Giving up. Giving up to me has always been a foreign concept. Something I knew existed in some other realm but nothing I had a close relaitonship with. Nothing I had spent much time with. Nothing I had smelt under my beautiful imperfect slightly crooked nose. Nothing I had tasted before inside the fine lines of lips I have. It was what other people did. For I didn't take no for answer. That had its failure too, the not giving up.
Watching someone give up before your eyes happens regugularly for me. It happens mostly with the kids. I see her eyes frustration with her inability to get her multipication tables as I hold the card in front of her. I don't know it, she says with words and with her eyes and the crinkles around and growing on her face. See she is good at most things. Reading chapter books in the beginning of reading and the weekly pursue of the week. Lingutically she excels but this math thing-it takes work. And she gives up as you lay the cards out to play them. But you the caretaker won't let her give up. She can't. For these printed cards with numerals and lines and xs will not be her only challenge but for right now feels like the biggest she ever will have. We can't be good at everything- I know- but she is still learning. We have to practice. It takes time. And it so easy to give up upon that bump in that road making us have to twist and turn in ways we aren't comfortable.
With him math comes easier but many things do not and it is hard to feel accomplished in the glow of the older sister. He is the dectective of the house able to find anything lost. He will find it. He is brave in his choice to stand in front of his classmates and talk about being made fun of. And he dreams of playing on the giants. The major league team. He looks at me with all believing eyes and says, you know all the pros started in little league. And they did. He is right. But his only relationship with a ball, a baseball has been being scared of it. I don't want him to give up. So we practice. First with a tennis ball and without a glove, builiding his confidence until he has the hard ball descending towards him. The hard baseball comes and he winces, again. Let's try grounders, I say. He travels back and forth. His throw imporving and then he throws to an invisible person next to me. And then the hard ball with the catching and the misses, we are in the abyss of misses, until he catches and the excitement in a yelp from me and a glow from him. I don't want him to give up either. For it will be hard. But seeing his little success makes him less scared to go. Go on that field again.
Part of giving up, part of feeling like you should be giving up is something I didn't think I knew- I knew personally. Maybe it was the fear of asking for help. Maybe it was the fear of failure. But now I ask for help. And I do take no for an answer. Sometimes. As I help others not give up- I realize the gift of it- is believing in someone- that they can- even if you believe in ways outside yourself and outside of them. I dream bigger then I should and maybe I want them to too. Dream of flying and major leagues and having 4 professions and a day of just sugar. I guess the never giving up allows the dreaming to happen. And me not giving up has always meant a yes eventually will happen. I do give up now when I have to. When I know I can't be in two places at once or need to throw money at a problem. But the never giving up stays with me along my side and I use it when I need to. When I need to get somewhere far, where I see someone who needs someone to believe- they can get there too. I am not done dreaming and being inside someone else's dreams allows me to keep dreaming too.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Leaving it Behind - Jackie Davis Martin
Roseann had left a number of things behind. She’d left her best earrings behind once, silver loops twisted with gold (neither real silver nor real gold, she suspected, but pretty all the same and matching everything, their being two metals), in a motel, forcing herself to drive up and down a highway the next morning before reporting to the high school where she taught, looking and looking for the motel that had that orientation of drive. She’d remembered pulling in sort of near an ice machine and walking three doors to the room assigned to her and the man, taking off the earrings and setting them down.
She kept her self-possession that morning as the tall guy with narrow eyes from the front office escorted her to the room she indicated—and there were her earrings, still on the side table. She thanked the man, shifted her shoulder bag and walked briskly in her heels, her skirt swaying, knowing he was watching and thinking any number of things, as she got in her car and drove to first period.
She’d also left behind a coffee maker, a real espresso machine, one of the first available, at Sam’s shore house. She guessed that it rightfully belonged to Sam, since he’d given the coffee machine to her, like an engagement ring, which he hadn’t. He’d given her lots of things, though, including—at least partially—a trip to Italy where they’d first had espresso, and the largesse of his vacation home at the shore, their relationship getting cozy to the point where she’d sewn checkered curtains for his windows and he’d purchased her a coffee machine that made foaming milk, if one could work the nozzle right, which she couldn’t seem to do. There turned out to be a number of things she couldn’t seem to do, like be a good mother and a good girlfriend at the same time, often leaving the kids behind to please Sam, and ultimately, not even being able to do that. So, after the last fiasco at the shore home, which left them both unsatisfied and a little angry and unhappy with each other, she hadn’t returned, hadn’t even bothered to reclaim the machine she’d dragged down there (he’d given it to her in her own house) so they could relive the old happiness, leaving it behind and feeling the loss of it, too, on top of the loss of Sam.
Then Roseann left her whole house behind. She took her car, with her new boyfriend, Bart, in it, and drove from New Jersey to California. There were evenings when they’d set up the tent in some National Park that she wondered what the hell she was doing, wondered about the house that she’d lived in for twenty-three years, the kids now gone from it anyway, but leaving no home to come home to. She’d snuggle next to Bart in a sleeping bag—or sometimes a motel room, when they’d spring for spending more cash—happy but unsettled, even in the San Francisco apartment which seemed temporary, like a motel, with its futon and cardboard tables, the kitchen set with three chairs they’d purchased at a garage sale. She felt as though she was involved in one of those scenes in front of the curtain while sets were being changed behind it to reveal ultimately the big story, the big picture, the real meaning of it all.
She did go back to collect the house. More or less. It was hers and when the renters left she considered moving back into it; instead, she sold it, leaving it behind for good.
Or so she thought. It wasn’t totally true. There was her daughter, who remained in the area, not very far from the house she’d grown up in, although in a different state, and Roseann visited every year, once at least, where they’d drive highways once familiar, once even past their old house, changed with new windows, new shrubs, down to a Jersey shore that had no associations, past motels of no particular orientation at all on their way to a museum or shopping center. When her daughter died, Roseann returned once more, packing up and giving away everything, carting back and sending what she wanted, knowing that no matter what she had in hand, this time she was truly leaving a way of life a life, behind.
She kept her self-possession that morning as the tall guy with narrow eyes from the front office escorted her to the room she indicated—and there were her earrings, still on the side table. She thanked the man, shifted her shoulder bag and walked briskly in her heels, her skirt swaying, knowing he was watching and thinking any number of things, as she got in her car and drove to first period.
She’d also left behind a coffee maker, a real espresso machine, one of the first available, at Sam’s shore house. She guessed that it rightfully belonged to Sam, since he’d given the coffee machine to her, like an engagement ring, which he hadn’t. He’d given her lots of things, though, including—at least partially—a trip to Italy where they’d first had espresso, and the largesse of his vacation home at the shore, their relationship getting cozy to the point where she’d sewn checkered curtains for his windows and he’d purchased her a coffee machine that made foaming milk, if one could work the nozzle right, which she couldn’t seem to do. There turned out to be a number of things she couldn’t seem to do, like be a good mother and a good girlfriend at the same time, often leaving the kids behind to please Sam, and ultimately, not even being able to do that. So, after the last fiasco at the shore home, which left them both unsatisfied and a little angry and unhappy with each other, she hadn’t returned, hadn’t even bothered to reclaim the machine she’d dragged down there (he’d given it to her in her own house) so they could relive the old happiness, leaving it behind and feeling the loss of it, too, on top of the loss of Sam.
Then Roseann left her whole house behind. She took her car, with her new boyfriend, Bart, in it, and drove from New Jersey to California. There were evenings when they’d set up the tent in some National Park that she wondered what the hell she was doing, wondered about the house that she’d lived in for twenty-three years, the kids now gone from it anyway, but leaving no home to come home to. She’d snuggle next to Bart in a sleeping bag—or sometimes a motel room, when they’d spring for spending more cash—happy but unsettled, even in the San Francisco apartment which seemed temporary, like a motel, with its futon and cardboard tables, the kitchen set with three chairs they’d purchased at a garage sale. She felt as though she was involved in one of those scenes in front of the curtain while sets were being changed behind it to reveal ultimately the big story, the big picture, the real meaning of it all.
She did go back to collect the house. More or less. It was hers and when the renters left she considered moving back into it; instead, she sold it, leaving it behind for good.
Or so she thought. It wasn’t totally true. There was her daughter, who remained in the area, not very far from the house she’d grown up in, although in a different state, and Roseann visited every year, once at least, where they’d drive highways once familiar, once even past their old house, changed with new windows, new shrubs, down to a Jersey shore that had no associations, past motels of no particular orientation at all on their way to a museum or shopping center. When her daughter died, Roseann returned once more, packing up and giving away everything, carting back and sending what she wanted, knowing that no matter what she had in hand, this time she was truly leaving a way of life a life, behind.
Leaving it Behind - Melody Cryns
It didn’t occur to me when I eloped with Stephen with a ph in Lake Tahoe that I’d have to leave everyone and everything behind.
“Can’t believe you’re going to leave,” my friend Victri said, the two of us sitting in my bright green Vega wagon that kept breaking down – looking out on to the ocean.
Maureen coughed and passed a joint to us – it was the beginning of 1980 when we watched the sun set into the ocean – this is what I’d miss the most, I thought.
But it’s what I wanted, I thought, as I took a small toke of the joint. I wasn’t much of a pot smoker, but every now and again it was good. This just seemed like the right moment.
“Can’t believe it either.” I don’t think it sunk in for any of us – I’d known Maureen and Victri practically my whole life. I grew up in San Francisco and hadn’t lived anywhere else since I was five years old when we moved to San Francisco from Chicago – oh yeah, I had that short stint in Hayward with that boyfriend and my sister and I rented an apartment in Redwood City for a little while – but I’d never moved far away.
Now here I was leaving on a plane – early tomorrow morning.
“Of course we’ll have a going away party for you tonight,” Maureen said. “Mom’s pulling something together.” Maureen’s mom was like my surrogate Mom – my mother lived all the way up in Oregon and I was staying with Mary Doherty and her kids in San Francisco for a little while waiting to head for Germany – I had tried staying with my new mother-in-law and all of Stephen’s brothers and sisters in Hayward, but that was a huge disaster.
That night I sat in Mary Doherty’s living room – my Dad and my sister Jennifer had showed up –what a surprise! And, all of my close friends were there, Paula who traveled all the way from Sacramento to say good-bye, and Cathy, and all the Meehan family whom I’d grown up with and known since I was five years old – Mary Doherty, of course and Eileen, Maureen and Kathleen, her kids – and Victri, the daughter of my mom’s best friend since I was five – everyone was there crammed into Mary Doherty’s living room.
I’ll never forget that night as long as I live…Michael Meehan had showed up with a brown paper bag on his head – and he set it on fire and acted like everything was just normal while I freaked out and everyone laughed. Mike Meehan, believe it or not, went on to become a successful comedian, appearing on Comedy Central TV quite a few times. That didn’t surprise me. I’d known Mike Meehan since we were little kids and he was always cracking jokes and pulling pranks with his brothers Howard and Johnny and Chris. Katie and Dolores Meehan, and Meg Meegan along with their mother were all there too.
“Play your guitar!” Kathleen had said – she was around 10 years old then. I remembered babysitting for her sisters Eileen and Maureen before Mary D. had Kathleen and how that summer we all thought she was going to be a little boy.
So I strummed the chords and played a few songs – some Eagles songs I used to play and sing with Eileen and Maureen when they were younger, and then Leavin’ on a Jet Plane, one of our favorites.
As I began to strum the chords and sang, it all hit me – I was leaving behind my life here in San Francisco and heading for Germany the next morning to be with a husband I didn’t know too well except through letters.
I started the words, “All my bags are packed I’m ready to go, I’m standing here outside your door..” and then I choked up and began to cry – it was so embarrassing because the room was crammed with all of my friends and the people who were family to me – everyone there in that one room at Mary Doherty’s flat in San Francisco on 15th Avenue. I kept playing the chords, but I choked on the words, feeling overwhelmed with emotion.
Then I heard the singing – it was my Dad filling in the words I couldn’t sing, his voice a mid-tenor range, slow and true…”I hate to wake you up to say good-bye!!!”
Then others joined in, and before I knew it, everyone in the room sang Leavin’ on the Jet Plane while I played the song on my guitar completely unable to sing – and in the song I could feel so much love…
And I knew as I played the end of Leavin’ on the Jet Plane that things would never be the same again after this night in San Francisco, that I’d come back again of course, but this moment in time with all these people I loved and cared about in one room, would never happen again.
Everyone clapped and cheered when the song was over, and then we were all quiet for a moment.
They knew too…
“Can’t believe you’re going to leave,” my friend Victri said, the two of us sitting in my bright green Vega wagon that kept breaking down – looking out on to the ocean.
Maureen coughed and passed a joint to us – it was the beginning of 1980 when we watched the sun set into the ocean – this is what I’d miss the most, I thought.
But it’s what I wanted, I thought, as I took a small toke of the joint. I wasn’t much of a pot smoker, but every now and again it was good. This just seemed like the right moment.
“Can’t believe it either.” I don’t think it sunk in for any of us – I’d known Maureen and Victri practically my whole life. I grew up in San Francisco and hadn’t lived anywhere else since I was five years old when we moved to San Francisco from Chicago – oh yeah, I had that short stint in Hayward with that boyfriend and my sister and I rented an apartment in Redwood City for a little while – but I’d never moved far away.
Now here I was leaving on a plane – early tomorrow morning.
“Of course we’ll have a going away party for you tonight,” Maureen said. “Mom’s pulling something together.” Maureen’s mom was like my surrogate Mom – my mother lived all the way up in Oregon and I was staying with Mary Doherty and her kids in San Francisco for a little while waiting to head for Germany – I had tried staying with my new mother-in-law and all of Stephen’s brothers and sisters in Hayward, but that was a huge disaster.
That night I sat in Mary Doherty’s living room – my Dad and my sister Jennifer had showed up –what a surprise! And, all of my close friends were there, Paula who traveled all the way from Sacramento to say good-bye, and Cathy, and all the Meehan family whom I’d grown up with and known since I was five years old – Mary Doherty, of course and Eileen, Maureen and Kathleen, her kids – and Victri, the daughter of my mom’s best friend since I was five – everyone was there crammed into Mary Doherty’s living room.
I’ll never forget that night as long as I live…Michael Meehan had showed up with a brown paper bag on his head – and he set it on fire and acted like everything was just normal while I freaked out and everyone laughed. Mike Meehan, believe it or not, went on to become a successful comedian, appearing on Comedy Central TV quite a few times. That didn’t surprise me. I’d known Mike Meehan since we were little kids and he was always cracking jokes and pulling pranks with his brothers Howard and Johnny and Chris. Katie and Dolores Meehan, and Meg Meegan along with their mother were all there too.
“Play your guitar!” Kathleen had said – she was around 10 years old then. I remembered babysitting for her sisters Eileen and Maureen before Mary D. had Kathleen and how that summer we all thought she was going to be a little boy.
So I strummed the chords and played a few songs – some Eagles songs I used to play and sing with Eileen and Maureen when they were younger, and then Leavin’ on a Jet Plane, one of our favorites.
As I began to strum the chords and sang, it all hit me – I was leaving behind my life here in San Francisco and heading for Germany the next morning to be with a husband I didn’t know too well except through letters.
I started the words, “All my bags are packed I’m ready to go, I’m standing here outside your door..” and then I choked up and began to cry – it was so embarrassing because the room was crammed with all of my friends and the people who were family to me – everyone there in that one room at Mary Doherty’s flat in San Francisco on 15th Avenue. I kept playing the chords, but I choked on the words, feeling overwhelmed with emotion.
Then I heard the singing – it was my Dad filling in the words I couldn’t sing, his voice a mid-tenor range, slow and true…”I hate to wake you up to say good-bye!!!”
Then others joined in, and before I knew it, everyone in the room sang Leavin’ on the Jet Plane while I played the song on my guitar completely unable to sing – and in the song I could feel so much love…
And I knew as I played the end of Leavin’ on the Jet Plane that things would never be the same again after this night in San Francisco, that I’d come back again of course, but this moment in time with all these people I loved and cared about in one room, would never happen again.
Everyone clapped and cheered when the song was over, and then we were all quiet for a moment.
They knew too…
Frenzy - Christa Fairfield
I watched my daughter dip and spin in the Pink tutu my mother sent as a late birthday gift.
“Watch this Daddy,” Veronica sang across the lawn.
“I’m watching, honey,” I said back.
Her bare feet were lost in the long blades. The twin braids she’d proudly wove the night before slapped her shoulders and checks.
“Can you see, El?” I asked of the pale blue sky. My palms stretched across my knees.
“Watch this Daddy,” Veronica called as she tipped onto her right toe, touched the ground with the tips of her right hand and attempted to turn. “I’m like a ballerina.” She sang out before falling over on her left knee.
“Try again.” I encouraged.
“El, can you help her?” I asked of the sky. “Can you extend yourself to us? Hold our daughter up so she doesn’t fall?” I wiped the emotion from my eyes and looked across the lawn. Veronica was singing I’m a little tea pot while she twisted, tipped and spun.
“I can’t keep her safe alone.” I said into the void.
“Watch this Daddy,” Veronica sang across the lawn.
“I’m watching, honey,” I said back.
Her bare feet were lost in the long blades. The twin braids she’d proudly wove the night before slapped her shoulders and checks.
“Can you see, El?” I asked of the pale blue sky. My palms stretched across my knees.
“Watch this Daddy,” Veronica called as she tipped onto her right toe, touched the ground with the tips of her right hand and attempted to turn. “I’m like a ballerina.” She sang out before falling over on her left knee.
“Try again.” I encouraged.
“El, can you help her?” I asked of the sky. “Can you extend yourself to us? Hold our daughter up so she doesn’t fall?” I wiped the emotion from my eyes and looked across the lawn. Veronica was singing I’m a little tea pot while she twisted, tipped and spun.
“I can’t keep her safe alone.” I said into the void.
Frenzy - Maria Robinson
You turned sixty and had no one living to look up. Had you really scaled the mountain, reached the top of a male profession only to be told to retreat to quiet summers on your lake front porch in Michigan. During sleepless nights as you pulled at what little hair you had bleached Hollywood spun gold, you knew you had to maneuver into a way to get out. Out of the feckless days which left you breathless, out of the hours of waiting for the perfect life script to call you for casting, out of the tedium of people thinking you were still on the ladder up and in their way, while in reality, you were floating on air.
Stillness - Jennifer Baljko
Oriol slammed the door behind him, trudged down the flight of stairs, and dragged his feet down the street. When he got to the train station, he sat on a bench and stared up at the board announcing arriving and departing trains. He lingered in absolute stillness, only his eyes darting about, catching glimpse of people walking by. He wondered where they were going. He wished them a safe trip, a safe return. Oriol couldn’t really ever make himself look at train tracks again, not after the accident. But, he could never, shake off the jolt he got from the bustle of train stations. It was a childhood wonder he carried with him, and didn’t want to fade away.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Birth - Camilla Basham
Sometimes the very last row of pecan trees was a unbroken violet blue wall just a tad darker than the heavens but this afternoon it was almost indigo and behind that great never ending sky was a bruised dazzling white.
Peaches Delaney was leaning against the red of the house, her arms folded, resting on a cliff of belly, her legs crossed at the calf and her left toe spading the ground. She was a robust woman with a tiny barbed wire face and perpetual ferreting blue eyes.
Cherry was just the opposite. Small and slender body with a large round moon face and brown eyes that always seemed widened behind her coke bottle glasses as if in a state of constant shock. She was bent over pulling up weeds out of the bed of marigolds around the house. The two cousins wore large floppy sun hats that were once identical but Peaches’ had since turned a dull washed out shade of pale, bent and hanging low like the moss on an oak tree. Cherry’s hat was just as stiff as a good whiskey and vivid green.
“You hear about that young girl from Bogalusa that birthed that dead baby then up and died herself the very next minute?” Peaches asked.
“I read about her in the Herald.” Cherry answered looking up with a surprised expression, though not really surprised at all. “What of it?”
“She was a Roberts, married a Delaney, so she’s kin to us; something like a sixth or seventh cousin by marriage.”
“Is that so?” Cherry tossed a giant chunk of dandelion weeds and onion grass as if they were the devil itself come to wipe out the good earth and she the saint who would never allow such a fate.
“Seeing as how she was kin to us, we seen the body.” Peaches dug her toe deeper in the dirt, “We seen the sick baby, too. Tragic.”
Cherry remained quite, focusing now on exorcising the crabgrass. She was use to such catastrophic tales of tragedy from Peaches. They exhausted her. It was a well known fact in town that Peaches would don her best Sunday dress and drive a good forty miles for the sheer morbid gratification of seeing a body laid to rest.
Peaches Delaney was leaning against the red of the house, her arms folded, resting on a cliff of belly, her legs crossed at the calf and her left toe spading the ground. She was a robust woman with a tiny barbed wire face and perpetual ferreting blue eyes.
Cherry was just the opposite. Small and slender body with a large round moon face and brown eyes that always seemed widened behind her coke bottle glasses as if in a state of constant shock. She was bent over pulling up weeds out of the bed of marigolds around the house. The two cousins wore large floppy sun hats that were once identical but Peaches’ had since turned a dull washed out shade of pale, bent and hanging low like the moss on an oak tree. Cherry’s hat was just as stiff as a good whiskey and vivid green.
“You hear about that young girl from Bogalusa that birthed that dead baby then up and died herself the very next minute?” Peaches asked.
“I read about her in the Herald.” Cherry answered looking up with a surprised expression, though not really surprised at all. “What of it?”
“She was a Roberts, married a Delaney, so she’s kin to us; something like a sixth or seventh cousin by marriage.”
“Is that so?” Cherry tossed a giant chunk of dandelion weeds and onion grass as if they were the devil itself come to wipe out the good earth and she the saint who would never allow such a fate.
“Seeing as how she was kin to us, we seen the body.” Peaches dug her toe deeper in the dirt, “We seen the sick baby, too. Tragic.”
Cherry remained quite, focusing now on exorcising the crabgrass. She was use to such catastrophic tales of tragedy from Peaches. They exhausted her. It was a well known fact in town that Peaches would don her best Sunday dress and drive a good forty miles for the sheer morbid gratification of seeing a body laid to rest.
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