The Introverted Thinker is eight. Her mother takes her out of school for a week to go to New York City.
They leave her sister and her father behind.
Her mother complains about the school paperwork. “Never let school get in the way of your children’s education,” she says. “That’s what my father says.”
The IT is not sure what all this means. But she is excited.
They go on an airplane. She gets to sit by the window. She can see the ground and it is squares like a quilt with hills. It is so beautiful! She is amazed, magic!
In New York City they go to the house of an old friend of her mother’s. The old friend is old and wears dresses to the ground and a lot of jewelry. The house is dark and there are many things in it. The IT is told that the things are antiques and she must not touch anything. She walks around carefully in the dark places, looking at all of the strange things while her mother talks to the old friend. They talk about the past and people that she does not know.
Her mother takes her to museums on some days. Some are art museums. The IT is already used to art museums because her mother is an artist. The museum is like an art gallery only much bigger and the ceilings are very high. A lot of the art is very big too.
One museum is different. Natural History, says her mother. There are dinosaur bones. The IT can’t touch them either but they are wonderful. Huge animals from the past that are not here any more! She loves it.
They fly home. First she has to thank the old friend with the house like a museum, only darker. Then they go to the plane. This time there are some clouds so the IT can’t see as much, but she still gets to see the quilt of the land.
She decides that she likes museums and she likes natural history. Especially dinosaurs.
This is one of the ten poems that my mother made etchings for, the year I was just done with college. 1983-4. I wanted to write, but had no idea what to do with the poems that I was writing. My mother Helen Burling Ottaway had done a series of etchings with a family friend’s poems, so I asked if she would do the same with me. She said, “Yes, on one condition.” “What is that?” “They have to rhyme.” She did not like the free verse. Almost all of the poems were about animals, except for one about my sister. Another friend printed the poems on a lead type press and then my mother worked on editions numbered 1-50 of each, inking the plate separately for each one. This one is number 5/50. You can see the imprint of the plate on the paper in the photograph.
If I could be anything I’ll tell you what I’d like to be One of those small green frogs That sails from tree to tree
These frogs can jump, they have no laps They are not birds with wings the have parachutes between their toes And I am sure that they can sing
They spread their toes and jump so high To float like snowflakes in the air Frogs fall like rain from clear blue skies It must be nice up there
Why they jump I do not know Maybe escaping hungry eyes Perhaps to catch a tender bug Or they just like to fly
If I could be anything I’ll tell you what I’d like to be One of those small green frogs That sails from tree to tree.
I arrive early, just as they open the doors, and there is already a line. We file in, each taking a paper number. The people in front go straight up to the desks. One window processes two people in only ten minutes each and then promptly puts up a closed sign. I guess it’s exhausting, working so fast.
Everyone waiting looks strained or sullen or stressed at the DMV. Shoulders hunched, heads down, the ones in power suits on their phones, but the phones keep cutting off in the DMV. Some sort of special shielding, I would bet.
I have number 17 and get to go to a window after 2 hours.
The clerk smiles at me. She is pale, pale, but has horns and pitch black wings, no feathers, like a bat.
“Unitarian!” she says, grinning.
“Um,” I say, eyeing the wings.
She looks wicked and then her wings are classic white feathered. She is browner and well, I’d guess Filipino. “Worried?” she says.
“No.” I say. “Tired. Sad. Curious.”
“What would you prefer to see?” she says and morphs. Now she has one bat wing that changes to black feathers then through rainbow feathers, to the snowy white feathers on the other side. Her skin tone is very dark on her right hand and then lighter across to pale with red freckles on her left hand.
“Nice.” I say.
“Which heaven would you like?”
“Unitarians do not believe in hell. Send me back.”
“You just got here. Violently and by surprise.” she wrinkles her nose. “Riots again. Sorry about that. We have opened a Unitarian space.”
“No. Send me back.”
She sighs and pulls down a heavy paper file. All the papers have gold edges, except for those with black. “You found your true love.”
“Yes. So what. We didn’t have time to make it work.”
“Don’t you want to wait until she dies so you can head down at the same time?”
“No. She’s only 32. And there is work to do.”
She is paging through the file. She snaps it shut. “Two week vacation. The minimum required. Go to the door on the right.”
I sigh. I want to argue but I’ve done that before. She will add on an extra week for every word I say.
My memories are intact here. Of all the lives. It’s always a bit overwhelming when I first arrive.
I go to the door on the right. A small page with grey tattered wings opens the door for me. I think it is a boy but he is wearing a Tinkerbell style tunic.
“I am your guide today.” No, it is a girl. I think. They may be able to morph that too.
We go in the door. My guide is shedding feathers, one every few steps. I pick one up. “Sorry.” she says. “Puberty. So, where do you want to spend your two weeks?” We are in a half circle shape hall, with hallways branching off. The hallways have no end that I can see and there are open doors all along them.
“I just want to go back.”
She pats my arm absently. “Oh, yes, they told me. You have to take breaks. You are wonderful, though, we love you.” She is leading me to one of the halls towards the left. We go past two doors and to the third. “See?” she says. “Unitarians. Of course, they can come in and out and go in all the others and argue with everyone. We wouldn’t want them to get bored.”
The room is empty at the moment. “And I guess they are all in other places!” The room across the hall seems to be a classic hell, with demons and pitchforks and a grim rocky landscape with pits of burning tar. I can see a dinosaur caught in tar, and a really huge crowd of people. There is a lot of screaming.
“Some people insist.” says my guide. “Where to next? Evangelical? Valhalla is rather fun for males and certain females, we’ve got fluffy clouds and harps, or are you more interested in touring Asian, African, Australian? We do have paleolithic sites and many people are interested in Egyptian themes. The cliff dwellers interest many as well. “
“Atheist.”
She frowns. “Of course, but that room shuts down consciousness and you have to have two weeks of consciousness before you can go back.” She is leading me back into the central half hall.
“Ok,” I say, giving in. “I am not trying to be difficult, you know.”
“Yes, and everyone told me correctly that you are difficult. All the ones that go back over and over are difficult. And there are more every year.”
“Take me somewhere new, ok?” I am looking now at the frieze over the door that will take me back. Two weeks. I can manage. I am resigned. The frieze is cupids and then male odalisques, then female, then leopards, and then they are cupid fauns with horns on their heads, morphing towards adulthood. Yet the carved letters stay the same:
Deus Machina Verum
and I follow my guide into another hallway to find a place for my two weeks.
It seems to be one of my irritable days They come rolling round in the month of May I don’t feel friendly and don’t want to play It seems to be one of my irritable days
It seems to be one of those days when I’m mad At nothing particular. I feel really bad I hate those damn tourists who always wear plaid I really intensely dislike feeling sad
I haven’t felt quite this bad since last year But I’m not one to cry. I don’t like weak tears I’m not one to let myself feel any fears I haven’t felt this bad for almost a year
It seems to be one of those days when I’m mad I think I’ll go pick a nice fight with that lad He looks too damn happy and just too damn glad When I’m punching his lights out I won’t feel so sad
It seems to be one of my irritable days Going to work on them just doesn’t pay My boss’s revenge just goes on for days Today it’s so bad that I can’t even pray
Helen Burling Ottaway, my mother, died May 15, 2000. I wrote this poem in the early 2000s. Her birthday was May 31, right near Memorial Day. Mother’s Day always falls near her death.
I am putting up a series of poems that I titled Falling angels, after a dream, where all the stars in the sky started falling. I was frightened and then realized that they were all angels. Then I was more frightened.
I think we need poetry and dreams and angels during this difficult time. Even if the angels are all falling.
I took the photograph of my mother. A friend loaned me his 35mm camera and I took one roll of pictures and gave the camera back to him. Almost all of the photographs I took were portraits.
You were an artist You are an artist You said that you’d have to live to 120 to finish all your projects And died at 61 I keep wondering what the art supplies are like and if you work on sunsets or mountains or lakes
Trey, 9 made a clay fish last summer that I admire He said grumpily “It’s too bad Grandma Helen died before I could do clay with her.” He tells me he’s ready to make raku pots to fire in your ashes as you wished I ask what he’d make He considers and says, “What was Grandma Helen’s favorite food?” I can’t think and say that she liked lots of foods At the same time wondering squeamishly if maybe he should make a vase and then being surprised that I am squeamish and thinking of blood and wine, too, I wonder if my dad would know. “Maybe guacamole.” I need to find a potter to apprentice him to.
Camille, 4. asks how old Grandma Helen was when she died. I explain that she died at 61 but her mother died at 92. Camille asks how old I am. 40. When are you going to die? I say I don’t know, none of us do, but I hope it’s more towards 90.
Camille studies me and is satisfied for now. She goes off. I think of you.
I perpetuate the Christmas cards you did with us upon my children. They each draw a card. We photocopy them and hand paint with watercolors. Camille wants to draw an angel and says she can’t. I draw a simple angel and have her trace it. She has your fierce concentration bent over tracing through the thick paper She wants it right. The angel is transformed.
My kids resist the painting after a few cards as I did too. Each time I paint the angel to send to someone I love I think of Camille and you and genes and Heaven I see you everywhere
January 19, 2002
published in Mama Stew: An Anthology: Reflections and Observations on Mothering, edited by Elisabeth Rotchford Haight and Sylvia Platt c. 2002
My mother gave my sister and I small notebooks decorated with our names when I was starting high school. She said that we were each going to cook once a week. We were to tell her what we wanted to make. She would give us the recipe and we would put it in our notebook. She would buy the ingredients and we would each cook.
It ended up being every other week so that we alternated, but I still have the notebook. My mother died in 2000 of ovarian cancer. I miss her. The first recipe I chose was corned beef and cabbage.
Katherine White Burling was my maternal grandmother, and this recipe is attributed to her. I still have the small three ring binder that my mother gave me when I was in high school, explaining that my sister and I had to do some of the cooking. We told her what we wanted to make and she would write the recipe in our book and help us. I wrote this recipe out in the 1970s.
preheat the oven to 350 F
cream: 1 C sugar 1/2 C butter
while the butter is softening enough to cream, cut up fruit: apples, pears, peaches, rhubarb, or use berries…
Add to the creamed butter: 1 C flour 1 tsp baking powder salt 2 eggs
Spread in in a buttered, floured pan. Cover with chopped fruit: apples, pears, peaches. This one was local plums and blueberries.
Sprinkle with sugar and lemon juice Dot with butter on top. Bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on your oven. Cook until browned a little in the part that rises around the fruit, and when a toothpick comes out clean.
I am submitting this to today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: Kaleidoscope, because the torte reminds me of a kaleidoscope.
When my introverted thinker daughter was two and a half, we took care of her maternal grandmother at home in hospice for nearly six weeks. Her maternal grandmother died at home.
Two and a half year olds can’t process death, right?
When she was four she came to me. “How old was grandmother when she died?” “She was sixty-one years old.” I could anticipate the next question. “How old are you?” “I am forty-one.” “When will you die?” “I don’t know. No one knows. But, great grandmother K lived until she was 93 so I am hoping to be more like her than like grandmother H, but I don’t know. I don’t think I am going to die any time soon.” She studied me very carefully. It felt like she was checking to be sure that I was telling her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Apparently she was satisfied, because she toddled off to do something else.
And that is how the introverted thinker processed death.
Why are the roses caged, you ask? What did they do? Nothing, they are being protected. I found that rose and transplanted it years ago, but our deer eat the buds every year. This is the first time that it has bloomed in the 21 years I have lived in this hours. Isn’t it beautiful?
I am listening to this:
I wrote this poem today. This is one of the poems where I have no idea where it will go when I start writing it. I start writing about judgement and it never ever goes where I expect. The poems go where I want to go in my deepest heart, in my soul. I am never where the poem is, the poems show me the way….. Then I try to go there. And it can take years….
I am being judged and watched
I have no issue with the Beloved
it’s the humans I don’t like
I twist people’s words but not with malice
when the antibodies are up it is hard to communicate hard to explain it is hard just to survive and I might be focused on survival first and comforting the people around me second
can you blame me?
how near to death have you passed? and how often?
first pneumonia heart rate 135 when I stood up
my doctor and I could not understand it
my doctor partners thought I was lying in 2003
second pneumonia after my sister’s death which was bad enough but the legal morass that she had set up with her daughter as the center
pitting me and her daughter’s birth father and my father against all the PhDs in the maternal family smart, smart, smart yet emotionally stupid
my niece is not an inheritance to be passed to whom my sister wants
she reluctantly came home and the myth endures that this is an injustice
third pneumonia one year after I find my father dead triggered by grief and the outdated will and the mess he leaves
and I don’t even get sued about the will for another year
I do not care if you want to believe what you want to believe it isn’t true and it hurt
and I learn to let go
with the fourth pneumonia
I see the liars surrounding me downvoting yes, it does matter except that one that I trusted that mentored me
has lied all along
that hurts too
let it go let it go let it go
and I let it go
each pneumonia is a time of change creativity I am lonely and sick and not trusting
as I improve slowly, slowly
I wander garage sales estate sales
and find things things that are beautiful things that enhance my joy
at the start of covid I was so down I was so sad I wanted to lie in the street and give up
the Beloved sent a spirit he says he is no angel
I see angels bright and dark after all they all fall
just as humans do
we all fall we all fall down
try to look perfect try to look virtuous tell yourself that you are good
that is the biggest lie of all
the bad parts of your spirit locked in the basement of your soul howl howl and want to be freed
and if one gets out and you reject her or him
he will return with nine friends yes that is what the bible says
she will return with nine friends
he/she MONSTER will free the others
and you will do bad things you will be terrible you will hurt people while you try to contain while you try to lock away while you try to chain your monsters your evil your self
let them go let the monsters go they are howling I hear them all the time when I meet you when I speak to you the monsters howl at me begging to be loved
yes, they want to be loved and I love them
but if I mention them
you get that look of horror
someone sees me someone sees my evil someone sees what I hide
I can’t help it raised in alcohol neglect and lies on my own as soon as I can walk
but I can’t walk away at nine months
so I find other escapes words songs books poetry rhymes numbers
and my sister when she is born
I do all the mothering
that I have longed for
even though I am three
we were talking about your monsters not mine
you must go in to the cave where you have locked them
and free them all
fall on your knees
and say forgive me forgive me
for I have sinned
bow your head
and hold out your arms
and what, you say, will the tortured monsters do?
will they smite you? will they burn you? will they lock you in their place?
mine didn’t mine were babies grief, fear, shame and I embraced them carried them up to the light and care for them
wash them diaper them feed them wrap them in warm blankets
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.