I need some time at Laity Lodge to remember the important things

You've heard me talk about holding the poetry workshops in a Texas Hill Country retreat center. 

It's called Laity Lodge.

 

Adrian and I have been going there for a while. 

It's a great place to be inspired, relax...

reconnect with yourself or your lover or your God.

You hear great speakers, like Dale Bruner.

But you can catch a little personal time.

The Frio River Canyon is the perfect setting

for being in nature on a grand scale...

or a tiny one.

Most of the time when I go there, I am part of the weekend staff. 

The poetry workshops are a way to share with others what I love

about writing in a place that calms and nourishes me.

 

I give and fill up at the same time.  It's a good balance. 

I want to go back soon to Laity Lodge. 

After starting my last year of grad school--with papers to write, the endless reading, and the business of getting prepared to pass exams and graduate so that I can teach my own college classes--I don't want to forget

the important things.

I have a chance to win a free retreat for writers at the

 Laity Lodge Writers Retreat 29 September to 2 October.

I'd like to work on my thesis book of short stories, but who am I kidding? It will be mid-term around that time, and I will probably be researching Chaucer or T. S. Eliot. Mostly, I want to breathe fresh air, talk writing, eat delicious food, and catch my husband staring at me adoringly.

It's one of the perks of the place.

If you are a writer, why not join us. Make a reservation here. Or choose another date. Any time is a good time for a break at Laity Lodge.

My Name is Cyn, and I am a Cleanaholic

I have a tiny mop-wielding monkey on my back. 

This morning, with grad school starting next week, and having no appointments, I decided to give my back a rest and not do any chores. 

I didn't make it past my shower.  First, I tidied all the towels that were hanging in the bathroom.  And of course, I squeegee the shower walls and glass every day.  Hard water spots are deadly here in San Antonio.  Not too bad.  Just a taste.  Then, I made my bed.  Well, that's just polite.  My husband has to get into that bed tonight and the covers will be all straight.  But then, I fluffed and placed the decorative pillows.  I know. Decorative pillows are a gateway chore.  You straighten up those pillows and give them the nice HGTV touch and pretty soon, you are wiping down the mirrors in the bathroom.  God help me.

I'm a clean freak.  It's true.  I've been called the local Martha Stewart, and not in a good way. 

After the pillow situation, I decided to get dressed and just keep my hands busy.  Problem there.  This house is known far and wide as the place that young missionaries with tracts and quotas can always find the lady home, so I can't just put on a pair of fresh pajamas.  Of course that also means a bra. (Have you seen me? Seriously, me without a bra could cause an embarrassing situation amongst the white-shirt-wearing priesthood holders on my porch.)  So, I put on a pair of jean shorts and a sleeveless top, with matching jewelry.  I'm not a hobo!  Then, I put the jammies from last night into the hamper.  That's the last thing I remember before I found myself in the laundry room, Stain Sticking a pair of shorts with one hand while rubbing a little Vivid into a shirt with the other.  I stared down at my sticky fingers and knew I needed help.

I admit I am powerless over the idea that if I have mildew on  the inside of my overflow drain in one bathroom sink then some child will die of cholera in a third world nation.   Yes, I clean those overflow thingies that most people don't even see.  If you don't know what an overflow thingie is, see here.

I heard on a commercial the other day that if you want a clean commode you should use their product or you could clean after every flush, some 380,000 times a year.  They asked, "Who does that?" -- like it was a bad thing to clean your toilet every time you flush.  Heck, I even toilet trained my cat so that I would have a tidier house.  If I could train her to run a dust mop, I'd be in heaven.

I have pretty much always been this way.  If it's hereditary, it's recessive.  My grandmother Tommie was no housekeeper. She had maids for many years and never got the knack.  Then she got me and didn't need a maid.  I think I learned to clean as a response to her lack of housekeeping, that and the way she cooed over my ability to clean a bathroom.

"Oooh.  Cindy's so smart.  She can clean a bathroom better than I can."  Lord, she was such a mess that the chicken coop was neater.  Of course I could clean better.  And dust, and vaccuum, and run an Old English oil cloth over the hardwood floors.  She taught me how to clean out of necessity and for quarters.  I do love a good payday, too.

My other grandmother Callie was a bit of a germophobe.  You couldn't touch her food or her spoon or pretty much anything to do with food unless it was safely on your own plate.  I don't think that's wrong at all. My mom was a normal cleaner.  You couldn't catch a disease at her house, but she was ok with the magazines being haphazardly piled on the coffee table.  (Shudder.)

I will now stop to say that I will not discuss my daughter's cleaning habits in a public forum.  She is beautiful, kind, witty, talented, and has a genius-level IQ.  She is also a bit devious, a thing she inherits from me, so I don't want to be on her bad side.  Hey, Sweetie.

I don't want to make people dislike me.  But if you are a cleaner, you hear it. 

"She is just so....tidy." 

"Yeah, it's pathetic the way she recaulks her shower three times a year.  I mean, who does that?" 

"She even has a toothbrush just for cleaning the parts of the toilet that no one can see.  I mean there is a limit to what I'm willing to tolerate.  I think she needs an intervention."

"Or an exorcist."

"Or a good kick in the ass."

But there are no 12-step groups for the likes of me.  And if there were, we'd just all run around wiping up coffee drips from the refreshment table or fight over who gets to descale the pot this week.  It's hopeless, really.

So, yes.  I am Cyn, and I am an over-cleaner.  I accept myself for what I am, and I promise not to clean your house when I visit.  I take medication for that now, and I hardly ever do it any more.

Unretouched photo of my Junk Drawer.

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. 

A Poem of Natures: Write, Eat, Post, Bathe writing group

god of my yard


garden kitty, not mine, but adoring of my deck
for cover and comfy cushions

I filled a feeder for cardinals but attracted also
mourning doves, too portly for the perches

kitty skulks under the deck
dove gleans dropped black sunflower seeds

a sunflower sprung from some lost seed
will mark her end — that and a bit of wing

Write, Eat, Post, Bathe writing group Prompt: Things That Delight Me

When my daughter Ariane was small, she studied gymnastics.  One of the positions she learned on the balance beam was the scale--on one foot, the other leg back out behind, arms like wings of an airplane.  She had such balance. 

Ariane is 26.  She can still do a very nice scale, and she can stand in the statue of liberty pose like she used to do at the top of the pyramid as a cheerleader.  I wouldn't like to see her up there now, mind you.  She takes her chances these days on children with tough home situations and at love.  It all balances out.

Ariane delights me.  Sassy, bold, generous, messy, beautiful...so many wonderful things, that Ari.

Today, after a barbecued chicken lunch with Ariane, Adam and Adrian, we discussed siblings and childhood shenanigans.  We all had the latter; Ariane was the only one without the former.  We also watched as she demonstrated her ability to still perform a perfect scale and a liberty with her feet on the ground.  I love to see that and remember her fearlessness up in the air.  

This was supposed to be about how I can balance on one foot in physical therapy, about how I can do all the exercises, seeking to exceed expectations.  This essay was to be about how I went from being unable to walk last spring to being able to run a bit this summer.  But I got lost watching as Ariane demonstrated her scale, duplicating with precision my clumsy one, making it impossible not to write about the most delightful part of my life.  Walking is nice, but momming is better.  On balance, Ari wins. 

Stepping on Graves

I painted my toenails acid green for summer.

After slogging through the the 19th Century American Literature in June, I couldn't wait for a little rest, a little fun.  And what could be more fun than acid green toenails?

And they did cheer me up.  Every time I looked at them, I giggled a bit.  My neurologist joked that I must be doing better if I could reach my toes to paint them green.  He said he knew I had painted them because no one else would have done it to me.  I don't know.  They looked kind of spiffy.  I was intending to take a picture to show you and write about that. 

I didn't get the picture taken and now they are really needing to be redone. 

See, I went home to Tennessee for a few days to see the old home place that got out of my family for a few years, something like 30 years, really.  My sister bought it last month, and we were all tickled to see the place back in the family.  So I went home to inspect it and to bring my mom back here in San Antonio for a visit.  She's here now.  It wasn't her home place but the other side of the family--my paternal grandmother's home.  Lots of history there in that old ramshackle house by the pond.  I lived many years across the road from the farmland part of that piece of land.  Not such good memories for me there.  I have exercised demons from some other family land on previous trips home and by signing some of it over to a church for land for the kids to play.  I hoped for a positive experience last week.

Sherry couldn't wait to show me the place, so we went there on the way back from the airport.  I was wearing my brown flip flops and sporting my green toenails.  Not exactly good farm shoes.  A good neighbor farmer had cleared us a place to drive right up to the pond.  Getting out, we took some pictures and walked the place.  The old home where my grandmother was born had been moved by a previous owner to the back of the property for use as a shed for hay and feed for cows.  It was surrounded by a little woods that was thick with poison ivy.  Sherry is allergic; I'm not.  I blazed the trail, so I spent a lot of time looking at the ground and at my feet picking their way through to find a safe path for her.  Payback for many times when my big sister did the same for me with people much more nefarious (although just as toxic) as poison ivy.  I learned early to watch my step.  Snakes, rotten boards, sharp sapling stumps, bad relatives--pretty much the same.  Our Uncle Tuck killled himself in the room that had been turned into a shed for the cows to escape a storm.  No floor, three walls down, just a shed.  The 80-some-year-old man who bought the farm once fell through the roof putting up tin and was laid out with broken bones for hours until he finally crawled to the road for help.  Sometimes, it can be a long road.

My mom did come home with me for a visit to San Antonio.  She is 82 and has whipped lymphoma but has weakened considerably.  She has a bad back with more metal than bone holding it all together.  All this meant she needed a wheelchair assist through the airport.  You'd think with all the security complications that a wheelchair would add to the headaches of air travel.  Surprisingly, the skycaps, the fast lane for wheelchairs, and the early boarding made it easier to travel with a wheelchair-bound mommy than without one.  Sometimes, it all evens out. 

So here we are in San Antonio.  I am a little later than I had hoped writing from my "Write, Eat, Post, Bathe" group's prompt about feet. 

I thought about feet all week--in the airport, with green toenails, dusty with ancestor dirt, up on the footrests of a wheelchair in the Memphis airport.  I also thought about some other feet.  One other day when we were in Tennessee, I did some research for a book of short stories I am writing and for some genealogy I am doing.  My flip-flop-shod feet walked over the bones of the Thompson family members who came in a group from Alamance County, North Carolina to Dancyville, Tennessee around 1850.  They spread out and married and had children.  One of the grandchildren of that bunch, James Rawlin Thompson, married the woman who was born in that house up by a pond, Emma Sue Bourne.  They had my daddy, who, with a little help from Mom, had me.  He held on to me in more ways than one for many years after I had crossed an ocean to make a new life for myself.  My feet have carried me all the way and walked the floor with a daughter of my own.  It's almost too much to take in for a little posting on a blog.

Now, I am listening to my husband and my mother talk about the TV program they are watching on the Hallmark Channel about pioneers.  I just want to hit the "publish post" button and go change my toenail color to shocking blue.  I am having fun this summer.  And I am getting somewhere.

I hope your feet take you to interesting places as well.

Write, Eat, Post, Bathe: Cyn's Words

Over the last year, with all the diagnoses and not being able to walk and all, I have let myself go.

Yes, I gained weight, but that was mostly the "not being able to walk" and the prednisone. Physical therapy will take care of that. I am not worried about my physical presence. I will push through all that like I pressed through the pain.

I have let myself go in a different way. Maybe more than one.

I have let myself go when I write for school and put extraordinary effort and attention into it. I am bold enough to say that I write very well for school. I could show you some papers that would make you weep with joy, if reading about Faulkner, Beowulf, or Fleckenstein is your thing. I have made it my thing. I write and research and read.

There, now. That's another thing. I read you and don't write me. I wrote a poem about that once. Now, I just read other people's poems and write lovely papers about them. And it makes me sad sometimes. I love school, and as I always say, I am there on purpose. But I miss writing for me.

So, I am letting myself go in a different way. I am writing for me, too. I am giving just as much weight to the things that come only from the prompting inside my head as I give to school assignments.

And if that means that I need someone to be waiting for the work to help me along, then I have that as well. I am making myself accountable to my writing group. We are a group of friends who have been together online for so many years I can't quite remember. Some of these women I know so intimately that I can't imagine we haven't ever met in person. Some, I know only tangentially, a kind of over-the-shoulder relationship with the friendship they have with each other.

We are called Write, Eat, Post, Bathe. That's all I am going to have time for when school starts back, and I am writing that book of short stories, and I am still going to physical therapy.

So, I am keeping up with this blog for personal stuff like this post. And I still have Dead Daddy for the recovery poetry. But now, I am getting together another one. (Can you stand it?) And you shall have writing, my friends, from inside my own head.

Let's go.

Test

A Reminder of the Important Things in Life

Where He Put Things

He put his hand over my mouth,
assuring me with shushes, “Relax, you’ll like it.”

................................I didn’t, any more than you enjoy reading this.

He put bruises on my thighs,
my underwear down around my knees.

................................Bear [witness] with me here.

He put his penis inside me,
along with quite a few abrasions.

................................Breathe through the lines, don’t panic.

He put my arms up over my head, pinning me,
so skilled he must have had practice.

................................Stay with me.

He put fear in my gut, terrors in my nights,
and post-traumatic fugues in the mess he left of me.

................................Attend to my words.

By extension, he put pills down my throat,
cuts on my arms, and me in bed all day.

................................Softly. Gently. Unwrap the pain.

He put trust out of my reach until
he sat me on the psychiatrist’s couch.

................................Sit beside me. Listen.

He put me into training class to advocate for others,
strangely, leading me to college and grad school.

................................There are more of us here who can’t speak.

He put words in my mouth.
“Hold on.” “It’s not your fault.” “It gets better.”

with apologies to Mindy

I blamed Mindy for the mess on the floor at her house.

"I think Mindy got a bit messy with the crafting this weekend and is blaming everything on the pets. Minnnndy."

This is how the universe responded:

diesseell

The cat's name is Diesel.

a poem after the style of D. A. Powell

[reading poetry leads: to writing. often enough this]

reading poetry leads: to writing. often enough this
is not true, pretentious poets being what they are

and they cannot help it, I know. so I take the cue
promptly and run with it. David Sedaris’ new book

the one about the animals—naughty, what else?—is on
my mind: gay men comprising the theme today. loving

that so much, I can’t swallow the coffee for the humming
and the reading out loud and the anticipation. (Dave not hitting

the Kindle ‘til tomorrow; fuck, right there in the middle.) oh hell
with the gerunds. hitting. loving. not taking the ing out of humming

bird, I don’t care what. humbird. humbug.

So I am writing today, a poem, not reading
the other three articles for tonight. response due: today at 5

more things I should be doing. enjoying it so much,
so fuck-in-the-middle much, that I am swallowing. If you love it

that much. swallow, hummingbird, just swallow.
I am writing, today, poetry: I should say so

A Morning's Work

Laundry

Kleenex

Survivor Statement

The mother in me
would remove your lungs
by teaspoons over
a number of months,
watching your breath
grow precious.

She would have you
live long years,
seeing those
whom you have loved
die in your eyes,
waking you often
to view reruns.

The woman who
put her child to sleep
brushing circles
with her cheek on
a tiny head of baby hair
would hood you
and beat you on bare feet with
bouquets of barbed wire.

The sensible liberal
who is carrying my purse,
containing a card for
the ACLU and a copy of
the New Testament (NRSV),
petitions nightly to God
to deny you entrance to Hell,
sentencing you to a lonely
oblivion, conscious of your loss.

We dream of these and other
gruesome punishments for you,
often shocking the little
girl in me who had her own
nightmare offender, but we shush
her protests. She is not a mother.
The only thing that might
make it any bit better
is to never have been born—
you or I—it hardly matters which.

Error in Syntax

roses
having no noses
do not smell

I Don't Want to Die Right Now

I heard it said on TV
flashed back to times when
that wasn't true

I am so glad to have failed
at least twice
at least that many times

failure teaches they say
and saves your life
saves your life

I'm Back to the Blog - a poem to celebrate

beautician baby

her hair, blonde in the way only a toddler's can be
escaped barrettes and blew across blue eyes

long hair, daddies like and mommies brush
to remove the tangles left by dreams

this hair, she poked out her bottom lip
to direct a blast of baby breath against it

and it fluttered up, blonde hair, caught the light
to settle back on cheek as sure as eyes are blue

I think I am over blogging...

I used to go to my blog several times a day to check to see if anyone I follow had posted. I do that at facebook now. I have been writing most of what I write outside of cyberspace for a while. You can't really expect to publish anything that has been posted on a blog. That counts as "published in any media" in the fine print.

So I guess I am going to slow this down to a trickle. Most of the folk I follow are facebooking and I get their updates to their blogs that way. If you want to friend me, just go to Cynthia Huddleston and send a request.

If I write any poetry that needs to see the light of day, I will still put it here.

Thanks,

Cynthia

Something in My Dreams of Him

I dreamed my father sat struggling for breath
looking up at me asking for something
in the look in his eyes.

I gave him something.

I don't know what he wanted. I'm not sure what I gave.
But I did give it. And for once he was not my nightmare.

Encased In Silence

It's a nice church,
they sing nice hymns,
there's usually a good sermon
and the seats are comfortable.

Stolen, lock stock and phrase from Gabriel Byrne on 4/30/2009
Fresh Air with Terry Gross

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103651864