Like That Woman in the Picture

I watched Sunday on CBS with Jane Paulie. A reporter (?) interviewed some hurting people who are "low class," as one woman described herself with not a bit of shame or artifice. She talked of her troubles. She's a young woman, 20s, who said the closing of the coal mines because of EPA and environmental concerns split families. Men go off to work as they can find it and women and children stay put in the "home where [her] family lived for generations."

Two things, neither promising:

1) No one in government is going to get those coal jobs (or manufacturing jobs) back. I don't think anyone who promised to meant a word. And the Democrats in congress can block a lot of votes to prevent environmental apocalypse. (The Rs don't have 60%.)

B. Any major shift in work life (early mankind adopting agriculture, the industrial revolution, the rise of .com and e-commerce) brings upheaval. Some changes are good. Some are bad. Some changes are split between good for one and bad for another. All changes have required some people to adapt to relocation, loss of livelihood, and great stress. Former hunter/gatherers didn't hire guides when they could now grow their own. Large numbers of farm workers moved from rural areas to get manufacturing jobs in cities, many women, many exploited. And now, like me, Adam, and Ariane, some work from home by computer rather than going into a job in town. And steelworkers and coal miners have no jobs near home.

The "low class" woman reminds me of myself. I needed to create a whole new way to be in the world, more because of bad family issues than national issues. I had few resources. The military got me the hell out of town. And the things that were untenable back home were improved. I had to leave my home and some dear people. But my daughter is in much better position than she'd have been in had I stayed.

The woman who faces a split family and hard times gets my sympathy and empathy. I want her to find a way to have a good family life and plenty. I'm willing to pay taxes to get her and/or her husband some retraining. I'd support tax breaks if they have to move.

But I won't give her what she wants. I won't support reopening those coal mines. It's wrong for more people than it is right for. I'm sorry. She's in for hard times to come this next four years.

Later this morning, I learned Elton John has the photo "Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange.

It seemed fitting to put her here.

Consider This as Me Swooping In

Just before I swallowed the pills, I wanted to melt away. About 20 or 30 minutes after I swallowed the pills, I slipped into sleep, a rare thing.

Some time later, no one came to save me. No one swooped in to pull me back, giving me hope, listing my talents, telling me I was loved. No medic pumped my stomach or injected me with death-defying drugs. No gathering of friends made me comfort food while joking about dead-serious topics. The most desired love of my life didn't shake me and make me promise never to leave him ever again. None of the movie situations happened.

I just woke up.

When I say it now, as I have many times when I talk about suicide, I shiver a little. I have listed the things I swallowed on paper. It was every pill I could get. It was enough. More than enough. But I woke up.

I don't know why or how. I do have some strange chemical composition. Mosquitoes won't bite me. Never. If one lands, it hurries away. Coffee doesn't keep me awake. Other things. For some reason, the lethal dose of drugs I swallowed and processed through my body gave me a long, deep sleep. And then I woke up, very thirsty, a little queasy but alive.

***

I have severe depression, which most often presents itself in me as a cancer of the will to live. Medications put me in remission. Talk therapy keeps me waking up from month to month. My love for the view of deep blue in my daughter's eyes keeps me alive when all else fails.

But I still occasionally find myself face down on the tiled floor of my front hall wanting to die. It's not such a bad place to be for those times. There aren't any sharp objects, pills, weapons, ropes, or anything dangerous within my reach there. A cat or dog will usually lick my face or climb on my back or both. Time passes. I get up on my grievously bad RA knees and go back to living.

***

You can't depend on someone else saving you. Robin Williams' homeless, broken former professor character in The Fisher King saves Jeff Bridges' suicidal shock-jock character. That was just the movies.

Sometimes no one comes. And you will not wake up from those pills. You just won't. Suicide is not romantic. There is nothing less romantic than a dead body.

***

I am known for my angry response to someone's suicide. There is nothing worse than seeing your own mistakes played out in front of you. I worry that others, particularly teens, will follow the leader. I grieve the mothers that ache for a view of blue or brown or green eyes.

But I am also known for my ability to hear the pain you want to pour out like the blood dripping from a cut wrist. I understand that it just hurts so much. That it won't stop. That the chemicals in your brain are trying to make the chemicals that move your muscles kill you.

If you want to talk or find help, I am your girl. Call or text or FB message or come over.

But you are going to have to save yourself from the pills or rope or sharp things by asking. Robin Williams can't swoop in like in the movies and pull you back from the fire.

1-800-273-8255 or Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Three Films

The Wizard of Oz (1939), Victor Fleming, director

This film speaks volumes about my upbringing. I don't mean the theme of valuing home and family.  I am not referring to the parallel of a little girl out wandering the countryside with animals for her only companions.  It's not even Dorothy's fears, although there is certainly something there. 

The Wizard of Oz points out how integral church was in my life.  Yep.  Church.

I lived right behind Keeling Baptist Church.  I could roll out my front door and wind up at the bottom of the hill up against the church's back wall.  We were church-going peeople...well, my mother and siblings and I were. My father wasn't a churchgoer.  His membership was recorded at the Cypress Hut, a beer joint down in the Hatchie bottoms.  But we kids went to church.  Oh, yes.  Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday prayer meeting.  And we didn't miss for anything.

Well, there was one thing.  Sometimes.  Every once in a while there was The Wizard of Oz.

Once a year, the local tv station would show Dorothy and her pals on a Sunday night.  As soon as we heard the promo, we would beg to be allowed to stay home to watch.  Julie got the privelige way before I did.  My mother felt I was too little to tolerate the Wicked Witch without nightmares.  When I was old enough to stay, Julie still poked fun at me about hiding my eyes during the scary parts. 

Who killed my sister?   It terrified me.  I inevitably had trouble sleeping.  And yet, I couldn't wait to watch it again the next year.

Funny how the real life terrors never got that much attention. 

My father was a terror.  He delighted especially in scaring Julie on the way back from the outhouse.  Our little house on the hill wasn't equipped with a flush toilet.  We used the outhouse at the back of the church property until I was in second grade.  She used to ask me to go with her.  I wasn't as afraid of the dark as she was, even though I was four years younger.  With Daddy out there to torment her, who can blame her?  He was tall, well over 6 feet and Ichabod Crane thin back then. 

He would alternately pound on the walls of the stinking shithole or lay in wait for her on the way back. Sometimes he would say, "Something is gonna get you out there," with a gleeful grin on his gaunt face.  And then, he wouldn't do a thing.  The trip to the toilet would be full of anticipatory fear and nothing would happen.  He was clever about his terror tactics.

Dorothy walked a scary road with her companions too.  The witch was always there in their minds, with her threats hanging in the air like fog.  I'll get you, Pretty, and your little dog too.

Sometimes the wait for the Wicked Witch to pop up was worse than the reality of her appearance in a cloud of hellish smoke.  Same for Daddy.

Dorothy left Oz.  I left Tennessee.   

There ends the parallel, though.  When Dorothy went back to Kansas she found her truth: There's no place like home.  When I left Tennessee, I prayed there would never be.

~~~



All three of my films are The Wizard of Oz.  I first viewed Dorothy's story as a way to learn to take my eyes down from my face and see my fears without letting terror control me.  This was a handy skill to have.  I wasn't done facing the dangers of the road when Daddy left my life.  It's a lot easier to fight a witch when you can see where she is and find a big pot of water. 

Next, The Wizard of Oz became something else for me, as I focused on Oz, the Great and Powerful.  Oz, it turns out, is just a man and not even a very accomplished or erudite one.  He did what he could with the Emerald City and they benefitted from it, even after he flew away on a balloon.  I have tried to do that along the way...leave a little something behind.

Finally, TheWizard of Oz is for me a story of home and how to make home with those you find along the way.  It's embracing the misfits of life and finding that they have your back and will go right into the witch's castle to rescue you. It's looking back on that life later and saying it was a good one.  It's appreciating how a life's story can turn out.

All those other Sunday morning and nights were filled with stories.  They provided a kind of map of the road.  Turns out all that church attendance was useful.  I would hide out there and the other local church to escape from what was at home.  Church saved me, and not just in the usual sense of the word.  It was a place of sanctuary for me.  It modeled a safe haven that I used later to create family. My road would have been much longer without it. 

Thanks for meeting me at this place on the road.

And you were there.  And you, and you...

Places of Me

Six Places of Me

back of my neck - your mouth

left ring finger - Lyngby, Denmark

tummy stretch marks - Sacramento, California

nerve fiber network - The Web

amygdala - Keeling, Tennessee

feet - here, here, here

What Makes My Dress Fly Up...

Nine loves.  Easy.

9.  I love being able to walk again without crouching down like a crone or holding onto a cane.  I love being able to sleep.  I love being able to attend to the important things in life without worrying if I can stand up without help or get off the toilet.  There are still issues.  But these things are pretty nice. (Update:  Hiked for the first time since getting sick.)

8.  I love having a daughter.  I wouldn't have minded a son.  I just have no experience.  But a daughter.  It's so good I have no words for it.  I don't want to jinx perfection.

7.  I love being married to someone who does not give me reason to worry that he will drink up my earnings, bring sluts into my yard, beat me with a bone-in ham, shoot at my children in a thunderstorm, take my daughter to beer joints and a) take her into the place so that drunks can paw her or b) leave her in the car to worry that someone will see her and paw her, talk one way to strangers and a whole other way his family so that strangers think his family got a real smart guy for a daddy when he was a bum who couldn't keep a job, or, and this is key, make me lose a minutes sleep worrying that he would do something heinous to my daughter. You don't, in my experience, often find a man who is that "lacking" and Adrian deserves my loyalty and undying gratitude.

6.  I love that I am weird and yet still have people who are willing to be in my life. 

5.  I love cats. 

4.  I love my brain.

3.  I love being 51. (I have loved all my years since around 30, but not so much before that.)

2.  I love psychotherapy and good friends.

1.  And lastly, I love writing.  How else would you know all these keen things about me?

How Cyn Got Her Move Back

I can walk.

Sure, it sounds simple.  But last year around Valentine's Day, I started having weird bouts of pain and disability that would pop up in different parts of my body.  By St. Patrick's Day, I was hobbling and in near constant pain.  Doctors were stumped.  My family practice doc checked my blood for everything.  I gave more blood in the lab in one week than you do in a blood drive.  The list of results takes up pages.  I had none of the things she tested me for.  She sent me to a rheumatologist, who sent me to a neurologist.  He sent me to another neurologist who, I kid you not, put needles deep into my muscles and ran current through them.  I was told I had some symptoms for several things but not enough symptoms for any one thing.  I wasn't sick enough to diagnose, but I couldn't walk. 

I won't go through the emotional details of this whole thing or talk at length about how I still graduated  summa cum laude with a BA in English from Texas Lutheran University that spring around Mother's Day.  You could ask the folks who saw me grimace how that looked.  Don't ask my husband.  Watching all this took a toll on him that I wouldn't like to repeat.

There have been medication scares and adjustments and additions.  I finally got a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis, which some of you right now are confusing with the arthritis your grandma has in her left forefinger.  It's not like that.  You could look it up.  I have some other stuff going on with my spine, but I am not going to be paralyzed like my neurologist feared the day he called me andtold me to have my husband very safely and carefully drive me to the ER and not leave until the neurosurgeon confirmed I was not about to become a quadraplegic.  I spent our 28th anniversary on April 29, 2010 in the hospital in order to confirm that I will have control of all four of my limbs to some degree for the foreseeable future. 

Good times.

The meds are working pretty good.  I am not using the cane that was my constant companion for a year and a half.  Do you know how hard it is to negotiate the halls of a large university to get your master's degree with a cane in one hand, a bag of books and a computer on the other shoulder, and a cup of coffee to shove in there somewhere?  That cane is not going to be missed.

I am not getting rid of it.  It folds, and I keep it in my car.  I will always have Rheumatoid Arithritis, and I will have flare ups that will temporarily send me back to the cane.  Hopefully, not to the one that has four little tips on it for the really bad days or the wheelchair that I used for one weekend last April. 

Just before my military rheumatologist was reassigned, I asked her to send me to physical therapy to regain my range of motion and my strength.  I used to be the person last standing in any physical endeavor.  Now, I cheer when I can climb stairs. 

And I can climb them.  I am working my way around the room at PT, kicking ass on the equipment, although leg lifts holding a ball between my knees is not a fun thing.  Trust me.  Yesterday, the PT was especially hard, but I still rocked that room even though I was crying like a baby.

So, I can walk.  I am not running, but I never ran before the RA.  I can paint my own toenails.  Yesterday, I even replaced the faucet in my kitchen, to include all the climbing under the sink and everything.  It was grand.  My muscles ached last night.  It wasn't from joint damage but rather the PT and the plumbing.  Today, I am taking a holiday from everything but writing.  I am grateful. 

I can walk. 

Angels at the Point

angels dancing on the head
concerns the philosophers
and the mathematicians, I suppose
theologians
census takers

I wonder about those at the point
skewered to some lapel
like a living corsage
or mounted on a display board
with a little label, curator angelus

how many have stopped dancing?
still alive like immortals must be
never to tango or twist or tarantella
I wonder that they were caught,
perhaps with eyes closed in ecstasy

trapped by demons who never dance
colateral damage in the wars for souls

So You've Killed Yourself

pain all gone
you are still
I am alone

still all alone
you are gone
I am pain

He Couldn't Have Done It

When someone is arrested for a horrible crime, the wife or fiance is left as the person who must wipe up the mess.

He Couldn't Have Done It

Like a glass of milk
teetering on the edge of a table
her life is liquid potential.

She has kissed this man,
he has run his hand under her shirt,
catching her breath for her
and holding it in his grip.

And the milk is gathering
for a rush to the far side of the glass,
taking with it the fragile container.

It looks like him in the picture
and he called her at the moment
depicted on that security tape
and told her he loved her, see her soon.

And the inevitable weight of it
takes the whole thing over
and she is puddled on the floor
crying over what has been spilt.

Manifest Desitiny

Manifest Desitiny

there is a tiny tyrant in the house
the condition of his bottom
is of prime concern

no one can sleep when master
wishes an audience
with two inferiors in his thrall

he has conquered the frontier
of spare room, den or office
that land where adults ruled

he has pushed them to the limits
and then to the reservation
of a steaming shower, where they cry

Lord, help them when he is hungry
or unhappy or bored or sees his shadow
forbid it, that he get diaper rash

they will search the cabinets and bags
that mark their former happy land
in search of Desitin, a peace offering

those he conquers will never be the same

Memo to My Government

Re: Gonzales Memo 10/23/2009 page 24.

"First Amendment speech and press rights may
also be subordinated to the overriding need to
wage war successfully."

Due to the fundamental nature of free speech
and my right to write, I consider that it would be
an act of patriotism to disobey any agent of my
government when faced with that agent's
attempt to curtail those rights.

If I can't type,
I will tap my toes
a diddy bop
of freedom.

If you tape my mouth,
I will sign with my hands
and it will be my banner
of freedom.

If no one will take my cause
I will walk with the ghost
of Thomas Paine, a companion
to freedom.

If professional journalists
do not call to account
the militia will blog and tweet
in freedom.

Due to the fundamental nature
of free speech to the maintenance
of any government of the people,
I write.

The OhNo-mance Genre of Films

You've heard of Romance Comedies and Bromance Comedies. Now get this...

I have decided on a name for those films where there is a quirky, unhandsome man and he wins an absurdly beautiful woman (like Knocked Up)...

OhNo-mance.

As in...she tells her girlfriends and they say, "Oh, no!" Or, to be fair, he says he's getting married and his appalled bros spit Bud Light all over the foosball table. "Dude, Oh No!"

These films seems to have a place in our lives and the sitcom has been of this genre for a long time. King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. As long as Seth Rogan still makes films, (and please, God, let it always be so, for I love them) then we need a name for this thing.

Please feel free to spread this world-wide so I can be famous for something really important, seeing as how this poetry thing is not making me a million.

Conflagrare

I want to be burned
consumed by a thing for once
all in and no holds

I crave vaporization
and refinement down to
the rarified essence of me

I yearn to be stirred up
and sifted through so that
no part of me is hidden

I seek to be prayed over
and have all lips murmur
perfect intentions and blessings

I desire to be flung
into recesses of earth that
want nothing more than to consume me

I want to burn

A Good Breakfast

Whole Wheat Pancakes with Turkey Bacon
Chunky Cinnamon Applesauce
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

I remember their faces
eyebrows raised
eyes a little sunk-in
they took the milk cartons
and went to a table

they ate lunch
we all do
except those who don't have any
and this is so large a thing
that the tray could not contain
the sheer weight of the fact that
this would be their only meal

for so many, that was true
and you could smell it on them
as you could smell the wood smoke
from the fire that was their only warmth

Scrambled Eggs with Whole Wheat Toast
Pineapple Tidbits
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

it would have been Brownsville Tennessee 1972 when I
passed out the milk cartons to those little ones
big girl of thirteen, who had seen her own share
of unhealthy circumstances but I always had a meal

I looked at them in the mornings as they floated
onto the bus like the wood smoke from those fires
and later as they hovered over their chairs like
dead little angel children waiting for that first meal

most of the hands that took those milk cartons
were brown or black, but not all, some were like me
the hungriest among them did not refuse the milk
could not imagine doing so, just give it to someone
who wants it, someone wants it, I would say

Yoghurt and Granola
Assorted Whole Grain Cereal
Banana
Fat-Free or Low-Fat Milk

there was no free breakfast in my day
and 11:30 can come too late for some
not able to grasp the intricacies of math
or english, too busy with the studies of their own
social problems, like the ache in the stomach
or the hair that is falling out, not to mention
the loose teeth

I made a point to go to Ariane's school
Montgomery Alabama in 1995
and watch the children eat breakfast
tears fall down my face now as they did that day
watching impish brown boys and bouncing blonde girls
tease each other with orange peels in their mouths
bright orange smiles hiding solid teeth
and they spit them out quickly and slurped up the milk
and went off to memorize poems or study the rainforest

so my vote for the best invention of my lifetime is not
the computer that kids use to investigate life in Kenya
or the microwave or the cell phone
it is free school lunch and breakfast
a little grain,
a little protein,
some fruit and milk
in a full belly

Mrs. Hay

I remember Mrs. Hay
had gray hair
and I was in fourth grade
and she told me that
purple does not go
with yellow for spring flowers
and she gave me a C.

I have loved pansies ever since.


















Print and color your own. Go ahead. You should. Any color you like.

Equals Husband

It takes at least 3 of you
to equal my husband.
He is without guile.

It takes more than 12 of me
to equal my husband.
I have plenty of guile.

This may be the truest thing I've ever written.