“Albert Einstein put it best: The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” - Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
That afternoon, we counted one
broken window and two
good things: running water
and electricity. That evening,
a hazy yellow moon hung over
our silent city. Just hours earlier, I saw
iron roofs flying toward the horizon.
The day after, my daughter asks me
where I am going. "To work,
my baby." She only remembers a whole
day huddled in blankets, reading books
to distract ourselves from the howling outside.
The day after, the sun is so mild, the air
so soft and cool. I can't believe
we had been pummeled by wind
and rain if not for the flagpole fallen
across our building and the leaves
and branches lining the streets as we make
our way to the office.
That morning, trying to stop
my ears, I watched a video
about disappearing bees.
And now it is all
I can think about. There's
another low pressure area
coming this weekend.
We escaped the storm in Manila by a day.
The skies were overcast for days at the beach.
While we walked the length of Station 1 and 2,
I watched the perfect curve of your cheek, the
way a bikini, which I've dreaded my whole life, was
nothing to you. Around you, the time has come. Pork
barrels are rolling open like so many mouths with lolling
tongues, the streets at home are filling up with murky
water, the seas are heating up like a potent
soup. By the time we come back to Manila,
the people will have taken to the streets.
I want you to keep running unhampered in the sand.
I want you to be cheeky and defiant, the way
you are now as you hold up that stick in your hands.
I want you to kick up the dust and say
want you want. All I wish for are at least
a few seasons of amihan to hold up the tumult
that you are. All I wish for are a few quiet
summers for you, for your children, when there
are no crippling droughts, no floods,
in the coming months, to survive.
The question from BronzeAge.ph: You’re asked to write a story based on the most exciting/happiest/worst summer of your life. What would it be about?
The answer: It would be the story that I haven't written about, the summer that my mother died.
I never really thought about writing a summer story. But now that I think about it...my mother died in the summer. The skies must have been bright. It must have been really hot. It was in the middle of April, nine days after my baby sister was born. Her burial was in the afternoon. People wore shades. I never saw my Dad's eyes in the pictures. He had a good excuse to wear those shades.
It must have been the worst summer of my life but I hadn't realized it yet. I didn't know about death because I was only three years old. When I look at my daughter who's only two and six months...I realize how fancy free I must have been at the time of her death. I must have been worried about outfits and bathing suits and where to go in the afternoon. At the time, the days must have fused together and I had no inkling at all about yesterday or tomorrow. That's how my daughter is...everything is just one fantastic day full of smiles or tears or snacks or playtime.
Memory is such a tricky thing. It's especially tricky when you're three years old. There's not much there. So... what I want to do is to reconstruct that summer. The seventies fashion, the stories in the kitchen, the beach trips from the two years before and the surreal day that no one expected. Now that I'm a mom...I see that clueless little girl in an apple cut hairdo, wearing that white dress and my heart goes out to her. Come here, you. Let me hug you. You're going to be all right.
Well, thanks for asking, BronzeAge.ph. Now, I have some fantastic material brewing in my head.
NaPoWriMo or National Poetry Writing Month, is an annual project in which participating poets attempt to write a poem a day for the month of April.
Death Anniversary
By Justine C. Tajonera
You loved the work of Marc Chagall. I have Paris Through The Window on my desktop. My favorite
paintings of yours are of a tree and the one with
you outside the gate of a house. Or perhaps, that
was me, locked out of your embrace after I realized
you had died. I remember the bright blueness
surrounding the house, the gate, the woman.
I used to listen to your vinyl mood music records
when I was in grade school. I imagined you listening
to them. I watch my daughter now. She's almost three,
my age when I lost you. I imagine you dressing me
in smocked dresses and fussing over my hair.
I remember how you put Betadine on my imaginary
wounds the way I now apply the antiseptic
on your granddaughter's imaginary scratches.
I could write poems for you, for every year after
I had to live without you. I could go on and on.
But there aren't enough words. I close my eyes. I go
into the closet again, the one where we put your large
framed photograph. I forgot the prayers I used to pray in
in that darkness. I just wanted to be close to you.
I come out to embrace my daughter and
all the years we will have.
You move so quickly,
you won't stay still, not for pictures,
not even when I plead and offer you cookies.
I wash your hair and wrap you in a towel
and off you go, somewhere else, humming.
You used to scramble to pick up my jogging shoes
and put them on the shoe shelf but now you
only smile and say no and attempt to climb
up a shelf to get at your biscuits.
I want to capture your laugh, your smile,
all teeth and cheek.
I run to keep up with you and make
poor copies of you with my camera
(how will it ever come with the scent
of your nape?)
I want to keep discovering you, I want
to be surprised. I want this world to be yours,
little girl. I don't want you to be saved.
I want you to do the saving.
We hid eighty-four eggs in the park, yesterday
and waited an hour and a half for everyone to show up.
Eighty-three eggs were found in thirty minutes, one was unaccounted for.
Inside the eggs were pieces of paper with Easter quotes
about eternal life and temples and resurrection and God's
only begotten son. I had hoped some of the children would
read them before turning them over for the prizes of marshmallows
and star jelly candies and chocolates and lollipops.
Some of them did. But what I remember most was how hot
the afternoon light was. How cooling the breeze.
How peaceful it was with only the two of us looking for
unlikely places for children to find treats among the trees.
We rested on the wooden bench together, exhausted, smiling.
We counted all those eggs. We worked on them with our son,
our daughter. We had twelve big eggs with five small candies
in them. We had twelve small, fancy eggs with designs on them and
sixty regular eggs, each with three small candies in them. Sixty
out of the eight-four eggs had carefully folded pieces of paper.
Easter bunnies have nothing to do with Jesus Christ, I know,
but there was something in the work of that afternoon that was
the resurrection and the life.
At 5 a.m. she cries,
she demands,
she will not be denied.
I wake up, startled,
obeying an instinct, following
a predetermined course on a map
with my brain half-asleep.
Soothed, she cups my face
in her tiny hands.
She looks into my eyes.
The room is still dark
but her eyes are shining. Who is this who heard me? Who is this who completely understood me?
Years from now
someone will fall in love
with her
for those eyes.
I smile and take her hands
in mine before we both
fall back to sleep.
For Clea
Image is of Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo on the Cliff)
I just discovered this spoken word poem on Amazon.com. I stumbled upon it when I searched for poetry. It was the first book they recommended for the holidays. It is truly amazing. And because I do have a daughter, I found it really fascinating and true and poignant.
There are just some things I want to share with my daughter because I was there before her. And I want to share it with love, with a lot of understanding, with the compassion of a mother to a maybe-future-mother too. And not to say that I'm all-wise either. Like Sarah says in her poem, "on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive." I want her to know that I'll be there. Through her mistakes (which she'll surely make) and her triumphs and her heartaches (with all the drama!) and her joyful discoveries. And maybe when she's a mother herself... I'll be there before, during and after that painful, bewildering, crazy, beautiful thing called giving birth. And like "The Runaway Bunny" (one of my favorite kids' books) "B" reminds me that I am a "Point B" and no matter what my daughter will do... I will find her. And also that she can't get away from me.
Some things I want my daughter to have: a love for life, an independence of thought, a big, inexhaustible heart. And more, more, more.
I was very inspired by "B." And I'm already drafting something for Clea, especially after she woke me up at 5AM today! :-)
"B"
by Sarah Kay
If I should have a daughter,
instead of "mom," she's gonna call me "Point B."
Because that way she knows no matter what happens
at least she can always find her way to me.
And I'm going to paint the solar systems on the backs of her hands.
So that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say
"Oh, I know that like the back of my hand."
And she's gonna learn that this life
will hit you.
Hard.
In the face.
Wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach.
But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs
how much they like the taste of air.
There is hurt here
that cannot be fixed
by band-aids or poetry.
So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn't coming,
I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape
all by herself.
Cause no matter how wide you stretch your fingers,
your hands will always be too small to catch
all the pain you want to heal.
Believe me.
I've tried.
"And, baby," I'll tell her,
"Don't keep your nose up in the air like that.
I know that trick;
I've done it a million times.
You're just smelling for smoke,
so you can follow the trail back to a burning house,
so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire,
to see if you can save him.
Or else,
find the boy who lit the fire in the first place
to see if you can change him."
But I know she will anyway,
so, instead, I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby.
Because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix.
Okay...there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix,
but that's what the rain boots are for.
Because rain will wash away everything,
if you let it.
I want her
to look at the world
through the underside of a glass bottom boat.
To look with a microscope at the galaxies that exist
on the pinpoint of a human mind.
Because...
that's the way my mom taught me.
That there'll be days like this.
There'll be days like this my mama said.
When you open your hands to catch
and wind up with only blisters and bruises.
When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly
and the very people you want to save
are the ones standing on your cape.
When your boots will fill with rain,
and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment,
and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say "Thank You."
Cause there's nothing more beautiful
than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline
no matter how many times it's sent away.
You will put the wind in winsome...lose some.
You will put the star in starting over. And over.
And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute
make sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.
And, yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am
pretty damn naive.
But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar.
It can crumble so easily but don't be afraid to stick your tongue out
and taste it.
"Baby," I'll tell her,
"Remember your mama is a worrier
and your papa is a warrior.
And you are the girl with small hands and big eyes
who never stops asking for more."
"Remember that good things come in threes
and...so do bad things."
And, "Always apologize when you've done something wrong.
But don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes
refuse to stop shining.
Your voice is small
but don't ever stop singing."
And when they finally hand you heartache,
when they slip war and hatred under your door,
and offer you hand outs on street corners
of cynicism and defeat,
you tell them that they
really oughtta meet
your mother.
