My Other Love

Last night I fell asleep wondering about my last 15 years. How did I walk away from poetry when I so clearly and deeply adore it? What happened? It wasn't motherhood. I had closed my books long before Lily was born.

Ah. Then this morning a picture of a lovely abandoned house, three storied, Italianate lines.....peeling paint, five gables, a hybrid Stick, Queen Anne style beauty. I wondered about the balustrade inside.

I fell for architecture. When I graduated college the first time, BA in hand, wisdom my adviser had given me casually, haunted me. Sure, you know how to write....but about what? What do you really know of the world? Don't write for a living, be a brick layer or farmer by day. Let the salt of the sweat of your days season the writing you do at night when the day slips away. Let writing be the mistress you run to, not the drudge of the mundane.

So, I fell forward into restoring houses. It was a family business but I am a solitary creature. We bought a three storied Victorian, plaster collapsing, floors unstable and moved in to live like homeless teenagers. It sometimes snowed and gathered drifts in the bedrooms. There were rooms we didn't know about when we bought it. Sometimes we would get lost inside the house. It was an amazing project. I interned at the State Historical Preservation Office. I got hired at a local museum. I spent my days and nights deeply immersed in old house restoration, history, and technology. I got so intensely involved in starting the restoration that I started taking graduate architecture classes. Then, easily slipped into the graduate programs for history, architecture, and non fiction writing. One thing flowed into another and I was in love.

Soon motherhood entered that world too. That was hard. Balancing my day job, a newborn, graduate school, and the house restoration. So very hard.

Why did I abandon poetry for the crumbling plaster and splintery fumes of the hard labour and physical work of house restoration? Because there is poetry in the grain of the wood, because the stories of the people who haunt these places with their lives are intoxicating, because the words of architecture filled my soul the way that Shakespeare and Leonard Cohen do. I was not without.

Even now, my heart quickens when I oil the hardwood of our old farmhouse. I mourn brokenhearted when I see an abandoned turn of the century barn that will soon fall with the seasons from neglect, slipping from our collective memories and memorialised with corn and bean chemical fields. Sometimes I break down and cry.



Now, as I re-open the poetry part of my mind, I have a life I can write from. That was not a waste, that time was not idle. I need not regret my chosen path, as sometimes I have in the dark when sleep is stolen by babies and frozen pipes.

Tell me, where is the poetry and beauty in your life?

Taking Myself Seriously

When I started reviving my wild mind, listening to the writer's voice again, and taking up the pen.....I was unsure. I still am. I am falling in love with word craft again. I know much more about love than I did 20 years ago though, and this time around I know that love is hard work and not all intuition and applause. So I set to work to learn this skill again.

I surprised myself. I was startled at how much of the vocabulary of poetry I actually remember. I was reminded of the parts I never understood and took to puzzling it out this time around instead of haughtily moving on, nose upturned.

I set a schedule. I stuck to it.

Then, I let go. I let other people read my work instead of hiding it.

At some point I was researching something for the farm, we raise Ossabaw Island hogs, and I came upon a website for the Ossabaw Island Writer's Retreat. Ah, that looks neat, I said. Aw, it is also way expensive and 2,000 miles away. I clicked the page closed and moved on.

A couple days later my father in law sent me the link to it. Again, I sighed heavily and closed the email.

A week later or so my dear husband Chad brought it up over dinner. Why this retreat? There are others close by! At better times of the year!

A conversation with a friend led me to the realisation that the piece I am missing to publishing is networking, is knowing people who publish, is being out there with published folks. I brought it up with Chad and he reminded me of the retreat again. I set aside money to travel later in the year, had almost reached my goal....why not use it for this instead?

No.

I went to bed grumpy.

I woke up thinking of an island off the coast of Georgia.

I brought it up with Chad again, we looked up travel cost. Well, that nixed it. Travel there was WAY expensive. Train, plane, rental car....all of it too expensive. So I lamented to a friend and she said, MEGABUS.

Wait, what is that? 5$ to Chicago from here is what that is. Another friend said once I get to Georgia she will drive me to the ferry (4 hours from her house!).

So.....I applied. I sent in the best work I had as an example for the application. I waited.

I waited. Waited. Days and days of waiting. I hate waiting.

Today, friends, I got the notification that I was accepted.

I nearly shook with fear. Yes, fear! To do this I have to ride a bus for 36 hours over the whole of the United States and take myself seriously as a writer.

The bus ride is easy compared to that last part.

Easy Broccoli Skillet With Other Veggies and Sausage

A simple skillet meal of red bell, broccoli, mushrooms, onions,  butter, a squirt of lemon juice, and salt. High heat, stir a lot to keep from burning. Delicious. I served it with a side of sausage links. 10 minutes of prep and cook combined.

Did I mention easy? And fast? Oh yeah......

Touchy Subject of Touch

I do not make my children hug or kiss people they don't want to. I don't make them hug their friends after a fight to make up. I don't make them accept it when other people want to hug them. I early on taught them to say, "This is my body. I don't want to be touched/tickled/picked up."

They are the sentient occupants inside that mammalian machine we call a body, they are the owners of their flesh. Just as I don't like unwanted touch, even affectionate touch, especially affectionate touch sometimes, I don't expect them to allow it when they don't want it either.

It is called consent. This is how we teach it. This is how we model it.

Sometimes I have to walk the walk and that means when an adult thrusts a toddler at me for a hug and that toddler does not know me.....I have to step back. I always explain that I am a stranger to that child and forcing affection from a stranger is not acceptable. It is dangerous.

Wait, what if you are a relative? No. That part does not matter. In fact, it may even matter more. The majority of abuse and sexual abuse is committed by adults related or known to the child! Being related by family does not entitle affection. Teaching children that it is? Oh, that is so scary. If I am a stranger to that child, I keep my distance. If the child offers me affection while I am still a stranger? I gently redirect and look them in the eye and remind them that I am a stranger.

You see, it is also my body. I get to choose when I am touched too. People I don't know touching me does not feel good to me, even handshakes between strangers makes me uncomfortable though I see it as a necessity of fitting in to our community. Touch can be healing but it can also be destructive and invasive.

When a child says no, let's all respect that. As a community, let us also take a minute to think about how we touch others and what kind of lesson we are teaching our babies.

I am also going to make the jump here into discipline. When a child is struck with a hand or object (spanking) that is also an unwanted touch. When a loved one does it? Is that the message we want them to learn? That violence from someone who loves you is acceptable? That they have no say over their body at that moment, and it is because they have done wrong and you love them? No. No.

No.

NO.

Touch should be loving. Touch should be welcome. Touch should be from people they trust and know.

So, when my relatives went all a flutter because I stepped back from a toddler niece who I have only seen maybe 5 times in her life and four of those times were when she was a newborn, and she was not asking for affection on her own but being ordered to and physically picked up and thrust at me for a hug? This is why I stepped back. I said at the time, I am a stranger to her at her mother's choice. Let's all respect that choice and not teach her she has to give affection to strangers.

There is a history of sexual molestation and violence in our family. I am not about to take part in a cultural norm that grooms children to give affection to people they don't know or to trust people just because they are related to them.

I will not back down from this. I will not shut up about it either. Respect our children's bodies and minds and let them choose who they give affection to AND model for them appropriate affection.

What? You thought the feminism label on the blog was the silent undertone? Hardly. I am the mother of two bright and beautiful girls and a lovely boy. Consent is one of the most valuable lessons there is. Hug your children today, give them a million kisses, tickle them until they can't stand it.....but when they say, enough, no, stop!......listen and let go. When they hesitate to hug an aunt they have never met, don't force them to. When they act or even say they are uncomfortable around a certain cousin, let them follow their gut and keep their distance. Do not let people who are known child abusers babysit just because they will do it for free.

Let us do better by our children and really teach them consent.