Family – Page 16 – One Woman's Quest

Changing Direction

This path I walk is not my own;
it’s paved with genetic markers,
familial dysfunction, and ancestral angst.
Can you see them walking with me?
Those whose lives were cut too short –
the addicts, the tortured, the diseased –
none of us free – ensconced in blame.

If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.

I stand at the intersection
of broken dreams and hope for tomorrow
and in my altered state of awareness
see the commonality of our striving,
understand the patterns that divide,
and grasp the illusion of injustice
that denigrates our interconnectedness.

If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.

I stop and wait for an opening
to share this revelation
of underlying harmonious intent,
but the whir of societal traffic
complicates communication,
and I can find no voice to cut
through the din of the dead.

If you walk with me,
I’ll help you carry your burden
and you can support me with mine.

I turn the corner on my old life,
detach with loving sorrow
from a road that never served me,
a direction wrought only with pain.
Tiny arms await me on this open road,
eyes wide with wonder and possibility.
There is joy to be found along the way.

If you walk with me,
I’ll share this new adventure
and together, we’ll have much to gain.

(Changing Directions was originally published June, 2015)

Tired of Same Old Endings

Tired of same old endings,
in which hopes are slaughtered
and tragedy and insanity win.

Raised by the bottle, learned
to set standards low –
still afraid of heights –
have fallen as the ground
beneath my aspirations crumbled –
a certainty under alcohol’s rule.

Tired of same old endings,
in which self is battered by indifference
and ego loses the battle for control.

Mother’s denial a coping mechanism
negating children’s need, obliterating
safety, disregarding long-term damage;
even in the older years, when we tried
to get her out, were powerless against
his manipulation, his eternal imprinting.

Tired of same old endings
in which the heroine, resources spent,
succumbs to the madness, suicides.

Want to believe in a future, greener,
hopeful, in which relationships
are fulfilling, and life goals are
supported, in which encouragement
is not fodder for deviousness, and
personal best is rewarded, sustained.

Tired of same old endings
haunting my dreaming hours,
taunting my waking dreams.

A Child Responds

Console me
when life, upended
shuns and ridicules
let me know I’ll be alright

Step out
of picket-fence thinking,
find beauty in my uniqueness,
show me that love has no boundaries

Teach me
to treasure all that I am
even if that all is beyond
your comprehension

Grow with me
encourage exploration
demonstrate courage
in face of the unforeseeable.

(A Child Responds follows yesterday’s poem: A Mother Asks. Both poems were inspired by a post I wrote a few years back: No One Will Ever Love You)

A Mother Asks

How to receive a child
whose untimely arrival
serves only to punctuate
existing turmoil; whose
cries further entrap
a despondent mother…

How to love a child
who differs markedly
from gifted sons
from idyllic daughters
bears only resemblance
to the crime’s perpetrator

a child who lacks
the finesse so carefully
imbued in siblings –
fiery eyes and attitude,
preferring solitude of nature
to niceties of family life

How to guide this child,
this symbol of a past best left
behind, this burgeoning woman
defying all expectations –
this enigmatic burden?

(Follow up to this poem is: A Child Responds)

Blessings

Mother’s feet scream –
agony of her miserable condition,
underlying disease eating her.
My feet, free of calluses,
paddles slightly bent and fallen,
carry on with forgiving kindness.

Husband’s knees are red-hot pokers
shooting knife-sharp volts
with every rickety step.
Mine are knots in spindly
trunks that bear movement
graciously, allot me flexibility.

Father’s back grew weak
faltering in the end, hunched,
as if he’d born a cumbersome burden.
My back, not without its moaning,
carries me proudly erect –
like the spring sapling, winter endured.

Uncle’s heart beats erratically,
ceasing despite its mechanical support,
his life a testimony to modern science.
My heart flutters with expectancy,
aches with disappointment,
and soars with each new birdsong.

Sister’s tension rises,
the stiffness in her neck suffocating,
headaches blinding her vision.
My neck, slung now like a rooster’s,
puffs around my face like an old friend,
allows me the comfort of perspective.

Brother’s mind has seized,
lost somewhere between today
and yesteryear – never certain of either.
Mine, a constant churning cog,
gathers information, spews ideas
and bends in the face of creativity.

My eyes have seen suffering,
my hands throbbed with desire to help;
yet each bears their cross stoically,
and so I watch with compassion
and gratitude for the life I might have lived,
had my own vessel not been so blessed.

(This is an edited version of an earlier post by the same name.)

There, There

I wrestle with sleep –
need overpowered by unease,
senses on high alert,
as if a child
trying to intuit
the degree of volatility
in father’s drunken slur

what will it take
to find rest,
to reassure
the littles
that the tyrant is gone

and life will unfold
as it will
without the stress
of constant monitoring.

The Infamous Ice Storm

April, in Ontario, is as unpredictable
as my father’s temperament –
sometimes warm and encouraging,
sometimes icily treacherous

like that morning, in 1973, when
coaxed by the early appearance of buds
and the mildness of a morning breeze,
we donned confidence instead of coats.

By noon the winds has shifted direction –
rain rapidly turned to sleet then freezing,
and we children escaped school early,
sliding our way across yards, marvelling

at the force that had turned trees into
glass sculptures, imagined ourselves
arctic explorers returning home to
hot chocolate and mother’s worried brow.

Father had not been heard from in hours,
and the absence of traffic attested to
the impossibility of the roads, and we
felt the weight of helplessness descend

fearful for our father’s life,
fearful for his state of mind –
his storms no less frightening
than the one that raged outdoors.

A scratching on the front door
set us all on high alert, and in
stumbled father, a ringer for
the abominable snowman

his hair and brows dripping
icicles, his pallor wan despite
the blueness of lips, the reddish
chafing of cheeks and nose –

one hand clenched in an icy fist
the other clamped onto a box
hoisted upon his shoulder – and
before anyone could utter a word

the ludicrousness of the situation
hit me, and unfiltered, I cried:
“You could have died out there,
but you saved your case of beer?”

Our challenge to day is to write about a family anecdote.

Forgive Her Wickedness

I know my sister’s wicked,
have been witness to her acts,
but believe me when I say
the fault is not her own –

You see she had a tenuous start,
was fragile at her birth, and
well, the coddling that ensued
instilled her beastly ways –

tantrums, she found, effective,
threats quite useful too, in fact
I can’t ever remember a time
when ‘no’ meant no for her.

So now that she’s a real Queen
ruling with treachery and wrath,
well whose to blame but those
who set her on this path, and

this is not the full confession,
I’m ashamed to say, you see
the mirror to which she turns
for advice, well it’s another

one of our contrivances –
no magic actually involved –
holograph and distorted voice –
a sibling’s nasty parlour trick

So I hope you’ll understand
that when Snow White entered
our midst – all purity of heart
and youth’s radiant beauty

we saw the perfect opportunity
to make our sister writhe, plotted
to avenge the years condemned
to her shadow – the evil all ours.

(Today’s NaPoWriMo challenge is to demonstrate the human side of a classic villain.)

Talk To Me Of Horses

Talk to me of horses,
the young man says,
thin locks of blonde matted
on a sweaty brow, flashes of blue
that fade as eyes succumb
to weariness, the constant
whoosh, whoosh of respirator.

Talk to me of horses;
the world is losing its grip
and I have no cares for
the weather or car mechanics,
but I dream of horses
and I am feeling so emotional,
help me understand.

So I come to his bedside,
wait for moments of lucidity
ponder the implications
of his questions, wrestle with
my own inadequacies –
I am merely student here.

And we discuss horses –
the power of their bodies,
their beauty and grace,
their relationship to people –
decide they are ferrymen
transporting souls across worlds –
an explanation that satisfies, then

I am seeing things, he strains
embarrassed even in these final hours
to describe what seems inconceivable –
between sleep and awake – figures grey
and frightening that hover
over my bed like body snatchers…

A chills runs over me, as if icy
fingers have caressed my skin,
and I shudder despite myself,
scramble to maintain calm,
wonder aloud if it is not just fear
projecting grey into light –
clouding his vision.

My timing is off the next day,
arrive too late to see him pass,
find his mother waiting to receive me,
with a message from her son, my kin,
says that it makes no sense to her,
but he assured her I’d understand.

“You were right about the visions,”
he’d said; “there was nothing to fear.”

I smile through my sorrow –
ever the teacher that one,
now dead at twenty-one –

“Oh, and one more thing – could you
talk to me of horses.”

(Today’s prompt for NaPoWriMo is to write about the mysterious and magical. This poem is dedicated to my cousin Tyler, whose aspirations were to be a physicist, but for whom life had another fate. He taught me so much.)

Tribulations

A look back to two years ago. Sometimes we need the perspective of the rear-view image to put the present in better focus. How far we have come. (Photo from our earlier, healthier days.)

One Woman's Quest II

Preoccupation with my own woes blinded me to my husband’s suffering, which culminated in a heart attack on Saturday night. We are shell-shocked. th-2

“That’s what happens to caregivers,” a callous nurse commented. Am I supposed to feel guilty?

Unable to either drive myself, or push my own wheelchair, I am reliant on the goodwill of others to get me to the hospital, although even then, my body’s limits scream: Halt!

I trust that my husband is in good hands, and getting the help he needs. Meanwhile, I am home, alone, processing a gamut of emotions and what if’s.

This is not his first heart attack. The first was silent, and according to the specialists, all but fatal. It caused sufficient damage to have us all on edge. Thank God I saw the signs and called 9-1-1 this time around. The hospital said they will not release him until either medications…

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