Today, the sky’s the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, “The universe is not only stranger than we
think, it’s stranger than we can think.” I think
I’ve driven into spring, as the woods revive
with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
scarves flung over bark’s bare limbs. Barely doing
sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
and aren’t we just? Just yesterday,
I read Li Po: “There is no end of things
in the heart,” but it seems like things
are always ending—vacation or childhood,
relationships, stores going out of business,
like the one that sold jeans that really fit—
And where do we fit in? How can we get up
in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
put one foot after the other, open the window,
make coffee, watch the steam curl up
and disappear. At night, the scent of phlox curls
in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
lavender, thistle, a box of spilled crayons.
The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
for the thousandth time.
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Fave-O-Lit Friday
In my life...
We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
–Joseph Campbell
Fave-O-Lit Friday in Food & Love Week
Poem: “Toast” by Susan Deborah King, from The One-Breasted Woman. © Holy Cow! Press, 2007.
Toast
Toast
It’s worth getting up for.
Just at dawn, on a dead-of-winter walk,
I could smell it wafting from homes
all around the lake as they
emerged from the dark like loaves
from an oven, steaming.
Is there an aroma more divine
than that of bread warming, bread
browning, crisping for the spread
of butter and marmalade, the sprinkling
of sugared cinnamon? Whatever
terrors the night might harbor,
how bad can it get, if hot slices
stack our morning plate, the white
ones patterned with cobalt blue?
It’s what in the current vernacular
we’ll all eventually be: a pleasant
redolence rising and haloing
a roughed up, frozen expanse –
for such days, we make
not-too-burnt offerings of thanks;
we raise our glasses of juice.
Fave-O-Lit Friday: E.E. Cummings
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apartv
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
Fave-O-Lit Friday; 31 for 21: Day 30
21 Things We Love About The Quail
1. that bobbin of hair at the top of her head
2. the way her eyes crinkle up when she grins ear to ear
3. the way her eyes stay trained to Lovey waiting for him to notice her
4. the way she gets our attention by saying, “Uh!” when she has waited far too long
5. the way she grabs our face with two hands and pulls it to her to taste our noses
6. the way we leave her in one spot, go to get something, come back 30 seconds later and she is somewhere else.
7. the way she nuzzles her bunny lovey to her face
8. the way her eyes light up when you bring out the cereal bowl
9. the way her eyes stay trained to yours when you look at her
10. the way she lets you know by screaming when she’s had enough “affection” from her big sister
11. the way she nuzzles into your neck when you hold her up on your shoulder
12. the way she lifts her legs when you pull out a diaper to change her
13. the way she laughs (heh-heh-heh) when you press your face into her belly and give her a raspberry
14. the way she lifts her little arms up overhead when she wants you to pick her up
15. the way she concentrates so fully on the television when Baby Einstein comes on
16. the way you can feel her heart beat as you kiss the soft fontenalle on her head
17. the sweet baby, milky, yeasty way she smells
18. the way she splish-splashes in the tubby
19. the way she hollars a reminder to come get her if everyone has congegrated in a room that she isn’t in
20. the community that she has brought us along into with her
21. her, just her.
Fave-O-Lit Friday: Momma Zen AKA Karen Maezen Miller; 31 for 21 day 23
THE PARENT”S LITTLE LIST OF LETTING GO*
Baby is born.
Baby sleeps through the night.
Baby bites.
Baby crawls.
Baby turns 1.
Baby stops sleeping through the night.
Baby pees in potty.
Baby throws binkies in trash.
Baby starts kindergarten.
Baby stops sleeping through the night.
Baby’s first drop-off.
Baby’s first text.
Baby loses first tooth.
Baby’s first career plan.
Baby stops sleeping through the night.
Baby’s first true love.
Baby’s last Barbie.
Baby’s first head lice.
Baby’s second true love.
Baby’s first first-place.
Baby stops sleeping through the night.
Baby says, “Mom, I like your deodorant. Can you get me some?”
Baby is always right on schedule.*Not so little. Never ever gone.
Last week as I was scrolling through recent posts on Cheerio Road; I felt a broad smile cross my face as I recognized the above post of hers. I clicked on the comments section and sure enough- there I was- the newly minted mother of a two month old recently diagnosed with Down syndrome recognizing a gleam of light and inspiration in another mother’s worldly words. I’ve always enjoyed Maezen’s words and had read her book Momma Zen when Zuzu was a little bundle. I was glad to find a continued connection to something I loved and a momma’s view whom I found comfort in the past and now could still relate with my situation. I can’t even begin to tell you how normalizing that was for me at that moment. I had just returned to work and was spending my days wondering quite frankly how the Quail might compare to the other babies in her class- would her classmates and teachers accept and love her? Would she fall behind and have a difficult time? Would she be happy there and really benefit as our dear EI Jodi had predicted she would?
When I read my comment to the post written 6 months ago I feel like going back and patting that newly minted momma on the back and telling her good job for seeing the truth in the above words for the Quail. You wanted this to be true and in a few months you will know that it is down to the very core of your heart. Just hang in there. You become your thoughts.
What a gift her words were then and what a gift to feel them again. Thank you Maezen.
Fave-O-Lit Friday: 31 for 21: Day 16 A Credo for Support
A Credo for Support: People First Version
Authors: Norman Kunc and Emma Van der Klift
Description:
This powerful 5 minute video offers a series of suggestions for people who care about and support someone with a disability. These suggestions are intended to prompt viewers to question the common perceptions of disability, professionalism, and support. Designed for use in presentations, in-services, staff training, and orientation programs, this video can be a provacative catalyst for dialogue on these issues. The video is set to music.
Originally produced in 1995, a revised version was created in 2006 intended to be more respectful to people with disabilities. In this revised version, the credo was not reworded but is read by members of People First of San Luis Obispo, California. The self-advocates are shown on screen as each reads a line of the credo. The original version, narrated by one person with only words shown on-screen, also continues to be available
Contact Info:
Name: Norman Kunc and Emma Van der Klift Title: Axis Consultation and Training Address: 340 Machleary Street
Nanaimo, British Columbia V9R 2G9
Canada
Here is the revised video version that is read by members of one People First community:
A Credo for Support
Throughout history, people with physical and mental disabilities have been abandoned at birth, banished from society used as court jesters, drowned and burned during the Inquisition, gassed in Nazi Germany, and still continue to be segregated, institutionalized, tortured in the name of behavior management, abused, raped, euthanized, and murdered. Now, for the first time, people with disabilities are taking their rightful place as fully contributing citizens. The danger is that we will respond with remediation and benevolence rather then equity and respect. And so, we offer you a credo for support.
Do not see my disability as a problem. Recognize that my disability is an attribute.
Do not see my disability as a deficit. It is you who see me as deviant and helpless.
Do not try to fix me because I am not broken. Support me. I can make my contribution to the community in my way.
Do not see me as your client. I am your fellow citizen. See me as your neighbor. Remember, none of us can be self-sufficient.
Do not try to modify my behavior. Be still and listen. What you define as inappropriate may be my attempt to communicate with you in the only way I can.
Do not try to change me, you have no right. Help me learn what I want to know.
Do not hide your uncertainty behind “professional” distance. Be a person who listens and does not take my struggle away from me by trying to make it all better.
Do not use theories and strategies on me. Be with me. And when we struggle with each other, let me give that rise to self-reflection.
Do not try to control me. I have a right to my power as a person. What you call non-compliance or manipulation may actually be the only way I can exert control over my life.
Do not teach me to be obedient, submissive, and polite. I need to feel entitled to say no if I am to protect myself.
Do not be charitable to me. The last thing the world needs is another Jerry Lewis. Be my ally against those who exploit me for their own gratification.
Do not try to be my friend. I deserve more than that. Get to know me. We may become friends.
Do not help me even if it does make you feel good. Ask me if I need your help. Let me show you how to better assist me.
Do not admire me. A desire to live a full life does not warrant adoration. Respect me for respect presumes equity.
Do not tell, correct and lead. Listen, support and follow.
Do not work on me. Work with me.
Fave-O-Lit Friday- to Dear Gina
Sasha
RIP dear friend- you will be sorely missed- when I think of you I think of our fun-filled college days and explorations. I also think of the domesticity and goodness residing in you. One of my favorite memories is coming home to the smell of homemade chicken noodle soup in our apartment together in Madison. Your compassion for the world and those in it around you inspired all who knew you. In homage of your love of life and animals- I post this poem- Love you Gina- please watch over us all.
Two Cats
It’s better to be a cat than to be a human.
Not because of their much-noted grace and beauty—
their beauty wins them no added pleasure, grace is
only a cat’s way
of getting without fuss from one place to another—
but because they see things as they are. Cats never mistake a
saucer of milk for a declaration of passion
or the crook of your knees for
a permanent address. Observing two cats on a sunporch,
you might think of them as a pair of Florentine bravoes
awaiting through slitted eyes the least lapse of attention—
then slash! the stiletto
or alternately as a long-married couple, who hardly
notice each other but find it somehow a comfort
sharing the couch, the evening news, the cocoa.
Both these ideas
are wrong. Two cats together are like two strangers
cast up by different storms on the same desert island
who manage to guard, despite the utter absence
of privacy, chocolate,
useful domestic articles, reading material,
their separate solitudes. They would not dream of
telling each other their dreams, or the plots of old movies,
or inventing a bookful
of coconut recipes. Where we would long ago have
frantically shredded our underwear into signal
flags and be dancing obscenely about on the shore in
a desperate frenzy,
they merely shift on their haunches, calm as two stoics
weighing the probable odds of the soul’s immortality,
as if to say, if a ship should happen along we’ll
be rescued. If not, not.
“Two Cats” by Katha Pollitt, from The Mind-Body Problem.
Fave-O-Lit Friday- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Love Gift
If you haven’t read any Anne Morrow Lingbergh; do- she was a lovely, lovely writer. We were fortunate to have heard a passage from Gifts From the Sea at a friend’s wedding and were thrilled to incorporate it into ours 9 wonderful years ago. At the time I loved the island imagery but still instinctually fought against the whole concept of letting go, letting be. I’m a nostalgic, sentimental creature by nature. My instinct is to hold on and hold on tight to that which I love. It is my life’s practice I suppose. I was unfamiliar with any Zen writings or concepts at the time we chose this for the wedding, how beautiful to see the Zen spirit in which she writes now. Any work that you can read and reread and glean something fresh is one to keep on your shelves- or is it one to let go…
Gifts from the Sea- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.
The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.
Fave-O-Lit Fridays
Arrival of Zuzu
- First Breath of The Quail
Arrival of Zuzu
- First Breath of The Quail
In the Basket Marty Brought to the
Hospital After the Cesarean
Asparagus-pasta cobbler; raspberry bread; fresh
baked whole wheat bread; collages
young Molly did
on construction paper – de Kooning-esque –
with catalog clippings, great swirlies
of magic
marker, & filaments of glitter-laced glue;
Parmesan-mushroom wild rice;
boxed pear juice, boxed mixed fruit juice;
soy milk; mangoes; cold
cucumber-yogurt soup; fresh strawberries;
cut lilac; blackberry tea;
a hand-turned ceramic vase; a doll
sewn of scrap fabric, of stuffed athletic sock;
and a bouquet of herbs: fresh
mint, fresh rosemary, freshest sage.
“In the Basket Marty Brought to the Hospital After the Cesarean” by Thorpe Moeckel, from Odd Botany. © Silverfish Review Press, 2002.
Ordinary Afters... 