Category Archives: love

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broken

I wrote this poem in 2014. Sometimes you know things without knowing them. Or you know them before you are ready to know them and so…. you forget.

broken

I think you said
“Break her.”

And you told them how.

You told them my weaknesses
and my strengths.

You told them that I twisted your words.

You said, “You twist my words.”
K said, “You twist my words.”
S said, “You twist my words.”
Ko said, “You twist my words.”

and on everything2
they, too, twist my words.

Twist
twisted
fisted.

When the outer is charming and perfect
the damage is inside.

I wear my spikes on the outside.


No one, to date, has been allowed more then
visitation rights
inside.

No one except
you
and my children
and all children.

Only they are allowed inside.

Twist
twisted
fisted.

I am broken.

But I was always broken and knew it.

I hope that no one cut their hands
when they tried to smash me.

Pretty on the outside
deadly on the inside.

Yet I think a spark in you said,
“Break her.”

What you didn’t tell them
is that I don’t bother to lie
because no one listens anyhow
no one ever listened
and so I can always tell the truth
until they stop listening.

because they don’t believe me

but you knew

I tell the truth

And I was already broken.

8/22/14

And this should connect to this: https://drkottaway.com/2014/11/

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practicing grandmother

My sister sends me a t-shirt years ago.

It says, “I don’t know if I am the good witch or the bad witch.”

I burst into tears and put it in the trunk of my car. I never wear it. I am the designated bad witch for half my family. We won’t go into that.

She gets a shirt too. Hers is the green one. Mine is black.

She is dead, in 2012, breast cancer. It’s hard to describe the fallout. Toxic and radioactive. But… I have decided not to be a witch.

Instead, I am a practicing grandmother.

Really I’ve been one for a while. There was a young couple who lived down the street with two children. This was in 2014. I am a Facebutt friend, so sometimes noted what was happening. The father has to travel for his job. The mother is trying to care for two kids and work and so on… been there.

In 2014 I am recovering from my third round of pneumonia. This third round it takes six months before I can return to work. Short of breath and coughed if I talked. The state medical watch doctors want to disable me but I fight them tooth and nail. I win. In retroscope, oops, I mean retrospect, they were probably right.

Anyhow, I wander down to the neighbor and offer my services. She already knows me. She is instantly grateful and two year old T is introduced to me, again. He doesn’t really remember me. She explains that he is coming to my house for a little while and then back home.

T and I walk towards my house.

A nuthatch calls.

I stop and reply. In college I took ornithology and the teaching assistant could do a barn owl call so well that the barn owls would do a territorial fly over at night to see who had the weird accent. Marvelous.

The nuthatch and I went “enh” back and forth. T is amazed. This woman talks to birds. Then we see the nuthatch! I point out how nuthatches come down a tree head first. “If you hear that call, it’s a nuthatch. Look for it.” The nuthatch is very cooperative. Magic.

We get to my house. T is clutching a book. “He’s taking it everywhere,” sighs his mother. “I’m not sure why.”

So first we read the book. It is a board book about a farm. Each page has a central picture and then there are pictures around the edges with the word under each picture. On one page T says, “Haaaaay.”

“Oh!” I say, delighted. “You can read HAY!”

His face lights up. An adult who gets it! Yes! He can read HAY!

On another page he says HAY. “Oh,” I say, “That is straw. Straw is a lot like hay but it’s not exactly the same.”

He is very serious absorbing that information.

I show him my closet. There is a stick horse. Only it isn’t a horse: it’s a unicorn dragon, with a forehead horn and wings. When you press a button it’s eyes flash and it roars.

Ok, that’s pretty scary. He wants the closet door closed and he does NOT want to play with the dragon.

Next is pouring. I get out a towel and put it on the kitchen floor. I get out a rather nice expresso set. Bright colors. Orange and green and yellow and blue. I fill the coffee pot with water and invite him to sit on the towel. “You can pour the tea.”

He looks at me with surprise. He picks up the coffee pot. He looks at me again. “Go ahead. It’s ok.” He starts pouring into a cup. He pours until the cup overflows and the saucer overflows and he keeps pouring. The coffee pot is empty. He looks at me a little warily. This is technically spilling and he knows it.

“Would you like more in the teapot?”

He nods.

I refill the coffee pot with water and he starts again, with a different cup.

When I return him to mom, after two hours, he’s damp. “Sorry, he got a little wet, but it’s just water,” I say cheerfully. Mom is too harried to do much more than look resigned at a change of clothes. I tell her about him being able to read the word hay.

Next time he comes with a change of clothes and his large stroller, in case he goes down for a nap.

And first off, he goes to the closet. Time to hear that dragon roar again.

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stealthie in the grass

Stealthie in my yard, two days ago. I like the current crop of grass and weeds.

Music: Simon Lynge Hallelujah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIHpeaHJJ9s

His website is here: https://simonlyngemusic.com/. Hey Simon, when do we get another local concert? Concert in the grass? Hugs, ya’ll.

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trees awake

Do you know the round?

Spring would be a dreary season

If twere nothing else but spring

would be a deary season….

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: awakening.

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The introverted thinker on the playground

My daughter is an introverted thinker. Sometimes this is extremely entertaining.

When she was in first grade she came home part way through the year and said, “I want to get my hair cut like a boy.” “Short?” I said. “Yes,” she said. I didn’t think about it too much but made an appointment. I thought it was because she has that fine tangly hair that is really difficult to comb.

On the way to the salon, my intuition kicked in and I realized that something was up. She was in that deep abstraction mode, thinking.
I said, “Why do you want to get your hair cut like a boy?”
Her reply, “The boys chase the girls on the playground.”
Hmmmm.
“Do they chase you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“They are not sure if I am a boy or a girl.”
“You don’t want them to be sure?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There is another class that gets to recess before us. They get the tire swing. They have a club that is all boys. They won’t let us use the tire swing.”
“You are going to fool them. Okay.” I sat back to see how she would proceed with whatever plan she had regarding the tire swing.

She had her hair cut very short. The next morning she chose hand-me-downs from her brother. A rugby shirt, a navy blue sweatshirt, flannel lined thick jeans and his old hiking boots. She had never worn any of them before and her usual preference was pink. I took her to school. She went into her class and just went to stand by some other children, not saying anything at all. They commented on her haircut.

I went to the principal and described my daughter’s plan, mostly because I thought it was quite brilliant. He said, “Oh, we have to do something about this.” I said, “I wasn’t trying to get anyone to interfere.” He said, “No, but we have a playground policy. They are allowed to have clubs, but they are not allowed to exclude anyone. In other words, no ‘boys only’ clubs. We will hold an assembly to remind them.”

So for a seven year old introverted thinker on the playground, a problem required careful thought and a plan, which she then carried out. I liked the approach of challenging gender. As far as I could tell it did not occur to her to ask for help. I do wonder at times what other plans she is implementing.

She did get to use the tire swing. Then she went back to wearing pink.

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Pandas and the toughest yarn

After my sister died, I eventually got a box from her home.

People were cleaning it out. My cousin Ko, my friend Caroline, other friends.

Among other things, they sent part of her yarn stash.

What they sent me was the very very fine yarn and the fuzzy yarn. The mohair.

Oh gosh, I thought, they sent me the toughest yarn.

Well, as part of the dealing with the ADHD/OCD antibody annoyance, which makes me wired while the OTHER antibodies make me physically not able to do much, what am I doing?

Sorting my yarn stash, for one. I have a LOT of that lovely fuzzy soft superfine mohair and other superfine yarns. It is tricky to work with because the fine needles are hard on the hands and because if you screw up, it’s hard to take it out. I know some of the tricks: freezing the sweater is one. It makes it easier for the fibers to untangle.

I’ve also been sorting the knitting books and magazines. I have more books. My mother gave me a whole hardcover book on edges and casting on. I’ve used it twice so far. But now I am home, buzzing with antibodies (yeah, sometimes it feels like ants or bees or pins. On the inside.) and so: knit.

And lo, I find this book. Fine knitting. It even has a mohair t-shirt pattern! Awesome, I am going to be knitting up some of my sister’s mohair. Wonderful. I think she’d approve. Also, I plan to be just as glam and sultry as the woman on the cover, heh.

I think I’ll submit this to the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Country Comfort.

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Bad Pig

This is Bad Pig. She is helping with the computer.

Bad Pig was born, or made, in 1982 or 1983. I made her in college. She is constructed of a coat hanger, a cardboard tube and some stuffing and then I found fabric to cover her. I used post earrings for eyes, because that is what I had on hand. They are rather nice earrings. Her tail curls around so that she can sit on your shoulder like Anne McCaffrey’s fire lizards. I made her for a convention of some sort. Fantasy, I think.

Anyhow, I gave Bad Pig to my sister Chris. She was not named Bad Pig at that time. I don’t know what Chris named her. But she continued with Chris through multiple moves. When my sister was in hospice, I asked if I could take Bad Pig back home with me. Chris said yes. Later Chris asked me to keep the bad pigs from harming anyone else. I was not exactly sure what she meant, but I said yes.

On the way home, I named the dragon Bad Pig and explained that I didn’t want her to harm anyone. Let the past be the past and bygones be bygones. I am not sure exactly what the details of Bad Pigdom were, but it’s the future I am concerned with.

Bad Pig has been in the living room on the book shelf since coming back to Washington. Currently she is helping out with the computer. I tell her when the computer is considering being unhelpful and Bad Pig then considers breathing fire on it. However, the computer straightens up at that point, so she doesn’t have to.

My sister was born in the Chinese year of the dragon. In hospice she said, “How will I find you?”

I said, “You are a dragon. You are letting me take the dragon I made you home. You will be able to fly. All you have to do is find the dragon and you will find me.”

So it is very comforting to have her so close.

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leaf light

Well.

Being off from work, for an indeterminate time gives one time to think.

I have been advised by various people to move. Pick up, sort out, get rid of and move on.

I think they are right. I have been in this house for 21 years. Time to change it.

So, I am going through things. Washing everything washable. There is a lot of that. Starting to sort and give away things. I sent a unicorn horn and ears and a tail and tiger ears and tail to a five year old a couple days ago. She can be a unicorn or a tiger or a ticorn or a uniger. And rope the adults in.

Photos now. I could have a ginormous bonfire of old photos. It’s ok to get rid of the ones that have no remaining connection, right? I may give them to friends to cut up and use in art, that’s cool. I will keep the connected ones.

I took the leaf light picture with my phone yesterday evening. Crashed early.

Hugs, all.

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My father’s mother’s father

The eldest gentleman in this picture is Fred Bayers, my father’s mother’s father. And his family.

My father’s mother’s mother is present as well. Let me not overlook the women.
Gertrude Bayers.

My father is there and his two sisters. Their spouses and children are present.

My mother is there. My father’s mother and my grandfather and my grandmother’s siblings are present.

I am there. So is my little sister.

Look at all the love there. We need our families so much during this pandemic.

Sending love out.

All love comes back to me.

I hope it comes back to you too.