Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
“…When the little girl was finally sleeping, Marion put her to bed and tucked her in and sat on the edge of the daybed for a long while, looking older and more tired than anything that could be attributed to her eighty-five years. Pushing up from the bed, Marion began collecting the child’s clothing to fold for the next day, only to toss the lot on the floor, swipe a book and a half-empty mug off the table, and storm out of the house. The mug lay shattered on the stone floor, tea stains splattered. KayAnne stared at the ruined cup, reluctant to clean up and somehow needing the brokenness to remain: She wanted to demolish something herself.”
Excerpt from “Emilia“
For The Daily Post
Be a quill to the story you tell
Let it pen
Gentle words
Let it write
Soaring scrolls
As your life
Grows
Unveils
Hidden folds.
For The Daily Post
“…None of anything is half nearly as organized as you’d want it to be, Aimee. … In the end, child … all that matters is what your own skin and neck hairs tell you.”
“My skin and neck hairs?”
She chuckled. “And your gut, while we’re at it. Think of that Watchman who was up to no good in a hurry. How did he make you feel, not only in your head with thoughts or worries but in your body?”
“He made my skin crawl. … ” Her meaning dawned on me. “Oh, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck standing on end, and my belly flopped all frightened.”
“Exactly!” she smiled. “I knew those Matrons could maybe get you to obeying and to keeping your tongue quiet—not that anyone would know it now, from all your chattering—but they did not manage to squelch your instincts for detecting the real kind of wrongness. If you follow clues already in your body, you’ll see through titles and claimed importance. Just make sure you follow your body’s signaling and steer away from those who get your sensors to this kind of itching. Nothing but trouble in those people, and no amount of reasoning will make it worthy.”
(Excerpt, Outlawed Hope)
For The Daily Post
beyondtherack.com cupcake backpack
She packed a snack, Baby Bear, her rainbow blanket. She stashed a book and some crayons, last week’s (slightly stained and missing a corner but still meaningful) drawing of butterflies and “maybe aliens.”
She added a half-eaten cookie, a seashell, a necklace (you just never known when you might need one). She tried to squeeze in her pillow but it “won’t go.”
She put her shoes on (wrong feet, still fit).
She zipped the bag and pulled her hat on. Splayed the coat on the floor, pushed her arms into the sleeves, and flipped the whole thing over her head just as she’d learned. The coat slid on but tugged the hat off as it went, sending it to lodge someplace between her shoulder blades.
She paused in apprehension, then shrugged, jumped in place … ‘birthed’ the hat from under the hem and victoriously repositioned it on her head.
She nodded in satisfaction, reached for her bag and hoisted a strap over one shoulder. Squirmed and wriggled to get the other arm through the second strap.
“There.” She breathed. She looked around.
Frowned.
Being ready was nice but actually leaving was less enticing. All those hours at preschool before she got to see Mommy again.
Her shoulders slumped. So did the bag. Her lip quivered.
A moment passed. She brightened.
“Mommy!” she called. “Can you pack me a hug?”
For The Daily Post
Everything is harder for this little one.
Her body doesn’t quite know how to calm itself. Her hands don’t always know the extent of their reach. She trips. She falls. She bumps into. She upsets the cup, the plate, the markers on the desk. It takes her longer to climb up a flight of stairs. She needs help tackling them going down. Her mouth doesn’t quite make sounds as easily as others’ can: words come out jumbled, not always the right sounds or meaning, often in a mismatched grammar and word order. Food gets messy. Swallowing’s tricky. She gags. She coughs.
But she tries.
Oh, boy, she tries.
And tries.
And tries.
She’s a perfectionist, too.
Indomitable.
Determination personified.
Everything requires repetition. Still she tries again. Again. Again. She shakes her head at any suggestion she accept the unperfected.
“I do more time,” she insists, sometimes in tears but with no less conviction.
And she does. ‘More time’ and time again and then again and then some.
And slowly, sometimes out of the mist of helpless frustration and gritted teeth and hugs and endless patience — she succeeds.
A circle that closes. A list of items in a category. An idea expressed. A multisyllabic word with no sounds missing. A full sentence with all words in attendance. A coat pulled on without assistance. A triangle traced. A tower of blocks. A pattern of beads. A banana that peels without the insides getting mashed. A sip of apple juice from an unaided cup, no spill, no cough.
“I tried and I tried,” she beams. Each time anew. Sometimes with tears still glistening from the last attempt that didn’t quite get up to her own standards. Each time there’s fire in her eyes.
“I told you I can!”
Indeed you had.
Indeed you can.
Hats off, little one.
Every. Single. Time.
For The Daily Post
He won’t let her have a quiet cup of coffee.
He won’t let her sleep.
He needs her when she bathes
Or pees.
He whines during any of her conversations
Cares little for her schedule
Her meetings
Her needs.
He requires constant attention
Won’t be left alone
Must come along.
That phone.
There are a few things so precious as knowing one is seen, heard, known, accepted, cherished.
Loved.
As is.
Just because.
And no matter what or when or how or what else is most certainly going on that may well take front seat and burner.
Few things are as real to the core of one’s heart and to the moon and back again.
When I forget, in the bustle of the day-to-day annoyances and to-do lists and in the boggy mess of worry and all manner of variegated helplessness … I remember.
This.
A card from a dear friend who is no longer here in physical form, and who even as she struggled to find light at the end of the already quite dark tunnel of the illness that would soon after claim her life, still held the thought and found the energy to send me this.
Just because.
From India.
A transcript of caring.
via Discover Challenge: Transcript
People ask me, “Why do you write?” and my inner retort often feels like: “Why do you not?”
I don’t usually reply this aloud, however. I realize that such deflection is far from giving an answer, and that there are probably as many reasons to write as there are not to. Belonging to the former group, I cannot imagine life without words put down on paper and/or screen, even if I know it is not the only way to live. So it stands to reason that there would be those from the latter group who find in quite confounding to imagine why one would want to type letters onto screens for recreation.
Why then, do I write?
Beyond the obvious to me “because I do …”, my answer varies, but it often returns to “because it feels as natural as breathing and just as necessary.” Writing is essential to me. It feels like home. It is the place of flow, even if not always of comfort. Writing takes me places that I never knew I would be visiting, into mind-nooks and crannies I’ve forgotten I had known and some that I never owned and yet somehow remember. Writing deepens how I think, what I comprehend, how I understand it. It plumbs my heart for meaning and compassion, it weaves my thoughts so that they make a tapestry from smallish bits of living. Words offer vistas that lie hidden under the everyday, patiently (and not so patiently) waiting to be breathed onto page and screen.
To me writing is often fun. The best kind of delight, when I am immersed and floating down creative currents. Though some parts of writing can be tedious, they are to me never boring. Words paint pictures within me. They have me revisit. They bring alive people and places. They animate thoughts, realities, events, suspense and resolution. More than anything, writing surprises me. It is as if stories unfold and I am naught but the typist of their unveiling, a tool for their formation.
I write because I can, and because it seems impossible not to.
As Miller said, “writing is, like life, a voyage of discovery” and it is one to which I do not want to say good-bye.
If you, reading this, write: would you share why?
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