In five years a boy goes from child to young man, unless a day changes everything
For everyone
For all of us
The street, the people who remain there
Never the same
No amount of water
Can wash away grief
When pictures are unbearable
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Category Archives: history
Broken Alabaster
The Calhoun County Courthouse is a mausoleal mid-century modernist confection, the juvenile detention courtroom then a windowless (Chinese) box on its second floor.
Perhaps I am biased. I remember envying the parents whose kid had gone on a wild joyride and the various parents of pot sellers and users.
I remember thinking the local Baptist pastor who was there for jury duty was a harbinger of God as I spilled out
The terrible story of why I was there.
Which had to be after the judge used the shade of our old oak tree for his big white truck. After his lawyer son stood across the street, bemused as Mary, on the roof, hurled her salty invectives at me.
After the juvenile probation chief told us they would not hold Charles forever and I thought to myself as I looked at him, (what do you have to do in the state of Texas to get yourself thrown in prison?!)
They say there is a library somewhere, an Ivy League kind of library, which has thin panels of white stone from floor to ceiling.
The light diffused through the thin white stone, perhaps to show-off or to shield the books.
I have searched for it for years, can’t find it
So much like a pearl, mother-of-pearl, an alabaster jar
Full of the most unmistakably broken
Perfume.
A Voice in Ramah
The LA Times writes a puff piece on abortion doctors who travel to states like mine to kill the unborn.
Our Eichmanns
Our Holocaust.
Matthew 2:18 NIV
[18] “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Eves
We live our lives between Christmas and Easter
All that matters in between.
Mary Ellen
What would Jane say about the unspeakable crime scene? The girl already broken but still living? The final blow that ends the life.
Sometimes forensic science is not parsing out the rape, murder, and prosecution of the unspeakable crime. String of crimes.
Sometimes it is asking who decides what level of “good behavior” lets the murderer go on a shopping spree, walk alone in a mall–surrounded by the blissfully unsuspecting? Walk into the crowd.
And why all these years to wake us from slumber to
look for him
Among us?
Your Eyes
If I had a magic mirror I would hand it to you
To see all those looks of repudiation
I don’t know her
I don’t want people to think she belongs with me
I don’t
See things the way you do
Matthew 26:70 NIV
[70] But he denied it before them all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
All the cities of the world
When you were my baby you were always amazing, beautiful, lovable. So much so that I would spontaneously think you had all the cities of the world in your eyes, or put another way– I would give all the cities of the world for you.
I remember when I found out that the people who were taking you from me had a story pock-marked by leaving the laws of love behind.
I worried. I grieved. How would they be there always for you? How could they be picked over me?!? Crazy, messy, overextended, underprepared me?
I got the phrase all the cities of the world from Matthew 4–two heavyweights bargaining over the fate of the world. One aims to buy back his lost love the hard way, the other is trying to get him to take a shortcut.
He doesn’t.
There are no shortcuts to love.
Hold on my dear heart, Rapunzel. Love has always been on your side, even when all this feels so broken.
The rightful King of the world loves you so very much.
Fetal Position
Forebear all hymns, celebratory, solemn, or liturgical
Just wash the stuffed animal
Mammalian, maternal
Using sewn-on paws to clutch
a miniature version of herself
To her belly, too big for an ordinary machine, she curls without consent into
The grey plastic washtub
Fetal position
I think, anthropomorphizing
Everything
Tara Stories
When my children have their birthdays everyone tells them their story–how the delivery went, first memories of the child, what we ate in celebration.
Your mom told me about your birthday. She was in the hospital for a some time before you were delivered because you were a multiple birth. She was so excited about you. You all were delivered (most likely c-section) around 33 weeks old.
You were each tiny and perfect from the beginning.
She was overjoyed by your birth. They told her she would need help since all of you would spend three weeks in the NICU before leaving with three identical apnea monitors. They said they asked your grandmother to help out but she said no.
So they call us. I was young and stupid. The other foster mothers were older women. One had fostered and adopted many children, the other had only your sister and her own grown daughters. They made up lullabies for her.
When we left the hospital together people mistook me for the mother and them for my supporting family. We explained this was not the case.
I did not get to know your mom until they told me they were taking you away. She fought for her parental rights, but the system was well rigged against her.
Sometimes she would call me. She told the most interesting stories. It is these stories I wish I had written down, recorded, preserved for you, best would have been recorded, in her own beautiful voice.
So you could hear them now. So close to her birthday.
Break Up Songs
Since I lost you I have developed a small bag of tricks to cope with grief. The best of them is prayer, others include running, swimming, mixed martial arts, and writing stuff down. I did not begin to write about grief until I lost the others as well….mostly because others had written about us.
At the time I wrote to judges, elected representatives, functionaries, dignitaries, and Hillary Clinton, and I still lost you.
The other tricks included comfort eating or not eating and pretending that all the cheesy break-up songs in the world were for you and me (because for some strange reason there are none for grieving foster moms, per se)
This is a part one-of-two letter, dearest Little One. Don’t make my mistake, start writing now. It will help a little now and a great deal later.
You have a story, beautiful Rapunzel.
Tell it.
