, just like The Thinker only more clothes, less abs.

She thought about maternity wards. They have a hushed holiness about them. She thought about the nurses who kept such careful watch over the wee babes. Everything feels safe in a maternity ward, except perhaps for mom. Mom can be stressed. Heck, mom can even fear for her life, her child’s life.

As a professionally trained, bonded, and insured narrator she had performed the necessary internships in nursing homes, elementary schools, courts of law and fast food joints, but it was her elective stint in OB that had stuck in her craw.

The babies are so perfect, so new. It is as though their nurses are their angels–washing, swaddling, protecting their little patients. In a world of chaos and violence that frequently spills out over the heads of children, most were given a day, maybe two of safety.

After that all bets were off…

Priorities

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Ten years ago I heard a distractingly handsome doctor give a motivational speech. Ok, he was my husband.

He told a group of squirrelly teens that they needed to prioritize. Well, showed them.

He showed them how to fill a large jar. First he put in rocks, then pebbles, then sand, then water. The jar was not full until the water had been poured in. His point? Put the big things in first.

This morning I was up early contemplating a long list of chores–messy house, yard work, bills, medical appointments and school.

Got my blood pressure up just thinking about all that stuff to do, plan, clean.

Ugh.

I have to put the rocks in first. And for me the central stone is Jesus. I have to be still and know Him. Next is love, I need to minister to the hearts of my family.

After that may the mud fall where it may in the messy metaphorical jar of life.

Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV)
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. [25] The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. [26] But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. [27] The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Do you miss him?

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In the midst of a morning of futility (guarantees are often NOT guaranteed) my young son asks me if I miss my father–a man who died before he was born.

I say yes
Infinite sadness
I tell him yes. I do.

I tell him that he looks a bit like his grandfather and that helps. He asks if his grandfather likes the athletic wear he favors.

He is so good at connecting himself
To the identities of ghosts
This fully living child
I love.

Incidentally it is Christmas

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Honey is big with child and the child in question belongs to her baby daddy whom she calls “hubby” even though their common law arrangement would generally favor boyfriend over husband.

The narrator refers to him as “Cowboy” although he is more of a car or truck boy, no cows in sight.

It is winter which means that Hubby is wearing jeans with his wifebeater T-shirt and Honey is wearing a faux fur hunting cap, flaps pulled down.

They are traipsing through snow and the beagle puppy in Cowboy’s arms whimpers and squirms in the cold.

They have run out of gas and it is dusk. Cowboy is scanning the darker corners of a parking lot for an early model car with easy gas tank entry. They need to “borrow” a couple of gallons to get home.

The fading light, the young impoverished couple trudging toward shelter evoke the memories of a sacred crèche until one is able to discern the nature of their quest and the utter absence of either a donkey or a sacred city.

No. This is a different. One cannot see Joseph in a muscle T siphoning gas from a beat up chevy cavalier.

Petty larceny on the road to Bethlehem? Only if it is Pennsylvania.

Honey B and the narrator

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Honey likes memes with cats, puppies, and rude phrases which stretch the patience of the narrator, who generally perches over her shoulder quietly tsk-ing.

The narrator is concerned about the way caustic emotion seems to erode Honey’s traction on life and grammar.

Honey writes about her predicament:

Tore up? Wat ya mean tore up? I din tore nuthin’!!!!
It was you that tore stuff you bleeping bleep.
Your the one who tares stuff!

Honey, your spelling and grammar are abysmal, chastens the narrator.

Honey looks dumbstruck, not because she doesn’t want to tear into the narrator but because for some reason she can’t .

Weird.

She blinks at the narrator. Why can’t I cuss you out? She asks glumly.

Well, it is my magic powers of narration. A gift from the author, who, incidentally finds your mad swings at communication tragi-comic. Would it kill you to write “you’re for you are?”