I always enjoy re-reading stuff that I've written. I've done it quite a bit the past couple of days, re-reading those glorious pieces from my creative writing class and finding that I still love them. I know this is a bit vain, but it's also unusual as I still can't believe that I wrote them. Even more incredible to me is the fact that I can't believe that I still like them like I do. I also wonder that this vanity is exactly what prevents me from writing anything else. Sure I write here, but I can't seem to sit down and tell a story on paper anymore. It almost feels like I need someone to assign me something, which is silly, but the truth. I don't even miss school, but I do seem to be missing the structure of it. Again, I need to grow up. It's not that I like the idea of being told what to do and when to do it. I mean, that's obviously no way to live, but then again, feeling like I need to be handed a writing assignment would be most helpful I think. Then again, I looked back on what led me to write those stories, and although there was a deadline (I had to show up in class to read something), these pieces that please me were awfully timely. An Oreo House was written as I was living in an "Oreo house" - my black self, Jayme, the white girl, and Synithia with her black self. Poems about my dad were written after tiffs we had where I really felt I had to say something about him to someone (or thing rather) that wouldn't object; the 9/11 poem was, well, a result of 9/11 and my inability to fully grasp what my eyes had seen on television. Love*Sing, is one of those things that seems to be all about me, but I really made some things up to make the story more compelling. I still think the use of song lyrics is really special, and I still remember the feeling of excitement I got when I realized that as I was typing lyrics right into the story while listening to my playlist without really meaning to do so. It's probably the first time I ever had the feeling that I was on to something ...
Anyway, I am trying to figure out how I get back to those places. What led me to feel like I had to tell that story at that moment? I definitely feel like I have stories to tell, but it's the telling that's a problem. I think I'm afraid that I'll never write anything that I'll like as much as the stuff I've already written - and who is to say that what I wrote was even good? I mean, maybe it's total crap. Thankfully, none of you thought so (which was really nice or else y'all are just really nice liars, loti, but anyway ...) which helped me to believe that they are good. They are good to me and I worry that the magic has run out, which is just a sad thought. This is the first time I've ever said this, but I have not known a greater pleasure than sharing those pieces and seeing and hearing everyone's response. And this isn't intended to be vain, but it was totally nice to feel some gratification as I really poured myself out ... that's also exactly how I feel about writing here sometimes, which is why I don't expect anyone to actually holla, but whenever someone does, I feel like hell yeah, go girl ...
*******
So what's with the title to this post? Am I strong enough to ...? I wonder if I'm strong enough to become a writer. Obviously you know I've no idea how to go about it, so I thank Fidge and Rachel kindly for their little tips. It seems dumb, but I'd not thought of your ideas and now that I have them, I'm a wee bit closer so we'll see what happens.
In a side note, I realize I probably spend too much time wondering, loti.
*******
This title was supposed to be more about my mom (and my dad, too), and now that I'm reminded of that, I'll continue on and talk about it. What I was initially going to talk about was am I strong enough to grow into a woman as fiercely loving and as strong as my mother, or if I'll ever have the quiet and strong reserve of my father. I was tooling around the 'net today and looked at J.K. Rowling's page, and I was reading her biography and she talked about her mother becoming ill with MS. She said that most people, deep down, believe that their mums are indestructible. How true! I am totally one of those people. My mom has never been sick or in the hospital for anything other than to birth us or visit somebody. So to see her in the hospital that night when I arrived, sleeping with tubes coming out of her arms, with this look of rest upon her face was leveling to say the very least.
Two things were swirling about inside me - relief and fear. Part of me wanted to just throw myself on her and cry. Cry out of relief at finally seeing she was alright and alive, to cry bittersweetly - bitter because it had to happen to her and sweetly because at least she was finally getting some sort of rest. She has been working her entire life (I mean since like 8, out in the fields. Work. Cotton. Bugh.) and I have always wanted to make it so she wouldn't have to and suddenly it looked like I was running too short on time in order to make that happen for her. I still worry that I won't have enough time to make sure she has it easier. She just deserves it.
My dad's been working for just as long. His dad was in and out of his life from very early on, leaving my grandmother with 4 kids to raise, a house to find, mouths to feed, etc. I remember once we were having this conversation about my wanting him to take it easy and I even said what I'm saying here about how I want to help with that or whatever, and he turned to me and was rather irate. He said, "It's not your job to help me. I'm supposed to help you. And as far as working is concerned, I've always been workin' as I've never had the choice but to. I work hard in the hopes that one day you and your children won't have to work as much and as hard as I do and so far (I'd just graduated college) you don't have to." He went on to say how proud he was that I'd gone to college since he wasn't able to do so, and he went on to tell me about growing up and what it was like for him to literally become the man of the house at age 6. To learn how to cook so his brother and sister could eat, how he cut grass, picked walnuts, painted houses and murals or whatever he could do just so they could live while my granny worked two and three jobs. Age 6. Crazy. I didn't believe him at first even, but I asked my gran and she said it was so, my Aunt Joyce said it was so and so did everyone else in the neighborhood and at church. When it was time for him to go to college, everyone was sure he would go wherever he wanted. Some preacher, who took it upon himself to pose as a fatherly figure, promised to help my father get a scholarship, but wound up being full of hot air. Disappointed and deeply hurt, my dad joined the Air Force and was sent to Vietnam. He's always made choices that have proven to be tough, but were what he felt to be the right thing to do (for the very most part). The most marvelous thing to me is that he has stood by each and every choice, good or bad, as his own and has made the most each time. He is just resolute, which amazes an indecisive girl like me. He won't just go with the flow, he will go against it or with it - however he sees fit - but always he keeps himself above the water so to speak and I love that.
It's hard when I look at her life and my dad's life and I realize that they have literally spent their entire lives struggling and fighting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone struggles, and I'm not trying to claim a trophy for them or anything, but if I told you what they have seen and endured you might believe it and then wish I'd just kept my mouth shut. At least that's how I feel and felt whenever I learned a little more about them. It's like the longest list of grievances and really leaves me with wonder - wonder at how they really feel about it (both of them keep themselves rather guarded about the past and all the hurts, and I can't say that I blame them). Mostly I marvel at how wonderful they are, deep down, despite everything that didn't go well in their lives, despite the dreams that never came true for them, they are still capable and full of love, of laughter, of offering the best and most genuine advice, of offering their time and attention to anyone who needs it at any time even when it's to their own detriment (as has too often been the case for both of them).
I'm not angry at God about it, but I'm awfully curious as to why these things have happened to them, and why I think about it all so much. It's like I'm trying to piece together exactly how it is that I'm supposed to help them - because I do believe that I'm supposed to help them.
They would probably tell you that I'm not supposed to help them; what I'm supposed to do is live my life in a way that makes me happy and that'll be enough for them, and that may be true, but it's not good enough for me. I dont' believe that that's all there is to it. In church when I was younger, the elders would all talk about how children are supposed to climb on the backs of those who've gone before them (their parents and grandparents and surrounding community - all the people who had a hand in their growth or what not) and then stand on their shoulders. I always liked this explanation and thought hard about how I could actually make it work.
In the years since I've heard that over and over again and have read it in various places, and it's often connected to a plea of sorts. Please, in climbing up, don't forget on whose shoulders and backs you stand. Some, instead of standing, jump or pounce, thereby pounding their so-called support farther down; some seek nothing more than a piggyback ride, and some leap from those shoulders, severing ties altogether.
I like to think I am standing, and in doing so, I remain connected. Remaining connected means that they will always be with me and that whereever any of us may go, we will go together. That being said, I cannot move forward without them, just as they cannot go down without taking me with them ...
*******
Life is not fair. I hate it whenever I think of that, but it's so terribly true. And yet despite whatever fairness we may or may not receive, I am striving for goodness. I've talked about this with my granny (years ago) and other people well-steeped in religion and/or spirituality, and they all at some point said something like, this world pales in comparison to heaven, eventually no one will suffer once we're on the other side, etc.
This type of stuff ticks me off. It probably is designed to have this effect on young people like me who feel that this world, this moment, this weekend is what's most important. I know better, but still, that ain't no consolation. As Sofia told Celie in the corn fields in The Color Purple, "You betta think about heaven later." That's how I feel, which as a God-fearing person is kinda frightful, but I gotta be honest.
I'm no Veruca Salt either though. I don't have to have the goodness now, I'm not making any demands or anything, but I feel like my heart will just ache forever if I have to watch the two people I love the most endure any more strife and worry. I just don't want them to worry about how they're going to make it anymore, with work, with money, with people, with situations ... I mean they'll always worry I bet, but for once I'd like them to worry about something lighter. And by helping them, granted, it's mostly in the material or financial sense. I just want them not to have to worry about that type stuff because I feel like in every other part of their life, they're on their own and doing alright.
But who knows what God has in store. Maybe my heart will have to ache forever, but I just hope not. I'm beginning to live a life that is full of hope. Can we ever have too much of it? In building up hopes, when or where is the point when the building ceases and the reaching begins?
*******
Initially when I typed out that title I was reflecting on how strong my mother has been these past 3 weeks. She only cried once and thinking about that tonight I'm just amazed. I know me. I would've been crying as soon as I woke up, realized where I was and what had happened to me. My sister Kim and I talked about this almost everyday, and both of us are simply amazed, if not baffled. Kim said that when the doctors told my mom she'd had a stroke she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and shook her head, opened her eyes back up and said, Okay.
Every day they stuck her with needles, ran test after test, asked her to roll this way and that; every day my sister or myself helped her do the everyday stuff that she was used to doing on her own; people came in and talked her to sleep or talked her out of her sleep; there was medical mumbo-jumbo to endure and therapies. The onslaught was constant and only once did she get choked up. Just once.
As I've done so many times in recent years, I stared at her hard and wondered what she must be thinking? How is she so amiable and obliging right now? How is she not angry? What is she thinking? Is she sad? Regretful? Pissed off? I could tell when she was annoyed, and it amazed me how well our eyes could communicate things - as I've gotten older I've come to cherish how close we'd become. But I can't shake the fact that there is something hot and solid burning in her core that I just don't know. It's like a fire I cannot touch, but I can feel its warmth and it helps me to keep going. It also appears to be inextinguishable, which is what I mean when I wonder if I'm strong enough? Where did it come from? Do I have it, too, and just can't see it? Does she even know that she has it?
Her right side is weakened. When I first got there, she used it as little as possible. You almost had to remind her that she needed to use it - hold the fork in your hand, mom; c'mon and stick your arm through the sleeve, mom; use that clothespin like the therapist said and squeeze, mom ... Her legs didn't seem to be too effected, although she did shuffle her feet whenever she walked. But she was walking. I was surprised at that and the doctors told us that while no stroke is a good thing, she was fortunate.
In the week and a half that I was home I saw will. When they moved her to the rehab hospital, she was glad to go. The nurses hadn't really been doing anything for her for about a week anyhow, and they kept telling us that all patients should be as obliging and helpful as she was. The first morning she was at the rehab hospital, she got up, showered, changed into her clothes, even put her socks on and then stunned us all by making up the bed - hospital corners as tight as anything. Kim and I walked in at 7:30 thinking we were going to wake her up and instead she was sitting up in her chair, buttering her toast and looked at us like, y'all late.
It made me smile. Immediately I thought, I don't know where she gets it and how she's keeping it, but she's amazing. That day was her first day with all the therapists. The speech is the roughest part for her, but even there she's made great strides in this short amount of time. Besides the preserveration, every day she's added not just more words, but phrases and intonations that had been missing. She was willing herself to be ... herself.
At times when the words fail her, she'll just say I don't know, while her eyes will tell you that there's more to come ... These are eyes that are hard to describe. They're not bright, but they're seeing and they're looking and they're knowing. They still seem to see, look and know everything about me before I can even return their gaze, and that lets me know that she's still my mom, still my #1 girl and nothing will change that. Oh, am I so grateful for that.
By the fourth day, the physical therapist was like, yeah, she doesn't need us. Look at how well she's walking; she took the stairs out today, and has she always walked a bit fast or does she just not like me?
Her sense of humor and ability to keep one has been simply, probably the best thing to me. I laughed at her, intentionally, jokingly and sometimes inadvertently, and she laughed, too. She was keeping her own spirits up, and was doing so in order to keep ours up, too, I think, because I can tell she was concerned about the amount of attention we were paying her.
She likes to be paid as little mind as possible so she can go on about her business, which is why Kim and I mothering her proved to be an interesting task. Our greatest caretaker, and in my opinion, one of the greatest anywhere around, doesn't take kindly to being taken care of. Self-sufficient and proud she fought us in her own way, but even still, she was remarkably obliging. She fully realizes that she needs the help and while she wasn't thrilled about it, she took it.
It's called grace, I think. Something I have always thought she bore so much of; something I always fancied when admiring her. I just now had an epiphany. It was never her pearls that I wanted, or the sleek, ivory sweater coat, but her grace: her carriage and poise have always struck me as regal and strong ... assured. Even in a food-stained t-shirt she still wore her dignity with undetectable charm and grace, and I am trying now to figure out how I will ever be able to muster it, much less match it.
She is, hands down, the most magnificent woman I know, and things like this make me take back all those times when I was younger and I was just young and stupid, wishing she'd change her hairstyle, or that we drove a better car, or that she was more than a housekeeper and a nursing assistant. I'd take them all back because now I know those are the silliest of things, and that she has always been my constant everything.
I think about last week and the one thing I do recall that gives me tingles is when we were in speech therapy and the therapist was talking to mom about how singing will help her recover faster and more effectively. My mom was nodding along and said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard that. Rob, Kim and myself were silent, knowing that here sat a woman who could hold a church in the palm of her hand if she wanted to. The therapist asked if she sang, and my mom said no. The three of us didn't say a word, but inside I tittered - always so modest you are, always deflecting attention away from you, but you know you got pipes.
The therapist wanted to see what mom could remember as well as how well she could enunciate and intonate, so she asked mom to recite the words to Jesus Loves Me. Initially, I just sat there thinking this was harmless in the way that that's no big deal - everybody learns that song, so it's a good one with which to go. Then it happened. In one of these moments I've heard so many people testify about in church all these years, I felt as if God had entered the room. (Now I know just a few paragraphs up I said all that I said about getting ticked off at God or whatever, but make no mistake, I am a believer, especially now.)
My mom looked at her after this request with a face that said, are you kidding me? You want me to do what? She sort of sat there for a few moments gathering her thoughts and then she started speaking. Jesus loves me. This I know.
And then she paused and persed her lips together, and in that moment, for the first time that song made sense to me. It was like I'd heard it for the first time, and I think it might've been the first time any of us really acknowledged what it was all about, because I looked at everyone else in the room and all their heads just bowed, and through my own misty eyes, I saw the therapist grab a tissue, Kim wiped her eyes and Rob smiled, looking misty-eyed, too. And then there was my mom, still sitting silently but nodding and then she started over and her voice was stronger and for the first time sounded as close to her "old" voice: Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong. Yes. Jesus loves me.
Then she just looked at all of us, sitting there looking dumbfounded and she repeated it: Yes. Jesus loves me. But her eyes were like, Right? And we snapped back to reality and as if in church I said Amen, which wasn't so much random as it was just a blurt out. Even my sister looked at me and was like, what was that? The therapist, however, had moved on and one-upped my mom by asking her to sing it. My mom started laughing like, I ain't fallin' for that trick, so we all said we'd sing it with her and so we did. I sang as quietly as possible, though, listening to see if I could hear that voice that mesmerized me as a child ... and you know I heard it? And it was perfectly on pitch, going up and down in all the right places. I was so glad and I am glad still. We finished singing and my mom just laughed like she had been holding it all along and decided to let us in on things. As I laid my head on her shoulder and said how proud I was of her hard work, she kissed my forehead and the hand she laid upon my shoulder warmed me and said what her touch always says, "Everything is gonna be alright."