Category Archives: joy

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Pandora’s Box

I read this: Was Pandora framed? today and thought, I know I have a Pandora poem….and here it is, from 2011. And another write up, Why the number line freaks me out, that too. When I think of infinity and Pandora’s Box…. it’s worrisome…

Pandora’s Box

Oh, you’d think
It would be empty by now

But I open the box again
I say what I want

And hear “No.”

I sit in want
Old wants
Buried wants
Pressure rising

I know by now
What is happening
I let it rise in me
I do not fight it
I clean the bathroom
Scrub tile and grout
Wants claw inside me
Burst like striking oil
A geyser from within
Black sticky want
Screaming up through the air
Falling everywhere
Filthy, flooding

It will take a while to clean up
this dark matter,
pollutant to poison
or fuel to sustain?

 

I took the photograph yesterday on North Beach. It looks like a popped child’s toy, pink. But it’s not…. it is all over the beach. A seaweed? Something hatching? Nature is a Pandora’s Box as well…. infinitely creative….

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birth

Reading about drugs

LSD
and that people re-experience the terrible trauma of birth

but wait: terrible trauma…

I had the grace and delight and sometimes terror
of catching babies, new and slippery and surprised
for nineteen years

they do not arrive traumatized

an older obstetrician
always gentle
when I would ask for help
deep calm and sometimes
he would wait for the newborn
and not rush us to the operating room

and if the child emerged
he would say “girl ears”
or “boy ears”
he always guessed
frequently wrong
his small tickle of humor
and the mother too busy at that moment
to notice at all
except that his voice was calm

I think of the one forming
in the womb
the sounds of mother’s heart and guts
dark and sounds
of father brother sister other

the first time I see
the new baby in clinic
I imitate the sound of the doppler
swish swish swish
and the newborn alerts, and knows my voice too

I think of the one forming
in the womb
and my daughter
who tried to come early
confining me to bed for three months
and adrenaline-like terbutaline
continuously
my hands tremble
my heart rate at one hundred
I knit to channel the figdets
six sweaters
and my daughter is worth it

I think of the one forming
in the womb
out of room
the space is too tight
can no longer stretch or kick
head down
ready

I think of the one forming
in the womb
saying now
I need more room
now and the cascade starts

we don’t know what starts labor
the baby or the mother
or both

now
I need more room
and the infant pushes towards the door
towards more room

and I have had
the grace and delight and sometimes terror
of catching them
slick and messy and bloody
as they emerge
into the light

open their eyes
and breathe
startled
at light and room and air

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Morning

This is for the Daily Prompt: discover.

I see people out with ear buds in place, walking or running. I also see people outside face down towards their phones.

I am sending people outdoors from my clinic, without ear buds, with cell phone off or silenced.

We need the sensory input from forests, from the outdoors, from fields, from beaches. We need the unpredictable and to USE all our senses. Smell, sound, proprioception… Proprioception is your feet telling you whether you are on a flat surface or little stones or a dirt path or that there is a rock there. My daughter and I walked on the beach last night, without a flashlight. I stumbled more than her. We discussed night vision and clearly hers is better than mine. We could see the light of Seattle reflecting from the clouds and onto the water of the Salish Sea. Mostly clouds, a few stars, no streetlights. We could see the windows of houses along the beach. The tide was out and the waves were very quiet, and we walked into a flock of sandpipers who called.

When my son was 18 months old, we took him to family land in Ontario, Canada, with old cabins on a lake. The paths are dirt. I ran those paths in the dark as a child for years, and every year the rocks and sticks were different. My son was used to floors and sidewalks and a grassy yard. For the first few days he stumbled on the paths, which are not even. By the time we left, he was running the paths with ease.

We need that sensory input and proprioception and to use all of our senses. When we get new complex sensory input, chronic pain sensors are turned down, as the brain is engaged to evaluate new information. We need outdoors, we need sensory input, we need uneven paths and beaches and rocks, we need to practice balance or else we lose the skills….

Turn off your phone. Take off your headphones. I exchange calls with birds often. I hear eagles and can imitate their call. I am good enough that sometimes the eagles that I cannot even see when I call, will drop down from the sky to see where the sound came from….Am I some sort of weird eagle insulting them?

Happy solstice and joy to you and yours.

 

 

 

 

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Paper of pins

For the daily prompt: Treasure.

This is another song to raise girls. My sister and I loved the double twist at the end. This is a courting song, to be sung by at least two voices. At music parties, my parents would sing it to each other. We would join in joyfully.

First voice:
I’ll give to you a paper of pins
and that’s the way our love begins
If you will marry me oh me,
if you will marry me

Second:
I’ll not accept your paper of pins
if that’s the way your love begins
and I won’t marry you oh you
and I won’t marry you

I’ll give to you a dress of red
all sewn round with golden thread
If you will marry me oh me,
if you will marry me

I’ll not accept your dress of red
all sewn round with golden thread
and I won’t marry you oh you
and I won’t marry you

I’ll give to you a coach and four
so you can ride from door to door
If you will marry me oh me,
if you will marry me

I’ll not accept your coach and four
so I can ride from door to door
and I won’t marry you oh you
and I won’t marry you

I’ll give to you the keys to my heart
so we can love and never part
If you will marry me oh me,
if you will marry me

I’ll not accept the keys to your heart
so we can love and never part
and I won’t marry you oh you
and I won’t marry you

I’ll give to you the keys to my chest
so you can have money at your request
If you will marry me oh me,
if you will marry me

I will accept the keys to your chest
so I can have money at my request
And I will marry you oh you
and I will marry you

I love coffee and you love tea
you love my money you don’t love me
And I won’t marry you oh you
And I won’t marry you

I’ll take my tea and sit in the shade
I think I’d rather be an old maid
And I won’t marry you oh you
And I won’t marry you

We were interested in the escalation of the offer and that in the end, the woman was quite clear: she did not love him and was not for sale.

There are multiple versions on YouTube with different words. I like the one by Rose Lee and Joe Maphis.

The photograph is of a sewing kit. It belonged to Margaret White, my maternal grandmother’s oldest sister. It says: J. A Henckel, Twinworks, Germany. The paper is a paper of needles, needles of different sizes. I liked small things, so my mother let me have this kit. I have used it since I was a child. Some of the pieces were missing from the start, but I suspect that those that remain are ivory. My grandmother was born in 1899, so this kit would be from the early 1900s. I carefully kept all of the needles in their paper packets.