Tag: parenting

The Baldest Hour of Want o’Clock

I want to write all the things for you
Search for all the songs
Carefully mine all the lyrics
All the verses
All the passages.
Package them, deliver them all at once
Trot them out once a day
For all the days.

I want to stop stealing what is not mine
Accumulating you piece by piece
Adding to a stockpile that doesn’t grow.
Each day at the baldest hour of want o’clock, the grains slip.
A sieve, the finest holes through the ventricles all the way to China.
A carpenter ant through my belly
Around the stalactites that intersect my breastplate
Around the bunion on my right foot out the tips of my toes.

I want to bury all the hatchets
Mend all the holes
Remove all the blinds
Dust all the shelves with only my bare hands.
Finish off the cornichons and toss all the olives
Stacked, treading oil in the jar
Trapped in an underwater chicken fight.

I want to add not subtract
Yet I most definitely do not want to divide.
Canned beef stew an actor’s fake vomit sprayed over the walls
A dog’s breakfast that you can’t eat but are served for years
seated in a folding chair at a folding table, the surface covered in spots of paint
Splatters of pink white blue yellow
Red
Memories so pure and true and good
You’d eat the folding table you really would –
Screw by screw nut by nut
Each plastic-coated aluminum leg including the hinges –
If each swallow would erase every lapse.

That’s not how it works.
At least not from where I sit
In a wooden chair at the laminate-topped table that I got to keep.

It’s not possible to nibble around the good times
and gobble swill smoke and chew the rest.
Something’s got to give and it’s me
I’ve got to go.

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Sometimes, it’s gorillas

I’m pretty sure my daughter’s friend thinks I’m whacky. But, maybe not. Maybe she gets me. More likely, she doesn’t think that at all because she’s not thinking about me.

The three of us are in the car. My daughter in the passenger seat; her friend in the back. I dare glance at the youngest of my two children. I take in her face, her features suspended between child and young woman. I note how her eyelashes nearly brush the inside lenses of her sunglasses.

She allows my gaze for a couple seconds before turning to me with a scalding, ‘What?” followed by a withering, “Why are you looking at me?” and finally, “Why are you talking about gorillas?”

I’m talking about gorillas, I tell her, because they’re interesting. Because we have things in common with gorillas; with other people and it pays to take notice sometimes. To think of things other than manicures and makeup and boys; switching to her dad’s house and lunches out with friends. (She’s right. I also spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about these same things.)

I’m talking about gorillas because her 13-year-old best friend in the backseat has a younger brother who is autistic and non-verbal. And I want to share a story I heard a couple evenings ago that I think she will appreciate.

As I deliver my preamble, I’m struck by how unpredictable and confusing entry-level teenagers can be. Interactions with them remind me of the time I found a raccoon in my front yard. I was surprised and happy to see this unexpected guest. How lovely and delightful! I remember thinking, “Surely this is some sort of mystical visit. Wait. Maybe it’s a dead relative come to visit in animal form!” I had to get closer.  Continue reading “Sometimes, it’s gorillas”

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